So we are heading into September, month nine of the year. How is your Digital Marketing Strategy working? Are you achieving the desired result you were hoping for? Absent a solid  strategy, that blends and integrates your overall marketing plan for your business, measurement doesn’t mean much. But what if you do have a plan, but have drifted off the mark, now what?

Digital Channels perform Differently by Business Vertical

The good folks over at Hub Spot recently released a report titled On Line Marketing Opportunity Report. There are some great nuggets of information that may shed some light on ways to increase your On Line Marketing yield, and fast track the Digital Highway.

You have finite resources and nearly infinite possible online marketing channels. Where should your company put its marketing dollars and effort to work? Do you wonder if it is worth the effort to start a Twitter account or a Facebook page? Are you having trouble going beyond basic search engine optimization (SEO)? It can be difficult to know if it is worth the time and money to expand the online marketing for your business and even tougher to figure out where the conversation is happening.

Where are Folks Fishing

We have bantered about Fish Where the Fish Are, but where is that really. There may be a better leverage point for your Social Media Program than your current tack. As an example, according to the Hub Spot report, if you are in the real estate business, over 50% of your program shroud be aimed at Search Engines, 30% aimed at a Blog and 20% aimed at Social Media. So, if your resource allocation is not consistent with these numbers, you may want to make a shift.

When the topic of Digital Marketing comes up, people gravitate toward facebook and twitter, and while those platforms serve well to some business verticals, they may not be the best place for your marketing resources.

Blogs and Search Engines

The good news for Real Estate folks are that Blogs and Search Engines play well together. The company blog should be the cornerstone of your digital marketing plan, and with well crafted copy, can serve as a catalyst for enhanced SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

With that, perhaps a better question is, How is your Business Blogging going? That’s what we do here at Digital Sherpa, and we can help you and your business get on the Digital Highway to greater leads, increased web traffic and an overall enhanced Digital Footprint.

If you would like to discuss how Digital Sherpa can help your business get started on a digital marketing plan, heres how you can contact us, We look forward to chatting,

You can find Eric on twitter or ebrown@nci.com

You can find Adam on twitter or ajapko@nci.com

Build a Local and Relevant Following

One of the many questions that surface from our clients as they begin to think about launching a Social Media Strategy for their business is targeted traffic and followers. A local design studio in Kansas City isn’t interested in twitter followers and blog readers from Birmingham, Alabama. And while building a strong twitter following and blog readership isn’t a perfect science, there are many tools, coupled with a little guerrilla marketing that can greatly enhance the overall quality of your digital footprint.

Business is About the Numbers

Business success is and has always been about the numbers, or said differently, results. Growing the size of your digital footprint doesn’t happen without a plan to do so. Can you get some general organic growth, yes, but likely only a trickle without a consistent aggregation method. There are also specific phases of an integrated digital marketing life cycle. We believe that the cornerstone your social media marketing plan is your business blog. As we begin to populate your business blog with quality, relevant posts we also reach out to local folks in the digital space that may have interest in becoming contributors

Where Are They Hiding

There are an array of tools in your digital toolbox to help sharpen your hunting skills. One such tool we use is the search function in tweetdeck to ferret out local, relevant followers and blog contributors. For example, we have an apartment client in downtown Chicago, Left Bank at K Station Apartments that we have created a custom sherpa digital marketing program for. We have launched a life style blog, Left Bank Life to help them drive traffic and rental leads to their web site. We set up search categories for “West Loop”, “Fulton River District” and several other local search strings. When you Fish Where the Fish Are, you catch fish, and we have a series of Guest Bloggers lined up.

Locals Expand Your Digital Footprint

The newspapers used local news and happenings effectively. Local people and stories get talked about. Not only do local folks help you expand your reach, they also bring into the mix their own following, which quickly begins to expand. While not everyone you come across will be suitable writers, many are and they love to tell and share their story. But with that, they also begin to tell your story, as your brand gets talked about. That is how buzz gets started, people talking about your brand, which is why social media works.

Let us help tell your story

With over a thousand digital sherpa clients in several different verticals, we are helping brands and businesses share their story, and expand their digital footprint. We can get people talking, by getting people talking.

If you would like to discuss how NCI can help your business get started on a social media marketing plan, heres how you can contact us, We look forward to chatting,

You can find Eric on twitter or ebrown@nci.com

You can find Adam on twitter or ajapko@nci.com

Our roughly 1,000 Digital Sherpa clients buy one of our Sherpa programs for a variety of reasons.  Of course everyone likes to attract online traffic, find new customers and generate leads.  And while those are outcomes of a good social media and content marketing program, that’s not always what brings our customers to our virtual door step.

Some buy it for the content creation; it takes a lot of time and discipline to write 2 quality blog posts per week.  But there are a great many who buy our program because they want to build a social media presence.

