Care to learn about social media marketing for SMBs? Wish to develop an understanding for the same? Find the below Webinar by Mr. Evan Carmichael, Director, Evancarmichael.com and develop a complete understanding for the same.
The problem with the most of the social media campaign is that they are boring. There is no feeling, no emotion to that. Say for example would you share any of your companies’ unnecessary campaign if you are not force to. So first clear an idea of what your company stands for? Start posting creative and funny stuff, need not to be too much informative, because people don’t have time to read all those lines for you. It’s hard to be motivated if you’re working under pressure or some fixed guideline.
What do you stand for?
Some up what you want to say in one word which should be impactful. For example, Martin Luther stands for FREEDOM, for Steve Jobs it should be INNOVATION. For Mahatma Gandhi the word is PEACE.
You broadcast your campaign massively but remember people will get bore soon if you push it continuously on their page.
5 Step Process:
- Claim: Go out and get your accounts. You need to owe your name, your company name and what you do on social media. Select such a unique name that nobody can take it away from you.
- Listen: Listen carefully about customers’ demands. You need to know where your customers are. If your target audience is hanging on twitter, you need to be on twitter.
- Reactive: You are acting in a way how people want you to react i.e. responding the people who are talking about you. Or just say, thank you if they acknowledge you. If people are talking about you then you must be a part of that conversation. It’s not like if people are complaining about you or commenting about you then only you should reply them, but be proactive in such cases it should not happen at first place.
- Proactive: Talk about originality, through FB sharing, or twitting on twitter before launching your product or services. Just create hype by taking certain baby steps.
- Movement: This is the powerful step. Take forward “what you stand for”. You need to convey what you do by taking believe out of them. Like for example this tag line: “if opportunity doesn’t knock, build a door”.
Mr. Kapil Nakra, Co-Founder, Digital Vidya started Q & A by asking his question from Mr. Evan Carmichael who was leading the webinar:
Kapil: Since I am an entrepreneur there are two brands I have to deal with one my name and second is Digital Vidya. So I want digital vidya to be promoted but as an individual I really want to promote digital vidya as more than couple and not that just by grab on something which is my name. So what is your suggestion?
Evan: What I will suggest since you are in partnership, hopefully when you guys post something or tweet something then it should be talking about what you stand for. You have to sit down with your business partner and figure out what you company want to sell exactly. You are selling these webinars; you want people to learn about social media. There are some brands who are doing well in similar stuffs like 3M, they stand for innovation, people they hire need to be innovated; everything around them is about innovation. Think about what inspires you, what your business demands and start sharing content and again you look at it.
After Mr Kapil’s question, number of questions landed in front of Mr. Evan Carmichael by participants of the Webinar:
Q.1. How does the SME start their social media program? Do you have any tip on this?
Evan: Let’s go through 5 steps. Just go through them, create them, and make sure you get all your accounts, go through those 5 steps that how you get started.
Q.2. How can we choose one single word for business? Any tips?
Evan: For some people its super easy. Some people like the guys who wrote in here, there people come up with believe write away, I have to think about it. Organized about it which takes some amount of time before you got over exact word. But to find your one word, you look at everything you enjoy in life and find the one thing that combines all of them and then you inject that into your business. Because if it’s your own business it’s easy. If it’s a partnership, then you have to work together. If you are working at big company then again hopefully your one word is close enough to your company. If it’s not then you probably don’t enjoy working at your business. Suppose your one word is different and your company does everything the same way everybody else then you probably not having fun there. That not probably the best job for you to be at. A photographer friend of mine is there and his word is “Inspired”. You have to stand for something and that something will give you an idea and your business revolves around it, otherwise you are just broadcasting crap on Facebook, YouTube and Twitter.
Q.3. I am a busy entrepreneur. Some time I find hard to tweet during a day. How does one work around that?
