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Success Through Strategy!

Strategy Matters delivers news, tips and strategies for effective communications through traditional and social media. 

Upcoming Presentation:


Strategic content marketing: Building a plan for efficiency and results. Driven by Google's ongoing algorithm changes, communicators are increasingly being driven to provide more, and higher quality, content to their online audiences. That can be a challenge. This session will provide a specific process and relevant resources to get the job done efficiently and cost-effectively. 
Managing and Monitoring Your Social Connections

Many small businesses understand the importance of social media for their marketing efforts. Their owners or managers may be active on a variety of platforms - from Facebook and LinkedIn to Twitter and Instagram - and many run blogs with information relevant to their target markets. At the same time, many small business owners are close socially with their employees. They may play on common recreational league teams, go out together for happy hours, etc.

Just as there should be boundaries in your social interactions with employees, there should be certain ground rules for engaging with employees on social media. Here are some key considerations.

Monitoring Employee Social Media Activity

Although it might seem like spying or being nosey to track employee social media activity, many employers do this. It can be a good way to get a sense of their interests and concerns. There's a line between monitoring and responding to employee comments, though, and National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) issues need to be considered. Employers should exercise caution when indicating to employees what they can and cannot post, or when disciplining them for comments they make online about working conditions. This is an area where legal advice should be sought.

General Rules

Employers should always be very aware that anything they post online - even if it's just a message they send to a single individual - has the potential for much broader distribution.

  • Don't post anything that may reflect negatively on you, or your organization - or that may potentially damage your organization's brand.
  • Do monitor and be prepared to respond to comments online related to your business, but don't engage in lengthy, back-and-forth negative discussions that may quickly escalate. Instead, acknowledge the comment and then take it offline.

Both social media and close relationships with employees are good for business, and, depending on the context, there might be little harm in mixing the two; however, just as with any employer-employee interaction, there should be some boundaries that you, as a small business owner, respect.

How have you addressed issues related to social media interactions between staff, and company-related comments and posts, in your organization? What challenging issues have you faced?

Building Thought Leadership Through Blogging 
 
Blogs are so ubiquitous in the online world that it may seem like it's not worth the effort to maintain your own. After all, blogs can take a lot of effort to maintain. You need to be current, consistent and relevant. Is it worth all that time and energy with so many blogs out there?

We certainly think so. It may seem abstract to tie the efforts you put into your blog to the success of your business, but there are a number of benefits of maintaining a quality blog.

Thought Leadership: A quality blog helps to establish you, or your organization, as being expert and informative in your industry. If you're a business attorney, you can draw visitors to your site by posting knowledgeable blogs about business formation or common contract issues. If you're a plumber, you can do the same by posting about common maintenance and repair issues facing potential customers. If you're a content marketer, you can write about blogging!

Ear to the Ground: Unlike a newsletter or a TV commercial, blogs are interactive by design. They encourage discussion and active feedback. If you can generate some participation by your market, your blog can be a great way to do some market research to get a feel for what your potential customers are thinking, saying and doing. And, even if visitors aren't actively posting to your blog (they often don't), you can still gain marketing insights from your analytics which will tell you which posts get the most traffic, create the most engagement and lead to additional online actions.

Site Traffic: As noted by Social Media Delivered, one of the primary reasons to use a blog for your business is to drive your SEO numbers. And, as noted above, even if you don't see a lot of chatter on your blog, you can use tools like Google Analytics to see how highly trafficked your site is. You may be surprised. As long as your content is genuinely relevant and useful to your target audience - not simply a naked plug for your product or service - you stand to generate a lot of visitors.

Repurposing Your Content: One important best practice for those thinking about creating a blog is that you can repurpose those blog posts in a variety of ways to help augment your content marketing activities. This can save time and extend the reach of your information. For instance, blog content could be used in bite-sized chunks as social media posts. Larger excerpts could be pulled together to create an e-letter that you distribute on a regular basis. That's exactly what we do with our monthly e-letter.

Maintaining a blog might seem like just another activity, and it can seem hard to stand out among the crowd, but there are some very real benefits to having a dynamic online presence tied to your business.

Don't have time to do it yourself?  Get in touch. We work with a variety of clients to help curate and create content for their websites, blog posts, white papers, e-books, and more.
Being (Appropriately) Social Online: The Etiquette of Social Media Engagement

As the name suggests, social media is often a very informal means of conveying information. It's familiar, colloquial and often has a personal touch - it's social. So, when you're using social media to support your business' marketing needs, how should you behave? What's the appropriate etiquette?

Generally, we advise clients to use the same general communication principles and considerations when online as when interacting with people in any traditional setting. For example, don't ignore your guests. If someone posts something on your blog, try to respond. And when responding, avoid using all caps, which can come across as shouting.

The principal difference between your online activity and your in-person social activity, and it's a big one, is that your online comments have the potential to be seen by a much, much larger audience and those comments are accessible for a long, long time. Unlike a fleeting comment made at a business meeting that may be heard, and potentially repeated by, a handful of people, your online comments could conceivably be seen and shared by millions! That's great if those comments reflect positively on you and your organization-not so great if they don't.

Business owners, and business professionals in general, need to consider their business, as well as their personal brand, when communicating online by making sure that those communications are aligned and consistent across all channels.

While the basic rules of normal human interaction shouldn't disappear just because you're online, you also need to consider some nuances of proper behavior specific to the online world.
Social Media Current offers some basic tips for general etiquette when using social media for your business.

For example, make sure you use an automated spelling checker and proper punctuation. Just as with someone speaking with poor grammar, filling a blog, tweet or Facebook post with words that are misspelled or used in the wrong form (their, they're, there) makes you look unprofessional and will definitely turn off potential customers and clients.

Additionally, don't spam your social media network. No one wants to be bombarded with a bunch of junk after liking a Facebook page, following a new business on Twitter or signing up to a mailing list. At the same time, try to post often - just make sure your content is relevant and valuable to your audience (i.e., not spam).

Social media, like any online activity, can make people feel removed from those they're interacting with. But communicating with someone online doesn't mean the rules of polite behavior go out the window. When in doubt, use common sense, and always keep in mind that manners matter in social media.

In the online world it's all about engagement!
Featured White Paper

The Evolving Role of Email Marketing: a Three-Part Series

Email marketing is not only still relevant, but also still resonates with consumers in both the B2B and B2C environments. In this extensive whitepaper marketers share their perspectives on what works, what doesn't and what lies ahead for marketers connecting with audiences online.

Volume: 8 - Issue: 5
 May 2016
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In This Issue
We're In the News! 

Marketing: How to Ensure Your Employees are Prepared to Serve as Powerful Brand Ambassadors






Research Matters
Some recent news and  research you may be interested in--we were!  
     

 
EContent: Ad Blocking--A Symptom of a Larger Problem