So get ready to take off your “brand” marketer hat and replace it with your “newsdesk” marketer hat.  That is, to produce marketing messages on a daily basis and work to ensure the brand message operates within the context of your customers’ daily lives.

Here are a few best practices to get you started:

• Listen: Tune into what your customers are saying to determine what they care about today.
• Program: Develop content to match daily trends.
• Update: Program content updates to stay relevant.
• Measure: Monitor impact and iterate content accordingly.

Now is the time to get on the same page as your customers and ensure that today’s marketing messages are truly that.  Fishnet can help you create engaging daily content that your customer’s care about. Contact us today!

Spill the beans

When space is limited, you need to get right to the point – and do it quick.

Get their attention

This may seem obvious but you need to keep in mind that Twitter users access the service because they want information from trusted sources or updates from their friends, so the message needs to take that into consideration. Messages that create intrigue or use a joke are great ways to gain attention and prompt action.

Ask a question

It’s been found that tweets in the form of a question are high performers in terms of CTRs. Tweets posed as questions elicit a response, which opens the door for consumer interaction and message sharing.

Make the cut

It will likely take a few tries to get your message honed down to 140 characters.  Tackle it by first including everything you think is important, then start cutting out the extra details until you get to your limit.  One trick to shorten your copy is to try using different synonyms which say the same thing using fewer characters.

Don’t sacrifice grammar

As challenging as writing Twitter ad copy may be, don’t succumb to the temptation of sacrificing your brand image by butchering your words – for example using “u” instead of “you”.  What may be acceptable when texting a friend does not fly for ads that you have invested in.  Invite this creative challenge by finding other ways to tighten up your copy.

Need help writing attention grabbing Twitter ad copy that gets your customers to do what you want them to?  We can help! Contact us today.

Take a Bottom-Up Approach

Considering that your social media strategy needs to translate across an array of devices, start with the device that presents the most limitations – mobile.  What sense is there in designing a web app with all the bells and whistles, only to realize down the road that your plan will not work on a 2×5 smartphone screen?  Keeping in mind that simplicity is key, aim to make a great experience on the mobile screen first and then translate it for the web and other devices.  Not only will this approach be much easier but it will save time and spare your team the headache of “scaling down”.

Include the Newcomers to the Scene

Thanks to standards for things such as images and video, even with the mobile device variety and various versions that exist today, it’s easy to keep things looking good across the majority of devices without eating up your technical resources. Be sure to optimize your images and videos for multiple mobile outputs instead of one universal output, so that newer devices with upgraded technology can be fully utilized. Also, make use of the latest tablet and smartphone touchscreens which support richly connected apps with direct links to other apps such as phone dialing and geo-tracking by pre-filling them with user data.

Give Users Control

Users want to know where they are, where they came from, and where they can go at all times. With all the content sharing between apps this needs to be given serious consideration.  You can easily ensure that users are taken to the right piece of content by giving each piece of content is own unique URL.  Once they have arrived, let them know they have landed in the right place by presenting a prominent title, an optimized image and an uninterrupted banner-free post.  Since users begin to think about the share-worthiness of your content after only reading a few sentences, keep your call-to-action (CTA) buttons bright, prominent and always above the fold.

Let Fishnet Media help you put these user experience best practices into practice to ensure the success of your social media strategy.  Contact us today!

We have all experienced it…  You’re on the phone with your pal breathlessly talking up the great new gadget you picked up and – if they can even get a word in edgewise – they tell you the company ought to be paying you because you certainly sold them!  Unfortunately you are not getting paid to boast their stuff… The fact that you have no vested interest in the brand is exactly why this form of communication is so powerful in influencing buying behavior.

So what makes consumers talk?  People will go out of their way to spread the word about your brand if they have had an extremely positive or negative experience with your brand.  A sure bet to get people talking positively about your brand is by wowing your customers with great customer service.  Once you’ve laid the foundation with above and beyond customer service, here are some other things you can do to help get the conversation rolling…

One way to get people to start talking is to talk to them!  The more people you talk to and get your brand in front of the more likely they are to talk about it, especially if they have had a positive experience.  Another way to get people talking is to do something memorable (think stunts, viral marketing, etc).  Sure any hair salon can send emails offering service discounts, but when they offer a free cut to the person with the worst 80’s promo hairdo, just think of all the fodder to follow as people forward it on and flock to the site to see the hilarious headshots and cast their vote!

By making sure your brand is out there and accessible and having tools like Twitter, Facebook and blogs available so your brand can easily be shared, you will be on your way to creating just the buzz that your brand needs.  Let Fishnet Media help make your brand memorable…  What are you waiting for?  Contact us today!

