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Interview with Laura Ferrera, Community Manager at KWAWU

Publicado en 12/06/2013 por admin — Sin Comentarios ↓

We continue with our series of interviews with Social Media professionals with today’s guest Laura Ferra Van Thienen. Laura holds a degree in Public Relations and now Works as a Community Manager and content manager with KWAWU. She also develops social media training courses at Inmarkelearning.

You can follow Laura Ferrera at:

  • Tell us about the projects you are working on at the moment.

Right now I manage content and am Community Manager at Kwawu. I also do consultancy work in online marketing y Community Management.

  • Which social networks is your company active in? In your experience, which do you consider the most productive and why?

My company is presently on Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin and G+. In my experience, both personal and professional, I think the most productive network is Twitter, due to the immediacy of interaction with your followers, the personal attention and the feedback, which is so important on the 2.0 path we are on right now.

  • In the last few years, we have seen a boom in the role of community manager. Do you think that just anyone can perform this role?

Not just anyone can be a Community Manager. I think that to be successful in this profession you should have studied a relevant degree in communication, journalism or public relations and have complimented that with some training in community management. Communication skills are very important, as is empathy and not all professionals have these. This doesn’t mean that there aren’t professionals from other fields who can communicate well, just that there fewer of them.

  • How would you define the profile of a good Community Manager?

The key skills you need to have are people skills, empathy and communication skills. You must be able to use measurement tools to inform your client or company as to the progress being made on their social networks. You must also have a good knowledge of marketing because, at the end of the day, you are “selling” your company or product through social networks.

  • Do you think the role of Community Manager will still be around in 4-5 years?

I’m sure it will continue but as a constantly evolving profession. I’m sure it will not be the same as it is today.

  • What are the tools that you consider essential to carrying out and measuring an effective social media strategy?

I think every Community Manager must use the tool that they feel is best adapted to the information needs of their client. In my case, I use Hootsuite, Klout, SocialBro and commun.it.

  • Do you think that coupon and offer tools are productive and interesting for companies?

It Depends on the marketing strategy, and also on whether the product being offered is worthwhile, provides a service to the client and encourages some feedback from the follower.

  • How do you think the issue of negative comments or crisis situations should be addressed in social networks?

Negative comments are one thing and a crisis is something very different. Anyway, whatever the case, the community manager must always have the humility to apologize if they have made an error and mediate between the company and client.  

  • Do you consider that companies in Spain are more aware than other Europeans of the benefits social networking can bring?

They are still long way off, the awareness just isn’t there yet, many still don’t let their employees use social media, and a lot of bosses and directors don’t have Twitter or Facebook accounts. If they knew the benefits of social media, many company presidents would have their own blog to explain in person what their company sells or does

  • Finally, have you tried HiSocial? And if so, what did you think?

From what I have seen it’s a very intuitive tool, I haven’t used it, but I’m sure I will soon as it looks very easy to use.

Thanks very much Laura for your sharing your views about Social Media today!!!

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Interview with Sandra Cámara, Community Manager and journalist

Publicado en 05/06/2013 por admin — Sin Comentarios ↓

Today we interview Sandra Cámara, who has a degree in Spanish Philology specializing  in Digital Journalism and Communication, and who currently works as a Community Manager, blogger and journalist.

You can follow Sandra at:

  • Tell the readers a little bit about yourself.

I’m Sandra Cámara and I’m many things outside my work. But if we are focusing on my professional and educational life, I have a degree in Spanish Philology and specialized in Digital Journalism and Communication, and I cannot live without sharing what I and others are thinking. I have been writing ever since I was a child and will do so until I’m old, and while I express myself with my words, I will try to play along the way and forge my path with the people around me.

  • Tell us what projects you are working on at the moment?

I’m developing my own brand as a community manager and am excited to be a female social media entrepreneur. I implement online communication strategies for companies that have decided to project their activities onto the social networks and also offer personal training. I am responsible for communications in Iniciador Granada and I do some networking whenever they let me.

