DS12 – What a Show!

Guest Blogger: Rachelle Morris, DEMA Membership Marketing & Communications Coordinator

The past month has been a complete whirlwind. Having attended my very first DEMA Show, I am even more impressed with the professionalism of the Diving Industry! What a fun, intelligent, passionate and welcoming group of people! I met so many incredible individuals and can’t wait to see you all again in Florida for DEMA Show 2013!

Being this was my first Show, I quite honestly didn’t know what to expect. One of the Show features I was most excited about was the opportunity to attend educational seminars and learn from experts of their field. Being the social media fiend that I am, I was eager to attend Evolving Social Media Realities: What You Need to Know with Jason Heller, CEO, Agiliti. He was such an engaging speaker and had so many great ideas; I couldn’t help but take feverish notes so I could share some of them with all of you!

Facebook & Exposure
Did you know that only 15% of your followers ever actually see the content your business or brand page posts? Much of this is due to a complicated algorithm that determines who sees what. The whole thing is -quite honestly- beyond my understanding, but there are apps and programs that can help make it easy for those of us that “don’t do numbers.” Jason spoke about EdgeRank Checker, which is described on their website as “an algorithm that ranks objects in the Facebook News Feed. Pages with high EdgeRank Scores will be more likely to show up in the news feed, than Pages with low EdgeRank Scores.”

With EdgeRank Checker’s free plan, you have access to information like your EdgeRank score, the best average day of the week, worst average day of the week and more. And of course the paid PRO plan has even more insightful data for you to refer to like post grading, industry report, best day + best time + best keyword, and more.

With this sort of information you can leverage your content and maximize your Facebook exposure by ensuring you are posting during the ideal time, on the best days of the week, and using content and keywords that are most likely to drive engagement.

Be sure to check out EdgeRank Checker to see how the free or PRO plans can help you maximize your Facebook efforts!

Track Your Brand

Curious to know what people are saying about you, your business, or brand online? Socialmention* is a great, FREE tool that can help you do just that! You can even use it to see what people are saying about your competition. ;)

How Are My Tweets Doing?

I love Jason’s suggestion for a program that can help track your Twitter analytics: Crowdbooster provides you information on your retweets, impressions, replies, follower growth, influential followers, top retweeters, mentions, and more. What I appreciate is that you can switch between displaying information in table or graph form. Being a visual learner, I love the information being provided in a graph so I can quickly see how our Tweets are doing.

After setting up my account, Crowdbooster sent me an email informing me of the 3 best times to schedule tweets for today. LOVE IT!

Give some of these programs a peak and see if they would be a good fit for you and your social media efforts. The added work can certainly pay off as you start to see increased engagement.

And if you know of any other good resources, please share them here!

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Other recent posts by Rachelle:

• Instagram, Hashtags and First DEMA Show…OH MY!
• Well Isn’t That Pinteresting….
• Tweet, Tweet…Anybody there?
• Twitter Me This…
• How to Gauge the Success of your Facebook Page
• Searching for a Perfect Social Media Plan

Well Isn’t That Pinteresting….

Guest Blogger: Rachelle Morris, DEMA Membership Marketing & Communications Coordinator

I must confess, I am OBSESSED with Pinterest. My fiancé has experienced a sudden improvement in my cooking, my winter wardrobe wish list has grown exponentially and my new apartment has been cleverly decorated; all a result of countless Pinterest-inspired ideas.

But Pinterest isn’t just for the individual – it can also be a powerful marketing and revenue-producing tool for a brand or business. Earlier this year, Shareaholic conducted a study that found Pinterest to drive more referral traffic than Google+, YouTube and LinkedIn combined. Let me give you a “real life” example that I recently experienced:

With my June wedding getting closer by the day, I have spent countless hours searching for bridesmaid dresses that would meet my specific criteria (color, style and price point). Upon moving my search to Pinterest, I quickly found the ideal dress. Clicking through the pin took me to the dress’s Etsy shop that is run by an upcoming dress designer. This dress designer, thanks to Pinterest, will now have 6 additional sales under their belt (my bridal party) and has been exposed to countless other potential customers as a result of this one pin. That’s a pretty good return on investment considering Pinterest is FREE and pinning content requires minimal effort. Just image what it might be able to do for YOUR brand or business!