Give Em’ What They Ask For
Ask subscribers what topics they want to hear about and how often they want to be communicated with during the opt-in process and honor their request.  Your audiences may be smaller, but they will be more engaged.

Don’t Send Image-Only Emails
Sending emails with images only will miss a large audience because the email recipient cannot see the image content.  Be sure to create emails that are easily read by both image- and text-based email programs.

Keep It Short And Sweet
Subscribers are bombarded with hundreds of emails a day.  If you want your email to get read, keep the copy to a single screen, grab their attention with a strong call to action in the email subject line and use hyperlinks within the copy to help keep it concise.

Test It Before You Send It
Before hitting “send” test each email to see how it will come across on various email clients and on mobile devices.  Make sure to proof read the email for typos and broken links.

Optimize With Opting-In
You should only be communicating with the people who want to hear from you.  Remember, it is quality, not quantity, which counts.  Create opt-in lists organically by including sign-up forms on your website and Facebook page, links on Twitter, a sign-up mechanism at trade shows, etc.

Don’t Forget Social Media Links
Social links turn emails into viral machines.  Emails without links to Twitter, Facebook, and other social networks are missing out on a powerful opportunity to extend their reach exponentially and be more effective.

Start the year off on the right foot by revamping your email marketing strategy to create emails that are engaging, relevant and deliver maximum results.  We can help! Contact us today.

Really listen

The first step to thwarting an attack is to know that one had been launched and the only way you can do that is to be listening – everywhere. With free Google Alerts, which send you instant updates when your brand is mentioned online, or paid monitoring tools such as Radian6, it has never been easier to monitor your social presence and to stay on top of what people are saying about your brand.

Nip it in the bud

One negative comment has the potential to spiral out of control as “friends” quickly become foes. By responding immediately you show them that you care and are listening (always sure to win you some points) – allowing you to keep the crowd under control and minimize damage.

Turn the other cheek

It can be tough to stay calm and be friendly when negative comments about your brand are flying. The natural reaction might be put up your dukes and fight back, but this will only escalate things and cause you to lose face – and even worse customers and potential customers. If you made a mistake, the best thing you can do is admit you were wrong. There is no reason for companies to fear that acknowledging fault or error will lead to a loss of trust. On the contrary, by being open, honest, humble and sincere you can actually turn a threat into an opportunity and build customer loyalty.

By having a plan, monitoring your online presence and responding immediately to attacks in a friendly and honest way, you can use a social media attack to your advantage and strengthen your relationships with followers, fans, customers, prospective customers and the community at-large. Let us help you create your social media plan of attack. Contact us today!

Step 1: Listen to Your Customers to Create Effective Campaigns

The key to effective search, display, and email campaigns is making sure your message is targeted specifically to your audience.  If you already have an actively maintained Facebook page or Twitter feed, there is no need to make assumptions about what you think your customer wants to see when you can tap into their true feelings. Can you say free focus group?  This is an opportunity not to be missed.  Use it to turn this valuable information into effective ads that speak directly to the needs of your customers.

Step 2: Build Relationships with Prospects through Dead-on Content

You’ve heard it been said time and again that content is king, and this still rings true.  Content in the form of articles, white papers, webcasts, blog posts, etc. is what gains credibility, builds trust, and leads to the development of relationships that lead to sales. Why reinvent the wheel when you can use what works with your current customers to attract new ones?  By applying what you learned from the close observation of your customer’s social media interactions (what content was retweeted, clicked, Liked, and shared the most), you can create a relevant content  marketing campaign that makes prospects feel that you understand their problems and that your product is the best fit for them.

Step 3: Go for the Sale with Display Ads That Speak to Them

Now that you have a good handle on what your customers and prospects want, it’s time to update your messaging once more and hit them with new search or display ads that reflect what current customers actually believe. Since your prospects have been engaged with your content, they are already familiar with your brand, so go-ahead, ask for the sale now that you know what makes them click!

Need help creating a dynamic marketing campaign that pairs social media with traditional marketing to turn social media visitors and prospects into customers?  Look no further, contact us today!

Three Tips to Ensure Social Media Success:

• Be an active participant: If you’ve decided to use social media then you need to roll up your sleeves and get in the ring! Assign someone to be an active and consistent participant in the communication.
• Be yourself: Lose the marketing fluff – a real voice will build trust and allow you to connect with your followers and fans and make them feel that they are part of an exclusive group with special insight into your company.
• Be aware: The most active users of social media are the people who will carry your brand message for you. These influencers often retweet or post your messages to their followers and friends, so it’s a good idea to be aware of who they are.

