One thing that I have learned recently is that you want your header to have something that someone would search on Google. I can picture it right now, a small business owner, or a person who is intrigued to learn about what all this talk about “social media” is, hovering over their keyboard, typing in seven words that could revolutionize the way that they run their business. I hope that person finds this exact post.

Currently I am a marketing assistant at Bellingham Marine, the world’s most comprehensive marina builder in the world. There is no lie about it. Bellingham Marine has locations all across the world, and has built more marinas than any of their competitors. I started my position as a marketing intern in June of 2014. One of my objectives upon entering this position was, “Build a social media presence”. My first thought was, “piece of cake!”. I have been messing around with social media since MySpace, and have skills in just about every social media platform. But as I started to brainstorm how I was going to build a large audience on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn, I came to the realization that it was going to be a lot harder than I thought, and it wasn’t going to happen overnight.

Before I continue with my personal story about creating a social media presence at Bellingham Marine, I want discuss what social media actually is.

A fantastically cool company by the name of Moz created an eBook titled, The Beginners Guide to Social Media. This eBook give you the serious low-down on what social media actually is, how to master it, and provides countless advice on techniques to incorporate into your social media plan. There is a lot more to social media than posting pictures, making statuses, getting likes, and comments.

Social Media is a way for people to communicate and interact online. More and more businesses are using social media because it is a way for businesses to interact with their target audience. Businesses are able to come off as a human being that display empathy, kindness, humor, and authenticity. This is valuable because it really shows that you care about you customer, it show that you want to engage in legitimate conversations with them. Your customers are online. They are talking to their friends, they are talking about what they like, what they dislike, they are asking questions, and in return, they want them answered. That is where your company comes into play. I could write 5,000 words on what social media is, I could write another 10,000 words on why social media is important for your company, but instead I am going to teach you why social media is important in under 1,500 words.

If you are unfamiliar with some of the major social media platforms, well, here is a list that I encourage you to look into:

• Facebook
• Twitter
• Google+
• LinkedIn
• Youtube
• Pinterest
• Instagram

Three elements of social media that can change the way you run you business…

1. Relationships. You want to build a relationship with your target audience. This should be a no-brainer. When you have built a relationship with your customer, then they feel like they are part of your company, almost like family. You want them to “like” your page, then fall in “love” with your page, and then after that “defend” your page. When a customer is defending your company, you have hit gold. Recently I witnessed a plethora of Apple customers defending Apple on LinkedIn. They were getting into it with a bunch of PC users (classic, huh?). I was so intrigued by how passionate they were. Some had weak arguments on whey Apple was better than PC, and others had very strong arguments. They loved Apple so much that they felt the need to defend them, like they were a friend of theirs.
2. Feedback. Social media is the place for opinions. If you log onto Facebook or Twitter, you are going to read someone’s opinion. A lot of the times they are bad opinions. Ridiculing a company for their poor performance, or displeased with the customer-service that they recently received. This might at first frighten you as a company, but in reality can be extremely beneficial. You can use this feedback as a way to reach out to them to apologize. See if you can fix that problem. If you fix that problem then there is a high probability that, that customer’s friends saw you to come to the rescue. You can also learn about what your customers are frustrated about, maybe you work at RedBull, and you release a new flavor called, Pinapple Power. Your company thinks that it is the newest and greatest thing out on the market. But when you hop on Facebook and see what your customers are saying, and they are saying things like, “too sweet”, “I feel sick from all the sugar”, or “I hate how much sugar is in this RedBull”. RedBull can take this feedback and reduce the amount of grams of sugar are in each can. Feedback is good, even if it is bad.
3. Integration. When you start using social media, don’t half-ass it. Integrate it into your marketing, branding, PR, and advertising efforts. When doing so it gives your customers a better experience. This will display consistency, and cohesion.

Now that you have an idea of why social media is so important for a company, I want to continue my personal story about social media.

Bellingham Marine’s target audience is marina owners, harbor masters, and people that are involved heavily in the marina industry. This is mainly the baby-boomer generation. A lot of this generation is not on social media. Which I found it very hard to build an audience, let alone an audience that would defend Bellingham Marine. I had to do some serious analyzing on where our target audience hung out, and how to bring them over to the different social media platforms.

