Social Media - It's important to do what applies to your business

Twitter, Facebook, Youtube - what should you use for business? 

Case Study - Yeo Valley

This is great case study. Organic product (so not mainstream), yoghurt (some people like, some don't), and a family business.

Checking out their Website 

See the full gallery on posterous

page there are clear signs to social media networks. Clicking on these networks reveals some not unsurprising results - followers on Facebook and Twitter are relatively low. Why would you follow I suppose? It is just a dairy product and in every supermarket so you don't have to work that hard at keeping up with where they are.

But as with all businesses, Yeo Valley have extreme competition from foreign imports, supermarket own brand labels etc. It's important to try and develop a brand personality that consumers will align themselves with. 10 years ago the only way of making this happen would be through an expensive TV campaign. Well, Yeo Valley have an expensive TV campaign, but importantly it's backed up by Social Media, and in the latest case an incredible viral video that Youtube has already served 1.5 million times!! If you then check the social channels it's clear to see what a 'chatter' that this escalates. Yeo's Facebook page is full of likes for the video and although people are not signing up to Twitter they are tweeting the video (40 tweets today and the video has been out a while) that all send users to the site and increase brand awareness.

The business case is that the customer is now in control. Marketing is undertaken by them and as a business you just have to learn to interact with them in any way the wish (not any way YOU would wish - note Yeo Valley responding directly on Facebook to customers). Interflora searches Twitter for people having bad days and then sends them some flowers (having tweeted them) - what a great way to communicate and everyone is a winner.

For all the doubting Thomas' out there, you can always just stay in the dark. You won't get the best deal, nor the early bird offers. You probably don't watch that much TV and certainly not the adverts, and without any social media interaction you would have missed the video below, which just makes you smile and feel a bit better for the day (and buy Yeo valley bext time rather than American brand Rachels Organic ( - as Sid says, Buy cos it's British)

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Only Google Can afford Groupon (and win)

In truth it is only Google who can afford to buy Groupon at the valuations being bandied about. It has the infrastructure, Internet clout (local advertisers) and profits (only adwords makes money for Google). Google has a history of paying lots of money for big ideas and although they can't monetize them immediately that doesn't matter as they have so much cash swilling around it's just important that Facebook don't 'buy the competition'

So - is Groupon worth $6Bn? Certainly not in the short term, maybe in the long term with the right amount of Google Support, ensuring that it becomes the 'standard'. After all, there have been discount schemes around for a long time, why does Groupon work better? The key is in the repackaging of an old idea. Voucher schemes from businesses such as vouchercodes.com have been successful but don't command such wild valuation. They aren't very 'clean' sites, the consumer has to work hard to get the info. Groupon 'googelises' this voucher industry, making it simpler for consumers to understand what's on offer. It's Genius in it's simplicity.

Could Groupon shareholders make any more profit by not selling to Google now? Almost 100% not. Google are buying at a premium and valuation you would expect when it was a lot larger, which of course is difficult to achieve without Google, but easier with.

The gain for everyone is that Groupon has introduced a different form of advertising to adwords and adsense. That's good news for retailers but it's no wonder Google are buying the third largest advertising medium after the two it already owns. Keep up with news on Groupon at http://tiny.cc/fb3en

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SEO - an Insider's View

Let's just take one thing for granted. Google is the most powerful company on the planet right now. ALL it's income comes from PPC Paid Advertising. There is no way at all that they will develop a system that will deplete their income potential model. Now - over to SEO:

I've recently had two meetings, one with an SEO agency and one with an SEO Expert. The interesting thing about both meetings was the fact that in order to get anywhere in SEO you need to commit serious money investing in it and won't see a return for at least the first 18 months. Perhaps for the first 3 years you will have spent more money on it than was in the budget (seems that marketing online budgets are very flexible when it comes to PPC). Google admit to changing the algorithm regularly and so this is just an ongoing battle. You can really only ever afford to do SEO if you have a fast growing business. If you have a mature family business that is not intent on large growth then outside SEO expertise will just be a drain on finances (you are better off doing it in house over time).

The Agency Pitch

We work on the basis of being able to replace PPC and so in the long run you will spend less money advertising for new business. We have many mysterious and technical ways of achieving this.

The Consultant Pitch

I'm about risk management. Bypassing years of historical trading and internet presence to fool Google into thinking that I have a much better reputation than my new site would otherwise indicate. The nub of the issue is really link building, and tons of them. The technical stuff is just a given these days' Content and link building are the only ways you can perform better in search and both costs lots of money and link building is quite dubious in some instances so my role is to manage the risk of building SEO for a new client.

Conclusion

There are no guarantees to SEO. You should of course SEO optimise and write great content and link build, but do this over the long term with an inhouse team. Write a budget for it (named investment in the future), but don't throw all your other marketing activities (online PPc and offline) out of the bath. SEO is a long term investment. We are in a recession, spend at your peril (unless you happen to be a company that is immune to the recession) and concentrate on spending money to get immediate sales.

Foot Note: The consultant commented how difficult it is to make any money out of running an agency. Too many high cost people and too high an expectation from clients. In fact, if they did their job properly for the clients then they would not make any money. So, here's news to those companies hoping to outsource the magic. You can't unless you have very deep pockets. Get learning.

Posted via email from steve rushton