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A recent study by AdAge, which has been tracking such things since 2009, shows that there are over 180,000 people on Twitter who claim to be social media mavens, experts, consultants, ninjas, pros, warriors, or some other noun that’s intended to fill you with confidence about their ability to save you from the evil world of Facebook, Twitter, and Google+. This is up from 16k when they first checked.

It’s challenging for businesses to keep up. The world of social media offers so much potential, so many options, and has so many people using it every day that the allure to get involved is high, but there are risks. Bad strategies, an inability to keep up with changes, and the potential to blow a lot of time and/or effort are all high. Businesses often look to experts who reside in this world on a constant basis to guide them through the mess.

The bad part is that the industry can be an extremely lucrative one, so many people are jumping in without having a true understanding of how to make it work for business. The good part is that there are things you can do to identify the good ones from the bad, the real ones from the posers. Here are some telling signs:

Check their personal accounts

The most important component here is that follower counts mean nothing. For under $100 a Twitter user can buy thousands of “followers”. Given enough time and a willingness to accept any friend requests, a Facebook account can hit the 5,000 “friend” limit in a couple of months.

You’ll be looking at two things when checking the accounts. Links – what kind are they posting? Are they posting links to notoriously spammy sites like Hubpages and Squidoo? Do the links lead to teeth whitening, Forex, or “how to make money from home” ebooks? Everyone has to start somewhere, but those who are worth their title should have gone beyond the spamming and moved into the realm of quality content posting, particularly with their personal social media accounts.

The second thing you’ll look for is interaction. Are people retweeting them? Talking to them? Engaging with them? Commenting, liking, and sharing their content on Facebook? Giving their posts +1s on Google+? If so, is it organic? Just as with the account size factor, it’s not hard to buy likes and retweets. Are the people engaging with them real people or fake?

Look at their advice, strategies, and tips

Most gurus have a blog. They may have a YouTube channel. They should be on Pinterest. Check out the content that they’re posting and the advice that they’re giving. While not every guru is a writer, it’s safe to say that they should be able to put together a list of tips at the very least.

Are they putting out advice videos? These don’t have to be regular – a video with the right content can be useful for months – but there should be something of interest, some rants or recommendations that work on video. Are they pinning quality infographics on Pinterest?

Content is a tool of the trade. If they aren’t putting out content on their own sites or social profiles, do they really know what they’re doing or are they regurgitating strategies they read on Mashable and Social Media Today?

Look at their clients

As with any agency or individual that you hire, it’s important to look at the results of their efforts. Check to see if the pages they run, the accounts that they manage, and the content that they’re posting is effective.

Again, size doesn’t matter here. It would be easy for me to say, “don’t work with people who only have a couple of clients” since my company is loaded with clients, but it’s simply not true. Some of the brightest minds and most effective social media experts that I know only keep a handful of clients. Size is not important. If anything, being too large means that your needs won’t get the personal touch that you might require.

The most important component here is to call or email the clients. Be very skeptical about experts who use the “client confidentiality” ploy. It’s true, there are times when businesses do not want it known that they use a social media agency, but that really only applies to being out in public. I’ve had clients that do not want us to post that we work with them on our website, but none of them in the last 5 years have ever said they were unwilling to be a reference to a potential client. If they’re unwilling to let you contact their clients, they might not have any.

Social media isn’t hard. It’s time-consuming. It requires a constant attachment to the changes that are happening. That’s the main reason to hire gurus, experts, and agencies – if you’re running a business, do you have the time and energy to devote a couple of hours a day keeping up with it all? Finding the right person or agency isn’t hard, either. Yes, it requires an investment of time to find and check out candidates, but that is time well spent. It’s better to have no strategy or presence than a bad strategy driving a poor presence.

In business, we often look to social media as another venue through which to achieve our business goals. It's a marketing goldmine - at least that's what the experts are telling us. Sites like Facebook and Twitter are the websites and apps that the people, our potential customers, are visiting, so putting out our marketing messages on these venues makes absolute sense.

The problem with that premise is that people aren't going to those sites to receive marketing. One can argue that the same is true for television and they would be right. Television is an extremely effective advertising platform for many despite the fact that most people don't like seeing advertisements. The real difference is choice. On television, radio, and other venues, we have the choice to change the channel but normally we sit through and watch the marketing in between our shows because we don't want to miss it when it comes back on. On social media, the messages are chosen. Those who are posting content that doesn't appeal can be easily unfollowed. In the case of Facebook, they can be blocked, removed from the news feed, unfollowed, and even reported as spam.

It's a paradox. How does a business achieve their goals on social media while maintaining a connection with the audience that prevents them from blocking us? There are several answers to this question and many different strategies that can work, but one of the easiest and most underutilized is simply posting the things that we and our audience enjoy.

In the example above, the city in which a car dealership resided had their local team playing for their playoff lives. Sunday was the day that would determine whether it was time to pack it up for the season or continue on into the playoffs. The post itself, a simple message, was put on Facebook the day before the game and promoted through Facebook ads. The results were very strong. It had over 100 likes, a handful of comments, and dozens of shares, the majority of which were done by locals to the area since the Facebook ads were extremely geo-targeted.

How will this help them sell more cars? First, it expresses the dealership's personality. They love their local team. It's not a marketing ploy - the owners and most of the employees are strong supporters of their football team. Second, it's a shared love - many of their customers and potential customers are fans. These two things are great from a PR and branding perspective but they don't answer the question of how this directly helps them sell more.

That answer is the algorithmic response. When a piece of content resonates and is widely liked and shared by the target audience, it dramatically improves the ability for the marketing messages that follow to be seen by the same people and their friends. Facebook's and Google+'s algorithms are designed to reward businesses and individuals who post popular content with more visibility. By working in the truly likable things within a business' market area into the overall social media mix, the marketing messages will see more exposure. One strategically placed and properly promoted "fun" or "inspiring" message followed by one or two marketing messages will have a dramatically higher reach than a flurry of marketing messages that are not set up by the fun pieces.

The easiest way to find the right content is to look inwards. What do you know? What do you like? What do you enjoy that your audience will enjoy as well? For local businesses, it's best to stay laser focused; don't jump on a movie's buzz bandwagon, for example, but stay in the realm of your business' expertise and/or the local area's interest.

As with so many pieces of advice that I've been giving lately, the moral of the story is that if you "keep it real" and deliver authentic messages that resonate within you, there's a good chance they'll resonate with your audience as well.

If you ever want a crash course on the latest social media studies but don’t want to spend the money to do them yourself, just watch the Super Bowl. You have to assume that if companies are spending millions to produce and distribute 30 second spots for the big game, they’re going to research what’s working today.

This year’s big takeaway was a shift in the way that companies were presenting their social media. As described here, there’s even a debate about the winners and losers. The results of the research were easy to spot. Many advertisers decided that hashtags were the way to go social this year.

If you think about it, nothing could be simpler to understand. Hashtags are social network agnostic with the glaring exception of Facebook. Twitter, Google+, Instagram, Pinterest, and countless other social networks apply hashtags to their streams to allow for tagging and easier searching. Popular hashtags often get featured on these sites. It’s a way to win bigger than simply posting a Twitter handle or Facebook page URL.

You should apply the same concept to your campaigns, particularly when interaction is a part of it (and it should be). It’s no longer about sending people to your profiles through your advertising. They won’t go. If they want to interact with you on social media, they’ll find you (at least they should be able to if you’re doing it right in search and on your website). They will, however, be willing to take part in a conversation. The best way to group conversations on every venue other than Facebook is through hashtags.

