As part of the #SMPro Expert Spotlight Blog Series, this interview highlights Stewart Rogers of UsFitties, a philanthropic venture dedicated to bringing up-to-date and down-to-earth health and fitness advice to the public.
Below, Stewart discusses his background, offers a handful of outstanding digital marketing tips, and provides his opinions on the overall landscape of the social media industry.
1. Where did your interest in social media marketing originate, how has it developed and what role does it play in your professional life now?
I don’t recall, unlike many other events in my life, a key driver or defining moment behind my interest in social media and multi-channel marketing. For me, it has been more of an evolution.
Using social media in marketing and, initially, the sales arena was really an extension of my general attitude to all new ideas, tools and methodologies; try everything that is new, test if it works, keep if it does and throw it away if it doesn’t.
2. Who do you read, follow or pay attention to in order to stay ahead of the curve in social media?
I have around 65 feeds I monitor continuously that help me stay on top of what is happening in social media, marketing, business methods and sales practices. As a result, I read through around 200 articles a day.
To make that process easy and efficient, I use Feedly on both Chrome and Android. It helps me read everything quickly, stays in sync with my Google Reader RSS account and orders stories in terms of importance to my network, so I catch the juicy stuff first.
With that being said, I do particularly enjoy the content of a few individuals within that stream, including Danny Brown, Gini Dietrich, Sam Fiorella, Scott Brinker, Mars Dorian and Brian Solis.
3. What do you believe to be the biggest misconception some businesses still have with social media?
There is more than one misconception, that’s for sure. First, the myth that good social media marketing is free of charge just because some of the tools used to manage it are available gratis. Good SoMe marketing relies on ever-interesting and highly engaging content, in exactly the same way traditional marketing does. Just because the delivery channel is ‘free’ (in reality, it still costs money to manage the delivery channels properly), it doesn’t mean the inception, creation and approval process behind the message won’t require time, money and resources.
Another misconception is that SoMe is about constantly pushing links to your web content via Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn or the channel of your choice in the hope they’ll create leads and extra traffic. That is one sure way to bore your followers to death and have them running for the hills. To get the best from SoMe marketing, strive to create interesting content for each channel that speaks to that particular set of followers, and you’re on your way. Then, be there to engage and converse with people that invest their time in interacting with you. Just remember, Facebook users interact with updates in a totally different way to those on Twitter or Google+, so learn what works where, stay original and keep in touch with your followers.
4. A lot of businesses steer clear of social media due to the potential ramifications of making a mistake in such a public environment. What would your response be to that concern?
Social media is here to stay. Your customers, prospective clients, raging fans and detractors are all using SoMe to talk about you, your competitors, your successes and your failures.
Given that in all forms of business the trick is ‘to be where your customers are’, you need to be on social platforms. Simple as that. Of course, I’m not suggesting SoMe is the only place you need to be. You still need to have a full, rounded marketing campaign that includes all inbound and outbound channels, but if your clients are on SoMe platforms, you should be too.
And making mistakes, or dealing with negative feedback, is not only a healthy part of everyone’s day-to-day business, it is your golden opportunity to show everyone how great you really are. Nobody gets to see how wonderful you and your business are when everything is going well; it is when you deal with a negative issue in an extraordinarily good way that you create real buzz.
5. With the rapid evolution of internet marketing, are offline marketing channels now a waste of time? Or is it all still valuable?
Absolutely not. Every marketing channel is as important as the others.
Imagine, for a moment, your average day. You wake up and check if anything important has hit your email. You might then watch a little TV over breakfast, read the headlines from your Feedly aggregator and get to work. On the commute you may use a mobile device to keep in touch with the world and see what’s going on. At lunch you might read the newspaper. I could go on, but what is the key message here?
People use different systems of information at different points in the day. The above is one person’s story from waking to lunchtime; you might do things in a completely different way at alternative times. How can you get your message across to the largest number of target-relevant people unless you put that message on every channel your prospects use? If you limit your marketing to SoMe alone and ignore print, display, email, web and other channels, you’re going to miss a lot of opportunity.
6. How have you integrated social media effectively into your (or your clients) business strategies? How are you proving a return on investment?
Proving a return on investment with social media is a topic that might need an entire article, but it is possible. For example, I use technologies such as marketing automation software suites that allow me to see if a visitor to the website has originated from Facebook, Twitter, advertising (display and web), search engines (and what terms they queried) and other key pieces of information. Those leads are tracked through the CRM to the accounts software if the customer purchases, which gives us the ROI against all our source marketing channels.
If you don’t have the budget to install similar technologies, you can still gain a lot of this insight via good use of tools such as Google Analytics, and there are plenty of great guides available for free that explain how to set GA up to track social traffic.
7. What sort of marketing advice would you give to a person who said that their business simply does not fit with social media?
Usually the person that states their business doesn’t fit social media is the person that hasn’t tried using it. If they have, they haven’t used it properly. I go back to my standard marketing ethos; try it, measure it, keep/tweak/delete it accordingly.
Of course, the chances of success are much greater in the first place if you create great content that engages your audience and makes them think about you, above all others, when making a buying decision. But that isn’t about SoMe; that’s just good marketing.
8. If you had to give up all but one social network, which one would you keep and why?
That’s a tough question, since they are all valuable in different ways. If I think about my charity fitness website project, UsFitties, for a moment, I’d have to say that the content there resonates most with the Twitter audience, but all the channels we publish UsFitties content to play their part. For other organisations and companies, it could be any of the others; there isn’t a blanket answer for this question at all!
9. How do you deal with the 24/7 aspect of social media marketing? Do you ever step away from it all and recharge?
I have awesome processes and tools in place to manage my SoMe channels. I currently look after six accounts across five platforms and, thanks to those processes and tools, manage them in a combined 20-30 minutes a day. This isn’t a promise, but one day I might write a short e-book explaining everything.
10. One of the most exciting aspects of social media is that it’s always changing, evolving and progressing. What changes do you expect to see in social media over the next 12 months?
Google+ is already proving to be an important platform, both from a SoMe perspective and looking at the SEO benefits. While I’m already an evangelist for Google’s relatively new platform, I think there will be a big surge in Google+ interest over the next year, buoyed by the newsworthy ‘wearable technology’ movement that is being headlined by the Google Glass project.
I think there are also some positive movements in bringing ‘big company’ SoMe monitoring and management technology to the masses. The ever-expanding Hootsuite and the recent beta of Danny Brown’s Jugnoo solution have shown that ‘good’ doesn’t need to equate to ‘pricey’. I expect many more cost-effective tools and better understanding of how to manage SoMe as the year goes on.
Where Can Our Readers Find You?
Stewart Rogers: @TheRealSJR on Twitter
Blog: UsFitties – Fitness News (all revenues go to charity)
Twitter: @UsFitties on Twitter
Facebook: www.facebook.com/UsFitties
What is #SMPro?
#SMPro, in affiliation with My Social Game Plan, is a group of professional social media and digital marketers who have made a simple agreement to support, assist and promote each other via social media. With member backgrounds spanning the marketing industry and beyond, #SMPro has become a vibrant, engaging environment where questions are answered, hot topics are discussed, and everyone is always learning and helping each other reach that next level.
If you’re interested in joining the #SMPro group, check out the conversation on Facebook, Twitter, and Google+.
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