Five experts tackle today’s social media

Brent Renneke, Associate Editor
February 23, 2012
Filed under Brent Renneke

As part of the Marine Marketers of America’s annual meeting, five panelists tackled the subject of how to manage and measure social media at the Miami International Boat Show last week.

Titled “Managing and Measuring Social Media to maximize ROI,” each of the panelists shared their unique perspective. The following are the five tips I found most interesting.

Josh Chiles, founder of the social media firm Engaged!
Chiles first stressed the importance of not posting the same content to every social media channel. Instead, he recommends analyzing the audience on each one and customizing your message to that audience. For example, a business may have a younger audience on Twitter than on Facebook.

Also, measuring return on investment is tough to quantify, but Chiles outlined one method his firm recommends with social media. Assume a pay per click Google ad costs five dollars per click. Therefore, every click or comment on your Facebook page is worth roughly an equivalent amount (although Chiles acknowledges a comment is obviously more than a simple click).

Cam Collins, president and CEO of Exuma Technologies
With his dealer management software company, Collins embraced blogging. However, to make it successful for your business, the blog needs to have a value proposition for the reader, giving them a reason to read it. “If you talk about me, me, me, no one will want to listen to you,” he said.

Collins writes on topics his readers would come to him to learn about, like related issues at dealerships and boatyards.

Mike Dickman, general manager at BoatQuest.com, an online classified service for boats
Dickman stressed the need to represent yourself as an authority on a particular topic, and he feels YouTube is an excellent platform to do so. If you are a marine management company, for example, post how-to videos on how to fix basic parts of your boat. If your customer can’t do it, they will then come to you. Dickman says this is a great way to share your services, but not in a selling way.

Jared Jester, CEO of Jester Communications, a “think tank” for new and emerging technologies
Jester communicated the importance of embracing social media for mobile devices. According to Jester, one third of mobile phone users access social media on their phone, and Twitter is up 75 percent in visitors by mobile phone. Therefore, Jester asked companies to be mindful of the fact that many are accessing their sites while on the go.

Gaspare Marturano, president of the online marketing firm iPlus Marketing
Marturano warned of the dangers associated with not consistently updating your social media channels, which he called the worst thing you can do in social media.
Furthermore, consistently updating and being responsive on social media gives the medium a personal touch.

Marturano says some companies go as far as creating a Twitter handle for the manager and commenting on subjects not related to the company.

“You have to make sure you are genuine, not just a wall with a company name,” he said.

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