I was recently doing some research on Google and typed in the search box “simple steps to social media”. The results made me chuckle when the top 15 results contained the following descriptions:

• 10 Simple Steps to Social Media
• 9 Simple Steps to Social Media
• 8 Simple Steps to Social Media
• 7 Simple Steps to Social Media
• 5 Simple Steps to Social Media
• 4 Simple Steps to Social Media
• 3 Simple Steps to Social Media

I’m curious what happened with the 2-step and 6-step process. Well, if you search for 6 simple steps, it’s out there too! But I was surprised that no one seems to have the brilliance to devise a 2-step process. So I began to ponder to notion of how many steps does it take? Is there a answer to this question? Perhaps the magic 8-ball will know the answer? I know, Mr. Owl will know! He figured out how many licks it took to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop. A one, a two, a three.

So, how many licks does it take to get to the center of social media?

Truth be told, there is no correct answer. Social media campaigns need to be tailored for each clients specific objectives. Below are some basic components that should be understood and addressed prior to launch.

Understand Your Target Audience
The most important and first step in any social media campaign is understanding your target audience. One misconception/strategy is the idea of targeting the general public. You need to understand your audience and how to effectively communicate, precisely as possible, about your service or product. As a social marketer, you must create an two-way open forum allowing a constant stream of exchanged information with your target audience.

Figure Out Your Objectives
So now that you’ve determined your target audience, the next step is identifying your objectives. Objectives are often driven by marketing or sales. Many companies today use at social media as a tool for improving Search Engine Optimization (SEO), as it has long been directly accountable to improvements in web sales. A simple question to ask yourself, “What’s the goal or point of this program?” The answer is usually a combination of the following:

• Increase brand or product awareness
• Increase sales
• Lead generation
• Loyalty program
• Create a community
• SEO

Connect With Your Audience
You’ve now determined your audience and objectives, but how do you connect with the audience? A well planned social media marketing effort starts with research. Finding out where your desired audience spends its time interacting and sharing content is critical in any strategy. Social media marketing is an investment in time and relationships. Understanding and building upon those relationships allows for community building – leading to increased awareness.

With the plethora of social media websites available, choosing a right ones depend on your audience and objectives. Creating profiles on several websites will improve awareness and begin the first steps in building your community. A good start would be to focus on some of the most popular sites such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Digg and Flickr.

Choose A Strategy
While creating profiles is a start, understanding how to use these social media websites is paramount. Creating a channel on YouTube for you monthly video seminars, generating potential B to B clients through LinkedIn, building a fan base on Facebook, driving traffic with your followers on Twitter, or building a great community on your company blog all sound great, but it takes a sound strategy for implementation. There are different approaches to each website, fortunately there are hundreds of articles available on the internet. Some basic research will yield great results for strategies on the larger networking sites.

Software is also available and beneficial for monitoring and interacting with multiple social media websites simultaneously (Seesmic). Use tools for Twitter to allow multiple people to use and manage one account (CoTweet). With Twitter software such as SocialOomph or Hootsuite, you can schedule your tweets and have them deploy over a week. Other software available will help with Facebook and LinkedIn status updates. Posting and commenting on social media websites with a constant frequency and posting weekly posts to you blog (Wordpress or Blogger) will help build community and awareness.

SEO also plays a key role in strategy. Much of the content creation and promotion for a social media marketing happens within the mix of sites chosen. Building off the information gleaned on these websites leads to opportunities for optimizing content and keywords (Google Keyword Tool).

Measure Your Goals
There are lots of ways to measure social media success, so make sure you determine your key metrics before you get started. Leveraging social media monitoring services like Radian6 and web analytics such as Google Analytics you can provide marketers with the insight to improve results. Use tools like YouTube’s Insight to track videos posted on your YouTube Channel. The bottom line is that you need to measure your goals. Choose your objectives and goals, define them ahead of time, and create a plan to track your progress. This will allow you to not only gauge overall campaign, but allow for refinements on the fly while you’re still running the program.

