Hootsuite takes control of your social business

So, it's been a while since I've posted...sorry about that! I took a hiatus once classes ended, enjoyed sleeping in and playing with my pup, Tobias. But now that fall is here (Happy belated Labor Day, btw!) I'm getting back into the swing of things.

I thought you should know that I'm not taking classes this semester either, but it won't stop me from posting diligently at least once a week. *Fingers crossed*

These last few weeks, I've been getting calls, emails, and presenting at work about different facets of social media and various platforms. And I'll admit, it's been a great experience applying my newly acquired knowledge IRL and providing my (albeit, limited) two-cents on content curation and engagement.

I recently just finished a webinar on Hootsuite, and thought this would be a great opportunity to talk about a few highlights that I've gathered on the online social media management tool.

Its original form dates back to 2008, when it was known as BrightKit, a dashboard for all things Twitter-related. It was renamed in 2009 and quickly expanded with new features, including the integration of other social networking sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. I found it especially important because of the following three features:

1. Listening - Only using Hootsuite to get the word out to followers? Sorry, but you're doing it wrong. You've got to listen, too! Listening to targeted conversations is often one of the underutilized methods of the management tool. You can listen to (almost) everything anyone is saying about you (or your company) by setting up streams for your platform. Take Twitter for example: you can follow Tweets Retweeted; Mentions; Keyword Search (domain name, a hashtag, alternate spelling); Sent Tweets; Your Retweets ; Direct Message (Inbox); Direct Message (Outbox); and Home Feed. This is especially great for engagement and user-generated content!
2. Insights - A social media strategy means nothing without analyzing your efforts. Luckily, Hootsuite allows users to measure ROI with real-time social analysis in brand sentiment, tracking a social profile's brand growth over time, and visualizing audience social demographics like gender and geography. You can pinpoint your reach down to the city-level. Whoa.
3. App Directory -  Hootsuite offers a collection of extensions and apps that users can add to their dashboard to create a customized experience. This goes way beyond the typical Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube. You can add Instagram, EverNote, SlideShare, Reddit, DailyMotion... seriously, the list goes on and on. Users can manage, share, search, monitor, engage, optimize and explore streams of content that matter to them.

 

Hootsuite is great for its time saving capabilities. It allows users to manage social media sites from one place, no longer having to log in to four or more accounts separately. More than that, it's a crucial resource for a social strategy. Its scheduling and listening features are useful for content management and can help managers with creating additional timely/relevant posts. It's time to take control of your social business so social business can't take control of your time.

Read More

Analytics of a Social Media Campaign

This week we learned the importance of analyzing a marketing campaign. The idea of tying social media to conversions and isolating social referrals may seem like a daunting task, but they're an integral part to tracking goals and social media marketing efforts like brand awareness, sales effectiveness and advocacy. Analytics are concrete data, meaning they can't be changed or altered. The way in which the analytics are approached, however, may vary from person to person. The little bit (or a lot) of time spent in this area help you make the most of your social platforms.

Below are sample analytics for a real company. For the purpose of this blog post, they are known as "ABC Company." ABC Company is a health oriented organization in the Central Florida area. ABC are active on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and YouTube. They also send out a bi-weekly e-newsletter to subscribers. We will only be analyzing their Facebook page and e-newsletter.

The first set of data is from Facebook Analytics. During the month of May, one can see they lost more than 50% of the people talking about them despite a .69% increase in total likes. According to the analytics, there was almost a 40% increase in weekly total reach. They reached and engaged the most people when they invited friends to partake in ABC-hosted activities.The fact that their number of "Friends of Fans" is at 340,325 means they have quite a bit of potential to influence this extended network. I think if they can find a way in which to engage them, interest would spark and the number of people talking about them would increase. 

What I found the most interesting are the more detailed analytics about ABC's demographics and location found on the next two screenshots. They illustrate engagement rates broken down into gender, age, countries, cities, and languages. Women make up more than half of the total demographic with 60.3%, with 28.6% aged 25-34. This is also their most engaged demographic. If this is their ideal target market, the data shows they are posting the right type of content to keep them talking about the ABC brand. If females 25-34 are not their ideal market, they will surely need to reevaluate the content being posted so as to reach other segments of the market. 

