Human Website Blog is a Internet Marketing Consultation Malaysia Blog
If you want to succeed on social media marketing, communication skill is very important. Here is the video from Dale Carnegie - Secrets of Success: Don't Criticize, Condemn or Complain.
Linkedin ranks 3rd place in Malaysia among all social networking sites in Malaysia. According to Social Bakers, the penetration is only 5.09% for Malaysian online population and 3.29% for Malaysian population.
But figure is meaningless when comes to building relationship on social networking sites. Even though Facebook has the highest traffic in Malaysia but if you look for a genuine B2B business relationship, Linkedin is your first choice.
There are many ways to get business on Linkedin in Malaysia, today I am going to show you how to rank high on Linkedin (at least for your 1st Degree Connection) to get business.
Take a look the 5 search results below for the 5 keywords:
- Internet Marketing Malaysia
- Social media Marketing Malaysia
- Search engine optimization Malaysia
- SEO Malaysia
- Marketing Malaysia
So the question is how to do it? Below are step by step how to rank high on Linkedin.
1st - Your Profile
1st - In order to rank high, you need to put related keywords in your Title (1), Status (2), Current Jobs (3) and make sure your profile is 100% complete. For your profie title, rather than putting who you are (noun), you should put what you do (verb) and put a strong reason why people will take action to contact you.
2nd - Your Profile Summary
2nd - In your profile summary, again, put related keywords (for both Summary (5) and Specialties (6) but don't overdo. Bear in mind that write your profile summary for human, not for Linkined. Linkedin is just a platform you can leverage, it is your connections who read your profile summary.
3rd - Your Experience
3rd - Experience is very important to show to your potential customers (7). The purpose of experience is positioning yourself in your industry. You don't have to put everything in this section, but pick the most important and put in related keywords.
4th - Your Projects
4th - Your projects are your porfolio to prove that you really walk the talk rather than talk the talk. Put some important projects that you have done to show to your potential customers.
5th - Your Skills and Expertise
5th - When comes to Skils and Expertise, again, put in related keywords. Don't keep repeating the same keywords, otherwise you actually spam Linkedin.
6th - Recommendations
6th - Recommendations are one of the most important features you need to take notice. Recommendations act as testimonials. The more you have, the higher the convincing level to your customers. In order to complete your profile to 100%, you must have recommendations. If you don't, start asking your satisfied customers to leave you.
How to Generate Sales
When you are able to rank your profile at 1st position or 1st page of Linkedin (at least your 1st connection), then your potential customers either read your title on your profile on the ranking page or they click to your profile to read your title. Because of this your title becomes very important for you to generate sales. You need to put call-to-action title (why use your services) but not who you are (noun).
Finally, you need to study and complete your Linkedin profile carefully because your Linkedin profile is your reputation. Anyway, if you need help in building your reputation Linkedin, just call us at +6017 24 30 307 or contact us via our contact form.
Before telling you if social media marketing can replace your salesmen with lower cost, take a look the research we have done on Twitter and Facebook (Legoland Malaysia) on doing sales online.
A lot of people tell me that Twitter and Facebook don't work for sales and marketing. But I have proved them wrong with the research I have done for Legoland Malaysia. Those screen shots are from Twitter and Facebook (Hootsuite). There ARE sales opportunities through social media marketing.
Can social media marketing replace your salesmen with lower cost? The answer is Yes! The reasons are:
1) It is cheaper
How much the salary you have to pay for your salesman per month? RM2000? RM2500? It is cheaper when we use social media marketing. Let say we charge RM15000 per year, that means it is only RM1250 per month, which is much cheaper that you hire a salesman. And, don't forget, we don't ask for commission for every single sale! :)
2) International Market
If you need US market, we can do it for you. If you need Hong Kong, we can do it for you. Any market that you need in this world, we can give you. Even we can give you an international market. Can your salesmen do that? Yes, he can fly to US, UK, Hong Kong, etc. But how about the cost? How much you have to pay your salesmen to fly to different countries and how long time he needs to do it? With social media marketing, we connect to international.
If you need help in social media marketing, please contact us, we will help you to develop social media marketing strategy!
Most people think that social media marketing is about sales, sales, sales and sales. I would like to say that this is wrong, wrong, wrong and wrong. Social media marketing is not only about sales, but it is about reputation management as well.
Let's take Legoland Malaysia as an example on Twitter (our research) how not to do social media marketing tarnish their image.
As you can see this tweet, a customer already bought a ticket but no email came to the customer. The customer made complaint on Twitter. Asia Brick (formerly known as Malaysia Lego Club) helped Legoland Malaysia to entertain the customer.
The second example has the same problem. A customer bought a ticket but not getting anything. He scolded Legoland Malaysia "poor service la..."
