Dude.....You've Changed.

One of the first things you learn in life is that nothing stays the same. As you grow up seasons change, different trends become popular, governments sway from one side of the aisle to the other, and Van Halen gets a new lead singer. Ok so maybe I wasn’t there for the forming of Van Hagar, but you get the point. Everything changes. This is even truer in today’s technology fueled society. Websites, gadgets, and gizmos are constantly being improved upon and changed to fit consumers changing lifestyles and demands. The same thing is happening with Social Media. 

Since I got involved in the social media game a couple of years ago a lot has changed. It wasn’t until I started looking back that I noticed how much was actually different and what was still the same. For those of us that spend a fair chunk of our free time checking out the latest feeds on Facebook and Twitter change isn’t an issue. We are surprised by it for a few minutes or maybe a couple of days, but then we move on. However, for those of you that aren’t a slave to your Samsung Galaxy or any one of the numerous Appleganda devices, change can be quite noticeable. If you have taken an extended break from the social (media) scene, these changes can be a roadblock on the path to picking back up. I feel for you so I’m leaving you with just a little advice and a strong urge to shoot me any questions you might have after reading this post. 

Facebook – Don’t worry it’s still the number one site in town. It hasn’t gone all “Myspace” on us yet. Sure, Google + is throwing big numbers out there, but they still don’t have the type of use or social traffic to compete yet. However, Facebook is losing some ground. Young visitors don’t necessarily see it as the playground that it used to be. Also with the new algorithms that Facebook has put in place your fans don’t always see your content. It started out as a great (read: Free) way to connect to new audiences and current customers. Now Facebook is all about the pay to play. If you want to get exposure for your business page, you have to throw in a couple dollars towards FB ads. Luckily you can be extremely selective with your demographics.

Twitter – Twitter is probably the least changed. Everything is still 140 characters or less. Teenies are still filling up news feeds about Justin Bieber and One Direction. Not much besides a few vanity changes. However, big things are in the works here. Twitter desperately wants more of that Facebook money and has been testing out new profile prototypes. Luckily you made it back now before any major changes happened. Also, Hashtags are still here although it’s beginning to seem that perhaps their value is depleting a great deal. 

Pinterest – Pinterest is still alive more than ever. Things have remained relatively the same except that they are now recognizing business and have a validation process. Things are getting cleaner and Pinterest is learning how to become better at what they do, and how to capitalize on partnering with businesses. Lately they’ve been working with Target to boost sales. Pinterest gets it. They are an ecommerce site in disguise. 

Snapchat – Apparently the all powerful Evan Spiegel must have something great up his sleeve. He turned down deals with Facebook and really in my opinion came off as a cocky tool in his conversations with “The Zuck”. McDonald’s recently got involved with some Snap campaigns. It could be cool for you to use with some of those high value customers out there. Right now it could serve as a way to invigorate your old mailing list. Maybe some of those weekly emails can be replaced with a few Snaps?

Everything else – Expect this category to explode this year. As we find new ways to connect we will become even more social. Like I have said many times: I expect that in the next year or so we will see many more smaller niche social sites going after one or two demographics of people, and catering to their wants and needs. I think we are exiting the era of mass communication. We  know that we can say something to the entire planet, but we now know that there are ways to share things with a select group of people. We have gotten past the “I just ate a sandwich” tweet…..or at least I hope. 

For all things horticulture and social please contact me anytime here: mday55@gmail.com

Also find me on LinkedIn here: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/mason-day/20/9aa/233

And you know you can always tweet at me here: www.twitter.com/mday55 

The Writings on the Wall.... or is it Timeline?

Teens are leaving Facebook! Teens are leaving Facebook! I repeat, Teens are leaving Facebook! If you spend any time reading social media news or studies on popular culture, you might think that this is the headline of 2014. The prophets are heralding the demise of a giant! According to some “experts”, brands should set sail today for better waters.

Breathe deep. Relax. It isn’t the apocalypse. Sure, there are signs showing that teens are becoming less interested in Facebook, but it is far from the end. We are simply seeing a shift in the way new generations think. Trust me, Facebook, will continue to be popular in the next few years. We now have people 40 years and up hooked on Facebook, and to them it moves at a speed that they are comfortable with. Don’t expect that age group to leave any time soon. In the horticultural industry, our main age group of customers is still discovering the social network and still remains highly active on Facebook. Yes, we have to worry about reaching younger audiences, but we also have to make sure we don’t alienate those customers that we already have. Don’t give up on Facebook just yet. Hopefully, with that your Social Media stress levels are coming back to normal.

