For those of you who don’t know me personally, I am a Jersey Shore resident, born and raised. My current home is a half mile from the Ocean and less than that from a river on the other side. I was very fortunate, my house and my family are fine. Many were not as fortunate, as I am sure you have been witnessing on all of the major television stations.

In addition to worrying about my family and friends during the hurricane and the week after, we were also working and worrying about our clients, most of whom were without power, phones, and internet. As it turned out, hurricane Sandy helped us demonstrate to all of our clients, how crucial their social media accounts had become.

When the students of Advantage Career Institute didn’t know whether school was on or off because they couldn’t call the school and no email was coming out, they went to ACI’s Facebook page and we were able to answer their questions and keep them informed.  When donors wanted to reach the FoodBank of Monmouth and Ocean County to help with food donations and couldn’t reach them by phone, they turned to the FoodBank’s Facebook page for answers and we were able to provide guidance on how they can help. When the Natural Healthcare Center in Long Branch wanted to let their patients know that the roof was repaired and the generator was on and the phones were back, once again it was Facebook that helped us communicate that. When Casa Giuseppe wanted their patrons to know that power had been restored and they would be serving dinner on Saturday night, Facebook and Twitter came to the rescue and their restaurant was full of happy diners on Saturday night.

When power lines were on the ground and no one had access to their laptops and PC’s, everyone turned to their smart phones and tablets. From these devices, Facebook was the go-to communication tool among friends, families and businesses. It was a hairy week for us, keeping in touch with our clients via spotty cell-phone service, but it also made us really appreciate what we do and the power of these communication tools that have become such a part of our lives.

How many of you have been using Social Media to keep up to date with loved ones, friends, customers impacted by the hurricane? I’d love to hear how.

Some exciting news and some opportunities for some social media learning coming your way.

First, we are very excited to introduce the FoodBank of Monmouth and Ocean Counties “Facing Hunger” campaign as part of Hunger Action Month. We have created 5 unique cover images that individuals and businesses and can upload to their Facebook timelines to help educate and speak out about the need for food assistance in Monmouth and Ocean Counties. This is a very unique and visually dynamic campaign. Users can download one of five banners from the FoodBank’s Photo Album on Facebook. We are encouraging those who do upload a photo to come back to the page and leave a comment about it. It’s a great way to A: drive people to your page to grab the image and B: Bring them back and get them Liking and commenting on your page. We’ve already had multiple shares through pages and individuals. You can see it in action on JerseyBites’s Facebook page.

You may have noticed the NJ King Crab competition that we have been running all summer on JerseyBites.com. This has been an all encompassing campaign, incorporating POS materials in every restaurant with QR code pointing to the contest page, tying in social media sharing after each vote, PR and more.  The contest culminates at the Viking Cooking School in Atlantic City where the 3 finalists will compete in the crab cake show down. I will be serving as one of the judges. We will be live streaming this event on September 24th.

Upcoming Workshops: Over the past month I have delivered several LinkedIn workshops, most recently for the American Chemical Society at their national convention in Philadelphia. This month, I’ll be back at First Financial Federal Credit Union on September 13th to give an hour presentation on all the great networking opportunities that await you on LinkedIn. Recent grads, job seekers, sales professionals, B2B businesses all should be using LinkedIn to its fullest potential. Join me for an hour of learning LinkedIn. You can get all the details and register here. http://blog.firstffcu.com/bid/88038/Make-the-Most-out-of-LinkedIn-at-this-September-Seminar.

And, we have some cool new advertising tools available that now tie in Facebook & Twitter. Banner ads that can be updated real-time through your social media accounts. This is a brand new technology and perfect for restaurants who want to promote daily specials, promotions, and more. Contact me for more information on how we can put these banner ads to work for you. 732-966-7450

Don’t miss this great workshop where we will cover all of the steps for starting and marketing a blog for your business. Networking and light breakfast will begin at 8:30am.

Attendees will learn:

• Why blogging is important
• Which blogging platforms to use
• How to upload photos, insert hyperlinks, optimize your blog, attract readers and much more!

The cost of the seminar is $10 (no refunds), paid in advance.

Comments after my last blogging workshop included “I don’t think I’ve ever been to a more thorough and information packed workshop, ever!” 

We hope all those who are involved in blogging for his or her business, or anyone who wants to learn more about the basic strategies of  blogging for fun will be able to attend.  Hurry – space is limited.

