Who’d have thought it but MC Hammer - yes you read it right - the MC Hammer gave a talk at the Stanford School of Business and it is great.

Seriously? MC Hammer? Stanford?

It should’t be surprising that he is an eloquent speaker as he has spent several years as an ordained minister and that comes through in a way that is really genuine here. Watch it, you just may like it and get some new perspectives.

My response? Can’t Touch This. (okay, bad pun, I know.)

Social media is not a trend and its use is growing exponentially. The tools will evolve and may in fact change, but the need for businesses to incorporate the Internet in general, and social media specifically, into their overall marketing strategy in order to achieve their goals is not going away. Social media will continue to change the way businesses market their brand, products and services because a savvy business is able to be proactive with its consumers, listening to what they want and need and responding to those needs quickly.

Small business owners should be excited about the opportunities available using the Internet and social media to grow your brand and become more visible to your target market. Social media will enable you to reach more people interested in your products and services faster and more effectively without the huge marketing budget that traditional media requires. Social media gives you the chance to reach out, talk with your customers, give them a reason to talk about you and happily share their recommendation with their friends or better, your community. As pointed out in the video, consumers will “no longer search for products and services, they will find us via social media“.

The good news is that according to a study by AMI-Partners, nearly 70 percent of the small businesses in the United States use social media. The bad news is that only 30 percent of small businesses perceive social media as strategically important to their continued business success because they are unsure how to best utilize the sites’ services to grow their business.

What does this mean for your business?

If you haven’t stuck your toe in the social media waters yet, you need to seriously think about doing so. If you have started to use social media but are unsure of whether it is helping, make sure you have defined your goals for social media so you have something to measure your efforts against. As with all marketing activities, you must develop a marketing plan that integrates online and social media marketing strategies and set goals for what you want to achieve.

How will your business take advantage of social media for gaining visibility and growing revenue?

Facebook Pages actually can boost sales, a recent study Rice University in Houston, Texas, recently concluded. Fans of these Pages are, overall, more loyal to a business, spend more and are likelier to spread the word. The study on the Houston café chain Dessert Gallery was done by their consultant Emily Durham, founder of Houston-based consultancy Restaurant Connections, and Utpal Dholakia, an associate professor at Rice who studies online marketing.

“In a nut shell: Facebook fans visit more, they spend more during their visit, they have a higher attachment to that brand,” Dholakia tells us.

Dessert Gallery is a Houston-based café chain with two locations, that’s been around since 1995; the company’s Facebook Page went up in June of last year and currently counts 654 fans. Dholakia points out that, while there has been a lot of anecdotal evidence as to Facebook’s effects on revenue streams, this study had an element of control, as it looked at Dessert Gallery’s customer feedback before — and then after — the Facebook Page was used as part of the café’s marketing.

Dholakia and Durham surveyed Dessert Gallery’s customers via its email list of about 13,000 in June 2009 before the Facebook Page was up and running, and then surveyed the same list in October, after it had grown to about 14,000. The survey in October was also advertised on Facebook. The initial evaluation queried basic store evaluations and shopping behaviors and received 689 responses; three months later, the second evaluation asked similar questions, but also about the Facebook Page, and received 1,067 responses.

Facebook fans, it turned out, are excellent customers.

According to Dholakia’s research, after three months Dessert Gallery’s Facebook fans: made 36% more visits each month, spent 45% more dining out dollars there, spent 33% more at the café’s locations, had a 14% higher emotional attachment to the brand and had a 41% greater psychological loyalty towards the café. Facebook fans also generated more word-of-mouth marketing than non-Facebook fans.

But, Dholakia points out, there are several reasons why this is the case.

First, customers that became fans of Dessert Gallery’s Page were already more interested in the café to begin with and so the Page became sort of a self-selected pool of hard-core customers. However, once the Page began promoting the café’s specials, this group of customers became even more likely to participate or make purchases. Facebook is an excellent and low-cost niche marketing tool, and should be used in conjunction with other media — not as a substitute for a substantive marketing plan, Dholakia tells us.

“You’re not going to get every customer to participate on Facebook. A select group of people are going to be influenced by the Facebook marketing you do,” he tells us. “But you can’t rely just on Facebook itself.”

Dholakia said a more advanced statistical analysis of the customer responses is in the works to control for the fact that data was self-reported and should be available within a month.

A website is a way of communicating what you do to a wider audience. People, sometimes very random people, visit your site, see what you do, how you do it and who you do it with.

Sometimes, if you’re lucky, they stay around awhile and find out more about you. And sometimes if you’re really lucky they will contact you. They make up their mind quickly whether to pursue further reading about you and your business.

But, of course, your website says you are the best in your field, or the cheapest money can buy, or the longest lasting or whatever …. but so does your competitors!

So how do your customers differentiate between you and all your competitors? They take a look at your Social Capital – they ask their friends, colleagues, acquaintances and their family. We all know that our reputation matters but it is becoming increasingly important in the online, as well as the offline, worlds.

