How To Use Social Media For Customer Service

One of our clients had a potential customer find them on a Google search, but instead of calling them, they sent them a message on Twitter to schedule an appointment.  Since our team constantly monitors Twitter, we were able to respond quickly and help the customer. This got me thinking...customer service sure has changed!  Years ago, if a customer had a question or problem, they would pick up a landline phone and dial the customer service number (believe it or not, this did actually happen), wait on hold forever, then have a conversation with another person.  This evolved to using email as customer service where people could send an email request, then wait 24 to 48 hours for a response. Who has time for this in today's world? :) As a society, we want everything right now.  From our food to our answers, the faster the better!  Social media is no different.  People spend hours on online each day, so instead of picking up the phone, or even opening up an email, more and more people find it easier to send a Facebook message or a tweet to a business because they know they'll (probably) get a quicker response.  They expect this.  When a customer sends a message to a company and there is not a timely response, it's the equivalent of someone not answering the phone.  The only thing worse than not responding to a customer's question or concern is not having a Facebook page or Twitter account for them to reach out to.  Here are a few tips to wow your current and potential customers with outstanding customer service through social media.



Be easy to find:  When setting up social media accounts, be sure that your profile names are consistent with your business name so that it's easy for customers to find your accounts by searching for them.  You may need to get creative with Twitter and Pinterest as there is a character limit, but just do the best you can to make it as close as possible.  Also, be sure to include links to your social media profiles on your website so it's clear that you're active on social media.



Answer EVERY response: When someone does find you online and takes the time to send a message, direct tweet or comment, take the time to write them back. Every time, without fail.  This type of interaction will lead to creating raving fans.  The key is to also respond to negative comments and complaints.  I've seen some brands simply delete bad comments as if they didn't exist. This is a mistake because it doesn't solve the problem. It's best to respond and hit the issue head on to resolve it (keep in mind it's best to direct them to a phone number to take the conversation offline).  This shows your future and current customers that you are willing to address opportunities and improve your services instead of sweep problems under the rug. Look, we're all human and will make mistakes.  The true integrity of businesses comes out when we correct mistakes.



Be prompt: Responding to comments and messages in not enough. We must respond in a timely fashion (our team responds to all client comments within the hour unless it's in the middle of the night).  Imagine sending an email to a business and you don't get a response until a week later. Basically that's the equivalent of taking more than a few hours to respond on social media. This must be constantly monitored to give great customer service in the mind of the consumer.


Look for opportunities to help: This kills two birds with one stone;  Twitter has a search tool that we use daily, to look for opportunities to help our clients.  You would be amazed at what people tweet!  When you solve people's problems, you build trust and gain new clients.

Here's an example of a tweet found through a search for "toothache" in a 5 mile radius of McKinney,TX:

How beneficial would it be for a dentist in McKinney to stumble upon this?  Business is all about being a problem solver in your area of expertise.


Well, times sure have changed as far as how we market and attract new customers.  The way in which customers communicate with us has changed as well. Be sure you are prepared to service your customers via social media.  If you need some help, check out our small business solution here and we can manage it for you. Click here----->social media management for small business.

Thanks for reading and here's to creating raving fans with all of our businesses!

5 Reasons Why A Business Should NOT Use Social Media

As the owner of a social media marketing company, some may think that I believe that every single business under the sun should be active on social media. That simply is not the case. It's not for everyone or for every business.  Now, I would argue that MOST businesses could only benefit from more exposure and the majority of a business's audience and potential client base is active on social media. There are some cases where it just doesn't make sense for a business owner to make the leap to social media just because someone told them to. Here are a few:




1. The owner is against it: Have you ever tried to persuade someone to work out or quit smoking or do anything that they did not really want to do?  Not only is this frustrating for both parties, but rarely are the desired results achieved.  Well, the same goes for social media. If a business owner is not on board, they simply will not put forth the effort (or be willing to invest in a firm to put forth the effort) that is needed to be successful.

Is there ever enough time?

