In the wake of Google+, law firms are being forced to rethink their strategy. Attorneys are already growing a decent following on Facebook and Twitter, sharing the latest in legal news (as well as showing themselves as likable people). Small communities are popping up around such topics as accident injury, food poisoning, and toy recalls. The addition of Google+ gives the legal industry something new to think about.

The early adopters of Google+ will have to work hard to gain the trust of the social community and get into their circles. The best way to do this would be by developing and sharing fresh and exciting content, as well as engaging with others in the public stream.

It doesn’t just take great content. Growing a community in social media requires the careful use of ad words, engagement, and thoughtful design. A professional looking page still goes a long way in today’s competitive market. For an attorney, it’s also important to come across as a likeable person and not just another lawyer.  The occasional non-business status update and genuinely responding to others in the stream will make a lawyer seem more personable.

Sharing content across multiple social platforms will also increase a law firm’s chances of landing a client. It’s already been proven that Facebook users aren’t as likely to be Twitter users. Although, the majority of Twitter users are found to be active on Facebook. Through the use of Twitter chats, Facebook polls, blog posts and now Google+ huddles and sparks… attorneys have multiple ways to share what they have to offer, listen to their potential clients needs, and act accordingly.

However, Google+ isn’t for the casual social media user. It seems to have attracted those who are typically early adopters of technology. So if a law firm is looking to expand its reach in the social media community, being a part of the new platform will show they’re forward thinkers. And the upcoming addition of Google+ for businesses will make the social transition even easier.

Here are some new terms coined by Google+:

Circles:

These are groups sorted according to their relationship to the user. Family, Friends, Clients, and even People Who Annoy Me all have their place in Google+ Circles. Status updates and content sharing can be done publicly or can be limited to specific circles. This comes in handy when you’re talking about that crazy weekend in Vegas.

Sparks:

Sparks are content create based on the users interests. This comes in handy when it comes to sharing relevant content.

Huddles:

A huddle is essentially a group chat messenger. It allows you to communicate with users in various circles.

Hangouts:

Just like it sounds… a hangout is a video chat room for groups. Users can participate via video, voice, or text chat. Content such as a YouTube video can also be shared in a Hangout.

Many specialized industries will be jumping into Google+ in the days and weeks to come. Not only would Law Firms benefit from being so technically savvy… but the medical field and financial divisions would also do well by updating their social media strategies. Take my word for it. Better yet… shoot me a message (KellyL@Social2B.com) or a tweet (@Social2B) and I’ll help to train you or your enterprise for the next phase of your social media marketing. *Photo Credit Aaron Wood on Google+*

I took some time to ask my Twitter audience the following question: Why do you follow your favorite brands on Twitter? It turns out that most of us just want to be informed. Follow on!

You have a Facebook page, a account, a YouTube channel and a blog. You update them regularly and have a growing community on each of the platforms. This community could be much larger if the social profiles were integrated together. Below are some tips on seamlessly integrating your profiles and getting them the readership they deserve.

SEO:

Utilizing relevant search terms isn’t just for blog posts. Using key words tailored for you company are important even in the tweets you put out. Recently, Google announced that it’s search algorythm was adjusted to include social media. Don’t get left behind in the top searches because your company isn’t optimized properly.

Sharing Buttons:

It’s a well known fact that Facebook users aren’t avid Twitter users. By integrating your social profiles, you’re exposing your Facebook and Twitter readers to what’s happening on your blog, website, and YouTube channel. Sharing buttons, links, and portals to your profiles allow your readers to easily share and discover new content.

Press releases and email marketing:

Spread the word about your company and be sure to include all of your social profiles. In all outgoing collateral, include the many ways that your customer can find you online. And… don’t forget email marketing. Looked on by some as “spam”, emarketer recently reported that 95% of 18-25 year olds opt-in to email updates and newsletters.

Social Media Marketing doesn’t exist without some form of integration. Whether you are integrating your social media effort inside of a large organization or an independent marketer, there are a plethora of new tools to help you efficiently integrate social media based on the demands of their clients and partners. If you are a small business or a start up, don’t be left out – many of the tactics and strategies that apply in the Fortune 1000 world can just as easily be implemented by you.

Now get out there and share what you’re made of!

Kelly Loubet is the Director of Social Community Marketing at Social2B. She’s a believer in community building and using social media for good. Kelly is a mom, a writer, and a speaker. Follow her @Social2B and on her personal account @childhood. To read more of her writing, check out EverydayChildhood.com.