Join The Conversation
Now that your social media campaign is running, it’s time to join the social media world. Go get social. Search for your name and your company. See where people are talking about you and join in on the conversation. Post comments on other sites and blogs leaving contact information or website address if permitted. Learn the lingo and jargon so you understand the way people talk. Learn how tool use tools like the “Hashtag” (#) or “Retweet” (RT) features in Twitter. Participate in ways that follow the accepted norms of each site. Become a community leader or topic expert by answering questions, starting discussions, and stay actively involved. You must stay current and relevant to continually build awareness of your person, company or product in the social world.

So, how many licks does it take to get to the center of social media?

It takes 6… 6 licks to get to the center of social media! It appears that I have successfully created the “6 Simple Steps to Social Media” methodology. Social media marketing can have very beneficial results once the planning and set-up have been completed. It is important to realize nothing happens overnight and it will take time, but you can accomplish you goals and much more in only a few hours each week. Good luck.

So, how many licks does it take to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop?

Well, a student study at the University of Cambridge concluded that it takes 3481 licks to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop. Just thought you may want to know!

The Upside
One of the biggest advantages of creating a company blog is it allows organizations a platform where information, data and opinion can be shared and traded. The open forum of communication is a two-way exchange between the company and its employees, customers, partners and prospects allowing a constant stream of exchanged information. Blogs make it easy for group participation allowing users a quick way to post and comment, creating an ongoing conversation.

Reasons blogging may work for your company
Blogging can be an inexpensive way to establish an internet presence for small business owners. It is a constant communication stream generating information about customers, their experiences and opinions. The sharing of ideas freely, in an honest voice, helps generates trust and gives potential customers a source to obtain additional information about your company. Blogs are capable of creating positive Corporate/Product PR allowing opportunity to talk about your product, company and increase brand awareness.

Corporate leaders can communicate directly with customers, suppliers and investors, as well as employees, helping disseminate and explain strategy. And, if updated consistently with quality content, blogs can establish the company as a leader in its industry.

Blog also happen to be very well suited for Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Search engines love blogs because of their constantly changing structure of content, linking between pages, and because the content is categorized and grouped.

The Downside
There are two sides to every story, and some individuals believe blogs are not suitable for marketing a company, advertising products, are too timely and expensive when done correctly. Generally the content has become mundane, it lacks originality and that blogs have become too much of an echo chamber. And companies don’t understand the time required to maintaining a successful blog.

Reasons to rethink corporate blogging
One of the biggest challenges with blogging is companies are likely to join the millions of blogs with little or no readers. In general, corporate blogs tend to be very boring lacking any personal voice. The content must be original or provide significantly better information than competitors in your industry?

Creating a successful blog requires lots of dedicate time and effort. Writing a good blog entry can range from two to four hours a post. Your copywriters and contributors need to be personable and good readers. They must keep up with feeds, forums and mainstream media, to be able keep your readers informed about your industry topics.

Companies must understand blogs are not a substitute for marketing campaigns, but simply a potential part of corporate communications. A blog can be a useful tool for advertising, but is not a substitute for advertising campaign. A blog may require a skilled programming to set it up, a professional designer to incorporate corporate identity, and a talented/dedicated writer or editor.

Summary
Just with everything else in life, you get out of it what you put into it. If your a company or an individual willing to spend the time, blogging can have very positive results. Successful blogging results will not come overnight and will take effort to gain long term results.

The “Dreaded Threads” come in two basic categories:

• The Scroll-Down
• The Ongoing Conversation

The Scroll-Down: Headers Galore
For me, these emails come from just about anyone — family, friends, co-workers, colleagues and occasionally clients. The emails usually consist of a joke, chain letter, humorous video, virus alert or something about growing up in the 60’s, 70’s or 80’s. The email has been forwarded from one email group to another email group and so on. You know this as you scroll down through header after header trying to get to the content (which usually isn’t really that important anyway). It’s rude. It wastes time. How hard is it to delete the header of the previous email before you hit forward! I implore everyone to be kind and erase the headers. Let’s stop wasting each other’s time.