2. Not enough time to post consistently: Leaving a social media page dormant or unattended is similar to leaving a store empty and abandoned.  Could you imagine walking into an open store and no one was there to help you because they were too busy? Crazy right? Even worse, what if one day the store is open then the next day it's not? Some think that you can you setup profiles and now you're "on social media". Well, it actually needs to be maintained. Daily. What if a business owner does take the time to post, but doesn't have time to respond to comments and mentions?  It could do more harm than help for the business owner that doesn't have time to keep up with the daily duties of social media. When comments go unanswered, it's the same as a phone going unanswered. "Guess they're too busy...", or "I guess they don't care."


3. The product or service isn't very good:  Hear me out on this one. There are some businesses out there that focus primarily on volume and care nothing about quality and/or customer service.  This type of business would get buried by negative publicity on their social media accounts.  Basically social media enhances what a business already is. If you provide an outstanding product or service and more people know about it and talk about it, your business will continue to grow because people will comment on how great your product or service is. Basically, a social media presence alone will not fix a broken business, but it will greatly benefit an excellent one.

Results take time

4. Results are expected immediately: We all know that person that gets a gym membership, goes for a month or two and says, "well that didn't work". Social media marketing is very similar to working out to get in shape. People that just want to "give it a shot" and expect tons of clients and referrals overnight should stay clear of social media. Just like you can't do a few bicep curls and be in the best shape of your life, you cannot post for a few weeks and expect clients to line up right away. Building an online relationship and reputation takes time.  Those that want immediate results should keep searching for the magic pill that brings all of the leads ;) P.S, if you find it, let us know!


5. Don't want exposure: Believe it or not, there are people out there that do not want any more business than they already have or simply do not want the exposure.  With millions of people using social media on a daily basis (multiple times per day), your business will be seen.  If you are a private person or do not want people to know what you do for a living, or you do not want any more exposure for your business, do not use social media.  Conversely, if it's important to you and your business for people to know about your company, I couldn't find a better way to get the word out to the masses than through social media.


As always, if you find yourself in category #2, we are here to help.  We manage social media campaigns for our clients so they can do what they do best: Provide a great service or product for their customers!  Please share with someone that's on the fence about social media.

How To Drive Traffic To Your Website With Social Media

We've all heard the question, if a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it...you can probably finish that sentence.  Well, if we have a great website, but no one visits, does it exist? It may, but it's not doing much good.  Social media is great for interacting with, engaging with, and sharing helpful information with our target audiences. What a lot of business owners do not realize is that it's also great for driving traffic to their websites.  After all, chances are you are on my website right now as a result of clicking on a link from one of my social media profiles (unless you're one of my email subscribers. Thank you by the way). In a perfect world, people would just type in a keyword phrase into a search engine like Google, and we would be the 1st option on page 1 and we would get tons of traffic that way.  Let's face it...not everyone can be on page 1. So do we just give up on getting people to our websites? Nope! Here are some tips to get them there via social media.



1. Fill out profiles: Most social media profiles have a spot for our website URLs.  Be sure to complete all profiles completely.  Sometimes as people are clicking through our pages, they come across our websites and we get a bonus visit.


2. Link directly to your site from your profiles:  Here is a real example of how I drive traffic to my website via Twitter.  Basically, I have a headline leading to a blog post (if you don't have an active blog, you can guide them to a certain page on your website.  Here is the tweet:

Want people to comment on your posts? Try these 4 things: http://t.co/oUiepPveZV #mckinney pic.twitter.com/lJWd7zUz2g
— Market With Mario (@Marketwithmario) July 31, 2014

The key is to shorten the link. This makes it look cleaner.  Tip: Use a tool like goo.gl or bitly as those are the most trustworthy for people to click on.  Once someone clicks the link, they're on our website! Boom! This is how it looks on Facebook:

This is how it looks on Google Plus:

3. YouTube Description and Video:  Here's a neat little trick. When creating a YouTube video, add your URL to the beginning of your video description (pictured with the arrow). This is a clickable link and people will get curious and click, I promise.

