Electronic Word of Mouth – The highs and lows of your product.

For centuries it has remained evident that word of mouth is the best form of advertising a business can ask for. Endless customer surveys and questionnaires are conducted and still the final question remains; ‘ …and would you recommend this to a friend?’. But, centuries ago our social groups were probably what we would now consider as ‘local’. To think of the reaches we can access now through social media is a stark contrast. The term for this ‘e-wom’ (electronic word of mouth).

Image: www.brandingstrategyinsider.com

Our praises for a product can be expelled out to our 300+ Facebook friends, be tweeted and blogged reaching thousands in mere minutes. And we do it constantly, without even realizing that we are doing it. For example, you go out to meet some friends for dinner…before, after or during one of the group would have posted something like; ‘Great time eating at _______...’ You can even check yourself in at that exact restaurant, in your exact city. Then you tag your friends, add your hashtags and ‘post’. Within minutes people will have ‘liked’ and commented on it; and that’s it. You have marketed a product to tonnes of people without even thinking about it. Be honest, if one of your friends posts about something you like you will start thinking about it, and often buying it yourself. Its fun and its sharing, and that is what social media is for.

So it can be easily deduced from this that ‘e-wom’ is has incredible potential if you want to launch or continue a successful product, service or brand.

In contrast of this, it has been proven that if you enjoy a product or service you are actually less likely to talk about it. But if you have had a bad experience, you generally tell anyone you come into contact with. Of course social media doesn’t have a filter of who sees what you post so it’s evening out the ratio slightly; but still there is a risk now that really has been taken out of any businesses hands.

The issue that this introduces is that one simple criticism can snowball and suddenly begin a #angrymob against your product or site in plain, public view. Many large companies in the past few years have invested in a social media department, which will monitor any bad press. If they get an online complaint, they will contact the disgruntled consumer directly and arrive at some agreement – off screen, preferably. This can quell small disputes but the public are scary and demand high standards. If your product or service has an issue it must be rectified – and fast. Bad online press for a company can be extremely damaging.

Like us, celebrities are also constantly promoting products, people and services online. Unknown to many, this free marketing is actually illegal. An example below; Kim Kardashian promoting both Reebok and Dicks Sports Co.

Image: www.dailymail.co.uk

This unashamed way of plugging and promoting other products is incredibly effective. No effort from the business or the celebrity has to be made; but still within seconds the exposure is global.

So where do business ethics come into this? It seems only the biggest and most prominent brands are getting the use of it. Many smaller companies must be a little disgruntled as they fight for space in this already overcrowded domain. But if there is the capacity to monitor this, who is responsible? The big companies are benefitting so obviously not them and what can the social media sites do to prevent it? This is something we may see unfold…

Another positive of e-wom is the exposure it gives to non-profit organisations such as charities. Big and small, global and local charities can set up accounts like any other business and get themselves recognised. I hope to see more emphasis and help for those who are trying to use social media to promote helping others.

Image: whitefusemedia.com

The instantaneous online world can be sporadic but using e-wom seems extremely effective for many businesses. It is proving, like any form of advertising that as long as you know your market, you can get positive results from putting yourself into the public domain and being talked about.

Do not be ignorant in the fact that if you get your product or business on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook that you can become complacent. Plant the right seeds at the right time, keep up to date and interactive and you will build an online presence.

It is clear that the most successful brands are using tried and tested business strategies and applying it in the world of social media. Use e-wom to propel your business into the online world, be careful of the risks, and refrain from being blasé – do your research and you will get the results.

Do you do your companies social media or do you use a management company?

Faye Cannon

6 Tips for Finding Prospects on LinkedIn

Are you using LinkedIn to connect with new leads and clients?

Do you want to learn about social selling tactics on LinkedIn?

Social selling is the use of social media todiscover and connect with new leads and new clients.

In this article, you’ll discover a 6-step process to find new leads and attract new clients on LinkedIn.

Start social selling on LinkedIn with these 6 simple steps. Image source: iStockphoto

#1: Make Your Profile Easy to Find

Most of social selling requires an active outreach process. But you can draw prospective clients to you when you optimize your profile with keywords a potential new client might use when seeking out someone with the products or services that you provide. Add strong keywords to the Title and Summary sections of your profile to ensure you show up in search results.

Remember that you’ll only show up in search results for people in your network. This includes first-, second- and third-level connections, and people who are members of groups you belong to. For this reason it’s beneficial to have a larger LinkedIn network rather than keeping it limited to close personal connections.

The more connections you have, the more searches you will show up in. That said, try not to treat LinkedIn as a popularity contest, since you’re limited to 3000 connection invites.

#2: Create Strategic Alliances

Next you’ll want to remember to network and build business relationships with peers in your industry.

Find professionals who share a target market similar to yours, but don’t offer the service you provide. Once you connect with them, consider fostering a reciprocal relationship to generate referrals for each of you.