The 3rd example is customer made complaint but never get reply from Legoland Malaysia. Asia Brick (formerly known as Malaysia Lego Club) again helped Legoland Malaysia to solve the problem. Eventually, the customer is happy that Asia Brick is there to help him.
The final example is a person think that Legoland Malaysia is another White Elephant project (A white elephant is an idiom for a valuable but burdensome possession of which its owner cannot dispose and whose cost (particularly cost of upkeep) is out of proportion to its usefulness or worth).
So, think again, what people are talking about your name, your products or your companies? What if a lot of people are talking bad about your companies but you still focus on offline marketing? Are you on the right place to serve your customer and manage your reputation?
If you need help in social media marketing, contact us and we will help you in developing the right social media marketing strategies. :)
When I first get the digram above, I was totally shock on how many social networking sites that I still don't know. So far I only familiar with Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Google+, Foursquare, Blog and the latest Pinterest.
I told myself that I don't have to know and use every single one of them for social media marketing. It is waste of time and money since resources are limited.
So, how to determine which social networking sites are suitable for you? We talked about this topic before the factors - marketing goal, age, population, gender, behavior, etc. But today we are going to use another two very important factors - Relationship Quality and Relationship Quantity.
What is Relationship Quality?
Relationship quality is strength of a relationship in between two people or more. The closer your relationship with one person, the higher quality (strength) of the relationship. Generally, you have higher strength of relationship with your family members compare to your colleague. It takes times and effort to build a high quality of relationship.
What is Relationship Quantity?
Relationship quantity is number of connections you have in your network. Generally, a sales person has higher number of connections compare to a programmer.
Maintaining both high strength and high number is physically impossible. It takes time to build quality relationships and time is a limited resource. You need to find a proper balance in between quality and quantity to determine your social media market.
Let say if you are a financial planner and sell financial products, you definitely need high quality relationship with your customers so that your customers can trust you in handling their money to you. The higher the number that you handle for your customer, the close relationship you have to build. In this case, Linkedin and Twitter are your social media market. From relationship point of view, Twitter and Linkedin are definitely better than Facebook. Especially on Linkedin, you can easily add any person (restricted by Linkedin) and you need to get approval before you can get connected. While on Twitter, you need to be very creative in using 140 characters to build close relationship. It is very challenging compare to Facebook.
But if you have a online shop sells clothes, your strength can be much lower but your number has to be much higher. Customers land on your website, click buy and pay, and then you deliver the products. You don't have to build a high strength relationship. In that case, Facebook is your market.
Take time to think again what kind of relationship your company with your customers, choose the right social media market to avoid wasting your time and money.
Need help in doing internet marketing in Malaysia, why not contact us at 017 24 30 307 (Kent) or via contact form
Social media marketing is about listening and joining conversation to engage and build relationship with people to generate sales. There is one important question we need to ask ourselves after we have set our social media marketing goals is "WHERE ARE THEY?"
Internet is huge. It has a lot of social networking sites, e.g Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter, Google+ and the latest Pinterest. But due to limited resources of one company, especially for Small and Medium Enterprises, we can't appear on every single social networking site. So the question is where is your target market? Is your Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin or Google Plus your target social networking sites? Or Youtube? Or Forum? Or even none of them? You need to get them on the right social networking site.
Imagine this situation – your build your Facebook Fan Page, you spend 2 hours to generate content per day and post on Facebook but... your company sales never go up! Finally you realize that Facebook is a not suitable platform for you. You waste your time and money.
From my personal experience, I have a customer who has customers are mostly lawyers and doctors. They don't even have Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin accounts. We have to use Youtube (video marketing) and email to engage them.
Below are some tools that you can use to search your markets:
1) Social Mention
Social mention is a real time social search. It is a social media search platform that aggregates user generated content from across the web into a single stream of information. It monitors 80+ social media properties directly including: Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed, YouTube, Digg, Google etc. All you have to do is put in your keywords and social mention will search the whole internet for you whoever mentions the keywords that you put in. You can even select social media sources for your keywords. It is a very powerful tool to search your target market online.
We tried to search by using keyword Legoland Malaysia and below is the result. As you can see, Twitter is the best sources for you to get in and engage with people who interested in Legoland Malaysia.
2) Hootsuite Search (Twitter + Facebook)
Hootsuite is a Social Media Dashboard for you to manage your social media account, e.g Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, etc. You can use Hootsuite to create streams for the keywords that you would like to search. Below is the sample of a stream for keyword Legoland Malaysia and Lego Malaysia.
3) Whos Talkin
WhosTalkin.com is a social media search tool that allows users to search for conversations surrounding the topics that they care about most. They search and sorting algorithms combine data taken from over 60 of the internet's most popular social media gateways. They take this data and display it to you through our carefully designed interface that harnesses the power of AJAX to give you a seamlessly well-organized user experience.
