Is Your Work At Home Policy Spurring Jealousy?

Do you let your employees work from home at least some of the time? That’s great. Dozens of studies have shown that the ability to work remotely is one of the biggest perks employees of all ages desire. But is your work at home policy inciting jealousy and resentment in the ranks?

That’s not so great. But chances are, according to a recent survey by Kona, that’s what’s happening.

Seven in 10 workers in the Kona survey say they would rather telecommute than work in the office. Among those between the ages of 35 and 44, the number is even higher at 81 percent.

But the majority of employees (57 percent) in offices that allow remote work say the policy spurs jealousy among those who don’t get to work at home.

How can you make sure working at home makes your employees more productive, not more resentful?

Set a Work At Home Policy

You should write a work at home policy as part of your employee manual. Every employee should read and acknowledge it.

The work at home policy should cover issues such as hours to be worked per day or week, how the person will protect the business’s confidential information, liability issues, what equipment will be provided and how the employee will be monitored when working at home.

Be Sure Your Policy Can’t be Construed as Discriminatory

Clearly, not all jobs can be done at home. For instance, your accounting clerk might be able to work from home, while your retail sales clerk can’t. What’s important is that you treat all employees in the same job classification or with the same duties the same when it comes to working at home.

If you let one accounting clerk work from home because she has children and don’t allow a childless accounting clerk to do the same, you could be at risk of a lawsuit. And you’re likely causing gossip and resentment.

The only reason to treat employees in the same job differently is if one has a legitimate reason for needing to work at home that is not discriminatory. For instance, if one worker has a disability that requires working from home. As you can see, this area can be tricky, so it’s best to consult an attorney to review your work at home policy.

Communicate Clearly

Communication is key for businesses with virtual workers. When employees who work in the office feel they can never reach the work at home staff, or don’t understand why certain people are working at home, resentment grows.

Everyone on your team should know the expectations for work at home employees, including what hours they are supposed to be available, multiple ways to reach them (email, phone, IM, etc.) and what tasks they are working on.

Emphasize to work at home employees the importance of keeping a high profile so others on the team see that they’re working.

Monitor Work At Home Employees

There are many ways to do this, from having them check in with status reports every few hours to using time-tracking software like Toggl to using software that monitors what they’re doing on their computers.

Assess Results

Resentment occurs when employees feel that others are taking advantage of your work at home policy. To ensure employees aren’t abusing the privilege of working at home, it’s crucial to regularly review their productivity, progress and results. This can be done differently depending on the job and the person, but you might want to set daily or weekly goals or quotas.

Check in with remote employees quarterly or even monthly to make sure that everything is still working out. Remind workers that telecommuting is a privilege that must be earned, not a right, and you’ll get better results.

Reserve the Right to End the Work At Home Policy

Speaking of privileges, your work at home policy should state that you have the right to forbid telecommuting at any time. Otherwise, you may find yourself in legal hot water if you want to pull a Marissa Mayer (or Tony Hsieh) and have everyone work in the office.

Address Jealousy Openly

Despite your best efforts, it’s inevitable that people will get jealousâ€"they’re only human.

When these issues arise don’t push them aside. Be alert for resentments that are brewing. Address these issues with the person who’s expressing jealousy. You may find the root cause is something completely different than someone else working at home - and that you can nip it in the bud to create a much happier employee.

Jealous Photo via Shutterstock

3 Killer Content Marketing Insights for the Holiday Season

You may still be coming to terms with the end of the summer, but, believe it or not, the holiday season is just around the corner. This may stir up different feelings for everyone, but marketers share in at least one thought: it’s time to prepare a content marketing strategy for one of the most pivotal times of the year.

To help you get on the right track, we dug into our data from the 2012 holiday season and uncovered some key insights that can be put into action in 2013.

(*This study looked at how Americans consumed holiday-related content from consumer product, retail, and electronics brands during the 2012 holiday season, relative to all other paid content running in our network during that time.)  

Consistent with the extended shopping hours, frantic crowds, and often full-blown chaos of the holiday season in the U.S., our data shows that Americans consume content twice as much late at night and 3 times as much on their mobile devices when it’s related to holiday shopping.

1. SMARTPHONES - 251% More Consumption!

During the 2012 holiday season (Nov.1st - Dec.31st) in the United States, a large proportion of all holiday content was consumed on smartphones (relative to desktops and tablets). Smartphones’ share of total holiday content consumption was actually 251% larger than it typically is for all other content!

