Now you have to engage your followers to take action and turn those 1,500 fans into 1,500 repeat customers.

Everyone says “engage,” but what does that actually mean? It means give someone a reason to act on your Facebook post.

Give them a reason to respond — usually it’s because they will get your feedback or feedback from fellow Facebook users.

Incentive goes a long way online.

Engage also means give people a reason to come back and don’t give them a reason to not come back.

Ever had a non-responsive run-of-the-mill waiter at a restaurant or bad food at a so-called great restaurant? How many times did you go back? The same is true for social media. If you give someone a great experience or at least are trying to give them an experience — heck if you even show them you’re paying attention, you’re ahead of most.

And remember, like you do with your current customers, treat your online friends or fans like actual people and not just their representation in zeros and ones — aka digital code.

While traditional coupons work, think of social media as a way to get to the forefront of your customer’s their mind and stay there.

Fast food chains don’t have to advertise to let you know they’re out there, part of why they advertise is to keep their brand and associated products, words, etc. in your head so when you get hungry you associate that feeling with their food.

Social media can work like that as well.

Just make sure you’re being yourself so your Facebook posts don’t come across as fake and contrived.

Inflate your stats. Social media should be more about sales and conversion rates than the number of people you “know” online. Your goal in using social media should be to drive traffic to your website. Use your stats to track your activities and conversion over time, but don’t expect your stats to encourage people to engage in your social media activities or calls to action.

Just jump in. Some suggest building your social media presence by just blindly beginning your activities. But, like any other marketing initiative, you need a plan. Examine the platforms you want to use so you’ll become familiar with the lingo and practices. Map out your goals for using social media, and then think of the best tactics to encourage conversion.

Post as much as possible. Don’t post everything that comes into your mind. Create messages that are relevant to your business. Participating less frequently with bigger impact information will create a higher ROI. Your readers won’t be as likely to listen to your important messages if you bombard them with useless, extraneous tidbits.

As we’ve mentioned, use social media as you would any other marketing tool. Approach its planning and use the same way you would an advertising or public relations campaign. Before you begin, know how to engage, utilize and maximize your efforts, and don’t inundate your readers or followers with items that won’t drive people to you website.

The view counter read something over 7,000 views – plenty popular, right? In the next two days it got national play on GMA and was video of the day somewhere else. As of this morning the twins had a worldwide audience…with over 13 million views and counting.

Striking it viral is like catching lighting in a bottle.  Like hitting Lotto.  And there ain’t no strategy for winning the lottery.

It’s luck.  Not a strategy.

For all those out there who are convinced they’ve got the approach to go viral.  Who have completely bought into the thought that social media is a cheap, simple way to market your business – I’d like to offer a few simple words of discouragement:

No it’s not.

It’s not easy.  It’s not cheap.  (if your time is money)

Over the last year or so it seemed every Capital Region chamber, business and civic organization has had a presentation on Social Media marketing.  They showed up in droves.

Was it interesting?  Yeah.  Have you built your list of friends and Linkedin contacts?  Probably.

But, have you made any money with it?

I’d argue that the only thing that’s gone viral is social media itself.  Facebook has a zillion members and is making money hand over fist.  Are you?

Look, using social media as part of a well conceived, overall marketing strategy can make sense.  Just don’t go thinking that every new friend you add brings you closer to hitting the lottery.

Got an opinion? Share it with us.

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Marketing chart of the week – building your email list

Email marketing strategies have matured and are no longer strictly about increasing the number of subscribers. Today, the priority lies in building a quality list of names.

A survey of more than 1,100 marketers to provided insight into the level of effectiveness of each list growth tactic used by their organization.  Here are the results:

These results align well with content marketing strategies. Tactics that deliver value to the customer such as purchased products, downloaded material and webinars develop trusted relationships which enable customers to share email addresses and contact information. For this reason, company blogs and published articles have become an excellent method of capturing email addresses.

Expect to see growth in mobile capture in the coming year as marketers rank the effectiveness positively and the difficulty low.

And now…

Blogs are kinda where mainstream social media began. People just had something to say…and Web Logs (a/k/a “Blogs”) were the new, inexpensive, and immediately available way to say them.

Now, we advise businesses to use blogs as part of an overall content strategy to accomplish one or more of these 3 objectives:

1. Define who you are (brand voice)
2. Improve organic search results and increase site traffic
3. Generate leads

With help from Hubspot, here are some tips to help you accomplish all 3.

Define who you are

Blogs are about content.  Lots and lots of content.  For a moment, I’m going to leave all the high-minded talk about brand to others.  I’d just like to address a very practical question we’re asked a lot – “I like the idea of blogging, but finding ideas to write about and the time to write them is overwhelming.  How do I make this happen?”

