Social media without analysis is worth nothing. Analysis and data is what has given online marketing its power. Social Media practicioners should never forget that without research they are flying blindfolded. Those who just “engage in the conversation” and “mingle” will probably be the same ones complaining they have seen no returns from their social media activity. Coincidentally we tweeted this week how 69% of companies embark on their social media without plan or strategy in a clear “me too” spree.

Thankfully, Dan Zarrella, a Social Media Scientist, has been studying massive amounts of information on Facebook to find out what is the best content and context to market using the site. Then, he shared it with everyone in a Hubspot live webinar. Although, as with any statistic, it doesn’t mean it’s going to work, just that it is way more likely to draw attention and shareability. Let’s take a look at the top ten takeaways from the study.

1. Weekends are the busiest days. So you need to schedule your messages to be sent on weekends. You may use Hootsuite for free or pay for an account at Sendible (where free basic accounts are also available).

2. The more people that like your content, the more viral it becomes. Open Graph aside for the moment, Social proof must become a key concept in your Facebook marketing. Consequently, make your users look cool when sharing your content, or they won’t.

3. Videos are shared on Facebook in great numbers, whereas they don’t work that well on Twitter.

4. Food, movies, TV shows, books and musicians are the most shared content of Facebook.

5. Statistics and specific numbers are also good attention-grabbers.

6. Conversely, religion, pets, bars and pharma are amongst the least shared topics.

7. Media buzzwords such as Optimisation, SEO, Twitter or Google are actively avoided.

8. Being entertaining and positive shoots up the number of Likes and Shares. Being negative has the opposite effect.

9. Straightforward, user-friendly content receives more attention.

10. Research your audience. Even with this hard data, you need to be aware of your own audience. Marketers of religious organisations or plainly boring companies may start with a disadvantage, but an ongoing bespoke analysis of the context and content of the most shared media and status updates will help you greatly. Also, use Google Analytics and Quantcast to give you insight into your audience’s demographics and tastes.

About The Author

Xavi Izaguirre

Xavier Izaguirre joined Social Media Library as a Social Media Analyst, helping brands and agencies identify key influencers online and devising best outreach strategies. With a background in traditional marcoms, Xavier has also completed a Masters Degree in Marketing and Communications at Westminster University, London and carries out social media and online marketing consultancy work as a freelancer.

Follow Xavier on Twitter at @Xavi_izaguirre

With the upsurge in productivity tools such as Hootsuite and Seesmic we can now update multiple Social Media accounts in one fell swoop. Write a sentence with a link and use it for your Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin profiles. Technology allows us to do this, but does this means we have to?

There are various reasons to never ever produce the same copy for all your social media platforms. One can argue that even strategy may need a different take and angle. Balancing consistency for a memorable message with an understanding of the different audiences is key. Dan Zarrella, consistently studying the most shareable and retweetable content has come up with great data on the right content for our social media. According to him,

Facebook audience (audience as every individual using Facebook at that very moment in time) is looking forward to light content, videos, funny stuff, or anecdotes and interesting facts more related to pub talks than essays. All the techy stuff that gets RT and shared on Twitter doesn’t actually have a big uptake on Facebook, where it is rather ignored.

Twitter is very different. Its audience is information hungry, early adopters, smart individuals that can face complicated information on the spot (or save for later with Delicious or Instapaper). On Twitter, software, apps, gadgets and ebooks work better than videos and images.

As a general rule, never produce copy and push it to all of the platforms. Instead, spend a while looking at the conversations of your target audience in every scenario to give you some insight into the right content. Then, try your hand out with some tweets, posts or status udpates and analyse the content that gets liked and shared the most and produce more of it. Discard the other. Doing otherwise just won’t work and is a ticket to quitting. In addition, never trust those who tell you to “forget strategy and participate in the conversation”. That is just an insane cliché for all those who don’t understand Social Media. Never drop the brief.

Soon you will realise how your Twitter activity and your Facebook marketing part ways to talk to different people, at different times of the day and about different angles of your product or service.

About The Author

Xavi Izaguirre

Xavier Izaguirre joined Social Media Library as a Social Media Analyst, helping brands and agencies identify key influencers online and devising best outreach strategies. With a background in traditional marcoms, Xavier has also completed a Masters Degree in Marketing and Communications at Westminster University, London and carries out social media and online marketing consultancy work as a freelancer.

