Bilingual Social Media Online Marketing Manager

March 12, 2014 By Olga Santo Tomas Monroe 1 Comment

Spanish Speakers in North America

The last US census conducted revealed an astonishing large number of Spanish speakers living within the United States: 53 million. With this number quickly growing by an average 2.2% per year, speaking Spanish has moved from an interesting trait to a mandatory skill. As the Hispanic population in the United States grows, the international love affair with social media simultaneously expands. While the growth of the two is independent of one another, there’s no doubt that there’s a large interaction between the online community and the Spanish-speaking one. As such, the services I can offer you as a bilingual social media manager are invaluable.

Cultural Acknowledgement

As a bilingual social media manager, I bring more than just language skills to the table. Rather, my translations extend beyond simple vocabulary to understanding cultural appropriateness, norms, and expectations. While anyone can look up words in an online translator or dictionary, I can provide your business or organization with the skills necessary to promote a positive relationship with clients and customers. This relationship, that recognizes and incorporates cultural diversity, is essential in creating and maintaining a connection between a business and its consumers.

Essential Skills

In addition to providing culturally relevant information to consumers, I possess the essential skills to getting the job done right. By having fluency in both English and Spanish, I am able to focus on:

Creating enticing and shareable content for various social platforms;
Integrating social, community-based media business strategies;
Creating, monitoring, analyzing, and reporting on social media trends within the Hispanic community; and
Acting as a liaison between communication teams, online influencers, and Spanish-speaking communities.

In addition to these cultural and lingual-specific skills, I also have all the know-how of an experienced social media manager. I fully recognize the benefits of guiding and executing strategic social media initiatives, developing and managing viral campaigns, creating and maintaining high-profile channel accounts, understanding how to grow a brand’s social presence through paid and organic means, and maintaining an influencer-level profile across key social media platforms.

Conflict Resolution and Improved Communication

A bilingual social media manager is beneficial within the workplace–not only can I help you to create a business culture that recognizes and appreciates diversity, but I’m also an effective tool in conflict resolution and communication improvement. With a bilingual social media manager, miscommunication and misunderstandings are no longer a cause for concern. When there is a problem in the workplace, the problem can be exacerbated by a language barrier. I can help to coach clients and employees through conflict resolution, as well help promote direct communication.

Translating between English and Spanish

Additional Benefits

A bilingual social media manger acts as the social media voice for the organization or business, and cultivates new communities and manages branded online communities. By running reports and translating metrics and data into useable information, I’ll help to guide the overall communication strategy of the brand. Additionally, I promise to engage in and lead a community of social media followers across all platforms. In conclusion, a monolingual social media manager can no longer be considered the most effective means of creating and maintain meaningful social media; rather, a bilingual social media manager provides the cultural expertise and language know-how to accomplish the task at hand; I will provide your organization with both.

by Olga Santo Tomás Monroe 919-604-0104 olgamaria3@aol.com

Social Media and Online Marketing Management—Click to view this article in Spanish

Connect to me on G+: https://plus.google.com/+OlgaSantoTom%C3%A1sMonroe/posts

Filed Under: Education, Social Media Management

Creating a Social Media Marketing Plan

March 1, 2014 By Karen Tiede 2 Comments

Social media plays a critical part of any successful online marketing plan. Learning how to efficiently structure your social media plan can help you increase brand awareness while driving customer engagement. Below are some tips to help you get started on customizing your own plan of action.

Understand What Social Media Is

Often times, executives and business owners struggle to understand the value of social media and the positive effect it could have on their business as well as their bottom line.

Today, social media plays a more central role in online marketing strategies. “Social” can engage a business’ target audience, increase brand awareness and generate publicity. Social media marketing can also be used for brand building, reputation management, customer feedback, community building and customer conversions.

Social media, when done with intention, is about having meaningful conversations. By starting and maintaining a dialogue with your target audience, you can better serve them.

Know the Vision and Mission of the Business and Make It Come to Life

What is the business about that will other people would want to talk about? Beyond making money, what else are you here for? An ideal mission statement is clear and simple enough to keep alive. For example, Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful. A guiding statement is kept alive by the owners referring to it and leading from it.

