Golden Practices Blog

How Effective is Your Social Marketing?

Veteran CPA firm marketer Katie Tolin had posted an article on the need for a social marketing audit in a LinkedIn group I manage a while back and I just spotted it (yeah, I know, my bad).

I commented there with some specific recommendations and thought I'd share them here with you, too. Here's what I wrote, slightly modified for this blog...

I think it's important for the marketing departmant to have their arms around who in the organization is doing what online (only relevant to the org, of course) and to help those individuals learn the best, most effective ways to interact on the Interwebs.

Knowing where people "are" is a good start, but we (as their marketing educators and supporters) want to help them focus their efforts and be aware of signs of true success so they become increasingly encouraged when they occur.

The signs can be quite subtle and might go unnoticed!

In Chapter 6 of my book, as part of planning social-media use in the first place, I recommend taking baseline measurements as early in the (any) marketing process as possible, and then identifying very specific objectives as part of an individual's role in increasing his or her—and ultimately the firm's—visibility.

Side note: For the individual versus company promotion trade-off, you might like to see my blog post "Why Social Media Rock Stars Are Good For Your Firm." (Sometimes CPA- or law-firm partners get frustrated about the attention an individual "supposedly representing the firm" starts getting when their online visibility increases. This article helps explain to those partners why they should encourage the individual "fame" and not squelch it.) 

As the marketing audit article says, the audit isn't just about assessing where we stand at the moment, but this is an important part of ascertaining success when you're using multiple channels to market.

You can rarely truly know exactly where a lead is generated anymore (unless it's from a specific campaign) and that's OK. We are looking for overall growth. This is all the ROI that you'll need. 

BASELINE MEASUREMENTS

To accurately assess growth later, I recommend taking these broad baseline measurements now:

• number of current clients
• revenue (average and standard deviation)
• revenue change % year over year
• client longevity (length of stay with the firm)
• frequency of client interactions
• frequency of transactions (purchases)
• number of clients lost per month, quarter, or year
• number of new clients per month, quarter, or year

PLANNING AND GOALS

Then it's wise to plan for the right types of outcomes from online interaction. Some very specific sample objectives (besides the obvious $ in the door) might be:

• Increase retweets and mentions (by anyone) related to [practice topic] from [baseline #] to [goal #] by [date]
• Obtain [#] retweets and mentions by target personas including peers and thought leaders in the specialty (i.e., Get on their radar. Knowing exactly who they are in advance is best.) by [date]
• Receive at least [#] unsolicited invitations from trade organizations to speak or write by [date]
• Earn [#] appearances as media “expert” in [publication or station] by [date]
• Receive [#] questions or requests for advice from [define personas] every [frequency]
• Build up to [#] of [define persona] Twitter (or blog) followers (or subscribers) by [date]
• Move [# define persona, or specific names] from digital to personal conversations by [date]

These are very attainable goals with social marketing. Having goals like this (rather than just "tweet often") might help reshape how you or your colleagues are using social-media tools. 

TRACKING WORTHWHILE THINGS

I also think it's important to track the right things. Just # of followers or visits or likes or RTs is pretty useless. I like the marketing department (or individual) to keep track of mentions:

• Where did it appear?
• Who said it?
• Was it positive? Y/N
• What was said? Categorize the nature of the comment and keep a clip file.
• Was the mention about a particular practice, department, or person?
• Did the mention include reference to your content or website? If so, to what specific content or page?
• Who responded and how fast? You may want to keep the response in a clip file, too.

Ultimately, we're looking for an increase in mentions that are positive and made by increasingly influential people in the right spaces. 

Sound like a lot of work? Maybe. No one ever said marketing was easy! Also, what do you want from a basically free marketing channel?

You don't have to do any of these things to be successful...you might luck out.

But if you're not having success, or if you really want to ensure it, you've got to be able to recognize it when it happens. Like I said, social marketing success can be very subtle, but never confuse that subtlety with lack of importance to you and your organization. It's similar to—and deeply tied to—the level of subtlety and importance as your brand. And it merits the same level of forethought and attention.

These days, our brands are often defined by our most recent interactions.

Why Outsourcing Social Media Isn't Always the Best Step

Social media takes considerable time and energy.