Males in the age range of 25-34 are also the most reached by ABC. The data shows that their audience is made up of mostly English speakers in Orlando. It is not surprising to see Spanish as the second-most popular language, as Puerto Rico is the second country in the list of countries being reached. The way in which they reach people is mostly by viral page content. 

The final set of analytics is of their email newsletter. I found this piece of analytics the most alarming. Although ABC has an almost perfect delivery rate at 99.3%, the number of opens and clicks should be causing them to make immediate changes to the contents of their newsletter. Out of 2,606 delivered emails, only 661 people opened them and only 72 found something worthy to prompt a click. And if that wasn't enough, the lack of conversions from the number of clicks is a sure sign of an unsuccessful email campaign. 

In short, ABC Company has a lot of room for improvement on their Facebook page and email newsletter. Re-evaluating goals would be my first recommendation for ABC. I think their Facebook would see much more engagement if it provided interactive material with polls, quizzes, contests, sweepstakes or puzzles. This would also evenly spread the opportunity for engagements across the demographics.

Then, I would suggest sharing information that complements what ABC offers in their email marketing campaign by including things like behind-the-scene images and videos, photos or videos of employees, sneak peeks of an upcoming event or sale (remember those higher numbers of engagement when they used the word "Join" in posts), previews of future projects or offerings, funny videos that relate to their business and other great links of information ABC has come across. By sharing pieces that delight, engage, and entertain, numbers for click rate and conversion will likely increase.

Read More

BullHorn Media: Promising Video Business

BullHorn Media is the newly separated corporate video production services brand from Mark and Lisa DeGrand.  Their original business, Pro One Video, has provided over 20 years of wedding videography services to Orlando, Florida. The tagline and idea behind BullHorn Media is to help businesses in need of “amplifying [their] image,” in which Mark can produce corporate and education video services like live streaming, conventions coverage, testimonials, meetings, on-site editing, title/motion graphic design, branding and photography.

 As a boutique creative office, their focus on the customer is what sets them apart from the heavily saturated market. Their expertise and quality work in video production has allowed them to perfect the art of recognizing customer needs, and exceeding their goals even when they’re not be clearly stated at the start. Since the duo has low staff overhead costs, they are able to work with small businesses with smaller budgets, or call on a network of creatives to assist when approached about larger corporate projects. Regardless of the project size, they pride themselves on offering unmatched personal attention.

Their target audience includes associations, small businesses, trade shows, and corporations. They will provide their services for anyone with video needs whether for a presentation or convention interviews during an event. They’ve worked with not-for-profit organizations

The overall campaign messaging/theme/goals for BullHorn Media to achieve in the fourth quarter:

• Catch and keep the attention of potential clients and current BullHorn Media audience.
• Make a personal connection with BullHorn Media audience.
• Increase online presence and reinforce BullHorn Media brand.
• Stand out from your competition as well-rounded video, photography, graphic design experts.
• Increase leads by 5% in fourth quarter.

Trends and habits that happen during fall/winter:

• September through fourth quarter is busiest season for conventions and corporate business.  

Strengths and Opportunities

Strengths

• Skilled workforce
• Established identity and credibility in the Orlando area with Pro One
• Ability to convert video shoots to DVD on-site
• Provide a wide array of services including: photo restoration, photo montages, Photo FX
• Strong Management
• Pricing Power based on quality of work
• Innovative Culture as they are open to a variety of ways to market their new brand

Opportunities

• Growing demand
• Ability to focus on photography side of videography through their services offered: photo restoration, photo montages, photo FX
• Ability to convert and author video shoots to DVD
• Ability to expand their services by placing video shoots on the internet
• Financial Leverage allows BullHorn Media to quickly expand into other markets
• Greater innovation

Why use an Integrated Marketing Communications Plan

According to the American Association of Advertising Agencies’ definition, integrated marketing communication is a form of planning achieving the objectives of a marketing campaign through a well-coordinated use of different promotional methods that are intended to reinforce each other. By integrating marketing communication tools such as advertising, direct mail, social media, telemarketing and sales promotion, a business provides clarity, consistency and maximum communications impact.

