community engagement

5 Keys To Engaging and Driving Online Community Engagement

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Online strategies aren’t just about setting up accounts on the right platforms – your strategy needs to involve true engagement.

Driving online community engagement requires planning, risk management, and a cohesive objective that is clearly stated to all of your key staff members.

1. Word-Of-Mouth Only Goes So Far

You need a plan. Simply signing up for an account on any given social platform does not mean your organization has fulfilled its obligation. Social connections via your chosen networks are not obligations but opportunities to engage directly with your members, prospects, fans, or clients.

As your message spreads and your community grows, how will you feed the appetite for more? Will you be equipped as an organization to create and disseminate your message?

This direct connection requires a clear plan with regard to infrastructure, integration, and, most importantly, a set of rules and policies for disseminating your message. There is nothing more important than a planned and coordinated process for responding to inquiries, comments, and requests.

2. Identify Your Advocates and Feed Them

The key to any community is the full engagement of its members. Early on in your campaign you will discover those advocates who are willing to share your message and push that message to their respective networks. With every Facebook post, tweet, or blog post, your advocates wait to share what your campaign is providing.

Gaining the trust of your online advocates and providing them with a continued stream of shareable content provides ever expanding reach; in turn pulling in more campaign advocates from their respective networks.

Reward their efforts. Recognize and identify your advocates publicly. Thank them whenever, wherever, and however you can. These individuals are the backbone of your campaign’s success.

3. Trust Your Community

Astute observers of successful online campaigns understand the nuances of online communication. Well planned, effectively executed online campaigns have assessed the risks at hand and understand how to mitigate those risks when required.

Just as your community trusts and advocates your campaign, you in turn must trust your community when negative comments or posts arise. Well-fed advocates who have been provided with the right tools will assist in regulating your community – most times without direct intervention.

Ask yourself before you begin: Do you understand how to mitigate risk? Can you identify those in your community who are your advocates? Can you identify those in your community that are Influencers?

4. Rules Of Engagement – Rules / Fears / Clarity Over Control

The rule of online engagement has shifted, placing the power of the message in the hands of the viewer, consumer, or visitor. The intention of a Rules Of Engagement policy is not to handcuff those posting and engaging online.

The intention is to provide a set of guidelines for disseminating content, insuring all messaging is on brand, on target, and true to the core message. Direct brand connections create deep inherent value and keep visitors and advocates coming back.

Community engagement using social media requires a shift in the way organizations view themselves and their relationship with the public. The shift is happening on a cultural, organizational, and individual level. Before committing resources to a social media program, organizations need to know how to mitigate the risks while maximizing the rewards.

The first step is to create a safe space for staff, volunteers, and other stakeholders through clear, effective social media policies. Clarity over control.

When everyone involved knows the purpose of the organization’s social media initiatives—if each individual is clear about his or her role in achieving that purpose and the parameters in which they can participate—those social media initiatives will be that much more successful from the start.

Do you understand the nuances of your community? Have you provided your key internal staff and your community manager with a clear community engagement objective?

5. Tools Don’t Build Communities – People Do

Many times online community engagement continues to fall back on the tools an organization commandeers to share their brand message. However, those tools don’t drive themselves. It’s the people that organize and implement the campaign who are the key to a successful campaign.

Your community manager, the advocates, and the influencers will make or break the success of your online initiatives.

Can you identify those in your community who are your advocates? Can you identify those in your community that are Influencers? Have you empowered your key internal staff with the tools they require to create a successful online campaign?

How Canada’s Anti-Spam Law Impacts Your Social Media

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Canada’s Anti-Spam Law (CASL) will come into effect on July 1st. It prohibits sending Commercial Electronic Messages (CEM) to electronic addresses unless those message follow three simple rules:

  1. Identify the sender
  2. Obtain consent
  3. Provide an unsubscribe mechanism.

If you are doing business in Canada or if your customers are accessing their emails in Canada, CASL applies to you. But it applies not just to email but to social media as well!