Evan: The way you do that is start with baby steps. You start tweeting once in week. Look at my 5 step process. Then, gradually twice a week. If you see the results with that then you automatically dedicate time to it because then it became important for your business to grow. Lot of people think that I need to tweet because it will increase my visibility but what they are tweeting is garbage. But if you tweeting once a week then make that tweet impactful and powerful enough. Be proud of what you created. Keep doing that once a week until you see results. The best day for me is when I wake up in morning and with a tea cup in hand I just go through all social media comments. Just interact with people. Seeing what comments are coming, every feedback that how it impacts every person’s life that gets me excited and give motivation to keep going. When you are at your early stage, everybody is busy, nobody gets a free time but then you have to figure out by yourself about that one most powerful tweet.
Q.4. What holds more credibility a person or his company? Which is better to reach out a person or his company?
Evan: I always like having a person behind his company because people are valued from people and not companies. If you are not in a campaign but it could be still your business but it’s good to know who is behind it. It’s not only logo that creates an impact, whatever might a company a very big company in India the person who is behind managing the social media campaign. Be in the love working with people and not the company because it’s easier for us to tell stories of people rather than big companies. In your post, every now and then show picture of your guys, let them feel connected to you. I always feel that credibility comes from person because its social media guys, you got to be social with other people. You don’t go social with the company but you go social with other people.
Q.5. I am big entrepreneur. I run 6 different companies and I am looking to scale up even more and further. I am having a really hard time you know finding good people to head these companies. Do you have any thoughts on that?
Evan: I am a big believer in building from within and finding people who share the same values of you, who may not have all the skills and training them up to become person that you need. Because it so much easier to train anybody who wants to learn, who share that same one word, that same value but may be little short on the skills. But then it’s better than to have somebody who has skills but lazy to work.
Q.6. I wanted to know, I have a company named YouTube Channel and I wanted to know if it’s possible to change that name even though I already register with it.
Evan: I don’t know. They have some restrictions but it’s possible. We have a YouTube expert team, I’ll ask him to mail you regarding this. Will give you more details later about that.
Q.7.What are some measures you use to try the efficacy of campaign especially when it comes to hard matrix like sales and revenue? How does that look for start-up businesses based on your experience?
Evan: Social media is complicated. It’s not direct line it’s not a leap that can be holded and used to TV spots and direct marketing and google AdWords where you say these many people I want and these many people converted. It’s not that kind of model. It’s like measure about word of mouth. How do you measure that? But it does have a major impact. So first of all, I am creating social media campaigns. I don’t do based on quantitative data because that can send you in the wrong direction where you just try to get lots of views, lots of like but you are not getting anything that are meaningful. I got a business in a lot of different ways; I got a business where people bought my guides, who stand up for seminar of mine. These are some of my videos. The guys who call me, they pay my speaking fees for presentation, they pay my flight and hotel over there and that was a great opportunity. I get to meet lot of people. In a same manner, I am talking to you guys because of that. I like when people ask my help as a consultant for any project.
Q.9. How much control should a brand give to customers on social media?
Evan: You have no control on social media. You can’t control what your customers say about you and to be active participate in it. Whether you like it or not people are going to talk about your brand like if you are doing anything important or if you have any kind of site where people sharing their experience good or bad and its more how you react to it and help shape public opinion around you. If you are like sharing stuffs where some brands share their campaign they suck, the worst content. The content is so boring so blank, they get nothing, no engagement is happening. If you sharing meaningful information then people will share. My community jumps on that prospect I don’t have to do anything. I built up so much equity to them and they love everything that I create. I am not a special person. You can do the same with you for your company. Your actions steps are one when anybody talks about your brand good or bad you are there you are responsible. You pass on the trigger, you are helping them through questions, helping them through terms and situations as positive they can be.
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I attended the webinar. Liked Evan Carmichael’s delivery. The beginning was very much interesting and moving. When he started his session with: What do you stand for?. It pulled me towards him. Tips are useful.