This should not come as a surprise since holiday shoppers are often on the go and are likely to research products while shopping for them in stores. According to a survey by PewResearch Center, “28% of cell owners used their phone while inside a store to look up reviews of a product to help decide if they should purchase it or not” during the 2012 holiday season. Further, a rapidly growing number of consumers are actually making holiday purchases on their mobile devices (smartphones accounted for 4.4% of U.S. retail e-commerce sales in 2012, according to a study by eMarketer).

Smartphones accounted for 7.1% of all eCommerce sales on Black Friday and 6.8% of all eCommerce sales on Cyber Monday. The proportion of total content consumption on Black Friday and Cyber Monday that came from smartphones was much larger for holiday content than for all other content on average (79% and 200% larger, respectively).

Key Takeaways:

â†'72% of consumers say mobile optimized sites are important to them (Google study), but only 27% of brands have mobile optimized sites (Adobe study).

â†'Be sure to have high quality mobile-optimized content prepared for this holiday season.

â†'Whichever amplification channel(s) you’re using, remember to take advantage of mobile-targeting options.

2. LATE NIGHT - 136% More Consumption!

Our study also found that late night hours (12AM to 4AM) account for more than twice the amount of daily holiday content consumption compared to daily consumption of the rest of the paid content in the network. This could be related to the extended shopping hours of the holiday season, both in-store and online (e.g., online coupons and deals launching at midnight).

This finding is consistent with comScore’s analysis of spending by time of day on Cyber Monday in 2010 and 2011. According to this study, the percentage of total US Cyber Monday spending that took place between 9pm and 9am grew from 3% in 2010 to 12% in 2011. When we looked at the percentage of total holiday content consumption that fell within this time interval on Cyber Monday 2012, we saw that it had grown to be even larger.

Key Takeaways:

â†'Let data inform your decisions as to when to push out your holiday content. Consumption patterns for content related to holiday shopping differ from the typical patterns seen for other content. Rather than waiting until morning, consider publishing your content that night. There is a much larger proportion of consumers than usual that you could potentially miss out on by prolonging the content push until the morning.

3. WEEKENDS - 16% More Consumption!

Holiday content showed a stronger tendency to be consumed over the weekends than all other paid content, with weekends accounting for 16% more of total holiday content consumption than of total non-holiday content consumption during the 2012 holiday season.

Key Takeaways:

â†'While weekends typically fall victim to content consumption drop-off, our data suggests that this is much less of an issue when it comes to holiday shopping-related content. Instead, the weekends offer an opportunity that should not be overlooked when mapping out this year’s holiday content strategy.

â†'The weekends of the holiday season precede some of its most crucial shopping (Mon)days: Cyber Monday, Green Monday, and Free Shipping Day. In the U.S., the Sunday before Cyber Monday (11/25/12) was the 6th highest day of the month in terms of the number of clicks on holiday content in our network, despite the fact that it was not a weekday. Take advantage of the fact that holiday shoppers are consuming more content on these weekends than you might have expected by getting your content in front of them before Monday’s purchase decisions.

We hope that sharing these insights with you has been helpful as you plan for the holidays. Remember: As researching online prior to making purchase decisions becomes the norm (76% of consumers researched online prior to making holiday purchases according to a 2012 study by Google & Ipsos), investing time in a holiday content strategy will be well worth your while. On that note, happy holiday content planning!

Got great holiday content ready to be discovered? Amplify it now with Outbrain. Outbrain recommends your content on premium publisher sites around the web reaching 87% of the US population with more than 193 million uniques each month. Get started here.

How to Get More Positive Customer Reviews, Using Get Five Stars

Online reviews have become important â€" and positive reviews are crucial for businesses.  Two customer review trends are important to know.  First, prospective customers are increasingly relying on online reviews to make purchasing decisions.  Second, there’s been an explosion in fake reviews online.  It’s gotten so bad, that sites like Yelp and the New York  Attorney General have been cracking down on fake reviews.

Where does this leave small businesses?

Businesses have an increasing need to get positive customer reviews. At the same time, small businesses also have to keep things ethical, even in the face of competitors who may be playing dirty.  A product called “Get Five Stars” can help satisfy both of these needs.

What is Get Five Stars?