Does this sound like you?    We get it.  So here’s a thought:

Probe you own mind.  Don’t you get questions all the time from customers and potential customers by email, phone and in person?  Find article ideas in your sent items folder in your email by reviewing how you’ve answered those questions.  Ask your sales and customer service people about the questions they get and the issues they run into.  You’re sure to cover many popular topics.

We think it’s also important to get the whole company involved and not dump all the blogging and content-creation responsibility on one person. How do you engage the whole company? At HubSpot they have 80 different people who have written for their blog. They do contests. Public praise. Executives contribute. And they say they’ve built it into some of the employee goals for a couple of different groups in the company. Get everyone addicted to the process of blogging, the feedback and the positive loop that can happen by publishing an article.

If you want more comments on your posts – ask a question at the end of the article or be controversial. The more controversial you are, the more comments you will get. Also, leave part of the issue untouched. If you completely cover a topic, you’re not really leaving room for people to add something to it.

Improve search results and site traffic

All that content should grab the attention of the search engines.  One of the first things to remember is that your articles should be keyword rich.  Use keywords that your audience would be searching for – in your titles.

We suggest using both e-mail and RSS subscription. Certainly, most blogging services include RSS. There are ways to do email subscription as well. When you publish a new blog article, it can automatically go to the people subscribing to the blog by e-mail. For Hubspot, about a third of their blog subscribers are by e-mail. Other folks have 70 or 80 percent of their blog readers subscribe by email. Some site visitors use RSS, some use email more, and you should have both of those available to make sure that you’re making it as easy as possible for people to get your blog content if they’re interested in it.

Having an image in every article is good as is adding video.  They make it more visually appealing and give people something to gravitate towards rather than just a whole bunch of text on the page.  They make your blog more informative, more engaging, and therefore more useful.

Generate leads

Ultimately, whatever your business, you want new customers.  If you use landing pages in tandem with your blogs (and you probably should), it’s important to use calls to action to drive more traffic to your landing pages.  Strive to have a call to action in every post – acting as a link to someplace that captures visitors and gets them moving down the sales and marketing process. (e.g.; where people can register, opt-in, start a trial, buy a product, etc.)

Hubspot reports that adding calls to action to their blog almost tripled the number of leads they were getting from the blog.

We suggest using these tips as a foundation for your blogging program.  Don’t use them, and you’re probably throwing your time and money away.

What’s the one thing you want to improve about your blog results?  Let us know.

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When I think of a 23 foot high wall of water extending up to 8 miles inland…there are no words.  As always in disaster, the incredible people of the Red Cross were sending help almost immediately.  From their website:

Those who want to help can go to www.redcross.org and donate to Japan Earthquake and Pacific Tsunami. People can also text REDCROSS to 90999 to make a $10 donation to help those affected by the earthquake in Japan and tsunami throughout the Pacific.

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Stat of the week

The vast majority of B2B organizations find direct mail to be either very effective or somewhat effective for their organization. This is likely a result of the various personalization and segmentation capabilities organizations executing this tactic now have, such as personalization for name, location and other data points and segmenting lists based on a number of criteria.

Next, consider creating a social media policy or plan. Once you’ve identified the platforms, assess how much time you can devote to using them. If you only have 15 minutes a day, Twitter is probably your best option for keeping customers informed of news and updates. 30 minutes can allow for Facebook updates, such as pictures of events and products. If you have more than 30 minutes, consider crafting a blog post with interesting information about your company or helpful hints and techniques for your customers. You can create articles from your blog posts and add them to article submission sites to spread the word on your company beyond your followers and customers. Even one blog post a week can work wonders.

Here are some quick tips on making the most of your time:

1. It’s not about who posts the most. It’s about who stands out. Find a niche or an angle that makes you unique so you become a leading knowledge source.
2. Take five minutes to answer questions via social media. You will engage followers and potential customers, and show you care about questions and feedback.
3. Be sure all of your social media platforms work together. Keep your messages consistent and link back and forth between platforms. You’ll best maximize your time this way.

Keep these time-saving techniques in mind and use them to revamp your current social media actions.

In a recent article on Mashable.com, Christina Warren made a mistake that I hear all the time. She writes:

“Social media does inherently mean that you are giving up the ability to centrally control the message.”

While her article is interesting (it’s about social media and the Grammy awards), I think she’s a bit off base on that point. Getting involved in social media does not mean giving up control of your message. It means accepting that you weren’t in control to begin with.

She goes on to talk about why companies who do ‘give up control’ tend to succeed in social media:

“However, what is interesting is that the companies that embrace and accept that grain of truth are usually those that are most successful with social media.”

It’s no mystery why this happens. It’s the same reason that a person who can admit his or her weaknesses is the one who eventually overcomes them. Once a brand accepts that the message is beyond it’s control, it can begin to influence the conversation in the right direction. It can begin taking steps to get people talking positively.