Before connecting with a prospect, ask yourself "What do I have to offer her?"

The third-party credibility you receive will dramatically shorten the sales cycle with prospective clients.

#3: ‘Search’ for Opportunities

Now you can focus on finding the prospects you want for your business.

First, join a few LinkedIn groups to network with a wider audience.

Second, use the excellent functionality of Advanced Search to find prospects. You can filter by relationship, groups, location and industry, and the Save Search function even allows you to store effective criteria.

Search by relationship, groups, location and industry.

Use the Tags feature in LinkedIn Contacts to sort your results and save profiles of prospects to the Profile Organizer without being connected to them.

#4: Carefully Craft Your Message

After you identify someone you want to connect with, you’ll want to carefully tailor your communication.

A great first impression with your prospects on LinkedIn should leave them with an interest in your service and a willingness to continue communication.

Approach your prospects with a connection request naturally. Always start by greeting them by name. Be clear and concise in your body paragraph. Give them a reason to click “Accept“.

Personalize your connection request and tell them why you want to connect.

Personalize your connection request to avoid being flagged as spam. If you’re flagged too often, you’ll be required to add an email address to each connection request you send.

You can also contact your prospects through InMail, which can be purchased by unpaid members. These messages have a very high open and response rate and if the prospect doesn’t respond in seven days, the InMail will be credited back to your account.

#5: Build the Relationship

Once your connection request is accepted, develop the relationship through sustained communication.

Do you want to build buyer confidence and credibility? Offer your prospect something of value in the form of a helpful article, eBook or other free download. Whatever it is, ensure that it is of clear value so it isn’t dismissed as spam or self-serving.

Offer your prospects value with a free download.

Depending on your social selling strategy, you can send a follow-up message over the next several weeks. Set up reminders using the LinkedIn Contacts feature. Remember the content of these messages can vary, but you shouldn’t include sales materials.

Build your relationships with prospects by offering them something of value.

Do you need to organize this process? The Tags, Notes and Reminder features inside LinkedIn can help you.

Create a series of tags denoting stages (Lead-1, Lead-2 and Lead-3) to advance prospects as you continue through the process.

Store useful information about your contacts in the Notes feature and use the Reminder feature to let you know when your contact should be emailed next so they aren’t overlooked.

Keep track of where you are in the social selling process using the Tags, Notes and Reminder features on the profile page.

You’ll also want to stay up to date on what your contacts are doing on LinkedIn. The Your Day feature highlights the birthdays, business anniversaries and job changes of all of your contacts.

Develop your new and existing relationships on LinkedIn by acknowledging special occasions for prospects using the Your Day feature.

Use this information to further your relationships with a comment directly from the Your Day feature or with a personal message.

#6: Move Online Connections to Offline Conversations

Eventually, you want to move the contacts you’ve identified as prospects further into a business relationship by moving off the LinkedIn platform into an offline conversation via phone or in person.

Social selling starts online but moves offline to further the relationship.

Think about moving the relationship offline after a contact has responded to one of your relationship-building messages. If there’s no response after one or two attempts, consider sending one final message that briefly explains how you can solve their “problem.”

Everyone online has a problem that they are looking to solve and if you can tap into that and provide a solution, you’ll convert sales from LinkedIn.

Group unresponsive prospects under a tag for dormant contacts. You can continue to reach out to these prospects through the Your Day feature and by actively contributing to common groups they are members of.

Over to You

Follow these 6 steps to discover and connect with new leads and new clients. Integrated into your business strategy, you’re sure to transform your connections into business relationships.

Social selling produces better results than cold calling and allows you to easily reach the decision-makers. To be successful, strive to offer value and build credibility. After all, that’s what we look for when we do business with people, isn’t it?

What do you think? Are you using LinkedIn for social selling? What successes have you had? Leave your questions and comments in the box below.

20 Ways to Build Your Online Reputation in 10 Minutes a Day

Joining a network like Twitter or Facebook isn't enough to build an on-line reputation; you have to participate in it as well. That's obvious, but this is one area that worries some people, who think they need to spend all day on these networks to build their reputation. That doesn't have to be the case. There are people who are constantly updating Facebook and Twitter, but you don't have to be one of them.

Instead, note this quotation attributed to Benjamin Franklin:

"It takes many good deeds to build a good reputation, and only one bad one to lose it."

This is usually quoted as a warning about the one bad deed, but you can also think about the many good deeds. For most businesses, building an on-line reputation is a series of many small good deeds. So it is a commitment, but not a large commitment.

Let's look at 20 easy, practical ways to participate in various on-line communities. Each of these takes less than ten minutes to do, so they only take discipline, not a big time commitment.

LinkedIn

1. Expand your LinkedIn network by connecting with somebody new (somebody you know who you're not currently connected to on LinkedIn).