For Facebook, things are different and that deserves a blog post of its own, but for now if you focus on hashtags to spread your campaign messages in your advertising (print, television, and just about everywhere else), you’ll find that your social media interactions can improve. If you’re still posting your profile handle next to a blue bird, you’re probably not getting anything out of it and simply wasting space.

When putting together strategies and making adjustments (and the occasional complete overhaul) of social media pages, processes, and content, there’s nothing better than to get a client truly “plugged in” to the social media world. There’s an excitement that surrounds it, particularly after a couple of weeks when the results start improving and the processes start moving like clockwork.

As John “Hannibal” Smith used to say in every episode of the A-Team, “I love it when a plan comes together.”

There’s a challenge, though. Every now and then, the system starts to work too well. The plans can be so effective that it’s good to take a quick break from the routine and step into a realm that I like to call Acoustic Social Media. It’s a time when you stop the planned posts, turn off the automation tools, and actually spend a day or two (or five) getting your hands involved and actually play directly with the social media profiles.

The Machine: Playing Songs While Plugged In

You should be using tools. If you’re not, you’re either small enough to stay nimble and effective working everything directly or you’re not being successful with it at all. Management and monitoring tools can allow strong business pages and profiles to maintain a consistently improving social media presence, run timely campaigns when they’re supposed to run, and put together an overarching strategy that goes unnoticed by the casual observer but that is a work of art from the birdseye view.

I’ll use my Twitter account as an example. I check for Twitter replies every hour or two when I’m at the computer. It’s important to me to maintain a strong Twitter presence, so the majority of my direct time on Twitter is seeing the Tweets of the people I follow and responding to direct communications. I could do that all day. Unfortunately, that leaves very little time for actually Tweeting from a business perspective; my account is a combination of business and personal.

To make sure I remain robust but engaging, the majority of my Tweets that aren’t directed at people are done through tools:

• I use Buffer for a good chunk of them. My formula is relatively simple – image, link, quote or thought, link, quote or though, link, image. Rinse. Repeat. The majority of these Tweets are personal, though I include some business Tweets from time to time if it’s important.
• I use Triberr to find and auto-schedule interesting marketing content. Like Buffer, Triberr does the scheduling for you based upon your settings which determine how often you’re posting. I scan the content on Triberr, open the links that I like, then approve the good ones to be posted into the queue.
• Content that I post on Pinterest, Tumblr, Scoop.it, and my personal WordPress blog go live the moment that I publish on those platforms.
• Important Tweets – those I post directly through Twitter whenever they occur.

By doing it like this, I have a machine of content generation that works very much like a band. Each tool has its purpose and unique sound just as the guitarist, drummer, bass player, and vocalist all have their roles when playing their songs. When looking at my feed, it looks pretty darn random. It’s hard to see the rhyme or reason. In essence, it looks as if I’m just an extremely active Twitter user who posts whenever I see something that strikes my fancy. It also looks like I’m awake 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. That’s not far from the truth, but I do sleep on occasion.

Staying “plugged in” to the machine allows for a consistent flow of content that goes out at the right times. It’s enough to be ever present but not so much that it gets annoying.

Unplugging – Acoustic Social Media

There are some tremendous advantages when popular singers leave the big stage and run some shows in a cozy atmosphere without the assistance of amplifiers. First and foremost, the sound is more pure. Regardless of how amazing the sound is at a large concert, it really doesn’t compare to listening to artists playing an acoustic guitar and a singing into a microphone connected to a couple of small speakers.

The intimacy is palpable. You can see the sweat on their temples, the movement of the fingers over the strings, the emotion in the faces during the tough notes. It’s real. They’re not looking at the crowd as “Cleveland” or “Sydney”. They see the crowd as a group of people who came to hear them bare their souls.

The music isn’t just heard by the audience. It’s felt. It’s raw. This is where artists and audiences can really make a connection.

Social media works in much the same way, only without the sweat. Turning off the automation for a little while allows users to reach out with their business pages. They can respond more quickly to what’s happening in real time. They can have conversations that happen back and forth at a rapid pace rather than replies that are hours apart.

I will likely never be convinced that a “set it and forget it” approach to social media works, but “set it and monitor closely” is the most scalable and effective way to truly use social media for business. If you have the time to skip the “set it” part and work social media in an acoustic manner from time to time, you won’t just be mixing it up with proper engagement and a personal touch. You’ll have an opportunity to roam around in the virtual world and see what’s going on outside of your campaigns and strategies. Just as few artists are able to be successful without the big concerts, few companies can sustain a purely organic social media presence without full time employees dedicated to the process.

If you can unplug from time to time, you’ll find the value within the intimacy.

“Journalist” according to Wikipedia: “A journalist collects, writes and distributes news and other information. A journalist’s work is referred to as journalism.”

It’s important to understand what I mean when I use the word. Many people hear the word and think of a “reporter” since most people who call themselves journalists today follow the news reporting line of the art. With that understood, let’s get right into it…

Every company who wants to reach the highest level of success in online marketing going forward needs to have someone acting as a journalist for the company. They needs someone who collects, writers, and distributes news and other information about the company, the industry, the customers, the local area – anything that has relevance from a marketing perspective. This hasn’t always been the case. Until very recently, a good SEO content writer would suffice as long as they had some skills to put together a nice press release every now and then. SEO content was all that you really needed to succeed.

Today and going forward, that’s no longer the case. That’s not to say that you don’t need SEO content. In most cases, you do, at least when getting your site put together. If you’re in a competitive industry like automotive, you’ll want additional SEO content pages to be built regularly just to stay ahead of the competition. To truly push forward and start dominating on both the search engines and social media, you’ll want to apply some journalistic art to your website and blog.

You need a journalist.

It doesn’t have to be a full-time job. It could be someone at the company who can do it occasionally. It can be you. If you’re involved with marketing at the company, it’s a great skill to have. It doesn’t take a degree from OU’s School of Journalism to get the job done. It just takes understanding your industry, a touch of creativity and brainstorming abilities, an eye for good content, and a willingness to stick to it.

No, a Content Writing Service Won’t Work

There are plenty of very strong and useful content writing services out there. Some of them put out great work. Most are mediocre, but even that’s okay as long as you can edit it a bit before publishing. The problem with these services is that they’re designed specifically to build SEO content. They rarely put out content that is worth reading and sharing which is the goal of your company journalist.

More importantly, they aren’t at your store. They aren’t there meeting and talking to customers. They aren’t shooting the breeze with the guy in accounting or participating in the March of Dimes walk like the girl in the service department. This is where the journalist comes in and it is hard (impossible?) to outsource.