A clear mission statement will serve as a beacon and touchstone for all marketing efforts, and in particular, for designing your presence on the social platforms.

Know Your Goals and Milestones

The start of any successful social media marketing plan is outlining your goals, or the problem to be solved.
What do you want to achieve? Do you want to use social media for customer service? Are you trying to network with other companies? Do you want to use social media to help re-brand your business?

Taking the time to think through specific goals will help you lay the groundwork to social media marketing success.

Know Your Target Market and Define Avatars

Social media allows you to market directly to your target consumers on the same social channels that they use every day. Do you know where your customers spend the most time online? Facebook? Twitter? Pinterest?

Take the time to develop avatars of several types of clients or prospects (3 to 10). A clear example used in politics is Soccer Moms vs Hockey Moms. An ideal avatar is defined so clearly that someone else could identity your customer at a party after talking to them a few minutes.

You also need to know who your negative-customer is as well. Who do you want to repel or send to the competition? Who are the people that complain easily and consume 80 percent of your time? If you can define avatars for these customers, you can design marketing that will NOT attract them to your business.

Post engaging, unique or other shareable items that your target demographic would find appealing, and don’t forget to engage with the people who comment on and like your posts!

Know Your Budget

A solid social media marketing strategy requires two things: time and money. Exactly how much of either depends on the size of your business as well as the size of the audience you are trying to reach. Consider the following:

Time

Who will be maintaining your social accounts? Consider how much time will be required to invest in the ongoing management of the various social media accounts that you create. Will you have this much time, or would it be better if you hired an outside social media marketing expert?

Money

Is your business big enough to hire a social media professional?

If you’ve determined that you don’t have the time to manage multiple social media accounts, consider hiring an expert. Outsourcing your social media marketing may save you both time and money as well as help you meet your social marketing goals.

Look at your budget and establish how much money you have to spend on marketing. How much can be invested in social media?

Know Your Social Networks

If your company is mainly a B2B firm, focus on LinkedIn, Google+, and Slideshare. B2C companies often focus on Facebook and Pinterest. Both sides of the business divide need to pay attention to Google+ and the Google Business Pages.

Determine a Frequency for Posting

How often should you post new content to social networks?
Posting too much to your social networks is almost as bad as not posting enough. In the beginning, it will take some trial and error to figure out how much is too much versus too little.

Use cues from your audience to see what sorts of content resonates (ex: people ‘liking’ or commenting on posts or re-sharing). Look for content posting patterns that may have led to unlikes or unfollows.

Consider the timing and who will see your posts

Most platforms offer analytics information that can help you determine when your followers are on-line and more likely to see your posts and updates. 50% of your exposure on Facebook, for example, happens in the 30 minutes after you share. If your viewers aren’t online at that time, they won’t see your updates.

Create a calendar

Putting together a content calendar is one of the best ways to organize your total social media marketing plan as well as keep track of what things you’ve tried. A content calendar can also serve as a sounding board, helping you come up with new ideas to better market the business.

There is no one way to write up a social media content calendar. However, some of the basic things you’ll want to include in your calendar are:

Months, noting special events, seasonal information, and holidays that matter in your business.
Blog Post Titles
Content Titles
Date and place where content was published
Social Sites, along with an indication of what type of content was posted to each social site

Get as detailed as you want with your calendar. For example, some companies will stratify their information even further to include line items such as: keywords, title tags, names of authors who wrote content, who content was last approved by, and other detailed information.

When going through your social media content calendar, be aware of where you are publishing information as well as what type of information you are publishing. For example, Pinterest, Instagram, and Facebook are predominantly visual, so images may get more engagement than written content. If you do post written content, be sure that it is connected to a relevant image.

Measure Success

In addition to having a social media marketing content calendar, you should also include a separate spreadsheet to formulate Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). KPIs are formulas that help you measure success in your marketing efforts.
It’s not enough to join a social network and post information. You need to have a way to measure how this information is (or isn’t) reaching its intended audience.