However, that still leaves us to solve the other issue at hand. If all of these young people are leaving Facebook, where are they going and why are they leaving? It would be really easy to say that they’re leaving Facebook because social media was a fad. I know a few people that are still waiting around to hear that. Sorry, but that’s not the case. It’s not that people are leaving social media. People are evolving in how they use these platforms and which platforms they use. Back in 2005 we had two social sites: Facebook and Myspace. Those were the only two mainstream platforms you had to choose from (bloggers I’m leaving you out of this). Think about where we are 9 years later. We have Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, Pinterest, Snapchat, Vine, Pheed, Foursquare, and about a thousand other social networks.

Teens are leaving Facebook because they are finding better ways to connect. We, Millennials were the real proponents of Facebook and Myspace because we had this need to feel like we could access the entire world. We were the first generation to grow up as part of a true global community, and we had to break all the rules that were previously established.  For the generation that follows us, this is old news. Being able to connect across the globe is nothing new. They were born into a global system. The concept of social media connecting them to people in Japan and Africa is more of a “Duh” moment rather than the “A-ha!” Millennials had. They now see it as a means to connect based on specific interests or cliques. It’s about reaching others across the planet, but at the same time finding their niche. That’s why company websites that are working to create miniature social spaces within their own websites are actually succeeding in a lot of cases. They are able to create a space for people who identify with each other to discuss whatever they want. Social media is becoming integrated into teens daily lives everywhere they go so much that they don’t NEED Facebook like Generation Y did.

I predict that over time we will see a decrease in the use of the big social sites like Facebook and Twitter. However, some people will still want to congregate in those large “meeting spaces”. Also Facebook still acts as a major data storage site for people. Pictures and memories are now locked into Facebook’s care. I also predict that we will see an increase in the use of overall social media. People want to connect (well unless you’re Dexter), and this is what social media does for the world. It connects the masses, however big or small they want their groups to be.

Instagram is the new Facebook. #SWAT

See you here: www.twitter.com/mday55
Or here: www.linkedin.com/pub/mason-day/20/9aa/233/
And Apparently here: mday55@gmail.com
Find me on Google +

You Are the One, Neo

Right now I’m guessing that about half of you that are reading this understand where the title comes from. To the other half, who have no idea what it means but figured they would click through to read the blog anyway, I ask that you please find time to watch The Matrix.  It will make you question everything around you. Ok now that we’ve established what you need to do this Sunday night, let’s get down to why I’ve gathered you all here today.

 

“Who do I need to hire to do this social media stuff?”

 

No matter where I go, or who I talk to, this is always one of the first questions that gets asked. It seems that everyone from garden centers, to massive corporations is searching for “the chosen one”. People always seem to think I’m going to have a short answer for them. I wish I did; however, the truth is that for each company that person is different. With social media it’s not about which school someone went to, or even what they studied. It’s not about hiring the first 20 something that applies for the job either.

 

The first thing I usually say when I get asked the question of who to hire is: I really hope you don’t have to hire anyone! In a lot of cases there are people already working in your organization that might be completely capable of handling your social media efforts. This is the best situation. That inside person already has one of the most valuable pieces to the social media puzzle. They (hopefully) know how your business works. Knowing how things work on the inside is crucial to social media success. When taking on the persona of a business, you really have to live as the business or brand.

 

I understand sometimes, hiring from the inside just isn’t an option. That’s ok. However, my suggestions on what to look for remain the same no matter where you pull your champion from. I’ve put together a quick list of my top three character traits to look for. Honestly a complete list of essential traits could go on for days.

 

-        The most important trait to me, without a doubt is LOYALTY. You have to be able to put complete trust in this person. They act as a gateway between your business and all of your fans/followers online. You cannot afford to hire someone that doesn’t care about your business to the maximum. You have to look for that “clingy ex-boyfriend/girlfriend” type. Even if you have to let them go, for any reason, you have to know that they will still care about your company enough not to ruin your fan base before you can remove their access.

 

-        The next trait on my list is PERSONALITY/CREATIVITY. This should be self-explanatory.  Social Media success comes through true creativity and out of the box thinking. Finally something a robot can’t do.

 

-        My last suggestion is that this person has a high level of AWARENESS. I mean that in every sense of the word. You have to know what is going on at all times; with you, your brand, your fans, your pages, and the world in general. The social media scene never stops. Nothing is going to stop someone from trashing your business on the web at 3am. I’m not saying you can’t sleep, but it has to be one of the first things you check when you wake up.