The Ongoing Conversation: Huh? What?
These are the emails that bother me the most! Most often they are work related and come from a client or co-worker. You receive an email, but it doesn’t quite make sense. Something is missing, a small detail, a comment about a project or perhaps it’s the key to solving the puzzle. Sometimes you understand what’s being discussed and other times you have no idea until you read the entire conversation. This is my biggest pet peeve of the “Dreaded Thread”. Reason being, it’s usually work related and it either wastes time or causes confusion. And that part that gets me the most, it’s usually a small detail. Why can’t the sender capture the important pieces, copy and paste them to the top of the email so I don’t have to waste valuable time reading ten emails to figure out the entire message. It’s just plain laziness on the sender’s part. I realize that we need to keep the thread together to track the conversation, but do I really need to read ten emails to understand one simple point! NO! Stop being lazy and take the time to collect the information and put it together in the top of the email! Please, help the reader and send a clear visual map of what’s being discussed.

In Summary
If you’re going to forward an email thread, do one of two things…erase all the headers and/or understand what you are about to send and summarize it for the recipient!

I ask you the reader to forward this message along, but be kind, erase the headers as it goes from person to person. Perhaps put your own little message, explaining the importance and relevancy of this story. Only you can prevent the “Dreaded Thread”!

Generating lists via different opt-in methods
No Opt-in
The most unscrupulous method for building lists is known as “email harvesting”. Harvested lists are created either by manually or automatically collecting email addresses from forums, chat rooms, websites or being automatically generated using a method called “dictionary attacking”. In 2003, the CAN-SPAM Act was passed to help curb the amount of SPAM. Part of the CAN-SPAM Act put strict penalties on people who collect email address by using harvesting methods. The act also required marketers to include unsubscribe links, physical addresses, clear subject headings, and legitimate “To” and “From” addresses. To avoid being prosecuted and keep their email from being banned, the email marketing community had to make significant changes to comply.

Single Opt-in
To avoid prosecution and have a qualified email list, email marketers began using single opt-in methods for list generation. Simply put, a single opt-in agreement is when you provide your email address once to a company or website using several methods. There is a simple sign-up where you provided your email address with the understanding that you will be receiving a newsletter or communication from a company. There is the check-box or tick-box method, whereby in the process of filling out a form, you are asked to check a box to confirm that you would like to receive additional information. And there is a transactional opt-in, where a company collects your email address when you purchase a product or use their service. That company can then inform you about updates, news or additional information in regards to that product or service.

Notified Single Opt-in
This is basically the same as the single opt-in strategy mentioned above, however, with notified opt-in, the email recipients are sent an email to notify them of their subscription and offer the opportunity to opt-out.

Confirmed or Double Opt-in
Presently, confirmed (or double) opt-in methods are preferred by most email marketing companies and email service providers (ESP). When an individual signs up to receive messages, updates or newsletter about your company, they will first receive an email confirmation that they have signed up for a subscription. Most commonly that message will state “You have just signed up to receive our newsletter. Please click here to confirm you that this is correct.” When the subscriber clicks on this link, you now have a confirmed (double) opt-in. By having a confirmed opt-in, you now have a record that a person has opted into you subscription. If you are reported for sending SPAM, having a confirmed or double opt-in will hold up in court much better than a single opt-in.

Advantages and Disadvantages
Both methods, single opt-in and confirmed opt-in, are legal under the CAN-SPAM Act. The major advantage of single opt-in is the simple process; however, there are some distinct disadvantages. The chance of receiving erroneous email addresses is higher due to typos, forged and false subscriptions, and SPAM-trap addresses. Notified single opt-in has the same disadvantages as just mentioned, but an individual will have an opportunity to immediately opt-out if they have been falsely subscribed.

As mentioned earlier, most email marketing companies and ESPs prefer confirmed opt-in as it better protects all parties involved from prosecution. Confirmed opt-in will also validate the authenticity of your list, reduce user complaints and internet service provider (ISP) issues. A drawback of confirmed opt-in, is the loss of 30%-50% of potential subscribers, however, using confirmed opt-in results in a higher quality list. This is based on the premise that the subscribers were dedicated and interested enough to complete the registration process. Therefore, subscribers who have gone through the double opt-in process are more likely receive and engage the email in their inbox. Research has also shown that confirmed opt-in lists have a much higher percentage of deliverability and quality.

Best Practices
Since both single opt-in and confirmed opt-in are legal methods, the decision which to use will depend on your subscribers, business and list sources. There is no right or wrong, however the majority of ESPs require confirmed opt-in. If you do get large amounts of complaints, having the confirmed opt-in will give you a much better chance at defending yourself against litigation, blacklists and spam monitoring organizations. Since many of the larger ISPs, such as Yahoo, AOL, MSN and Hotmail now work with these organizations to block spam, the only way to get off the blacklists is by having proof of confirmed opt-in. Single opt-in versus confirmed opt-in is an individual choice for each business, so consider you own situation and determine which is the better choice, or try both methods.

