You may use social media to increase brand awareness, build a loyal community or manage customer service, but make no mistake: you are always selling.

Every tweet you send is a pitch.

Every Facebook status update is an advertisement.

Every YouTube video is a commercial.

Your company’s social media presence might provide the most friendly, engaging and community-oriented experience any human being has ever had online… but it’s still a sales tool.

This shouldn’t be surprising.  Think about your brick-and-mortar store, or your corporate headquarters, or your fulfillment center.  Why do any of those facilities exist?  To sell products.

Your store is a point of sale.

Your office is where you manage your employees… so they’ll increase sales.

Your fulfillment center is where product is shipped… completing sales.

Your customer service center helps keep customers happy… so they’ll buy more.

So while social media may be about “conversations” and “communities” — and we’d never deny that those are the social structures which make these tools useful — when it comes to brand interaction on these channels, the bottom line is always, always sales.

You tweet to give your followers a snapshot of your company’s personality… so they’ll buy more from a company they can relate to.

Your Facebook page gives your customers a place to ask questions and provide feedback… so you can optimize the sales process.

Your YouTube videos can be funny, informative or inspirational… as long as they incite viewers to buy what you’re selling.

Be as social as you want.  Be talkative, personable, informative and entertaining… but always be selling.

Because just being interesting won’t keep the lights on.

Learn more from us on Facebook and Twitter!

Image by Gerard Stolk via Flickr.

Here’s a dirty little secret: you don’t need a degree, a portfolio or any experience to make a living at social media.

All you really need is a website.  (And, if you’re really fancy, a blog.)

Because the barrier to entry for this emerging field is still so low, the social media industry has been plagued by hundreds of self-appointed “gurus,” “experts” and “ninjas” who’ve never actually worked for a client, but they’re eager to convince you that their “expertise” will improve your business and make you a smashing success online — even if their expertise only consists of reading the blogs written by the people who actually do it for a living.

Fortunately, we at Creative Concepts are happy to give you a few tips to help tell the legitimate service providers apart from the social media charlatans.

5 Questions to Ask Your Potential Social Media Agency

Q1: “How long have you been managing social media for your clients?”

Granted, longevity is only one indicator of success.  But the longer an agency has been in business, the more likely it is that their collective experience can improve your bottom line.

(Our answer?  Since 2005.  Yup; even before Twitter.)

Q2: “Have you created any campaigns I might have seen?”

Again, a caveat: some social media successes occur far below the public radar, especially in terms of B2B or niche markets.  But if your potential agency has been working with brand-name clients (and can furnish portfolio proof thereof), it’s a good indicator that other decision-makers have considered them to be a smart hire.

(Our answer? While Ouidad and Ecover may be niche-specific brand names, and while you couldn’t have seen the internal media we created for Pitney Bowes, you just might be one of the 11,000 Facebook fans we’ve helped attract to the Bigelow Tea Facebook page.)

Q3: “What do you consider some of your greatest social media successes?”

This is really a two-pronged question: it allows the agency to list any wins it’s collected (even if they’re not “mainstream”), and it gives them an opportunity to explain how they judge their own successes or failures — via sales, traffic, engagement, awareness or any other metrics they might favor.  That way, you can see how your expected needs and their areas of expertise overlap.  (HINT: If they can’t point to a positive impact on client sales, you should be skeptical.)

(Our answer? Now that our clients list Facebook as one of their top 10 sales drivers, our clients’ YouTube videos have received industry awards, and both we and our clients have been invited to speak about social media at industry conferences, we think we’ve had quite a few successes — and counting!)

Want to learn more? Follow us on Facebook and Twitter!

Image by respres via Flickr.

As an industry that’s built entirely upon the exchange of opinions, the fashion world may seem like a field where social media would naturally take flight.  After all, aren’t terms like “word of mouth” and “viral buzz” the same keywords that signify success on both the catwalk and on Twitter?

But there’s a catch: the fashion world is actually built on a scarcity of opinions.  It relies on the reputations and influence of a select few tastemakers to tell the rest of the rabid audience what they’re supposed to like (and not like), and when.

So how did an industry that benefits from the existence of gatekeepers learn to embrace a new technology that essentially renders gatekeepers obsolete?

By turning their own world upside-down and offering everyone access.