  • S productive? Why?

I write content for the blog twice a week and then for the next few days spread it around Facebook, Twitter, google+ and Linkedin. Also, I try to share my posts in debate groups and forums where you get feedback directly from the other users. Linkedin and Facebook also have a system for sharing that I can highly recommend.  

I also contribute to Espacios Blog, a blogger collective that discusses marketing and social media.

Every company relies on the social network best suited to its activities. In my case, the blog and the forums generate more virality and participation for my brand.

  • In the last few years, we have seen a boom in the role of community manager. Do you think that just anyone can perform this role?

Since some companies believe that anyone can open a page in Facebook and stick some content on it, there are people who evidently devote themselves to that. But this is not what being a community manager is all about, to get results in social media, it is essential to create a strategy based on the creation of good content that is backed up with the tools needed to keep track of their actions.

  • How would you define the profile of a good Community Manager?

Anyone who wants to be a community manager must have a passion for communication and new technologies and be willing to live simultaneously in the offline and online world. They must be an excellent communicator with great language skills, know how to listen to their audience, have the flexibility to adapt to their customers, be creative, have expertise in social networks, blogs and SEO, and the capacity for great organization and planning.

  • Do you think the role of Community Manager will still be around in 4-5 years?

Well, since I just had my fortune told (only kidding)…I don’t know what will happen in the future, but what I do know is that if the community manager no longer exists, there will still be a great demand for marketing strategy and online communication professionals. The future is happening already and is will now inevitably be on the Internet. Companies will end up accepting that without an online strategy, they will be left outside the marketplace.

  • What are the tools that you consider essential in carrying out and measuring an effective social media strategy?

Tools used for planning, such as hootsuite or bufferaap, and tools for evaluating the impact of our actions such as socialbro, Facebook statistics and Google Analytics. Social Mention and Klout are good to find out about your influence and reputation online. Also, I recommend RSS readers, I use Netvibes, that help bring different sources together, along with other tools for organizing your time and tasks such as Wunderlist.

  •  Do you think that coupon and offer tools are productive and interesting for companies?

Yes, provided they are well managed. I think that it is a dynamic and original way to attract customers, promote interaction with users and gain their confidence.

  • How do you think the issue of negative comments or crisis situations should be addressed in social networks?

I do not think is the solution is to remove the negative comments, I think it is more effective to respond to comments as soon as possible with a response or solution to their problem. Acknowledging mistakes and offering solutions are always welcomed by people more than to deny, lie and argue like in a school playground. Big brands have developed the art of turning their crises into opportunities. Who doesn’t remember the strong criticism received by McDonalds over the quality of their meat? Now their menus are filled with vegetables, salads and fish and people are convinced that taking their children to McDonalds provides them with a healthy diet.

  • Do you consider that companies in Spain are more aware than other Europeans of the benefits social networking can bring?

Fortunately, more and more companies are applying online communication and social networking strategies to their businesses. In my experience, this is especially true with small businesses that want to leverage the power of the Internet to reach more customers. The process is slow, at least in Andalusia, but is progressing ok. I guess we still have a bit to do to get to the same level as other European companies.

  • Finally, have you tried HiSocial? And if so, what did you think?

I have not tried it yet, but it looks like a useful project for the creation and management of promotions on social networks and the web. I won’t hesitate to try it next time I have to design some campaigns.

Thanks very much Sandra for giving us this excellent interview about Social Media!

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Interview with Rolando Cuevas, CEO and Founder of CommunityNext

Publicado en 29/05/2013 por admin — Sin Comentarios ↓

Today we interview Rolando Cuevas, CEO and Founder of CommunityNext, as well as Community Manager and Content Manager 2.0. Rolando is also a trainer and volunteer for various NGOs

You can follow Rolando at:

  • How would you define Social Media? In your experience, which is the most productive social network and why?

Social Media is the captain of Web 2.0, steering the conversation across the Seas of the Internet. I love Twitter, it brings the most content and speed, and its where you get immediate results, statistically speaking.