Here at DEMA, our Pinterest boards are aimed at encouraging and supporting the Diving lifestyle as well as sharing Industry news. In an attempt to track how successful our efforts are, I have come across Pinpuff, a free web app that measures your virality and influence on Pinterest.

DEMA is using this as a tool to gauge our influence by tracking and watching our Reach Score, Activity Score, Virality Score and overall Pinfluence Score. Perhaps it will be a handy tool for you as well.

What I appreciate about Pinpuff is that:

• Your score is generated instantly.
• It gives you helpful suggestions to boost your reach.
• It lists the number of likes and repins each of your boards has received (up to 20 boards) which can help you see what sort of content is most likely to be shared.
• It tells you here what is considered a good, average or poor score so you can easily gauge how well you are doing!

By monitoring your Pinterest content, you can track how successful your efforts are, where they might need some additional attention, or, if you are running a campaign/game/contest you can get an idea of how much participation it’s getting. (Doing a quick search online will give you countless ideas for contests, strategies, games and other creative ideas that you can use to drive your Pinterest influence.)

If you aren’t already on Pinterest, take a moment to check it out and think about how you might be able to use it to the benefit of your business or brand. And be sure to connect with DEMA on Pinterest and don’t forget to click follow!

If you have discovered any other useful tools for keeping tabs on your Pinterest influence, or a strategy that you MUST share, please do so here!

Tweet, Tweet…Anybody there?

Guest Blogger: Rachelle Morris, DEMA Membership Marketing & Communications Coordinator
 
Developing a strategy for your Twitter marketing efforts is one thing, but how can you tell if all your time and planning is paying off? Well, like most things related to marketing and social media, there isn’t a simple answer (I am beginning to sound like a broken record). There are all kinds of ways you can track your Twitter insights, however, allow me to share with you how DEMA is tracking the success of our Twitter efforts and perhaps you will find some of these methods useful.

DEMA finds the following insights are beneficial in determining how well our Twitter efforts are paying off and areas that may need more attention:

Followers 
We track these numbers to make sure we are 1) increasing our following, which would indicate that our content is valuable and 2) not losing followers which would raise a red flag that we are doing something wrong.

Following 
We track the number we are following to make sure we are making a continuous effort to find and follow new people who are able to provide us with valuable information that we can then pass on to our Followers.

Weekly Retweeted 
Having someone retweet your Tweet (in other words, share your content with their followers) is one of the highest levels of engagement on Twitter. It means that your content is not only valuable, but valuable enough that someone else found the content worthy of being passed along to their followers. Think of that saying, “Imitation is the highest form of flattery…” yeah, it’s kinda like that.

Weekly Clicks 
Having someone click on a link provided in your tweet is another high level of engagement. Clever writing and high quality content are just a few ways to experience a high click-through rate.

Weekly Mentions 
When someone uses “@[yourTwitternamehere]” they are engaging you in their conversation. It can also be a way to tag you in a Tweet so you can find who is talking about you.

To keep track of these insights, we use 3 different applications:

1 ) Twitter

• Used to track: Followers & Following 
• Information Available Via: Twitter profile page 

2) Hootsuite

• Used to track: Weekly Clicks 
• Information Available Via: Hootsuite’s custom reports 
• Methodology: We make sure all DEMA Twitter postings are posted via Hootsuite and that all links are shortened using the Owl. ly shortening tool. This way, Hootsuite is able to track how many clicks each of our links receives on a weekly basis and reports this statistic for us via our custom-made click report. 

3) Twitonomy 

• Used to track: Weekly Retweets & Weekly Mentions 
• Information Available Via: Mentions & Retweets panel 
• Methodology: On a weekly basis, we count up how many times @DEMAorg is mentioned in the Tweets of others and also how many times someone has retweeted our content each week. 

Follow DEMA on Twitter to connect with the Dive Industry and stay in-the-loop with everything happening WHEN it’s happening at DEMA Show 2012!

 Are you looking to learn more about Twitter and how to set up your business or brand’s Twitter presence? Consider reviewing this Twitter Guide Book that I’ve found to be a good overall resource to get you started!

How to Gauge the Success of your Facebook Page

Guest Blogger: Rachelle Morris, DEMA Membership Marketing & Communications Coordinator

 Last week, I shared some of my favorite strategies for creating a successful Facebook business page and I am sure you probably have plenty of good ideas as well. Once you have your ideas and plan in place, how do you go about tracking the success of your social media efforts? Again, there is no universal answer, but I can certainly share with you what DEMA has decided to do to track and gauge the success of our efforts.

