Companies often agonize over how to use social media.  The process can get fairly drawn out but at the end of the day there are only three options available to companies.

Strategy 1: Company Communications

Doing a company approach to social media is really about setting up social media channels that get fed company communications.  Any information that the company sends publically should find its way onto every social media channel.  This is an easier strategy to put in place because all social media platforms can get linked through an email platform or social media management tool like hoot suite.  Simply put, it takes less time to manage this process.  It also comes with less risk as central employees or contractors can be used to distribute and manage the information.  So the pros are that it takes less time and closely manages the company message. The down side is that very little one-to-one interaction is available which limits powerful brand or marketing capabilities.

Strategy 2: Employee/Individual Communications

Every company is made of individual(s).  This strategy leverages that group of people with the ability to personally interact as representatives of the company.  The benefit here is that, as a group, interactions will be more frequent and personalized which can create a strong bond to the social media audience.  True one-to-one interaction is feasible.  The down side is that those interactions happen in real time and there is a risk of problems being presented on a public forum.  There is also a risk of wasted time as individuals can get drawn into social interactions that provide little value to the company.  Centralized control becomes almost impossible and presenting a unified message is often a challenge.

Strategy 3: Hybrid Style

It’s possible to create a hybrid strategy where company communications are distributed across social media channels but individuals also have access to interact with the social media audience.  This provides the pros of a centralized message mixed with personal interaction but also all the risks of less control and more time dedicated to the social media channel.  The added problem is that sometimes company communications can disrupt the personal interactions as the company communications are sent on a schedule rather than real time.

There is no right answer to social media strategy.  It’s more of deciding what fits for your company.  Some important things to consider is manpower to dedicate to social media, risks involved with personal interactions, and time invested in managing the channels.  The answers to these questions will help you narrow in on the strategy that works for your company.  Once you choose a strategy, it’s important that all parties involved with the social media channels understand the goal.  Once the goal is clear then it’s easier to dedicate the resources necessary but not waste time on low return activities.

Happy new year.  Like most business goals, now is the time to review your metrics and set goals.  And it can’t be a resolution that’s forgotten after January.  eMarketing is not a “set it and forget it” activity.  It’s an ongoing process of trial, error, and improvement.

Look over your email, social media, and website metrics and set target goals for the end of 2012.  Then break those target goals into quarters.  Finally break the first quarter into a monthly set.  In this way you can make a monthly plan that covers the year.  Each month should be assigned one enhancement that you believe will improve results.

After you set this plan you only need to track results.  Then at the end of the year you’ll have numbers that support or inform your plan of action.  So next year’s plan can be a bit more precise.  Over a few years time your eMarketing plan will be pinpoint accurate with reliable projections on what to expect.

But it all starts by setting goals now . . .

Many times the complex can blind us to the simple.  This is true in online and email marketing campaigns.  We become immersed in metrics, schedules, and best practices to refine our online campaigns to their top performance.  That is admirable unless we let the simple items slip.  Stripping away all the complex online marketing vehicles that are available we are left with our website, and it just has to work.

It’s a good idea to do functional checks on your website.  This includes submitting test versions of forms or surveys to make sure they function properly.  Few things can make as bad an impression as a form or link that is broken.  In fact when this happens all the online and email marketing are an exercise in futility.  Even if people get to the site they won’t have the ability to take a next step in engagement.

Remember your website is your central point of contact for most online and email marketing.  Make sure that it is perfectly functional so that interested parties can take advantage of your offers and are left with a positive experience.

A question that pops up is whether a price should be advertised right off the bat or on a second level that people have to navigate to.  The answer to this depends on space limitations, price appeal, and communication vehicle. But as a guiding rule pricing should be included unless it’s a complex product, service, or offer where pricing is not easily outlined.

For something simple like a banner ad or a social media update a price likely shouldn’t be included unless it’s a selling point.  The reason for this is purely functional, there’s not enough room to focus on anything but incentives to click.  However the landing page should display pricing clearly if possible so that users aren’t frustrated in finding it.

For website pages or detailed communications the answer is yes, unless it’s a complex product or service where pricing models would be unreasonably complex.  It’s frustrating for users to see a straightforward offer or product and not see pricing.  Furthermore it becomes a headache for the site owner because they will be flooded with, “how much does x cost,” questions.

