Writers Cafe - Sharing Real Life Social Media Stumbling Blocks, Strategies, ROI & Success Stories
Over at Small Biz Mentor I wrote Social Media ROI - Real Life Lessons From Small Business Owners. I asked
- Do you know of Social Media ROI (Return on Investment) (or other) social media success stories?
- If you are a small business owner wanting to try social media, what do you see as the main stumbling blocks? Karen Swim of Words For Hire summed up the social media counterpoint of dilemma and opportunity beautifully, with her comment on my post -
Yvonne, I believe one of the perceived obstacles to utilizing social media in small business is resources. People believe it will be time intensive with little to no return. Another issue arises with the sometimes narrow definition of social media. Social media is not simply twitter, FaceBook or a blog.
Every business of every size can gain value from creating a community around their products and services. The methods and tools may vary but in that regard all share the same end goal.
Brad Shorr sparked an interesting discussion on return on investment for social media and business blogging in particular at his blog, WordSell. Check the comment thread for some informative insights.
Whether for your own social media explorations or when speaking with clients, let’s throw this around.
Let’s add two more questions to those above.
- What is social media success and how do you measure it?
- What are the social media stumbling blocks you have or clients talk about and how do you approach or address these?
Over to you. I’d love to hear your thoughts. Grab a chair, some yummy food and let’s talk!
Hi, Yvonne. Thanks for mentioning our social media debate post. For me, the answer to both your questions is the same - social media is evolving rapidly. It seems as though every day I hear new stories of how companies and entrepreneurs are using social media to generate new business or some other result. I don’t know if a set of metrics has been established or can be at this stage. The rapid change of social media and the lack of metrics make clients skeptical. The best way I’ve found to overcome it is to tell clients success stories. I’m very curious to hear other thoughts on this topic.
Brad Shorr’s last blog post..What I Learned from Riding Trains in Europe
Good topic, Yvonne! I think certain types of social media can be more distracting than useful, such as Twitter and Facebook. They are both good tools, but they offer too many other ways to get distracted!
And lets face it . . . we writers are a distractable bunch.
That being said, I do think social media is a good thing to work on. I`ve focused mainly on StumbleUpon and developed some good relationships on there that have actually helped build my blog from a hundred or so visitors per day up to around 1,000 daily visitors. That was almost entirely due to proper networking with StumbleUpon, so I`d have to say it`s worth it! Not to mention, I`ve had several requests for advertising space from people who discovered me on SU. Definitely worth putting the time into it.
It seems to be most effective if you work hard at building one or two social networks up, though. I`ve seen people jump from one to another and spread their time out over ten or twelve different sites and they end up with nothing because they just can`t afford to put enough time into any one of them.
Hi, Yvonne,
Just finished a week’s workshop on integrating technology in projects and a week earlier, took a short break to see a godson in NC and side tripped to GA. Wheeew!
My belief is that one needs to be loyal to his “community” in order to be successful in business blogging and also to test any media first and feel how it will work for his purpose. Consistency is another way of gaining back your “community”’s loyalty.
Have a great weekend.
Princess
Hi Brad
Success stories is a good approach as there is “social proof”. Which social media have your clients found success with? Do you recommend they start with a blog or other form of social media?
Hi Genesis
A great SU success story! Would you share some tips on how you network on SU & using StumbleUpon with us. I love StumbleUpon too and agree it is a good place ot start once you have a blog up and running.
I agree we writers are easily distracted. LOL.
Hi Princess
Sounds like you’ve been busy and having lots of fun too. Consistency, community and using what works for you is great advice.
What were the most interesting things you learned in your workshop?
Yvonne, I just started Stumbling similar pages to what my readers enjoy (which is what I like, too, of course), and some of those users befriended me and we started swapping Stumbles now and then, whenever a really good article comes up.
Adding reviews to your favorite stumbles definitely helps boost your profile and you can actually send pages to your friends that will appear the next time they are stumbling. It`s a nice feature.
The main thing for me is not to spam. You want to keep a high quality profile and that interests more people who then start checking out what you`re stumbling and before you know it, you have a whole network going.
I’m a total dunce about social media and can’t contribute anything of value to the conversation. Blogging for me, though, is just for fun, and I’ve made a commitment to myself to keep it that way. If I start getting serious about traffic and stats, I think it will become too much like work. And to be really successful as a blogger, I think you need to have a well-defined niche. I like to write about whatever interests me, and I don’t want to limit myself to a niche. So I don’t approach blogging as a business but as a hobby. If I were using it for business, I’d be much more interested in getting subscribers and traffic.