DEMA has decided to focus on the engagement rate of our Facebook Fans. That is, calculating the Engaged Fans of DEMA’s Facebook page will tell us how many fans are engaged with the page content and essentially how well we are doing with providing our Facebook fans with content that is relevant and valuable.

We track this number on a weekly basis by taking the number of weekly engaged users (you can find this information under your FB business page insights “Talking About This” tab), less any new “Likes,” and then dividing it by the number of total fans as of that week. Ta-da! Weekly engagement rate!

What is a good engagement rate you ask? Prepare to be surprised. Well, at least I certainly was…

According to a study done in 2011 by Ehrenberg-BassInstitute, only 1.3% of Facebook users engage with brand pages. Only 1.3%!?! Wait…there is more… If page “Likes” are removed as a contributing factor of engagement, the actual average of engaged CURRENT fans is only 0.45%. Also noted is that even a sample of “Passion Brands” which were expected to see a higher level of engagement only saw an average of 0.64% of their page fans engaging with content.  I don’t know about you, but I was both shocked by this number (I was expecting something a little bit higher) but also relieved as it meant that DEMA is doing pretty well! One interesting tidbit to note is that engagement rates tend to drop as fan size increases (probably because of an increased number of lurkers rather than truly engaged fans). And according to another resource, Social Examiner, healthy pages have an average of 1-5%.

“Rachelle, why can’t you give me a straight answer?” It’s frustrating, I know. I was searching for a concrete answer like, “Your engagement rate should always be X%.” However, like most things related to social media and marketing for that matter, there doesn’t seem to be a finite answer. I would suggest that anyone trying to set an engagement rate goal consider these factors:

•  Do you have 20 followers or thousands? If you are on the higher end, you may find that your pages have quite a number of lurkers (it’s ok!) which may bring your engagement rate down a tad.
• Keep in mind the availability of the staff. If you don’t have the manpower to dedicate countless hours, just do the best you can do without sacrificing other areas of your business.
• Calculate your current engagement rate. Is it on the lower end of the scale which leaves room for improvement? Maybe some of my suggestions from my previous post can help get your rate where you would like it to be.

·         Ultimately, what are the goals of your Facebook page? To entertain? To makes sales? To share information? You might have a great engagement rate, but if your underlining goals aren’t being met, perhaps incorporating a different strategy will help you reach your goals.

While we really focus on our weekly engagement rate, DEMA also tracks things like our audience demographics, page visits, number of likes, reach, tab views, referrers and so on. There is a wealth of information available to you under your Facebook page’s insights. If you haven’t already, take a peak and see what you can learn about your followers. 

• What do you track?
• Have your insights revealed any surprising information about your followers?
• Does your engagement rate blow the 0.45%-5% scale out of the water? If so, please tell us what you are doing!

Have a great week!

Rachelle

Searching for a Perfect Social Media Plan

Guest Blogger: Rachelle Morris, DEMA Membership Marketing & Communications Coordinator

As DEMA’s Membership Marketing and Communications Coordinator, one of my responsibilities is to maintain our social media pages. Sound like a Millennial’s dream-come-true? As it turns out, giving social media followers what they want is a HUGE responsibility and requires much more thought and strategic planning than simply reposting the latest “Cute Kitten Meme.”

With social media trends ever-changing, I have spent countless hours trying to find THE answer to making our social media sites the best they can be.  And after much research, I finally found the answer: There is no answer. No 10-Step Process. No “one-size-fits-all.”  No magical equation. Pretty anti-climactic, huh?

There are plenty of great tips out there, but no one has the universal answer for guaranteed success. You can bet that in all my research I NEVER found a guaranteed step-by-step process for how a non-profit trade organization can best engage the professional Diving Industry.  

However, my research did uncover a number of themes that seem to push most social media campaigns in the direction of success. In an effort to spare you from hours of grueling research, I’d like to share some of my discoveries with you over the next few weeks. I am not saying that these are the answers to your social media woes, but instead may they serve as food-for-thought. It is my hope that something you read here may be of some help in your social media efforts.

