GetClickable.com Interviews Attorney Uduak Oduok and Other Industry Leaders on Social Media & Social Media Marketing

I had the privilege of being invited and participating in Getclickable.com’s social media series. Listen to what I had to say and read the press release below.

Get Clickable Launches Best Practices Videos and Presentations by Industry Leaders Sharing How They Get ROI Using Social Media Marketing as Part of Social Media Series

Marketers in various industries share information on how their companies have soared and seen true ROI through the implementation of effective Social Media best practices
LOS ANGELES (September 12, 2011) –To correlate with Get Clickable’s Social Media Series, they have launched several video clips and presentations from different companies who use diverse approaches in targeting and reaching their audiences with their Social Media campaigns.

Since 2009, Get Clickable has been showing companies the best practices in Social Media marketing to help them optimize their efforts and work towards receiving the greaest ROI. Using information obtained through the use of automated data algorithms to track the backend results from Social Media sites, Get Clickable is able to study patterns and trends to create content and messages to target specific audiences.

Although the specific implementation of these best practices may vary, in order to successfully increase revenue and get a true ROI, it is essential for companies to study the following—data mining, text analytics, social profiling, productivity software and measurement tools.

Information gathered from these tools can be used to learn what consumers want and what they are saying about products, track posts and messages that are relevant to your specific business, allow you to connect with customers, and reach out to potential customers.

Get Clickable’s Social Media Series Best Practices videos and presentations feature — Social Media guru Randi Zuckerberg, Mega Brand Manager Christine Kelly (Brand Manager to Rihanna, Katy Perry, Sylvester Stallone, Susan Sarandon and more), Julia Allison (International Syndicated Columnist), Ronald McDonald House Charities, the Zocalo Group, and Uduak Law—sharing information on how they have successfully launched online marketing campaigns utilizing the latest Social Media channels.

The first video is a clip featured from the Get Clickable August 26 Social Media Series—Recruiting, Engaging and Growing Traffic in Social Media—at the famous Mr. C’s in Beverly Hills, with special guests Randi Zuckerberg, Social Media strategist, Christine Kelly, celebrity brand integration expert, and Julia Allison, internationally syndicated Social Media columnist.

The other videos featured are from Lauren Fischer of Ronald McDonald House Charities, Hugo Perez of Zocalo Group (Omnicom), Uduak Oduok a Fashion Model, Journalist and Attorney who engages in Social Media best practices and Greg Weekley of Shoutlet, one of the best Social Media publishing and engagement tools according to Forrester Research.

For the Ronald McDonald House Charities, Social Media channels are a forum to engage with customers and connect with them on a daily basis through tweets, blogs, messages and posts.

The Ronald McDonald House Charities discussed how they try to reach people through the way that people want to be talked to or communicated with. The goal through the RMHC Social Media channel is to reach potential donors and inspire them to donate. Using various Social Media channels, RMHC focuses on building relationships and maximizing the online resources. Using Facebook, RMHC posts numerous messages per day to ensure that their conversation amongst fans and followers never ends. At all times they want people to be engaged and actively getting involved in their conversations. With Twitter, they focus on tweeting messages every hour and connecting with fans on an individual basis so they know that RMHC cares about them, and in turn they care about RMHC and get involved.

“One of the key ways we thought to keep our communities going strong was through Social Media,” said Lauren Fischer, Supervisor, Communications, Ronald McDonald House Charities. “We launched our social networks in 2009, and have seen exponential growth. We have seen the value of putting resources and time into communicating online, and we have seen our communities grow. Supporters are interacting through Social Media channels daily, and we want to be part of their conversation, part of their newsfeed every day.”

“Social media is a cost efficient and easy way to communicate with supporters and donors,” said Fischer. “One of our main focuses is on giving the supporters a chance to get involved in each platform. When we post messages, we encourage them to re-post them to optimize the audience we reach.”

Fischer also touched upon the importance of allowing users to get involved through the various Social Media channels.

