Dave and I headed to the GrowSmartBiz conference downtown yesterday and joined about 500 other people interested in technology and business. It was a great morning thanks to dynamic folks like “The Long Tail” author Chris Anderson, Sen. Mark Warner, and Ogilvy Worldwide’s Rohit Bhargava, author of “Personality Not Included.” The afternoon was populated with great speakers, as well, including an engaging session with London Ink’s CEO Bob London and SmallBizTechology.com editor Ramon Ray, among others.

Steve Fisher of AppSolve charged the room in the afternoon with some some hilarious, unfortunate, and expensive examples of how to (and not to) present yourself on business cards before the day closed with Women Grow Business’ Jill Foster moderating a panel on social media.

Overall, we took several pages of notes and had conversations with tons of bright, driven people who all came together to learn about how they can grow — and help the larger DC market (and beyond) continue its upward swinging economic course.  The event was valuable both in terms of new learning and discussing real opportunities with other business owners about how we can help them grow.

I’m often asked if we at Tellenger “do social media.” My short answer is “Yes.” People generally want to know if we do both social media campaign planning and execution (yes), and at what rate (approximately $130/hr, depending on the complexity of the project).

But I normally probe a bit more about what people want to achieve, because social media is more than just having a Twitter account or a Facebook page. In response, I’ve heard:

• More sales. (Actual conversions from campaigns)
• More traffic. (Higher numbers in general)
• More brand awareness. (Greater presence in existing social networks)
• Wins over the competition. (More sales and social media followers alike)
• More customer feedback. (The right vehicles to encourage audience interaction)

Each client’s social media strategy is different, and each of these questions carries with it important elements that not EVERY client would need. For example, our social media strategy at Tellenger is participatory — we individually have been building our social media profiles for years, but only recently started a company blog collectively. By contrast, we’re working with someone who is preparing to launch a product, and driving sales is The Sole Purpose for his exploring social media in the first place, so careful planning, detailed execution, and daily analysis are absolutes.

Social media campaigns can be tremendously successful when done in consult with existing marketing and messaging, in consideration of the great, back-end capabilities that can be integrated, and with proper measurement that allows for instant evolution (i.e. Do more of what’s working; immediately stop doing what isn’t). Most people can’t afford to lose money right now, and the instant feedback that social media monitoring provides allows for business owners to see the performance metrics that are essential to their making informed, immediate decisions.

Of course, asking the right questions early to discover “what do you want to achieve with social media?” is Step One.

Many people new to social media view it as a stand-alone campaign. They come up with a list of things they want to do on Twitter or Facebook, then start implementing.

The problem with such an approach is that it doesn’t leverage existing momentum in other parts of the business, and social media is most effective when used in coordination with larger organizational strategies that are cohesive in nature.

Most of the time, social media is one of multiple pieces of a larger sales or marketing campaign that might span print, television, and the web. Those efforts will incorporate an integrated look, feel, and messaging, which should transition to any new social media activities. Ensuring that all channels are unified and synergistic reinforces a consistent brand identity and call-to-action to target audiences.

For example, let’s say we make chocolate mint flavored toothpaste, and it’s the greatest tasting toothpaste on the planet. But it’s got major value adds to our audiences in that it prevents cavities and whitens teeth while tasting so utterly delicious. But, for the sake of having a cohesive message across all our campaigns, we have to decide: what’s our core message?

Aha! But let’s say we don’t decide on a core message (a problem that afflicts so many great products and services). Instead, we use TV to promote the whitening capabilities, print to promote the cavity-fighting properties, and social media to promote its choco-minty flavoring. Such an approach would create confusion about the key product benefit, and would fail to capitalize on building momentum across marketing channels.

So, when clients come to us asking for a social media campaign, we first identify the core messaging, then allow social media to boost those existing efforts in new, dynamic ways.

Such an approach will surely make you and your customers smile. (Yes, pun intended).

Touting “I had Bran Flakes again for breakfast” on Twitter *may* help your brand reach its goals … if you’re leading a community of people trying to eat a higher fiber diet, for example. But really, each client’s business or organizational goals are unique, and so each client’s messaging is, too.