In other words, CASL’s effect on your communications is likely broader than you may think. The Government of Canada’s website for CASL states that “Canada’s anti-spam law takes a technology-neutral approach, so that all forms of CEM sent by any means of telecommunications are captured under the new law.” Furthermore when listing the list of potential violations, “social networking” is mentioned.

To add to the confusion, the CRTC previously stated that, “Whether communication using social media fits the definition of ‘electronic address’ must be determined on a case-by-case basis, depending upon, for example, how the specific social media platform in question functions and is used. For example, a Facebook wall post would not be captured. However, messages sent to other users using a social media messaging system (e.g., Facebook messaging and LinkedIn messaging), would qualify as sending messages to “electronic addresses.” Of course, you didn’t expect the government to make anything easy did you?

To make sure your interactions with potential customers on social networks comply with CASL, one solution would be to include the following in the communication: “Could we send you a DM so we can discuss this with you in more detail,” as it is asking for consumer’s consent prior to encouraging them to engage or participate in a commercial activity.

If in doubt, and to make sure you don’t run afoul of the regulations, reach out to the marketing and media pros at Momentum Marketing for advice on your campaigns.

Happy CASL-Compliant Messaging to You!

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LinkedIn – The Business Social Network to Watch

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When asked which social network will be tops as it pertains to building business, especially among B2B companies, the easy answer is LinkedIn.

Bigger Isn’t Necessarily Better

LinkedIn is the social network for business. And although it doesn’t boast 1 billion served, LinkedIn does offer some impressive stats:

  • 300 million users (May 1, 2014)
  • 187 million daily unique users (Feb 6, 2014)
  • 40% of users check it daily (July 2, 2013)
  • 2.1 Million LinkedIn Groups
  • 41% of daily visits are mobile
  • 44,000 jobs accessed via mobile every day

What makes LinkedIn so powerful is that it is fast replacing Address Book (which replaced Rolodex – look it up kids!) as the place to store and access contacts. The beauty of course is that you stay in touch with your connections as they move from job to job.

It’s a Matter of Intelligence

Most business and sales people miss the vast intelligence that LI affords. By watching moves your contacts make, you can identify an opening for a conversation about your product or service. With just five minutes of research, smart users can identify and qualify prospective buyers or business partners. The act of this pre-qualification can mean the difference between having your advance welcomed or rebuffed.

Unlike Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, or any other network, LinkedIn is simply the most effective way to pre-qualify leads.

The Cost Efficiency is Compelling

If you are selling a product or service, LinkedIn advertising (at least for now) remains one of the best and least expensive advertising opportunities when it comes to cost per lead. It amazes our clients when they realize that we are able to target their message right down to the ZIP code and connect with the precise target within corporate hierarchy. And because users tend to be connected with like professionals, there is huge value in reaching those people as well.

LinkedIn Groups and Spotlight pages also create an amazing opportunity to share critical and timely content with connections.

As with all things, the manner in which you use LinkedIn will define the quality and quantity of the results you get.

Reach Out For More!

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Understanding the Difference between Google Local and Google Places

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Currently Google Local and Google Places are two different Google products each with different data sets. They compete against each other and, in some cases, display duplicate results when those sets are not perfect matches.

Google is in the process of merging Google Places with Google Local. But until then, you need to make sure that your business is up-to-date for both. In the meantime, information submitted on Google Local overrules information listed on Google Places IF the location has been verified.

How will you know if the data for your business has been merged already? The only way to know for sure is observing carefully to see which dashboard appears when logging into Google Places. If the latest dashboard is displayed, then the Google account is already a merged data set. If the older dashboard is displayed, you must still update both listings.

Old Dashboard
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New Dashboard
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Being moved to the newest dashboard is a computerized, automated, process that no one, not even Google employees, can speed up.

The most important thing to remember is that without going through the verification process, it is impossible to change or edit any information on Google Local as well as Google Places.

Localization is as easy as #1, #2, #3

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The Impact Of Google Places / Local On Localized Searches



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There is no more important consideration for a bricks and mortar retailer than discovery. In the past, this type of discovery relied heavily on the local Yellow Pages. The big yellow book was the means by which many people found the services they required.

