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Social Media Beyond Your Target Audience: A Case Study

September 23, 2012 by Michael Carusi 4 Comments

There are a lot of things to talk about when defining your target audience. Are they on the social network you’re using? What are their likes? Dislikes? Professions? Ages? Gender? Even though the Internet is global, geographical location is also important. As much as people talk about “developing an online presence” and “getting new fans”, these fans and followers need to be capable of becoming customers in the future. A mom and pop store exclusively serving Fairfield County, Connecticut isn’t going to make money with 1,000 Twitter fans out in California.

On the other hand, what’s unique about the Internet is its bidirectional nature. Even if you shouldn’t proactively target non-ideal fans or followers, nothing is stopping them from finding your business online on their own or through mutual connections and getting involved. You should be thrilled when this happens. If people are interested enough in checking out your Facebook page just by word-of-mouth, your page is generating buzz and your content is interesting enough for mutual acquaintances to take notice. Even if friends of your current fans aren’t your ideal customers, they’re opening you up to their own fans. Non-target fans may not have the most immediate return for your business but remember that they have their own personal network of connections. Fan satisfaction begets good recommendations, and over time the most unlikely fans can have positive effects on your business.

The Consequences of Deleting Social Media Comments, Part 2

August 12, 2012 by Michael Carusi 2 Comments

Credit: activegarage.com

In the first part of this two-parter I talked about the terrible consequences of deleting social media comments. It makes your customer unhappy, it makes you look bad, and it makes people reluctant to do business with you. The good news is that social media makes it easier than ever to connect with and make amends with unhappy customers, even when it seems like they’ll never do business with you again. When I was at Likeable University several months ago Peter Shankman declared that you can turn your biggest haters into your most powerful brand ambassadors, and social media makes it comparatively easy. People are jaded of having bad experiences and venting about it without hearing so much as an apology or refund from the brand. Proactively reaching out and demonstrating your interest in making things right leaves a powerful positive impact on a customer.

The good news about the Restaurant X debacle is that it has a happy ending, although Customer Z pre-empted it. Before we could prepare to reach out to Customer Z to make amends the customer found one of Restaurant X’s partners on Facebook and sent a Facebook message conveying how upset she was. The manager took my advice to heart, offering a sincere apology and inviting Customer Z to have dinner. I can’t say what transpired that night, but the manager had very positive things to say.

Less than a day later I noticed Customer Z on Restaurant X’s Facebook page again, but this time there weren’t complaints. Customer Z posted a very positive piece of feedback on their experience the other night. Since then, Customer Z has become a regular on the fan page, liking, commenting, and sharing very frequently.

The restaurant manager didn’t make excuses, try to justify the Facebook incident or force Customer Z to jump through hoops. Instead the manager was honest, open, and transparent. Those three words can turn someone who seems to be your worst enemy and make them into a loyal customer.

Also remember the value of a complimentary meal, a refund, or reimbursement for trouble like this. If you find yourself cringing at the additional expense, ask yourself this: How valuable is it to turn a review website bombing, bad word-of-mouth spreading, unsatisfied customer into a happy, talkative Facebook fan? Isn’t it worth paying for to have someone telling their friends and colleagues about a negative turned positive experience instead of just a negative one? A refund or freebie isn’t just an extra expense;. It’s a long-term investment into positive word-of-mouth and repeat business.

So the next time your blood freezes at the sight of an irate customer snarling on your Facebook timeline about a poor experience, consider the delete function off-limits. Remember the value of turning your biggest haters into your most powerful brand ambassadors through honesty, transparency, and wanting to fix a bad experience. Be good to your fans and they’ll be good to you.