The Journalist’s Role

The goal is to put out content that helps in four major areas:

1. Search Rankings – Google and Bing need SEO content on the site to let them know the proper purpose of each individual page, but they love real content that people are willing to read and share. They can tell the difference between content that is meant for them and content that is truly meant to entertain or inform your visitors. This type of journalistic content can propel your other content to the top in ways that SEO content alone simply cannot do.
2. Social Sharing – Nobody is going to share your specials page. They’re not going to share a piece of content written by an SEO content writer titled “Chevrolet Dealer Serving Madison Proud of Award Winning Models”. This content has its place, but it’s not going to find its way on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, or Google+ without some artificial inflation (which Google and Bing can smell from a mile away). What people will share is a piece of content at the same dealership titled “Everything We Know About the 2014 Corvette is Mind Blowing”. An outsourced content writer might be able to put out something decent, but then it won’t have the flair that your business demands. Make it special. Use a journalist. Be a journalist. If you know you’re industry, you can do it.
3. Public Relations – Again, it takes someone at the store to take pictures and videos when you sponsor the local Social Media Saturday meetup. Yes, there are plenty of press release services out there that do a nice job, but they can’t put out the real content that is replacing the canned content that goes into press releases. Real people don’t read PRWeb. Real people won’t find the content that gets syndicated to Yahoo News except for the few weeks that it ranks well in Google. Blog and website content that sticks, that’s already associated with the company, and that you’ll have some measure of control over forever – that’s the place where real public relations starts in 2013? Why? See reason #2. Social media is the new public relations driving force, not press releases.
4. Humanized Businesses – Today more than ever, people want to deal with other people. The business atmosphere is loaded with automated telephone service, autoresponder emails, and vanilla content that nobody reads. By adding the human flair of a journalist at the store posting pictures, videos, and stories at the store, on the blog, and across social media, you’ll be able to highlight the human factor that people consciously or unconsciously crave. They may not know why they prefer to do business with you, but after the transaction is complete it won’t matter. Now it’s time to keep them happy through ongoing service – a different topic altogether. You have to get them in the door, first. Humanizing your business is a step in the right direction for both you and your customers.

One of the most important parts of good journalism is to keep it as short as possible. On a topic like this, 1000 words simply won’t be enough, so proper journalist standards says that I need to break this up into parts. Part II of The Company Journalist Series will cover how to pick the right topics and give examples of what you should be posting on your site and blog to start building your content marketing goldmine.

It's one of the most overlooked components of a modern automotive internet marketing strategy. Some do it naturally, expressing the way they want the dealership to be perceived by customers and potential customers by instilling a unified sense of direction amongst employees, on their website, and throughout their online interactions such as on social media or when replying to reviews. Most have not set up a personality in the traditional sense and are just trying to get by day-to-day facing whatever obstacles come at them.

Your dealership's personality shines through regardless of whether you've established one or not. For most, it's one that is friendly, inviting, and competitive. This works. It just doesn't work as well as it could if the dealership took a more holistic approach to all customer-facing activities online and offline.

So, what exactly is a personality as it pertains to a dealership (or any business for that matter)? Let's start there...

Understanding Your Business Personality

It's not the easiest concept to understand. Sure, we all have a personality that shines through from the top, permeates to our employees, and (hopefully) manifests properly to our customers. It could be as simple as a "whatever it takes" personality, one that tries to communicate to customers (and employees) that we're here to earn your business and we're not going to let price get in the way. For others, it could be a community-effort personality, one that focuses on the family-owned-and-operated component that builds trust and lets customers (and employees) know that they can count on your dealership to be there for them.

Some go a more direct route. This is where the old television commercials come in with men screaming about amazing deals. This type of personality is often frowned upon, but it has been effective in the past and is, to some extent, still effective today. How long that will last, nobody knows. I would anticipate that the effectiveness is waning.

What is your focus point? That's the start of establishing your personality. Do you focus on being the volume dealer that can has the right vehicles and that can deliver the best prices possible? Do you focus on being honest and personable, making low pressure and pleasant experience the trademark of your company? Is your dealership fun with the owner wearing crazy hats and blow-up giant monkeys gracing your roof from time to time?

Whatever your focus is, you can build your personality around it. Now, let's look at the importance of establishing your personality from the dealership level straight through to websites and social media.

Why a Personality is Important

You can't be everything to everyone. You can't tell them on one hand that you're a volume dealership that does anything and everything to put them in a car, then try to be the low-pressure, awesome customer service and experience dealership that relies on repeat and referral business. You can try, but it doesn't work.

The only way to control the public perception of your dealership is to craft your personality around a single focus.That's not to say that you can't be a volume dealer that uses a low-pressure style and has a monkey on your roof. It means that you shouldn't try to communicate all of those things to your potential customers in your advertising and marketing. Different things appeal to different people, but more importantly different things turn people off. They may not care whether a dealership claims to offer the lowest price because they think that all dealers will negotiate down to the same price, particularly on new cars. They might have had a bad experience in the past with a dealership that claimed to be low-pressure, only to feel like they were getting ripped off.

The more personality types you try to maintain, the more opportunities you have to turn someone off about the dealership. Consolidate. Pick the single component of your potential personality that you feel will resonate best at the dealership and through your marketing.

Make sure it's real. If you're a dealership that questions the salespeople any time they take an up that doesn't make it into the showroom, you can't take on a low-pressure personality because your salespeople will not give that impression to the customers. If you hold gross and refuse to cater to the undercuts when your competitor down the block keeps giving away cars, don't try to take on a price-beater personality.

When you have a singular personality that resonates across all channels, you'll be able to attract customers who are seeking this particular type of dealership. That's not to say that you will be turning away the invoice minus half of holdback customers if you express a hometown, good-experience type of personality. It just means that you're targeting a particular type of customer specifically and avoiding having too many personalities that can turn more people away.

Once you've decided on a personality, it's time to make it a reality.

Building the Company Culture

Some of you have already established a true company culture and now need to make sure it's applied to your online marketing efforts. Those of you who fit this bill can skip to the next section.

For the rest, it's an absolute necessity to get the company culture built. Sounds hard. It's not. It really only takes an email or two and maybe a mention in the next company meeting.

You know who you are. Let your employees know. All of them. Here's a quick example of an email that can be sent out:

To The ABC Motors Family:

We wanted to thank you all for your commitment to our success and communicate with you some of the goals we have as a dealership. For starters, we are moving forward with a plan to adjust our marketing preference around the fact that we do business differently than our competitors.

As you know, we strive to give our customers the best experience possible. We want them to know when they buy a car or service their vehicle here, that we're going to go out of our way to make the experience an unexpected surprise. Car dealerships often have a bad reputation based upon the business model itself. At ABC Motors, our goal is to delight our customers. We need your help.

When you're communicating with customers, always be mindful that our company culture is centered around giving them an outstanding experience. We hold this with the highest regard and we will want you to as well. If you have any questions or suggestions, please email Ralph@ABCMotors.com.

When was the last time you sent out an email reaffirming to your employees what your company culture really was?

Translating the Company Culture into an Online Personality

This is the tricky part. How can you sculpt your message to accomplish everything that has been outlined here? You have the overview. Now it's time to make a plan. That's not something I can do directly in an article; it differs from dealership to dealership, personality type to personality type. What I can do is give you some things to keep in mind while you're formulating your holistic strategy:

• Make Your Website Match - There's nothing worse than a generic website. Despite what OEMs have been telling you (and thankfully some are finally starting to change their tune), a unified look and feel with your competitors is not a good thing. People are no longer "internet-challenged" the way they have been in the past. They know how to navigate any dealership's website very quickly regardless of how many they've visited. Make sure that the message that you're sending out through your website matches the dealership's personality.
• Focus on Certain Pages for Personality - You have a limited number of opportunities to communicate your personality to the dealership. It's not just a matter of putting a slogan in your header and calling it a day. Every important page of you website should reiterate the personality. The "important" page include About Us, Vehicle Details Pages, and the most overlooked but highly trafficked page on your website, Hours and Directions.
• Build Ads with Your Personality in Mind - Whether it's television, radio, online videos, or banner ads, you should set the tone properly. If you're loud and fun, don't use boring colors and boring voices. If you're down to earth and family-focused, put the kids or grand kids on the ads. Communicate your personality consistently with a slogan and, whenever appropriate, expand on that personality by making a longer commitment in every ad.
• Respond to Reviews with the Right Voice - There should be a consistency that flows in your response to all of your online reviews (you are replying to all of your reviews, good or bad, right?). That doesn't mean that you're saying the same thing over and over again. It means that the tone and personality flows through your responses and establishes a consistent voice. This is who you are. This is how you reply to customer complaints. This is how your reply to happy customers. Keep it unified.
• Center Your Social Profiles Around Building Your Personality - The vast majority of dealerships do not have an appropriate voice on social media. This is different from your review response voice. It's your way of interacting with past and potential customers that reinforces that personality. There is a ton of potential symbolism involved here as well as the need to build on your presence through your personality. I will go into further detail about this in the next post in this series.

