Measuring ROI From Social Media

Social Media BandwagonSearch the Internet about social media, and you’ll find a host of results on how to use it, what mediums are out there, making money with it, and how to use it best.  You’ve read all about Twitter, than Twitter makes updates and you don’t know where to begin. Same thing with Facebook. You hear all about how many millions of users are using it, yet you can’t seem to get your Fanpage past 50 fans. Let me tell you, they’re ever changing sometimes week to week, so if you’re not understanding them now, it could be harder to find the relevance to your bottom line.

Before I get into the return on your investment with social media, I’d like to first talk about the various mediums and some basic effectiveness. If you think that all it takes to be successful in social media is just a few minutes a day with thoughtful posts of inspirational quotes mixed with posts about your website, sales, and products; you’re seriously mistaken.  Don’t get into social media with the intent on trying to sell. You’ll quickly become frustrated with the lack of interactions and see it as a one way conversation.

Twitter is great for short conversations throughout the day. You can jump in any active conversation, trending topic, or subject. Its real-time so the chances of hearing back from someone minutes after your replies are quite high.

Facebook Fan Pages are best with fewer posts each day. Another words, you may come up with a great post about a subject, then concentrate on following up with your fans as they post comments to your original post.

Linked In has so many avenues to engage with people, you can literally spend hours on that site and forego any actual productivity. From answering questions, to posting in groups, to connecting with old colleagues or new prospective clients; there’s plenty to keep you busy.

YouTube can almost be seen as one directional since you are mostly posting videos. However that’s just the beginning. Once posted, you’ll have the opportunity to follow along with the viewers feedback via the comments below your video. So post a great instructional video and you’re likely to get comments and questions for more information or encouraging words to post more videos.

Return on Investment. Well this is a hot button that seems to change often. At first I used to say that there was no money in social media. Whatever efforts you put in, you wouldn’t find the same in profits. I’m starting to change my stance on that because I’ve learned that you can’t use social media to sell. At least not blatantly. What I mean is, think of it as a networking meeting. You can’t just walk into a room full of people screaming to the top of your lungs about the sales and services you provide. Instead you walk in and court each person you make eye contact with. You meet people and ask who they are, what they do, where they’re from; then engage in light conversation. Maybe they sound interested (follow) in what you do, but not enough to be compelled to purchase something from you on the spot. However what you say about your industry and brand intrigues them to keep you in mind (comment/@reply) to tell other people about. You leave them with a great impression (post) and move on to meet someone else. The more people you meet, they more impressions you make. With the increase in impressions, the more traffic your website and business phone starts to get. You then start to become an authority on a subject matter. When that happens more people start to pay attention to what you say and post. And now because you’re respected, when you do offer a special or a sale (not often) they share your offer with others or purchase some for themselves. You couple all of that with analytics to gauge where you were most influential each day of the month and you replicate your best efforts the following month. All while keeping track of your lead performance, site traffic, and other metrics.

I know this sounds like a lot; and to be honest it’s all of this and more. Sure anyone can do this. Not everyone will be as effective or as diligent so choose your mediums and efforts wisely. The worse thing you can do is start and abruptly stop.

Have some other tips on social media and how to bank more for your buck? Please share in the comments below.

 

Launching your Graphic Business – 5 keys for 2012

Your design business 2012

Your design business 2012

2011 just flew by and you still contemplating how to start your own Graphic Design business. Now 2012 is here and you’re thinking you really want to start the year off with your skills and talents in hand with a new business venture. Aside from being a daunting situation if you’ve never started a business before, it can be a mix of emotions and aspirations that can and will change from day-to-day. I wanted to give you some of the tactics and tricks I’ve  learned. Here are 5 common keys that will make the difference on your jump-start.

