Dude. You’re doing it wrong. Brash, I know … but the truth hurts. Your business has some marketing failures. I’ve been on your websites and social media profiles. I’ve seen your print collateral. Or worst of all, I’ve not seen anything and I don’t even know you exist!

We could all gather around, point our fingers and laugh at your utter failure, but we’re not going to do that. We are about building up. Not tearing down. Don’t feel bad if you find your “marketing self” on the following list. Today is a day of redemption! It’s not too late to turn the beat around as Gloria Estefan so wonderfully sang. That song will not leave your head for the rest of the day. You are welcome.

1. No strategy – What’s the plan, man?

If your business has a website, brochures and a bolded phone book listing, that’s not a marketing plan. Also, if you heard Joe Bob’s Fantastic World of Carpets had some success with Google Adwords or you got Wreck-it Ralph’s Auto Repair direct mail piece and decided to give it a go, that’s not a plan.

If you have no goal, you will not hit it. The World Cup is happening right now. It would be pretty useless for the teams to kick around the old fútbol without any goals. Nobody wins! Your customer won’t know you can meet their need and you won’t have any customers.

How do you formulate a plan that works? Know yourself, your brand promise and your customer. Once you understand who you and where you are going, you can get there. This will allow you to stay focused on the marketing that will work for you.

2. No call to action – Give them something to do.

Websites, brochures and all other marketing tactics are great, but if your potential customers do not respond it is pretty much a big waste of time and money. That is why a clear call to action on all your marketing materials is essential.

Many businesses are focused on what they want to tell the customer about themselves. “Oooo, look at the pretty pictures and the fancy artwork!” Yeah, that’s great and all, but in reality you want the customer to take action by purchasing your product, contacting you, signing up for your email list,etc. Make an offer that they cannot refuse. For instance you could have something like this on your pet care website:

“5 Tips to Keep Your Cat From Murdering You in Your Sleep” – Fill in your email to download now.

Sorry, I don’t actually have that whitepaper for you to download. This call to action gives the customer some useful information (you never can be too safe) and it gives you their contact information for future marketing correspondence.  A CTA works best when it’s paired with something people actually need or want, and that goes back to your plan.

3. No engagement – It’s called “social” for a reason.

Reminder: so•cial [soh-shuh l] – pertaining to, devoted to, or characterized by friendly companionship or relations.

Did you catch that? Devoted to friendly relations. If you want your social media to be successful stick with it and make friends. Who doesn’t like friends? He who wants friends should be friendly. Being friendly, in case you forgot, is having conversations with people, encouraging them, helping them out.

Social media is necessary part of your overall marketing efforts in today’s connected business environment. The key is to find the right social media platform for your business and be devoted to it. Social Media is not a fix it and forget it tool. You do need to fix it, though. Fix it and friend others.

4. No content – You’re the expert … let the world know.

If you had the wherewithal to start a business then you hopefully know something about what you are doing with your life. Knowledge is power, my friends. Sharing not only helps others, but it will make you feel good inside, too. Yay!

Maybe you do not have the literary skills of Shakespeare, but that’s not required. What is required is the ability to provide good answers to questions that your customers are asking. There are many outlets to produce content that connects with people: blog posts, infographics, video or a combination of all of those.

If you really struggle with creating content, find someone to help you out. You are still the source of knowledge. It’s always best to come from the originator, if at all possible.

5. No personality – If you’re happy and you know it, tell your face.

Generally speaking people want to be happy and if you can help make them that way it’s a good thing. Be yourself in your marketing efforts. Not all companies should follow in the footsteps of the goofy Old Spice or GoDaddy campaigns. Once again, know yourself and then be yourself.

Being in business should make you happy and if it does not find something else to do. We all have to choose how we face each day. We can address it with a smile on our face or with something else entirely that will not help anyone. Smiling literally will affect your mood for the positive and that should be carried out in your marketing tactics.

Make others happy with your message. You choose.

A smile is happiness you’ll find right under your nose. – Tom Wilson

You can do it! Tweak these marketing issues and you’ll see good things happen. Let me know what you think. What other marketing problems have you seen that need to be fixed?