That’s exactly why we move social media engagements through planning, execution, and evaluation phases (all three of which consistently are iterative as campaigns unfold and the data is analyzed) because being prepared and strategic is essential to success. This approach is also critical to ensure that social media engagements work in concert with existing sales and marketing efforts. Doing so reinforces consistent messaging and increases progress toward a common business goal.

Two of our social media case studies illustrate just how broad campaigns and goals can be:

1. A non-profit combating underage drinking “competes” with other advocacy groups of greater and lesser fame. With an old site and no knowledge of the social media space’s potential, they didn’t know where to begin in order to gain support from financial supporters, and then gain support from American citizens who want to activate and prevent underage drinking. So they asked us to help.
   • Goal #1: Gain funding toward executing a new online strategy
   • Goal #2: Create a more dynamic, interactive online presence to better connect with volunteers across America who are interested in preventing underage drinking
   • What we did: Defined an entire online media campaign encompassing a microsite, blog, Facebook group, Twitter strategy, email marketing, and future considerations such as a database for users to input and extract data related to underage drinking prevention efforts.
2. A B2C is launching a new product and competing against other local vendors. Exploring an emerging market already saturated with like companies was daunting, and they wanted to open with a bang. So they asked us to determine whether or not a social media campaign was one tactic they should leverage as a complement to their existing marketing efforts.
   • Goal #1: Determine if social media has potential given the competitive market
   • Goal #2: If so, use social media to drive more foot traffic on-site
   • What we did: Created a research-based competitive analysis and defined a social media engagement using Twitter with existing marketing strategies to execute defined messages and an offline feedback process that would hook into Google Analytics goal-conversion tracking for instant analysis, evolution, and insight into returns on investment.

And we love helping clients get into the social media space, whether they’re trying to raise awareness, increase sales, or sell Bran Flakes.

Paul Boag of Boagworld authored “10 Harsh Truths About Corporate Blogging.” In it, he knocks common corporate pitfalls like using a blog to publish press releases or treating it like a straight marketing tool (rather than as a means to form relationships with individuals).

Blogs aren’t intended to be packed with marketing jargon or attempts to up-sell. Readers confronting such commercial-style content likely will be dismayed because they didn’t find genuine personality in that brand’s informal communication vehicle. Those readers might even cry. (But probably not.)

So when clients tell us, “I’m told I need a blog,” we always ask, “Why?”

If they want to “get more sales,” then we might explore additional methods for attracting leads — and leverage a blog secondarily to add more context for helping users make decisions. If the client wants to “connect with audiences” through accessible, two-way communication, then a blog might just be the perfect solution.

Either way, clients who are willing to put forth the time and effort it takes to produce valuable blog content that’s useful, interesting, or capable of building communities will best position themselves to land a loyal readership that helps them learn and grow overall.

After two years, we’ve re-launched Tellenger.com to better highlight the results of our work and the services we provide. Like many businesses, we started heading in one direction, though our successes, clients, and the market have encouraged us to adapt in order to better meet a unique set of needs.

Some of the changes that more accurately describe Tellenger include:

1. No longer focused exclusively on Government clients – We’ve found that our work with the Marine Corps, for example, has led to private sector businesses wanting our advanced coding skills. And our Government clients want to benefit from our leading edge work in the private sector.
2. Increased focus on Business Strategy – While strategy has always been an important part of our process, we were surprised to discover how many competitors fail to put the business strategy of an organization at the forefront of technology consulting. We let the business objectives of our clients drive our exceptional technology engineering and visual design … not the other way around. As a result, we’ve proven exceptionally skilled at building web-based businesses and driving organizational value through technology.
3. Not just complex coding anymore – Tellenger got its start building complex, mission-driven software applications delivered through the web so people could access their apps anywhere, anytime. However, we were missing an important market segment of organizations that needed less complex, though equally important, websites and digital technology solutions. Interestingly, the shift to building web-based businesses and ecommerce sites has actually enhanced our software apps.

While some website re-launches are simply refreshes or updates, Tellenger’s signifies our successes and our growth. We are doing outstanding work for our clients, which is leading to new clients, new requests, and repeat business. The new Tellenger.com site is a marker of the achievements our clients have experienced as a result of our work together.

I’m proud to welcome the new Tellenger.com.