Back in July of last year (Should Municipalities use Social Media) I wrote about how city government could use social media to communicate with their residents. Since then, my little experiment with the City of Tipp City has been going full steam. The City launched their facebook fan page back in October, 2009 and now have 614 fans. The City Manager, Jon Crusey is the primary editor of the fan page and uses the resource to communicate to residents about:

1. Snow Emergencies – Often during the winter road closures, troublesome potholes and trash collection day changes necessitate urgent communications with residents.
2. City Council Agenda – One of the murky areas for residents had been lack of knowledge of what is going on with City Council. Full agenda summaries are now available online from Facebook.
3. Financial Transparency – The City uses the page to post winning bids for work being performed around town, street repairs, water towers, etc.
4. Schedule of Events – The City can now announce events and uses the wall to post openings/closings

Social State of the City

If you visited the link, you noticed that the facebook fan page did not have direct fan comments to the wall enabled. This prohibits the fans of Tipp City from creating their own interesting, snide, or thoughtful commentary on the City’s wall. What impact does this have on their “social state?”

• Fan counts stay artificially low. Residents with a “beef” with the City won’t become a fan, because they can’t create their own rant post
• Rants that are shared within threads started by the City can be edited out, keeping the friendly state of affairs in-tact
• Comments within the City threads are mostly favorable
• Links are presented on the fan page that lead readers to the City’s website http://tippcityohio.gov

I have consulted with several of my social media peers regarding Tipp City’s specific use and management of their facebook fan page and there seems to be agreement that their work is a good example of a municipality taking its first step into the social media vista. The worst scenario of course would have been an experience where the City received a barrage of comments, rants and questions that they were not staffed to handle. What has resulted has been a steady stream of mostly positive comments about the City making an effort to stay in touch with residents.

KUDOS go out to Jon Crusey, City Manager of Tipp City for his use of facebook to better communicate with residents. Hopefully other cities and townships in Ohio are able to learn from Tipp City’s example and use facebook to better deal with communication challenges that they may face.

While community managers beat the “electronic pavement” every day to enhance and moderate brand dialogues, what is running in the background is clearly important. It sets the tone for the B2B relationship as well as enables the community manager to set a baseline for success.

I actually backed into the relationship with Techrigy. Early this year I struggled with a number of different business analytics and met up with Connie Bensen @cbensen on Twitter. Our tweets led me to her site where I discovered some blog articles that were just what I needed. Connie (on Twitter) let me know about a meetup in Toledo where her boss Aaron Newman, CEO and Founder of Techrigy, would be speaking. As my calendar was free and the weather was nice I took the 3 hour drive up to Toledo to meet Aaron. He provided us with a bit of insight as to how his software analyzes and captures components of social demographics that other tools do not. When was the last time that you saw software that could correctly identify consumer sentiment. The only component of consumer sentiment that SM2 seems to miss on is humor and innuendo. So a comment on Twitter like “I LOVE it when my PC blue-screens!” is classified as a positive sentiment. Knowing this Aaron allows you to make manual corrections to the data with a thumbs up/thumbs down click.

I use Techrigy’s SM2 product to identify all of the keyword opportunities that my clients’ current SEO optimization plan has missed. Specifically, it will tell me what sort of phraseology consumers use to not only “search on” but also “comment on” inside of blogs, twitter, facebook, etc. I am amazed sometimes at the varied types of social platforms that SM2 can dig into. I am presented with a very unique and valuable look at consumer metrics that Google Analytics fails on. If you are just building a business plan or thinking about expanding your operations, I have found that SM2 does a great job of letting you know what your consumers may think of your new ideas.

You rarely get to vet the CEO of a company before the product, and I can assure you that I was pleased with the quality and capability of both in this case.

One of the beautiful things about PodCamp is that each one of us has a particular communication specialty. Some are best behind a podcasting microphone, others a camera, and a great deal only when logged into their blog post interface of choice. This laid back and very social community comes from all walks of life, but all believe in the strong pronounced voice of the consumer. I am very pleased to see that AT&T (through Amybeth) sees the evolution of these new forms of digital media and recognizes their importance. Hopefully their continued participation will allow this well respected company to obtain the high performance talent and customer leads necessary to compete.

