Tag: engage121

Why Being On Facebook Is A Mistake

Today’s guest blog post is by Thomas Scott, CEO of Brand Journalists, a firm that is creating breakthroughs for several franchise companies using a mix of content and Engage121.

No Facebook Logo 

  

 


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Why Being on Facebook is a Mistake

 
Almost every session I attended at this year’s International Franchise Association conference in Las Vegas touched on social media. No matter what the subject matter, the dialogue eventually focused on the impact of social media. Just as in past years, there was standing room only space for social topics and several times the crowd spilled over into the hallways.

Throughout all the conversation, a disturbing trend emerged as a best practice: Facebook is where you should focus your social media efforts. The message to franchisors: when it comes to social media, it is a Facebook world.

On many levels, this makes sense. Facebook is growing at amazing rates and has quickly become the most popular social network. Our customers are all over Facebook and we feel the pressure to be where our customers are. Our franchisees want to be on Facebook and we are struggling to develop a plan makes everyone happy and produces results.

This is a mistake.
I’m not saying that you shouldn’t have a presence on Facebook; at Brand Journalists, we do a ton of Facebook work for franchisors and franchisees, both of which have a large opportunity to connect with customers via the popular network. I believe in Facebook and we are always looking for ways to coax a return out of our marketing.

The mistake is in thinking that all your social media efforts should be focused on Facebook.
Franchisors today need to exploit four areas of social media. They are all important but not all equal. Some are easier to use and some are better for driving sales. In our experience managing social media for several franchise brands and individual franchisees, Facebook is the least likely social activity to drive actual sales and revenue.

Here are the four areas of social media listed in order of importance and impact on your sales:

1. Blogging – every day, millions of people search for billions of things on Google. Despite Facebook’s size, Google is still many multiples larger and growing. Your customers are looking for you and your services on Google; the humble business blog is the best social media tool to help you get your content in front of your target customers. The business blog is the most overlooked social media tool and by far the most underused. Companies that get good returns on social media are heavy bloggers simply because the blog allows creation of optimized content that gets in front of people who want what you have to sell. A good blog leverages emotionally compelling stories and relevant keywords. If content is truly the backbone of a successful social media campaign, it needs a place to call home and its home is your blog.

2.  Google Places – in several IFA sessions we asked if franchisors knew much about Google Places and few understood this important tool. Google Places is Google’s business directory and one of the most important social media platforms. Search for a business or service in your city and you’ll see Google place pages for your local franchisees. This is a mini-website that provides basic information about your business, showcases user reviews and gives business owners spots to update statuses and upload media such as photos and videos. Potential customers who are ready to buy your product or service are influenced more by Google Places than any other social media. If you want to drive sales, spend time claiming, optimizing and managing each of your local franchisee place pages. Spend time to train franchisees on how to manage local pages and gather positive reviews. You’ll get an immediate return.

3.  Social Loyalty Programs – Don’t know what social loyalty is? You are not alone. This is a very new field of social media and it holds immense promise for building repeat business and generating referrals from existing customers. Social loyalty programs tap into point of sale systems. Similar to a grocery store customer card, you issue your customers who register online a swipe card. They indicate which social networks they use and give you their email. Why would someone hand over this information? People respond to incentives. If you are a yogurt shop, they agree to post positive messages about your brand and earn points for every posting. Once they reach a set number of points they get free yogurt. When a loyalty customer swipes the card in the store, the program checks them into foursquare, posts on Facebook and even tweets. Every posting has a coupon or promotion for others so you just turned your customer base into a guerrilla marketing sales force. Not only do you entice customers to visit more often, they build brand loyalty within their networks. Talk about word of mouth on steroids……

4.  Facebook – last but not least, Facebook is not to be overlooked. In this list, however, Facebook is the most difficult way to generate a direct sales return, but that doesn’t mean you should avoid it. Facebook is a closed system. That means your content stays within the Facebook network. Facebook wants it this way to encourage sharing and eventually tap into a lucrative ad market. For businesses, this means creating a business fan page. The best advice I’ve heard is to think of your fan page as a business website with similar functionality as your main company website. Don’t use Facebook as it comes in its default mode. Don’t have people see your wall when they click on your page. Do get help customizing your Facebook tabs and think about ways to serve up blog content, store locators and Facebook-only deals on custom – built tabs.

As franchise companies, social media has become part of our integrated marketing strategies and it’s a good thing: we have tremendous opportunities to build brand awareness and leverage fans. For the first time, companies are really beginning to show solid track records using the social media tools above to drive sales. If you are trying to tackle social media, start at the top of this list and work your way down — you’ll get a much better result and your franchisees will thank you.

