IFTTT stands for If This, Then That and it allows you to create conditional statements called “recipes” that help you manage aspects of your private and public life. Some of the recipes are private, like if you create a screenshot on your device, then a copy of that can be sent to your Evernote account or to your Google Drive. Other can be more public, like anytime you post something on LinkedIn, IFTTT automatically creates a WordPress blog entry or tweets it or posts to your Facebook page.

here is a screenshot of the basic recipe construction:

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The possibilities are pretty unlimited, and there are recipes created by the IFTTT community that you can use and you can share yours. Recipes cover all of the major social media platforms and some of the smaller ones. Here are some of the recipes that I am using:

As you can see, I have created a daily chain of content production that runs from LinkedIn to Twitter to Facebook to WordPress. It is a great way to manage my social posts. I highly recommend it if you’re looking for a way to work smarter, not harder to manage your social media presence.

I’d love to hear about your experiences with this app. I am cooking up more recipes and see how much I can automate. Get it at the App Store.

One of the main reasons that I am glad that they aren’t around anymore is that no one, including me, connected with this project ever asked the question: What do you want this site to do for you? Of course now I ask the question as a matter of routine.

What I am noticing now that time has passed, business owners are doing the same thing with social media. ” We need a social media presence” and that’s the end of the sentence, and I suspect, the end of the thought process. That’s unfortunate, because with social media, you’re playing with fire.

If you plan to launch a new business, one of the things you need to consider is keeping your commercial space safe and secure. It is therefore advised to work with fire watch kansas guards to address your fire safety needs.

Brand Love

So how does a company build a community around their brand? There are a few steps, and not all of them are simple.

Define your brand as a persona: What does your brand like? Dislike? Stand for? Stand against? What is the ethos of your brand? What is your brand promise? Your brand story? And what kind of car would it drive? Some of these questions sound silly, but you’ll need to look at your brand as an individual actor amongst a group of actors in the social media ecosystem.

Once you have defined your brand as a persona, then develop a list of keywords that have a connection to your brand. This is a good time to break out that mind-mapping app and gather people who know your brand and whose judgement you trust. The more diverse the group the better.

Now that you have found your brand’s persona, who are the people that would gravitate towards the products and services that represent your brand at it’s best? What do they like? Dislike? Stand for? Once you have identified that audience, then come up with the keywords that connect to that audience.

See how those keywords mesh. When you combine those lists, you may come up with new keywords. Make that your master list.

Now, if you haven’t already, set up your social media touch points; Facebook and Twitter at a minimum. Once those are set up, make sure that all of your other touch points mention your social media presence. Current customers can be a great way to build your fan base.

Okay. So everything is set up to go after new fans. Four steps:

Invite: Through your social media and other channels, invite your target audience to join your fan page or follow you on Twitter. You can find these people by searching the Twitterverse or Facebook using your previously developed keywords and see who comes up. Engage them honestly in your authentic brand voice and ask them to check you out. Some will, some won’t. The trick is to keep at it.

Incentivize: Integral to the invite process is to create an incentive for them to like your brand or follow you. This incentive needs to align with the values of your brand and the values of your audience. If your brand is aligned against an environmentally-conscious group, perhaps a $1.00 contribution to reduce their carbon footprint for every like might get them to sign up.

Impress: Show your audience how authentic your brand is and gain credibility with this group and their trust. Give examples of when you’re putting your money where your mouth is, or show real world examples of how your product is helping people just like them.

Interact: Here is where many businesses drop the ball. Once you have initiated a conversation with your audience, you must continue to communicate with them and respond to them as if you are in a real conversation (because you are). You must also remember that your brand is just one of the people speaking in this many-to-many communications model. Of those that actually try your product or service, make sure that they are blown away. If you do create an impression on (hopefully delight) a customer, invite them (again) to make their thoughts known on your social media page, regardless of their experience. They will feel heard. Through this process, you will create brand advocates who will make the job of getting new sign-ups easier.

Remember those keywords? When you make a post, any post, make sure that at least one of those keywords are included in every post or tweet. Make good use of the hash-tag (#) in Twitter AND Facebook. This will make it easier for others to find you. Over time, your brand will become associated with those keywords and in the minds of your new, growing, vibrant fan base.

Mind map of social media strategy for Celebrations on Market

I’d love to hear any thoughts you may have on the subject and any details about your experience creating/maintaining your social media strategy.

I ask a prospective client about his/her goals, and they invariably say something along the lines of “increase sales” or “get more customers”, but many small businesses don’t have a clue about how to keep the customers that they have or improve the relationship that they have with them in order to make them more than one shot deals, or, better yet, get valuable referrals from them.

It’s a known fact that it’s cheaper to keep a customer than it is to get a new one, a fact that is lost on many small business owners.

The Customer Relationship Life Cycle

Essentially, the Customer Relationship Life Cycle works like this; every customer goes through these stages of engagement with your brand:

• Awareness
• Engagement or Exploration
• Familiarity
• Commitment
• Separation

Each of those stages is an event and requires event marketing. This is not to be confused with a Back To School sale or a newspaper ad for Mother’s Day. This is about the events on the Customer Life Cycle.

