The Social Media Marketing & Communications guide for Natural Health and Wellness insiders.

Social media strategy: One massive step to get you over the hurdle

This post is for natural health business people who -

1. Are still wondering how to use facebook, twitter and the rest of the social web to help grow their business.

2. Have started social media accounts but need ideas for using them.

It’s great to get ideas from other businesses and from marketing gurus, but for the most valuable insight you need to look at your own business.

It’s like one of my favourite parables – the Indian one about the blind men describing the elephant. To a sales person, social media is about sales. To a customer service department, social media is about customer service. And so on.

The point is, social media is simply communication. And communication is used in lots of ways. Hence the problem: “How should our company use social media?”

It’s a question that many companies continue to wrestle with.

And here’s the place to start: Assess your real life brand.

What MommyBloggers Can Teach Natural Health Brands About Marketing

Nummies Bras Website - simple and effective

I’ve always admired so-called “MommyBloggers.” They get it. They know how to leverage their brands through social media. They engage their networks with apparent ease, transparency and effectiveness. They make it look so easy, like it just comes naturally. Maybe it does. After all…

• Moms like to socialize and talk to each other. When a product or idea helps them, they tend to evangelize and share it with others.
• Mom oriented businesses often grow out of the personal experience, passion and values of visionary founders. This helps them speak clearly and effectively to the needs of their target market.
• Parenting and childhood are universal themes.

Um, are you seeing any parallels to the world of natural health and wellness?

• Natural health enthusiasts also evangelize products that have enriched, changed or saved their lives.
• Natural health businesses also often grow out of the personal experience, passion and values of visionary founders.
• Health is also a universal theme.

But many natural health businesses struggle with web strategy, social media and online marketing.

What are mommybloggers doing different? What can we learn from them?

Brand Ambassadors: Turning the Idea Upside-Down

The term “Brand Ambassador” has loosely come to mean someone (an enthusiastic customer or superfan) who is influential, loves your brand and tells people about you – officially or unofficially representing your brand. There’s much discussion across the internet about engaging, enrolling and empowering brand ambassadors. A quick Google search will net you plenty of opinions, definitions and examples around the whole concept.

What I want to share isn’t more ideas about conventional brand ambassadorship… it’s about turning the whole idea upside down.

Friends, Fans, Followers and Contacts – An Argument For LESS

Whether it’s Facebook fans or friends, Twitter followers, or LinkedIn connections – there’s an almost unchallenged belief that more is better when it comes to Social Media numbers.

If Social Media channels were simply free advertising, perhaps this would be true. After all, the value of any advertising vehicle has traditionally been determined largely by its reach – ie: The value (and cost) of advertising is proportional to the number of people it reaches.

But Social Media is a different game – a game where “advertising” is generally the least effective approach and where numbers can be misleading.

The ONE Thing Your Website, Blog or Facebook Page Absolutely MUST Have…

It’s not any particular function, plug-in or widget. It’s not a sign-up box or RSS feed. Those things don’t apply equally across the board. I’m suggesting that what virtually ALL websites (and web strategies) must have to be successful today is… flexibility.

Here’s why:

Why Your Social Media Strategy Isn’t Working

Even if I don’t know you, I bet I know why your social media strategy isn’t working.

Reason Number One:
You don’t really have a strategy.

The Cheshire Cat says to Alice “If you don’t know where you’re going, any path will do.”

Do you know where you want social media to take your business?

Do you have a clear, specific outline for what you’re trying to accomplish… and why? Can you connect the dots between your social media strategy and your overall business objectives? Rather than re-invent the wheel, from here I’ll point you toward Shannon Paul’s excellent post on the topic.

Reason Number Two:
You’re Thinking With The Wrong Brain.

Tuesday Tweaks: Un-Sync Your Social Media Platforms

Don't Tangle Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn

(There’s so much social media advice out there that it can be overwhelming! Tuesday Tweaks are the antidote… simple, step-by-step actions for improving your social media performance. On Tuesdays, but not every Tuesday.)

Many people in business are tempted to synchronize their Twitter, Facebook and even LinkedIn posts. This means that when you post to one, you post to all. I think this is a grave mistake.

How Information Technology (IT) Is Different From Social Media

Do You Have a Social Media Map?

Imagine you’re trying to get to… Disneyland. You’re in a car. You ask a guy for directions. He says, “Disneyland? Oh, that’s easy. Here’s how you get to Disneyland: Press down lightly on the accelerator while you slowly release the clutch. This introduces fuel to the carburetor and engages the transmission…”

Half an hour later you’re getting a pretty thorough understanding of combustion engine mechanics. But you’re not any closer to Disneyland.

Twitter, Facebook, Blogging, YouTube… are all tools with mechanical aspects. Certainly you need to know how to use them, just like if you’re going to drive to Disneyland you need to know how to use a car. BUT – an understanding of mechanics is NOT the same as having clear directions to your destination.