I don’t think anyone has ever answered this question in the history of social media. So I’m going to take a crack at it. (Written in sarcasm font.) It is a legitimate question because the landscape of social media is constantly changing. The heavy hitters aka Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn have established themselves as the go to platforms in the last few years but just because everybody is doing it doesn’t mean you should, right?

What about Pinterest, Instagram and Slideshare? Are they worth the effort? Can’t we just answer the phone and get on with doing business? What in tarnation is a hashtag? What is tarnation?

hash·tag

ˈhaSHtag/

noun

1. (on social media sites such as Twitter) a word or phrase preceded by a hash or pound sign (#) and used to identify messages on a specific topic.

   “spammers often broadcast tweets with popular hashtags even if the tweet has nothing to do with them”

That clears that up. Now on to the rest of the post.

Facebook

Let’s start with the 800 lb gorilla or the 1.3 billion user network. Basically 57%  United States’ population is posting cat videos for their friends to laugh at while they’re supposed to be working. While “lolcats” are a great service to mankind how does this work out for the business user?

It turns out that Facebook is an important piece of the marketing puzzle according to a Hubspot study.

• 42% of marketers says it is critical or important to their business.
• 73% of B2C companies got customers via Facebook; 42% for B2B.
• 80% of US social network users prefer to connect to brands via Facebook.

Some other realities learned from the study include: auto-posting is not very effective, lead generation is difficult and the retail industry is most successful in acquiring new leads via Facebook.

If you are going to use Facebook, try to do so in the most effective way. Buffer has complied some stats that give us insight on what works best for engaging customers on Facebook. Think about utilizing some of these tactics on your next post:

• Photo posts get 39% more interaction.
• Shorter posts get 23% more interaction.
• Using emoticons increases comments by 33%.
• Question posts get 100% more comments.
• 35% of facebook fans like a page so they can participate in contests.
• 42% of fans like a page to get a coupon or discount.

Advertising has become a huge part of social media and Facebook is no different. This cuts through having to go out and find your target audience the old fashioned way via shares and likes. Facebook ads have gotten more effective, as well. As of the first quarter of 2014, clickthrough rates were up 160% from the first quarter of 2013. With this success the rates have also increased. During the 2013 holiday season the rates increased 120% over 2012. According to Adobe, 75% of the social media referral traffic to retail sites are being generated by Facebook Ads. So, Facebook is winning.

Twitter

In reality, Twitter is more of an information network than a social media network. News spreads fast  through the 750 million users. If you’re a recognizable brand and you drop the ball, the entire internet will know in 1.3 seconds — scientific fact. As we all know, good news will not disseminate as quickly and your tweet about your awesome new product won’t spread at all … unless your Apple.

In order to get the most out of your business experience on Twitter there are some best practices to follow.

First of all make sure you have someone dedicated to the cause of tweeting. Make sure they know your business and that they are not a knucklehead. Also, establish your voice. This should be done across all your social media. People like to deal with people. So make it known who is managing your account. Follow people and companies that are relevant to your business and then engage with them. That means retweeting, favoriting and replying. Have a conversation but only 140 characters at a time.

Buffer also supplied some helpful info on how to tweet successfully.

• Twitter engagement for brands is 17% higher on weekends.
• Tweets with image links get 2x the engagement rate of those without.
• Tweets with less than 100 characters get 17% more engagement.
• Twitter’s fastest growing demographic is 55–64 year-olds.
• Tweets with hashtags get 2x more engagement.
• 6% of user-generated tweets that mention brands come from mobile users.
• Twitter users who mostly use a mobile device are 181% more likely to be on twitter during their commute.

Twitter offers sponsored tweets as their advertising outlet. These ads show up on your timeline based on the information Twitter has gathered from your profile. You can choose to promote an account as opposed to merely highlighting a tweet. Also, a Twitterer can see ads based on their Twitter search. The latter has been more successful since it targets the exact phrase or word that a user searched. Reviews are mixed on whether or not Twitter Ads are effective. Buyer beware.

LinkedIn

At first glance it would seem LinkedIn is the perfect place to have your business social media presence. It is the World’s Largest Professional Network with it’s 300 million users. Of course, a whole passel of that network is looking for a J-O-B.

