“Companies know they have to do social media marketing today from Facebook and Twitter to YouTube, but on the whole most really don’t know how to do it well,” said Haines, a 2008 Hope College sociology graduate who has been working in social media marketing for half a decade.
He now helps companies and public organizations effectively use social media marketing through his West Michigan-based company TechBridge.
“l was using social media while working on a United Way national project and started doing some freelance consulting on the side. The consulting business kept growing until I knew I had a viable business and made the leap and started TechBridge in 2012,” Haines said.
The company generated $100,000 in sales in its first year and is shooting for $250,000 this year.
Haines clients include Freightliner of Grand Rapids and Kalamazoo, Somersault Group publishing and strategy services and marketing and branding agency Grey Matter Group of Grand Rapids, Holland City, the downtown Holland marketing group and now Macatawa Area Express bus system.
It’s a good time to be in social media marketing. An estimated $10 billion will be spent on social media marketing this year, up 20 percent for 2012 according to The Social Habit by Edison Research.
Studies show that 47 percent of people now say Facebook has the greatest impact on purchase behavior, compared to just 24% in 2011. The overwhelming majority of new Twitter users - 76 percent - are active tweeters and followers.
And with the popularity of smart phones, 54 percent of Facebook members use the social network via an app and 33 percent use a phone as their primary way to access Facebook and other social media.
“Social networks marketing is what you want to use If you want to drive behaviors, product awareness and product branding, especially for those under 50,” Haines said.
Haines works with clients by first doing an audit of where they are in social media and where they want to go. working with each department and work team to create a plan that is reviewed and approved.
TechBridge is a virtual company with Haines and five part-time contractors doing the work. Cost of an audit, recommendations and initial training runs $2,000 to $3,000 with the creation of a social media strategy, additional training and follow up costing between $5,000 to $15,000.
“We do staff training on use of software and the effective use of social media including the do’s and don’ts protocols,” he said.
That gets into subtleties like not carrying on negative topic threads on Twitter but staying on Twitter with back-and-forth conversation if it’s a positive discussion.
“Other people can follow what you write on Twitter, so if it’s going bad, get the person to email or call you right away,” Haines said.
“You don’t want to go back and forth with everyone in the world watching. But, if they are complimenting your product or service you want that on Twitter.”
He also assists clients in developing Facebook and Twitter campaigns that can be rolled out over a year.
“We create a unique strategy for the specific company that uses multi-level social media strategies that build on build on each other as part of an overall plan,” Haines said.
TechBridge also brings organization to the social media marketing of companies.
“In a lot of places, everyone from the intern to the president can post on the company Facebook page. That’s not good, so I have them put in IT security controls,” Haines said.
MAX Marketing and Customer Services Manager Sherri Cadeaux said she hired TechBridge because the company uses a lot of social media marketing in its communication plan.
“We thought we were doing a lot of things right, and we wanted him to help us improve our community engagement and leverage our social media in our overall marketing,” she said.
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