Get Five Stars is an online app or tool that guides you through the process of how to get positive customer reviews.  It helps you:

• request testimonials and reviews from legitimate customers;
• identify which customers are less than happy or giving negative reviews, so you can attempt to turn them back to positive;
• encourage customers to share their positive reviews online at major review sites;
• place reviews and testimonials on your own website in a Google-friendly way, leading to greater visibility in search; and
• monitor new reviews on public review sites as an ongoing reputation management process, so you can stay informed and be proactive.

After all, if a customer is willing to recommend your business, don’t you want to show that review off?  And don’t you want as many other prospective customers to see it as possible?

Plus, the proactive nature of Get Five Stars helps you catch negative reviews.  That way, you can attempt to resolve any issues before they cause lasting harm.

In essence, Get Five Stars gives you a process and shows you how to get positive customer reviews.  It helps you organize and streamline the process of requesting and displaying customer reviews, and increasing their visibility online. That way you can make the most of them for online visibility and to convince new shoppers to buy from you.

How to Get Positive Customer Reviews - Getting Started

The process to request reviews from your existing customers is straight forward.  Right in the dashboard, business owners can insert customer names and email addresses.  You could add customer data from your invoicing system, a Contacts app, or a CRM database â€" or insert it manually.

Then, of course, you are going to want to communicate with customers.  To do that, you call up pre-built email templates (see image below).

Customize your email message, and then send it to your customer requesting feedback.

It’s a two-step process with customers. As part of the process, you:

• Ask them to rate your business privately first.
• Then after you have a chance to review the feedback, if it’s positive you can ask the customer to go to a public review site to leave feedback there, too. If it’s not so positive, you have a chance to fix it.

The process is kicked off when the customer receives an email that looks like the image below, with an invitation to leave a review by clicking a big button “Provide Feedback”:

Simple Review Process Based on Net Promoter Score

Customers are busy.  Most don’t have the time to spend writing a long review or filling out a lengthy survey.  The beauty of Get Five Stars is that the review system is easy peasy.

Get Five Stars uses the Net Promoter approach to customer feedback.  There are just two short text fields to fill in â€" the title of the review,  and a brief comment with a maximum of 250 characters.

Customers then are asked one question, “How likely is it that you would recommend our company to a friend or colleague?”  Customers then rate the business from 1 to 10, with 10 being the best (i.e., most likely to recommend).  The customer simply moves a sliding scale button to rate (see below).

If a customer answers by giving a rating below a 7, then the small business gets the information and can follow up. In this way, potentially negative reviews can be addressed proactively.

Some small business owners and managers may not be familiar with the Net Promoter feedback scoring system.  The app gives the business owner a little tutorial on Net Promoter scores in a popup window.

Once the customer feedback is returned, you have a place in the dashboard where you can see all your feedback.  Then from there, you can send out another followup communication to customers that left positive feedback, asking them to leave the review on various public review sites such as Google, Yahoo Local, Citysearch, Facebook and other places.  On the app’s dashboard you choose which review sites you want to request the customer to leave a review on.  Remember, you can’t place the review on the public for them â€" but the app makes it easy for you to request and assist the customer in doing so.

Interestingly, co-founder Don Campbell downplayed Yelp when we spoke with him.  He said seeking out Yelp reviews may not help you. “Unless the reviewer is an avid Yelper the review is often filtered out and doesn’t show up publicly on Yelp,” due to Yelp’s algorithms.  Also, he points out, the app’s language does not actually request leaving a Yelp review. It is against Yelp’s guidelines to ask for reviews.  Therefore, the app simply includes a small message in the email asking customers to visit the business’s page on Yelp.

Place Testimonials on Your Website

The reviews you get back can also be embedded on a page on your company’s website (see below) using a small embedded bit of  javascript code.  There’s also a WordPress plugin to put the testimonials into WordPress sites.

The embedded testimonials also appear as HTML on your website page. The reason that’s important is that when they are in HTML format, the reviews can get indexed by search engines.  Reviews are structured using the Schema.org format, a markup language that Google understands.  That means they can under certain circumstances show up in the snippet of text presented in Google search result pages.  When you have gold reviews stars appearing near your website name on a search page, it helps your brand stand out.