In 2010, the vaunted New York Fashion Week — an event once so exclusive that access to it has been proffered as the grand prize on every season of Project Runway — went social in a big, big way.  Brands like American Express, Womens Wear Daily and Aveda helped sponsor a Twitterizing of Fashion Week, which spurred a wave of tech industry buzz.

Although the fashion world’s initial Twitter experiment was the source of much discussion, the model was reversed in 2011: instead of Twitter providing a top-down information hub, veteran (and aspiring) fashionistas seized the day and curated their own views of Fashion Week, resulting in a more vibrant variety of fashion coverage.  (Our clients Ouidad and Ecover even got into the mix!)

Today, the Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week fan page on Facebook currently boasts more than 85,000 fans.  And while this year’s migration of fashion brands to Tumblr has had its share of ups and downs, the future implications of fashion’s affair with social media are clear: this once-insular industry is now actively seeking new ways to build buzz, generate awareness and connect with the general public.

As for fashion’s gatekeepers, they’re certainly not obsolete.  In fact, their expertise is actually even more valuable now, as a filter to help the public make sense of the flood of available fashion information that was once so highly restricted.

Who knew the industry that generates so much of the world’s art, imagery and gossip could get even bigger simply by opening their doors, pulling back their curtains and pressing the “share” button?

You should follow us on Facebook and Twitter!

Photo from 2010 Fashion Week by j-No, via Flickr.

To celebrate the 50th anniversary of the very first Ken doll, Mattel — the creators of Barbie, Ken and their vast plastic empire — launched a social media campaign to help Ken woo Barbie back.  If you didn’t know, the iconic couple broke up a few years back — presumably to see other plastic people — but Mattel decided today was the right time to reunite the star-crossed lovers.

The problem is, Mattel used social media to drive their Ken campaign.

Normally, this would be a good thing… if the campaign was producing content worth discussing, or if it were actually taking the public’s opinion seriously.

But, since a happy ending was most likely in the works all along, any pretense of “letting the public vote” on the ultimate outcome strikes us as a sham for at least three reasons:

1. Do you seriously think Mattel would spend millions of dollars just to announce that Barbie and Ken weren’t reuniting on Valentine’s Day — especially after they broke up on Valentine’s Day in 2004?
2. The web is alive with trolls, and the likelihood that those digital misanthropes would hijack the voting process to ensure that Barbie and Ken would remain apart is quite high.
3. Millions of people already saw Barbie and Ken come together on the big screen in Toy Story 3.  Creating an alternate, highly-commercialized “reunion” seems far less real — and less satisfying — than their Pixar rendezvous.

But maybe the largest problem of all with a social media campaign like this is…

Who cares?

Children and optimists will always vote for love.  Cold-hearted cynics will always vote against it.  And since cold-hearted cynics aren’t Barbie’s target audience, this entire campaign can be seen partly as “preaching to the choir” and partly as a public service reminder: “Hey, we’re still here.”

Ultimately, the entire campaign was really just a stunt meant to direct attention toward Ken’s 50th anniversary, in which the nearly 2 million Barbie fans on Facebook were used as leverage to catapult Ken into the mainstream news.  However, with Compete.com only registering 12,000 unique visitors to the barbieandken.com website in January, its traffic would need a sharp jump in February to match likely expectations.

Then again, today is the first day that Mattel will begin selling Barbie merchandise directly through Facebook, so it’s still possible (depending on sales) that the Ken campaign will eventually be seen as both a PR and a retail win for Mattel.

Which is nice.

But it isn’t social media.

Want to hear more? Follow us on Facebook and Twitter!

Last year, in the shadow of the recession, public trust was amazingly (but predictably) low.

But now, according to the results of the annual Edelman Trust Barometer, trust in “people like us” is plummeting while trust in experts is on the rise.  Steve Rubel has a well-reasoned theory about why that might be happening, and he predicts a cyclical boom in the prominence of thought leaders and subject matter experts.

If people are once again in search of facts, figures and fountains of wisdom, what does that mean for your business?

Are You In the Business of Trust?

You don’t have to make a living in finance, health or politics to be a member of the trust economy.  Companies of all sizes, and in all industries, live and die as customers’ perceptions of business ethics and reliability shift.

In short, if your company…

• builds its brand image around claims of effectiveness
• is in competition for customer loyalty
• engages in philanthropy
• relies on donations
• solves a problem

… then you’re in the trust business.  And once you’ve established trust among your customers, that trust is always worth promoting — and defending.