2. Look through your LinkedIn connections, and write a recommendation for somebody you know. Be sincere, specific and brief.


3. LinkedIn groups are for members with common interests. Join a relevant group and contribute to a discussion. Be positive in your comments and build on existing comments in the discussion, especially if you're new to the group.


4. Browse the "Answers" section on LinkedIn, and answer a question in your area of expertise. LinkedIn shows these questions and answers to people beyond your direct connections, so this is a good way to demonstrate your expertise to more people.

Twitter

1. Promote somebody else on Twitter - an award they have won, an event they are running, a book they have written, a sale they are offering, and so on.


2. Check Twitter right now, find something you like (for example, a link to an interesting Web site or blog post), and re-tweet it to your network. This helps the original tweeter, because you're sharing her insights with your network; and it helps you, because you become known among your followers as a source of valuable information.


3. Find an interesting article, blog post or Web site, and send it to your Twitter followers.


4. Thank somebody publicly on Twitter. Include their Twitter name (e.g. @gihanperera) so they see it, but the main purpose is to tell your followers why you're grateful to that person.

Facebook

1. Look through your friends' recent status updates, find one you like, and click the "Like" link next to that update. It's a simple way to give a small note of encouragement to a friend, customer or colleague. It also helps them spread the word, because this appears in your status update, which means your other friends see it.


2. Look through your friends' recent status updates, find something you can comment on, and add a comment. Facebook is primarily for connecting with family and friends, so you don't have to write anything clever or profound. Just something simple and sincere will do.


3. Search for interesting groups or business pages on Facebook, join one that looks relevant, and contribute to a discussion.


4. Connect with somebody new on Facebook (somebody you know personally, but isn't already a Facebook friend).

Reviews

1. Write a review on Amazon.com for a book you read and liked. You don't have to write a long review - just a few paragraphs will do. This not only boosts your own Internet presence, it also helps the author promote their book, and helps other customers learn more about the book before buying it.


2. What are your favourite apps on your smart phone? Pick one, and write a positive review for it in the iTunes App Store or the Android Market.


3. If you enjoy listening to a particular podcast regularly, take a few minutes to write a positive review for it in the iTunes Store. This helps the podcast author, because it makes them feel valued, it boosts their ranking in iTunes, and it encourages other comments as well.


4. Many podcasts also have an accompanying Web site, so visit that site and leave a positive comment there as well.

Commenting

1. Find a blog post you enjoyed reading, and write a positive comment on that post. Bloggers love comments on their blog, so they will appreciate you taking the time to write a comment.


2. Find a video you like on YouTube, and add a comment. YouTube has a handy option to automatically notify your Twitter and Facebook followers every time you comment, so use that for greater leverage.


3. Comment in an on-line discussion group you've joined. If possible, add to the discussion in your comment, rather than just saying, "I love it!" or "Thank you". If you can't think of anything new, simply explain why you liked it (how you applied the idea, what insights you got from it, and so on).


4. Think of two people in your network who don't yet know each other - but should - and introduce them to each other. All you have to do is send an e-mail to both, explaining briefly what each other does and why you think they should connect. They now have each other's e-mail address, so leave it to them to follow up if they wish.

That gives you 20 ideas you can use immediately to build your on-line reputation - and that's just a small sample of what you can do. I've limited this list to general ideas anybody could use, but of course you might find more specific things as well, based on the on-line communities you participate in.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/7214870

Famous LinkedIn Profiles - Social Media vs. Social Networking

Seems like everyone has "social media" in their profile these days, or at least about 600,000 on LinkedIn do (search for social media on LinkedIn to see). This got me wondering about the difference between two terms we all use a lot to describe Internet-based applications: Social Media and Social Networking; what is the difference? Social media allows anyone to broadcast content that others can discover, share, and comment on, while social networking allows people to connect around shared interests. Both types of software are used as part of broader marketing campaigns and both generally rely on viral marketing to bring in new users and so can grow at exponential rates.

The latest trend in advertising is to tie celebrities and authoritative voices into interactive advertising campaigns, although arguably this isn't all that new since advertisers have been using celebrities to market their products for years, known as the "celebrity endorsement". SocialMediaMarketing.com describes a case study where they recruited influential bloggers to lead as ambassadors as part of a large scale marketing campaign. Say Media took this one step further when they acquired the Typepad blogging platform last year. This is social media.
There is a special case of social networking I'd like to zero in on for this blog posting: What happens when famous people use social networking tools? In some cases such as the examples I give below, I think these people are trying to use social networking platforms as if they were social media platforms, and in my opinion, this usually fails spectacularly. Barack's campaign is one notable exception, but that was unique because his campaign invented a new way to use social networking tools, and I'd hesitate to call this either social networking or social media. I think we need a new term for this. Any ideas?