  1. Word of Mouth:  It doesn’t matter in what stage of your graphic design business is, word-of-mouth is one of the most effective ways to land more jobs.  First, impress your client with your design skills and business sense, you will be amazed of  how word will get around. Belonging to professional organizations is another way to spread the word and meet other designers
  2. Have your portfolio ready: Companies will choose a designer based on his/her previous work and how this is presented.  There are several choices for what type of portfolio to build, and each has their own benefits and drawbacks.  Search for options and decide which apply to your case.
  3. Manage  your projects like a pro: It’s very important that you keep in constant contact with your client and follow the project schedule so the job is finished on deadline.  Staying organized is another way to keep projects running smoothly, this is a great key to be successful in your new endeavor.
  4. Marketing your design business: Fortunately, these days there are plenty of ways to market your business.  Take full advantage of the Social Media; Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare and many more are great options to position your design business on the “know”.
  5. Never Leave a Client Unhappy Even if it Means Losing Money: This one is hard but you just need to deal with it, finish your job, and send them on their way. Satisfied clients will tell a few friends how awesome you are – unhappy clients will tell the whole world how much you suck.

The secret to a successful long-term design business has little to do with design itself – it’s how you handle your business, how you deal with your clients. Is definite that your design skills matter, but if you don’t get your business end together, it won’t matter how good you are. People simply won’t want to work with you.

What are your plans for 2012?  Are you ready to launch your design business?

 

5 Things Your Website Needs for 2012

As 2011 starts to get closer to end, we as entrepreneurs and self startups all start to think of what we will improve on for the coming year. We reflecting on all of our accomplishments for this year, as well as any pitfalls that we learned from. As a designer, 2011 had many new apps, design improvements, and devices that helped contribute to our creativity. For all the small businesses out there, here are some great items you should implement to your website for better engagement and ROI.

Video – Having a 30-90 second video on your homepage is a great way to briefly talk about your products and services. It gives your visitors a great visual look at your products in action or how truly effective your services are against your competition. My only suggestion is to turn off the auto play option on your embedded video. There’s nothing more frightening than a loud video that automatically starts playing even before a website loads and your visitor scrambling for a mute button or just closing out of your site all-together.

Call To Action – Most everyone who is on the internet has an email address. They’ve got a Twitter handle, a cell, phone, and a physical address. Though they have all of this, it doesn’t mean they’re just going to hand it over to you for nothing. Give them a reason to give you their contact information with something they are looking for too. Could be a short e-book on how to make their own business card out of clip art for starters. Or how to find the best hosting company with the most options for a WYSIWYG editor. Change your CTA maybe each month and see which “gimmick” lands you the most leads. And tailor to suit after that.

Google Analytics – I can’t stress enough how having data is vital to your website. Knowing how many people view your site with some free site-hit button at the bottom of your page is so 90’s. How about knowing which pages people view the most; or how long people stay on each of your website pages; or what buttons and links they click on. What browsers they use (mobile, Firefox, IE, etc). There’s so much more Google offers you for free in data it will blow your mind. What’s key about all that data is that you continue to use it to tweak your site.

Social Media – I don’t need to beat the horse on this one, but your newer potential clients are out there talking about your products and services. They’re talking about you and your competition. If you want free crowd-sourcing social media will give it to you in a lot more than 31 flavors. Your business needs to join and be part of the online conversations that are happening right now. Take advantage of using specials with FourSquare Check-ins or Facebook Places. Check your listings on Yelp. Promote a one day sale with Twitter. Host a webinar and post it on YouTube and inspire people to watch and share it.

You – Yes you, you need to be on your website. For those of you that think a website is only important just to have and not to monitor and keep up with, you’re wrong. I’ve seen too many websites (good and bad) fail to keep updated. Plan a date with your website at least once a month. Our team at Design Theory make it a point to reach out with our clients at least once a month to discuss their website performance, things learned from the previous month, and new ideas and tactics we’ll try for the following month(s).

So what do you plan on doing with your website for 2012? Anything more than what we’ve listed above? Share in the comments below. We’d love to dialog with you.

Content Redundancy: Social Media and Your Website

Redundancy jpdesigntheorySo you’ve got a blog right? You’re on Twitter circulating your links to your followers. You’ve got a Facebook fanpage and personal page to post your blog links on. You’ve posted a similar post on Tumbler and Posterous. I’m sure I’m leaving out some other mediums for linking but you get the point. What else could we be missing? Oh yea, you’re own website right?