Today, I received an email from LinkedIn evangelist, Karen Yankovich, stating that LinkedIn is 277% more effective for lead generation than Facebook or Twitter. This information was released in 2012 by Hubspot. Two years is an eternity is social media so that stat could have easily changed. The general idea is that people visit LinkedIn with a business mindset so the content from your business will perform better.

The main three ways to promote your business on LinkedIn are a profile, company page and groups. If you do not have a profile on LinkedIn absolutely nothing is going to happen. This is the gateway to LinkedIn Land just like any other social media site. Fill out your profile properly. Make sure you get a good head shot with a smile. Some of the profile pictures I’ve seen are troubling. Make an effort, people! I won’t go in depth on how to have a show stopping profile here, but there are plenty of resources for that. Just use the magic Google box.

Now you can create a company page. Your company page is completely separate from your profile. If you want your 500+ connections to know about groundbreaking insights your company has you will have to share it via your profile timeline. Only the company page followers see your company updates.

Groups can be a very powerful way to engage with potential customers. You can join up to 50 groups. Choose wisely. What groups are your customers most likely to be a part of? Once you’ve joined, establish yourself as an active member providing real knowledge. Become an expert voice that customers can trust.

Adobe CMO compiled some useful stats on LinkedIn that will help you understand the landscape better.

• 47.6% of the users spend between zero and two hours on the network per week.
• 10.5% spend more than eight hours on LinkedIn per week.
• 64% of all social media visits to corporate website originate from LinkedIn.
• The ten most-liked brands on LinkedIn are B2B.
• 38% of visits to LinkedIn are via mobile.
• The average CTR for ads on LinkedIn is 0.025 percent.

As you can see LinkedIn also offers advertising. That click through is not that inviting. They offer native advertising which is the new rage that allows you to post ads that look like regular content. Facebook and Twitter also offer native ads.

Which One Should You Do?

That’s the $64,000 question, right? There is not a simple answer of “This works for business and this one does not.” Each of these major social media players can be used effectively to generate leads, raise brand awareness and generally make more money. The real question is directed back at you. Are you committed to make it work? Take time to make a plan, set goals and follow through. Having a successful business takes commitment and social social media is a part of today’s business world.

Everybody is not doing it the right way. Opportunity! Someone else’s lack of commitment leads to your opportunity for success. Be the social media voice for your market that everyone has to listen to.

You may be wondering about Pinterest, Instagram and Slideshare as I mentioned earlier. Soon enough, my eager learner, soon enough. Keep your eye out for the next post.

Tweet at me: @mark_markets

Facebook me: MarkSRowan

LinkedIn me: MarkRowan

Yeah, I’m writing about Justin Bieber. Apparently, he is a marketing genius. I have been told to watch Never Say Never by my wife and by marketing guru Guy Kawasaki. Inevitably it will happen, and I will watch it for educational purposes only. There will be no enjoyment whatsoever. I kid. I know the Biebs is a good guy and it’s a rite of passage for tweens to go crazy about some pop star. I’m not too proud to take lessons from a 17 year old internet craze.

Not only has YouTube been a boon for his success, but Twitter and Facebook have been instrumental to building his following. Lady Gaga and Bieber are number one and two respectively in the number of Twitter followers. He also has nearly 30 million fans on Facebook. It’s not enough to be uber-famous to tally that many social media followers. Interaction and content are key.

Here’s where we can take from the Biebs. We may not have the amazing dance moves or smooth vocals but we can engage and communicate. Have something to say and make it interesting. And say it to someone when you have an opportunity.

In order to interact, we must be active on these platforms. Getting a reply or a message and not acknowledging is a no go.  Take this example from Bieber’s Twitter feed as an example of connecting:

BiebsBella Isabella
@justinbieber people continue to say that you will never notice me,they’re wrong,i won’t surrender. i’m a BELIEBER #dreambig

justinbieber Justin Bieber
@BiebsBella i notice

Bang. Fan for life. BiebsBella was obviously a fan, but his interaction will further solidify her devotion to him. And she’ll keep buying his stuff. And he will be even more rich. Take the time to reach out to those that have expressed interest in your business. You don’t know the long lasting effect it may have.

We all have something to offer. The challenge is to rise above the din of noise that constantly vies for our customer’s attention. Doing something different. Be personal. Be consistent.

Now to rent Never Say Never and become a true Belieber.