Azure Collier http://azurecollier.com I'm a marketing Swiss Army Knife: social media marketer, blogger, ex-journalist, video editor, podcaster, ex-public relations professional. I also shop - a lot.
Need proof that social media marketing works? Check out the movie Chef.
Chef Carl Casper (Jon Favreau) starts a Twitter feud with a food critic in the movie Chef.
When I went to the theater to see the movie Chef last weekend, I expected a quirky independent comedy with a lot of delicious cooking scenes. And I wasn't disappointed. But what I didn't predict is a subplot about the power of social media and how it helps small businesses. It's a movie about marketing!
In case you're not familiar with the film, Chef is about a Los Angeles celebrity chef, Carl Casper, (Jon Favreau) who gets in a public Twitter feud with a food critic and loses his job. He decides to start a food truck with the help of his son and a former co-worker.
The trio finds their footing in the food truck biz by taking a culinary road trip across the South, and this is where the marketing kicks in. Carl's 11-year-old son Percy starts tweeting – using his dad's Twitter handle (which has tens of thousands of followers thanks to the feud with the food critic) – about their itinerary. And he creates a Facebook page that is quickly filled with road trip and food photos. They're greeted with long lines in each city and the movie does a great job visually of showing how social media helps generate new customers. The folks waiting in line start typing on their smartphones, and Twitter graphics appear like thought bubbles over their heads as they write tweets about the food truck. Once the customers press "tweet," the tweets turn into a flock of Twitter birds that fly off to spread their messages to the followers of each person in the line.
Boom. Social visibility and word of mouth marketing.
I know it's a movie, and in an ideal word, every single customer would tweet about their favorite businesses like the people in the food truck lines. And every business would send out interesting, relevant messages to their followers and be greeted with lines around the block.
But don't ignore the reality here. Social media does work. You don't have to be perfect, but you do have to be visible and use social media as an extension of who you are and what you do. If you have the right amount of personality and engaging content, you can connect with customers who will spread the word about you to their networks and attract new customers.
Marketing won't save your business. Unless you respect it.
I got an unexpected phone call recently from an acquaintance that was calling for a friend. The friend owns a business near a college campus, and is desperate to reach out to the student population. She wanted to see if I would be available to do some freelance work to for the business' social media marketing.
I asked if she had some goals in mind to accomplish, and how much time they would need someone to spend. She didn't know. They hadn't been doing any social media marketing, or any marketing in general. How much did she want so spend? "As little as possible," she said.
And yet, the business owner spoke as if Facebook and Twitter might be her last hope to reach out to the college population.
I declined the freelance gig. This business has a lot of work to do. They're starting from scratch, and that's going to take some time that I don't have. I've already got a full-time job that I love.
I walked away from the situation feeling really annoyed. And I tried to figure out why.
It's not because the business owner doesn't use or understand technology or social media. It's because the business owner obviously knows that marketing is important for the survival of her business, but doesn't respect it enough to spend time or money on it.
So put that together, and for some people, social media marketing means promoting your business using some marketing stuff that they don't understand themselves by talking about it on these free tools that you use in your spare time to pass the time. They just can't make the connection on how this all works together and why it's valuable. How does this possibly work?
Well it's working for some people, isn't it? Social media is how people are hearing about what's happening at their favorite businesses or companies. It's how they discover things they want to buy – to spend their time and money on. Twitter and Facebook are now publicly traded companies. They're valuable communication tools. They're making money. And they're helping plenty of other people make money. We've moved past that cliché about how social media is about posting what you had for breakfast, haven't we?
Marketing takes skill. It's not something that just happens. And marketing ain't free. I know that some businesses can't afford to hire a marketing person. And if you can't do that, you need to be open and willing to learn a little bit yourself or to assign someone on your staff to do so. As you grow your business, you'll eventually have the money to dedicate to a full time marketing position on your staff. But you're never going to get there unless you step out of your comfort zones, overcome misconceptions, and accept and respect marketing enough to make it a priority.
As Instagram's popularity grew in 2013, people were interested in getting the most out of their Instagram content and measuring how effective it was. This post gives you 3 tools to do that – Statigram, SimplyMeasured, and Twitrland.
If you've been taking Instagram photos, they probably look better than other photos you've snapped with your smartphone, thanks to Instagram's magical filters. So it makes sense that Instagram users want to show those off in their Facebook cover photo. This post has instructions on how to use PicStitch, Statigram, and InstaCover to do just that.
Most marketing blogs are focused on how to create and measure effective content for Facebook business pages. I really haven't seen anything to show how your network of friends and family interact with your personal Facebook profile. This post looks at 3 tools – WolframAlpha's Facebook Report, Klout, and My Social Strand – and how to analyze what content your personal network likes.
In 2013, Facebook made several changes to the look of its News Feed and what kind of content is seen by fans. Those changes reflect something that Facebook users have been telling us for a while: they want more photos and videos.
Thanks to all of my readers for checking out my posts this year! I look forward to writing more posts to help you with social media marketing in 2014. Happy New Year!