Recently I was chatting with some of my colleagues in design and development. One of our main issues is the redundancy of the same content being regurgitated on all of the same platforms. Now I have to admit some guilt and hypocrisy with that because I do the same to some extent.  If you follow some industry leaders you’ll see them have profiles and many different platforms. Almost all of which you’ll find the same content when new content is published. This is so that the masses can consume in whatever way they find most convenient. However what if that content wasn’t anything different from what a similar person is saying. It reminds me of that game where you till one person a story, and 7 people down the line will have variations of the main story plus or minus their own input.

How do you know what content is worth consuming? I don’t know of any one answer that blankets all, but I can say you should each really make your own decision on who you decide to hold on a pedestal of worthiness. Not like a monarchy or anything, but more-so for validity. Just because Tom of #1 design dot-com has 1.5 million subscribers and says something key about a subject matter doesn’t mean he’s 100% right for you or your industry.  There is a lot of quality insights out there from some well-known people. There are also some great insights from some lessor known people too.

Your website should be your #1 source for your content. Sure your blog should be integrated in that, but people need to be captivated and drawn to your own website.  Not consuming your content solely on other mediums and never returning to your site to comment, purchase, or consume more. You should also monitor your outlet mediums. If you find that more of your content is being consumed on a particular outlet AND for a specific subject matter more than others, its time to produce to that demand. Don’t regurgitate that worthy content that works mainly in Linked In, on Tumbler if the audience on Tumbler is obviously different.  That could be just lazy tactics, but you’ll grow tired of social media as a whole if you go this route. Especially if you’re doing this yourself outside of using a marketing firm or social media adviser.

Let me know your thoughts on content redundancy in the comments below. I’m intrigued to hear you weigh in.

Why you should try Google+

Google+ IconSo its been a little over a week now that I’ve been in and playing with Google+ (Google Plus).  At first glance it has a good few visual concepts that are both familiar and appreciating at the same time. Like any other Google product, it is fresh and new, and takes very little effort to learn. However why should you get involved?

For starters it has a clean user experience (UX). It reminds me of the earlier days of Facebook before the left and right side panels were littered with ads and game notifications. There’s an easy but small navigation bar that has 4 icons for your jump menu that will take you to either your Home Stream, Photos, Profile (yours), Circles.

To the left is a Stream filter that enables you to either view all of your Streams, or just Streams from certain Circles. So no need to be mad that you missed out about your 3rd cousins new baby because she didn’t qualify as “top news” for your wall, you can simply click on your “Family ” stream and not miss out.  This also helps keep the clutter out of your posts too.

Google+ Navigation screenshot

  • Home – This is where your streams will be. Similar to the Facebook wall. Not much different to the Facebook wall, but what I personally like is how you can make a post and have it limited to just your circles, or specific circles.
  • Photos – Well this is simple; a place to upload photos from your computer. But the cool factor here is the collage of pictures from people your connected to that covers the page. Soon mobile devices other than current Droids.
  • Profile – Here is where you can change/load your picture, details about yourself, location, alias, etc. You can also Chronologically view your posts, view all your photos and videos, and all the +1’s you’ve clicked on around the web.
  • Circles – Here is where you see everyone your connected to. Those that you’re not you can easily send out an invite. Part of the invite process requires an email address (Gmail preferred) and what circle you want to place that person in.

One of the game changers to me is the Hangouts option. Multi-video chat with people in your circles is a nice feature. I haven’t tried it yet with more than one person. It’s been a bit tough getting everyone online at the same time and there’s still a limited amount of people able to get into the site. Speaking of that; since official launch the Google servers have been quite loaded with user’s trying to accept invites.  So if you received an invite, keep trying. Though you have to sign in with your existing Google account.

I had to explain all of that to tell you my number 1 reason why you should give Google+ a try. The great separation of family, friends, and clients in a social media platform. Facebook is great and has groups and some rather difficult filtering options for sharing with certain people while blocking others. With Circles you can easily have your mom and aunts in a family circle and make posts about that client from hell and neither of your family or clients will see your outbursts (provided they’re all in their respective circles). So couple that with a sleek minimalist interface and you’ve got a good baseline to grow something compelling.

Well let me know what you think. And just for stopping by I’ve included a link to @graphicsfuel’s website for some neat Google+ icons. Yes they’re free so get ’em quick! google-plus-icons