LEVELTWO is a marketing agency in Dallas, Texas. We specialize in Advertising, Interactive Marketing, Brand Development, Collateral, Direct Marketing, Graphic Design, Marketing Strategy, Media Planning and Buying, Media Promotion, Website Development, and Website Optimization.
According to a consumer online behavior study from Forrester Research the number of people visiting social networking sites has doubled since 2007. Forrester surveyed 40,545 US heads of household in January and February 2009 about a variety of topics including online behaviors and media consumption. Their executive summary states that,
Our 2009 data shows a stabilization of consumers’ overall time spent with online media. However, engagement with the online channel has deepened, as evidenced by the widespread adoption of such activities as social networking.
Take a look at this graphic that shows the very clear trending in favor of social networking.
Notice the not so subtle big red circle I added? It shows a large jump in the number of people that visit social networks. That’s great news! However if you look a little further down on the graphic you’ll notice that less than 20% of those surveyed read blogs, so there’s a key lesson to learn here.
When you decide to launch your business into the social networking world it’s important to incorporate your blog posts into your social network. Import your blog posts into your Facebook Page and other social networking accounts, because chances are that people may not visit your blog, but they much more likely to view your content through a social network platform.
Go Slow and Steady, Don’t Overdo It
Your fans use their Facebook as a personal communication tool. While they have shown interest in your product or services, remember that there is such a thing as too many updates. Keep your status updates, videos, pictures, and blog posts consistent, but don’t overwhelm them with information. Post at least something a day, but don’t overdo it.
Contact Your Fans Directly Your small business is built for customer interaction. You may not have thousands of fans and tons of comments on each of your blog posts, but you’ve got an advantage on the large companies because they have no way of interacting with all of their fans. Follow up with new fans and reply to comments. Don’t spam them with messages to buy your stuff right now, rather encourage that one-on-one relationship.
Don’t Spam
Treat your customers like you would want to be treated. Posts in all CAPS and with big flashy buttons won’t help you sell your products any faster. Instead it will likely result in a loss of fans.
Consider it an Educational Experience
We’ve said it before, but it’s still not old. The most important part of social networking for businesses is to make your content interesting. Let your visitors in on a few industry secrets and they’ll come back for more later. Establish yourself as an industry expert.
Use Incentives
Your marketing tactics may have changed, but those traditional marketing pulls are still just as strong. Offer new fans a discount the next time they come into your store or order your services.
Post Occasional Entertaining Statuses
Put some personality in your updates. Fridays are always a good opportunity to post something a little off topic. If you find a funny video post it on your facebook. Or share a joke with your fans. Especially if there is a way to tie it into your own business. Like a dentist might post a joke about a kid with braces. It’s a great way to break the ice.
For a business investing time into doing social media, it’s important that you connect with the locals, because the grassroots approach of social media is all about getting the word out from person to person. By involving the built-in viral aspect of social networking you can gather more viewers and therefore more customers.
So here are 13 ways to connect and interact with local twitterers:
Start a conversation with the people around you. Use advanced twitter search functions to find people that are interested in your industry or might be in the buying cycle for your product or services and make a connection. The number one rule is don’t be a salesman, be their friend. The last thing Twitter needs is another spammer. Provide quality content and you’ll find that people are eager to join in the conversation.
Landing Page – An active webpage where customers will ‘land’ when they click your ad. The web address for this page is often called a ‘destination URL’ or ‘clickthrough URL.’
Below is a list of 7 deadly sins for landing page designs. The list was taken from a webinar from Tim Ash, a consultant from Google.
Have you committed one of the “7 deadly sins of landing page design?”
Unclear Call to Action
Ensure that traffic is sent to a page where the desired action is clearly defined. If you wish for them to book a room night, have a large visible button that allows the customer to book a room night.
Too Many Visual Distractions
A page filled with too many visual distractions, whether its photos of products or flashing banners or AdSense ads, will likely not convert as well. Keep the page simple, clean, and to the point.
Too Much Text
A landing page should not be text heavy. Keep sentences short and simple, and convey your message using bullet points.
Not Keeping Promises
Your AdCopy says: Buy 2 get 1 free, but if this same offer cannot be found on the landing page, you are not keeping that promise. If you have an attractive offer in your AdCopy, make sure that it is easily found on the landing page.
Long Forms
Keep forms as short and concise as possible. Only include fields where it’s absolutely essential for the existing transaction.
Invisible Risk Reducers
If your business is accredited by the BBB, or if your website is hacker safe and tested on a daily basis, be sure to include these logos above the fold.
Trust Indicators
If your business is highly rated or raved about by another company of trust, place that logo above the fold as well. For example, if Conde Nast named your hotel as one of the “Top 500 Hotels in the World”, adding this trust indicator will surely help increase trust, and hopefully conversion.