There are certainly aspects of maintaining a social media presence that are tempting to delegate to interns or outsource to outside companies. 

But wait.

Before you turn to others to "do your social media" for you, remember that social media are just communication tools like telephones and email.

When you have someone "do" email or phone for you, what's that like? How does it go over with the recipient? Would you let just anyone do it?

I prefer you don't delegate the interaction at all. Delegate monitoring and even researching and drafting or the actual act of posting, if you have to.

But be very, very careful if you delegate more. 

If you're a knowledge worker—like a CPA or lawyer—delegating these things well requires finding someone who has exceptional judgment, thinks like you do, and resembles our idea of that superindispensable assistant of the old days—the one who anticipates what we need before we even know we need it. Like Radar O'Reilly.

That person can do your social media "for" you effectively. Interns most probably can't. Outside companies need to be carefully vetted.

(Note: I, in no way, endorse letting someone pretend to be you. I'm referring only to outsourcing company-level social-media interactions. If you have stand-ins for your individual-level interactions, you should be completely transparent about that. Without exception.)

Hiring good judgment isn't cheap. And it's rare to find.

Companies and firms of all sizes—even those with savvy, good-sized marketing departments—sometimes hire outside agencies to interact on the social web on their behalf. Whether it's corporate tweeting and Facebook-page posting, or posting comments on blogs to try to drive some traffic back to their website and boost SEO (search engine optimization), there are businesses who assure you that they'll handle everything you need—you essentially put your entire social web presence in their hands.

And some probably do a good job. (Another note: I've not personally found one yet.)

If you, as the person hiring them, don't know how to go about "doing" social media effectively to begin with, what they say could sound really good. The words and concepts are foreign to you. You don't really want to deal with it. Hiring them solves a big problem for you.

But check out that SEO link I just shared a couple paragraphs ago. Google tells you what to be wary of. Don't let the mystery of what social media entail make you blind to good decision making.

Many of these agencies resort to bad practices and slimy tactics to get you "out there." Sometimes on purpose, and sometimes it's just pure ignorance; they think the approaches are fine. They think what they sell is what you want. Like you sell Viagra or something.

This is why you need to understand what you're actually buying.

A few days ago, I received blog spam from one of the top 10 public-accounting firms in the world who seems to have retained an agency to alleviate their social-media headache.

Oops.

The comment they submitted on an ancient post of mine makes no effort to even pretend to interact with my blog. Its purpose is to attempt to improve search results for the firm related to the keywords included in the comment.

I'll guarantee you that the company is reporting to this Top 10 firm that "we've placed # of links for you as comments on credible blogs." Uh-huh.

Here, I've redacted the firm name and IP address to spare the firm some embarrassment. But not every firm is so fortunate.

Take Martindale-Hubbell (the 140-year-old lawyer-directory company) for example. They hired a company to help them and that company took a similar SEO-boosting path by posting comments to legal blogs.

They at least tried to be conversational. Sort of.

Much to MH's dismay, the hired gun posted a spammy, fake-conversational comment on the New York Personal Injury Attorney Blog whose author Eric Turkewitz called them out. This is the offending gibberish comment:

Being a representative of a law firm, reading an article and blogging and commenting on legal issues has always proved to be useful. To some extent, information given on such blogs and the comments and articles has benefited the victims facing complexities in term of legal issues and helps us also update our knowledge of what is happening around and what all complexities we should expect from our future cases.. It provides a great platform to discuss experiences and share knowledge.

This was particularly bad for MH because they happened to have been well into a promotion about being a leader in social media (which no one in the social-media space believed because of how isolated MH's lawyer listings are from important things like, say, Google searches) even before they proved they weren't a social-media leader with this really bad we-don't-get-it move.

MH stepped forward, answered the questions—albeit a bit inelegantly—and after they got dragged through the mud (see the comments on that mud post, too) later shared how they'd make good. 

Don't let this happen to you!

Be sure you know exactly what the agency (or person) you're thinking of hiring intends to do in your name. 

Do you really want random people making telephone calls or sending emails on your behalf?

Well, letting them interact on the interwebz for you is the very same thing. Without equipping your helpers with information they need in order to represent you knowledgeably, you could really look the fool.

Choose wisely and learn the basics and nuances about anything new to you before you go hiring someone to help you step into it or you could end up with it all over your shoe.