With the advent of Google Places in 2009, the importance of proper listing within this platform has become more and more important for local small businesses. In fact, the importance of a properly optimized and validated Google Places / Local listing for a small business in many cases outweighs their need for a full-scale web presence.

What drives such a bold statement you may ask? Relevance.

Momentum client Budget Brake & Muffler Auto Centres engages our services to optimize their current web property for placement in organic searches. We have taken on the challenge to create high rank for blanket search terms such as “auto repair” and “car repair.” We are optimizing the web property for localized searches that depend on the physical location that the search is taking place from. The results are dramatic. We concentrate a considerable amount of effort in this optimization campaign on mobile searches – as we can see through proper tracking that a large amount of searches occur from mobile devices. This comes as no surprise considering that a large portion of individuals requiring car repair are searching on a mobile device from the vehicle that requires repairs.

With this focus on mobile platforms we have discovered something about the traffic this type of search creates. A large portion of the traffic that searches for and discovers the location of a Budget Brake and Muffler Auto Centre never end up clicking through to the company website. Why? Properly optimized, up to date Google Places / Local listings for each Budget location provide a direct connection to the local Budget franchisee right in the Google search results. The relevance of the result provides a direct path to the franchisee – discovery equates to a customer at the push of a button. Pushing Budget’s Google Places / Local listings to the forefront requires a consistent effort and a cohesive strategy involving the participation of each franchisee within the organization. Each Places listing requires up to date location information and validation of the business owner through Google’s own phone validation process.

Beyond the administrative tasks of ensuring each listing has the correct contact details and hours of operation, one key factor came to the surface. Reviews in these listings have a direct effect on placement both in search results and map placement. Franchisee’s who have positive reviews within their Google Places / Local listing consistently rank higher than those with poor or no ratings. Google views these reviews as a crucial key to providing their users with relevant results that create a positive outcome for the searcher.

Every small business owner now needs to understand that the relevance of their online listing is not based solely on their hours of operation but on the service they provide to new and returning customers. The Internet and Google itself is in a perpetual state of evolution.

It’s critical to reach out to your digital team to stay in-synch with these changes in order to maximize discovery for your business and real-time conversion of search traffic into real traffic, real satisfied customers, and real revenue.

Reach out now, and let the work begin!

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Why B2B Marketers Love To Hate Google

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The Key to Understanding Google’s Robots

It’s virtually impossible to avoid using Google as part of any marketing strategy.

But as every business that uses Google knows, the rewards to be reaped from its services are huge yet dealing with the technology behemoth can be absolutely infuriating. This frustration with Google often reaches its crescendo when it comes to dealing with Google Reviews.

There are a lot of things for the marketing pro to explain. Some helpful tips might even help understand how Google works, but they may not totally remove that feeling of frustration.

Things to know about Google and the online/tech industry in general:

    • Tech giants are not like traditional industries. They never release a finished product. Everything is a big test. They launch broken services (beta) and fix things along the way. New products and services almost never provide a seamless working experience. For example, Google Places, Google Maps, Google+, and Google Reviews were conceived as separate services and when Google decided to merge them the result was complete chaos. Google tries to prioritize and fix problems according to what brings them the most revenue, not what is the best for the users of the service. Frustrating, but understandable.

 

    • Google (the company with employees) is different than the Google we all use every day. The Google we use to search or post a review is really made up of a bunch of computers that work using algorithms that are so complex they would confound us mere mortals. To the average human being, the logic seems completely random and without sense. But there is logic to it. Thousands upon thousands of people at Google work on those algorithms and nothing else. But once the algorithm is instituted, as it were, the robots make decisions about content posted by humans (posts, reviews, etc.) and those decisions are made without any human intervention.

 

  • Let’s just scratch the surface on the review algorithm, for example. The Google computers do a deep background search on the person posting the review. They look for information such as:
    • Is the person posting related to the business in one way or another?
    • Where is the location of the computer used to post the review?
    • How many reviews has that person posted before?
    • Is that person actively using other google products (like YouTube or Gmail)?
    • Does the review contain a specific sequence of words or turns of phrases that have been deemed of low value by Google?