Ideally, you should have KPIs that are quantitative as well as qualitative. While quantitative results are important, make an effort to look at qualitative results as well. These results will show you how people feel about your brand and the information you are posting.

Some social networks produce their own metrics, including Facebook, LinkedIn, and Pinterest. Once you’ve established what your KPIs are, create a spreadsheet, and decide how often you’ll update it with metrics. Some companies may choose to update their KPI spreadsheet on a weekly basis, monthly basis or even quarterly.

Don’t forget to take advantage of Google Analytics to see which social sites are top referrers to your business. Google Analytics can be a wealth of information for any business to help you see what is or isn’t working with your social media marketing plan.

Have the flexibility to change the plan and update it based on events and feedback you gain.

We welcome your comments and response. What have you learned about having a Social Media plan? What have you learned by not having a Social Media plan?
by Martin Brossman and Karen Tiede
Learn more about our Social Media Management Training at: http://smmcp.wpengine.com

Filed Under: Education, Resources, SMMCP Course, Work

Repurposing Content and Content Curation

February 27, 2014 By Olga Santo Tomas Monroe Leave a Comment

We live in a digital age, where information is no longer found through the phone book or word-of-mouth; rather, people get their information from the Internet, primarily using search engines such as Google. Because of this Internet phenomenon, having an online presence as a business is the best possible strategy for marketing your company and services. However, not everyone is a natural writer and not everything needs a blog post. Repurposing content and content curation can be a great way to share valuable information to your customers and prospective customers through your website. Here’s how to create meaningful content that’s been repurposed:

What Exactly is Content Curation?
Content curation refers to the process of finding already existing content and organizing that content in a way that’s relevant to your customers or potential customers. Oftentimes, content curation can involve using very similar content but on a new medium, hence the name “repurposing” content, or giving the content a new purpose. Creating high quality repurposed content involves more than just using already existing content, though; high-quality content will also add new information, a new perspective, or new relevant questions.

What’s the Point of Content Curation?
Content curation is a marketing tool that’s used by companies for their blogs or websites. The point of content curation is to provide valuable information to your customers or potential customers by cutting down the time they spend sifting through useless information. By using content curation, you create content that provides important information to site visitors that’s easy to find and navigate.

How Does Content Curation Work?
Content curation has three primary aspects that go into its creation, which are filtering, analysis, and social rating. Each of these three things can be done either manually or automatically, depending upon the technology that you have access to.

Filtering: Filtering is exactly what is sounds like—choosing material (either through personal preference, votes and views from a social community, or due to the information’s relevance) that should be included in future content based on its current effectiveness.

Analysis: Semantic analysis is the process of looking at a problem and finding information and relationships between existing information that answer that problem. For example, if the problem is “How do I explain my product?” then semantic analysis looks at content to ensure that it’s solving the problem by examining the relationship between statements, facts, and sources in the content.

Social Rating: Social rating simply means that the content that you choose for repurposing was chosen based on the fact that it received a high social rating. This is usually used for social media sites, like Facebook.

When you’re attempting to repurpose content for your own blog or website, the most important aspect you should focus on is filtering already existing information, and adding new, relevant content, too. Use hyperlinks, incorporate multimedia, address the problem, and make a schedule for yourself of when you’ll be posting.

Why You Should Repurpose and Curate Content

Copying and pasting old information into a new blog post simply for the sake of having something on your website isn’t helpful—it doesn’t provide customers with any new information whatsoever.

What is helpful, however, is taking bits and pieces of old information and making it new and exciting for those who visit your site/blog. A great example of repurposing content was Martin Brossman’s Hangout-On-Air with David Amerland about “What’s Beyond Interruption Advertising?” When Brossman went to put the information on his blog, it would have been really easy to just transcribe the dialogue. Instead, though, Brossman added new, free content and ideas that he learned in the interview, and organized it in an easy-to-navigate and relevant fashion.