Filed Under: Controversy, Conversations, Facebook, Negative Comments, Social Media Tagged With: crisis communications, crisis management, customer service, social media marketing

The Positive Side to the NextGen Social Media Debacle

July 22, 2012 by Michael Carusi 8 Comments

Image credit: Funny Eye

A Millennial-oriented website got way more than it bargained for a few days ago when Cathryn Sloane, a graduating senior at the University of Iowa and a writer for NextGen Journal, wrote an article entitled “Why Every Social Media Manager Should Be Under 25”. Just in case the title didn’t give it away, Cathryn’s argument is that Generation Y – which, for full disclosure, includes myself – grew up with social media and therefore we have a better understanding of social media marketing and management than anyone regardless of how well anyone else thinks they do.

The backlash was as immediate as we’ve come to expect on the Internet. Everyone from newbie marketers to the likes of Mack Collier and Peter Shankman took to the Facebook comments to object to Cathryn’s position, which resulted in a follow up editorial and plenty of rebuttals. Surprisingly, the implication that someone with no marketing background or experience was better qualified to manage social profiles than people who have been in digital marketing for ten or more years upset people.

Here’s the thing, though: I’m glad people are upset. I’m glad they’re upset because regardless of your views on Cathryn’s article it is indicative of a pervasive stereotype about social media that is thankfully starting to go away. As social media marketing has boomed, we’ve had to deal with the ugly approach of people assuming they’re qualified social media marketers or managers by virtue of simply knowing how to create and maintain Facebook or Twitter pages and because they believe “content creation” is being able to string together status updates. I think it’s safe to say I speak on behalf of digital marketers everywhere when I say this has to stop, and it’s good to see people calling out articles like this.

I’m not going to tell you to love or hate the article itself and I won’t bother to analyze it myself, but the resulting discussions have been fascinating to read and I’m happy that these discussions about younger generations and social media marketing proficiency are happening. As someone who works in digital marketing and social media management for a living it’s been tiring to see companies choose to automatically delegate “doing social media” to the youngest employee and then blaming their lack of results on social media itself rather than the individual they chose to maintain and promote their channels.

Youth does not and should never count as digital marketing experience, regardless of who grew up with which network. I tend to harp on this quite a bit because knowing how Facebook or Twitter works is like knowing how your phone or E-mail works. It’s what you do with those tools that matters, and people who only have experience with using social media, phone, or E-mail personally are not marketers. My hope is that Cathryn and perhaps other people who read about this controversy will walk away wiser and more enlightened about the constant research, learning, and hard work that goes into social media marketing.

The good news is that as social media becomes more integral to the marketing mix, more and more businesses seem to be becoming more careful about who they allow to handle their social media marketing and how seriously they take it. Businesses would never let the 22 year old write the press release for a major new product unveiling, and it’s gratifying to see the same respect being given to social media channels.

So regardless of your position on the article (and many of you have made it clear already), I think we can all agree that this has been an enlightening experience for at least some people. It’s common to say that we’re all learning new things every day about social media, and helping to dispel the persisting myth that youth begets social media marketing expertise may be one of the most important things we do. As commenter Andrew Healy said, “Glasses raised to the bright future that is Social Media for all of us!” Personally, I’m enjoying every second of it.

Filed Under: Controversy, Marketing Experience, Millennials, Reputation Management, Social Media, Social Media Careers

Using Social Media: Five Questions Every Small Business Needs to Ask

July 19, 2012 by Michael Carusi Leave a Comment

“Well, we started a Facebook page because everybody else was doing it.”

Every time a business employee says those words, digital marketers die a little on the inside. It’s painful for us because we know that eventually, the small business is going to assume they tried social media and that it didn’t work.

One of the prevalent issues with social media marketing is that the barriers to entry are set lower than the expectations for M. Night Shyamalan movies. It takes less than five minutes to start Facebook and Twitter pages and even less time to start updating. Mix this with the ongoing hype about social media and it leads to a lot of business owners frantically jumping into the social media pool without so much as a paddling board. This leads to a situation where social profiles often run on auto-pilot, without any goals being defined or metrics being tracked, unless the business just gives up and lets their social profiles gather dust. In the interests of keeping level heads all around when it comes to spending time and effort on marketing channels, I’ve written up five mandatory questions to be able to answer as you make the initial foray into social media.