  • In recent years there has been a boom in the role of Community Manager. How would you define the role and what are the qualities you think one should have?

Well, as is often said, they are the administrators of the image in front of a community. The desired qualities are to give Confidence, be Proactive, be Positive, capture Contacts, encourage internal and external Communication, and Preach the word.

  • What tools do you consider as essential in carrying out and measuring an effective social media strategy?

My way to get a good measurement is by using SocialBro and Buffer, among other things.

  • Do you think coupons, sweepstakes and contests are productive and interesting  tools for companies?

I don’t think they are interesting for the companies so much as for the clients. They break down the rules of participation between you – the company, and the target audience

  • Do you think that companies in Spain are more aware than other Europeans of the benefits social networking can bring?

Actually, I see a considerable advantage in America, where they take the issue seriously. But with regards to Spain / Europe, I do not see any significant differences, because neither looks to the imminent future.

  • What advice would you give a company beginning to develop its presence in Social Media?

The first thing is to consider the gameplan for the new member of your team, who must work very closely with your marketing department, and be very clear in what you require  and when you require it in order to achiebve excellent short-term results.

  • What new trends and developments do you think we will see in 2013 ?

Unfortunately, we will see the restructuring of many large companies due to the bad internal and external management of their customers, now is the time to save ourselves from our own mistakes.

  • “Engagement” is currently a very fashionable concept.  Ever heard of it? How do you understand it with regards to social media?

Yes I know the term and it is no longer just an expression of motivation and good intentions in businesses. It is the cornerstone of social networking, because if the internal customer isn’t happy and interacting with your brand, you can not expect it of the external customer, who will ultimately shape the results and reputation that the brand has on the social networks.

  • Finally, have you tried HiSocial? And if so, what did you think?

I haven’t managed to try it out yet, but I can say that it is visually attractive, simple, and puts no limitations on who uses it in terms of programming skills; but it like any tool, what worries me is that it should be very clear who the end user is, and who should be using it.

Thanks Roland for sharing your thoughts about Social Media with us!!

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Publicado en: Interviews

Online Promotions

Publicado en 24/04/2013 por admin — Sin Comentarios ↓

Online promotions are an effective way for our company to achieve different and interesting marketing objectives. For example:

  • Increase brand awareness
  • Attract new followers to our social networks
  • Increase fan loyalty
  • Increase the “engagement” of our brand with our fans
  • Promote increased conversions and sales

In this post, we will look at the various considerations we should keep in mind to make our promotions a success.

Creating the promotion

There are basically two ways to create a promotion:

  • Hire a programmer/designer to create the promotion for us. This option has the advantage of being adaptable to match 100% of our needs. However, this option also has some major downsides:
  • Increased costs
  • Long implementation time
  • Unproven solutions, error-prone
  • Less features
  • It can’t be adapted to new requirements
  • It can’t be adapted to changes in the social network rules and regulations
  • Use of an external tool. It is true that this type of platform does not offer solutions for specific needs, but it does have the benefit of solving the problems outlined above. HiSocial offers a white-label solution that enables you, at the design-level, to fully tailor the “look & feel” of the promotions to be consistent with your online and corporate identity. This is achieved through personalized CSS access, where you can configure all aspects of the promotions graphics.

personalizacion_css

 

Setting targets and time frames

It is important to establish a timetable governing how we will implement and disseminate our promotion before launching it. Better yet, the ideal is to design an annual plan that can be rolled out over the following year and that includes: the types of promotions we are going to make, what form they are going to take and how they will be organized. Another post talks about creating a road map for a social media strategy. I refer you to this post, so that you can see how it can be applied specifically to online promotions. To summarize the main idea of that post: you need to set clear goals (you can see more about here)

promo4

 

The scope of the online promotion

We should be clear that, when we talk about online promotions, we should not restrict ourselves to social media promotions, since we can use the promotions directly on our own website. There is no doubt that the social networks are very important, but as I always say, our own website is equally important if not more so. In fact, the ideal solution would be cross-platform, and would distribute our promotion through various channels.