4) Google Search, Blog, Plus Search
Google Plus search is another very powerful tool to search if your target market is on Google Plus. We have tried to search on Google Plus by using keyword – Legoland Malaysia and there are some people mentions on Legoland Malaysia. But compared to Twitter, Google+ has less people. Not only Google Plus Search, you can use Google Search, Google Blog Search to check your target market as well. Please visit Social Search Guide: 40+ Social Search Engines.
Hope this blog post helps you in searching your target market.
Why do social media marketers need high EQ?
Imagine the situation below:
You in charge your company social media campaign, one customer shouts at you on Facebook. He says your company provides worst quality service ever in his history. He wants to take legal action against your company. You are very angry and shout his back. So you both start a war. You regret and want to delete the conversation but unfortunately he is fast enough to print screen shot of the conversation. He spreads this issue on not only Facebook, but Twitter, Linkedin and Google Plus as well.
Finally your company has to bear the responsibility to pay the price and you get fired.
This may not happen to you yet, but if you don’t have high EQ in handling social media marketing campaign, soon you will be one of them because you don’t know how to control your emotion. You can’t blame customers for shouting at you (even though we know the customer is over), but as we social media marketers, it is our responsibility to turn angry customers to become loyal customers.
Compare to the situation below:
You in charge your company social media campaign, one customer shouts at you on Facebook. He says your company provides worst quality service ever in his history. He wants to take legal action against your company. You stay calm and apologize. You talk to him smoothly and ask him what you can do to solve his problem. He gives you a suggestion and eventually you both are able to solve the problem. He is happy and spreads this news on Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin and Google Plus. A lot of friends read it and buy from your company.
So, if someone tell you that social media marketing is about opening a Facebook Fan Page, Twitter account, etc only. Then definitely, he doesn’t understand social media marketing at all.
EQ is more important than IQ in everything we do.
Malaysia Lego Club is a non profit organization. Our company in charge of their social media marketing on Twitter and Facebook. We are able to increase the engagement, viral reach and likes more than 100% via Twitter, as you can see the graphs below. The number of likes before we started Twitter marketing campaign, the likes are 157 from 2009 - 2012 March, but after we took over from 28th March 2012, it increased to 366 less than one month (increase 133%).
For Facebook Overview and Viral Reach, please refer to the graphs below.
Click the image to enlarge
Click the image to enlarge
The most important is those fans are targeted market which we use Twitter to search related keywords and join their conversation and talk too them. If you need help in Social Media Marketing, contact our Internet Marketing Consultant, we will get back to you! :)
As you can see, traditional marketing is build and push. That means, it builds messages and push to public. It is not targeted and they build in large quantities and push to the market.
While on normal web marketing or blog marketing, it is two ways communication. Consumers can talk back to companies or brands. They can comment on companies, make complaints on company blogs.
But in social media era, consumers can talk to consumers, or consumers can influence consumers. Word of mouth marketing is getting important on social networking site. Conversations flow online.
Imagine if you ignore social media marketing but consumers are making complaints about your companies, or looking for your solutions, you will lose a lot of opportunities. We need to implement social media marketing to expose your companies and brands online and influence your consumers so that they can help you to generate word of mouth effect.
Are you ready for social media marketing?
Until today, there are still a lot of companies in Malaysia don't trust social media marketing works. They shouldn't be blamed because they don't understand what social media marketing is and a lot of so called experts make it very complicated.
Let me make it simple by illustrate two images below.
Pre internet age, what people look fo solution, products or services, they make calls,to friends go through yellow pages, talk face to face, etc. That's why we advertise on TV, yellow pages, billboard, banners or distribute flyers, etc. Conversations flow offline.
But in Internet age, we search our products or services on search engines, we post our problems on Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin and other social networking by using computers, tablets and mobiles phones. We look for solution online rather than refering the yellow pages. Conversations flow online. AND THAT'S SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETERS JOB TO CATCH AND LISTEN TO THOSE CONVERSATIONS. We need to listen and understand them like what we do offline, we need to join their conversations, we need to provide solutions.
Social media marketing is not only about setting up a Facebook account or Twitter account. Or keep posting content. It is about listening to your customers, search for conversations that related to your industry online, understand them, join them and provide them solution.
So, if you do the same thing for offline, why not online? Social Media Marketing is even more targeted (search for keywords that people mention online) compared to distributing flyers offline. And, if you do customer service offline, why not online when your customers now don't make call to complain (doesn't mean you do a great job), but post on Facebook to complain you?
Don't get me wrong, I don't 100% say that offline marketing doesn't work, but I believe it is time for you to start thinking about social media marketing, especially your customers are young generation.
Yes, social media marketing does take long time. Malaysia has almost 70% internet penetration rate and almost 13 millions of users on Facebook. So, your customers are online now to look for your products and services and even make complaints, don't wait! :)