You can also add text to your video and have a call to action to have people visit your website. Just be sure to give a selfish reason such as, "visit our website for tips on..."


4. Pinterest: Pinterest is an amazing tool to use to drive traffic directly to your website (especially if you have pictures of products or projects on your site). This is what it looks like as a pin:

Now here's what's cool: Once someone clicks on this pin while on Pinterest, it will take them directly to our website!  Edit your pin and check its website source to be sure your URL is included (you can also direct them to a certain page of your site).  Here's what I mean:

5. Include on business cards and email signature:  When designing business cards and creating email signatures, be sure to include your website (you'd be surprised how many times this is overlooked). Most people today will check us out before calling for a quote or even before a coffee meeting.




Search Engine Optimization is an important tool in marketing, but businesses that do not have the budget to outrank their competition (clean, effective SEO is not cheap), on Google then these tips above will help accomplish the goal of getting potential buyers and clients to your websites.  Please feel free to leave a comment and share with a friend that this may help. Thanks!

Why The Quality of Followers Is More Important Than Quantity

Social media is a great way for small, local businesses to get exposure, but the bottom line is....the bottom line.  The goal of any marketing campaign is to generate revenue for the business.  Way too often I see, "like us so we can get to ______ likes!" or "we really want to get _____ followers so please please help us out".  No one really cares about helping us get to a certain number of likes, fans, or followers.  We are human and we have a "what's in it for us?" mentally.  The problem with going after numbers is that is all you will get.  Just empty numbers.  If I could pay my vendors in "likes" I would! Unfortunately, they request actual dollars.  So how do you make money on social media? By attracting people that would actually buy your product or service or refer someone to do the same.  Don't get me wrong, we still need a healthy number of fans to make a difference, but here are a few reasons why it's all about the quality of followers rather than the quantity when it comes to building a social media campaign.



1. Quality fans can actually use your service:  When I say quality, I mean qualified or targeted.  For example a roofing company that services McKinney would benefit from having home owners in the McKinney area liking their Facebook page.  It would not mean much if they had people that did not own homes that lived in another state to like their page.  So basically, for them, 20 local likes from homeowners would be better than 1,000 likes from renters in New York.  Sure the "1,000" looks cool, but the "20" could actually write them a check.



2. Quality fans will engage your posts:  In this example, let's use a med spa in Frisco,TX.  A targeted user would be a women in her late 20's to 40's or 50's that lives in the Frisco area that has interests in spas and beauty (and yes Facebook knows these things) . There could be 2 strategies to obtain followers: Target everyone in Frisco or target the women previously mentioned.  The number of people in Frisco is obviously larger, but the med spa would benefit monetarily from the smaller number of women that have interests in spa services. Social media is all about engagement and if your posts "speak' to a very specific audience, your audience is more likely to comment on, like, and share your statuses.  The more they share and engage and the more exposure you get.



3. Quality fans will stick around: When fans follow us because they actually like us or like our product/service then they will be there long term (assuming we provide great content and do not hard sell them). When fans follow our page due to a contest or "like" us just to get to a certain number of likes then there is no genuine vested interest to for them to hang around (especially if they aren't really into the brand or niche anyway).


Think about this analogy: We have TONS of names and numbers in our phones.  Hundreds! But if you really think about it, we only engage and communicate with a small fraction of those contacts.  Think of our social media platforms in that same fashion.  Are we just piling up contacts or are we attracting people that we can actually communicate with on a daily/weekly basis?

It truly doesn't matter how many followers or fans we have as long as they are the right ones.  If you need help finding more qualified followers, please do not hesitate to let me know.  Good luck in your social media efforts and please share this with anyone that it might help. Thanks!