If you still think that Facebook is not an within the right demographic for you business, I want to share a few recent statistics with you:
First let’s start with a pie chart, because everyone loves pie.
Observations:
- The largest percentage is the 18-25 age group
- The percentages decrease as the groups move up in age
- Over 1/3 of Facebook’s users are made up of people over the age of 34
So with that in mind, take a look at this chart that shows the growth of new members over a period of 30 days:
Observations:
- Facebook is growing more popular among 40 and 50 year olds
- In fact according to a recent post on insidefacebook, the fastest growing demographic on Facebook is women over 55!
While it’s easy to let social networks fall into a young demographic of tech savvy users, but the facts point to a completely different trend. Facebook and other social networks are not a young trend. There is a wide scope of users from all demographics!
Over at mashable.com they have an interesting blog post discussing how Google News has opened their Google News search engine to YouTube publishers.
What this means is when you do a search on Google News you will get search results with not only news articles, but also there are embedded videos directly from YouTube.
I tested this out doing a search on “obama healthcare” and I received this search result page (screenshot below).
While your company may not be a news distributor, this new feature points to the growing integration of videos and the search engine world. We’ve discussed this factor many times before.
The internet is not a closed loop. The term universal search refers to the inclusion of multiple forms of media within a search result page and the more channels that your social marketing campaign includes, the more reach and depth your campaign will gain.
Over at ÜBERCEO, a blog that discusses everything about CEOs, they have an interesting article about the Fortune 100 company CEOs and their lack of social media exposure.
They looked at Fortune’s 2009 list of the top 100 companies and tried to find out if their CEOs are on any of the major social networks, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Wikipedia, or had a blog. The results were not very impressive and led them to label those elite 100 “Social Media Slackers.” Their results are listed below:
Only two CEOs have Twitter accounts.
13 CEOs have LinkedIn profiles, and of those only three have more than 10 connections.
81% of CEOs don’t have a personal Facebook page.
Three quarters of the CEOs have some kind of Wikipedia entry, but nearly a third of those have limited or outdated information.
Not one Fortune 100 CEO has a blog.
They put their results into a presentation, which is embedded below.
Another great video from CommonCraft about Twitter Search. In this video they discuss trending topics and the use of hashtags on Twitter. They also briefly discuss the practical uses of Twitter for businesses.
“Other than people who come to the store, he could never hear about what people said about his [product]. He can now do a Twitter Search for his [product name] and see tweets about his product. Then he can reply to say ‘thanks’ or follow their future updates.”
Somebody’s finally done it. The internet is now complete. Sears, in partnership with AOL News, has created Good News Now, GNN.com.
I think it’s a great way to share some positive headlines in a news market that is flooded with depressing topics and stories about failure. With headlines about seven leaf clovers, inspiring stories, and slideshows loaded with cute pictures like newborn twin black panther cubs, GNN seems like a great way to harvest a large amount of traffic and maintain a strong and positive branding campaign.
And on a particularly creative twist, they even have a weekend countdown timer!
Yesterday was a big day for Mac and iPhone users. Apple hosted its annual World Wide Developers Conference (WWDC) and announced the latest updates to their wildly popular iPhone. While the majority of the opening keynote was focused on updates to the Apple products, they did allow some time for featured developers to discuss their latest technologies using the iPhone.
A very exciting presentation was done by AirStrip Technologies. They made medical devices and their presentation at WWDC 09 was about AirStrip Critical Care which delivers real time information to practitioners like ventilator flow tracings, patient vital signs data and rhythm strips.
The medical industry is flocking to the tech market and applications like this are a glimpse into the future of healthcare. Patients are looking for their healthcare providers to take steps toward advanced technologies. It’s important that your medical company show its strong commitment to staying current and valid in today’s dynamic market.
While you may not have the ability to create your own medical technologies, there are other ways to establish a presence of innovation and we can help you do it.
We specialize in:
creating integrated marketing campaigns that include TV, radio, print, outdoor and interactive
developing surgical cases for healthcare facilities, surgical centers and surgeons
ensuring your staff effectively captures and tracks leads
patient generation for individual physicians and physician groups
website development
pay-per-click (sponsored keywords) to drive targeted leads
natural/organic search engine optimization to drive targeted leads
powerful social media tools that capture grassroot leads doing research on the web
results that are quantifiable by our proprietary software tracking and CRM system
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Jul 31, 2009 
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Blogging, blogging tips, brand building, business blog, LEVELTWO, Marketing, SMM, Social Media, Social Media Marketing, Social Networking
A very exciting presentation was done by AirStrip Technologies. They made medical devices and their presentation at WWDC 09 was about AirStrip Critical Care which delivers real time information to practitioners like ventilator flow tracings, patient vital signs data and rhythm strips.
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