You should already be familiar with these sites!
That’s right, Guerilleros! As I promised, today we are going to look at how YOU can build a loyal fan base around your blog! I discussed the importance of a blog in the last post, and today I am going to give you 6 steps to follow for building a blog community that can attract real attention. Everything in it is easy, and with a little maintenance, you can have a killer blog following! Read More…
pinpoint your social media marketing to your local audience
It’s with an immense pleasure that I invite all of you guerilleros and guerilleras to join me in a great run-through of Social Media Marketing strategies geared for local businesses.
I’ll be at a BlogTalkRadio show on Thursday afternoon with Marnie Swedberg and you’re in for a real treat.
Here are the details:
When: Thursday 02/25
Time: 4:00pm
Call-in #: (646) 727-2510
Address:
As you’re very much aware, Social Media has no borders or boundaries, and despite its wonderful benefits, connecting with your neighbors online has always been somewhat of a challenge.
Mentor Marnie
Marnie Swedberg is a community leader, mom, brick & mortar and online entrepreneur that hosts a popular radio show on BlogTalkRadio. She’s the utmost definition of a successful Guerillera.
However, even a guerillera such as Marnie has her issues dealing with a local audience – she owns a restaurant and wants to reach her community via Social Media.
Based on that, here’s what you’ll be learning at the interview:
If I’m missing anything, let me know. Post a comment here with your question or shoot me a reply over @leosaraceni.
See you there!
Local Social Guerilla On The Beach - Is That a Drink?
Guerilleros, the battle has been taking the best of me – not because I’m losing, but because I’m fighting too many 😉
But I’ve got some interesting stats to show, and if you’re trying to conquer ground in your local market, light up your best cigar and join me for the kill.
I’m going to briefly analyze the highlights of two completely different companies that we have DOMINATED their local market (the same market, by the way) through smart, interactive, social media guerilla.
First, the market: we’re talking of a highly-scattered, hugely diverse population of about 20k residents in the Outer Banks of North Carolina (Northeastern NC). If you’ve been to any beach towns outside of NJ, you know the deal: middle-class locals, broke surfers, and the rich retired make for a tough crowd to target.
But…. what brings people together better than TV these days?
If you said accidents on the highway, you’re probably right too, but I’m talking about Facebook!
So let’s get to the nitty gritty:
Community Interaction Fuels Viral Exposure
Their campaign actually started with PPC, and that brought the good-ol’ ppc lead: mickey mouses, john does, jane eres.. Probably because the gym was already established on the beach, the “hit-em-over-the-head” PPC approach did not work very well. The market had been introduced to the product and made up their mind about. (It did work very well for Turists, but let’s save that for later)
When PPC started to get annoying & expensive, I felt it was my duty as social guerillero to set them up with a blog – and since I was there quite often, I took pictures and footage of what was going on in the gym from time to time.
Do you see any work of genious here? Me neither.
What do you, smart guerillero, think happened? Well, a series of things:
Internally, the gym members were all excited to have a place where they could see each other (anybody said online community yet?), and they were even more excited to see our posts going to Facebook – where their friends and family could see how much weight they lost, blah blah..
Externally is where the fun began – It was great having the gym’s profile on Facebook feeding video and news all over the place, but it wasnt until one of their students, completely impartial to their marketing efforts, started posting his own videos of the training, the races, etc… that things really kicked off.
See what happened here? A happy member, posting about his good time at the gym, on his own Facebook profile, started a massive viral reaction!
Suddenly, a great part of their own community also started posting their stuff – and the mess was made.
Now, we’ve got people asking on Facebook about the gym’s rates and how they can sign up. And people in other cities asking about our programs, to see if they can find something similar in their places. It’s creating more buzz than PPC ever did. And all it’s taken is a bit of time to take pictures and videos! Check out the gym’s youtube channel:
Now, for the second case:
Videos Are Incredibly Powerful For Marketing - Surprise Your Customers!
Again, we also started with PPC – which brought some results, but infimal, and highly volatile – and since they didnt have an actual sales staff to work on those leads, it was up to me to make sure the leads were extra hot so they could close them easy.
This company also owns one of the best restaurants on the beach, and they already had a decent group page on Facebook before my guerilla services were summoned.
The problem here was that all of their prospects came through word-of-mouth (very effective on this tiny market), so they had ZERO marketing material or experience. Again, there I was with the social guerillero’s killer tool: my camera.
We started shooting their really awesome caterings – this one wedding in corolla was a big hit, and most recently, the owner guided us through the entire footage of this wedding in nags head.
Again, nothing even close to being work of genious, but check this out: footages like this one are still a hot novelty in the industry (specially here in the beach), and we sent the entire restaurant community to go check it out.
They loved it: the company got amazing feedback, and the community received a new influx of members at a very impressive rate. But that wasnt all.
The videos were breaking the seal on that market, but the wedding industry here, specially in the summer, has been dominated by large hotels and event planners. This catering company did not want to compete against a Hilton or a Ramada, but they wanted their piece of that pie.
And where can you compete as equals, without a budget? Exactly – ONLINE!
When we started their Party Catering Blog, the idea was to put all of their knowledge and experience out there, offer great advice to brides and dominate the market through SEO.