Lillie Ammann’s last blog post..Guest Post Follow-Up
Yvonne Russell, I most definitely thing a business blog is a super starting point for engaging in social media, sort of a “base of operations”.
Brad Shorr’s last blog post..Super Valuable Communication Efficiency Tip
Hi Yvonne and Good Morning All! What a great discussion! Thank you for including my comment. Dell is one shining example of the returns on interaction from social media. Their involvement has hard and fast dollars attached to their success. Busch Gardens did a blogger outreach campaign and had tremendous success with leveraging social media as part of their marketing campaign (details can be read at The Viral Garden). As writers we need to look beyond what social media can do for us to what it can do for our clients. Social media marketing and social media optimization are tremendous opportunities for writers to expand their engagement with clients. Clients do want to drive business. They want to identify and engage influencers to drive WOM marketing and social media is a vehicle to make that happen. For our personal purposes the comments are right on, it’’s not about volume but participation. To build community you must be an active participant.
Hi Lillie
You raise an interesting point about the purpose of a blog.
Again it comes back to what you want to get out of it. I agree that most business blogs work best with a defined niche. A personal blog is just that and gives you free reign to cover any topic. Your blog offers a lot of value to readers.
While we all like traffic and subscribers, I don’t dwell on that as in the end I think you tend to attract like minded readers. For me, this blog is mainly about sharing and exploring ideas and about the conversations.
I’m working on another blog which will be more focused on my business.
Yvonne Russell’s last blog post..Writers Cafe - Sharing Real Life Social Media Stumbling Blocks, Strategies, ROI & Success Stories
Hi Brad
A business blog is where I suggest clients start too.
It seems to be more tangible to those not familiar with the web than other forms of social networking and is a good jumping off point for other forms of social media if they want to head in that direction.
Yvonne Russell’s last blog post..Writers Cafe - Sharing Real Life Social Media Stumbling Blocks, Strategies, ROI & Success Stories
Hi Karen
Well said. Thanks for the examples too. I look forward to exploring those.
Clients do want to drive business and social media offers a very effective platform for that. I think “potential” and “opportunities” are key words as different blogs have different purposes.
Some clients use a blog as an online newsletter and update just once a month. That’s fine. Some clients want a blog to provide engagement, community, traffic, subscribers - the whole lot, but don’t want to do what it takes to get those.
It comes back to being very clear on the purpose from the outset and how to reach those outcomes, and then adding that magic ingredient “action”.
Any thoughts on this?
Yvonne Russell’s last blog post..Writers Cafe - Sharing Real Life Social Media Stumbling Blocks, Strategies, ROI & Success Stories
I am not blogging for money - but nevertheless I try to work on my blog to make it more attractive. And - due to the fact that my time is limited (I’ve got a 8-4 job) I concentrate on twitter as one kind of social media. I carefully select the people I follow and follow those who I think I can learn a lot from. I follow their blogs and try to contribute to their discussions as good as I can. By doing that I’ve got the feeling that I’ve built up a small community.
Ulla Hennig’s last blog post..Blue blossoms - sharp and blurry
Hi Ulla
Welcome to the Writers Cafe. Social media is all about connections and community so Twitter is a great place to meet new people and learn. I like your approach about being selective with Twitter. It’s too hard to follow too many people, I’ve found.
How about Plurk? Do we have any Plurk afficianados here? I wonder if Plurk can (or is) used for business. I quite like the Plurk format in terms of following conversations.
Yvonne, you are absolutely right in that clients must be clear on their expectations and goals before beginning a social media campaign. With clear objectives you can then choose the right tools to attain them. I also use Plurk and have lively in depth conversations that feel like an intimate chat with a smaller group of people. Plurk does make it easier to follow single conversation thread. However, I still love the frenetic pace of Twitter and the multiple simultaneous conversations.
I find Plurk a little clucky to use — but I do like its threaded feature. Despite its server problems, Twitter still draws me the most of all apps in its category. It’s easier to follow and use than any of the other apps.
Meryl K. Evans’s last blog post..Last Day to Win Prizes!
I am sorry to be this late but I am now two degrees more comfortable in preparing a Power Point presentation.