The adoption of businesses in the social media space has been exploding in the past year.  And Sherpa clients are a part of that surge of businesses on that leading edge of social media adoption.  But often when we ask new clients why they want to build a social media presence, the answers range from “because I don’t want to be left behind” to “my son/daughter/grandson/friend said I should” to “I really don’t know, but I feel like I probably should”.

The answer to why you want to be in social media can be found in a recently published report from Comscore.  Comscore is an internet marketing research firm that tracks and reports on online behavior.  Their recent report “Women on the Web:  How Women are Shaping the Internet” gives some great insight into the very question of why you want to be in social media.   The report speaks for itself, but I’ll highlight a few things I found particularly relevant:

• Women are more enagaged than men on the internet
• Social networking is central to women’s internet experience
• Women drive a disproportionate amount of online spending
• 9 out of 10 women in North America visited a social networking site in April 2010

Social networking sites are prime areas for attracting new customers whether you want to lure them to online sales or to visit your showroom.  The audience is there, what are you doing to make sure they find you?

Design Sherpa, our Digital Sherpa product for the home design and remodeling industry, is hosting the What Inspires You? contest.  In this contest Design enthusiasts are competing to win $10,000 and a 10-day trip to Maison & Objet in Paris.

Phase 1 has ended, the judges have spoken and narrowed down the field to 100 winners which are announced daily on the Design Sherpa blog.

Each winner submitted a photo and up to 100 words telling us what inspires them.  Below are a few of the images submitted.  You can view these, the 100 word design inspiration messages and the rest of the 98 winners on the Design Sherpa blog.

Phase 1 winners will now move to the second phase of the contest.  In this phase each contestant will enter a 350 word blog post about an interior or architectural design topic that communicates both his or her unique passion for design and writing style.

Challenges to consider with social media marketing:  In-house, or outsource?

There is little question that a well-executed social media program will generate new business by engaging your customers, increasing your “Google rank” and turbo charging word of mouth.  As an example, in a recent study of over 1500 businesses by Hubspot, a social media research company, they discovered that
business to consumer companies have a high degree of success finding new customers.

A critical question for many businesses is simply should we do this ourselves?  Or should we outsource it?  There are pluses and minuses to each approach but no matter how you proceed — here are the critical success factors that you need to consider.  It is not as simple as throwing up a facebook fan page and hoping for interaction.

1.    Setting up a well-designed blog and linking it to your other social identities (Facebook, Twitter, etc.) is an important first step.  This is not exceedingly difficult, but does require a focussed effort and for someone to learn basics and best practices around blogging and your specific blog.  There is absolutely a learning curve

2.    Staying current with technical changes in social media platforms.  New features are constantly added to Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and the various blog platforms.  Someone needs to stay current, and have it be part of their job.

3.    Creating ongoing content is the single most important key to success in social media marketing. Someone needs to be focussed on the creation of fresh and relevant content (blog posts, Facebook posts, Tweets).  Without it, there will be no engagement, no “Google juice” and no benefit.  There are countless examples of companies starting with the best intentions, getting setup, and then failing over time to continue to create posts and content.

4.    Tagging tagging and search engine optimization (SEO) tasks need to be managed, as this is one of the key benefits of social media marketing.  Whomever is creating content needs to be saavy to making that content as findable as possible by Google and the various search engines.

5.    Measuring results. Traffic, visits, comments, engagement can and should be measured.  Part of any social media program should be measurement and analysis to gauge program effectiveness and make adjustments.

More and more businesses are finding social media highly valuable for generating new customers, and retaining existing ones.  Your next marketing plan should absolutely contain some basic social media marketing efforts — bearing in mind the key success factors outlined above.

If you have a person on staff that has the time and expertise to handle your companies social marketing needs, that’s great.  If that is not working for you or if you seek a more professional perspective, outsourcing might be the answer.

For additional information, contact Bill Pryor at Digital Sherpa, bpryor@nci.com  781-254-3677

Given the explosive growth of facebook —- over 500 million worldwide users, it is very interesting to note that over a third of those users interact with brands. What drives this? The offer of coupons, specials and discounts. That is an amazing number considering Facebook was considered almost exclusively a personal networking tool not that long ago. Companies are becoming more and more innovative when it comes how to communicate through social media, but the real “aha” is that consumers are also evolving in the way they think about communicating, sharing and interacting online. The online behaviors learned initially for personal use, have broadened to other (practical and commercial) areas of people’s lives. For more reading on this topic check out a post called “brands and social media”.

There is little question that a well-executed social media program will generate new business by engaging your customers, increasing your “Google rank” and turbo charging word of mouth. The real question is the classic make or buy decision. Should we do this ourselves? Or should we outsource it? I believe there are 5 reasons to outsource the “heavy lifting” of your social media marketing.