Getting the right personality in place is one of the keys to success in 2013. Most dealers have been pushing forward and having successes and failures online with their advertising and marketing. For 2013, let's eliminate the failures and improve on the successes. It starts right here.

“I sit down at the computer and think of things to post on social media.”

This is the problem. It’s the challenge that faces many dealers as they try to explore new ideas to post about on social media. They have “social media time” set aside, and while this is good to schedule and maintain, it also allows people to miss some of the best opportunities available in social media.

It’s what happens in the day to day affairs of a dealership, the things that come to us when we least expect it, that really makes for strong social media posts. Dealers all too often try to come up with their social media posts while they’re at their computer and fully in “social media mode”. This is a mistake.

Social media is a reflection of life. In business, it’s often what happens at the dealership every day that makes for the most interesting social media posts because it is during these times that the reflections of real life actually occur. Examples:

• The happy customer who is really excited about their new car (beyond what we normally look to for testimonials)
• The employee who’s going to be playing with their band this weekend at a local bar
• A great coffee mug that an employee brought in
• An interesting quote from someone at the store
• A random thought that pops up in your head that is both relevant to your business and interesting enough to share

These all seem simple. They seem like they’re mundane aspects of life. They are. That’s a good thing. Find the little things that happen every day and make them interesting through creativity while in “social media mode”.

If you walked around the store or simply chatted with people throughout the day, both customers and employees, you’ll be shocked to find what kind of interesting things are happening at the dealership at that very moment. Take notes. It could be as simple as pulling out your smartphone and hitting the voice-recorder to get the ideas in a safe place for when it comes time to “do” social media. It could be recording a video at that very moment or shooting a picture of the scene. There are lots of choices available to us through the various technologies at our fingertips. Often, it’s just a matter of staying in “social media mode” at all times.

The best social media posts are natural. If you keep your eyes open for the opportunities, there will be nothing blocking you when it comes time to make the post itself.

* * *

“Opportunities” image courtesy of Shutterstock.

First and foremost, it’s important to understand that Facebook (and social media in general) is a communication tool. It’s a way for businesses to connect with customers and a safe venue through which customers and potential customers can interact with your business.

With that said, let’s look at the other two primary functions of Facebook: marketing and branding. Both are similar. Both are categories that can mean different things to different people and businesses. While it’s definitely possible to do both well on Facebook at the same time, the safer and less time-intensive strategy would be to pick one or the other as the primary goal (outside of communication, of course).

Here are the two basic options. There will be those who will say that it’s being oversimplified, but this isn’t a tutorial. It’s a way to distinguish between the two so that a business can make an intelligent decision about which mindset to take in their efforts. Once the mindset is established, the strategies can form.

Facebook for Branding

This is becoming the more common practice among businesses because it is more open in form and more singular in goal. More importantly, using Facebook as a marketing tool is considered by many to be harder (depending on your business type, of course). Many, particularly those who are engaged with individual customers on a daily basis such as car dealers and realtors will opt for this approach because it gives them the freedom to simply be entertaining or informative without having to put the time into crafting an appropriate marketing strategy.

It’s the easy road, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s any less rewarding.

Using Facebook for branding is all about getting your name, logo, and general message out there. The general message is often abstract – it’s not talking about a sale or a particular product but rather trying to convey a company attitude with the message.

This strategy can use popular images, interesting (and sharable) facts, or funny concepts to will encourage liking and sharing. While some take the road of using ideas that are completely off topic, I’m a firm believer that it’s possible to stay focused on either the local area, the industry, or both with every post. In other words, a car dealer shouldn’t be posting pictures of cats. They should be posting pictures of cars, videos of cars, and images or discussions about the local area.

The branding message is easier to spread because it doesn’t involve marketing. There’s no goal of direct conversions or clicks to the website. It’s all about getting the brand out there as much as possible.

The downside, of course, is in proving ROI. Without direct marketing applied to the messages, it’s a leap of faith that by getting interaction and engagement around content that does not lead directly to a lead or a sale but that keeps the name and logo of the business in mind, that there are intangible benefits that are happening.

Facebook for Marketing

Unlike using Facebook for branding, the marketing strategy is trickier. It’s easier to mess up. There’s a risk of actually doing damage to the Facebook account by being too “spammy” with the posts. Those who are not ready to take a little heat on their path to get more conversions should not even go down this road.

However, if your goal is to achieve demonstrable ROI and take what you can today in a concrete manner, this is the right approach. It will rely on Facebook ads. There’s no way around it – unless you’re marketing something that resonates while also being productive such as a funny T-Shirt company, you’re very unlikely to get away with a hardcore marketing message without the use of ads.

Thankfully, Facebook ads are cheap.

Using a marketing strategy on Facebook does not mean that it’s all business. While some I have spoken to on the subject (including a VP at Facebook) have said that businesses can find success by only posting once or twice a week and promoting those marketing posts, I’ve found that a mix of interesting or entertaining content with the marketing messages can be beneficial.

People aren’t going to Facebook to see marketing messages, so yours has to be truly valuable. It’s not about putting up a picture of a car and calling that marketing. It’s about generating messages that they can only get through Facebook. For example, having Facebook-only sales events can be effective with next to zero risk. If people come to the store as a result, awesome! If they do not, then the expenditure was minimal. If they aren’t successful, you shouldn’t give up. You simply need to tweak the message, adjust the advertising, or go through a series of “fun” posts to set up the marketing posts properly.

Don’t Forget Communicating

Regardless of which path you choose, remember the number one rule: Facebook (and social media in general) is about communication. It’s about talking to your customers and having them talk to you. It’s about giving them a venue through which you can be completely open about your business and hold public conversations with unsatisfied customers as well as the happy ones.

Which way fits best with your business? That’s the only real question you need to ask to get started down the right path.

There are many mistakes made by dealers on Facebook. We detail the most egregious ones here from time to time in an attempt to help others not make the same mistakes. There's one mistake in particular that is almost unforgivable for the simple reason that it's so darn easy while being pretty darn effective. Dealerships are so focused on their own pages that they often neglect to take their pages out into the rest of the Facebook world and interact there.

Here's the short version of what you should be doing with your page: log in as the page (top right arrow next, "Use Facebook as:") and go like other pages and posts. Done right, it should take no more than 5-10 minutes a day. Like your local newspaper. Like local charities. Like other local businesses. Like the posts that are on those pages that you truly enjoy (more on that later). It takes a certain creative and professional personality to comment appropriately as a dealership on other Facebook pages. It takes the ability to read and click buttons to like things that others post.

Here's the longer version...

Interacting with the Community by Pushing the Like Button

Facebook gives you the ability to humanize your dealership. That's one of the most important attributes of Facebook as a marketing and public relations tool. It's great for communicating and most dealerships are starting to be more active on their Facebook pages when people seek them out and talk to them there, but so few are going out into Facebook as their pages and doing the interacting there.