You have a new follower on Twitter! Great! You’re expanding your readership and increasing your  online influence. Now what? How do you retain  Twitter followers once they’ve clicked “follow”? Many  new followers click “follow” and that’s the end of  them. There’s no engagement… no involvement  whatsoever.

New followers bring a new relationship and like any new relationship, it will need cultivating. Developing personal relationships with your followers will create a loyal community. Of course having a one on one conversation with each of your followers everyday isn’t feasible, but it is important to set aside a portion of your day each day to converse with some of them.

First, see who’s speaking to you. Check your @’s and respond to them accordingly. Taking time to respond to those who took the time to reach out to you will go a long way in your community building efforts.

Second, be a source of knowledge. Answer questions and be a helpful member of the Twitter community. If you show knowledge on your topic, your followers will continually come to you for answers. Beyond answering questions, share your insight. Sharing insight on your products and services in a helpful way, makes you an expert in your field. I didn’t say “the” expert, but an expert. And there’s something to say for a knowledgeable representative. Use your expertise as a way to educate and your follows will appreciate it.

Give back. Showing that your company is community-minded is a great way to get the backing of your social media followers. Find a like-minded charity and throw your support behind them. Get your followers involved by doing a fundraiser. Perhaps a portion of your sales will go to charity. Design a campaign that fits your brand and implement it as you would any promotion. Giving back will create new cause-minded followers and bring existing followers in closer.

Have a giveaway! I’m not big on giveaways… but doing one every once in a while is a fun and exciting way to keep your followers engaged. The giveaway doesn’t even need to be related to your product or service, but could be the hottest new gadget. A giveaway like this will draw attention. One of the most interesting contests I’ve seen, involved a picture of a jar of coins and bills. Each day, the brand gave a clue as to how much money was in the jar. Followers tweeted in their guesses until finally, someone guessed right on the nose. They won the jar of money (which ended up being a couple thousand dollars). I thought it was such a creative way to keep readers coming back.

Lastly, don’t make it all about you. Share articles and insights from others in related fields. This might sound like you’re shooting yourself in the foot, but really, you’re saying that you respect and agree with the opinions of others. Sharing information from others in your field also shows that you’re up to date on the  latest techniques. A company this isn’t afraid to share information from others will gain the respect of their competitors. It also shows confidence to your readers.

Everyone knows that clicking the “like” button on a company’s Facebook page shows that company is increasing its fan base. But what happens after the click? For me… it’s often just that. A click. I’m sure that I’m not alone. So how do brands turn a simple click into loyal relationship with consumers?

It all starts with engagement. If a brand can engage its audience… they’re on the right track. Being able to excite the fan base and get them to act is key in building a Facebook community. In order to get them to act, there must be an exciting call to action. Contests, polls, and general questions encourage a sense of community. They’ve already acknowledged that they like the brand, now’s their chance to share their opinion.

In addition to a call to action, in order to engage the audience, a brand must also put out worthwhile content. Posts that both inform and entertain readers are a must. So many brands today are just putting out fluff pieces. Sure, these pieces of content keep their page fresh, but audiences want something more. They want something they can relate to. A well written post can be shared again and again across Facebook by loyal community members. Give them something worth sharing.

Finally, loyal community members want to be rewarded. Companies that find a way to give back to their fans have a much more activity on their pages than brands who don’t engage. A simple “thank you” to fans when a certain milestone has been reached can go a long way.

“Thank you to all our readers who helped us reach 10,000. We couldn’t have done it without you and your input.”

A message like this will prompt those who have been around from the beginning to comment and be proud of the community they helped to build. Beyond words of thanks, giveaways are a nice way to show your community you’re happy to have them around. Brands might also consider a charity drive. Giving back always builds a sense of gratitude in people. Nothing builds community more than giving.

These are just some simple ideas that could be easily implemented with a dedicated team. Without a team willing to put the time in to keep the conversations going… it’s not going to work. Facebook is about people. It’s about relationships. No relationship grows without some cultivation. If your brand is looking to step up your Facebook efforts, be sure you have the proper team in place. Soon enough, your Facebook community will be going beyond the “like”.

By Ytzik Aranov, Managing Partner, Social2B

For those of you who’ve been through business school lectures on Michael Porter’s Value Chain Analysis this doesn’t come as news to you.  But when asked to implement social media practices, policies, platforms, tools, etc., in today’s corporation or enterprise, we throw out all of what we learned that makes the enterprise tick and elect to “surf” it through!