1. What social networks are we going to use?

A lot of business owners never pause to consider this one because their minds are set firmly on Facebook and occasionally Twitter. It’s true that Facebook is the 900 million user gorilla in the room when it comes to social networks, but the real question you should be asking is how many of those 900 million people are going to benefit your business. Are people on Facebook going to be interested enough in what you do to like your page and integrate your updates into their personal newsfeeds? Any time you prepare to use a social network you need to know how it will be adding value and revenue to your business.

Not knowing the answers to these questions means you may be putting a lot of time and effort into Facebook or Twitter without knowing what the objective is. This leads directly to…

2. What are we going to do with social media?

There’s a two question process when I sit down with small business owners for the first time.

Me: Okay, let’s start off with an important question. What do you want to do with social media?
Business owner: We want to make money.
Me: Okay, good answer. How?

That’s when I get the blank look.

Saying you’re “doing” your social media is like saying you’re “doing” your phone or E-mail. Social media is a tool, another arrow in the quiver. If you want social media to make money for you, you need to know how you’re going to leverage social media. Lead generation? Building an E-mail subscriber list? Generating word-of-mouth on Facebook? Customer service? Recreating the experience of being in a physical location while online? None of these are mutually exclusive but there needs to be a goal in mind for how the people on social media will positively affect your business.

3. What is our target audience?

This is another one that tends to go understated. My favorite response to this has been “Target audience? Uh, people who want my product/service! Who else?”

There’s a lot to consider about the value of knowing your target audience overall, but let’s stay social media specific. Even then there are several posts I could do on this topic, but let’s address two major points.

-Knowing your audience is knowing what they’re interested in, what makes them tick, and what they’re likely to respond to. This leads to a better understanding of what type of content to create and share with your audience. It also lets you better understand what times your audience is likely to be online. If you know when to reach your audience and how to reach them, and on what social networks (see #1), you’ll get more people talking about and sharing your own content.

-Knowing your audience is key to success with social network ads. If you’re a New York City based business, you could target everyone in all five boroughs with a Facebook ad campaign and you wouldn’t see any traffic. Targeting your ads based on a much narrower audience based on precise, focused demographic data and interests of your ideal customers makes it much more likely that they’ll click through to your Facebook page, app, or website.

4. Are our customers really interested in this?

People in general tend to have almost no filter when it comes to sharing every mundane detail of their lives online (we still don’t care about what you had for lunch), but to that end, social media marketing is thinking like your consumer. It’s thinking about their needs, wants, desires, and interests. When you get new likes or follows, these people have made the decision to integrate your content into their personal newsfeeds. Social media is entirely opt-in based, so you’d better find out what these people like and provide that value through your content.

Now I can rest easy knowing you ate a turkey sandwich.

Answering this question will prevent you from lapsing into vapid updates about the weather, random Instagram photos with no significance, or updates from your personal hobbies or interests that you may care about, but your customers likely won’t. There’s a lot of white noise in social media; respect your readers by giving them something for their like.

5. How will we measure our results?

Most of the prior questions on this list come into play here. If you know what you want to do with social media you’ll have a much easier time measuring the results. Knowing your target audience and what content to create for them makes this that much easier. On a general basis you gauge return by increased leads, online and offline traffic, share of online voice, and ultimately, sales. Get specific by monitoring your goals. If you want to get people into a storefront, measure offline traffic relative to your social media efforts. Integrate Google Analytics if you want to drive people to your website through your social channels.

Be sure to measure the right results, too. Getting 1,000 Facebook likes or 60,000 impressions from a Facebook ad may look impressive to you but it has no impact on your business or bottom line. If you really want to build a big Facebook audience, focus on answering these questions to make people want to follow your brand.