 

Like I said, that list could go on for days, but we’ll save that for some other time. In between posts you can always find me @mday55 on Twitter.

We Can't Stop....... Thinking About Social Media!

I wanted to use this blog post to discuss Miley Cyrus and her VMA performance……. Not! I don’t know if you feel like I do, but I’m ready to get back to real news and fresh ideas. Lately, I’ve been doing a lot of local traveling. I’ve learned that in the Chicagoland area you really don’t have to go very far to meet some interesting people with great ideas and loads of motivation. Last week I had the opportunity to travel into the city and attend the IGC Show (Independent Garden Center) on Navy Pier. Social Media guru Peter Shankman offered up some great advice during his keynote address. I then had the opportunity to elaborate on some of his ideas during one of the educational sessions in which I happened to be on a Panel discussing trends in media.

I came away from the show refreshed. For a while I was worrying that some of the excitement around social media was beginning to die down. I was worried that people in the industry were starting to second guess their social media efforts simply because it isn’t always something that can directly be traced back to a profit. A coupon can be tracked to a sale, but it’s hard for a business owner to know what sales were generated due to a Facebook post (unless you put a coupon in it!). However, the IGC Show quickly proved me wrong. I just hadn’t had the chance to talk to other people in the industry in a while! Walking around from booth to booth it was clear that social media is becoming more important than ever in our industry. More companies are starting to realize that it isn’t just a new gadget, but rather a new channel that presents many different opportunities that were never available before.

After spending some time at the show, and reflecting on what I had seen and heard I came up with three major takeaways that can help you out with your social media initiatives.

1. Find your customer – Your social media strategy will be a failure if you do not reach out to YOUR customer. That means people that buy from you. It’s great to have followers from all over the globe. It shows that you might be more influential than you think. However, if you aren’t focusing on those followers that actually spend money on your business, you’re doing it wrong. That means talking to the right people and being on the right platforms. 

2. Forget the Hard Sell – People understand that you want to sell more plants and vegetables. They get it. You don’t have to push it on them. They come to your business on social media for something else. They want to see what’s behind your business. They want to know why you’re selling what you’re selling, not what you’re selling. Use your social media platforms to shout what your business believes! If you do this, people will follow your cause. However, despite my ideas against hard selling on social media, I will say everyone loves a coupon or deal once in a while. 

3. Gain Followers through Followers – Word of mouth is more important than ever. With social media people can talk to more people on a regular basis. You want to be the topic of as many of those conversations as possible (for good reasons of course). You can actively follow people on Twitter to increase followers; it works, but those best leads come from word of mouth interactions. They are coming to your pages with interest. This is why it is more important than ever to publish content that is unique and insightful! It is this content that drives people to talk to their friends about your pages. Social media is not a place for mediocrity.

The next time you sit down to try and figure out a social media strategy take these concepts with you. Content is king above all else! It doesn’t matter if you’re farming 2,000 acres of corn raising awareness in your community about agriculture, or if you are a small local garden center selling plants and gardening supplies; when it comes to social media tell people what you believe, and they will follow you. If you give your customer something to stand behind, it is less likely that they slip through the cracks.

Email me: mday55@gmail.com

Tweet me: @mday55

Or just search Mason Day on LinkedIn

Also you can find me in the 2014 Issue of Flourish for IGCs talking about Facebook, and in the September issue of Grower Talks!

Who ya gonna call?

In every action movie there is always some sort of go-to team. When things get crazy people in the movies always seem to call on a specific group of people to “get in there and take care of things”.  Whether it be the Ghostbusters, the Avengers, or just Rambo himself, it seems that in the movies people always have someone to call on when things get bad. It isn’t just in the movies either! When things get hairy for the military or there is a top secret mission they send in the Seals or the Rangers. When police come across situations that are especially dangerous they call the SWAT team.

The point I’m trying to make here is that in these instances everyone is (at least) somewhat prepared. People have someone to call on when everything is going wrong. Wouldn’t it make sense for your business to do the same? In the past year we have seen hundreds of businesses and people take PR hits for things they have said or done. With the world becoming more connected every day information slips through the cracks. Everyone has made their mistakes, and with social media it’s very easy for those mistakes to be blown way out of proportion. Even your small town greenhouse business can make the evening news if one of your employees does something inappropriate, or makes a claim against your business. This one spot then translates to an angry Twitter mob demanding for you to shut down, and leading others to harass your business. Like it or not the human race operates off of mob mentality. You certainly don’t want to fall victim to it. How do you prepare for something unexpected like this?