How to Integrate Social Media and Measure Its Worth

First things first… Start by connecting your Facebook fans and Twitter followers to the customers in your marketing database using the email address – accessible via the application programming interfaces (APIs). Now you are ready to build social media into your marketing mix. A great way to start is to direct message your followers and/or place exclusive offers on your Facebook page. To keep fans and followers coming back for more make sure that when you do send an email or direct mail message that they are the first to receive it. Also be sure to advertise your social media presence on your website and by using the “forward-to” social features in email. Finally, you can measure the success of your social media efforts by turning to the APIs from Facebook and Twitter which contain valuable information such as who has posted your message, who has retweeted, who has clicked on your link, and more. This information can then be brought into your marketing database and measured.

While only time will tell the true marketing value of social media, one thing is for sure – this is definitely an area you don’t want to ignore. We can help you bring social media into the mix and maximize its value while enhancing the value of all your other marketing communications. Contact us today!

Sounds easy enough, but with consistently low customer satisfaction ratings for cross-channel customer experiences, it’s obvious that businesses are struggling with this. Why is that? For one, it is enough of a challenge to merely keep a company website up-to-date, never mind ensuring that is also delivers an excellent customer experience. Add to that the growing number of web-enabled mobile devices and the rise of social network usage and companies face a real challenge when it comes to creating a seamless and personalized experience for each user. The goal is to figure out how to communicate, not only constantly, but consistently with customers across all these intersecting channels. We have listed several ideas below to get you going.

Optimize your website for all mobile devices
We’re talking more than just resizing the screen and calling it a day! This requires getting in tune with how you want customers to move across the various channels and devices they use to interact with you. Customers on the go using their smartphone to get quick information have different goals than customers accessing your website from the comfort of their office. The key is to tailor the experience to what customers want, when they want it – quick answers to specific questions or a more engaging experience where they can browse and search. This allows you to recognize the customer as an individual and customize your content to them regardless of the way they choose to access it.

Make it personal
By addressing the customer’s context as opposed to just the channel or device they happen to be using, you are able to create a personalized experience. This means it’s not just enough to know how they are seeking information, but in what situation they are seeking this information – the who, what, where, why, and when. All these factors will help you to present relevant, timely, and highly- targeted content.

Make communication a two-way street
Communication needs to be a give and take to be effective and customers need to feel that their opinion counts. An easy and effective way to do this is to use your website to invite comments, ratings, and reviews. This lets customers know you are committed to improving customer satisfaction and provides them with a forum for discussion with you and with other customers. This provides many benefits for you too. Your best sales team may very well be your customers, so why not unleash the power of all those happy customers, as they interact and communicate to help sell your products? Customer comments and blogs allow you to directly respond to customers and address issues before they affect more customers. The feedback from ratings and reviews lets you get into the heads of your users and find out what they are seeking so you are guaranteed to hit the mark when you go to market with new products and services – a win-win for all.

Help them to help themselves!
Ease the call volume of contact centers, decrease costs, and increase customer satisfaction. Sound good? As long as it is intuitive and appropriate to each channel and device, offering web self-help can really, well, help! The key is understanding the potential problems that users encounter and providing the right help at the right time.

Providing a forum that allows you to tap into your users (many of whom enjoy helping others deal with issues they too have faced) not only builds a powerful database of solutions and takes the pressure off your own call center employees, but builds a customer community that works to increase customer loyalty. The most important thing is to ensure a smooth transition between channels. If customers don’t have to repeat information their frustration and the time your agents need to serve them will be greatly reduced. Also be sure that your call center number is still easily found on your web site so that customers can contact you on their terms.

Know who your customer is – all the time
With more and more customers accessing you through different channels at different times, it is becoming increasingly important to take an integrated approach that provides a snapshot of key customer information across all channels. Not only will this allow you to address customers on a personal level as they contact you through a new channel – making them feel important – but it will help your sales team to easily identify cross and up sell opportunities.

Be a social butterfly
Go ahead, spread your wings. With social networking on the rise – 46 percent in 2009 according to Forrester Research – social networks offer a new way to get in touch with your customers, drive web traffic, get customer insights through candid conversations, and provide real-time information to your organization – allowing you to increase the size and loyalty of your audience and maximize your communication efforts. Just be sure to stick to social networks that are relevant to your audience, otherwise you are wasting time with something potential customers will never use.

Mix it up
Make these different channels work for you. By mixing your various channels together and having them play off each other, you can create integrated marketing campaigns to liven up your marketing efforts, differentiate your company, and get your target audience to sit up and take notice.