LinkedIn was where they were all hanging out. LinkedIn is a networking site where professionals interact and talk about recent job openings, what is going on in the business world, promote their business, and much more. Since that was where our target audience was, I decided to really promote on that social media platform. I would post in numerous marina discussion groups, and people would comment back, and express their love for our company, as well as some frustrations. By starting these discussions, and interacting with our target audience, I started to see that the engagement percentages increased, and the number of followers. Just this past week I launched a social media contest to promote our LinkedIn company page. Just in the past week we have increased our followers by 28, sitting Bellingham Marine at 608 followers.

Facebook was a different story. Bellingham Marine already had a LinkedIn before I was hired, and they had a decent amount of followers. What they didn’t have was a Facebook page. I had to build a company Facebook page from scratch for them and perform the hardest thing; acquire likes. I tried many different things including promoting the page on Facebook groups, posting beautiful pictures, recommending people to like our page, and various other social media activities. I would find myself getting quite frustrated because I wasn’t getting the return I wanted. Then I stepped back and looked at what I was posting from a customers view. I then realized I was posting things that weren’t that engaging, posting things that didn’t ask questions, and in short, no posting great content. I started to post beautiful of marina’s with captions explaining when they were built. I started posting statuses, saying things along the lines of, “Happy Friday! Bellingham Marine hopes you have a great weekend.” These were the posts that were acquiring lots of likes. Our target audience felt like we cared about them, we truly wanted them to have a great weekend. I have acquired 99 likes in the past couple months. It is not thousands but that number is rewarding to me.

My next mission was to set up an Instagram account. Instagram is an app that allows you to share only photos, and short video clips. You can “like” the photos, and also comment on them. Instagram for Bellingham Marine was more successful and I was able to acquire more followers faster. One way I really utilized this app, and made Bellingham Marine more of a human-being, was by searching for hashtags that involved marinas that we had created in the past. To my surprise there were actually people who were hashtagging Bellingham Marine before we even had an account. This was an awesome feeling, and got the staff at Bellingham Marine really excited. Every person that would use the hashtag #BellinghamMarine, I would “like” their photo and leave a comment, expressing how thankful Bellingham Marine was for promoting our brand and the marina that we built. You could tell that when I would interact with these people they would get quite excited, and show gratitude for the work that Bellingham Marine did. Another way that I was able to build an audience was by following Instagram accounts that were in the same line of business, not competitors (which is important to keep an eye on), but companies that were in the marina business. This was quite successful, in that I was able to acquire 136 followers in just a few months.

I recently read an article by The New Yorker titled, Virologist. This a fascinating article about a man by the name of Emerson Spartz. The New Yorker gave him the nick-name King of Click-Bait. If you are unfamiliar with what click-bait is, then check out this link. Mr. Spartz knows how to make things go viral. It’s his specialty. Spartz created a business called Spartz, Inc. where they create websites that contain interesting content. There specialty is creating headlines that will make you want to click on them, because they are so enticing and make you curious. An example of one title is, “This Dad Decidedto Embarass His Son in the Most Elaborate Way Possible. LOL”. Honestly, when you read that you want to press it to see what that Dad did. I also found it quite awesome that at Spartz, Inc. they name all of their conference rooms after the regions in Game of Thrones (GREAT show, can’t wait till season 5 airs on April 12th).

Spartz, Inc. also does an interesting thing called “hat tip” or H/T. You might see this abbreviation at the bottom of the article, this means that they are giving credit to another company for the article (basically re-posting their content and making money off of it).

Whenever you are creating content or posting on social media, create an AWESOME headline. Something that will pull your reader in. Something that they HAVE to click on because it could make them laugh, or even learn something they never knew. For example, say you write an article on how 85% of people are not drinking enough water each day. Make the title of that article, “85% of People Are NOT Drinking Enough Water, Are You?”. I myself would feel inclined to press on that link.

I truly hope you learned how effective social media can be for a business. Don’t be afraid to try out different things. Social Media is like a plant. You have to consistently give it water, make sure it gets some sun, and occasionally try different techniques on where you should place the plant. I had to learn from my mistakes and figure out what my target audience enjoyed. Until next time…

 

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