Let me start off by discussing the heavy hitter which may very well have replaced the timeless tradition of the High School Reunion: Facebook. While my research suggests there are many things that can help keep your followers happy and engaged, here are my five favorites:

1.       The 80/20 Rule: Did you ever (or maybe you still do) have that annoying friend that ONLY ever wants to talk about themselves? Don’t allow your Facebook page to be that friend. Nobody wants to follow a Facebook page that is going to entirely self-promote, so don’t or you may find your page getting dropped like a bad habit. The 80/20 rule suggests that 80% of your posts should be providing valuable content that supports the lifestyle/interests/concerns of your followers while 20% should be promotional.

What DEMA is doing: DEMA’s Facebook page “80%” contains stories that we believe diving professionals will find interesting. Whether it is news on the 1900’s ship wreckage discovered by divers or a great business tip – we want to pass it on to you to enjoy. Our “20%” is providing our followers with Association-specific news, Member benefits, important reminders and other DEMA tid-bits.

2.       Don’t post too much: On my personal Facebook page I have one friend in particular who – and I am not even exaggerating – on any given day will LITERALLY have 15-20 posts IN A ROW in my news feed. As much as I want to connect with them on social media, constant updates like these put them at risk for being “de-friended.” My point is this: if people are following your page, that means they are interested in what you have to say but that doesn’t give you a license to be annoying. My research suggests that your business page may see higher engagement rates if you post 1-2 times per day and that you may (remember this is not an exact science) get the best results during the hours of 1:00pm and 4:00pm. My takeaway from this: Moderation is key; post regularly enough to stay top-of-mind, but not so often that you turn people away from your brand. Know your audience and be mindful of how often they want to see you in their newsfeed. Combining this pattern with quality content should keep your followers intrigued and loyal.

What DEMA is doing: We try really hard to follow the 1-2 times per day rule. Sometimes it’s more, sometimes it’s less. But more often than not, you are probably only going to hear from DEMA on Facebook a couple of times a day.

3.       Visuals are KEY: Timeline was designed with visual stimulation in mind. Some love it, some hate it. Either way, take advantage of this trend! Post photos. Share photos. If you can, turn your content into visuals. If you can create a viral image…then gold star for you!

What DEMA is doing: We update our cover story weekly to visually communicate news released that week. We have even experienced these images being shared as our followers spread the news to their friends. We’ve also created a special “Industry News” photo album that essentially acts as a news archive including links to the full articles. If we see a fun, diving-related viral image – we share that with our followers. And we have developed a little game we like to call, “Mystery Pic of the Week.” We have other fun visual ideas coming down the pipe, but I don’t want to spoil all the fun quite yet. :)

4.       Tell people what you want them to do: Do you want someone to “Like” or share something? Tell them! Telling your followers what course of action you want them to take is sometimes the only little nudge they need to engage with your content.

What DEMA is doing: We’ve used this little golden nugget in a number of our posts. Over the past few months, the post to experience the most engagement ASKED for follower participation: "LIKE" this status if we will see you in 79 days at DEMA Show!” How’s that for delivering results?! ;)

5.       Talk to your followers: Ask people questions. Ask for their feedback. Create a poll using Facebook’s fancy little poll feature! RESPOND to post, questions, direct messages and comments. After all, social media is all about COMMUNICATION – make sure you are communicating with your followers and show them that you care about what they have to say.

What DEMA is doing: Here at DEMA we check our Facebook throughout the day and respond to comments, questions and direct messages as soon as we see them. Sometimes we will post questions or polls on our Timeline to prompt conversation. Posts that are left by followers might even receive a “LIKE” or comment from us as well.

So there you have it! If you aren’t already, think about how some of these ideas might work in your social media plan. Next week, I will share ideas for how to track and determine the success of these efforts (and how DEMA is doing it ourselves).

So, until next Monday and in the spirit of today’s post, I’d like to know:

• What do you hope to get from DEMA’s Facebook page?
• What is it missing? What do you like?
• Do you have any strategies and creative ideas that have been successful for your company/organization?

I invite you to share them here with me and the rest of the Diving Industry!

Have a great week!

Rachelle

Just a tiny sample of my findings:

• The 80/20 Rule
• 10 Powerful Tips to Increase Fan Engagement on Facebook
• The Best and Worst Times to Share on Facebook, Twitter
• Seven Ways To Use Photos To Amplify Engagement On Your Facebook Page
• 5 Tips to Maximize Your Brand’s Facebook Reach
• How to Use Facebook Questions to Increase Engagements and Fans
• Facebook Timeline Brand Pages Are Here
• Here’s How People Look at Your Facebook Profile — Literally