Excellent SMX Wrapup. Clearly the search engine optimization techniques are now heavily leaning towards Blogging.
Everyone.. Group Hurrah??!!
Not quite. I seem to think that major entities will need to start “socializing” so that they can retain their JUST ranking. No more sitting on your laurels.

Consultants many times answer this question with “It depends”. I tend to lean towards full disclosure. While I am not the first to disclose what a Community Manager makes, I may be the first to disclose the costs involved in social media in comparison with other forms of traditional media.

I tell companies that I usually charge $499 to setup a blog site, tuned for the search engines, loaded with features and set to effectively market their product. This blog also allows them the ability to update their own content.

“Well.. I don’t have time to write my own content” is the next thing that my clients usually say. OK, I can create unique, creative content to build your brand for between $200 and $300 per month.

$499 one time.
$250/mos.
Total first year investment: $3,499

Once presented with the initial years expense many owners will balk at the price stating that they cannot commit that sort of funding to this type of marketing. So, I then set off to find out what these businesses were spending on other sorts of media advertising.

• 10 day radio spot on one station in a medium sized market: $10,000-$15,000

• Pay Per Click (PPC) Advertising: $3,500 per month
  • Total first year investment for ONE PPC campaign: $42,000

• Billboard cost: $1,000 and $2,500 per month
  • Total first year investment for ONE billboard ad: $12,000-$30,000

• Direct postcard mailing to 10,000 households: $3,800 one time
  • Total first year investment to send out 4 postcards per year: $15,200

• Yellow Pages 1 inch listing: $30-175 per month
  • Total first year investment for ONE Yellow Pages 1 inch listing: $360-$2,100

• Two magnetic signs for your car/truck: $300 one time cost

• Pack of 1,000 business cards: $50 one time cost

As you can see, my social media rates sit somewhere between  the 1 inch advertisement in the yellow pages and sending out 10,000 post cards 4 times a year. Available 7x24x365 social media is a very affordable form of advertising. And unlike the yellow pages or post cards, your customer distribution grows exponentially for free. Say 1000 people look at your blog in the first month. 3,000 in the third, and so on and so on. Very quickly you find that you have exceeded the distribution targets of both the yellow pages and direct mail campaigns.

Now that I have fully enraged Community Managers everywhere by revealing my Social Media pricing, I have to throw out a few caveats.

• First, I am a full-time blogger and can handle multiple campaigns at once. We buy in bulk and pass the savings on to you!
• Second, I live in the Midwest so I don’t have the overhead my friends on the coasts do.
• Third, while my rates demonstrate my average blogging and SM consulting fees, I do have several customers with complex needs who pay significantly higher rates.

Again I have to ask.. Are you paying too much for your Social Media campaign?
Is it slurping up cash like a freight train? Does it keep you from paying your utility bill or from sleeping at night? Then yes.. you are probably paying too much, but overall social media has demonstrated that it can be highly effective at reaching more people who are better targets for your advertising dollars with a higher propensity to buy. Think higher conversion. Think Socially.

Type A job seekers

• Totally unaware of their true gifts and abilities.
• Cannot easily describe why someone should hire them.
• Are fearful that they lack the skills to obtain a good job yet still SPAM out their resumes to any and all job openings.
• Fear that their age will hold them back from getting hired.

Type B job seekers

• Recognize that they lack the education necessary for the jobs that they want, and actively seek out retraining to further their education.
• Often find that they lack the funds to obtain a better education.
• May often shoot for jobs either greatly above their capabilities, or under.
• Often have weak resumes and do not recognize their own worth.

Type C job seekers

• Focus on something that they not only are qualified for, but also are passionate about.
• Are willing to sacrifice salary for job happiness and work/family balance.
• Have a strong, clear and concise resume that demonstrates their value to the position being sought.
• Find value within adversity.

Both Type A and Type B need to receive a transfusion of faith and understanding from those who can provide both. Additionally, Type A and B will never find jobs in the Dayton area without first understanding their predicament and then dealing with each challenge appropriately. Active networkers often lend a committed hand to folks through job shadowing, cross-training, free education resources, free resume review.. the list goes on and on… I am personally taking on the challenges presented by this exercise through my work in the following organizations:

The Northern Miami Valley HYPE organization (Helping Young Professionals Emerge)
Dayton Marketing Community
Linked Dayton
Rain Ohio

All of these organizations provide Dayton professionals with an opportunity to network with their peers and build their “street cred”.  While everyone can agree that networking is an important part of a job search, the members of these organizations actually go a step further to develop the individual into a better and more educated job seeker readying them for the challenges of today’s job market. I have a strong belief that tomorrow’s economy will be driven by those between the ages of 25-45 and also that the positions that these individuals will eventually have are not even currently envisioned. Think all new job titles, new responsibilities and new focus.