It’s easy to get hung up on the task of managing the many channels, devices, and social networks that we have today. Instead look at this as a unique opportunity which offers many new ways to approach customers and allows you to differentiate your business through multi-channel, innovative campaigns that spark interest, ignite desire, and most importantly keep your sales engine running.

Listen up and don’t be shy about it
At the end of the day you can do all the work you want creating integrated, personalized communication and it would be all for nothing if you do not actually listen to what your customers are telling you. You do this by taking real steps to improve your business based on the feedback and advice garnered from your customers. But what good is this if your customers don’t even know that you have listened? Take it one step further. Tell them. It goes a long way to toot your own horn and actually tell your customers that you have listened to them and let them know what you have done as a result. Think: You asked, we listened. And since you’ll already have the communication channels set up to do just that, it should be no trouble at all! What a great way to not only communicate, but demonstrate, to your customers that they are important.

Need help creating an effective and innovative integrated communication strategy? Look no further, contact us today!

Whether yours is a small or midsize company, nonprofit, or public institution, if it’s not yet in the social-media space you should know up front that entering and playing in that space is going to take an investment of time and effort.

And even those organizations that have been tweeting and networking for a while should stop chasing social media without the following three essentials in place.

1. A Professional Website

Although some marketing experts claim that blogs are quickly replacing websites, most people will visit company websites to learn more about your products, services, or mission. Your website’s landing pages are also the destination point from external links in online news releases, published articles, videos, or any social-media entries and blogs in which you’ve posted a URL or other hyperlink. If your site isn’t ready for prime time, you can lose those visitors in seconds—and reduce the odds that they’ll come back.

Your organization’s website should have the following elements to attract and retain visitors:

• A professional and consistent design and look that are easy on the eyes
• Easy-to-read text
• The organization’s name and a clear explanation of what it does
• Menu options that are easy to navigate
• Contact information or contact links on every page
• Content that is compelling, informative, credible, authentic, and relevant— focused on the “customer” and error-free
• Few bells and whistles that take too long to load
• Working links

Although 63% of consumers and small-business owners turn to the Internet first for information about local companies, and 82% use search engines to do so, only 44% of small businesses have a website and half spend less than 10% of their marketing budget online, according to research from WebVisible and Nielsen.

Participating in social media can help your organization build brand awareness and possibly generate leads; but before you post links to your site (or landing pages) to entice target audiences with more information, ensure that your site has all the essential components to make it professional and functional.

2. An Understanding of the Social-Media Rules of Engagement

If you jump into the social-media space without a solid understanding of its rules and best practices, you may commit social-media suicide without even realizing it. There are certain protocols that will become evident to you as you read and observe others. Learn from them first, and you’ll avoid alienating your audience.

Here are some valuable rules:

• Know your online identity. “Knowing your online identity as well as letting others know up front who you are is important in establishing trust among the online community.”
• It’s not about you. Social media is about community; it’s not about what you do and what you market. Show interest in others and offer value, or others will see through your self-interests.
• Do not jump in and promote your products, services, or mission. Wait and build your reputation on the networking site first before you begin to promote anything. Contribute to the online community, help solve users’ problems, and develop friends and followers.
• Read and learn first. Observe users and get a feel for their interests, attitudes, and personalities. Take the time to “listen” and learn before delving into the community.
• Don’t mix business with pleasure. Keep your friends and family profiles separate from those that you use for your organization or company. Friends won’t care about your latest promotional effort, and customers won’t care what you did on the weekend.
• Be positive. Don’t say anything that will come back and bite you, and avoid getting defensive when someone says something negative about your organization. Take a deep breath and wear a public-relations hat when you respond.
• Go slowly. You don’t have to join every social-media site at first. Take it slowly, and establish your identity on the one or two sites where your target customers are before you take on more. It’s better to participate more frequently in fewer sites than infrequently in many.

3. An Understanding of Available Online Tools

It’s important to know the available online tools, particularly those for beginners and intermediate participants. If you are unsure of what’s out there, or what you can use – talk to us, and let’s know how we can help you.

Again, start slowly, using the tools that you find easy to learn. You can build on your knowledge and engage other tools as you become more proficient.

Although millions of organizations and companies participate in social media, many have overlooked the aforementioned essentials before taking the leap. If your organization hasn’t yet begun, take the time to develop a social-media strategy that will help guide your participation and content as well as build a foundation for better results. And if you have already been engaged in this space, evaluate how many of those essentials are in place. There’s always room for improvement.