This is way too easy of a task. It's so easy and so potentially effective that it's shocking so few do it.

Here it is, step by step:

1. Using Facebook as your page, find relevant local businesses, charities, organizations, and publications to like.
2. Be open but vet your selections. Make sure the pages are active, posting content that your business would agree with and that your fans would also enjoy, and have a real following. Avoid pages that are too big - your likes will not be seen if their page has hundreds of thousands of fans and each posts gets hundreds of likes. Think Goldilocks - not too big, not too small. If they're getting 1-10 likes per post, that's perfect.
3. Like content on their pages that you enjoy. This is important - don't go through "blind liking" things on others' pages. Only push the like button if it's something that you would want to be associated with online and in real life.
4. Check your news feed daily while using Facebook as your page. Again, be selective. The urge to save time and start hitting the like button a lot is strong for many, but be certain that you really like what you're liking.
5. Set a schedule to vet the pages that you have already liked as well as finding new pages to like. I do it once or twice a month.
6. Rinse. Repeat.

Why this Helps

This may seem like a frivolous activity. It's not. It works.

Every time you like something on another page, your business name appears on the post. The branding implications here are clear - repetition and reinforcement are keys in this uber-competitive auto sales environment.

More importantly, it's not just how often people see your name. It's where they see it. There's a certain level of goodwill associated with a like. This can register on a conscious or unconscious level. Either way, your brand is associated itself with worthy causes, other local businesses, and stories posted on publications that other people agree with or enjoy as well. When they see that you liked a recent post by the local March of Dimes chapter, for example, it shows that your dealership is potentially involved with good things happening in the community.

There's also the return-reaction factor. Let's say a car dealership likes a post by a local restaurant. The restaurant's Facebook page manager will likely see this. They might "return the favor" and go to your page to like something there as well. That's the minor benefit. The major benefit comes into play during those rare but real moments when an actual sale is made as a result. There's a dealership that recently liked and commented on a post by a local college promoting their book sale drive that was going to benefit the math department. A math professor at the university bought a car from the dealership a week later, noting that they were "in the market anyway and was pleased that the dealership was supporting his department."

A $35,000 vehicle sold as a direct result of clicking a button and writing a nice comment - it doesn't get any better than that.

Cases like that are ideal but obviously very rare. People are normally not so easily swayed. While the direct benefits are often never seen, the indirect benefits of branding, exposure, and goodwill are easy to understand. Remember, it takes 5-10 minutes a day at most. Some may do it less often and still find success. The key is to do it. If you don't have the time to be engaging with your local community by clicking the mouse a few times a day... who am I kidding. You do have the time. You just have to make it a priority.

From a marketing and advertising perspective, Facebook is a game. It may not be very fun for businesses, but just because you don’t like something doesn’t mean that you don’t have to play along to be successful. On the other hand, some businesses have plenty of fun on Facebook. Whether you do or not makes absolutely no difference, though some will say that if you’re having fun with it that you’ll be more successful. I contend that fun or no fun, you still play the same way if you’re doing it right.

The “game” aspect of Facebook is affinity. It’s the component of Facebook marketing that a business has the most control over while simultaneously having not true control at all. It’s not a conundrum. It’s not double talk. It’s just the way it is.

You see, affinity is a measurement of the engagement you’re receiving on each post. If you’re getting more engagement because of the quality and strategic placement of your content, the affinity portion of your EdgeRank will be higher. It’s for this reason that you do have control. Technically speaking, there really is no true “EdgeRank” anymore. It’s an antiquated algorithm that has been replaced without a name given to the replacement, and since there aren’t a ton of differences in the factors applied to the new algorithm, the name has stuck. Regardless of the name, you have the ability to affect how popular your posts will be based upon the weighted factors attached to affinity.

Facebook really started playing around with how posts from pages appear in the news feeds around the middle of last year. It became noticeable around September. Those who were popular before were seeing dips in their exposure. Things have leveled out now, so wherever you stand currently is a good starting point, particularly if you’re trying to correct errors from the past or reviving a dormant or semi-dormant page.

Your fans and friends of fans are the ones who have the real control over how your posts show in the news feeds, which is why affinity is still the most controllable without giving you any actual control. If your posts are getting ignored or reported as spam, your posts will not show up as well on news feeds. It’s that simple. It’s the reason that you have to play the game whether you like it or not. You can control your own content but you can’t control how people will react to it. All you can really do is learn what works and try to improve.

By improving the quality and focus of what you post, you’ll be able to have the most positive influence on your affinity. Here’s how:

Make Every Post Count

We keep mentioning it here and on other publications, but it definitely cannot be overstated. You cannot waste Facebook posts. You do more harm by posting weak content than if you didn’t post content at all.

Regardless of what you’re running as your strategy, be sure to identify the content that is resonating with your audience. A car dealer should post pictures of cars and the local area, for example. The pictures should be extremely interesting, not just boring pictures of people smiling in front of the car they just bought.

Part of playing the affinity game is making sure that every time your posts appear in front of people, that there’s a chance they’ll like, comment, or share the post. Content that might bring value to you but that brings nothing to the table for the Facebook audience is worthless. In other words, links to your inventory will hurt your efforts. Images of important and interesting parts of your inventory with an accompanying link is better.

Source and Type Matter a Lot

One of the parts that many businesses don’t understand about the way the Facebook algorithm works is that it affects different posts from different sources… well, differently. Let’s say you have an amazing image that you post. It gets a lot of comments, shares, and likes. That popularity will affect all of your posts a little, but it will affect your image posts by far the most.

Sources are another indicator that Facebook doesn’t talk much about but that have an affect on news feed placement. If you post something from Buffer that does well, it will affect future Buffer posts more than it will affect Hootsuite or direct Facebook.com posts, for example.

Keep in mind that the opposite is true as well. If posts of a particular type or from a particular source perform poorly, the algorithm will stop trusting your posts from those sources. They will be presented lower on the news feed.

The Two Things to Avoid

There are a couple of things that hurt you when you post. The first is obvious: spam reports. Every business will get reported for spam from time to time regardless of the content, particularly if the posts are promoted through Facebook advertising. Users in general do not understand how sponsored posts work (or they may understand them too well) and will try to keep your promoted message about the big sale this weekend from ever popping up ahead of pictures of little Timmy sliding into third base by reporting your posts as spam. That’s fine. It happens. Facebook knows this.

What you don’t want to happen is for too many of these reports to come in. Facebook gives your posts a little leeway knowing that there will be some reports no matter what, but when your posts get more than what Facebook believes is reasonable, your future posts and your page itself will be affected. This is bad. It’s very difficult to reverse, even with Facebook advertising. In a conversation with Facebook, I was told that if a page has been posting too much spam when I take them over, that it may be easier to build it back up from scratch rather than try to fix the problem.

The other less-known thing to avoid is getting passed over on the news feed. Every time your posts appears on someone’s news feed, it’s your opportunity to shine. You earn trust in the algorithm when people interact with your posts, but there’s a catch. If they see your posts and do not interact with them in some positive way, Facebook registers that as well. It’s not just someone who saw your post and didn’t do anything. It’s an actual negative that gets registered in Facebook’s data. They know when your posts were viewed. If they get viewed but don’t get liked by a user, they are less likely to be presented to that user as well as that user’s friends in the future.