Attention – and I quote:

“Social Media (in the Enterprise) is a Business Process, not a channel, department, or vertical silo”.

End quote.

You heard it here!  Think about it.  Social media touches upon every department, every business process, every channel, every prospect / customer interaction, every investor, every supplier, in short, it touches the entire organization.

In today’s marketplace, social media and an enterprise’s’ online brand architecture and social media footprint is arguably, the most important business process affecting the entire Enterprise Value Chain.  Poor implementation of a solid online & social media platform strategy & tactics directly impacts a company’s ability to market, sell and extend its brand reach, globally.  Failure to effectively implement an integrated social media strategy & tactics across the entire Value Chain could potentially lead to lower revenues (read, shareholder value), slippage in market share, increased financial exposure, risk, and more

One of the most effective measurement techniques to measure enterprise social media effectiveness, both pre- and post-implementation, is to diagnose the “Social Media Maturity Index” (see graphic), which establishes a recognizable industry-specific metric with which to assess the social media value, influence, depth, and footprint of an enterprise’s value chain components – combining both departments and business processes.  Moreover, the social media maturity Index in its very essence is a barometer of how the value chain is capable of moving at the speed of (digital & social) business today.

So, when looking for added revenue stream, cost savings, internal value, constraints, and external interfaces with the world, then social media maturity acutely identifies the lack of, or plethora, of business excellence in sync with today’s pace of commerce.

OK, skeptics, How do we drill down into the Enterprise Value Chain and establish Social Value Chain Maturity & Scalability? Let’s break it apart into pieces.  Look at the following chart that defines touch points throughout selected departments throughout the enterprise, and their social media impacts.

The same goes for every other vertical silo, and, every business processes.  Each and every business process running across – horizontally – the enterprise has multiple social media touch points.

Social media maturity, coupled with an integrated online, SEO, SEM and Social Community Marketing strategy replaces one-way communication with dialogue. Participation by customers, suppliers, employees, the industry, the market, etc., and feedback from them all (!), must be listened to because it has the power to make or break your enterprise or enterprise function.  Social media tools allow us to observe the conversations, measure, monitor, track and quantify the online & social media reach and influence. It allows us to assess and re-assess the correct strategy & tactics from the bottom up to increase revenues, open new markets, capture greater market share, lower costs and in general, improve the bottom-line ROI.

So, what about ROI?

If done right — and you’ll have to come back for a later post on this subject — the Social Media Maturity Index is then mapped by those of you honored to be the “Keeper of the Social Keys” in the enterprise, to any existing enterprise Balanced Scorecard KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) in use by the Executive suite (read CFO), in order to assess true ROI, Economic Value & shareholder value. And, by the way, to justify shifting dollars from traditional advertising / marketing into your online / social media marketing budget.

In Summary:

The value in executing a Social Media Maturity Index exercise, as the very first step prior to embarking on that “Journey to the Edge of the Social World”, includes, but by no means is limited to:

• Creating a more aligned and more cohesive internal organization (whether vertical silo or horizontal business process) involved with social media and its offshoots;
• Developing a cross-enterprise social media policy – let me guess, you’re thinking about it, while hundreds of employees across the value chain are uncontrollably blogging & Tweeting about the company without any filters – to manage the social media impact;
• Channeling the endless volume of Content across the enterprise that is not “curated”, re-purposed or managed effectively throughout the enterprise, thereby losing SEO and ranking power;
• Implementing a solid, instantaneous, Reputation Management process – what’s that? – more on that in another post …;
• Hiring – training – more targeted and experienced human resources to effectively channel the enterprise’s social media assets and better utilization of current ones;
• Mapping out a better-defined path to enterprise success by assessing the maturity of the organization and its readiness to embrace a new channel (SM) affecting the entire value chain – from customer service to distributor relations to marketing;
• Establishing a quantifiable and actionable ROI – well, we know what that means (Return-On-Ignoring, Return-on-I (me!), etc. – in short, how we justify the extra capital needed to implement targeted social media campaigns to accelerate products or services sales.

The Social Media Maturity Index provides an immediate snapshot of where every Value Chain component of the organization is today is with respect to social media & market acceleration and what can be expected in terms of performance based on the overall social media maturity of the enterprise. It also maps out where each Value Chain component is lacking and what can be done to accelerate it and better sync it to the other Value Chain components thereby creating a powerhouse enterprise that socially rocks!