I recently discovered that a number of famous people appear to have their own LinkedIn profiles. At least I'm assuming these are real as I expect they would have been torn down if they were fake. Here are my personal favorite examples of celebrities trying to use LinkedIn as if it were a social media platform. I've just requested a direct connection with all of them. If I get any responses, I'll come back and edit this blog posting and let you know who let me in!

Sarah Palin's profile is just downright funny to read - her summary ends with such badly written English, you have to wonder how this could still be here online, but there it is:


"My fellow Americans, come join our cause. Join our cause and help our country to elect a great man the next president of the United States. And I thank you, and I -- God bless you, I say, and God bless America. Thank you."
Bill Gate's profile is awesome in it's conciseness. With only 38 connections it's pretty clear Bill is not using LinkedIn for its social networking capabilities. I'm guessing he wanted to try it out at some point and just abandoned his account. Maybe he thought his profile description would be a good way to describe himself to the LinkedIn community.
The man does not need to say much in his profile. He calls the Gates Foundation, the largest foundation in the world, "A humble initiative", and Microsoft, one of the most dominant software forces in history, "A small monument". A bit of false modesty? He never finished college though, so I don't know. One of his public recommendations appears to be this comment which probably wasn't meant to be public so I am a bit surprised that he'd post this:

"Great job on your promotions. Please contact executive assistants at MAP92112 @ gmail.com to work out details of future promotions."


Like Gates, this guy doesn't need to say much. His job description for being President simply says, "I am serving as the 44th President of the United States of America." This is the complete opposite of Bill's profile: millions of connections - over three million on facebook alone. This is not social networking in the sense that most people think of when they think of LinkedIn, yet at the same time, he never posted anything new on his LinkedIn profile so there could not have been much social media going on either. I think this was something else, neither social media nor social networking; it was a badge his fans could put on their profile to show their support to their own network.




Talk about not needing to say much, Britney has the shortest profile of the group. This is the entire profile:
Summary

It's Britney Bitch!
Specialties
Dancing and singing

With only 23 connections and not being open to accepting new connections, I'm guessing she's not using LinkedIn. I think the only reason she has a profile there is to provide a link to her real fan site.

Will people ever tire of Social Media?

You can say many things about Social Media but most assuredly you cannot say it's boring, lifeless; standing still. No, Social Media moves along at a breakneck speed.

To answer my own question - is that allowed?... I don't think we will ever "tire" of Social Media per se. There will be times in our lives of course when we all collectively say "enough is enough" and the need for more platforms and apps, etc will begin to wane.

And during the course of a given day I think all of us Social Media evangelists feel the need to step away from the proverbial cookie jar.

That's what I think... but I wanted to find out what others think; what others would say to the query: "Will we ever tire of Social Media?"

So I posed the following query on LinkedIn...

Will we ever tire of social media?
Like everything else, things come, things go... personally I dont think social media and acrt of being social with folks will never truly ever go away.

But I can see the time when folks en masse start saying 'enough is enough.'

How about you?

What do you think the future holds for social media?

Here's some of the far ranging and fascinating replies I received...

"When the next big thing comes along, social media will be tossed aside... Until then, for many, it's a great way to market one's business... Time for humanity to start communicating with one another verbally or we'll end up with a new bunch of workers who have no idea what it means to actually talk with someone..."

"...blogs are likely to never go away....We have a new medium for the masses to be heard....but then, never say never"

"If by Social Media you are referring to web sites and tweets, then yes we will eventually get tired. Just as we did with communicating thru newpapers or fax machines. The art of being social won't go away. The tools that we use will change."

"No, what we will get tired of is social media that at the end does little or nothing to our social and professional life."

"Social media will be mature (and maybe we will be, too) when we no longer think about it, use a name for it, break into a cold sweat worrying if we understand it, pretend we understand it better than anybody else does, or salivate with anticipation about the riches it will bring us."

"People haven't tired of television, and I see no reason people would tire of social media."

"I tire of it weekly. So I take a few days off and when I return, it's kind of fresh again."

"Was Radio tossed aside for TV?! Was TV tossed aside for Internet?! Ridiculous."

"Social media has always existed it just had another name "word of mouth" the internet only broadened the boundries and increased the speed of the info..."

"Hey - I get tired of working - but still do it. Get tired of being a mom - but still there:) Tire and doing don't always go hand-in-hand:---)"

"Nothing is constant except change. And people are already asking what next? No sooner the next medium pops up the social media will go in hibernation. Having said that Social media ( networking by fingers) should get replaced by Telepathy - networking by minds in not so distant future.."
Hands down that last one was my favorite answer. Networking by minds is a very scary proposition because it all depends on which minds are doing the networking. Of course if Mr. Spock can do the vulcan mind-meld anything's possible.

But I digress...

What do you think?

Will YOU ever tire of Social Media?

Are you tired of it already?