Getting too many reviews too quickly can be almost as bad or worse than too few reviews. To a search engine or review site getting too many too fast may seem suspicious. So let’s say you start using the product and do a one-time communication to all your recent customers asking for reviews.  You’re going to get a lot of reviews back.  You may not want to display them all or encourage all those customers to leave public reviews, at one time.   The business owner or manager has control over the timing.

Monitor Reviews at Public Review Websites

Get Five Stars also monitors key review sites, as part of an ongoing reputation management process. You get a dashboard that is regularly updated, to see how many reviews you have and the average rating (below).

This way you don’t have to visit each of the review sites separately.  The Get Five Stars system will also send you an email when a new review appears.

According to co-founder Don Campbell, by being proactive you can have a big impact on how your company is presented to the world.  He described the case study of an optometrist that had just one review showing on Yelp and it was a very bad “1 star” review.  The optometrist knew this customer.  His frames had broken, but that incident had been fixed.   The optometrist KNEW the customer had been made happy.  In that case the optometrist was able to contact the customer.

The monitoring dashboard would help to let you know so that you could contact the reviewer and ask him to update the review if you know the issue has been resolved. Or you could leave a message yourself clarifying inaccurate information in the review, such as a restaurant review that gives a bad rating for a dish your establishment does not even offer.

Using Get Five Stars just as a review management platform would mean only scratching the surface of what this tool has to offer. Get Five Stars is capable of serving as a proactive reputation management mechanism.  If you use the tool to its full potential, it can pay for itself many times over.

Who “Get Five Stars” is Best For

Get Five Stars is ideal for B2C businesses with large customer bases as well as service businesses, especially professional service businesses.  If you are serious about using data to improve your systems to grow sales and increase customer loyalty, then Get Five Stars can make the end-to-end process efficient and manageable.

The Get Five Stars system is a cloud software service.  You access it and use it online.  It is designed to review a business, not review individual products.

It’s priced at $29.95 per month (discounted to $24 per month if you pay annually).  There a 15-day free trial offer, too.  No credit card is required for the trial.

This app is designed to be used by a single business, a business with multiple locations, or an agency (such as a marketing agency) managing a number of  businesses.  The individual business can also manage their reviews directly even if they get access through an agency.  Discounts are available for agencies. Even small marketing agencies managing four businesses will find it cost effective and a time saver.

The Get Five Stars system was developed by Mike Blumenthal, an expert in local search, and Don Campbell and Thomas Hasch from Expand2Web.  The company is headquartered in the San Francisco Bay area.

Get Five Stars is a valuable  tool for any small business that takes a customer-centric approach to growth.

3 Killer Content Marketing Insights for the Holiday Season

You may still be coming to terms with the end of the summer, but, believe it or not, the holiday season is just around the corner. This may stir up different feelings for everyone, but marketers share in at least one thought: it’s time to prepare a content marketing strategy for one of the most pivotal times of the year.

To help you get on the right track, we dug into our data from the 2012 holiday season and uncovered some key insights that can be put into action in 2013.

(*This study looked at how Americans consumed holiday-related content from consumer product, retail, and electronics brands during the 2012 holiday season, relative to all other paid content running in our network during that time.)  

Consistent with the extended shopping hours, frantic crowds, and often full-blown chaos of the holiday season in the U.S., our data shows that Americans consume content twice as much late at night and 3 times as much on their mobile devices when it’s related to holiday shopping.

1. SMARTPHONES - 251% More Consumption!

During the 2012 holiday season (Nov.1st - Dec.31st) in the United States, a large proportion of all holiday content was consumed on smartphones (relative to desktops and tablets). Smartphones’ share of total holiday content consumption was actually 251% larger than it typically is for all other content!

This should not come as a surprise since holiday shoppers are often on the go and are likely to research products while shopping for them in stores. According to a survey by PewResearch Center, “28% of cell owners used their phone while inside a store to look up reviews of a product to help decide if they should purchase it or not” during the 2012 holiday season. Further, a rapidly growing number of consumers are actually making holiday purchases on their mobile devices (smartphones accounted for 4.4% of U.S. retail e-commerce sales in 2012, according to a study by eMarketer).

Smartphones accounted for 7.1% of all eCommerce sales on Black Friday and 6.8% of all eCommerce sales on Cyber Monday. The proportion of total content consumption on Black Friday and Cyber Monday that came from smartphones was much larger for holiday content than for all other content on average (79% and 200% larger, respectively).

