Mention social media marketing and most people think of Facebook and Twitter. Sure, they are the biggest players on the Internet…or are they?

It’s true that Facebook and Twitter receive a lot of visitors each day, but that doesn’t make them the biggest players when it comes to social media marketing. There are some businesses that don’t seem to be able to make an impression on either of those sites, yet they find real success connecting with their audience on Pinterest or MySpace.

Where is your target audience online?

Social media sites are not all the same. Each site draws a different group of people for different reasons. With over 900 million users, Facebook has the widest appeal when it comes to demographics; however, each group has a different agenda when logging in. “Millenials” tend to want to upload photos, banter with their friends, and organize party dates – they really are social. Parents will log in to check on their children, compare notes with friends, ask questions, then log out again.  While that’s a bit of a generalization, it’s clear that everyone uses social media just a bit differently.

“If you look at the latest fad in social media, it’s Pinterest,” shared Social Media Strategist Caroline Melberg. “By all accounts, Pinterest is driving more traffic than Facebook and Twitter combined for some niches. When it comes to Pinterest, the audience is 75%-80% female, generally mothers, and mostly interested in fashion, food, personal services and baby-related goods. If you deal in any of those niches, then you may well find that Pinterest is the best social media channel in which you should market.”

When considering a social media marketing campaign, you need to strategically segment the social media channels that are available. Analyze each one to see whether or not your audience (potential customers) is heavily involved, and if so, find out in what way. Just because the numbers are large, that doesn’t mean you are going to get a huge response. By carefully assessing each option, you can then plan a marketing campaign that doesn’t just deliver your message to the right audience, but one that delivers that message in a way that is acceptable to them in that channel.

“The days are long gone where you can just pump content through Facebook and Twitter,” said Melberg. “You now need to be smarter in how you approach social media – more importantly, smarter in how you assess your approach to each social media site.”

Posting too frequently on social media sites can annoy friends and followers, but if you’re not posting often enough, you might be missing your chance to stay top-of-mind to your target audience. If you’re the administrator for a company’s Facebook page, do you know how often you should be posting?

According to Social Media Strategist Caroline Melberg, the convergence between Twitter and Facebook continues. “The half-life of a Facebook post is now 3.2 hours, and the new Facebook Timeline feature means that amount of time will continue to shrink,” said Melberg. “No longer can a business post once per day to their page and expect that they will achieve the reach they are hoping for.  This means businesses will need to post more frequently to their Facebook pages to achieve the same reach as they did prior to Timeline.”

Just like Twitter, you can now start to think of Facebook like a “stream” versus a lake.  What you see floating by is dependent upon when you are sitting there, and different people will be sitting at different times. With Facebook Timeline, you’ll want to send more messages down stream in order to reach folks who watch at different times.

It’s also critical that you check your Facebook Insights to find out what the best times for you to post are – those times when you receive the most engagement. Be sure to monitor that on a regular basis, as we expect to see this change with Timeline.

While Facebook Timline was a major change, what do you think will be the next big change in the world of social media?

Oh, what the click of one button can do. A single click can cause an uproar of negative responses, uncover groundbreaking stories, or release an unlimited amount of information. In this case, we take a look at Ad Age‘s article about individuals and representatives of companies who seem to have simply clicked “Post” before thinking twice.

Are you always double-checking your details before posting content online?

From the offensive tweets of a spokesperson impersonating a duck, to the ‘Qwik’ fail of a new name and site for a DVD rental service, 2011 definitely saw its fair share of social media blunders. Twitter was a common site for many of the mishaps, including a short rant about the drivers of the Motor City that was posted on Chrysler’s own Twitter account by accident. One person on the list was even fined $500,000 for the contents of his tweet – that’s an expensive fee for a post that was 160 characters or less.

Keep in mind that what you post online can be seen as a direct reflection of your character. Most people don’t think that accidentally sending their next text to the wrong person or place could result in the loss of their job – and it’s likely that New York congressman Anthony Weiner didn’t think so either.

What can be learned from this entertaining list? Think twice and check your facts before posting anything online – especially if you’re posting on the behalf of another person or entity. If you wouldn’t be willing to have the information printed on the front cover of Time, don’t publish it online.

Do you have a social media policy in place in case you or your business made a social media mistake?

Do you see a pattern in your mood throughout the day? How about throughout the week, or through seasons? If you’re a social media user, your posts could indicate patterns in your mood changes. The New York Times recently released an article about a study conducted by Cornell University that examined “the emotional tone of people’s messages”on Twitter.

