This edition of Happy Minutes includes Mari Smith, name the Pied Piper of Facebook by Fast Company. Mari explains how to research your demographics on Facebook. It’s important to know what your target audience looks like as well as where they are on and off line. Mari gives you a great tip on how to see the number of people that are within your exact target audience on Facebook.com.

If you’re on Facebook, you’ll appreciate this. My favorite part: “Poke poke poke…poke poke poke poke!”

I read this article a few months ago when it was published, and just had to add it to my blog. Owning a social media company I often get “why should I work with you” or I often get scare that other business owners are working with people who don’t know the first thing about effective social media campaigns. Before you hire anyone to do your social media, read this post.

Co-written by Peter Shankman and Sarah Evans

There’s a new phenomena of people declaring themselves social media experts. We’ve actually heard from firms who pushed someone to become their resident social media expert because the person was on Facebook. There is no endorsement or accreditation to set apart legitimate industry leaders from bandwagon opportunists.

Social media is a hot topic. We get it. And we don’t want to see people getting scammed by self-touting experts ready to make a quick buck.
There are very few people who could, or should in all honesty, be called social media experts. We’re sharing this list with our networks, including those not yet involved in the social media world to give them a helpful guide.

Ways to tell your Social Media “Expert” Might Not Be An “Expert” After All

1. They call themselves an evangelist, guru or expert, and no one else does.

2. They use “expert” or “evangelist” or “guru” or our personal favorite, “influencer” as any of their user names.

3. They “discovered” social media in the last six to 16 months, and there’s nothing online from them in the social media space prior to that. (Remember – Google is your friend.)

4. All of a firm or agency’s “social media strategists” come from traditional PR or Marketing agencies.

5. Everything they learned about social media they learned by reading blog posts (i.e. no application). You can learn a ton about sex from reading Kinsey’s manuals, but I’d still rather be with someone who has some practical experience.

6. They haven’t done anything of significance using social media (i.e. demonstrating they know how to apply the tools). Again, see point on Kinsey.

7. They keep shouting about “widgets.” (Or worse, they’re still talking about push marketing.)

8. Their resume doesn’t include anything that has to do with social media (i.e. no results using social media). And no, having a Twitter account doesn’t cut it.

9. Their sound bites eerily resemble what you just heard from Chris Brogan and Brian Solis. And quite frankly, following them and a few others (including Sarah) can usually answer 95% of your social media questions to begin with.

10. Their firm has added social media as an additional service (as opposed to integrating it into a comprehensive PR approach). If they say “And we’ll do Facebook and Twitter!” beware.

11. Any use of the term “MySpace” unless you’re only targeting 14-year-old males, or independent bands.

12. Their networks don’t reflect that they are connected. (You should probably research them before hiring them. If their blog hasn’t been updated since 2004 yet they tweet every time they take a slurp of Yogurt, something’s up.)

13. When you Google them, it’s difficult to find them. If they don’t show up on the first page of Google, how are they going to get you up there?

14. They never talk to you about free ways to monitor your online presence (like Google alerts and Twitter search). Perhaps they’re afraid you can do it yourself?

15. They don’t maintain an active blog (at least two posts every month).

16. Any case studies they present only involve very big companies with very big budgets

17. Their lead social media strategist is “this kid we picked up after his internship ended.”

18. When they talk strategy, there is no approach that encompasses a discussion about: communications, marketing, advertising, business development, internal communications and/or customer service.

19. They see “Social Media” as a replacement for customer service, when in fact, only good customer service propels positive social media.

20. They want to charge you to get you signed up on social media sites (yuck).

21. There’s a pay structure that includes a pay-per-post model. Run very far away, very fast.

22. The strategy they provide you primarily includes a Twitter profile and a Facebook fan page.

23. Measurement to them means building up lots of followers and fans.

24. After you work with them you’re just as confused as when you started.

25. They’ve never used Help a Reporter Out (added by Sarah, not Peter). To Sarah’s point, they’ve also not suggested any of the wonderful free services out there before they recommend paying.

This is our list. We’re not saying you have to agree or disagree, just that people acknowledge everyone who calls themselves an expert, isn’t. The list doesn’t end here, either. Share your own “red flags” to identifying social media “expert” posers.