Basically the answer is to include a price as soon as it’s feasible.  If you are offering something simple and have a defined price it’s best to include it early.  Your audience is going to want to see pricing so it’s better to be direct rather than make additional steps that can appear like it’s trying to be concealed.

I’m often asked, “What should I change in my approach?”, or “What best practice should I adopt to improve performance?” I always struggle to answer these questions for 3 reasons.

The first is that it’s usually asked before I have a chance to understand the online and email marketing campaigns. The second reason is because the answer is always different for different people/companies. The third is that there is often an assumption that one thing will revolutionize the online and/or email marketing which usually is not the case.

The first 2 reasons are just circumstances of reality. But the third is a pitfall that leads to frustrations when expectations are unreasonably high. Sure, there are some common mistakes that can be easily corrected, but generally great online and email marketing campaigns evolve from a series of small improvements. It’s rarely a quick change that causes a major improvement.

Even when we read/hear/experience stories of drastic improvement, it’s rare that these major benefits are retained immediately. Rather there is a drop off that stabilizes as the change is integrated into ongoing efforts.

Email and online marketing is a marathon, not s sprint. Don’t look for a magic bullet that will dramatically improve performance but rather focus on continually making small improvements. If your effort is consistent over time you’ll see that your online and email marketing campaigns have become best-in-class without even noticing the change.

Video is becoming more and more prevalent on websites.  And why not? If done well it can be a powerful marketing tool.  But what is the best way to get your video content online?  There are two options host or post.

Posting to an external site has advantages:

• Easy to upload video
• No bandwidth costs
• Lots of traffic
• Easy to share (embed, email links, rss feeds, etc)
• Serves as a pseudo social media platform

But there are also some disadvantages:

• Videos are watched on their site, not yours.
• No link benefit if people embed/share your video
• Limited analytics to understand user engagement, video bounce rate, etc
• Tend to be lower quality
• Ads appear on your content
• Limited length/duration
• No custom branding

So taking pros and the cons I tend to use a hybrid strategy.  For shorter length video where highest quality is not a concern put them on a video sharing site (like youtube).  Everything that’s on youtube can be embedded into your site.  This provides the benefit  of uploading video using their pre-set tools and the extra exposure online.  When embedded on your own site you also gain better tracking and can brand the page to ideally suit your online marketing campaigns.

If high quality, duration, or limited compression is a concern, always host the video on your own site.  This is necessary because the video sharing sites won’t support it and  time consuming work-arounds are necessary which make it an inefficient strategy.

Using this method is a way to get some of the benefits of hosting and posting while minimizing the limitations.

It’s a common question, “What’s a good open rate for my emails?”  While every email campaign is a little different and campaign goals can skew these numbers open rate often come down to one variable, email list building practices.

Double Opt-Ins are the most intensive way of building a list.  People have to opt-in and then confirm that opt-in via email.  Lists built in this way have a focused audience and usually subscriber fatigue or email address expiration causes non-opens.  Double opt-ins often have a high open rate, anywhere from 40% – 60%.

For email lists that are built on an opt-in basis open rates are usually around 18% to 20%.  Opt in is usually done online but offline additions can also be added from sign ups at events or gathered by the business development team.

Purchased or found lists often have the lowest open rates, typically 8 – 10%.  These are lists where the email marketer buys, rents, or finds addresses and the recipients have not specifically requested their particular communication.

So as a general rule that’s a breakdown on what to expect from open rates.  Open rate success often directly correlates to the quality of the list it’s being sent to.

Many times we get too close to our own websites.  We know right where everything is because we put it there.  The problem is that what makes sense to us, often doesn’t make sense to visitors.  An easy way to ensure that items of a similar type are easily found is to make an index page.  When a site has an index page for a single topic then it serves to be a single point of contact that visitors can use to find the individual thing they are looking for.

Recently I was reviewing a client’s website.  We were in the process of updating it to support marketing efforts.  My client was heavily involved in doing events designed to give a sampling of how they help companies which converts some of the attendees to customers.  In fact, this was such a large part of their marketing matrix that they ran an event every two weeks.

So we outlined which events were coming up and made a list of 6 events for the quarter.  I jumped on my client’s site to see how each event was promoted.  I found 2 of the events that were featured on the homepage.  However the other 4 were MIA.

So I called my client and asked whether the events had pages on the site.  He assured me the events were there and walked me through the navigation.  Two of the events were available through banner ads but the ads cycled so they were only available 25% of the time.  It turned out one event never had a link set to it.  The sixth one was available through a buried link on a calendar document.