That’s when you call in your team of “experts”, your SWAT team. I’m not talking about a group of henchmen that would resemble the cast from The Expendables, but rather a team of three or four people that are extremely knowledgeable about your business, who are the best communicators in your organization, and that can make sound decisions at a moment’s notice. Type up a guidelines and procedures that are the limits of what your business will and will not due during a crisis; this acts as a boundary for your team and they know where they can act if the time should ever arise that they are needed.

It’s also extremely important to have an outlet for your team to act in. If something goes wrong and rumors are going around that you have been selling drugs out of your greenhouse or farm, how do you combat it? There has to be a channel in which your people can make a statement. Not addressing the issue is seen almost as an admission of guilt these days. This is where blogs come in handy. You can publish whatever you want. It gives your go-to guys a place to write the real story out. Twitter can be useful too, but only if you can handle your problems in 140 characters.

I know you’re thinking that it won’t happen to you. Your business is safe from the digital rumor mill. In reality it’s not. In some cases it’s almost worse. If you sell to a local region and something negative gets out to the local Facebook or Twitter community you can lose large quantities of your smaller customer base within a few days! Don’t let that happen to you simply because you didn’t have a plan in place for this kind of situation. For larger companies that span over many regions, a small local incident might hurt the business, but for smaller businesses a local incident might shut the operation down.

Even though you and I both agree that it seems ridiculous that it would be necessary for a business to have a digital crisis team to manage bad PR on social media, it’s the way the world is these days. It isn’t changing back either. The more connected the internet community becomes, the faster it can spread information. You as a business owner must ensure that the information being spread around is both accurate and non-damaging. If not you might not be around to fix the mistakes “next time”.

As always I’d love to hear your thoughts on this!

Feel free to shoot me an email at mday55@gmail.com

OR find me on Twitter www.twitter.com/mday55

Business as (Un)Usual

Think about the cell phone. When it was first developed, the cell phone was a pretty bulky thing, but still allowed people to have phone access from remote locations. However, the only purpose for the first cell phones was to make and receive telephone calls. Then a few years later we found out that we could send messages with our phones without making a call. We saw that we could put a small camera on a phone and integrate it into the phone’s system. Then phones were developed that could access the internet. We know have access to millions of apps online. We can send emails fast from our phones than we can most computers. There is almost nothing that we cannot do with a cell phone these days. The point I want to make here is that cell phones started out with one purpose and evolved into something we would never have imagined 20 years ago.

The same thing is happening to social media right now. You could say that the origins of social media lie in the chat rooms of the late nineties. Now there are many different social networks with different purposes. Sure, the central goal is still about connecting people, but the types of people using social networks is no longer limited to teenagers and college kids. People from all over the globe are logging into social sites for many different reasons. People are looking to find old friends, they are looking for deals on different products, some are looking to unite others around a cause, and some are looking to do business. Over the last few months I have been looking at social media from a B2B perspective (business selling to business perspective). I have been entrenching myself into both this non-consumer based culture and trying to see if there is any way that B2B businesses could fit into the scheme of social media. My answer: B2B companies need to be involved in social media. It’s not just about fitting into the picture, it’s about completing the whole puzzle.

The whole deal here is that as time goes on more people turn to social media for different reasons. This creates opportunities for businesses to jump in to the blender for a wealth of different reasons. Here are my top three:

1. Talent Acquisition – As generations move through the workforce more and more people will take to the internet to find a job. Speaking from experience, I can say that LinkedIn was the first place I went to look for a job before graduating from college. I’ve even seen people put “Looking for Immediate Employment” in their headline on LinkedIn. Also, by being active as a company on LinkedIn, people can find you. You do less searching for desirable candidates. LinkedIn is a place for people interested in being professional (somewhat at least), and it lets you see a person’s connections and past experiences before wasting anytime with interviews or phone calls.

2. Create Your Own Press – If you own a business and don’t have a blog of some sort or a way to address your customers and their customers I urge you to immediately find a way to rectify the situation. Even if you are a grower in the horticultural industry or the owner of a family farm it’s important to have a way to address your customers and their customers. Situations may arise in which you need to say something quickly to large amounts of people. In the green industry we can’t really hold a press conference and it can take days for industry media to type up a story. You need an outlet for damage control. In the fast moving digital world that we live in it’s important to act swiftly in those situations. Blogs are also great tools to keep people coming back to your website!