Essentially, your job is to find content that you think is meaningful, and then to explain why it’s meaningful to your customers. By doing so, you’ll be creating a website or blog with a strong online presence, you’ll drive more traffic to your site, and you’ll be providing customers and potential customers with what they need.

by Olga Santo Tomás Monroe 919-604-0104 olgamaria3@aol.com Social Media Marketing and Management
Connect to me on G+: https://plus.google.com/+OlgaSantoTom%C3%A1sMonroe/posts

Learn more about the Social Media Management Certification Program at: http://smmcp.wpengine.com

Filed Under: Education, Resources

Social Media Policy For Businesses

January 6, 2014 By Martin Brossman Leave a Comment

Are you empowering your people to surf or are you still trying to control the ocean?

Do you empower your people to use Social Media?

As social media becomes more integrated into our daily life, it is difficult to regulate employees. Too often, businesses shy away from social media. However, businesses fail to realize each employee is creating an impression of your business by what they are saying about you online. In many cases, what your employees say casually might not be the impression you want your company to project. It is easier to have clear guidelines than to try to control every action.

A social media policy is every bit as important to the company as any other policy. In fact, your social media policy should be part of your corporate culture.

The most famous example of this is the seven-word policy used by Zappos: “Be Real and Use Your Best Judgment.” While this policy is too simplistic for most companies, Zappos is able to make it work by incorporating it into every part of their corporate culture.

One employee with a bad attitude or a bad sense of humor can have a negative effect on entire brand or the “personality of your business.” The wrong type of exposure online can ruin anyone’s business.

The best way to protect your business from inappropriate social media exposure is with a social media policy. Here’s what you need to be aware of in order to create a good social media policy.

Identify What is Proprietary Information

Every business has information that cannot be discussed with outsiders. This could be a special process, a secret recipe or client details. A good social media policy will spell out exactly what type of information is confidential and not to be shared.

Make clear that logos, trademarks, company signatures, and company uniforms should not be used in images and posts unless actually speaking for the company.

Infringing on someone else’s copyrights or trademarks should also be discussed. In many cases, people don’t understand that they are infringing. Ignorance is neither an excuse nor a defense.

Spell Out Any Moral Clauses

Many businesses have ‘moral clauses’ in their employment contracts. Be clear about the type of content that is not acceptable to post on the business’ social media sites. What is offensive to your company might not be offensive to your employee.

If your industry deals with children or other special groups, you might have additional clauses in your social media policy.

Designate A Company Spokesperson

A Social Media spokesperson is the go-to person for any questions regarding what is and is not appropriate online. Companies with a designated social media spokespeople find that they have far fewer social media gaffes than those without one.

Encourage People To Be Civil Online

It’s not just what people say online, it’s how they say it. You don’t want an employee to purposely offending others. Encourage people to be civil to others online, even when they disagree with what’s posted.

Some businesses require pre-approval, or two sets of eyes, on responses to negative reviews and other difficult content.

Be Aware Of What’s Protected Speech

It’s common for people to complain about their jobs online. After all, social media is the new water cooler. When a company finds statements such as “I hate my job” or “my boss is a jerk” online, one natural impulse is to fire that employee. So many companies did fire employees for posting negative statements on their personal accounts, in fact, that the courts have ruled some of this as “protected speech.”

There are two kinds of work bashing that are considered protected speech online: venting and discussing.

Venting is loosely defined as someone complaining to let off stream. As long as they don’t give away any proprietary information, or engage in “instigating speech,” employees are permitted to post content in this category without repercussions.

Discussing wages or working conditions with other employees or outsiders in an effort to improve wages and working conditions is considered “union activities,” and is governed by the National Labor Relations Act. This is true even if your business or industry does not have a union.

Educate Employees

When and where an employee can post should also be spelled out. Are they allowed to post from work? How about a work related event or retreat?

Discuss Consequences

A rule without a consequence is just a suggestion. The same is true with your social media policy. Without consequences properly spelled out, no one will take your policy seriously.

Are all offenses treated the same? Is one offense enough to be fired or does your company have a “three strikes and you’re out” rule? Whatever the rules, whatever the consequence, make sure your employees know and agree to them.

