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The traditional media advertising mindset and your social media #fail

April 23, 2012 By Gregg McLachlan Leave a Comment

Traditional media advertising (newspapers, magazines, radio) is about push marketing. It’s all one way. Unfortunately, many businesses attempt to transfer this approach to social media.

Social media isn’t about push advertising. It’s not meant to be used for only tweeting about open time slots for a hairdresser. Or only tweeting about real estate open houses. If these are all you’re using Twitter for, you will end up with few followers. If I’m not interested in making a hair salon appointment, or visiting a real estate open house, I’ve got no reason to follow you.

“We need to start doing social media!” No, you don’t!

April 10, 2012 By Gregg McLachlan Leave a Comment

I hear it almost every day. Organizations and businesses say “We need to start doing social media!”

Ugh. That sounds like you want to join a stampede-like crowd akin to the wildebeest migration across the plains of Africa. “Everybody’s doing social media, so we need to, too!” Stop looking at social media as doing. Start thinking in terms of what it truly represents. Here’s what you should be thinking when considering social media . . .

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Filed Under: Social media Tagged With: social media for rural businesses in ontario, social media in rural ontario canada

Go beyond regular email, mail marketing lists. Build social lists too

March 22, 2012 By Gregg McLachlan 2 Comments

Most organizations build email and traditional mail marketing lists. But fewer organizations build social lists. It’s time to rethink your list building in the social media era.

Twitter is an ideal platform to build social lists. You can make your lists public or private. And you can build as many lists as you like.

Pinterest: My growing collection of social media infographics

March 13, 2012 By Gregg McLachlan Leave a Comment

If you haven’t started to check out Pinterest, I highly encourage you to take a peek. I’m sure you’ve already heard that Pinterest is visually-oriented. People are putting it to all kinds of uses to ‘show’ with images rather than ‘tell’ with text.

I don’t proclaim to be a Pinterest expert (actually, nobody can really call themselves an expert on this newbie social media platform just yet). But I can definitely see its value for sharing content.

Check out the various boards I have started on my Pinterest account, and especially my growing collection of social media infographics. P.S. Pinterest is still by invite only. If you’d like an invite, just leave me a comment on this post!)

Filed Under: Social media Tagged With: Pinterest Brantford Ontario, Pinterest Norfolk County Ontario, social media in Norfolk County

The simplest (and most crucial) Facebook app you’re missing on your fan page

March 8, 2012 By Gregg McLachlan Leave a Comment

When was the last time you did an audit of the communications effectiveness of your Facebook fan page? Organizations and businesses often go to great lengths to create and maintain a fan page. Yet most overlook one important aspect: Can your fans, non-fans or potential supporters/donors/customers easily reach you?

The answer is often no. Sure, your fans can post on your wall and comment. And you’ll get a notification. If they dig around your fan page under your Info tab, they may even find contact information. But seriously, this all adds up to far too much clicking and too much searching.

There is a better way.

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Filed Under: Communications, Social media, Web Tagged With: Contact form for Facebook fan page

Guidelines for cover images on Facebook Timeline brand pages

February 29, 2012 By Gregg McLachlan Leave a Comment

Facebook has announced that its new Timeline will be rolled out for pages (brands, companies) effective March 30. You can actually play with your existing page in the Timeline format now, but not publish it until you’re ready.

Most importantly, Facebook has issued its guidelines for what you can do with your cover image on your new Timeline page. There are restrictions, sorry to dash your hopes that you will soon be able to publish big ‘SALE’ graphics on your business or organization Facebook page.

Here are Facebook’s new cover image guidelines for Timeline pages for brands:

10 ways to give your Twitter account a fast tuneup

January 26, 2012 By Gregg McLachlan Leave a Comment

It’s easy to forget the little things when you’re tweeting up a storm. One of the most forgotten parts of any social media account is the need to continually review your profile wording and how you are best putting forth your brand. So take a few minutes and start putting your Twitter account through a little tuneup.

Here are 10 easy things to do on your Twitter account today:

Why most businesses can’t ignore teens on Twitter

January 12, 2012 By Gregg McLachlan Leave a Comment

Sadly, far too many businesses today are still dismissing Twitter as a useless tool with little value. These businesses will often point to tweets by teens as an example.

Here’s what a business owner recently told me: “I do have to wonder what “VALUE” and what impact promoting Twitter does …. I wouldn’t get caught up in that culture personally.”

The business owner used a specific example of a tweet by a teen: “$84 dollars later “well there’s a nice t-shirt”#happybirthday bearf—–.”

Customer service failure: When companies forget about the power of social media

January 5, 2012 By Gregg McLachlan Leave a Comment

Social media is an incredible tool for companies and businesses to showcase their public relations expertise at dealing with customers. On the other hand, used the wrong way, it can be a public relations bomb (and for all you hipster language folks, I don’t mean da bomb, or any other bomb in a good kinda way).

Take this example of a US woman who recently purchased an electronic device from BodyBugg and soon discovered it to be defective. She emailed the customer support department (the company includes email as an option to reach them for support) twice within a week and did not get a response. Frustrated, the customer took her anger to Facebook.

Small businesses: The BIG risk behind using Facebook as substitute for website

December 19, 2011 By Gregg McLachlan Leave a Comment

Anyone can try this experiment. Oh, um, wait a minute! Many of you probably have done it. If the results annoy you, you are not alone.

Social media experts often do tests where they attempt to engage big brands in discussion on social media. The results are usually less than flattering. Media tends to be the worst, according to one recent study, responding to only one per cent of wall posts. Overall, the study found only five per cent of wall posts ever receive a response. That’s bad. How bad? On a tool called social media, it’s viewed as being ignorant.