It’s for this reason that we don’t want posts wasted. Regardless of how many times I say it, it just won’t be enough. You must make every post count.

Look at your posts before you make them live. Are they incredible? If the answer is no, work harder to make it incredible. You can’t post for the sake of posting. Not anymore. You have to “bring it” each and every time you post. Don’t damage your account. Make it shine. The difference is extreme.

One last quick note: everything that I just mentioned about Facebook is very similar to how Google+ handles their network. As it continues to rise, playing their game is also a necessity. Thankfully, it’s so similar that if you work the same basic strategy on both, the results will be similar.

The automation of Twitter for businesses continues to become the norm.

As micro-blogging, interaction, and expression get replaced by RSS feeds, Facebook feeds, and post scheduling that is all dominated by links, links, and more links, the power of Twitter is being replaced by the easy alternatives to actually, well, using the service.

This is a huge mistake for most. There are some who are simply overwhelmed by social media and internet marketing in general and anything that they can check off their list with minimal or zero effort is a good thing. For those who actually want to find success on Twitter, it’s not going to work with zero effort. Thankfully, Twitter is a platform that can work very well with minimal effort. There has to be some, just not a ton.

Post fewer links

When I first started using Twitter over five years ago, the site was loaded with communication. Links were in fewer than 20% of the Tweets in my feeds. It was mostly about, “look at what I’m doing here” or “I really like pickles”. Now, links dominate Tweets. For news sources and other publications, this is fine. For super-active accounts that talk to people regularly, this is fine. For businesses who are not super-popular on social media, links should be used sparingly.

Again, it comes down to time. If you simply don’t have the time to come up with 3 or 4 good, solid unlinked Tweets, interactions with everyone who reaches out to you, and proactive interactions with new people the way a proper Twitter strategy should look, then getting something out there on a regular basis is better than going completely stagnant. The effectiveness of the “bail out” strategy is minimal, but if it’s all that you can afford from a time perspective, so be it.

It’s it’s at all possible to tone down the links and get truly engaging with your posts, you’ll get much more out of the service for your business.

Talk to people

It would have been hard to imagine in the days when I was first getting started on Twitter that there would be a need to give this advice, but that need is here. Twitter is first and foremost a communication tool. Most businesses are using it strictly for broadcasting. The paradox that many fail to understand is that if you talk about yourself less and talk about others more, your messages about yourself will reach a greater number of people. In many ways, it’s about earning the right to broadcast.

Those who use Twitter regularly can smell a feed-driven Twitter account in seconds. They can tell when an account is strictly being used to broadcast and when it’s truly being used for communication. When someone is strictly broadcasting, they better be a publication like Mashable or a celebrity like Oprah Winfrey or the message simply won’t be heard.

Here are some quick ways to establish that you’re communicating on Twitter rather than broadcasting:

1. Send @replies – If you’re a standard business account that is getting a handful of interactions directed at you per day, reply to all of them. If you’re more popular, reply to the ones that are personalized. In other words, no need to reply to retweets unless the sender added their two cents to the conversation.
2. Retweet often – A decent account should retweet 5+ times a day. A more active account can get away with fewer but should be retweeting at least once a day. This isn’t the “RT @0boy…” style, though those should be worked in as well. These are the direct retweets by pushing the retweet button directly from Twitter. This is important because it adds different avatars to your stream. When visitors see that you’re retweeting others, they’ll be more likely to assume that you’re actually listening to the outside world rather than working inside your own little Twitter broadcasting box.
3. Start or join conversations – You’re an expert in your industry. You can chime in on conversations that are happening regarding your industry, your local area, or even the world in general. That doesn’t mean that you should butt in and start spreading your wisdom in one-on-one conversations, but it does mean responding to people’s Tweets or even starting the conversation with them directly. You can see in their Twitter streams whether they’re replying to people or not. Be sure that if you start a conversation, it’s with someone who will reply back to you.
4. Split your times up – This is all very easy stuff, but doing it all in one block per day isn’t the best way to do it. It’s better than nothing, but the preferred method would be to do it at least twice a day. A best practice is to do it first thing in the morning when you’re done checking your morning emails and then again shortly after lunch. You don’t want to do it at the end of the day unless you’ll be checking your stream from home in the evening because you’ll want to be timely with your responses when people engage back at you.

Once you’ve established that you communicate properly through Twitter, you’ll have room to post occasional self-serving links. If all you post is links, your message will get lost in the mix.

Post pictures and unlinked text

Twitter has a great filter feature for mobile images. Use it. Before we recommended Instagram but that didn’t work out so well, so Tweeting images directly through the Twitter mobile app works great.

If you use Buffer or any of the other posting tools that upload images directly to Twitter (Hootsuite doesn’t do this, FYI), scheduling images through a PC is another way to get your feed flowing with engaging content. It’s not as good as mobile uploads as people love to see real pictures taken by real people associated with the business, but it’s definitely better than nothing.

Text posts are great as well. They can be sayings, quotes, opinions, or anything that has nothing other than possibly hashtags linking out from the Tweet. This is particularly useful when posting about local area events and asking questions. One note: if you do ask questions designed to get a response from your followers, be sure that you’re available to respond to their answers. Don’t drop a question in the queue and walk away. Again, timeliness is important, even for a business Twitter account.

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Twitter is the one component of social media strategies that has been botched by most over the years. It’s hard to get real followers. It’s harder to get real engagement.

It can, however, prove to be extremely useful if you put the effort into it. Again, and I cannot stress this enough, the effort that’s required to take a Twitter account from decent to great really isn’t that much. It’s for this reason that if you have a little extra time every day, Twitter is a good investment of it.

When I first explored Triberr over a year ago, I ran away quickly. It seemed to be an automated tool that took over my social media profiles and posted on my behalf in ways that I absolutely refuse to submit to, even on Twitter where a person’s feed is given a bit more leeway. People would post something and by being in that tribe, I agreed to share their content. This didn’t sit well for me, so I abandoned it.

Things have changed for the better. Much better. Now, I’m somewhat addicted to Triberr. If you’re in standard tribes, you don’t post anything automatically. You don’t have to post anything at all if you don’t want to. What was once something that I refused to do – automate my social media feeds without vetting the content first – turned into something that I absolutely love. It’s now a place to find content written on the topics that I like and schedule posts at whatever pace I want. The forced posting community that I didn’t like at first became the perfect content grooming and vetting system.

By joining the right tribes, I’ve been given the opportunity to discover some great content. There’s awful content in the mix as well, but thankfully I don’t have to share that content. I can ignore it or even “mute” that particular blogger if they demonstrate a tendency towards submitting bad content. When I see something that strikes my fancy, I simply have to approve it. Triberr takes care of the rest and posts on my behalf.

There are plenty of post scheduling tools out there that work better for that individual purpose, but nothing combines post discovery with post scheduling like Triberr. The analytics are simple but useful – they use Google’s URL shortener to track clicks combined with their internal stats to track shares.

The important part from a marketing perspective is that your own content gets shared as well by others in your tribes. They, too, have the ability to like or not like what you’re posting, so it’s a great tool to see which pieces of content are resonating within this particular community and which ones fail miserably. The community itself is strong – the interaction between users is useful and organic.

I’m glad I checked it out again. Many services and social communities lose me from the start and never get an opportunity to get me back. I don’t remember what it was that prompted me to re-examine Triberr but I’m very glad that I did.