“We implement four keys to make a lasting Social Media impression—stay authentic with your conversation, equip shareholers—make it easy for fans to get involved, encourage storytelling—allow users to share their stories in their voice, and to get involved—interact with them; acknowledge their posts, and be flexible with your posts.”

Another example of how different companies implement the best practices to cater to their own specific strategies is provided by Hugo Perez of the Zocalo Group. Perez focuses on how sustainable recommendations are driven across market audiences, therefore studying trends of brand fans, industry influencers, peer/family influencer and determined detractors.

The Zocalo Group (Omnicom) focuses on the ‘word-of-mouth’ approach in which they engage with key influencers of their brands—experts, reviewers, columnists, bloggers—and target conversations in the channels where they can best reach their audience.

Through these channels Zocalo is able to understand their consumers sphere of engagement. Zocalo taps into conversations of their target audience, using different Social Media tools and outlets. They implement a six-step approach—know, formalize, identify, engage, protect and measure. With this approach Zocalo is able to understand how a brand is being talked about, formalize a story to help connect with their audience, identify key influencers per their specific market, drive conversations and engage in conversations, protect their brand against any negativity, and lastly measure the impact to evaluate success and ROI.

“At the end of the day, what we are trying to do is to reach our target consumer in the way that’s going to be most impactful to them, and get them to recommend our brands to their peer influences so that our brand is seen in the most reputable light,” said Hugo Perez, Senior Vice President, Hispanic Marketing Lead, Zocalo Group.

Whereas Lauren Fischer and Hugo Perez use different approaches to reach their intended audiences, Uduak Oduok of Uduak Law breaks the common misconception that more is better. Rather than targeting any possible follower or fan, Oduok prefers quality over quantity when it comes to her specific audience.

“People need to understand how the online world works. We use tools available online to find out where the competition is going and what people are talking about,” said Uduak Oduok of Uduak Law. “With Facebook our ROI has been great; people think you need to have millions of people following you, but I don’t believe that. Ladrybrille Magazine has had millions of page views, but not necessarily lots of fans. We want fans who are happy to be there, and more importantly are responsive.”

“Each Social Media platform serves a different purpose,” said Oduok. “You have to know what the specific purpose is for which you use each platform. We use Facebook to build communities and inspire fans and followers through conversations. On Linked In it is about building relationships with other professionals. Using, Twitter, it is key to keep messages short and straight to the point. It is important to maintain your personality with your messages and continue to inspire people.”

Oduok went on to add that Social Media channels are all about connecting with your given audience, and building and managing relationships.

The above examples are only a few ways businesses can harness the power of data mining to maximize their ROI. Using this information allows them to make proactive, knowledge-driven decisions, instead of waiting to react.

As technology continues to evolve, businesses are constantly looking for ways to efficiently and effectively reach their target audience to successfully promote their product or service. With Social Media marketing flourishing in recent years and changing the ways businesses’ launch their marketing campaigns, it is imperative to stay up-to-date on all of the latest advancements that simplify Social Media marketing.

Greg Weekley of Shoutlet, explains about Shoutlet and demonstrates this most amazing Social Media platform for publishing content, publishing widgets, providing CRM and providing e-commerce capabilities to Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and the web in an easy-to-use publishing system that can be used by both small practictioner and large franchise.

Shoutlet provides enterprise social management software for companies to engage consumers online and monetize their Social Media communication. It includes Facebook, Twitter and YouTube management, Social CRM, a contest platform, HTML5 web app building, email and mobile marketing, social commerce, and real-time analytics in one easy-to-use interface.

The platform gives brands and agencies the tools to create, manage, and measure their entire Social Media communications. Companies using Shoutlet’s platform are able to better design and implement highly targeted campaigns and ultimately improve the business impact of their Social Media communications.

For more information on Get Clickable’s Social Media Series visit www.letsgetclickable.com/social-media-series.php.