Can Twitter track your mood?

How did they do it? “In the study, they collected up to 400 messages from each of 2.4 million Twitter users writing in English, posted from February 2008 through January 2010. They analyzed the text of each message, using a standard computer program that associates certain words, like ‘awesome’ and ‘agree,’ with positive moods and others, like ‘annoy’ and ‘afraid,’ with negative ones. They included so-called emoticons, the face symbols like ‘ ‘ that punctuate digital missives.”

The results showed that in general, people’s moods tend to be more positive around breakfast time in the morning. They gradually become lower, or more negative, in the late afternoon, before rising once again near the end of the day. Moods also tended to be higher during the weekends and lower at the beginning of the week.

Social Media Strategist Caroline Melberg feels that these results show some of the effects of the social media revolution. “It goes to show how social media is really affecting more areas of our life than we might think,” said Melberg. “Social scientists using Twitter to tap into the ‘wisdom of the crowd’ is just another example.  Of course, their findings weren’t that surprising (people like weekends – who knew?) but it’s still interesting.”

What does this mean about people who schedule their tweets in advance?  And how does all of this affect the growing area of sentiment analysis online? Results for these questions are still pending…

What’s more frustrating for a customer than trying to connect with a company regarding service, and that company keeps redirecting the customer to various departments? Or, how about once the customer is finally connected with a real person, the service is handled either incompletely, incorrectly, or both?

What is a disgruntled customer to do?

More and more customers are reaching out to connect with companies via social media. As a result of this, virtually any company who deals with customers should have some kind of presence on social media.

How angry do you get when you get terrible customer service?

Now is the time to define ‘presence’ on social media. ‘Presence’ does not mean the company simply has a Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn account. ‘Presence’ means that the company has people on their staff who ‘get’ practical social media. They need people whoknow how to monitor, strategize and use social media to enhance the customer service for that company, as well as the having the ability to build authority for that company and their brand.

In other words, the company must have an active and knowledgeable social media person or team in order to have an effective social media presence.  After all, a company doesn’t want a disgruntled customer to tweet to their hundreds or thousands of followers something like this:

“Epic #fail 4 @companyname Was just told it would take 2 wks to correct phone#/message. Unable to receive messages/incoming calls in meantime.”

Those 140 characters or less in Twitter can do a LOT of damage for the company’s customer relationship. And what company wants their name or brand linked to the words “epic fail”?

Time to look at a couple of companies who use social media correctly.

Take Facebook for instance. Facebook has integrated Survey Monkey for their fan page survey. This gives Facebook information they can use in discovering how Facebook users integrate with different brands or companies.

Another company who uses social media correctly is AT&T Customer Care on Twitter. Right off the bat AT&T says “AT&Ts social media care teams (https://twitter.com/ATTCustomerCare/teams) are here to help you. For more online assistance, visit http://support.att.com.” By having a Twitter account and actively and correctly using it, AT&T engages their customers, builds authority for their brand, and knows that customers with a good experience will Tweet this experience to their hundreds or thousands of followers.  A case of simple inbound marketing.

If your company is on social media but does not know how to use it effectively, or doesn’t have a social media presence at all, it’s now time to step forward.

Social Media Strategist Caroline Melberg shared a recent experience with a client that reaffirmed her opinions about automating all of your online communication.

“I was talking with a prospect recently about social media, and as I explained how we could help him manage his social media activities, he asked me, ‘Aren’t there tools that let me just automate all of that so that I can just set-it-and-forget-it?’

I paused, as the following possible responses went through my mind in rapid-fire succession.

- I don’t know – could we just automate your receptionist and have everyone who calls your company speak with a robot?
– Sure – if you want your company to look completely clueless online, you could do that.
– Um … are you human?

I chose to not say any of these rather snappy replies, and instead explained how social media is different from every other marketing tactic he’s used in the past.  It’s really more like networking than marketing – and it requires participation and building relationships to be successful.”

Melberg knows that people on social media, who understand not only how to use it but how to have it work for them, want to get to know the person behind the business before they begin to build a working relationship with the business. After all, the people behind the business are a great indication of what doing business with that company will be like.

Social media doesn’t work if you take the ‘salesy’ approach – as a matter of fact, that’s one of the best ways to get unfollowed or blocked on Twitter, and unfriended on Facebook. What used to be considered a salesy approach is now usually considered spam. Obviously, spam is THE big no-no on social media.

Recently we have received a post on Facebook saying something very similar to “I’ve ‘liked’ your page, now please return the favor and ‘like’ my page.”