 

BullHorn Media should utilize an IMC strategy using various channels because it will give their small business the potential to get better results from their campaigns and reduce marketing costs. By repeating the headlines, key phrases and images in communication, they will ensure that prospects and customers receive consistent messages each time they see one of the elements of the campaign – no matter the platform or touch-point. Creative consistency helps reinforce the basic campaign themes by increasing the number of times prospects see or hear the same message.

All in all, I think with a bit of strategic planning and personal investment (more time than money) in learning about their respective platforms and audience, there is a lot of opportunity for BullHorn Media to catch and keep the attention of potential clients and audience in the long run. Their social sites like Facebook, Twitter and blog will allow them to make a personal connection with their audience as long as they are consistent in their messaging and response time. 

Special attention on how to use photo and video into their platforms will increase online presence and reinforce the BullHorn Media brand. By using more than one medium and by honing in on strong keywords and phrases will positively affect where they stand in comparison to their competition as well-rounded video, photography, graphic design experts. All of this, along with their high-level quality work, personal attention to clients’ needs, and analyzing of success in the areas they've invested time, BullHorn Media will surely increase their number of leads by 5% in their fourth quarter.

Read More

Trying my hand at Reputation Management

This week we covered reputation management and the "online identity" of a brand. Reviews and social comments are a lasting and influential representation of a company, product, or service. Positive and negative feedback are a product of social media, but the way in which a company responds to the feedback (especially the criticism) can make the greatest impact on their business and financial bottom line. When brands acknowledge and remedy a situation, it doesn’t go unnoticed.

I'll be using this blog post to recommend responses to the following negative and positive comment examples from The Hilton Fort Lauderdale Marina and Hyatt Regency in Orlando, as if I were the Social Media Manager of the respective hotels. **Please note this is for class purposes only - any phone numbers or email addresses are fictional and strictly made for the purpose of this post!**

Negative review:

Greetings - Thank you very much for taking the time to review our property at The Hilton Fort Lauderdale Marina. Your input, and the feedback from all of our guests is vitally important to us and we always want guest expectations to be met upon arrival. We apologize sincerely for your experience not meeting those expectations during your stay for your 10-year high school reunion. 

I have informed management of your comments and our top priorities are now twofold - to have them addressed, as well as working to ensure that future travelers experience only remarkable hospitality, service and cleanliness. The issues you've encountered made us aware of the areas in which we can improve. 

Please know that we have since covered the parking lot gate box, as well as addressed the cleanliness issue of our pool and spoken with the employee in question. We want you to know that we truly enjoy sharing our passion for our destination with visitors and want you to make the most of your trip while enjoying our amenities. If you come back to our hotel, I would love the opportunity to speak with you directly, so please ask for me. We hope to see you again in the future and you can reach me directly at 954-463-5555 if I can be of any assistance. 

Positive review:

Thank you so much for visiting the Hyatt Regency in Orlando! It is always a pleasure to hear how our hotel goes above and beyond our guests' expectations for both business and leisure experiences. Please know that we have added your requests of a room on a high floor and views of the pool to your account for future visits. Requests are made possible based on our availability at the time of reserving with us. 

Have you registered for our Hyatt Gold Passport? You can do so here to take advantage of exclusive member benefits on your next business trip. You can be on your way to earning free nights at Hyatt hotels worldwide if you provide the reservation number from your most recent visit. Thank you for recommending our the Hyatt Regency to your friends and family. To show our appreciation of continued visits, we'd like to upgrade your next 50-minute Deep Tissue or Spa Refresher massage - you'll get an extra 30 minutes on us. We look forward to serving you again in the future!

Read More