Follow Xavier on Twitter at @Xavi_izaguirre

According to the 2010 Business Monitor United States report, only 1% of small businesses see social media as a factor in business growth. No matter how many case studies we find, let’s not forget that there are zillions of local businesses that remain dormant before the immense opportunities that social media brings.

The problem could be to do with having overwhelming doubts on where to start from. So, I just wanted to put together a few tools that could help your local business. Please note: the article will focus only on physical local business.

Monitoring and Reacting

Even before you “gain a Facebook/Twitter/Foursquare presence” or run a blog, local companies need to monitor existing conversation. This doesn’t need to be specifically about them, but could also exist about the competitor’s offer or the product itself. So if we happen to be “The Breakfast Club“, we should monitor for “The Breakfast Club” but also on keywords like “breakfast”, or “brunch”, locations such as “Hoxton”, “Shoreditch” or “Soho” and competitors such as “Fox and Anchor” or “Canteen”. Being comprehensive in our search is key and all platforms should be included. While Google can help users search within different platforms (blogs, forums, etc) as well as the whole web, some specific search engines can provide a lot of value.

• Searchtastic, a great Twitter search tool that allows users to find specific keywords and extract the information to an Excel file. Once there, specific tweets may be selected and replied to
• Hootsuite, a fully fledged Twitter client which has a monitoring feature, enabling “search columns” on keywords or hashtags that users can easily set up. This way we have a more casual but frequent way to respond to customer’s and prospective customer’s feedback or to butt into general chat ( if relevant )
• Boardtracker is a forum search engine, scouring discussion boards and forums for keywords
• Google Alerts is a very simple application that feeds your email every time someone mentions the keywords selected
• For a more holistic approach we may very well try Social Mention, where the keywords are scoured throughout all the social platforms and we even get values on sentiment and popularity that can be compared in different instalments or before/after campaigns

Marketing

If using the above search tools doesn’t bring a lot of actionable results, don’t worry. Awareness would then be our first social marketing objective and the search would not have been in vain.

When it comes to Marketing for local business there are a few obvious tools.

Foursquare and LBS. Foursquare in the UK has not taken off as much as it was supposed to but the whole category of LBS is close to hitting the mainstream. We have discussed Foursquare here.

The concept of LBS is simple. People go places and want to share their locations with their friends in case they want to pop along. By chatting with friends I have also discovered that LBS serves as an aide memoire to users. In both cases, footfall will be increased if we know how to leverage LBS. There is also the possibility of offering the person who checks in the most on Foursquare something special (a guest list) or something not so special and yet effective (a free drink).

Mainstream Social Media such as Twitter and Facebook will include geolocation ( the base of LBS ) soon (Twitter has done it in the US today and soon this will spread through geographically and across Twitter clients). This makes social media gain importance for the marketing of local business.

Schmaps. A nice way of putting your local business on the spot on Twitter is by providing a link built with Schmaps. Available in free or paid for versions ($250), you can build a clickable profile that takes Twitter click-throughs to a screen with pictures, maps, descriptions and RSVP, making it ideal for parties, events and local business. A powerful tool worth checking out.

Schmaps

Yell – As technology leaves its footprint on how we promote our local business, traditional tools don’t remain untouched either. Yell now includes a video channel for businesses to showcase the interior of your shop. What a great way to stand out.

Qype – Qype is a social network for places. Places get talked about, discussed, buzzed or slagged off. There are big chances your place is on Qype, but are you harnessing that? Connect with enthusiasts that can’t get enough of your offerings or liaise with the deranged customers if there are any.

SEO

Local businesses have an SEO advantage and that is that they can get good SERP positions through Google Places, a free service from Google that allows you to register a business so a map springs up in search queries, raising awareness of your profile and location. A great return may be obtained from this tool that is totally hassle-free to set up

Conclusion

Think big, act small. (Ring a bell? It’s Seth Godin)

As a local business you need to think big. But whereas large organisations can’t always afford to talk to individuals, small companies should be engaging in conversations at all levels. Never be afraid either to build your profile through your persona and chat to customers and prospective customers as if you’re the local grocer. For here lies your unique selling point.

About The Author

Xavi Izaguirre

Xavier Izaguirre joined Social Media Library as a Social Media Analyst, helping brands and agencies identify key influencers online and devising best outreach strategies. With a background in traditional marcoms, Xavier has also completed a Masters Degree in Marketing and Communications at Westminster University, London and carries out social media and online marketing consultancy work as a freelancer.

Follow Xavier on Twitter at @Xavi_izaguirre