One of the biggest problems faced when businesses try to use social media as a marketing tool is that there are simply too many social media sites. A day doesn’t go by when I’m not asked about this new site or that old site and whether or not they can be used is marketing. Most can. However, most simply do not have the reach to make them worthwhile. For the majority of businesses, if they stay focused on four current social sites, they’ll have the vast majority of their marketing covered.

Some big sites were excluded. It’s not that Tumblr doesn’t have its place or that Foursquare is useless. It’s that the time and energy necessary to make them stronger is not worth the return on investment. Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and Pinterest are the big dogs right now. They don’t take a ton of time to master and the results are strong compared to the effort put into them.

• Facebook – This is the only no-brainer out there. If you only use one social media site for your marketing, this is it. From both a social interaction perspective as well as a public relations perspective, Facebook can cover as much as 70% of your social media marketing efforts.
• Twitter – This is often the hardest for businesses to understand. They look at it, give it a try, and believe that the results aren’t worth the effort. The problem with that argument is that Twitter is still extremely popular and more importantly the time necessary to have a rock-solid Twitter presence is minutes a day at most. Don’t abandon the low-hanging fruit just because the results aren’t apparent. If you use it right, the results will come.
• Google+ – Even if you don’t believe that Google+ will emerge as a true social media force (it will, but I won’t argue that here), the search engine marketing benefits of building up and maintaining a strong presence on the platform cannot be argued. Few would say they couldn’t use better search results or more traffic from Google. Their social network is one of the ways to improve those results.
• Pinterest – Just like Twitter, Pinterest falls into the category of low-investment, higher-returns. One of the things that differentiates Pinterest from other social sites is that they’ve embraced business usage more readily than other platforms. Posting and maintaining a quality Pinterest presence can be literally less than a minute a day and many of those who use the platform swear by it.

There’s a common theme here. Effort versus reward. If you measure your returns relative to the amount of effort put into the maintenance, you’ll find that these are the sites that generate the highest level. Used properly, just about any business can benefit from a strong presence on these four social media sites.

Facebook has the market cornered on true social networking. Twitter is the news source. YouTube owns videos. Google+, the network that's growing huge but still having challenges communicating its identity, has one major advantage over all of the other social networks: size of posts.

It's possible to format and utilize Google+ as a lite blogging platform. This is not necessarily a good replacement for those who already have a valid and active business blog, but those who are getting started or who never been able to generate real traction to their blog can take advantage of some of the things that Google+ does well.

Here are some of the advantages:

* Formatting - While it's not nearly the type of formatting that is available on true blogging platforms like Wordpress or Tumblr there's enough formatting options on Google+ to make it work. Again, this is only good as a lite version.

* Length - The constraints present on other social networks are looser on Google+. Sure, you can use hacks to plug in a blog on Facebook and there are tools available to fake a blog through Twitter, but posting directly to the feed is only possible from a length perspective on Google+.

* Instant Rankings - While I haven't tested beyond my own accounts, I know that Google+ posts tend to rank extremely quickly and very high for good keywords, particularly for those who follow me. Even unauthenticated web searches present Google+ posts.

* Tie-In to Google Local - The local components of Google through search and directed from other locations are generating more and more traffic. Reviews, maps, information - all of these give people reasons to visit a Google account for a business. Once there, people are often unable to find anything interesting on the pages because of how infrequently most post to their Google+ page accounts. By making it a lite blog, this can change.

The disadvantages are numerous, of course. Links, images, videos - pick one. Unfortunately, you cannot mix and match different media types. You also can't put them in-line the way you can on real blogging platforms. Unless you are one of the lucky ones with a vanity URL, it's not easy to get people to your G+ page without using a custom short link.

At this point, anything that can get businesses communicating more robustly with their customers and potential customers is a good thing. It's not that I would prefer that people use Google+ for blogging over Wordpress, Blogger, or any of the true blogging platforms, but if it's convenient enough to make businesses act, then it's worth describing in a blog post.

I guess that's what I just did.

The marketing adage “content is king” has been around for a long time. In 2013, it appears that both the search engines and social media sites are focusing on content as their driving forces, but in a different way than most understand. Things are changing in the world of internet marketing. Here’s what you need to know.

Content was never really “king”. Though it made a nice talking point and allowed marketing companies an opportunity to charge for their labors, it was always a temporary fix. In search, it started off as extremely important for a little while until marketers started learning how to manipulate it, so the search engines switched to focus on external signals such as links. Then, the links started turning into link farms and “splogs”, so content re-emerged as a focus point.

Companies were built on the premise of “more is better” and started putting out low-quality, spun, or light content in an effort to fool the search engines once again. Google made moves to shut this down in February, 2011, with the first of many Penguin algorithm updates that effectively put an end to content farming.

Social media saw a similar shift towards spam in 2011 that was quickly sorted by secretive algorithm adjustments that took into account the different layers of liking, sharing, retweeting, and other social media activities to once again force quality of content to the front ahead of bulk.

For the first time ever, content is truly emerging as the leader in internet marketing activities, but it has manifested differently than most have seen in the past. There’s no longer SEO content, social media content, and conversion content that act separately from each other. Going into 2013, these three primary types of internet marketing content are consolidating into a singular strategy. It’s not that they are becoming the same. It’s that they have to work together for maximum results.

In essence, content is not king. It’s like a president. It has power, certainly, but the majority of that power must be shared, enhanced, and complemented by other factors such as links and social signals. Here’s how the president of internet marketing will work in 2013…

The different hats of a president

Just as any good president must wear different hats depending on the circumstance, a strong content marketing strategy requires that the content falls into the different categories depending on the needs of the moment. I mentioned the three most important – SEO content, social media content, and conversion content – but there are others that often come into play.

We’re going to focus on the three important ones for now:

• The President as an Organizer – The President can’t do it all. He or she must bring the leaders of Congress and the states together to demonstrate a coherent strategy for their country. SEO content works must the same way. Creating SEO content is different from creating content that acts as SEO for a particular page. True SEO content is designed to help generate inbound links, points the search engines in the right directions once they land on a particular page, and enhances the conversion pages through context and appropriate internal links.
• The President as an Ambassador – It’s important for a President to be strong, friendly, and build relationships with others. What the President says and how he or she says it makes a difference in perceptions. Done properly, the message is shared. The same holds true for social media content. You can have interesting things to post from your website onto other sites, but if the relationships aren’t there, you won’t get very far regardless of the quality of the content.
• The President as an Administrator – Despite what anyone says, a President has to be a good salesperson. They have to take their ideas and make them work within their country which requires the ability to direct the people appropriately and get things done that work. It doesn’t matter how good a President is at being an organizer or ambassador if they can’t deliver the goods at the end of the day. This is where conversion content finds similarities. You can have people interested, but if you don’t turn them into leads, customers, or clients, your other efforts are worthless.

From a practical perspective, you content must be able to bind all of the major internet marketing efforts into a working strategy. This is where content comes in. Turn it into the centerpiece of your internet marketing for 2013. Links, social signals, traffic, conversions – all are necessary for success. The easiest way to achieve them is through the strongest content that you can muster.

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“Mt Rushmore” image courtesy of Shutterstock.

https://www.mouthfulsocialmedia.com/

I start to sound like a broken record whenever I recommend to businesses that they need to be as human as possible on social media, that the venue is one dominated by people, and that brands are most successful when they stay professional but avoid being robotic. I’ll continue to say it as long as it stays true, something that is currently slated to be relevant indefinitely. One of the hardest but most effective ways to humanize a business on social media is to inspire, to post ideas, actions, and images that are not business related but that compel the human factor into the mix. It’s risky, but when done right it can be a beautiful thing.