Feature photo courtesy of Joel Abroad on Flickr.

Integrating Social Media Into Your Current Marketing

Are you interested in integrating your marketing to include social media channels?

The first question, then, is: “What are you doing now?”

The odds are that you’re doing some things that can be leveraged into social media activities very nicely. Start with an inventory of all your non–social web activities.

Think about what you do and who you do it for, or in front of:

• Print products (brochures, flyers, etc.): What do you produce? How often? Who sees it?
• Websites: Do you have one or more websites? For whom are they geared?
• E-mails: What e-mail communications do you send? How often? Who sees them? 
• Advertisements: Do you have any TV, radio, print, web, or other advertisements? Where, when, and how often do they appear? Who sees them?
• Print articles: Do you write articles or guest columns? How often? For which publications? Who is the target audience?
• Case studies and testimonials: Do you collect or create these materials? From whom? What do you do with them?
• Surveys: Do you take surveys? Of whom? How often? What information do you collect?
• Membership in organizations: Are you involved in any trade, peer, general business, community, or charitable organizations? Who else is involved (audience)? How do you interact with others in the organization?
• Activities or programs: Do you sponsor any of these? If so, what are they?
• Events, classes, or seminars: Do you attend events, classes, or seminars? Which ones? Who else is there?
• Speaking engagements, seminars, webinars: Do you accept speaking engagements and for whom? Does your company host events, or are they hosted by other organizations? Where are they held?
• Media appearances: Do you appear on TV, radio, print, or on the Web as a resource or quoted expert? 

Other opportunities for sharing are our day-to-day interactions such as talking to people, e-mailing them, and print correspondence (including invoices). Any one of these activities can be bridged into another, or into your social media initiatives, as appropriate.

Remember, though, the tone in the social web is MUCH different than in advertising or traditional media.

De-fluff and de-spin with your actions online. In fact, I suggest you do so everywhere. No one likes gobbledygook and spin. 

Social media doesn't have to be a lot of extra work "on top of" what you're already doing.

There are undoubtedly a lot of untapped opportunities to build your reputation as a skilled, credible professional and perhaps even a “specialist” by maximizing what you already do.  

In the comments, let us know how you've made the most of an activity by leveraging it across multiple channels.

 

Above includes modified excerpt from Social Media Strategies for Professionals and their Firms (2010, Wiley).

Really. How Committed Are you to Caring About Your Customers?

I hate to talk about how amazing Zappos is, because everyone does it and, as David Meerman Scott wrote the other day in "The Trouble with Zappos," doing so frequently elicits eye-rolls from those of us who hear about them over and over and over. David's right. I've seen this myself in front of live audiences.

A lot of people, especially professional service providers, either think Zappos is an anomaly, or that their culture and attitudes don't apply to their firms.

Okay, fine. But please keep reading because this is important.

Last night, I was on the Zappos Facebook page and a few posts down, a customer of Zappos posted a photo of a bouquet and wrote this:

(Rosandra kindly granted me permission to share this)

So. I ask you. Does your firm do stuff like this for your customers?  

I don't mean the occasional congratulatory bouquet or funeral arrangement to the decision-maker at a client's office, but generously and sincerely caring about the people who buy from you and work with you to make the engagement a success? The bookkeeper? The GC's admin assistant? The receptionist?

Yeah, maybe it does cost too much money. Let's think about that. Zappos sells SHOES. Their average sale is probably less than $100. An average customer might buy a pair a quarter or spend, say, $400/year. So, how much is your average sale, again? 

Yeah, it does take extra time. That's the point. Caring takes a little time. No time. No care. How committed are you to the success of your firm? 

NEWSFLASH: YOU DO COMPETE WITH ZAPPOS

Just because Zappos is not a professional firm competitor, they are setting the bar very high among the same, exact people YOU sell to.

Just like Disney, Apple, The Ritz, FedEx, Nordstrom and all the examples we are "tired" of hearing about.

You/we HAVE to pay attention to this and learn from loyalty-creating behaviors they exhibit. We have to become committed to caring if we want to keep our customers. Both law and accounting professionals report that "client retention" is a top issue or concern for them now and in the short term. 

Keep rolling your eyes at companies like Zappos and client retention isn't going to improve.