Register Now

I’ve noticed an interesting advancement in the evolution of Social Media Marketing lately. When I started consulting businesses on Social Media Marketing about 4 years ago, there was really no title for what I was doing. Then the terms Social Media Manager and Social Media Strategist and the ridiculous “Social Media Guru” started to pop up everywhere from popular search queries to classified ads.  My job had evolved from explaining to businesses WHAT social media was, to explaining to them HOW to use it effectively.

With this evolution also came one more title, the Social Media Salesman. And with that new creature was born the Social Media Sucker.   The Salesperson preys on the ignorance of the Sucker, it’s an age old dance. The poor business owner doesn’t understand Social Media Marketing enough to see that the Salesman’s offer of 3 canned Facebook updates and 5 Twitter posts a week will mean very little to his business, if anything at all.

The new clients coming to me now are the ones who followed the Salesman’s pitch into a company that was churning out canned messages for all its clients. (I like to call them Twitter mills.) Placing 50 clients in the lap of a recent college grad and not caring whether the message is relevant to the client’s business or not. Posting a quote here, a “how’s the weather?” there, maybe a cutesy question once a week, and that is what they call a Social Media campaign.

One former Salesman who recently left his Twitter mill employer, said they would sell the same level of service from $250 to $2500. It all depended on where they could get the business to bite.  After hearing this and from new clients who had been led down this path, I felt the need to arm you with some tips on how not to fall prey to the social media sales pitch.

1. Pay attention to how much the company wants to know about your business. When I talk with a prospective client, my main goal is to find out about their target market, their products or services, their resources for providing us with sharable content. If the company you meet with has a pre-packaged service that they are trying to sell you, they are not planning to tailor anything to truly fit your business.
2. Ask the salesman where he sees your company being most successful in Social Media? If Twitter and Facebook is all they preach without a mention of blogging or video or if they never bring up LinkedIn and you are a B to B company tell them to hit the bricks.
3. Ask the salesman how his company integrates social media with the other forms of marketing your company does? Do they also offer email marketing and consult on how to market your social media offline? Social media should be part of a holistic marketing effort and a company worth their salt knows this.
4. Ask the salesman “besides messaging 3 times on Facebook and 5 times on Twitter” what else will you be doing with social media for my company?  A legitimate social media marketing company will be monitoring mentions of your competition, your team, keywords that your prospective clients might use. They will be seeking out relevant individuals for your company to follow and interact with. They may suggest training for staff or set up of a method of communication through key staff to assist in the flow of content.
5. Ask for references and call them. Ask the references if they feel their social media campaigns are representing them the way they had hoped.  Does the company work to come up with relevant, shareable content for their business?  Have they come up with creative suggestions for building a following? Are they responsive when called?
6. Look at the social media accounts of the references. Compare several clients. Is the messaging all the same? Is there any engagement on the page?
7. Look at the social media presence of the company you are considering hiring. Are they practicing what they preach?  Do they have a substantial following that they can use to help your following grow?
8. And finally, businesses need to realize that $300 per month for social media management will not buy you much more than 3 canned Facebook updates and 5 Twitter posts.  Quality social media messaging and engagement is time consuming, especially if the business is not helping to create content. We try very hard to get our clients involved in supplying content. It cuts down on the hours we have to spend on finding relevant, creative content and of course, it’s far more authentic. We are also very honest with prospective clients and will tell them if we think a presence on Facebook is a waste of time or with their limited resources, they should be concentrating on the one platform where they will really be able to generate leads.  Everything is always tailored to the individual client. I don’t know any other way quite frankly.

I was once called a “Social Media Purist” during a conversation with another social media consultant. I have to say, I’ll take that title any day. To me, that’s a compliment. I personally know the lasting value of an authentic social media program. I used social media to start and grow my own business in 1998 and developed lasting relationships with many influencers who have proven invaluable to me over and over in my career. I created an email group that lasted for 13 years, a private social media group on Ning that has over 1000 members and is still growing and thriving under new ownership. My blog receives over 20,000 visits per month and through social media I have recruited a team of over 30 contributors to that blog. My company’s twitter account was started in 2008 and grew slowly and organically to a very responsive community of over 6000 followers. I use LinkedIn primarily to market my social media consulting and Facebook and Twitter to market my food blog. I’ve learned over the years, that this works best for my two businesses.

So, social media salespeople, beware. The social media sucker is getting wise. Hopefully this article has helped. What other advice would you give to the business in search of a social media marketing firm?

I recently participated on a panel for WCBS New Radio at their Small Business Breakfast. It was a great time and experience. Check out the video for highlights.

Business to business companies seem to struggle with how they can best capitalize on the available Social Media tools. I say, get your sales staff more social.