There are literally millions of questions like these that the algorithm is trained to consider when analyzing a review.

The previous paragraph may help to explain why it takes so darned long for Google to post reviews and also why there isn’t really an ETA on when reviews might be posted. All the reviews written about all the businesses on the planet are put on a giant queue. It is impossible to know how long it takes for the Google robot to analyze a review as it depends on all of the above factors, and no human eyes, to know how many reviews are waiting to be posted ahead of the one submitted for your business (could be three thousand or five million).

Then there’s the robot factor. If the review contains something that the robot has been programmed to recognize as spam (not what we think of as spam as the Google definition is a very broad and generic term), it will be dismissed without any notification and without a way to appeal. The algorithm is literally judge, jury, and executioner.

Is the Google system perfect? Absolutely not.

Is Google broken? It sure seems like it sometimes, but let’s not go that far.

Is someone working on it? Yes the humans working at Google understand the value of reviews and their impact on businesses. Furthermore, as the whole, Google Places and Google Reviews represent a HUGE vector of growth for THEIR business and they are working hard on refining the process and making it more efficient for everyone. It might not be relevant to your business in particular, but as an example the Google Places batch verification process is something that didn’t exist not so long ago.

The whole notion of Google is hard thing to wrap one’s head around. Imagine driving a car that is morphing as you hurtle down the freeway. It’s a sedan then it’s a convertible. The size of the wheels is randomly changing. You have no control on the accelerator or the brakes. You’re just a pair of hands on the wheel, doing the best to maintain keep it between the ditches and moving forward. You’re not really the driver.

Frustration with this opaque process is completely understandable.

But there are concrete things you can do to best position your business for success in a Google world. It begins with a basic understanding that the internet is a great equalizer – which puts the start-up, the independent, and the big guys equal footing. There us a huge opportunity for all businesses to reconnect with their customers in a whole new way that inspires engagement and sharing, organically, naturally, and in a way that earns attention of the robot.

In the meantime, talking with experts who live and breathe this connected environment can often make this process smoother and be that missing human link you’re looking for while figuring out how to deal with that faceless monolith.

We speak robot. Let’s talk!

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Conversion Paths – Putting the cart before the horse: Why it’s never a good idea to put design before strategy

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For most clients, design is the fun part of a web development project. It’s exciting to choose colors and pontificate palette decisions. And it’s tempting to start there.

My counsel is always to take a step back and consider critical business issues. Ask key questions. Then let the answers inform the design choices.

For example, in the case of a retail business that sells online as well as in brick and mortar stores:

1. Conversion Paths – The objective for the web presence should be to drive customers to the point of purchasing product, filling the cart, or driving them to physical locations. These conversion paths can be plotted and mapped from existing metrics and taken into account when building out the wireframes. The objective is to get traffic to convert. Understanding and monopolizing the path will ultimately deliver a design that provides conversion. Not the other way around.

2. Wire Framing – Before fixating on stylized elements there needs to be some importance weighed against the architecture, how you are drawing the customer in, and the paths you are pushing them through, etc.

This pushes usability to the forefront and provides clarity to the objectives of the website beyond its aesthetic value. Ultimately, proper wire framing will draw out the inherent flaws in architecture, providing insight into conversion paths, as well as where the roadblocks are from a user standpoint. 
It is important to draw the functionality out of the core branding and creative work. Otherwise the core functions of the website (selling the product) will be lost in the back and forth over colour, style, etc. A contractor wouldn’t build a house without a blueprint.

3. Brand & Creative – There is an established brand that already exists. Once the architecture, wire framing, and mapping is established then it is time to apply the brand elements. This will make the design process iterative in its nature, in turn providing a well thought out, properly executed design that serves the user base and draws them in to convert to a paying customer. I often sound like a broken record (remember those?) but not unlike the in-store experience, where stock is carefully placed according to consumer behaviour, one needs to need to understand the customer before choosing the website aesthetic. By evaluating metrics via Google Analytics, we can develop an experience that better suits the ultimate goal – conversion.

Assess. Wire-frame. Map. Then design it! Approaching it any other way is just plain “bass ackwards.”