Social media marketing is an endeavor that requires knowing. Know yourself, know your business, know your customers.

Filed Under: Conversations, Social Media, Social Media Marketing, Social media strategy Tagged With: analysis, metrics, planning, social media marketing, social media strategy

The Consequences of Deleting Social Media Comments, Part 1

July 6, 2012 by Michael Carusi 4 Comments

Pictured: The results of a deleted Facebook comment

“What’s the worst that can happen?”

These are famous last words when it comes to something that should be absolutely taboo for social media marketing: Deleting negative comments.

Deleting negative social media comments is a reflexive and almost instinctive reaction for most businesses. They see one angry customer, panic about the prospect of this looking bad on their Facebook page, and quickly hammer the X button before they understand the implications. It seems like a completely harmless way to manage your reputation. A few mouse clicks and the bad word of mouth is silenced, right?

Not in the least. As a business owner you can silence negative feedback on your own social profiles, but you can’t control what people say elsewhere. By deleting negative comments you lose the opportunity to remedy a customer complaint directly. Worst of all, deleting a customer’s complaint gives them all the ammunition they need to prove you’re as bad as the customer says to their friends and colleagues.

Let’s call the client involved in this case study Restaurant X. The restaurant was fairly new in Fairfield County and had been receiving a heap of recommendations as well as glowing feedback on their timeline. All was well until one irate customer posted about a bad experience with a rude bartender. This is the sort of complaint that needs immediate attention because it addresses a specific grievance rather than taking the “This place sucks!” approach to reviewing. Unfortunately, the customer was quietly ignored as updates were posted, which understandably served to make them angrier.

Restaurant X, prior to consulting with me, worked with a company that I’ll refer to as Agency Y. Unfortunately, Agency Y made this same mistake. I opened Restaurant X’s Facebook page after our first meeting and saw that the customer’s criticism had vanished.

Pause for a second and think from the perspective of a consumer. You’ve just had a bad experience after paying money for guaranteed service and quality, and you’d like to make your voice heard in a public forum. How will you feel seeing your voice unceremoniously silenced by the business itself? In Likeable Social Media, Dave Kerpen compares it to “collecting someone’s comment card, reading it in front of them, and then ripping it up in his or her face.”

It wasn’t a good feeling for Customer Z. They immediately began bombing every review site they could find with one-star reviews, citing their original complaints on top of the Facebook comment deletion. They took the opportunity to share this bad experience on Twitter. They promised never to visit the restaurant again (and there’s a lot of competition in this town). One day later on Twitter I discovered two tweets about the restaurant citing Customer Z’s review as a reason for not patronizing Restaurant X.

If you think this sounds like Customer Z was overreacting, remember that communication is what people use social media for in the first place. Responding to comments is the expectation on a social network. Not responding and then deleting a comment means that the business representatives have created another bad experience and people have every right to be upset about it.

Then again, maybe I took it too far. (Credit: Wired)

Check in soon for Part 2 of this two-part article, which deals with how to handle a situation where you’ve already deleted a Facebook comment and how to turn such a situation around. Part 2 will also feature the ending of the Restaurant X Saga.

Filed Under: Negative Comments, Reputation Management, Social Media, Social Media Marketing Tagged With: negative comments, reputation management, social media marketing, word of mouth

Is your social media crumbling like the Roman Empire?

May 13, 2012 by Michael Carusi Leave a Comment

Pictured: Not a bustling social media presence

Photo credit: Articlesweb.org

At its height, the ancient Roman Empire was about the size of the United States today – not bad considering it existed two thousand years ago. Unfortunately, this made communication, travel, and defense of the Roman frontiers difficult. Becoming too large is often cited as a factor in Rome’s downfall to barbarians and indigenous tribes. Rome’s resources were spread too sparsely, its armies too taxed, and the cost of maintaining an army needed to police such a vast landscape too massive. It stretched itself paper thin and eventually broke apart for it.