If you don’t know where to start, outsource or get help. You won’t be sorry.

  

Brand Journalists is a content, PR and social media firm based in Nashville, TN that uses Engage121 with all of its clients to help manage content on social networks to create marketing breakthroughs and drive sales.

www.brandjournalists.com
Twitter @brandjournalist
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/thomscott 
Facebook: facebook.com/brandjournalists:

Social Media in Real-Time at The IFA

IFA

Here are lots of links to sites, apps, and content surrounding the 2011 International Franchise Association Convention. 
 

 

Thanks to Paul Segreto for hosting me today on Franchise Today. We discussed how to experience the conference in real-time via social media channels. Listen to that conversation on demand here.

Also, check out Social Geek Radio’s discussion on Social Media at IFA here with Deb Evans, AK Stout, and Greg Pitkoff.

 

 Twitter Searchable Hashtag for IFA conversations: #IFA

 
RSVP to Tweetup, Sunday 2/13 at 8:30pm: http://tweetvite.com/event/ifa


IFA Blog: http://franblog.tumblr.com/


IFA Convention Downloadable Application  


IFA’s Tweets


My Tweets


Do you have others? Let me know and I’ll post them here!

Franchise Today: Social Media and The IFA

IFAPlease join me Thursday 2/10 at 12pm CT on Paul Segreto’s radio show Franchise Today.  Here’s a preview:

 

 
 
 
On the next segment of Franchise Today, Paul Segreto welcomes as his guest, Jack Monson, Vice President at Engage121, a social media and pr software solutions providor.

With the International Franchise Association Annual Convention kicking off in Las Vegas on Sunday, February 13th, attendees will be able to enhance their convention experience with real-time social media. Jack and Paul discuss how to effectively utilize the IFA Mobile Application to create a personal convention schedule, navigate the exhibit hall and interact with exhibitors, download powerpoint presentations from education sessions, and stay on top of breaking news and alerts.

Effectively integrating the relatively new Foursquare, along with social media mainstays, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and You Tube into the mix also lends to an enahnced convention experience. As Engage121 is a co-sponsor of the IFA Convention Tweetup, Jack and Paul also discuss the benefits of attending the event and interacting with fellow IFA Tweeters.

 

 

Listen Live!

 

 

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Social Media Marketing for Franchises – Webinar

 
I’m pleased to be part of an upcoming free webinar with some smart marketers in the franchise industry. And, this is your invitation to join us for free! On Tuesday, February 8th, Engage121 is hosting a free online panel discussion called Social Media Marketing for Franchises: Approaches to Making it Work. Panelists include:
  
AK Stout: Founder, Saying It Social 

Bill James: CEO, We Engage LLC 

Jack Monson: Vice President, Engage121

Tammy Nienaber: Communications Director, Great Clips, Inc.  

Thomas Scott: CEO, Brand Journalists 

Moderated by: Nick Perold, Marketing Manager, Engage121

 

See below for more details and click register to reserve your spot. This is highly recommended for Franchisors, CMOs, Marketing Directors, PR Execs, and Social Media Managers and will be a terrific lead-in to more marketing conversations at this year’s IFA Conference.

  Register Now

 

Title: Social Media Marketing for Franchises
Date: Tuesday, February 8, 2011
Time: 12:00 PM – 1:00 PM EST
Cost: Free

The franchisor-franchisee relationship is a unique one – combining oversight and support. As a result, when it comes to marketing and promotion, franchisors and franchisees often find themselves asking “whose responsibility is this?” – and the answers are different for every system. Join Engage121 for a webinar on February 8th as we host a panel of franchise industry experts who will present different approaches to making social media marketing work for franchisors and franchisees alike. We’ll spend an hour discussing topics and answering questions from the audience such as: 

–  Should franchisees operate their own Facebook pages? 

–  Is social media marketing covered by the national ad fund? 

–  How do brands protect brand guidelines on the social web? 

–  Can franchisees opt-out of (or into) social media promotions?

Social Media: Candy for Franchises

  Social Media Hearts

 
Social Media is a means to give your brand a voice, put a face on your corporation, and give consumers “someone” to engage. Remember, people don’t buy from companies; they buy from people.

  

Nowhere is the opportunity greater than in the Franchise Industry, where even the biggest global brand is represented by a local business owner (and many times literally mom n’ pop)! The explosive growth of social media platforms means most of your potential customers are now reachable. Smart franchise systems are reaching those customers by empowering their franchisees with training and tools to be that local voice, face, and identifiable part of the community.