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The Website: Shift is Happening

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Over the past 10 years business has been forced to move because an educated consumer has shown up on their doorstep armed with remarkable intelligence. Access to on-demand information has been a game changer in every business sector and with it comes an expectation of how your business enables and responds to its community.

A shift is occurring and we are seeing it with all of our clients – a changing dynamic in the function of their websites. Those metrics, which we track ferociously, now see brand engagement occurring on all platforms equally – or in some cases traffic and engagement of the brand outside of the website well exceeding the traffic to the organization’s URL.

Your website creates one destination for the information customers seek. A cohesive jumping off point for the brand. However, this is only the beginning of an overall strategy that needs to take into consideration all of the platforms currently available to support and enhance your brand.

The creation and dissemination of content may be what binds your website marketing messages together, however, that content now needs to be offered within the right context. Contextual content that your customers are compelled to share to their respective networks is the key to a successful strategy and a high traffic website.

The key motivator for this shift in contextual search results is, without a doubt, the deep market penetration of mobile devices. Predictive in its results, this type of search technology is pushing information to your customers based on what information the device already knows about their likes, habits, and social connections.

Effective marketing campaigns now have to adopt an active listening approach to fully incorporate customers in the feedback loop. The consumer voice has never been so strong and those businesses that pay attention to active consumer voices will see the rewards. Your company’s reputation online has never been as important as is it now.

In addition to active listening, inbound marketing becomes an important factor in an effective marketing strategy. Focusing on being found by your customers by providing high value content that is relevant to their wants and draws them into contacting you is now the strongest tool in attracting potential clients.

As your content takes shape and becomes distributed across networks your offering obtains authenticity. For many, this is a drastic shift from the traditional outbound model, however, brands that do not shift a portion of their marketing budget to an inbound marketing model will have more and more difficulty conveying their message.

We have said it before and we’ll say it again – online strategies aren’t just about setting up accounts on the right platforms – your strategy needs to involve true engagement. Engaging and driving online communities requires planning, risk management, and a cohesive objective.

Your company needs to measure the impact of each platform; your website, landing pages, request for information forms, YouTube channel traffic, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn traffic – all measured.

Consumers are educating themselves on your brand, where they what, when they want. The shift is happening. Business must meet the consumer with content and information that engages, informs, and a path to purchase.

Your inbound marketing agency can help you get your strategy right and show you how to implement and track it for optimum results.

Go ahead and Shift!

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3 Reasons Why Pinterest is a Female Marketing Dream

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Pinterest describes itself as a simple “Virtual Pinboard.” But don’t let this modesty fool you. Pinterest is the second most influential social networking site (behind Facebook) among women. It is also one of the fastest-growing with over 27 million unique visitors and 220 million page views per day. Here are some more reasons why it makes sense to use Pinterest as a marketing vehicle to reach women.

1. Pinterest Fosters Unique Shopping Behaviors

One of the key factors in the success of Pinterest among women is that they use the network in very specific and different ways than men. According to Edison Research, men utilize Pinterest boards as shopping carts to display what they have already purchased whereas female Pinterest users view the platform as wish lists filled with items they are exploring with an interest in buying. According to a recent Women’s Buying Behavior Index survey of thousands of online women shoppers, 36% of women shoppers use Pinterest to research items they are already considering buying and 60% use Pinterest to get gift ideas.

2. Google Doesn’t Understand Fashion and Beauty

When it comes to fashion, the purchase trigger can be discovering and viewing a special item you didn’t even realized existed. Google is the biggest search engine on the planet. It offers an image search but lists every result without the benefit contextualization, which is Google’s downfall. For instance, according to BuzzFeed, a woman looking for “ruffles” on Google image search would end up with these results:

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Whereas searching for the same term on Pinterest yields the following results:

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Pinterest virtual pinboards and women go together like sugar, spice, and everything nice because content is contextualized and curated by its users. What could seem to be a flaw, is actually its greatest strength: Female users are making Pinterest a better visual search engine for women than Google.