1. TIME….Time hog number one is setting up your blog and linking it to your other social identities (Facebook, Twitter, etc.). This is not exceedingly difficult, but does require a focussed effort and for someone to learn basics and best practices around blogging and other platforms. There is absolutely a learning curve. If you outsource you are letting someone execute these basics who has done it many many times.
2. TIME….Time hog number two is staying current with technical changes in social media platforms. New features are constantly added to Facebook, Twitter, Wordpress. YouTube and the other key social media platforms…..someone needs to stay current, and that takes time.
   

   "Time Hog"

3. TIME….Time hog number three is creating content. The single most important key to success in social media marketing is the ongoing creation of fresh and relevant content. Without it, there will be no engagement, no “Google juice” and no benefit. There are countless examples of companies starting with the best intentions, getting setup, and then failing over time to continue to create posts and content. It takes time.
4. TIME….Time hog number four is making sure that tagging and search engine optimization (SEO) tasks are being managed effectively. Whomever is creating content should be consciously working to make that content as findable as possible by Google and the various search engines.
5. TIME….Time hog number five is metrics. Traffic, visits, comments, engagement can and should be measured. Part of an outsourcing program should be measurement and analysis to gauge program effectiveness and make adjustments.

Social media is a powerful new form of marketing for small and mid-sized businesses, but most run very lean from a staffing standpoint and the basics of a good social media program can absolutely be outsourced. This does not mean that you should wash your hands of active content development and participation—-it simply means that many of the tasks can be efficiently outsourced. In fact, your input on content should be a critical component of any outsourcing program. For an example of custom (outsourced) blogs that have been created for small businesses…take a look at the sample sherpa blogs .

The time to get pumped up has officially arrived. Digital Sherpa is growing, and building a new brand around, well, body building. The NCI company dives into the health and fitness market with the release of HealthFitSherpa, a fixed-cost monthly subscription service aimed at industries focused on health, fitness, beauty, wellness, cosmetic, spa, nutrition and diet.

Following the lead of other successful Digital Sherpa ventures – such as DesignSherpa for the design industry and CommunitySherpa in the apartment community market – HealthFitSherpa offers health industry businesses a chance to expand their digital footprint with an original blog, Facebook page, Twitter presence and more.

The custom-branded approach means to improve search results, increase referrals and leverage social media tools to deliver fresh content and will ultimately impact a company’s bottom line. It’s a proven approach that offers measurable results.

“Social media marketing requires expertise, management and focus,” said Bill Pryor, business development director for HealthfitSherpa. “NCI has successfully created over 1,000 social media programs for local businesses in a variety of industries. HealthfitSherpa will now serve the health and fitness industry, which has natural communities ideal for this type of client and community engagement.”

Learn more about HealthFitSherpa here.

Our  friend and customer service advocate, Becky Carroll penned an interesting post over on her blog, Customers Rock. The jest of the post is the significant disconnect with what companies think they are delivering relative to Customer Experience, and what their customers purport.

Understanding the principles of customer experience and actually delivering them do not necessarily go hand in hand. In 2008 Bain & Company found that while 80 percent of companies believe they deliver a superior experience to their customers, only 8 percent of those companies’ customers report having such an experience. Similarly, a CMO Council study found that fifty-six percent of technology vendors perceive themselves as being extremely customer-centric, compared with only 12% of their customers.

There is a clear disconnect between the experience companies think they deliver and what customers experience, perceive and – more importantly – desire. It’s not about what you think… it’s about what your customers think.

In order to determine whether you are disappointing, meeting or exceeding your customers’ expectations, you need to continuously listen. And it’s not as easy as it sounds. It goes far beyond monitoring the chatter on Twitter and other social media platforms or performing your annual customer satisfaction survey. It requires soliciting customer feedback on a regular, ongoing basis at multiple touch points, and closing the loop to address issues and understand root cause.

How to Bridge the Gap

I think part of the issue stems from confusing Customer Service with Customer Experience. It is much easier to Enhance the Customers Experience than to deliver stealer Customer Service. We confuse great customer service as being Ritz Carlton or Nordstrom, it isn’t, as customer service varies based on the product type, brand and product price point.

Folks can argue that if they want, but you simply do not expect the same level of customer service at McDonalds, a fast food chain as you do at Mortons, a high-end steakhouse. The problem with focusing on increased Customer Service is, irrespective of your product price point, folks always expect a little more “service” than your product offering is designed to deliver. Trying to out service your competitors is a race to eroding profits. I am not suggesting that a company only deliver minimal customer service, but am pointing out there are differences.

However, companies that shift their thinking toward Enhancing the Customers Experience should have a much easier time, and really speaks to shifts in your behavior to align with your brand. This was an epiphany moment for us at Urbane, as once we started behaving, consistent with our Brand, things became much easier and more clear, all of which centered around Enhancing the Residents Experience at each of the touch points throughout the resident life cycle.

What are your thoughts about this? Is there a difference between Customer Service and customer Experience?