I was a dedicated visitor and I needed a guide to find the events I knew were there.  How many unmotivated visitors that don’t know about the events do you think made it to the event pages?  As you’d expect, very few.

The solution, make an events index page.  We placed an events link on the primary navigation so that it was easy to find what was on the calendar regardless of where a visitor went in the site.  The index page provided a handy list to site visitors as well as my client so that there was a simple reference of upcoming events.  Furthermore, promotions could point to the index or the individual event page depending on what’s most appropriate.

It’s a simple thing but one that can be lost as a site grows.  Make sure that any important category of your site has an index page so that visitors can easily get to the information you want them to see.

I was recently informed by a client that they needed to step up their social media presence because “email is on the way out”.  That was a shock to me as most of my clients (this one included) see a nice return on their email marketing investment.  In fact, industry wide email marketing boasts a leading ROI among online marketing efforts with $42.08 generated from every dollar spent.  In short, my client was mistaken.  He’d made the error of thinking “new” was “better”.

Social media seems to be the new “new”.  It’s one of the first things out of people’s mouths when internet marketing comes up.  And I don’t mean to pick on social media, it’s a valuable tool.  It just shouldn’t be put on a pedestal above older communication channels that still outperform it.

An older example is when CSS layouts were first appearing.  Many companies rushed to update their pages for the new “standard”.  The problem was that many of the web browsers weren’t quite up to speed in rendering these sites so web developers had to create multiple versions for individual browsers.  That made developing the site significantly more expensive.  The difference between jumping on CSS layouts when it was new and when browser support increased was potentially tens of thousands of dollars.  At the end of the day there was no difference between a tabled layout and a CSS layout to most users but the early adopters could revel in the “newness” for a short period of time.

Neglecting other marketing channels to do what’s “new” can be very problematic when resources are shifted to a new media that does not perform as well as an older one.  It’s like trading a dollar for a quarter, it might be shinier but there’s no financial upside.

Of course I’m not suggesting that you let your online marketing stagnate into a tried and true rut.  Innovation and new technology will come up and many times it should be adopted.  But focus on effectiveness not newness.  When you keep track of what’s performing best it keeps the allure of “new” out of your decision making.  Online marketing is about increasing awareness of a company, driving opportunities, and ultimately having a positive impact on the bottom line.  Newness is hard pressed to affect any of those things on its own.

Remember in elementary or middle school when you were told that someone “liked you”?  That tended to be the most consequential thing a young teenager could hear.  If liker or likee worked up enough they might speak a little bit.  Then what happened?  Other class mates might be abuzz with the new “couple” but very little tended to actually happen between the two people in question.  That’s a social media like, it makes you feel good but at the end of the day it’s not worth much.

Liking or following does not mean someone is really interested in your company, let alone an advocate.  A second tier to social media marketing should shoot for real engagement and conversion.

An example of good social media can be seen in most video game launches today.  First they send out announcements, trailers, and teaser material typically with links to social media pages.  This starts a trickle of “likers” but only dedicated fans are committed to buying the game at this point.

As the game gets closer and pre-orders are available it’s common for sweepstakes or exclusive downloadable content to be made available.  The dedicated group obviously takes advantage of these offers but many fringe “likers” then begin to be drawn in.  Both the committed followers and enticed followers are likely to buy.

Finally at release the marketing switches to last chance/release celebration.  This is designed to pull in anyone on the fence and create a sense of urgency.

Imagine if the video game company just put out information on the game and were satisfied with the people that liked them.  They’d miss out on a substantial market segment and generate little revenue that wouldn’t have happened organically.

I often site this example to business people and they scoff and say, “People don’t get pumped up over our product or service like they would a game.”  To some extent that’s true, it’s hard to imagine most business clients rabidly looking through marketing material for promotions or anxiously awaiting a service release date.  But that doesn’t mean that the structure can’t be similar.

Use social media as an information platform so that you’ll get “likers”.  But don’t fool yourself in to believing that’s an achievement.  You have to use social media for a second level of engagement.  Most companies have valuable content or offers that can take the social media audience to a new level.  Tracking who and how many people take advantage of those offers provides a more concrete metric of social media marketing effectiveness because it’s a sounder foundation.  Not a meaningless “like”.