One large drawback of email marketing is the typically short length of time that the emails circulate. Once deployed, the emails are will get a high number of click-thrus and conversions, however, it tends to drop off quickly. Marketeers have been using many techniques to improve the success of their email campaigns, but the use social media platforms is increasing and helping improve the life of email campaigns, messaging and brand awareness.

The concept of leveraging social media platforms and implementing it can be extremely beneficial to your email deployments. Traditionally, email campaigns are deployed to a specific group of targeted individuals. Using social media will help spread your message through different channels reaching more people, therefore increasing overall goals and results.

Why use Social Media
In the past year alone, social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Digg and YouTube have grown significantly. Facebook recently touted hitting 300,000,000 unique visitors. Twitter has grown over 1000% and Linkedin over 100% since 2008 (Source: Compete.com, May 2009). At any given time, 84% of U.S. consumers online will be reading, viewing or contributing social content. With these number only rising, it only limits your success by not engaging in social media.

How Social Media Enhances Email Marketing

• Improves Brand Building
• Allows for New Customer Acquisition
• Helps with Customer Retention
• Overall Success with Messaging

Improves Brand Building
By getting your message out and allowing group discussion, you engage the target audience more deeply and get a better understanding of your customer. This allows for refined messaging and expanding your reach to potential customers.

Allows for New Customer Acquisition
With the discussions taking place on social media sites, you have now expanded the reach beyond the opt-in list. This allows for a faster and low-cost source of new opt-in names for future email deployments. It also allows for continual acquisition between email deployments.

Helps with Customer Retention
Social media helps maintain customer retention by allowing ongoing looped communication. This communication allows for deeper engagement and emotional investment by the participants. It also improves relevance of a particular product, service or brand.

Overall Success with Messaging
Getting the messaging out and monitoring it on social platforms creates a simple survey/panels type forum for your target audience. This allows the marketeers, manufacturers, companies, etc. to better understand the product or services and the needs of the consumers, good or bad. It also allows for faster PR buzz, again positive or negative. Understanding the good/bad or positive/negative will allow for revised messaging, product modification or improved services in the future.

Methods for Engaging Social Media Platforms
One very common method of email marketing is the newsletter. Adding links on your emails will drive consumers to your Facebook, Twitter or Blog pages. Then using a links on those pages to encourage new newsletter sign-ups can increase your opt-in list. The discussions can become to central idea for new outbound email topics. This broader exposure helps strengthen the brand.

Using “share” links allowing the email recipients to post your email message on their favorite social media sites will increase awareness and create additional interest from a new audience. It may also spur additional conversations on social sites which you have not specifically targeted. By allowing the viral spread of your message, the email has now extended its lifespan between email deployments allowing for ongoing opt-in name acquisition.

With the numerous amount of methods to further distribute your message, increase opt-ins and create brand awareness it would be counter-productive not to engage in social marketing with your email deployments. By improving you message and awareness, you will also increase your revenues by acquiring new customers. And who doesn’t want to grow their business and revenues?

Ask us at Creative Solved how we can help your company implement social media into your next email marketing campaign.

Social marketing has been around since the early 1970’s but has only become very mainstream in the past decade. The first thing to understand is, what is social marketing? It takes many forms, but can be most easily be described as “interaction between an audience or community with a common interest.” Of course, this is a very simplified definition of a very complex marketing concept.

Social marketing is made up of bits and pieces of several different disciplines, such as education, marketing/advertising, anthropology and social psychology. The benefits of social marketing are more directly associated with the individual or society than the marketer’s organization. Social marketing is most effective at sustaining socially beneficial behavioral change, increase program use and customer interaction of an existing service or product.

Understanding Your Target Audience
The first step in any social marketing strategy is understanding your target audience. One misconception/strategy is the idea of targeting the general public. You need to understand your audience and how to effectively communicate, precisely as possible, about your service or product. As a social marketer, you must talk and listen to your target audience. You need to find out what the audience wants or needs, and what would have the greatest impact on changing their behavior, therefore creating effective programs and messaging.