How to Handle a Negative Online Comment

No one or no business wants to deal with negative comments, customer complaints or bad publicity.  The truth of the matter is every company in business today has had an upset client or customer. Every single one.  What I am trying to say is that it's okay and actually normal.  Any entrepreneur or business owner can look great when things are going well, but the integrity of a business owner is revealed when things don't go according to plan or when there is adversity.  In this age of social media where it is easy to reach out to a company with the a keyboard or mobile device, we need to be ready for feedback that is not necessarily positive.  Here are some tips on how to deal with a negative comment online.



1. Act Quickly: Regardless of the problem we are dealing with (off or online), it's best to take the "bull by the horns" and hit the issue head on as quickly as possible.  There is nothing worse than letting a problem fester and boil over.  I recommend checking comments from social media accounts throughout the day to respond promptly (whether it's good or bad feedback). I use online management tools for my clients that alerts me when comments come in so I can monitor them in real time.



2. Don't Delete It: One of the biggest mistakes I see (in my opinion) is when a person or brand deletes negative comments or feedback.  Here's why: First of all, could we get away with that face to face? Imagine someone having a complaint or voicing their opinion and we just ignored it or dismissed it.  This would make the customer even MORE upset.  Deleting comments online does the same thing.  Secondly, everyone (our other followers) has already seen the post. It's out there.  Now they are looking to see how we respond.  If we delete the comment, people know. They will think that we have something to hide or are running from the problem.  It's best to comment back and address the situation. Your followers will respect you for it and feel comfortable offering feedback in the future.  Speaking for myself, I would like to know if someone had a complaint or criticism so I had a chance to fix what was wrong.  Here's what's really cool though:  When someone is completely out of line and has negative things to say for no reason and you respond professionally, your other loyal followers will go to bat for you and defend you. Publicly! No need to hide from the trolls. Your fans will call them out for you.



3. Fix the problem: Lastly, and most importantly, we must fix the problem.  Many years ago I was a manager in the restaurant business. When an order was wrong, or there was a complaint with the food, etc, our job was to fix the problem and make the customer happy.  Same thing online.  If someone has a complaint or has something negative to say, it's best to see what can be done to fix it.  I advise you to comment asking the customer to call you directly or message you so you don't beat down your audience with a back and forth conversation. This will allow you to get to the root of the problem and hopefully make the customer happy.


Our number one goal in business is to serve and please our clients, but there will always be someone with something negative to say.  If this does happen, I recommend addressing it and keep helping our loyal following.  Please feel free to add any additional tips below.  Thanks for reading!

How To Get More Reach on Facebook

There has been a lot of chatter lately about the decline of reach (amount of people that actually see posts from business pages) on Facebook.  Business owners are frustrated with the new algorithm changes from the social media powerhouse.   Let’s shed some light as to why this is happening:  Facebook would like businesses to invest money in it’s platform, and the reason why is simple:  Facebook is a publicly traded company and here to make money.  This does not mean the beginning of the end for companies that depend on Facebook marketing to attract new business.  In fact, I have personally seen little to no impact in the pages that I manage when it comes to reach and I want to share some tips with you that has kept my content consistently in the newsfeed.

1. Aim to please fans, not an algorithm:   Pages that try to cater to an algorithm get punished when the algorithm changes.  One thing that will never change is people (fans of pages) love valuable information.  Whether it’s a helpful tip, entertaining picture, or sharing product information related to their industry, it’s all about pleasing our audience.  That’s what keeps fans coming back, engaging in our posts and eventually using or recommending our products/services.  People can tell the difference between a genuine post and a post designed to just get reach.  Pages that post valuable content never have to worry about an update or algorithm change.  It gets really fun when great content is shared organically and making the reach go through the roof!

2. Run Targeted Facebook Ads: In my opinion, it’s an absolute must that businesses run ads on Facebook to target the correct audience.  I am mainly concerned with helping and attracting owners of small businesses in the McKinney area so I run ads to target that exact audience.  I would not get a ton of engagement (comments and likes) from people that weren’t business owners or interested in marketing.  My reach hasn’t changed because my audience is generally interested in my content which leads to more engagement and most importantly, people sharing my content with others.