Conclusion

When social media is used correctly, employees can help spread the word about your company and build your brand. The key to making this happen is to have the right policies in place. A good Social Media Policy will encourage polite, respectful interaction without disclosing confidential information of the company or your clients. A social media policy is not just a nice thing for businesses to have, it’s a necessity.

by Martin Brossman and Karen Tiede

Learn more about their Social Media Management Certificate program:
http://smmcp.wpengine.com

Special thanks to Mercedes Tabano II for research.

Filed Under: Education, SMMCP Course

Strategy for Social Media Marketing Management

August 6, 2013 By Karen Tiede Leave a Comment

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Filed Under: SMMCP Course

Word for the Day: Webcare

July 13, 2013 By Karen Tiede

Rather than women or Internet-savvy youths, older men are the most likely demographic group to complain online.

“Webcare” is the translation of a Dutch word that means “using social media to do customer support.”

Graphic from Olga ter Voert from TNS NIPO showing where people post reviews, by motivation.

Click on the image to go to the original post.

Filed Under: Infographics

The Social Media Prism

July 12, 2013 By Karen Tiede

The Conversation Prism v. 3

The Conversation Prism gives you a whole view of the social media universe, categorized and also organized by how people use each network. V 3.0 introduces new groups and networks and also removes those networks no longer in play. Use the Conversation Prism to see what you’re missing!

Click on the image to go to the website where you can see more posters about social media.

Filed Under: Infographics

Your competition works for … bees?

July 11, 2013 By Karen Tiede

The Johannesburg Zoo has a tweeting Honey Badger.

Ferocious. Relentless. Extremely thick-skinned.

Perfect for the position of social media manager.

Honey Badgers eat bees, among other things I don’t want to eat.

The tweeting badger from the Johannesburg Zoo.

Apparently, the badger is selective about whom he follows.

If you do social media management for a zoo or animal rescue group, think about how you can use the Honey Badger example in your organization

Filed Under: News

Aweber is Hiring a Social Media Manager

July 7, 2013 By Karen Tiede

Social Media Manager (for Aweber, an email marketing company)

Note: We included more text than usual from this position because it will be filled quickly and probably removed from the web. We know the company better than the other help-wanted ads we share with our students. One of the instructors is an Aweber customer.

The company is 100% invested in the social media market and understands, probably more than many older brick-and-mortar businesses, what this position both offers and requires.

It is a bit of a surprise that Aweber is advertising for this position, rather than promoting from within. However, they may already have an internal candidate for the position; sometimes ads are either fishing expeditions or EEOC-compliance exercises.

This position is MUCH larger than many freelance, part-time, or small-agency social media marketing managers usually encounter. It requires much more of a corporate background, or at least a well-grounded (proven!) understanding of what it’s like to work in a multi-million dollar company. Students and graduates who have come to the Social Media Manager Certificate Program from Fortune 1000 backgrounds will understand how these cross-functional, communication, and liaison skills are critical in a larger business.

The Social Media Manager Position

The Social Media Manager will own the Social Media strategy, management and execution for Aweber’s social presence. The Manager will work closely with other internal departments (PR, Sales, Product, Creative, HR, Customer Solutions) to meet/exceed company Social Media objectives and goals. Success for this role is measured by the evolution of our impact in Social Media (from an acquisition, retention and customer service standpoint), and across other paid, owned and earned efforts.

Our team includes smart people who appreciate talented goal seekers, continuous learning, experimentation and a lust for creating and implementing cutting edge solutions. We welcome those who share these passions to apply.

Qualifications for the Social Media Manager Position

Minimum of 3 years managing a social media presence in an agency/product/brand environment.
Bachelor’s Degree preferred.
Comfortable working in an informal, high-energy team environment.
Proven ability to effectively work cross-functionally across the company.
Excellent project management skills (i.e. Effectively owning something from concept through completion/launch).
In-depth knowledge and understanding of social media platforms, their respective strengths/weaknesses and how they can function successfully as a holistic solution.
Knowledge of the blogging/earned media ecosystem for messaging platforms
Effective articulation of ideas and complex concepts in written and verbal forms.
Ability to effortlessly /effectively build and maintain internal and external relationships.
Proven results as a team player and independent contributor.
Proven ability to serve as a discipline/practice lead that can influence other departments (specifically PR, Product, Sales, Creative, Tech, HR) effortlessly.
Have proven knowledge of other digital marketing channels (e.g. SEO, PPC, Display, Email, Affiliates) and their impact/influence on social efforts.