One thing that should be understood is that “inspiring” does not necessarily mean posting Winston Churchill quotes or fighting climate change with likes and shares. On social media, an inspiring message can be one that expresses an idea that fits with current circumstances. Reaching out during tragedies like the Sandy Hook shootings, for example, is an inspiring message. It’s one that is extremely risky even for local businesses and should be avoided by those who do not have a connection. The exceptions, rare though they are, happen when contributions and solutions are offered. For example, Jet Blue was able to fly family members and letters to CT quickly and without charge. Their gesture rang sincere; they didn’t make a big deal out of it. They didn’t have to. People on social media took care of the “promotion” of the action for them.

The other opportunity that is available to every business is the seasonal inspirational post. We have the opportunity as businesses to participate in a human way during holidays and other events by expressing the personality of our companies. That is not the same as running a Memorial Day Special or Christmas Savings Extravaganza. It’s about inspiring through humanity. This is where most businesses fall short. All too often we get generic. This is worse than saying nothing at all.

On one hand, you have the standard, “Wishing all of our fans Happy Holidays from your friends at ABC Motors!”

Meh.

On the other hand, you have what Driving Sales did. They did something fun and turned it into an image that is both noticeable and memorable. They conveyed a couple of messages that helped with branding – they’re fun, they like where they work, they have a “hip” atmosphere (notice the beanbags), and they put effort into their message. It’s the last part that makes the difference. People enjoy effort. They like to know that a post was more than an afterthought or a business requirement recommended by the internal social guru. They like creativity. They reward those who can make themselves stand out from the crowd.

It’s definitely not required to use this type of technique. Some businesses prefer to keep it professional at all times and there’s nothing wrong with this. If you choose to post the occasional inspiring post, be sure to make it work. Don’t go half way. If you want to make an impact, take it well beyond what your competitors are doing. If you’re going to be boring and generic, you’re better off keeping that in the professional realm and avoid the inspirational posts altogether.

As more businesses start to embrace the cost-effective method of social media promotions that Facebook Sponsored Stories offers, I’m seeing some mistakes pop up. As Louie Baur posted last week, you have to be careful what you advertise, as pushing the wrong content can do more harm than good.

I want to take that concept a step deeper using this analogy. It can be confusing to some who wonder why so much money is paid to sponsor racing teams. After all, their logo is placed on something that is attempting to travel so fast that the logos themselves cannot be read properly. What’s the benefit?

The reality is that everyone wants to be associated with a winner. They want to be associated with the sport itself and their hope is that their logo will appear on a winning vehicle and/or piece of racing apparel.

The same holds true with Facebook Sponsored Stories. You can throw money at anything and get it more views than it otherwise would have gotten, but I see too often that businesses are advertising the content that they think needs more help. The spammier it is, the more likely they are to sponsor it. This is the exact opposite of what businesses should be doing with Facebook advertising. If something is a winner – that’s the story you want to be pushing. You want to pick out content that would probably get likes, shares, and comments even if you didn’t sponsor it in the first place.

This has an affect on the rest of the “spammy” content that you might be posting more than if you sponsored the spammy content itself.

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Racefotos2008 / Shutterstock.com

Let's face it. Facebook (and Google+) love pictures. It ranks at the top of the news feed food chain above text posts, videos, and links. It's the primary reason that many people visit Facebook in the first place. They want to see pictures of little Timmy sliding into third base, the places that their friends and family are visiting, and cats. Don't forget the cats.

Unfortunately, many businesses have focused on cats (or similar Facebook-friendly images) as their source of content. It simply doesn't have to be that way. It's the lazy approach to find things that make us laugh and then post them on our business Facebook pages in hopes that other people will laugh as well and like, comment on, or share the image. What's worse than the laziness factor is that it's insincere; it's like trying to fit in at a party where people are frolicking in order to spring a sales pitch on an unsuspecting soul while in line for a drink.

What's worse than the insincerity is that it simply doesn't work. Sure, people may like the picture of the Sistine Chapel that your sister posted. They may even share it. You may even be able to loosely justify it by saying that it's improving your branding. These are fine delusions, but they don't address the core problem you have with your Facebook page. You aren't actually becoming anything to your fans other than another interesting page that posts content that they occasionally see and rarely enjoy.

If Facebook (and Google+) are mostly visual platforms and you want to capture some of the "magic" without being a poser, you'll want to find the various treasure troves of content to post. Here are some...

Finding Images for Facebook (and Google+)

One of the most annoying practices that businesses employ on Facebook is that they talk about anything other than their business. Don't get me wrong, it's much more annoying (and completely useless) to post a feed-based flurry of links to your website every day. Still, if you're going to post images (and you should), there are places to find them that will improve your overall presence by staying interesting while also staying on point.

In this example, we'll look at a local Ford dealership. What do they do? They sell and service Ford vehicles as well as used vehicles of other manufacturers. There's no reason for a Ford dealership to post pictures of cats. They have plenty of content available to them that would serve them much better.

• Google - The obvious choice. It's the other form of the lazy person's approach, but it works and can still help you to stay on point. Search for specific cars. Search for engines. Search for images from the various car shows around the world. When you find something you like, post the image with a unique description. Be sure to add a localized or otherwise-relevant spin to the description. For example, if you're posting an image of a concept 2015 Mustang, you could ask a question such as, "Is this different enough to make it stand out from the current body style?" or simply make a statement such as "We can't wait to get these here in Fond du Lac!" As always, you'll want to post a link to the source, but only after you've included the image. You don't want this to be a link post with a preview generated, so add the link to the description after you've already selected the image. This works on both Facebook and Google+.
• Shutterstock - There are various paid image galleries that offer different packages. These are particularly useful when you're posting content to your website or blog about the local area. In this example, we used Shutterstock to find interesting images of Wisconsin, the home state of the dealership itself. This gave us very sharable content (23 shares from a dealership's website isn't too shabby) on the website itself as well as a dozen images that we can share on the dealership's Facebook page spread out over time if necessary or posted as an album.
• Your Store - This is quite possibly the most under-utilized source of content for most businesses. It's also the most useful. Sure, there are plenty of businesses that are starting to post images of their happy customers, but it's not really super-engaging content. The buyer and anyone who knows them might like or share the image, but it's not going to get liked, commented on, or shared by anyone else. However, there is plenty going on other than the customers. In the example of the Ford dealership, there are often "cars with a story" coming through service. It could be a Ford with 300k miles. It could be one that just came back from a trip in the mountains and is now covered in mud. It could be an interesting or funny bumper sticker, a cool modification that someone made to a motor, or even something very simple like a silly outfit the boss wore to work today. There's content floating around the store every day. You just have to keep your eyes open for it.
• The Area Around You - Every place has something photo-worthy. Whether you're in a bustling metro area or a desert wasteland, there are things happening or interesting scenes that can be captured with your smartphone. Do it. I couldn't tell you how many times I would stop in every city I've been to in order to take a picture of something cool had I managed a localized social media profile in that city. Take advantage of your surroundings and you'll find treasures that your localized fans will recognize and enjoy.
• Your Imagination - This is rarely used as well but when it's done right, it's awesome. By using your imagination, you can explore both the store and the local area and manufacture scenes that would make for great posts on Facebook (and Google+). For example, you can go to the roof of the dealership and take a picture of the lot itself, then apply tilt-shift manipulation to the image for a really cool final product. The image above was a normal image, but when tilt-shift is applied, it makes it look like it's a miniature car.