Seriously?

Isn’t that a little immature? It’s like saying, “I’ll be your friend if you’ll be my friend.”

That approach didn’t work well in elementary school, and it doesn’t work well now.

A company that does work well on Twitter is Zappos. Most Zappos employees have an active account, lending their personality to the company brand, letting them be engaging, helpful and friendly with Zappos customers.  In return, their customers say marvelous things about the company. (See the screen shots)

Yes, social media takes time, and there are some time-saving tools, such as Hootsuite, that can be employed to help. But that doesn’t mean you use them only as a time saving tool and completely ignore your social media account. That is detrimental to real-time responses that are essential to your success on social media.

Social media is about building successful relationships, and aren’t successful relationships the foundation on which every successful company is built?

The question which used to be “What is Twitter and why should I use it?” has now morphed into “What are Twitter lists and why should I use them as a part of my strategic social media plan?”

Simply put, Twitter Lists are a way to organize the people you’re following on Twitter. Examples are having a list for family members, for friends, another for clients, etc. The list then groups the members of that list together, giving you a bird’s (Twitter’s) eye view of the posts just from people in that group.

Here is a list of suggested Twitter lists that can help you organize your business, making life much easier.

Industry Peers

Professionals and Experts in your field

Customers

Competitors

Partners or Collaborators

Employees

Local people

Event specific

Business Journalists/Bloggers

Twitter List Tip: Explore the lists of the people you follow on Twitter. If someone already has a list you will find useful or helpful, follow that list instead of creating your own duplicate list. Twitter only allows 20 lists, you’d be surprised how quickly you can use those 20 lists on your own!

Social media is an incredibly convenient communication vehicle and a powerful business tool as well. One of its greatest features is its accessibility. You can Tweet, text or post from just about anywhere – at home, at the mall, in the car – as long as you’re not driving! As the Star Tribune reported today, law enforcement is taking distracted drivers seriously in a one-day crackdown as part of a statewide campaign in Minnesota to stress the dangers and reduce crashes for drivers.

Reporter Tim Harlow points out that texting while driving will make you eight times more likely to be involved in a  crash than a driver who is not texting.

“According to the Department of Public Safety, driver distractions account for 20 percent of all crashes and result in 70 deaths and 350 injuries statewide each year,” reported Harlow.

If jeopardizing the safety of yourself and others isn’t enough, how about having to cough up $300 for being a “distracted driver”? This fine isn’t just for texting – eating, applying makeup, reading a newspaper or magazine are all reasons for law enforcement to pull you over and give you a ticket for being a distracted driver. Even talking on your cell phone, while it is still legal in Minnesota, can result in a ticket if you are driving dangerously (swerving into another lane, etc.) or are distracted from driving.

Read the article.

If it is an emergency and you need to use your phone or do another task that would distract you, find the nearest place to safely pull your car over.

Are you willing to risk your life and the safety of others just to send a text?

Social media is more than just a hobby or form of communication – it has become a valuable PR & marketing tool for companies of all sizes to increase return on investment (ROI). But for all businesses, it’s important to keep in mind that not all social media sites are right for every company. Why? The answer is because first you must find the right sites to reach your target market and cannot simply aim at the general public.

The more strategic you are with social media, the better your ROI will be.

Some might say, “I don’t know what to say or post on social media sites – I’m not a blogger.” In order to use social media as a business tool, you first must use your expertise, in whatever area it may be, to educate and engage your audience in a discussion. Presenting yourself as an expert in your field is key to increasing your social authority.

Are you strategically engaging your audience in a discussion to increase your ROI?

When is the last time that an advertisement or marketer interrupted what you were doing? Think about your initial reaction – did you immediately brush off the message or person, or did you wait to see if it would be worth your time to hear more? According to Caroline Melberg,  the well-known marketing writer Seth Godin is known for coining the term “interruption marketing.” Whether you get a call from a telemarketer or you’re approached by a salesperson at a department store, interruption marketing seems to be all over.

But what if more businesses utilized social media to get to know their target markets instead of using a generalized approach? Social media sites are excellent business tools that allow people, businesses and brands to establish relationships with one another on a permission basis – not an interruption basis.

For example, getting more followers on sites like Twitter or fans on your Facebook page gives you another vehicle for marketing to your target audience – who all choose to opt in to hear what you have to say! You can feature new products or offers to keep your audience up to date without getting the annoying sales stigma, and you can build upon those relationships to make those people life-long customers.

Taking the time to learn more about your target market can really pay off. Are you taking advantage of social media business tools?