Cross Posted on Shankman.com and PRSarahEvans.com

I don’t understand how it will help my business!

I am constantly hearing the above statement from almost anyone I meet at a networking event after they learn that 3 Elements is a social media company. After talking to me for 5 minutes, they get it; at least a little bit and wants to know more. So I decided to write a blog post about that statement to help others better understand how social media can help grow their business, and understand how you don’t have to spend tons of time online to make it successful.

Mari Smith explained Facebook and Twitter beautifully when she said, “They are a Relationship Management and Visibility Tool.” If you take a second to think about that, you will realize that statement didn’t include the word ‘sales’. However, when you are building and maintaining relationships and gaining exposure, what ends up happening….SALES!

Often, I think business owners create an account on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Linked In, etc., fill out their profile, connect to a few people, and then sit back and get frustrated when their traffic and sales haven’t gone up. This is because it is a tool, which has to 1. Be a part of your marketing plan, and 2. Needs to constantly be used to be effective.

Once I say, “you need to constantly be updating and using your social media accounts”, the busy business owner looks stressed and immediately says, “well there’s no way I have time for that.” But my argument is; do you have time to build relationships, gain exposure, make sales and have awesome customer service?” Of course the answer is, YES!

If the answer is no, I would suggest you stop what you are doing and close up shop because you’ll never be successful. However, if you said yes, keep reading because I’m going to give you a few tips on how to be effective on social media, but not spend tons of hours a week.

1.Learn it. (Or hire someone who knows it.) You must understand what social media is used for, how to use, and the tools to help you use it in order to be successful. If you had a manual car, but didn’t know how to drive stick, you would either stall a million times, fluid the engine (speaking from experience) or never move more than 3 feet. Why would you buy and try to drive a manual car if you didn’t know stick, and didn’t plan on learning it?

Social media, just like almost anything else, is the same way. You need to learn it to be able to make action happen online. If you don’t have the desire or time to learn it, then you need to hire someone that will learn it for you and work in house, or you need to hire a consultant or company that specializes in social media.  And this applies to pretty much any business and leads me to my next point.

2.Social media NEEDS to be a part of your Marketing Plan. If it isn’t, you are missing a huge and targeted audience that needs and wants to learn more about your company….online. Like Bob Dylan sang; Times, they are a changin’. With technology being so advanced, fast and shiny, we are more likely to sit down and pull up digg.com or NYTimes.com to find out current news versus go pick up the paper from our driveway.

We are also shopping this way. And I don’t know about you, but I go to Facebook and Twitter to ask what I should do this weekend, which movie I should watch and were I should have lunch. If someone was suggesting your restaurant to me, or your movie theater, or your event to attend, without you doing it yourself; wouldn’t that be fabulous!? A recommendation goes so much further because it is an endorsement rather than a suggestion.

Having an online presences helps put your company at top of mind when people are searching for their answers. It also puts you before your competition. Having social media in your marketing plan adds a whole other world for you to market that could double, triple or quadruple your sales, readers, subscribers, etc. Is it worth it to you yet???

3. Measure your Online Efforts. Just like all of your marketing campaigns, you need to be tracking what you are doing to see if it is effective or not. If you are spending time marketing, networking and promoting online, you need to see if it is paying off, and which site is most effective. One thing to note…social media is 70% networking, posting articles from your industry, etc., 20% promoting other people, and 10% self promotion. Only 10%! If done correctly, it won’t take too much time until you are a leader online. But if not done correctly, when you start tracking your efforts, you are not going to see the results you want.

Each month track your traffic, top referring sites, percentage of growth, forwarded URL’s, etc., via Google Analytics. If you don’t have analytics, get them immediately at google.com/analytics. It’s free to add to your site, and vital to measuring your ROI. Also, using a URL shortener like bit.ly or su.pr will store the URL’s you shorten and display how many people clicked on the URL, where they are located, and where they clicked from (twitter, email, etc.)

At the end of every month I generate a report with all of the above info and plan my next month’s sales goals, tweak my social media strategies and learn from what info was valuable and spread virally, and what didn’t.

If you have questions, or still don’t understand how social media would help your business grow, please contact us and we will help you see the light!