  

And, last but certainly not least, a social media plan and tools will give your franchise sales team a boost by presenting franchise candidates with an attractive – and affordable – benefit to selecting your system above others. The very fact that you have a plan of attack in social media may a deal-maker for some potential franchisees.

 

If you’re in franchising, I hope to see you at the 51st Annual International Franchise Association Convention . Perhaps we can continue this discussion!

 

I have organized a Tweetup at the IFA show with Deb Evans, Matt Haller, and my colleagues from Engage121. If you’re attending, please join us on Sunday evening. Here are the details: http://tweetvite.com/event/ifa

 

 

 

Engage121 Launches Enterprise Application

   
Here’s the announcement about the latest social media tool released by my colleagues at Engage121. The focus of the Engage121: Enterprise app is social meeting local. This is critical for franchise systems, retail or restaurant chains, and brands with dealer networks or independent sales agents. 

For full details and to see the release, click here. 

 
 

Engage121 

 

Social Media Optimization Summits – Dallas

 
Social Media Optimization
 

I’m looking forward to participating in next week’s Social Media Optimization Summits in Dallas. One of the features of this conference that stood out to me is hands-on experience for attendees. It will be interesting to see a roomful of attendees with heads down in their laptops and know that they are participating in the discussion, not just checking email and updating their Facebook status.

If you have the opportunity to attend and haven’t registered, please click here for a discounted registration courtesy of Mack Collier. With Mack’s VIP referral, registration is only $200! Thanks Mack!

Social Media and Franchisee Satisfaction

 
A recent chat with Joe Mathews revealed Joe’s top two criteria for measuring a franchise system’s health:

1. Local Financials, and

2. Franchisee satisfaction

I think Joe nailed it. I do want to discuss how localized social media can impact your local financials soon. But for today, let’s dig deeper into franchisee satisfaction.

Helping your franchisees engage in and market their businesses via social media will improve their satisfaction and retention.

Your Zees are constantly bombarded with messages about how they should be doing something in social media. They are inundated with “gotta do it” ideas from their peers, their kids, The Wall Street Journal, and Oprah.

But none of those sources of information can be resources for success the way a franchisor can. Be the hero! Give your ‘zees tools and guidance to grow their businesses via social media and keep them satisfied.

Social Media Satisfaction by Franchisors: 

  • Give guidance on using SM platforms to increase their business; NOT just a policy!

  • Provide a library of content (photos, articles, YouTube videos) for your Zees to share with their local connections.

  • Supply a tool to make engagement by zees fast and easy. 

  • Use a tool for the franchise system to speak on the Zee’s behalf (for Zees not apt to dive in themselves).

At Engage121, I speak with franchisors each day about solving business problems – including franchisee satisfaction – using social media tools. Please contact me to discuss further.

 

What is Engage121?

We’ve spoken frequently on this blog about using Engage121. A few people have asked, “what is that, exactly?” Here’s a new video from my colleagues at Engage121 to explain how companies are using the application.

Monitoring Social Media Versus Engaging People

 

 
When asked “what are you doing in social media?” here are the four worst responses:

 

1. Nothing yet, but we know we should be

2. Developing a social media policy

3. Not doing anything until we finish developing the social media policy

4. Monitoring using ___________ (insert free or paid monitoring tool here)

 
 
 
 
 I submit that even those answering by #4 above are not really doing anything in social media.
  
 
 
Only monitoring social media is like having a telephone stuck on “mute”: you can listen all day, but you will never be part of the conversation.

Let’s also use the common cocktail party analogy for social media. Those who monitor are the folks at the party who lurk around the outsides of conversations, never introducing themselves and never asking you a question. You would never know they exist!

Don’t misunderstand – monitoring is a necessary part of brand management and corporate communications. It’s the same as monitoring and collecting clips from newspapers and TV.

And just like traditional clipping, when only monitoring, what are you really doing? You find some mentions, put them in a report or clipbook, and pass it along to your internal or external client. Perhaps the clips get analyzed for tone. Perhaps the analysis is considered for overall business decisions.
 
Companies who are engaging are not waiting for clips, reports, or analysis to solve business problems. They are actively executing tactics that serve business goals in real time, one-to-one with consumers.
 
Those who currently engage are responding to customer service issues (ComcastCares and Best Buy’s Twelpforce). They are cross-pollenating consumer-created content across other SM platforms (Buick’s MomentofTruth). They are sharing their customers’ experiences to build communities of interest (Ford, Computer Explorers).

So, what do you want to do? Monitor or Engage?