 

Types of online promotion

There are many types of promotion, but the most common are:

Competitions: A competition is a form of promotion characterized by the winner being chosen on “merit”. The following link will lay out some of the things to keep in mind when organizing a competition, how to create an online competition. Alternatively, we also have a guide to creating online contests with HiSocial.

Sweepstakes: In contrast to competitions, in a sweepstake the winner is chosen randomly. Here at HiSocial, we are currently working on the sweepstake module, which will be available shortly.

Coupons and offers: This type of promotion is particularly attractive as it can have a great impact on possible future sales. We must clearly distinguish between printable coupons (for “physical”shops) and electronic coupons (for e-commerce). At HiSocial, we offer specific solutions for each. To learn more about this topic I recommend you read this post: online coupons.

Digital downloads: Under this heading we include all those promotions that offer a gift to the user in digital format (white papers, pictures, wallpapers, songs, demos etc) These promotions, while often neglected, are very effective. We encourage you to read this instructive post: virtual gifts.

Legislation

There should be little need to stress the importance of this issue. Generally, every country establishes its own set of rules that we must follow. Obviously, it is impossible to study each piece of existing legislation in detail here, so we will limit ourselves to giving some general recommendations, and advise you to consult your lawyer about any specifics that may be applicable to you:

  • Be transparent: State exactly what you are offering and all the requirements needed to enter the promotion. For example, if you organize a contest or sweepstake, lay out in great detail the terms and conditions.
  • Identify yourself: Provide all the relevant data surrounding your company, so that users know exactly who is offering the promotion.
  • Personal information: If you collect any personal data during your promotion, you should be aware that there are many laws that lay out what standards need to be met. For example, explain what you will do with the information collected, so users can properly exercise their rights. This should be set out in a document detailing your companies online privacy policy.
  • Carry out to the letter everything promised in your promotion, otherwise the image of your company will be severely tarnished, and obviously, there could be legal consequences for noncompliance.

Social media rules and regulations

Along with the points made in the previous section, if your promotion is spread over a range of social networks, you must consider the different regulations for each of them in turn. In these links you can find information for some of the most popular networks:

https://twitter.com/tos
http://www.facebook.com/legal/terms
http://www.google.com/+/policy/pagesterm.html

It is outside the scope of this post to go over the specifics of each network.: We will instead discuss one common mistake on Facebook. Facebook clearly states that “Promotions on Facebook must be Administered Within Apps on Facebook.com, Either on a Canvas Page or a Page App”, which means that we can not make promotions directly on our Facebook page, but must instead use an external application. There are many companies around today that completely ignore this fact, and are in danger of being “banned” from the network.

Distribution and virality

A promotion that nobody can sees is useless Thats why we must strive to properly disseminate all of our online promotions. A good idea is to carry out some kind of advertising campaign to help spread the promotion. To compliment this, we must ensure that our promotion creates Virality, as this will greatly contribute to the dissemination. At HiSocial, we do a lot of work specifically on this issue, as we feel it is of special importance.

Here are two interesting links with respect to this:

How to get more likes on Facebook?

How to attract more Followers on Twitter?

 

Need more information?

If you want more information surrounding the things discussed in this post, I recommend you look at the following presentation

Now that you know the secrets of successful online promotions, why not get moving?  and start to…..

Create my own free promotion.

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Publicado en: contests, Coupons, Downloads, Promotions Online

Virtual Gifts as part of an online marketing strategy

Publicado en 22/04/2013 por admin — Sin Comentarios ↓

Virtual gifts are a really useful tool – although an all too often neglected one – to strengthen your online marketing strategy.  In this post, we will analyze some their finer points and explain in detail how to use them as a way of promoting online. But to begin with, here is a brief definition:

What do we mean by virtual gift?