The basic idea is to keep your customers in the Engagement/Commitment phases as long as possible. It used to be a time where people became loyal to a brand because that brand was what they grew up with or was the only game in town. Not so any more. There is competition from all over the globe to provide the kinds of good and services that you do.

So you have to have a plan. Here are some key concepts to remember:

Acknowledge Engagement

Small businesses need to have a strategy to deliver a message to each customer when they reach a certain engagement milestone on the Customer Life Cycle. What do you tell a person when they make their first purchase? Their tenth? Their fiftieth? Or if they haven’t made a purchase in a very long time? Each of those events is an opportunity to deliver a customized message to that particular customer that a) acknowledges the event, b) thanks/rewards them for the behavior that led to that event and c) creates an incentive to continue said behavior. Keep doing this and that customer will advance onto the next stage of the Customer Life Cycle.

Create Customer Evangelists

So when you have rewarded a customer to the point that they are in the Commitment stage of the Customer Life Cycle, something wonderful happens. They start telling their social network (friend, family, coworkers, Facebook, Twitter) about the wonderful relationship that they have with your brand. Think I’m kidding? Stand in a group of men and tell them that you are looking for a mechanic. You know the response that you’ll get. Each of them will tell you that “their guy” split the atom.

Now you have a “sales force” working for you, bringing you even more business.

Develop a Multi-Channel CRM Strategy

Sit with your creative/marketing people (insert shameless pitch for M19 MEDIA here) and devise a plan to communicate with your customer base on a regular basis. Email is the cheapest way to do so, but don’t forget the other channels, like direct response mail. If you have a storefront, you can use postcards to bring them in. Likewise with lo-so media, like Foursquare. Create incentives for repeated check-ins or purchases. Or, if your base is small enough, call them! Whatever you do, communicate your gratitude and you’ll keep those customers for life.

On location-based social sites, also known as “lo-so”s, like Facebook, Yelp! and Loopt, a user can “check in” to establishments near him/her and the savvy business creates incentives/rewards for doing so.

Tijuana Taco Shop is offering 50% off your meal for liking them, thereby creating a fan base that will advocate their brand, and 10% off your meal every time you check in, creating incentives and a pathway for deeper brand engagement.

Brand advocacy is then handled by the user who will transmit Tijuana Taco Shop’s message through their social network of friends, just like I did to my social network.

The beauty of this is that there is a non-existent barrier to entry and the initial cost of acquisition will more than pay for itself over time. The initial offer is presented on site to maintain control of traffic and therefore costs. Muy inteligente!

I’ve attached a photo.

“Eight in 10 Twitter users surveyed worldwide said they thought the answers businesses posted on Twitter were at least as trustworthy as those from regular people, and about six in 10 said they wanted businesses to respond to them on the microblogging service.

Yet just 21% of Twitter users with under 100 followers and 41% of users with over 100 followers said they had actually received a response from a business via Twitter.

Users indicated that more responsive brands would benefit from greater loyalty and purchasing. Almost 60% of respondents said they would be more likely to follow a brand that answered them, and 64% said they would be more likely to make a purchase from that brand.”

-Emarketer

The whole goal of social media is to have a conversation with your audience. It’s not enough to regularly blurt out what you’re doing, be prepared to share information and have people interact with your brand as the living, breathing entity it is. My advice to small businesses pursuing a social media strategy: make sure that you have the time and resources to monitor the chatter and engage in a dialog with your customers/prospects. If you do, you’ll enjoy greater customer loyalty. If you don’t, you will fade into the background noise.

So both of these ads are running and are targeted to the same group of people: those that are 30 years old and above, who are not already fans of M19 MEDIA and live within 25 miles of Wilmington, DE. That comes out to about 186,000 people. I am reaching about a tenth of those people, but that is okay. I am only working with a $50 budget for the entire campaign, which was what my budget app recommended. I want to keep the reach small.

Facebook has added a Social Reach category, and it tells you the number of people that are friends of current fans. Your fan base can be leveraged to boost your click through rate (CTR) without having to do anything!

So up until two days ago, the icon was winning hands down in all categories, posting a healthy .039% CTR, kicking a** in impressions and social connections. Now the image is having a late surge with a mind-boggling .057% CTR (that number will certainly decline). There is still some time left in the campaign, and after tweaking the amount per click that I am bidding we’ll see how the numbers will pan out. Stay tuned!

UPDATE:

The campaign is winding down. With only $10 left in the lifetime budget, there’s little that can happen now to drastically change the statistics. The icon is the winner! Posting a healthy .020% CTR, it beat the image hands down. The image achieved a respectable .014% CTR.

While this is no means an exhaustive study, it does mean that mixing up your creative is the best way to maintain viewer interest and determine which approach is resonating with your audience. Test, test and then test again until you get your desired results.

