SOCIAL MEDIA NEWS

We wanted to offer more to our customers than just social media marketing services, notwithstanding of course what they can do for the growth of your business. No, what we wanted was an addition to the site whereby we will talk about and discuss all things social media, and hopefully help our site visitors to understand better just what social media can do for them and the growth of their business. 

To kick off therefore, let me discuss two very important things, all under the one heading of "empowerment" -

Firstly, empowering your customers, and................

Secondly, empowering your company and its staff.

I saw a hugely relevant quote recently, which I will very badly paraphrase as follows..................

"If you empower your customers to be your evangelists, you must decide to do it permanently, as it is not a one-time, or a temporary thing. Follow through on this empowerment, and your business will grow accordingly".

What in essence this means is that once you start to  enagage with what we call your hungry tribe, then you must continue to listen to it and in so doing you will build trust and loyalty. No longer are you talking TO, or AT, your customer group, you are LISTENING TO THEM, and then acting on what you hear. This creates huge trust and loyalty in them and it is not something you consequently ever want to cease doing.

Your customers will love you for empowering them to help you - just make sure you both never stop that empowering, nor ever stop listening to what your customers are saying. 

And the same thing applies to your company and its staff - you want to empower them also to understand social media and what it can do for their company, their job, their career, their success.

I helped bring a Japanese computer company into the U.K. many years back and we turned it into Number 1 in its marketplace in a very short time, and today it is a major player in the I.T. arena worldwide. One of the things I learned from my Japanese colleagues was the skill of employee involvement in ALL things to do with the company. We met monthly as a company - and we did it within working hours - and it was as much a social event as a business gathering. We got all the senior managers to talk about their departments and effectively brief the whole company as to what they were doing and why. In concluding each monthly get-together we, as the company board of directors, then briefed everyone on overall strategy, revenue, sales targets etc., and we ended up with a company of highly motivated people, all of whom knew not just what part they played in the business, but where it was headed and how they could contribute to that.

And so it is with social media. If your company knows why you are using social media, how you are using social media, and the benefits all of that can bring to the business, and therefore to the security of their jobs, your business stands to benefit.

Let me take just one example here to make the point, and I will use Facebook to help make it.

You may decide to create, or have created, a Facebook page which addresses the issue of customer support and effectively becomes your customer support platform. Empowering your staff to use such a medium, and targeting them to respond to customer queries within, for example, two hours, will involve them on a daily basis in the overall social media strategy of the business. And what you will start to find is that those same employees will then start to make their own suggestions, and bring their own constructive ideas to the table.

Their empowerment leads to their involvement, something which would be very difficult, if not impossible, to engineer if your company only uses just all the non social media "old-style" marketing methods.

In conclusion therefore, empower both your customers and your employees via social media, and watch your business grow and prosper.

 HOW GOOGLE VIEWS SOCIAL MEDIA, ESPECIALLY "SOCIAL BUZZ"

Lets first of all understand what exactly is "Social Buzz".

Social Buzz is the measureable "noise" created throughout all the internet's social media channels when people take note of, Tweet about, Like, Comment on, Bookmark etc. etc., your site and its content.

The word "measureable" is deliberately used as quite simply, this is one of, if not now THE most important factor in Google's ranking algorithms.

The more Google sees your content being commented on etc. throughout the social media world, the higher the rankings it will give to the content and its related website[s].

So, not therefore to use Social Media will condemn your website[s] to ultimate oblivion. In the event you may doubt this, then read on, paying particular attention to what Google themselves are saying - horses mouth etc. etc. !!

In weeks past - and we are now in April 2011 - Google has been hinting about the influence of "human social activity" when it relates to your web presence.

Just recently Google announced their new +1 social feature:
http://www.google.com/+1/button/

Long story short, Google intends to use this new feature as a way to measure the quality (and subsequent rankings) of your web presence.

Straight from the proverbial horse's mouth...that expression again!

"When someone recommends something, that's a pretty good indicator of quality," said Matt Cutts, Google's principle engineer for search. "We are strongly looking at using this in our rankings." said Matt Cutts to AdAge...

Read the full article at AdAge here:
http://adage.com/article/digital/google-adds-button-foray-social-search/149645/

Do you need more evidence that building social buzz is critical to your success?

All these "social factors" have been influencing search results and visibility for at
least 2 years now. Google announcing the +1 feature finally gives all of us the
definitive answer that a lot of people knew all along.

So, get your Social Buzz cranked up... Google loves it, and so you will you when you see what it does for your rankings, and then ultimately your bottom line.