Now consider the case of a local business I recently met with. They serve consumers in a town of about 20,000 people. They had one physical location and primarily relied on people in town with a smattering of customers from the surrounding communities. This business was operating the following social media accounts: Facebook, Twitter, personal LinkedIn, LinkedIn company profile, YouTube, Google+, Digg, Reddit, Stumbleupon, WordPress, and Tumblr. They also had an RSS feed.

You think these are enough?

Since this is a small business with less than ten employees, most of these social profiles were gathering dust, although this may be too much even for a Fortune 500 company to handle efficiently. Facebook and Twitter had weekly activity, but most of these profiles hadn’t been updated in over a year. Stumbleupon and Tumblr were sent to broken links and the owner couldn’t remember the password for Digg.

Much like the Roman Empire, this social presence was too big to manage effectively. This business staked out its claim on different social networks, made updates and even did some community building but the employees couldn’t possibly devote an appropriate amount of time to all of these social networks. Your Stumbleupon and Digg profiles may not be invaded by conquering barbarians but when you attempt to do so much with so few employees to manage it, your social presence collapsing is inevitable. You may still update your Facebook page much like the Byzantine Empire’s continued prosperity after the fall of Rome itself, but there’s no more integration between your different social profiles and you don’t take advantage of video content on YouTube, or photo content on Instagram or Pinterest.

This can happen to any business, albeit on a much smaller scale than the example I detailed. What I see often is clients who are reasonably comfortable with one social network but don’t have the time for Twitter or their blog. Sometimes they become so used to Facebook that they’re intimidated by a social network with a different layout, structure, or language like Twitter. What happens either way is that one social network tends to flourish reasonably well while others stagnate and make the brand look negligent. Or worse, the business is flummoxed when a dramatic change like Facebook timeline happens and then they lose interest in that too.

So how do you avoid this? It’s as simple as pacing yourself. Don’t dive into social networks without mapping out a strategy or at the very least a mission statement. You need to be able to establish in two or three sentences what you’re using the social network for. Did this business really, for example, need separate WordPress and Tumblr accounts? Each platform has a different audience and there are different ways to engage people with different types of content but nobody thought about that when they started accounts and branded them with the business logo and graphics. Walk before you run. Bringing this full circle to the Roman Empire analogy, don’t set up a social account then move on to another one immediately. Build a strategy around each social network, come up with a content calendar, build your community, and consolidate your influence. You’ll wind up saving your business from a social media collapse.

Filed Under: Blogging, Social Media, Social Networking

Do You Have a Social Media Yellow Page?

May 8, 2012 by Michael Carusi Leave a Comment

(Image credit: EZLocal)

I was speaking with a client last week and he may have summarized in one sentence why so many businesses are willing to let their social profiles sit idly and gather dust. This client has a colleague whom he regularly partners up with, but who also stubbornly insists he’s handling his own social media.

As it happens, his Facebook business page hasn’t been updated in six months and Twitter hasn’t seen any activity for a whopping two years as of this writing. Before you rush off to conclude in the comments that he needs to have his head examined by a team of neurologists familiar with Twitter, listen to what my client had to say:

“He treats it like the Yellow Pages, where you just let sit and hope people find it, and that people will be interested enough to visit your physical store.”

It isn’t a total disregard of social media as a marketing tool. It’s the different perspective that a lot of people who are used to marketing in an age before social media or even the Internet can’t let go off. It’s the approach of marketing being more about passive, one-way listings than dynamic engagement.

The Yellow Pages are a great example of this. When you put an ad in the Yellow Pages, you don’t strategically time status updates or tweets to maximize your organic reach. You don’t think about how can convince people to help your content go viral. You aren’t measuring the demographic data of the response you get (unless you have a printable coupon, although Yellow Page coupon response rates are tenuous at best). You certainly don’t need to be on standby to respond to customer inquiries or address negative feedback. You hire a graphic designer and possibly a copywriter, create the ad, purchase the space, and let it run. Meanwhile, you as the business owner move on to other things.