As you can see, I am trying to attract a very specific audience:

3. Post at the correct times: Another way to get more reach on posts is to post at the correct times.  I firmly believe that there is no bad time to post (well maybe 2:00am), but there are definitely optimal times to post.  EVERY page is different so it’s best to experiment with different times and see what times work best.  This tool in the insights is helpful as well to see when our fans are online:

My page is pretty steady, and peaks at about 4:00, so the afternoon is best for us.

4. Post pictures:  I cannot stress this enough. The majority of my posts should include pictures (here’s a guide to size them correctly:size guide) because they attract attention in the newsfeed and spark an emotion.  Pictures will get people to engage in the post and more likes and comments will increase the reach. Also, if entertaining enough or helpful enough, our pictures will get shared and be introduced to a new audience!

5. Respond to comments:  Okay so we’ve established that engagement is good.  Continued engagement is even better!  The best thing a business can do when someone takes the time to comment on a post is to reply back and continue the conversation.  This will encourage others to chime in because they know you are “really there” and also condition that person to comment again in the future.  When a page doesn’t responds to a comment, the person doesn’t feel motivated to ever comment again. What’s the point right?  Always reply to comments and mentions.

6. Boost posts:  I have bad news for some: social media is not free.  There will have to be an investment in time as well as money.  What’s great is by “boosting posts” we can reach a very targeted audience for a relatively low amount of money (even as little as $5 to reach hundreds).  I recommend boosting promotional posts such as events and new products and services.  Blog posts (I will boost this one) and videos are great to boost as well.  

I know it can seem like Facebook is about to get us or punish us, but they’re not.  It’s an extremely powerful network to generate sales and they are trying to make money just like we are.  Remember, if you chase an algorithm, your strategy will always change and you will be frustrated.  If you provide value to your followers each and every day, you’ll create raving fans.

For those that do not have the time to execute these recommendations, I invite you to the social media management tab at the top of the page to see if I can help.  Thanks for stopping by and your comments are more than welcome as always!

How To Enhance Your LinkedIn Profile

In business, just like in life, it is important that we make a positive and lasting first impression.  This is extremely vital when it comes to our social media presence.  We have one chance for someone viewing our profile for the first time to impress them and let them know exactly what we do and what makes us different. A few months ago, LinkedIn softly rolled out a feature to some (not all) of its users that enabled the use of media such as photos, videos and presentations to be inserted into our profile summary and other areas.  Recently, LinkedIn gave all of it's users this ability and I want to show you how to use this feature effectively, along with a couple of  other tips to highlight yourself and set you apart from your competition.


1.  Update your headshot:  Hiring a headshot photographer for the day is well worth the investment, especially if it has been a few years since you have had one.  Using a non-professional image can give the impression that you are...well..unprofessional.  Nothing makes a first impression like a clean, high definition headshot done by a professional.


2. Add Video and Pictures Your "Summary": Every profile can tell our potential clients and referral partners exactly what we do.  LinkedIn now give us the ability to show them as well.  This is a great opportunity to show off your skills.  If you have a particular product you would like to display, you can add a picture of it in the summary.  This gives your prospects an idea of the products you have to offer.  If your business involves providing a service, such as attorney, this is a great chance to plug in a promotional YouTube video, link to your blog, or PowerPoint presentation.

Here is where you add the media within the summary section (below red arrow):

From there you can upload a file (picture) or add a link:

You can add media throughout your profile anywhere you see one of these:  
3. Complete Your Profile:  I know this sounds obvious, but you would be surprised how many profiles are incomplete on LinkedIn.  This is important because, just like in search engines, LinkedIn ranks our pages based on our profiles being optimized.  Having a complete and thorough profile can be the difference in being selected for a project over someone else when a business is searching for someone in your niche.  Keeping our profiles up to date is a must as well.


LinkedIn is a powerful tool to grow your business and if you use it to it's full capabilites, referrals will start to flow in.  It's always easier to attract more business when someone is already impressed by you before they even meet you!  Please feel free to share this with anyone that it may help. Thanks!