A virtual gift is anything that is made from digital material, and therefore downloadable, that you can use to reward visitors to your website or social pages, foster brand awareness and further strengthen your overall online marketing strategy.

When we talk here of digital material, we will not include those promotions that consist of printable coupons that can later be exchanged for “physical” products. This second type of promotion is also very usful, but falls outside the scope of this post. If you are interested in this type of promotion, you can find out more by following this link: Coupons and offers in social media.

Now we have the definition clear in our minds, let’s take a look at some of the most common types of virtual gift.

Types of virtual gift

Really, there are many possibilities, and each promoter can develop their own ideas in relation to their own potential audience.

  • Ebooks or white papers. When speaking about online gifts, many people forget that they are also valid for B2B businesses. Ebooks, market studies, etc are a type of promotion that regularly works well here on HiSocial. You can see an example by following this link: Effective social media marketing.

  • Images. Another possibility is to reward visitors with some kind of image. For example, screen savers, exlusive photo collections, different types of gif, jpg, png, etc.
  • Music. This type of promotion is obviously ideal for any kind of music group, but there are also many other possibilities, from advertising campaigns that let fans download the soundtrack to an advert, to podcasts containing interviews etc.

There exist lots of other possibilities as the digital format has such a wide variety of materials. Without wanting to dwell on it for too long, lets see a few more examples: promotional videos, software demos, song lyrics, guidebooks, pre-recorded TV or radio programs, and so on.

Now let’s see how to distribute our virtual gifts.

Distribution channels

Here are the most common:

  • The web page. While our main objective is to promote our social networks, we should never forget the importance of our own webpage.  Here we have a number of possibilities, from announcing it with a banner, to sectioning off an area of the main page, or even creating a separate download area. To do this, HiSocial offers you an online assistant to help create banners for your webpage more easily.

 

  • Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin. If we are talking directly to the end consumers, Twitter and Facebook are generally the environments in which these types of promotions work best. However, if we are targeting professional groups, Linkedin and Twitter are a better alternative.
  • More possibilities. While the most common ways of distributing our promotions are outlined above, HiSocial also allows you to automatically create a landing page for use on any type of web site.

Another important point to keep in mind is how users will access the promotions we are offering.

Different ways to provide access to virtual gifts

To access a virtual gift, we can ask the user perform certain distinct actions (or combinations of actions), which act in our own best interest.

  • There is, of course, the option to offer a shortcut to the virtual gift without any preconditions whatsoever. While it’s true that this will easily facilitate the download, you may well be losing many hidden advantages, these will be presented later when we talk about the other forms of access.
  • Access via an online form. Here we ask the visitor to enter data that we will find useful in planning future campaigns.  We could ask, for example, just for an email (to carry out permission marketing), or for more extensive information (name and address for direct marketing campaigns), or limit ourselves to asking for a telephone number (for sales campaigns).
  • Fan only access. If our main aim is to increase our presence on Facebook, we could insist that anybody wishing to download the gift must first become a fan of our page. In this way we also succeed in rewarding our existing fans, and thereby increase their loyalty to our Facebook page.
  • Pay with a Tweet. This method is particularly viral, because by insisting on a Tweet, the promotion, along with the virtual gift, is widely distributed on Twitter.

Now, to bring this post to a close are two indispensible pieces of advice that will make your virtual gift a success.

Final advice

  • It is obvious that if nobody knows about your promotion, it will be far less successful. If you only have a few visitors on your website and a few fans and followers on your social networks, it is almost essential to compliment your promotion with an advertising campaign, either offline or even better, online.
  • Viral elements. Functions such as “publish on my wall”, “share on Twitter”, and such like, are a great way to distribute your virtual gift. However, if you are a HiSocial user, you needn’t worry about it. Our platform comes fully intergrated with all these viral optionsSmile.

Now that you know the secrets of successful virtual gifts, why not get moving?  And start to…..

Create my own virtual gift for free

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Publicado en: Downloads, Promotions Online

Coupons and offers in social media. Keys to success.