By Kelly Loubet Social2B Director   Social Community Marketing

We all know that social media impacts the way we do business. It affects the way that consumers shop, the way that brands market, and the way customer service responds. Social media allows customers to give instant feedback on their favorite (or not so favorite brands). It allows regular people to become a part of the branding process.

Being a part of the team at Social2B has given me new perspective on the sheer number of individuals and companies taking advantage of networking tools. If you didn’t think the power of social media was mind blowing before… check out the latest social media statistics:

Facebook:

·  Facebook has more than 500 million “active” users worldwide.

·  People spend over 700 billion minutes per month on Facebook.

·  The average Facebook user is connected to 80 community pages, groups and events.

·  More than 30 billion pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photo albums, etc.) shared each month on Facebook. Your content should be among these!

·  Every month, more than 250 million people engage with Facebook on external websites. I “Like” this!

·  There are more than 200 million active users currently accessing Facebook through their mobile devices. Can your website be viewed on a mobile device? Have you tried viewing it on your own smart phone?

·  Being mobile-compatible is important because people that use Facebook on their mobile devices are twice as active on Facebook than non-mobile users!

·  And here’s an interesting fact… About 70% of Facebook users are outside the United States. Is your business global?

Twitter:

·  eMarketer estimates 20.6 million US adults will access a Twitter account at least monthly this year.

·  There are 200 million Twitter users around the world.

·  Twitter now comes in English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, and Spanish.

·  95M tweets are written per day (Sept. 2010)

Linked In:

·  LinkedIn has crossed the 100 million user milestone.

·  LinkedIn said that it is adding 1 million new members every week, which equates to one new member every second. This is astounding to me!

·  LinkedIn now has presence in 200 countries and territories around the world, with 56 million of the 100 million users being from outside the US. Another reason to make sure your business is part of the global market!

·  On LinkedIn, there are 997,000 teachers, 1,030 chocolatiers, 74 Elvis tribute artists and 1 Martini Whisperer.

Wikipedia:

·  Over 18 million articles have been written collaboratively by volunteers.

·  Wikipedia ranks seventh among all websites on Alexa and having 365 million readers.

·  For the first time in January 2011, Wikipedia cracked the top ten list of the most popular websites in the United States, according to comScore Networks Inc. With 42.9 million unique visitors and rank #9, Wikipedia surpassed New York Times (#10) and Apple Inc. (#11).

You Tube:

·  35 hours of video are uploaded every minute.

·  70% of YouTube traffic comes from outside the US.

·  YouTube is localized in 25 countries across 43 languages.

·  YouTube’s demographic is broad: 18-54 years old.

·  YouTube reached over 700 billion playbacks in 2010.

·  Over 4 million people are connected and auto-sharing to at least one social network.

Aren’t these social media statistics amazing? Is your business social?

By Kelly Loubet – Social2B Director of Social Community Marketing

Talk to any social media consultant or social media expert and they’ll say this: If any company wants its social media marketing plan to go farther, faster, they can’t ignore the power of social media integration.

Social media integration is the syncing of all social media profiles on various social media platforms and aligning their functionality with that of a company’s main website.

Using the social media platforms that are right for a business can have a positive effect on traffic for their website. Installing sharing tools will allow a visitor to share what they’re reading with others via social networking. Not only is social media promotion the fastest way to spread a brand’s message but it also gives the customers a voice.

Social media allows customers to give instant feedback on products and services. They become a part of the social branding of a company. This is where some companies fail. If a brand isn’t responding to its engaged consumers, they lose valuable advocacy and break spread of the brand’s message. The branding can quickly go from “The company that cares” to “The company that doesn’t listen”.

It’s what we call the creation of a social value chain that enriches the brand and business growth.  Social media integration ensures that genuine interest is sparked by real people around a brand. Building a community of repeat customers will help a brand gain in social finance and create a credible social name among consumers in general.

Whether it’s social media for small business or a large B2B social media marketing campaign, companies should integrate social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter to their websites. This allows customers to share content and help to spread the word about promotions across all social media platforms. Social media integration is the stuff that successful social media marketing campaigns are made of!

By Suzanne Nagy, Social2B Social Media   Coordinator

Social media is changing the way small businesses communicate with customers and market products and services. Social media gives small business owners the opportunity to access online communities that reach expansive groups of people on a personal level.

Selling your Products to an Online Community

Tips for Using Social Media for Lead Generation

Scaling Your Social Media Marketing Efforts