When a 2010 UK report baselessly accused our client Ecover of “greenwashing,” the burden of proof was shifted to Ecover.  After all, the report had been issued by an “expert” in the ecological field and published in The Guardian.  The problem was, the report was wrong, and Ecover wouldn’t let that kind of misrepresentation stand.

Ecover knew that their customers trusted them as experts in a crowded and competitive market, and they defended their reputation with 30 years’ worth of documented expertise.

Could your company do the same?

• Do you have documented proof that verifies your claims and statements?
• Do you make it easy for people to find the information they need?
• Are your subject matter experts engaging the public?
• Are your ethics and values visibly on display?

In this hyper-connected world, trust will continue to rise and fall as the public reacts to varying levels of white noise in their lives.  But, in the end, everyone relies on information to make daily decisions they can feel good about.

Are you providing your customers with the information they need?

Are you giving people a reason to trust you?

For more media tips, follow us on Twitter and Facebook!

Image by Anna Borska.

Let’s say that, until now, you’ve had one small team (or even one single person) be responsible for your company’s entire social media presence.  And now that things are going well, you want to expand.  Maybe that means involving more people.  If so, consider this:

Your existing customers are used to what you’ve been doing.  If they wake up tomorrow and find themselves talking to someone completely new — and if they can tell — you risk a disconnect that might jeopardize your customers’ trust and emotional investment in your brand.

Here at Creative Concepts, we have a variety of writers, researchers, content creators and account managers juggling dozens of different tasks every day.  But no matter how many people are assisting our clients with their messaging, there’s one standard we must all adhere to:

We all have to be working from the same process, and toward the same goal.

That means we take steps to ensure that anyone who’s working on any aspect of a client’s communications is following the same rules, and staying apprised of the same topical developments, as everyone else.  This includes…

• Creating our own internal user manual for Twitter, with tips and suggestions for navigating various situations.
• Tracking industry-specific client-related news that might need to be addressed in the future.
• Assigning specific messaging tasks to the individuals best-suited for the nuances of each channel.
• Multiple layers of editing, so every message is reviewed by as many eyes as possible.
• Internal metric sharing, so each of us can analyze data and compare our individual conclusions.

etc.

Why do we do this?

Because it’s important that our clients be served by as many well-rounded service providers as possible.  But it’s equally important to us that our clients’ customers feel as though their Twitter, blog, Facebook, YouTube and other branded social media experiences are all built with the same building blocks, rather than feeling like disparate voices are being smashed together around a common topic.

Whether your social media messaging is being piloted by 2 people or 200, consistency is key.  No one trusts white noise.

How are you making sure the image of your brand is consistent in the minds of your customers?

Need some tips? You should follow us on Twitter and Facebook!

Image by mafleen.

While the world debates the meaning and the merits of Julian Assange, Wikileaks and our expected right to privacy, we at Creative Concepts can’t help but wonder… how interested would Assange be in sifting through your emails?

One of the basic tenets of social media is the call for transparency.  As the theory goes, the more openly you engage with your customers, the less ambiguity there is in your actions and the less “dirt” there is for others to dig up, should they choose to do so.  (For a deeper examination of the business approach to transparency, check out the book Tactical Transparency by our friends Shel Holtz and John C. Havens.)

But despite the public push toward openness, that doesn’t mean companies and brands don’t still have their secrets.  Tactical transparency doesn’t preclude tactical advantages. And, as Christopher Penn reminds us, some companies are built on secrets.

The question, therefore, is this:

Are your public actions drastically different from your private motives?

People tend to be most vocally concerned about privacy when they’re worried that the image they’ve publicly projected would be somehow damaged or destroyed “if certain information got out.”  In the case of military positions or diplomatic strategy, that concern can be understandable.  But in the case of brand management?

Perhaps the Assange affair is a timely opportunity for you to reconsider your brand’s public image and its private intentions, and to make sure that they’re harmoniously reconciled.

The world has enough secrets.  Does your company have too many to hide?

This is about more than lulling potential customers into a false state of security so you can take financial advantage of them later (although that’s obviously reprehensible).  This is about making sure that what you want and how you’re getting there isn’t in conflict with who you are.

And just who are we? Connect with us on Twitter or Facebook to learn more!

Photo by Lost Vegas.

Photo by eysteina, which comes with a great story.