So what’s in it for me?
Easy… This business transformation will occur without the understanding, prior-approval or recognition by those currently leading today’s established corporations. The transformation will be driven by the consumer (rather than the producer) who will identify what is most important to them. All new businesses will sprout up to fill the vacuum and accommodate those new consumer wants and needs. As a Community Manager I get a front row seat for the formation of this new economy thanks to my immersion into the social media stream of conversation that both heralds the birth of the new economy as well as the death of the old.

p.s. Thank you Bridget for helping me gain additional clarity on this challenge, and then find the proper insight behind this blog post.

So how do these forms of advertising and marketing aid our local plumber or roofer’s business when:

• Their customers will never email a request for service.
• They receive their service calls by phone, and usually when something is broken and needs to be fixed.
• A Real-life Reputation for being honest, reliable and trustworthy is not equivalent to online reputation points and scoring.
• Their real-life local competition reaps more financial benefit than any online competition will.

So, with those out of the way, are there any compelling reasons why a plumber (for example) would want to engage in digital marketing or social media?

• Search Engine placement. With a growing majority of people “Googling” their search results to find a local product or service, your placement in the results are key. Have you setup your Google business profile yet? You will want to be the first hit when people search for service + city/location.
• Online reputation. While word of mouth reputation is still the most truest and effective form of reputation gain/loss for the “plumber”, a blog site that includes customer comments (rants or raves) could bring positive buzz about your services, increasing the effectiveness of your search engine placement and competitive edge.
• Affordability. Many times contractors and other businesses have loads of information that they need/want or are required to share with their customers. Things like contractor license numbers, privacy notices, financing terms, or legal documentation can be easily stored, referenced and posted for customers (either current or potential) to view. Think of the cost of mailing this information or printing it out for each customer versus posting it on your company blog.
• Keyword definitions. I once owned a small computer store and on my website I posted an ATI video card along with its SKU number. When folks entered that SKU into the search engine my website was the first hit. I sold 11,000 video cards that month, making me the largest distributor of ATI video cards in the state of Ohio. This trend lasted only a few months until the biggie parts distributors caught on and cannibalized my trendy marketing work. If your business has keywords or product SKU’s you need to own them digitally.

Are there any other “good reasons” you can think of for digital marketing that would enhance a contractor’s business? At the end of the day it comes down to a customer picking up the phone and dialing a number and listening to the reassuring confidence of the contractor who wants to earn their business.

Overachieving SM specialist and community manager looking to meet and learn new techniques from the digital marketing superheroes of today in order to lead hundreds of small and medium sized businesses to build strong communities rallying around their brand. Recently experienced a string of family, economic and employment challenges which prohibit me from flying to SoCal to meet with these guys in person.

The Social Media Success Summit is right down my alley. I can sit in the comfort of my SM castle here in Tipp City, Ohio and experience the Session Objectives!

• How to Create a Mega-Following and Mega-Sales With Social Media Marketing
• Building a Loyal Facebook Following for Increased Profits
• How to Grow and Engage an Audience on Twitter
• Using the Power and Reach of LinkedIn to Grow Your Business
• How to Productively Engage in Social Media Marketing
• Five Reasons You Need to Be on Twitter (and Tools to Help You Manage)
• Social Media Start Up: 3 Key Tools to Build Your Social Media Marketing Plan
• How to Attract Tens of Thousands of People in Mere Days
• Using Social Bookmarking for Improved Traffic, Links and Visibility

The SM superheroes that I referred to are:

• Chris Garrett
• Gary Vaynerchuk (Wine Library TV)
• Darren Rowse (Problogger)
• Mari Smith (Facebook guru)
• Jason Alba (wrote the book on LinkedIn)
• Ann Handley (MarketingProfs)
• Brian Clark (Copyblogger)
• Denise Wakeman (BlogSquad).

So yea, I want to with the free ticket to the conference and capitalize on the info-sharing and bash foo goodness from this online SMM summit.

Nice blog review of social media from a traditional media outlet. (The Miami Herald)