1. If your company uses a sales team to conduct business, why not give them the training they need to make the most out of LinkedIn?  Even the most experienced LinkedIn user gains new information and skills from formal training. Get your company page up on LinkedIn and make sure all of your employees are properly linked to this page.
2. Identify “Brand Advocates” who can help lead the social media charge and set an example for less “enthusiastic” employees.
3. Set up a system where your brand advocates can communicate with one another to share content that can then be shared on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. I have found that a simple email group, like Google groups, works great for this.
4. Assign one person or a few people to be Administrators on the company Facebook page. Your company should have one central Facebook page and Twitter account. However, your sales reps can certainly have their own accounts if they wish and it falls within company policy. Get your sales people trained on Twitter and Facebook so they understand best practices and can use these tools to their fullest potential.
5. If you sales reps are willing to write articles, create a collaborative blog for you company website. This will give those sales reps who want to participate added exposure not only on the blog, but on the social platforms where the content will be shared.   Instead of waiting for your staff to come up with topics on their own, create a list of topics based on keyword research that you would like them to write about. This will clear up any confusion as to what you are looking for and will encourage them to move forward.
6. Sales professionals respond to goals and rewards. Incentivize their participation by awarding the most active Fan on Facebook or the one who generates the most sharable content that month.

The greatest lesson I have learned in working with so many different companies, is that there is no such thing as a cookie cutter approach. Corporate cultures differ, products and services differ, and people differ. The best approach is to try and see what works. Add to what is working, take away what isn’t working.

Now that your blog is set up, what next? Maybe its not set up, that’s okay too. Join me on Thursday, October 13th for a fun and informative class on Blogging.  Today, blogs come in all forms and with as many features the imagination can conjure up. Businesses are using blogs in place of traditional websites for many practical reasons. Join us and learn why.

You’ll Learn:

In-depth information about the WordPress platform, themes, plugins, and more.

How to optimize your blog for the search engines and keep your articles search engine friendly.

How to attract readers and keep them coming back.

How to monetize your blog, and more.

Space is limited.  Register Now!

*Cost to attend is $10.00 which must be paid in advance, and there will be no refunds. You may register with a Credit Card via Pay Pal, or send a check in advance. If you are sending a check, please list 10/13 Blogging Seminar in the memo portion and address it Attn: Marketing.

Contact : First Financial, http://www.firstffcu.com info@firstffcu.com 866.750.0100

When: Thursday, October 13, Networking and light breakfast – 8:30am Seminar- 9am

Where: First Financial, 1800 Rt. 34 North, Bldg. 3 (Corner of Rt. 34 & Hurley Pond Rd.) Wall, NJ 07719

Guest Post by Scott McKelvey

As a writer, I’m often frustrated when I write content that reads like poetic brilliance until it gets chopped up and cluttered with keywords to improve the almighty search ranking. Enter Inbound Writer. Developed by Eightfold Logic and released in May of this year, Inbound Writer was designed with writers in mind and allows you to optimize your content by tweaking instead of making wholesale changes.

Inbound Writer not only accounts for search, but it digs deeper into what people are discussing and sharing through social media, delivering access to what they call “real-time social intelligence”. When you create a document, you enter seed terms so Inbound Writer knows what you’re writing about and can find it on the web. Then you enter website references (websites that are known to discuss this topic) to drill down its search even further.

When you get to the “New Document” dashboard, you’ll see keywords ranked from 0-5 stars so you know to focus on the right keywords and you can adjust your strategy based on a number of factors. Next, write your document (minimum 250 words) using their editor or simply cut and paste from another source and Inbound Writer will score your content for SEO.

Inbound Writer then offers tips to help you improve your score, whether that means moving a keyword to the beginning of the document title or adding a keyword to the first or second line of content. Instead of reinventing the wheel, I was able to improve my SEO score by 20 points by adding a single term to the very beginning of a blog without making it sound awkward. It’s a great way to save time and preserve content quality.

I also like how Inbound Writer scores your content in real time so you can optimize as you go. Again, any writer would prefer tweaking over rewriting. You can create up to eight documents per month for free and unlimited documents for $19.95 per month, so the price is right.

It’s important to point out that there is no magic bullet that allows you to fly to the top of search rankings with content that’s completely client-focused. Compromise on both sides is always necessary, but Inbound Writer allows you to write for your target audience first and the SEO gods second. It’s a tool that can help writers produce better results and become more marketable. That sounds like a win-win to me.

Scott McKelvey

Copywriting & Marketing

www.ScottMcKelvey.com

info@scottmckelvey.com

908-907-0031