Mathematically, business is all about profit.  And, subconsciously, we all understand this.  But when the holidays roll around, people get so inundated with sales messages that they become desperate for an emotional life raft that can reconnect them with their own greater humanity.

Could that life raft be your brand?

Here at Creative Concepts, we’re huge proponents of humanizing your brand.  We believe that people want to do business with (surprise!) other humans, and that any effort you can make to remind your customers that your company is still a group of people who are just like them will help them feel better about doing business with you.

So why not consider the holidays to be your opportunity to say “thank you”?

Whether you’re a small business or an international conglomerate, you’re still people.  So instead of focusing on coupons, sweepstakes or clearance sales as your way of rewarding your team, why not send a holiday message that’s focused less on dollars and more on sense?

What if your company’s blog hosted a Thanksgiving message from your customers, detailing what they’re thankful for?

What if you asked your vendors for their New Year’s resolutions, and used them as a springboard for a larger conversation about goals and dreams on Facebook or Twitter?

What if your company’s Christmas or Hanukkah cards were hand-signed by all of your employees?

By incorporating the voices of the people who aren’t usually front-and-center in your messaging, you’ll remind your customers, your vendors and your employees just how much you respect, honor and value them — as people.

Want to hear more? Connect with us on Twitter or Facebook!

Have you conducted a stress test of your marketing or PR team, to see how much trouble they can sustain before your reputation — or your business — would fall apart?  (Good news: it’s probably more than you think.)

On the other hand, how much positive feedback can you process before even the nicest compliments start sounding like white noise to your overtaxed brain?  (Do you even know what you should be listening for?)

As exciting as the immediate connectivity of social media can be, that immediacy comes with a price.  Bad news can travel fast, while good news can become a tsunami that overwhelms our ability to make use of it.  The key is to understand your limits at both ends, and to plan for both the best and the worst-case scenarios.  Ask yourself questions like…

• In an emergency, how many people would we need to operate our social media channels?
• Are there well-known protocols to help everyone stay on the same page?
• How bad does a situation need to get before we need to make a public statement?

Or, while thinking happy thoughts…

• How are we separating “good” feedback from “great” feedback?
• How much of our feedback is actionable, and how much doesn’t require a response?
• Can we identify potential partnerships and opportunities by studying our metrics?

The better prepared you are for both the highs and lows of real-time engagement with customers, competitors and the general public, the easier it is to capitalize on your upsides and mitigate your losses.

Want to hear more? Connect with us on Twitter or Facebook!

But if you’ve read up on Lewis & Clark (or played the Oregon Trail), you know how daunting America’s westward expansion really was.  In the 1800s, our maps were still being drawn by hand, and our railroads, highways and airports were but a distant dream.

Yet, every time another covered wagon arrived at the Pacific coastline, word was sent home: “It can be done!”  And the more the pioneers succeeded, the more others wanted to follow in their footsteps — especially because doing so became both easier with experience and more cost-effective with demand.

Not long ago, social media was the same way.

Ten years ago, we had no Facebook, Twitter or YouTube.  The Internet was still considered a fad.  Blogs were a revolutionary concept.

Getting companies to buy into social media was an uphill battle.  Concepts like transparency, connectivity and conversations with the public were seen as potential threats to financial stability, rather than assets that could actually improve business.

Today, as the social marketing field grows and matures, getting started is becoming ever easier.  The maps have been drawn.  The studies have been conducted.  The pioneers’ wagons have crossed the rough terrain and now the towns they’ve built at the edge of the water are booming with great expectations.

If your company hasn’t explored the world of social media yet, now you can learn from the successes (and failures) of thousands of brands who’ve gone first.  These pioneers have figured out what works and what hasn’t (yet), and many of them are selflessly sharing their own experiences to help others find their way.

Why?

Because those boom towns need new arrivals in order to keep growing.

If your competition is succeeding in social media, they need you to succeed alongside them.  When an entire field or industry embraces new technologies, it increases general customer awareness while simultaneously driving down entry costs.  And when everyone is on the same page, disruption becomes innovation and everybody wins.

Simply put, the better you do at social media, the better we all do at social media.

So here’s to you, and to your co-opetition.  May you all keep redrawing your maps until you find the best, fastest, most scenic and most effective routes from where you are now to where you’d all like to be.

Need an experienced guide? Join us on Twitter or Facebook!