Consider things like billboard signs, paper posters, or radio advertisements and they fall under the same category of passive advertising. Even if they actually require daily interaction the amount is beyond negligible when compared to social media.

When businesses say they’re “handling” social media just by virtue of having a social media presence – no matter how deserted – it can stem from this mindset. A few of my clients used Facebook as a passive listing before working with me. They filled out their basic information, provided contact details, and one even uploaded a decent landing page since this was before timeline for pages. Beyond that they did almost nothing. One didn’t bother updating at all and the other used it for occasional announcements. They didn’t even bother thanking people for comments or for writing recommendations.

If this is the mindset you take when approaching social media, imagine you’re talking to someone over a cup of coffee. They simply stare blankly at you and say “30% off all merchandise on my store this Saturday!” When you ask about what that means or what brought it up, your only response, ten minutes later, is “We’ll be closed this Monday!”

Sounds like an ineffective way to communicate, doesn’t it? That’s how people feel when they’re confronted with blank or unresponsive Facebook pages. What does that say about the brand name you’re trying to promote?

If you really want to make the most of social media, remember the social part. Passive advertising won’t help you. Don’t fall into the social media yellow page trap. It will only cause you harm.

Filed Under: Conversations, Facebook, Social Media, Social Networking, Twitter, YouTube

Chasing Twitter Malware

April 2, 2012 by Michael Carusi 2 Comments

One of the best things that the Internet and especially social media have done is to make us a globalized world. Here in Connecticut I routinely chat with friends in Rome, Hong Kong and Sydney with a few mouse clicks. Speaking as someone who lives in a relatively small town, social media has also gone a long way to bringing local communities closer together online. What happens online for one business can affect the merchant’s neighbors and fellow businesses down the street. It can be a great way to organize community-oriented events online or to just stay connected.

This cuts both ways, though. Scams and phishing can take advantage of local community trust with unfortunate results. Case in point is Twitter malware. Twitter junk malware tends to spread very quickly among trusted circles of friends and businesses, especially among people new to Twitter or social media. It commonly works by clicking on a suspicious or bogus link (usually through a Twitter bot account). The malware then takes control of your account and sends direct messages or sometimes mentions to your followers under your name, usually with a message. Often it’s something that would be obvious to social media-savvy users like a mortgage refinance or winning a free cruise, but there are always accidental clicks and reflexive clicks. A few months ago, my town’s online Twitter community had a bit of a domino effect with Twitter malware that I’d like to exhibit as a case study.

January 31

11:28 AM – A hacked local blog sends the malware to Client A along with several hundred other unfortunate recipients.

“Hey, so some real nasty things are being said about you hereI cant believe what was said..”

This is an effective trick for Twitter malware. More than a weight loss or mortgage refinancing link, people tend to have a kneejerk reaction when they assume their online reputation is being threatened, especially when it comes from a trusted source. I fell for the same ploy several months ago.

This also happened to be a rare instance where I didn’t have as much time to check my clients’ social media streams due to a series of appointments and conference calls and finally a webinar.

2:45 PM – Client A notices the malware and clicks on it, entering contact information on a form that I was never able to view. Client A then sends me an E-mail asking if it was just junk, followed by a follow-up confirming that it was junk.

3:00 PM – I get out of my webinar, see the E-mail, and shift into crisis management. I tell Client A to change their Twitter password immediately and send me the new one. I call the client and quickly go over what we’ll be doing, and I get the new password.

3:05 PM – The account password’s changed, but the malware already took effect. The same message and malware link have been sent to around 100 followers of Client A. I quickly alert everyone on Facebook and Twitter that the account has been hacked and to not click on a recent direct message link.

I quickly respond to a few inquiries on Twitter directly and begin purging Client A’s direct message inbox.