Key Takeaways:

â†'72% of consumers say mobile optimized sites are important to them (Google study), but only 27% of brands have mobile optimized sites (Adobe study).

â†'Be sure to have high quality mobile-optimized content prepared for this holiday season.

â†'Whichever amplification channel(s) you’re using, remember to take advantage of mobile-targeting options.

2. LATE NIGHT - 136% More Consumption!

Our study also found that late night hours (12AM to 4AM) account for more than twice the amount of daily holiday content consumption compared to daily consumption of the rest of the paid content in the network. This could be related to the extended shopping hours of the holiday season, both in-store and online (e.g., online coupons and deals launching at midnight).

This finding is consistent with comScore’s analysis of spending by time of day on Cyber Monday in 2010 and 2011. According to this study, the percentage of total US Cyber Monday spending that took place between 9pm and 9am grew from 3% in 2010 to 12% in 2011. When we looked at the percentage of total holiday content consumption that fell within this time interval on Cyber Monday 2012, we saw that it had grown to be even larger.

Key Takeaways:

â†'Let data inform your decisions as to when to push out your holiday content. Consumption patterns for content related to holiday shopping differ from the typical patterns seen for other content. Rather than waiting until morning, consider publishing your content that night. There is a much larger proportion of consumers than usual that you could potentially miss out on by prolonging the content push until the morning.

3. WEEKENDS - 16% More Consumption!

Holiday content showed a stronger tendency to be consumed over the weekends than all other paid content, with weekends accounting for 16% more of total holiday content consumption than of total non-holiday content consumption during the 2012 holiday season.

Key Takeaways:

â†'While weekends typically fall victim to content consumption drop-off, our data suggests that this is much less of an issue when it comes to holiday shopping-related content. Instead, the weekends offer an opportunity that should not be overlooked when mapping out this year’s holiday content strategy.

â†'The weekends of the holiday season precede some of its most crucial shopping (Mon)days: Cyber Monday, Green Monday, and Free Shipping Day. In the U.S., the Sunday before Cyber Monday (11/25/12) was the 6th highest day of the month in terms of the number of clicks on holiday content in our network, despite the fact that it was not a weekday. Take advantage of the fact that holiday shoppers are consuming more content on these weekends than you might have expected by getting your content in front of them before Monday’s purchase decisions.

We hope that sharing these insights with you has been helpful as you plan for the holidays. Remember: As researching online prior to making purchase decisions becomes the norm (76% of consumers researched online prior to making holiday purchases according to a 2012 study by Google & Ipsos), investing time in a holiday content strategy will be well worth your while. On that note, happy holiday content planning!

Got great holiday content ready to be discovered? Amplify it now with Outbrain. Outbrain recommends your content on premium publisher sites around the web reaching 87% of the US population with more than 193 million uniques each month. Get started here.

2013 Small Business Influencer Awards: Meet the Top 100 Champions of Small Business in NYC

The third annual Small Business Influencer Awards, produced by Small Business Trends and Smallbiztechnology, has named its Top 100 Champions and is now gearing up for it’s big awards gala event in New York City on Thursday, October 17, 2013.

The Awards honor companies, organizations, vendors, apps and people who have made a significant impact on the North American small business market. Nominees were chosen by the small business community in the first phase and an all-star judging panel sifted through the hundreds of nominees and voted for the final top 100.

The Top 100 Champions, Honorable Mentions and Community Choice Honorees will be honored at the Awards Gala this Thursday, October 17th at the CUNY Graduate Center Proshansky Auditorium at 6pm. All are welcome to attend this celebratory and networking event and you can register here.

We send a big congratulations to all of this years winners! For a full list to see who won:

Register today to join the most influential and inspiring people in small business for this wonderful night of celebration.

2013 Small Business Influencer Awards: Meet the Top 100 Champions of Small Business in NYC

The third annual Small Business Influencer Awards, produced by Small Business Trends and Smallbiztechnology, has named its Top 100 Champions and is now gearing up for it’s big awards gala event in New York City on Thursday, October 17, 2013.

The Awards honor companies, organizations, vendors, apps and people who have made a significant impact on the North American small business market. Nominees were chosen by the small business community in the first phase and an all-star judging panel sifted through the hundreds of nominees and voted for the final top 100.