The QR code contains information or can direct you to a web page, say Facebook, to get more information. You could also direct someone to a coupon or allow them to read or write reviews.

Here is a QR code that I pulled from the web:

This QR Code will take you to the BBC programming page if you scan it with your phone equipped with a QR reader.

This particular image will take you to the BBC programming page.

I hadn’t seen any small businesses in Delaware use this until about a month or so ago, and I couldn’t wait to use it. Here are some of the benefits:

Engagement is easy to track. If your QR code direct users to a landing page, you can immediately track the effectiveness of a particular medium, say, direct response mail.

It’s cool. The image in this post allows the BBC to directly brand itself in the design. That links the brand with this technology and informs the user that the brand is trying new ways to connect with its audience.

It is nearly free. The QR code patent has not been exercised, so the barrier to entry for small businesses is low. QR codes can be printed in any color, so there would be no additional costs to include them in printed materials.

It recognizes the increasing mobility of the typical user. In 2009, according to the Pew Center, nearly a third of Americans use the internet with a handheld device like a smart phone. The QR code rewards the mobile user for being mobile and is a concrete adaptation to the way an increasing segment of the population accesses the web.

As I said earlier, I couldn’t wait to use this technology for my small business clients, and so have presented identity design with those QR codes on the business card, envelope and letterhead. I will be encouraging them to use these codes on all their printed marketing items from now on.

Would love to hear your thoughts on the matter or examples of its use.

Hang Time

I have had responses to Facebook posts, both professional and personal, weeks after the original post. That works doubly so when it comes to pictures. So I put out a message and others will respond when they get around to it, which is just fine by me. I want people to respond and for most messages, I don’t care about the time frame. And when you’re cruising a page that you haven’t been to in a while, a month old post is not quite as stale as a month old email. Think about that the next time you have something to say that isn’t time related.

Other addicts

Facebook addicts are celebrated. They are called thought leaders. I have a friend that will comment on my posts regardless of the time of day. She is always on. The good thing about that is that those people that are addicted to Facebook are also addicted to others that are addicted to Facebook…you see where I am going with this. If you develop a message that your addicts will respond to, you can guarantee that they will share this with others. Having a post get “picked up” is what every Facebooker lives for. Find those people and get them on board with what you’re doing and you’ll reach people you never thought you could, while if you need some sort of support you can always talk to a princessemzs4xo virtual girlfriend online.

It’s still cheap

Free, for the most part. And Facebook is still the cheapest way to build an online brand that I have found. I ran an ad for the holidays to get people to start design projects before the end of the year. The ad did not perform very well. I had few click-throughs, but well over 100,000 impressions. Was the creative bad? Probably not. The timing? Probably. The demo? Certainly not. The point being is that you don’t need to have a click-through stampede to build brand recognition. This isn’t quite an apples-to-apples comparison, but I don’t buy a lot of fast food, but I remember their ads, and by extension, their brands. By opting to pay for clicks instead of impressions, I get some brand recognition for free.

It’s better than a phone call

Don’t get me wrong: calling people is still a great way to connecting, but when you need an answer or a volunteer, sending a blast through Facebook is a great way to get the word out without activating a phone tree. M19 MEDIA hosts an Art Loop stop here in Wilmington, and I use Facebook to find new artists. How long would it have taken me to call people that I know that may or may not be connected in the art world…well, you get the idea. Another plus is that, like texting, a Facebook post is short, sweet and to the point. No chance of getting conversation drift like you would on a phone conversation.

(Unscientific) Focus Group, anyone?

One of my favorite activities on my fan page is to come up with some logo comps and share it with my fans. My fans (God, how I love them) come from all walks of life: some are friends from high school doing me a solid, others are professional links, others still are current and future clients. Showing my work on my fan page to get feedback is good business. Go ahead. Take an idea for a spin with your fans and see how it plays. Maybe they will provide a new twist that will make it a best-seller. Future clients will be impressed with the work that you’re doing and it may nudge them closer to doing business. Current clients may find new needs for your services. And your high school friends can remind you have far you’ve come as a professional.

Just fall backwards…

I tell my students every session that unless your audience trusts your brand, you’re fried. Pack it in. The great thing about Facebook is that there is a certain amount of trust that people give to the medium. Not to say that you shouldn’t be careful about what you post and the information that you make public, but the messages that you get from a friend on Facebook convey weight similar to the sought-after referral. “I know a guy who does that…” can mean big bucks for a small business. Use your friends/fans as referral sources. They can help you get your foot in an otherwise locked door.

It’s still the future

There’s still nothing that rivals Facebook in its reach, and they are constantly providing more. Even though it’s not even a decade old, it has transformed the way we work, live and do business. It’s still hip. It’s still effective. It’s still the future. Now that people have the opportunity to converse with each other and their brands, that genie is not going back in the bottle. Embrace it. Own it. Make simple steps to get your brand out there in the mix.

Or just drop us a line and we can do it for you.