3:15 PM – Support and concerns from customers pour in through Facebook, Twitter, and E-mail – Client A even gets several phone calls asking if their Twitter account is okay. It’s heartening to see this, but on a practical level it means we can stop the malware from propagating itself by getting the word out.

3:23 PM – Client B E-mails me to say that they clicked the link, even though they were suspicious about its authenticity. I confirm that it’s malware and advise them to change their password. Thankfully we stopped the malware from taking effect for Client B.

3:25 PM – A fellow business in Client A’s industry has also unknowingly clicked the link. We apologize, tell them about the hack, and urge them to change their password as soon as they can. They do so and another potential infection is averted.

3:35 PM – Another local business that I don’t work with direct messages me through Client A saying they clicked the link, asking if it was spam. I again confirm that it was malware and let them know to change their password immediately.

3:47 PM – The non-client business thanks us for alerting them. It looks like they managed to change their password soon enough to block the malware from taking effect.

3:55 PM – A friend messages me directly on Twitter through my personal account – she’s a Twitter newbie and unknowingly clicked the malware virus after following Client A a week ago. Rinse and repeat the password change protocol.

4:05 PM – The blog that was hacked and set off the chain reaction touches base with me through Client A and apologizes to everyone. I message them through my personal account to ask if they remember the source, but it was an accidental click. Sources for Twitter malware can be very difficult to track.

4:15 PM – Three of my other clients received the direct message malware from Client A but I delete the messages before anything else can happen.

After doing a quick sweep of other accounts in the area and monitoring Clients A and B, it looks like we’re in the clear.

February 1

2:00 PM – Client C E-mails me and forwards a Twitter notification for a DM – yep, the malware’s back. This time a local business owner’s personal Twitter account got hit, but thankfully Client C knew not to click the link in the message. I alert the business owner through Twitter.

2:30 PM – Client D got the message from this second round of malware but thankfully I managed to alert him before he clicked the link.

February 2

9:00 AM – The business owner thanks me and messages his followers apologizing for the inconvenience, and that he has secured his Twitter account. It’s actually a relief that his personal account was infected instead of his business account, which has far more followers.

After E-mailing all of my clients again to make sure they knew about this I watched Twitter like a hawk for the next day or so for any signs of the dreaded message popping up. Thankfully that was the last of it.

So what’s to learn from all of this? First of all, be extremely careful if anything looks suspicious. Malware takes advantage of the relationships in social media to infect your account with whatever junk the virus is trying to spread. If you get an abrupt direct message on Twitter like the one that set off the chain reaction, message them back and check their profile page for

The good news is that your fans and customers will know something is wrong if you’ve spent time building your social media presence. Client A’s customers knew the business’s voice and it was gratifying to see that they immediately knew something was happening. Be good to your customers and they’ll be good to you – especially when something like this happens.

Filed Under: Fraud, Social Media

Social Media Manager: Day in the Life

January 12, 2012 by Michael Carusi 2 Comments

Ah, the gilded world of social media. Based on anecdotal evidence it almost seems illusory for people who are still in college or just in a different field. What’s it like? What will your hours be? How much do you earn? I addressed these to a certain point in the last blog post, which prompted an interesting E-mail requesting a day in the life article. This was definitely one of my busier days. I could have been completely evil and written about one particularly harrowing day where I was on the go for a full 12 hours, but this is more along the lines of normal. As normal as social media gets, anyway.

8:00 AM: Wake up. I’m lucky enough that I don’t have to get up too early for any meetings or conference calls, since I was working late last night crunching the numbers for analytics reports for my clients (done on a monthly basis). Sleepily check my smartphone – no messages. Hallucination? Back to sleep for me.