The Top 100 Champions, Honorable Mentions and Community Choice Honorees will be honored at the Awards Gala this Thursday, October 17th at the CUNY Graduate Center Proshansky Auditorium at 6pm. All are welcome to attend this celebratory and networking event and you can register here.

We send a big congratulations to all of this years winners! For a full list to see who won:

Register today to join the most influential and inspiring people in small business for this wonderful night of celebration.

6 Tips That Will Fix Your Broken Social Media Message

Social media is an important way in which your business should be communicating with the world. If your social media has become ineffective, the results can be detrimental to your brand and eventually to your bottom line.

Fortunately, there are some easy fixes to a broken down social media campaign. Social media expert Lisa Barone suggests some of the top options for bringing your social media campaign back to life.

Here’s a list of things you should be considering now to fix your broken social media message.

Get More Visual

Visual content grabs attention, so the more you use the better off you’ll be. An infgraphic from Marketo gives an overview of six kinds of visual content you may want to start incorporating into your social media.

They include more obvious options like:

• Photos to engage by showing your personal side with photos on Instagram and Flickr.
• Video to teach customers more about your product.
• Graphics as a way to tell a more visual story with your data.

But there are also some ideas you may not have thought of yet, like:

• Visual Note Taking to express your thoughts in a more visually engaging manner than text.
• Memes to establish a powerful viral presence with a memorable image and a line of text.
• Comics as a way to communicate ideas in a highly sharable and entertaining format.

How are you using visuals to share you message?

Become a Trusted Curator

Barone explains the importance of content curation in social media:

One way to lighten your content writing load is by becoming a trusted curator. Instead of putting the burden on yourself to write the content, you can take advantage of the content others are creating (and you’re already reading) in your industry by sharing links, pointing your readers to third-party resources, and highlighting the smart things that others are saying.

Content curation is a perfect option for channels like Facebook, Google Plus and LinkedIn where you can share links to blog posts, videos, infographics, resources and more.

Your contacts and customers will become as interested in the content you share as in the blog posts you write. So this content too can be very helpful in establishing your brand.

Stop Misusing Facebook

There are some big no-nos where Facebook is concerned. Ignoring them puts your marketing message on the most popular and highly used social network on the planet at risk.

But don’t worry. Barone has created the ultimate guide to things you should never do on Facebook.

Do you still:

• Use your personal profile instead of a business page?
• Fail to fill out your profiles completely?
• Use Facebook as a broadcasting media, or
• Leave spam on your Facebook wall

If you’re doing any of these or other things on Barone’s list, it’s time to stop now. Ignoring these problems could ruin your reputation on one of the most powerful and pervasive social platforms around.

This is a tool you want working for your business, so be sure to handle it right.

Develop Metrics to Measure Effectiveness

If you have no way to measure what you’re accomplishing in social media, how will you know whether you’re a success? It’s simple. You won’t.

Barone recommends a simple method of developing metrics that can measure your  success. Simply start by asking yourself what you want to accomplish.

For example, with social media you might be trying to boost your brand recognition, Barone surmises. Or perhaps you’re simply trying to shorten your sales cycle.

In the first instance, Barone recommends documenting the number of times your brand is being shared, where you are being cited of linked to.

In the second, Barone recommends benchmarking the cost per customer today verses the cost per customer a years ago.

No matter you’re using social media, you must have a way of measuring whether your efforts are achieving their objectives.

Get Comfortable with Self-Promotion

There’s an old saying. If a tree falls in the woods and no one hears it, did it really make a sound?

It’s kind of like that with social media, says Barone. You can spend a lot of time and energy creating cool content. But if you don’t get it in front of your target audience, what’s the point?

Instead, Barone suggests building an email list, finding followers on Twitter, working harder to get people to “like” your Facebook page, blog outreach and so on.

Without these efforts, your great content and awesome social media channels will be just a tree falling in the woods, with no one there to hear a sound: Silent and ineffective.

What ways can you think of to make people aware of your product and business and of the great content your create?

Get Help When You Need It

finally, if you still find yourself overwhelmed, it may be time to get some help. Barone recommends:

Consult an outside agency or bring someone into your team who understands social media from a business perspective. Someone who will help the company to create a social media plan to guide the company’s interaction…

This could be as simple as hiring a social media consulting firm to do an audit of your company and its potential audience.

This could help you see the parts of your social media plan that are missing and develop strategies to take advantage of some of the opportunities you’ve missed, says Barone.