Online, your Social Capital equates to what Tara Hunt described in her book ‘The Whuffie Factor’  as the residual outcome, or the currency, of your reputation. I think that sums it up nicely – your ‘standing’ at the Social Capital Bank is a direct consequence of the effort you have put into your community. And the good part is that the more you ‘pay out’ ie the more input you give to your community, then the greater your bank balance.

It is this Social Capital that is becoming increasingly important in helping your customers make an informed decision about whether to buy a product or service from you. Personally, I am using search engines less to find information on the best widget to buy or the best company to get a service from – I use Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Social Bookmarking sites to dip into the collective wisdom of my trusted network. The experience is better as I get real reviews, in real time, by real people whom I TRUST.

Of course, WEBSITES ARE STILL REQUIRED – especially transactional sites because currently there really aren’t alternative digital platforms for the buying of selling of goods and services online. There are, however, moves on Facebook and others, to bring ecommerce and Social Media together and that is a VERY interesting space to be in

BUT, I think the emphasis may shift from your website being THE destination to direct all your customers to, to being more a destination that customers can find ways of connecting to you. This is nothing new - word of mouth and personal recommendation have, and always will be, the BEST way of securing new customers, it’s just that word of mouth is rapidly moving online.

I certainly hope that websites are still a valuable asset for at least a few more years but I recommend that, if nothing else, you keep one eye on the future and ensure that your website is built to be fully integrated with current (and future) Social Media platforms.

Mike Georgeson
I’m an online exponent whose 15 years experience of the internet has seen me successfully define, develop, manage and implement projects for both the Private and Public sectors.

Passionate about how the digital world can help businesses succeed, I am the founder and Director of Netdesk.co.uk, a company dedicated to helping clients gain competitive advantage by enhancing your digital presence.
Connect with me:
twitter.com/mgeorgeson |  facebook.com/mgeorgeson

- Just two in five retailers has a social media presence

- Only 10% use more than one social media network

- Only 32% of retailers with a Twitter or Facebook account promote them on their website

The majority of UK retailers are failing to exploit the opportunity to integrate social media marketing into their operation to increase sales and generate loyalty, a new benchmarking study from dotCommerce ecommerce solutions reveals today. The study of 100 UK retailers, available to download at www.dotcommerce.co.uk/social_ecommerce_solutions, reveals that while 42% have some kind of social media presence, just 12% are using more than one social media channel and only 32% of retailers with a Twitter or Facebook account promote these on their website.

The report also uncovers the differences in social media activity between larger and smaller retailers. Larger retailers are more likely to have a Twitter or Facebook account, with 42% on Twitter compared to just 12% of smaller brands. However, when it comes to blogs, smaller companies are leading the way as 10% have a blog, compared to only 6% of bigger ecommerce players.

Other key findings include:

* Twitter is now more popular than Facebook – Although Facebook has a greater user base than Twitter, fewer retailers had a presence there (24% compared to 26% for Twitter). One of the reasons might be the more ‘open’ nature of Twitter, making it easier to enter from a business standpoint
* Twitter used mainly for push marketing – Retailers are largely using Twitter as a broadcasting tool with 73% using it for product updates, 62% for marketing and 58% to promote company news
* Blogging used by few - Only 8% of retailers have a blog on their website, making it the least used of all the main social media channels assessed. Of those who blogged, only 38% posted daily and the blog was mainly used for product updates (50%) or company news (50%).
* Other social networks largely ignored – only 6% of retailers offered links to any other social media channels such as Youtube and Flickr

“We were surprised by the low levels of social media usage amongst the retailers we assessed. For those who had taken the plunge, there was a lack of sophistication and low levels of integration with their other online marketing efforts,” said Simon Bird, Technical Director at dotCommerce. “Lucrative opportunities to engage with target markets and drive business through social media are being overlooked by these retailers”.

“A surprisingly high number of brands with a social media presence on an external channel failed entirely to publicise this on their website. This is a significant missed opportunity for brands who want to adopt a joined up marketing strategy to maximise the effectiveness of their social media presence and deliver return on investment,” he added.

Here are Simon Bird’s top tips on how retailers can make the most of social media:

1. Publicise your social media presence - let your customers know where to find you on social networks by integrating all your web channels
2. Find out where your customers are – not every network will be right for every brand, so do some detective work and see which channel is being used by your customers
3. Quality content is key – social media success depends on creating great content that your followers or fans will want to share
4. Engage with your audience – most of the retailers using social media are just broadcasting information. Initiating conversations and engaging with your audience will help encourage loyalty and retention
5. Track your traffic – if you use a social channel to promote offers , make sure you use trackable tags in the links to your site, or an affiliate, to track the effectiveness of the offer.

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Netdesk can help you make the most of your Social Media presence. Whether it’s a commerce enabled website or getting your message out to existing or potential new customers using online marketing, we can help.

Contact us now on 01244 311517 or email us on enquiries(at)netdesk.co.uk

We’re here to help.

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