Part I: How VerticalResponse Uses Social Media

Over the past few weeks I've been getting comments asking how VerticalResponse uses social media to grow our business. The answer is lots of ways. So here's part one of an overview of our social media efforts.

Increase Awareness of VerticalResponse

We have a Twitter account, a Facebook Fan Page, a LinkedIn Group and a YouTube channel. We use all 4 of these social media profiles to increase awareness of VerticalResponse. We Tweet almost everything, every sales offer, every blog post, almost every event, and as much info on email marketing and growing your business as we can find.

For Facebook we take a slightly different strategy. I am of the belief that every social media platform is different because your audience is different and so your involvement should be as well. We do share every blog post and every celebratory piece of news we have because Facebook is a very social place and people always like to say congrats and celebrate with us. We also post some events and we post offers we believe our Facebook audience would be interested in.

YouTube is a very fun channel for us. One great example of how we use YouTube was our Furious Alf videos. We needed a way to reach a younger audience, 24-30 who were employed by our partner Salesforce.com as sales reps. We needed them to be aware of VerticalResponse and the fact that we are an email service provider that provides a great service to their customers. To accomplish this we created two videos, VR for AppEx Baby and Nuthin' But an App Thang. If you haven't seen them yet take a minute and watch them because I still can't get through them without laughing. Now we currently hold the spot for number one most downloaded application on the Salesforce.com AppExchange. We believe it's partially due to the fact that we have a great app but also because these videos were passed around by the sales reps themselves and their customers.

LinkedIn is a brand new channel for us. The feedback we get from the group is that people love to join because of the quality small business tips we provide. But we haven't seen as much audience interaction as we'd like just yet. So I will have to get back to you on our strategy for this platform.

Why do we do it? We do all of this because we are in the email marketing business and we want small businesses to be aware of VerticalResponse. If we can use social media to help our audience continue to think about VerticalResponse and email marketing then we have accomplished our goals.

Find New Customers

It's all about the key words. In the same way that customers go looking for email marketing on Google they also look for email marketing and other products or services on social networks. But sometimes the recommendations on social networks can be more powerful because it is coming from a real person, maybe someone they know and trust. We do two things when thinking about this idea to find new customers.

First, we are just there. We have set up profiles that look professional and are active enough so that our customers know we are there.  When our customers find us on social networks and become fans or followers, all of their friends and followers can see that they are connected to VerticalResponse and could potentially become customers. Also, if Facebook is someone's preferred place to share a recommendation for an email service provider they can easily pass on our company name or our Facebook Fan page.

Second, we set up our own searches and reach out to potential customers. On a daily basis we see someone Tweet that they are looking into using VerticalResponse but want to know more. We reach out to them with "getting started" resources and ask if we can help them in any way. Typically the responses we get to these types of Tweets are of gratitude and excitement. They love the personal touch and the fact that they now know exactly where to start with their email marketing.

If you have never done a search for your company name on social networks do it, you might be surprised at how many people are talking about you.

Coming in Part II: How VerticalResponse Uses Social Media is:

• Share Our Small Business Knowledge
• Show You Who is Behind VerticalResponse

Are there any other topics you would like to discuss about how VerticalResponse uses social media? 

Comments

[Mark McClure]

I'll be interested to hear when you get measurable results (or even interaction) with LinkedIn.

People, especially employees in the corp world, seem to be more reserved (cautious?) about sharing information via that service. Maybe a throw back from its days as an online resume service? (At least that's how many people I know were using it.)