What do you think? Do you need some help with your social media strategy? What efforts are you putting in to make sure your social media message reaches the right audience?

6 Tips That Will Fix Your Broken Social Media Message

Social media is an important way in which your business should be communicating with the world. If your social media has become ineffective, the results can be detrimental to your brand and eventually to your bottom line.

Fortunately, there are some easy fixes to a broken down social media campaign. Social media expert Lisa Barone suggests some of the top options for bringing your social media campaign back to life.

Here’s a list of things you should be considering now to fix your broken social media message.

Get More Visual

Visual content grabs attention, so the more you use the better off you’ll be. An infgraphic from Marketo gives an overview of six kinds of visual content you may want to start incorporating into your social media.

They include more obvious options like:

• Photos to engage by showing your personal side with photos on Instagram and Flickr.
• Video to teach customers more about your product.
• Graphics as a way to tell a more visual story with your data.

But there are also some ideas you may not have thought of yet, like:

• Visual Note Taking to express your thoughts in a more visually engaging manner than text.
• Memes to establish a powerful viral presence with a memorable image and a line of text.
• Comics as a way to communicate ideas in a highly sharable and entertaining format.

How are you using visuals to share you message?

Become a Trusted Curator

Barone explains the importance of content curation in social media:

One way to lighten your content writing load is by becoming a trusted curator. Instead of putting the burden on yourself to write the content, you can take advantage of the content others are creating (and you’re already reading) in your industry by sharing links, pointing your readers to third-party resources, and highlighting the smart things that others are saying.

Content curation is a perfect option for channels like Facebook, Google Plus and LinkedIn where you can share links to blog posts, videos, infographics, resources and more.

Your contacts and customers will become as interested in the content you share as in the blog posts you write. So this content too can be very helpful in establishing your brand.

Stop Misusing Facebook

There are some big no-nos where Facebook is concerned. Ignoring them puts your marketing message on the most popular and highly used social network on the planet at risk.

But don’t worry. Barone has created the ultimate guide to things you should never do on Facebook.

Do you still:

• Use your personal profile instead of a business page?
• Fail to fill out your profiles completely?
• Use Facebook as a broadcasting media, or
• Leave spam on your Facebook wall

If you’re doing any of these or other things on Barone’s list, it’s time to stop now. Ignoring these problems could ruin your reputation on one of the most powerful and pervasive social platforms around.

This is a tool you want working for your business, so be sure to handle it right.

Develop Metrics to Measure Effectiveness

If you have no way to measure what you’re accomplishing in social media, how will you know whether you’re a success? It’s simple. You won’t.

Barone recommends a simple method of developing metrics that can measure your  success. Simply start by asking yourself what you want to accomplish.

For example, with social media you might be trying to boost your brand recognition, Barone surmises. Or perhaps you’re simply trying to shorten your sales cycle.

In the first instance, Barone recommends documenting the number of times your brand is being shared, where you are being cited of linked to.

In the second, Barone recommends benchmarking the cost per customer today verses the cost per customer a years ago.

No matter you’re using social media, you must have a way of measuring whether your efforts are achieving their objectives.

Get Comfortable with Self-Promotion

There’s an old saying. If a tree falls in the woods and no one hears it, did it really make a sound?

It’s kind of like that with social media, says Barone. You can spend a lot of time and energy creating cool content. But if you don’t get it in front of your target audience, what’s the point?

Instead, Barone suggests building an email list, finding followers on Twitter, working harder to get people to “like” your Facebook page, blog outreach and so on.

Without these efforts, your great content and awesome social media channels will be just a tree falling in the woods, with no one there to hear a sound: Silent and ineffective.

What ways can you think of to make people aware of your product and business and of the great content your create?

Get Help When You Need It

finally, if you still find yourself overwhelmed, it may be time to get some help. Barone recommends:

Consult an outside agency or bring someone into your team who understands social media from a business perspective. Someone who will help the company to create a social media plan to guide the company’s interaction…

This could be as simple as hiring a social media consulting firm to do an audit of your company and its potential audience.

This could help you see the parts of your social media plan that are missing and develop strategies to take advantage of some of the opportunities you’ve missed, says Barone.

What do you think? Do you need some help with your social media strategy? What efforts are you putting in to make sure your social media message reaches the right audience?