At this point, webmaster tools tells me that NONE of the blog’s pages were indexed yet – but thanks to the Facebook exposure, a ton of local websites (realtors, convention centers, towns) have already published our posts on their blogs and our videos are all over the net with “yum” comments.
Can you say Screw Google? Frank Kern would love that!
So there you have it – two small companies, beating old time market leaders because of smart social media guerilla marketing.
I will post more details of our campaigns here as often as I can. If you’re really interested, leave a comment with your question and I’ll answer it really fast. (promise)
If you’re not excited by going into battle alone, I’m available for mercenary work – my guerilla skills are yours, for the right price. That include video editing and distribution, social accounts management, blog set ups, etc…
LEAVE A COMMENT!
PS. Check out the new site for the best Outer Banks wedding photographers. New Island Photography. The site is just getting on its feet but already has some great content. If you have any questions about anything on their site, feel free to give us a shout!
If your social media marketing is a silo, you're doomed to implode.
When I read this post over at Label:Indescript about social media silos, I immediately connected the subject to at least 4 business owners I’ve been in contact with.
Justin Boone, the author (and a darn good guerillero), talks about how companies start their social media strategies with a department (read blogger guy) that becomes completely alienated from the rest of the staff and from other departments.
I’d say that’s a better start than having NO SOCIAL MEDIA WHATSOEVER, but there are points to be taken from this when it comes to a powerful social guerilla.
The majority of businesses that decide to implement a blog or create dedicated social network accounts do so with only one objective: create more revenue.
Now that my guerilla is expanding into the fascinating world of “real” business (read offline companies), I’ve found that all these companies really know about social media marketing is that it’s “cheap” and can go “viral”.
The real benefits of creating an active community start when there’s a commitment throughout the entire company to share, engage, and participate in a public dialog. A good guerilla is never won by one lonely guerillero, but by a tactiful team.
And I’ve experienced lots of lost battles when:
The poor “blogger guy” is left hunting for material to post, and is left out with the task of tracking customer feedback and analysing google and twitter alerts.
Or, what is worse:
That happens more often than necessary, but it seems to be that corporate mentality impregnated on offline people; old ads, product releases, listing of properties… The entire community is now a giant billboard!
Turn projects in development over to the SM department, let them post updates. Collect feedback, and apply their comments into the design.
Integrate multiple areas of your company by asking them to report daily activities to the SM team. Motivate the staff to post their comments on the company blog and to interact with each other within the corporate Facebook page.
And one more thing:
QUIT THE RETURN ON INVESTMENT CRAP!
There are tons of ways to measure social media buzz, to ignite content syndication, and those are valid strategies to evaluate strategies. Hiring a web analytics expert is also a good idea.
But enough with the constant cry about time and effort wasted: if these companies havent noticed yet, online content doesnt “die”, and even though it may not be immediate, a solid online participation will pay huge dividends as online usage wont stop growing anytime soon.
On the other side of the fence, in the offline world, regular people are being bombarded by us Social Media Guerilleros, and they’re slowly waking up to a world where the phone is a secondary tool and relationships are created and sustained online.
But for offline people whose Facebook account is the ultimate experience with social media, the idea of building a community online may be a bit too much to handle.
Recently, my offline Guerilla introduced me to an offline professional to whom the phone was a fundamental tool. He had learned of my services and invited me to talk about using the internet to generate leads so he could – guess – CALL THEM.
Of course, he’s built success around this strategy and now wants to join the online world (even if it is with a offline mentality), but as our conversation goes from attraction marketing to pay-per-click to blogs, he starts to grasp the softer, more maleable side of online marketing.
I introduced him to the idea of using his knowledge and expertise to attract people to him – the Social Media Guerilla strategy, right?
Okay, maybe I didn’t introduce that to him, but I showed him infinite ways he could make his knowledge available to others and how, given the right tools, it could not only go VIRAL, but receive feedback from thousands of people that he’d NEVER be able to reach over the phone.
As I went on about content syndication, and creating a real social network, he started to realize how his social guerilla efforts would eventually lead to him becoming a knowledge provider, and people seeking him for advice.
For a second there, I think I saw him look at the phone with a sad look 😉
We settled on creating a blog, with the right tools to manage and keep a community active – autoresponder, feedburner, and active social networking profiles.
Now, he’s excited to take some time away from the phone to start producing high-quality content, and has already given me enough data to produce his first eBook.
He needed to understand that despite the amazing immediate benefits of taking an active role in social marketing (in his case, we’re going to blow his customers away by giving them all this content for free), building a community is a long term project.
Connie Bensen, author of the community strategist blog, writes about building a web 2.0 community – a community 2.0:
Community is a new channel for business. It offers new strategies for customer acquisition, customer satisfaction, retention, product development & the list goes on… but it takes a human touch!
Of course, as he churns out articles, reviews, and lots of data, his online market share expands. But in the long run, he’ll be solidifying his presence online and feeding a monstrous business engine, made of his own community.
I can’t wait until more offline people wake up and join the Guerilla!
Here at SMG we trust Volusion with our ecommerce needs. We’ve had multiple clients use them and can sincerely recommend it.
This is an affiliate link and we’ll receive a commission if you sign up for volusion. If you choose to do so, we really appreciate it.