For example if she is looking for “trendy shoes,” she’ll see this:

shoes2

3. Pinterest Followers Cost Less and Spend More

The last and probably most compelling argument in favor of utilizing Pinterest as a marketing tool to reach women resides in the quality of the users. According to Reuters, women Pinterest shoppers spend an average $170 per session. That is double the average of Facebook shoppers.

Also women utilizing Pinterest follow more retailers than they do on any other social site, according to Google Ad Planner. Women shoppers who use Pinterest are informed customers that do not fit the typical social networker profile.

The cherry on the cupcake: acquiring a Pinterest follower costs between a 1 penny and 50 cents, which is considerably lower than Facebook (50c to $2.50).

Are you leveraging all the marketing power that Pinterest can offer?

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How Analyzing Big Data Can Lead To A Big Payoff For B2B Companies

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Sharability. Reshare. Retweet. Likes. Inbound links. Page views. Social CRM. All of these digital metrics, and many more, when combined, can be described as “Big Data.”  Big Data is more than the latest tech meme. When mined and measured by marketing specialists and then translated into meaningful information that can be used to move a business forward, Big Data can be a goldmine.

But first we have to knock big data down from its scary overlord perch in order to avoid analytics overload. Then we can view Big Data as a delicate gemstone, a collaborative tool to give business access to the most accurate information about its customers and to develop a targeted, data-driven, marketing strategy.

So let’s break down Big Data shall we.

An Engaged Community Can Drive Re/Branding

The best way for your brand to avoid stagnation is to ask yourself these questions:

  • Does my brand generate organic buzz?
  • Where can I reach my customers?
  • What compelling messages are we delivering to our buyers?
  • Are we giving them reasons to come back?

Finding out what brand characteristics resonate with consumers can diagnose your brand health and prescribe ways to strengthen the relationship with consumers therefore increasing brand loyalty and making customers less vulnerable to competitive marketing.

Example: Samsung Galaxy S4

When Samsung launched their Galaxy S4 smartphone, their keynote was all about services and hardware specs were left on the sideline. This strategy was a direct reflection of the data gathered from their consumers’ use of the previous model: S3 adopters cared more about the Samsung’s software prowess than the number of cores their devices had. To become what some are calling “the hottest smartphone company on the planet,” Samsung had to rethink their brand and evolve to become what their consumers expected it to be.

Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/how-samsung-became-the-hottest-smartphone-company-on-the-planet-2013-1

Content Marketing Builds Brand Equity

Word of mouse is the new word of mouth. Producing valued content is the best way to get consumer attention. By monitoring real time social media conversation it is possible to target affluent brand advocates and learn what will reinforce the brand image and make the public remember it. Creating a water cooler moment is a science, not a lottery.

Example: House of Cards only on Netflix

When Netflix produced the 13 episodes of House of Cards, the company delved into the information it gathers from its users in order to identify what type of content as well as who would be the lead actor its consumers would pick. Investing millions on the show was not a gamble, but a sound investment.  Since its release February 1st 2013, House of Cards has become the most watched piece of content on the streaming service and has been the first show watched amongst the vast majority of new subscribers.

Source: http://www.salon.com/2013/02/01/how_netflix_is_turning_viewers_into_puppets/

Engaging The Next Generation of Consumers/Brand Advocates Starts Now

In a world where social media is driven by consumers, not businesses, coping with change isn’t the problem. It’s our behavior. Online strategy needs to be tailored to our customers. The strategies to engage baby boomers are not efficient when it comes to engaging millennials. Building trust with customers is fundamental to business success. Observing trends and their evolution is key in optimizing the reach and success of a social marketing campaign among the target.

Example: NASA’S Curiosity

To gather public support in order to keep its government funding, NASA decided to learn about the online behavior of its future brand advocates and turn the launch of the Mars-bound probe Curiosity into an event engaging audiences across all platforms. From hyping and then live streaming the “7 minutes of terror” to posting tweets and broadcasting the new tune from Will.i.am from the surface of the red planet, Curiosity has had the same impact on the public perception of NASA as the Moon landing.

Source: http://www.technewsdaily.com/17274-mars-curiosity-social-media-secrets.html

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