3. Customer Support – You may sell strictly to businesses, but your customers still sell to consumers. What does this mean for social media? The end consumer is connecting to those businesses that exist on social media. Pages like Facebook and Twitter are where consumers go to connect with the brands they love. So if your customers are on top of things, they should be connecting with the consumer in those places. However, where does your customer get the content to post on their social page for their business? How do you ensure that your plants or products are being represented correctly? Businesses have to be involved with the social media content of their business customers. For B2B companies it’s about providing a content service for all of your customers’ pages. It isn’t about posting a picture that gets 20,000 “likes” it’s about getting 20 other businesses to share your content on their pages. You get to market your plants by providing a content service for your customer. Businesses often get too caught up in how many likes their page gets. However, a better measurement of success is the dollar value behind those likes. If 20 businesses use your page for content and each business is worth $50,000 of business, 20 doesn’t seem like such a low number.

At the end of the day social media will continue to evolve over the next few years. Be ready to use things like Facebook and Pinterest in ways that you had never imagined. The key is to understand that even though you may not sell to the end consumer, your product still has to get there someday, and because more and more businesses are seeking to blur the gaps in the supply chain, social media is a must to maintain relevancy for the future.

- Mason  Day

www.twitter.com/mday55

mday55@gmail.com 

www.facebook.com/nextgenhorticulture

The Logic of Local

I’m back after a long hiatus and a couple life changing events! Sorry that I’ve been gone for so long. I looked on here the other day and it said I hadn’t posted in a month. I will admit I felt guilty when I saw that. I’m always telling people to blog as much as possible, and I had been silent for almost a month, but trust me if you had to deal with the things I’ve went through this month I think you’d understand. Anyways, enough of that let’s talk shop.

This past month I have spent over 75% of my days on the road. I have been to just over ten garden centers and to about five small farms. Everywhere I would say that 90% of the places that I’ve been to were active on social media. Were they utilizing it to the best of their capabilities? Most of the time the answer was no, but they were still believers in this new channel. In past blogs I’ve talked about how to get started on social media, how to set up accounts, even a little bit on how to engage the new consumer in and outside of social media. Today I want to talk about finding your customers and potential customers with social media. Today we’re talking about generating your own leads.

Being active in reaching out to your potential customers can help you show that your business cares about the community. Having a great deal of followers from around the globe can be great and you can learn a lot from people all over the place, but if you’re a local business and all of your followers are from over 100 miles away you aren’t reaping all of the benefits of social media. The key to local success is to think local. Put yourselves in the shoes of your customer.

Let’s start with Facebook for example. The first thing to know is that your business is not the only business in your town that is on Facebook. Hopefully by now you know where your target customer shops. Maybe they shop at a local hardware store, maybe they go to a bakery up the street. The point is they go to other businesses. They shop at other businesses that have Facebook pages. Search these stores. Like them, connect with them. Maybe you work out a deal with the bakery. Buying a birthday cake gets you a dollar off of their purchase at your location. It’s all about being connected locally. Offer an exchange post on your pages where if you share something of another local business they will share content of yours. Also many chambers of commerce have Facebook accounts today. Connect with them to increase your visibility.

If you have a Twitter account and are looking to connect locally, it’s even easier. Sure you can still follow local businesses and try to connect with them and work on cross promotion, but Twitter is an even sweeter deal than that. Twitter gives you access to all of the followers of any given user. Therefore if there is a famous business in your area that is followed by everyone in town. You can then go and follow all of the followers of that business (www.tweepi.com makes this task extremely easy). It puts your name in front of people. Maybe before they didn’t know where your business was or maybe they simply didn’t know you had a Twitter account. Either way you’re advertising directly to your target customers.  Most of them will probably follow you back. For the ones that don’t you just unfollow (if you’re concerned about ratios). It’s simple it’s effective and it gets those local customers thinking about your local garden center or farm.

Another way to tap into that local scene on Twitter is to use hashtags associated with your region or area. If there is a summer festival in your area that’s using a hashtag find a way to tap into it. Find a way to say something relevant that would be viewed in a positive light if someone stumbled across it in a hashtag stream. Some cities even have hashtags that are populated enough to draw attention.

Again the biggest lesson in this post is that if you make your money locally, it’s time to find a way to tap into the local social media. The channel is great for making worldwide friends, but sometimes it’s best suited for making friends right outside of your back door.

Contact me for any reason here:

mday55@gmail.com

www.twitter.com/mday55

www.facebook.com/nextgenhorticulture