RJM's
Insights

You can recognize companies where social media really matters. Their social media managers are some of the highest paid employees in the company and they have a seat at the executive table.

If you’re one of those companies, congratulations, you’ve cracked the code. Feel free to stop reading.

This is not a political discussion. We’re an advertising agency.

But with the amount of every company’s budget that has shifted to digital advertising in the last few years, it’s hard to ignore all of the issues going on in social media these days from a purely marketing standpoint. Because when it comes down to it, social media is us. It’s our customers. And that’s what we’re focused on. The customers.

While it may be easy to blow off all of these stories in the news today swirling around Facebook, Google and Amazon, we must pay attention. Too many companies have invested into building large marketing infrastructure around these platforms to pass these stories off as pure political fluff.

Why Current Events Need To Be Part of Your Brand’s Content Mix

We live in a time where brands can be connected and engaging with consumers, in real time, at any time thanks to social media. It is important to remember that on digital platforms, consumers can engage with your brand at their convenience. It’s a fingertip away and (again for emphasis) on their time. With this in mind, your content needs to accommodate the consumer. Pretty generic advice, huh? It’s not that simple. 

Over the Christmas break, I happened to be in Detroit with family enjoying the last days of the Walter P. Chrysler Museum. Shortly after we left, the inevitable discussion of where to eat came up. So I did what every good American now does and grabbed my cell phone. But I didn't fire up Facebook. Or Twitter. I started tapping icons for many social media outlets that many businesses don't even consider.

After all is said and done, what do we know for sure? First, we know that it's rare, if not unheard of, for a business owner to say that their website isn't important to their business. Years ago it was established that to not be online was to miss out on opportunities that could elevate business sales to numbers beyond normal expectations. Second, we know that the average business is reaching thousands of people per month with their site. This in itself deserves congratulations for many business owners.

While certainly not the only solution, a commitment to marketing a business website will be one of the ways to reverse the trend of non-returning visitors. Building feedback loops into the site, where customers can easily subscribe to a secondary source of information, be that a newsletter or Facebook account, provides a way to bring a visitor back to your site. If these methods of marketing are not utilized, continue to expect that 75% of your visitors will only see your site once.

One of the great privileges that RjM has enjoyed over the years is to have built well over 200 websites for businesses of different sizes serving a variety of industries in many of the fifty states. This allows us to take a look at online trends at a macro level that many people will never be able to see. We can see where the trend lines are pointing, but often individual businesses have no way to compare themselves to their peer group. That's about to change.

If you’re involved with a business-to-business business in any way, you almost certainly know of LinkedIn, a social network geared specifically toward professionals looking to build business connections and promote themselves or their companies. But, what have you done with that knowledge? Does your B2B business have a robust and active presence on LinkedIn? Or maybe you have a profile that you check in on every few months. Or perhaps, getting on LinkedIn is just another thing far on the bottom of your “to do” list.

These days it’s hard to escape the endless barrage of social media. Even if your phone isn’t constantly notifying you of Facebook posts, Twitter re-tweets, LinkedIn requests, or Instagram comments, you are still very aware of the presence of these sites, and how they are infiltrating our lives, and by extension, the way we do business.

At a recent seminar I attended in Atlanta, the conversation revolved around business use of social media. The predominant question was, “Do you need it or does the market demand it?” Frequently I hear business executives say they need to get into social media, mostly because they hear a lot about it and feel they are missing out in some way. Then the discussion flows. What does it cost? Who will do it? What is the ROI? Do my customers even care about social media?