Since there are numerous methods of implementing a successful social marketing campaign, planning is the first step. The planning phase is the foundation to building an effective social marketing program. The second step is the development of messaging to be conveyed and delivery methods used to successfully carry your message to the target audience. The third step is testing your messaging and material with a target audience. This phase may go back and forth several times before you reach a desired result. The fourth step is implementation phase where you introduced your target audience to your program. The fifth step is the feedback and evaluation phase, where you can analyse the effectiveness and response to the program. Each of the steps mentioned above will take time, resources and planning , but if done properly, the desired results should be accomplished.

So back to the initial questions conveyed at the beginning of this blog. I don’t believe that social marketing is a fad or trend, however the delivery methods may be very transitional. As we have seen over the past years, sites like Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin (to name a few) continue to grow. We have seen a site like MySpace rapidly decline in over use. Will Facebook or Twitter be as dominate in the next couple years? I don’t know, but can only imagine that newer sites and technologies will continue to be developed allowing for the possibility of improved delivery methods.

Do I think your company should engage in some type of social marketing? The answer is almost always yes. I do believe that most companies can only benefit is some type of social marketing program. I recently read an article that stated 84% of consumers now use some sort of social marketing website prior to making a purchase. I have also seen the data how email marketing tied into social marketing increases awareness and effectiveness of email marketing.

Facebook or Twitter, Blog or Bulletin board? I can’t answer that question without fully understanding your business, products or services, and target audience. Personally I recommend Facebook, LinkedIn, blogging and email marketing as my basic toolset for delivery, however may niche social marketing sites have become very popular over the past several years. Sites like “Meet The Boss” (www.meettheboss.com) specifically for financial executives, “Cake Financial” (www.cakefinancial.com) specifically for investors and “Live Mocha” (www.livemocha.com) specifically for web site professionals keep popping up and growing exponentially.

So in summary, yes, its time for you to engage in social marketing.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has issued the following statements.
The CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 (Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act) establishes requirements for those who send commercial email, spells out penalties for spammers and companies whose products are advertised in spam if they violate the law, and gives consumers the right to ask emailers to stop spamming them. A “transactional or relationship message” – email that facilitates an agreed-upon transaction or updates a customer in an existing business relationship – may not contain false or misleading routing information, but otherwise is exempt from most provisions of the CAN-SPAM Act.

It is important as marketers that we don’t just rely on being CAN-SPAM compliant as the sole measure of whether a list is valid and compliant. We want to make sure that your brand is protected from being labeled as a sender of unsolicited commercial email. The Act defines consent as the recipient expressly consenting to receive an email message, either in response to a clear and conspicuous request for such consent or at the recipient’s own initiative. There is obviously a difference between what is allowed under the law and best practices.

The term ‘‘transactional or relationship message’’ means an electronic mail message the primary purpose of which is to facilitate, complete, or confirm a commercial transaction that the recipient has previously agreed to enter into with the sender. The anti-spam organizations are very tough on the practice of using lists where the registration does not provides clear and conspicuous notice of the intent to add them to a mailing list. Not only that, but sending a campaign without a confirmed opt in will almost always result in a very high complaint, abuse, and bounce rate.

At Creative Solved, we continue to strive to make sure your email deployments meet the CAN-SPAM Act. We also educate our clients on best practices in the generation of their distribution lists. It is the combination understanding compliance and CAN-SPAM which allow us to continue providing successful email campaigns for our clients.

Marketing dollars spent during a down economy are far more powerful than similar dollars spent during good times, because each dollar represents a greater percentage of the overall marketing expenditure in your industry. While other companies drastically cut their expenditures, your consistency means that you stand out more in the minds of your target audiences. While other companies cut their advertising budgets, you continue to show relevance in you particular market. This projects strength and stability in a way that supports any brand strategy. It provides valuable differentiation that will contribute to increasing sales more rapidly in the short term, and toward building your long-term branding success.

At Creative Solved, we are offering our clients cost effective methods of marketing, enabling them to stay relevant and properly positioned during this economic downturn. Tools such as email, web and social marketing have all become much more prevalent, cost effective and measurable allowing you to carefully spend and track you marketing dollars.