It’s not about giving up control. It’s about giving up the illusion of control. And the sooner a brand can do that, the better they’ll leverage new media.

Everything from dancing babies to the Obama girls made its way across millions of screens across the globe.  And the word viral went from an adjective to a noun.  As in, “it went viral.”

Now everyone tries to figure out that one elusive quality that make their message go viral.  But unless you can “force” viral on people with a big bucks campaign, then for most of us, chasing viral is like catching lightning in a bottle.

In 2010, go back to the original viral.  Infect people.  Viral will still work for you, but it will start with a few small sparks here and there – not the sweeping brushfire everyone wants.

If your message and methods are infectious…then look for patient zero.

Posted by: Steve Banis

Over the next few weeks, we’ll touch on what I believe are some of the trends to look for in business, marketing, the economy, and social dynamics – and how they may affect you.

But first 2009. Wow. Enough said?

I think most would agree that the economy was the story in so many ways. How many banks are there in the country now? 3 maybe? (ok there’s at least a dozen.)

Here in Albany, NY, we saw two democratic state senators switch to the other party – triggering the most embarrassing political fight I’ve ever seen or ever want to see – only to see them switch back and one of them raised to the leadership post. State government erupts while the cities, counties, and towns burn with unemployment and shrinking revenue.

Global warming / climate change takes center stage in Copenhagen and businesses worldwide do their best to wrap themselves in “green causes.”

2009 was also the year that social media supposedly came of age.

While foreign governments shut down the Internet in their countries, citizens ran through the streets and tweeted about what was going on with the help of surrogate computer users in other countries. Cameras showed our national leaders tweeting during the State of the Union.

Of course, 2009 was so much more – suffering and ecstasy. But there was more suffering I think.

What will 2010 bring? There will be a lifting of the economic haze that settled over our country during the last 2 – 3 years. Once that haze lifts off the ground, we shall see the new business landscape.

One topic will be demographics…the continued shift towards an overall older population…a relatively large younger generation raised online…and a shrinking middle class frightened by lots of things.

What else?

• Rising interest rates – but still no money to lend
• Trust first
• Conventional marketing comes back – but moves forward too
• And more…

2010 – ready or not, here it comes.

Posted by: Steve Banis

For over a year now, I have preached the gospel of content.  More content.  Better content.  Relevant content.  Just keep generating and distributing content…it’s the “software” of marketing.

While preparing content and materieals for the launch of the “new” Burst Marketing, I’ve broken my first commandment:

“Thou shalt never stop producing new content.”

While attending to new clients and the launch of a new business, I ingnored the responsibility to connect with Burst Marketing’s readers.  And such, Google rankings are down.  I’ve lost some continuity with readers.  I’ve been a bad boy.  And I apologize.

So let my misguided ways be your beacon of light.  Once you start your blog, newsletter, friending campaign, tweeting, or however you communicate with your peeps – don’t stop, never stop.

That’s just the way it is.  See you next week.

Posted by: Steve Banis

Last week two girls, ages 10 and 12, fell down a storm drain/sewer in Australia. They weren’t seriously hurt. (link to story)

But they were without any means to climb out and desperately needed help. Fortunately, one of the girls had a working cell phone with plenty of bars.

So, within minutes she pulled out her phone and…updated her status on Facebook. Her friends then called 000 (the Australian equivalent of 911) and help arrived soon thereafter.

You either admire the girls’ quick thinking and resourcefulness or you are recoiling in horror. If you’re like me – you’re simply left slack jawed.

Younger ‘Millennial’s’ have so adopted social media as a means to carry on regular dialogue with their friends that, at least in this case, they trust Facebook over calling 911 in a dire emergency.

The older you get of course, the more preposterous it seems.

But is it really?

Facebook is now beyond 250 million members and skyrocketing globally. Together with other social media, it is a standard mode of communication. Individuals, businesses, and government officials exploit the platform – finding new ways to use it every day.

Over the last 9 months, the number of users in the USA has grown 101%. But that’s nothing to Taiwan’s 1899%, the Philippines’ 1136% or Indonesia’s 879%.

The upside? Worldwide personal connectivity and the emergence of the true world marketplace. Going where no one has gone before.

The downside? It is growing as a standard of personal communication, taking the place of face to face and even voice to voice communication. Relationships are increasingly bound by skin deep connections rather than shared life experience.

In the virtual world of online gaming, Avatars ARE you in the community. They are not real – rather they are the perception you wish others to have of you in this alternate ‘reality.’

Is Social Media becoming an Avatar for personal relationships? A stand in for true friendship and professional bonds?

We may not like the answers to these questions, but we better figure out how to deal with their impact on our daily personal and professional lives. And take action.

Welcome to the continued evolution of society.

Posted by: Steve Banis