9:00 AM: Wake up again and promptly check my smartphone again. Sure enough, there are thirteen E-mail messages. Two are Google Alerts for clients in the news, four are responses from clients for whom I sent invoices and requested meetings, two are updates from LinkedIn groups, two are from newsletters that I subscribe to, two are from clients with information for status updates, and one is a colleague forwarding an invitation to a social media webinar.

9:30 AM: Quick oatmeal and fruit breakfast at my desk while I arrange for several meetings via E-mail. People are still coming back from the holidays, so a lot of business that was put on hold for December is alive again. Send some updates on a few of my clients’ streams, respond to a customer inquiry about hours, and confirm a lunch meeting. I also scan the news headlines on my Google Reader and check Google Alerts to read up on my clients’ industries. I favorite two articles to use as content during the day.

10:00 AM: Meeting with Joe’s Pizza. We discuss a reputation issue that the owner had called me about last night, and I present analytics reports. I smile at his reaction when he sees the 27,000 post views through November and December and huge spikes in feedback and reach. Small businesses are much more powerful on social media than they realize if they devote enough resources to it.

11:00 AM: Meeting with the design solutions and Nurenu Brand Marketing team. We’ve just finished up an extremely successful promotion that drew a huge amount of attention to the design solutions Facebook page, so we’re all happy. We discuss plans going forward, seasonal changes, and promotions for the future.

12:00 PM: Lunch with the owner of Nurenu. We discuss another prospective client that we’ve both joined our forces on, as well as the latest social media trends and what’s happening in town. Meanwhile we both keep our smartphones next to our food – true digital marketers stop just short of welding their phones to their arms.

1:00 PM: I arrive home and take my seat in front of my monitors. I spend the next few hours:

-Updating client streams on Facebook and Twitter

-Networking through my clients’ streams with relevant people and businesses

-Setting up a LinkedIn and YouTube page for a client who wants to expand

-Going back and forth on Google chat with a graphic designer about a splash page

-Chatting with some happy customers on one of my clients’ Twitter feeds

-Reading about and registering for a webinar on social media trends in 2012. The social media world involves a lot of webinars.

3:00 PM: I get an unexpected call from the younger brother of a friend, recently graduated, who wants to learn more about online marketing and how social media factors into it. This is becoming a more frequent occurrence.

3:30: Work resumes. I do some additional stream updating but I shift more towards networking. The best way to promote your page is to leave it. I reply to peoples’ Twitter messages, post on Facebook walls, and post blog comments.

4:30 PM: Accounts have been thoroughly updated, E-mails are answered, and inquiries on streams have been responded to. I treat myself to some Elder Scrolls: Skyrim.

5:30 PM: Meeting with Aetheria Spa. Even though the owner decided to scale back social media for December we experienced record traffic and engagement rates on Facebook, and got a crop of new Twitter followers. A lot of it had to do with celebrating Aetheria’s anniversary and posting content that a lot of people liked. This is actually a lot harder than it sounds.

6:15 PM: I stop into another client on the way back to my car to say hi. I like to do this often with my local clients. I have no client relationship coordinator, and I enjoy seeing how my clients are doing. It’s not enough to just do the work you’re asked to do.

6:30 PM: Dinner at home. My clients’ streams seem to have quieted down for the most part so I eat in the kitchen and take a break from the electronics. As much as I love social media and technology, you always want to avoid burnout.

8:00 PM: Time for the gym. I keep my smartphone with me, mostly since I use it as a timer for my stretch exercises but also to be ready in case anything important comes in by E-mail. I manage to catch The Fifth Element on the treadmill.

10:00 PM: I get home and spend some time working on a blog post that I’m guest writing for Aetheria. I don’t actually write blog posts as Aetheria, but I pitched a topic idea that I was knowledge about.

11:00 PM: After replying to one more E-mail, things shut down for good and I relax with some Modern Warfare 3.

12:00 AM: Well needed sleep. My phone charges on the bedside table, ready to be my external organ once more tomorrow.

Filed Under: Social Media, Social Media Careers, Social Networking

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