Responsibilities of the Social Media Manager

Develop and implement the external and internal social media strategy, coordinating with key stakeholders across the multiple departments to ensure its effectiveness.
Serve as the key liaison between our internal departments and external-facing social media content, driving key initiatives around customer service and our social media policies, protocols and workflow processes.
Manage social media campaigns and day-to-day responsibilities. Duties include proactively managing content calendar, community outreach efforts, facilitating the resolution of customer inquiries, developing paid/earned tests, developing our brand advocates & influencers, driving innovation, etc.
Manage and develop our presence on social networking sites including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Quora and other similar community sites. Maintain our presence on relevant blogs, and develop relationships and innovative tests as needed.
Become an advocate of the company (both internally and externally) in social media spaces (including mobile, video, local), participating in webinars, trade shows and conferences as needed.
Develop and monitor relevant benchmarks around the impact of our social media programs. Create and analyze holistic reports for company stakeholders.
Own the identification and negotiation for additional, relevant tools necessary to be effective in the position.
Monitor trends in social media tools and innovations and report/present them internally.

Tom Kulzer on Mixergy

Tom Kulzer, Founder of Aweber

Andrew Warner of Mixergy interviewed Tom Kulzer, Founder of Aweber, on May 10, 2013. It was not Andrew’s greatest interview, IMO, and Tom handled a few inappropriate questions gracefully. If you are not a Mixergy Premium member, you can’t hear the interview anymore. However, you can read the transcript. Should you apply for the position, you would do well to included this interview in your preparation.

Filed Under: Jobs & Income

Help Wanted Ad Content

July 6, 2013 By Karen Tiede

In this post, we are collecting a selection of extracts from help-wanted positions we find around the internet. The paragraphs collected in this post are offered to our students and graduates as a means of expanding their thinking about how they offer their services to their own target market.

(Note: we are not planning to keep these listings up-to-date. Many of the positions will be pulled off the web once they are filled. The links may not work. The point of the post is to share the content.)

Child’s Play Communications

Child’s Play Communications, the award-winning specialists in public relations, social media word-of-mouth communications and online marketing targeting moms, seeks a full-time Social Media Manager to strategize and execute social media initiatives for multiple clients.
Responsibilities include:

Advising on social network strategy for Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and other social media platforms
Developing and posting content for all of the above
Analyzing and reporting results using appropriate software
Client relations

Qualifications

A minimum of 3 years’ experience in a social media agency or public relations agency
Experience developing social network strategy and content for multiple accounts simultaneously
Ideally, extensive background developing social media strategy and content targeted toward moms/parents
Understanding of social media analytics programs
Experience advising brands on all of the above
Excellent organizational skills
Ability to multi-task, meet deadlines and work independently in a fast-paced environment
Enthusiasm, professionalism and a passion for social media and public relations

Graduate Online / Social Media Manager – Entrepreneurial Start-up

Relevant paragraph:
You will lead and develop the implementation of the online strategy, utilising brand-building social channels including LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, blogs and the company website, to enhance the generation of business for other members of the team. As much as you will need to have a clear strategy for how you will deliver the company vision online, you will also be equally at home creating all types of content either alone (such as blogs, tweets, competitions etc) or alongside other professionals such as videographers and designers. This work will include hands-on management of a complete tip-to-toe rebrand and website rebuild within your first few months.

Social Media Manager

If you would like to join our team as social media manager, get in touch: email address provided on the associated website.

Responsibilities:

Facebook communication (posts, engaging with users and fans, etc)
Planning and coordination of social media activities (editorial calender)
Other Social Media activities (Blog, Twitter, etc)
Communication with marketing and content team
Creating, proofreading and translating texts as needed (for website, presentations, marketing material)

Requirements:
– Fluent in German and English

Startup enthusiast, interest in ecommerce and social media
<snip>
Experience in social media management a plus