Publicado en 28/02/2013 por Albert Mora — Sin Comentarios ↓

Numerous studies show that receiving coupons and discounts is one of the main reasons why consumers follow brands on social networks.

cupon

Source

It is logical therefore, that companies strive to use this strategy to attract new social followers, more so when you consider that this type of follower can directly generate new purchases of products and services. In other words, the ROI of this type of strategy can be significantly greater than for other types of social media strategies.

Companies basically have two ways to create coupons and discounts online:

- Through specialist portals (like Groupon)
- Creating their own online promotions

The first strategy has one great advantage: the increased coverage that our deals will receive. The site itself takes charge of this, and has all of the appropriate means at its disposal (web traffic, emails databases etc). Nevertheless, this type of strategy does have serious disadvantages, among which we can highlight:

- The discounts that these portals demand (Often in excess of 50%)
- The commission that the portal takes from any sales (this can also be in excess of 50%)
- The negative impact on traffic to our social networks
- We will not have a database of the participant’s details to carry out subsequent promotional activities.

Creating our own promotions circumvents these disadvantages and gives us total flexibility over our business strategy. But……it’s not all plain sailing and as I’m sure the reader will realize, it also has a major drawback, if the coupon is not properly distributed it is of no use to us at all.

Now let’s see some essential features to help our discount coupon or promotional offer be a success:

- The offer that we make. It’s logical that our potential market will respond better to a more attractive offer. Let’s look at some of the things to keep in mind.
If we are talking about discounts, the percentage of discount we offer, and on what product we offer it, will have a logical and intertwined effect. Bigger discounts on top products will receive a greater response than token discounts on marginal products. But the reductions do not have to be limited in solely monetary terms, instead there are many other possibilities such as

Free samples
2×1 offers
Easier financing
Extension to guarantees etc

- Distributing the offers. The second basic pillar around which the success of our promotional offers is built is their distribution.  An offer that doesn’t even have the minimum level of diffusion is of no use to us whatsoever. The possibilities to spread the promotions are infinite, we are going to briefly look at some of them.

  • Social Media. We should publish the offer over all of the social networks in which our company retains an active presence.
  • Our webpage. An obvious, but often forgotten, place to announce our promotions is our own webpage or blog, if we have one.
  • Newsletter. We have a database of people who have given their prior and express consent to receive information about our company; this can be very useful in distributing our promotions.
  • Publicity campaigns. If all of the above methods do not have sufficient force to promote our offers, it will be essential to carry out an advertising campaign. Online campaigns often have a better cost to benefit ratio and, specifically campaigns on Facebook and Google Adwords, can give us excellent results.

HiSocial is characterized by being multi-platform and allowing the distribution of deals through various distribution channels. We should take advantage of this characteristic to distribute our promotion as widely as possible.

- Virality, confidence and aesthetic elements. Finally we will look at some other complementary aspects that will help us achieve a greater diffusion of our coupon or offer.
Let’s start with virality. It is important that our promotion contains viral elements to help with its diffusion. Participants in our promotion should be able to easily share our coupon on all of the major social networks.

On an aesthetic level, the promoters should be sure that the images chosen, just like the text that accompanies them, are as attractive as possible. It’s worth taking the time to choose an image that will “seduce” our potential participants, and write a coherent and descriptive text. It is precisely this aspect that is key to transmitting confidence to the users, to adequately describing our company, to clearly specifying the details of the offer and to specifying our privacy policy and legal details of the promotion. This in turn will help to create confidence in the contest, and consequently, the number of participants in our promotions.

Having said all this, it is important to note that experience will also help us improve results and understand what kinds of deal work better. HiSocial lets you create an unlimited number of promotions, so we suggest you take advantage of this feature to improve your overall promotional activity.

Now that you know the secrets of making a successful offer, why not get moving?  and start to…..

 Make my own free promotion.

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Publicado en: Coupons, hisocial, Promotions Online
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