A few months ago a client asked for a cheat sheet on how to uses social media tools. Here’s more or less what I gave them on Twitter. See something important missing, let me know and I’ll add it. Note: This list isn’t a substitute for a strategy.

You should read the whole article.

1. Follow some good tweeters to get a feel for it and find a voice you feel comfortable using. There is no one right voice.  @chrisbrogan, @postachio, @comcastcares, @delloutlet and @lancearmstrong are examples of popular tweeters using very different styles.
2. Understand frequent users will never visit your twitter.com page. Your brand/identity must be in your communication or where you send users.
3. Use Bit.ly or other tool to shorten links and collect data.
4. Use CoTweet or HootSuite to optimize your workflow and track analytics.
5. Engagement is earned with time and by providing value. You must be dedicate significant time to get any value from it.
6. Be helpful is the Golden Rule of social media.
7. Use Twitter lists to manage the information flow.
8. Add to conversations that are already happening instead of expecting them to come to you.
9. Re-tweet often – people like to be patted on the back. Add a comment/value to your re-tweet.
10. Try and reply to @ messages, but you don’t have to reply to everyone
11. Try and thank people for re-tweeting.
12. Ignore the “What are you doing?” question and answer more interesting questions like, “What interests you right now? What did you just discover? What are you passionate about? What is something positive you can share?”
13. Frequency is key. Don’t feel bad for tweeting the same message again if it’s valuable.
14. A message will be viewed on someone’s Twitter page or Twitter client only if they happen to be looking at it at the time when you Tweet. And you probably have a lot of competition for attention. Again, frequency is key.
15. Tweet about other people you respect – no one likes anyone who only talks about themselves.
16. Give followers somewhere to go, some news, or something to do or read. There’s no interaction without action.
17. People will follow your tweets if you provide them what they find valuable. Usually that’s news, inside information, entertainment or deals.
18. Use search engines or Twitter client to create searches on relevant topics and your brand.
19. Use Google Alerts.
20. Find other users with similar interests and follow them, get a feel for what they’re doing and engage them.
21. If possible, have more than one tweeter.
22. Obviously, be ethical and transparent.
23. Let people know you’re on Twitter by putting your username on e-mail signatures, web sites, blogs and offline communications.
24. Try and follow people back who seem legitimate; this gives them the opportunity to direct-message you…which could be important.
25. Don’t be boring. Don’t just Tweet PR language or links to press releases. This is not a push medium.
26. Don’t treat it like a broadcast mechanism for advertising.
27. Don’t read every tweet; you’ll go mad.

jimmy-gilmore.com, Jimmy Gilmore, Feb 2010

You should read the whole article.

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]]> http://www.markappeal.com/create/359/feed 0 http://www.markappeal.com/create/355 http://www.markappeal.com/create/355#comments Tue, 02 Mar 2010 16:44:57 +0000 Mark E. Ting http://www.markappeal.com/?p=355 tips on using social media for business users. ]]> Facebook Fan Page Tips

This is the second post in a series of tips on using social media for business users. Note: This post assumes you already have your strategy set and by no means should you be engaging your customers without one in place.jimmy-gilmore.com, Jimmy Gilmore, Feb 2010

You should read the whole article.

1. Remember main goal of the page and ask yourself before posting if the post is on topic.
2. Leave a little room for fun. Your fans will enjoy it if it doesn’t overwhelm the reason they fanned you in the first place.
3. Delegate a project ownership, if you don’t have time to post continuously.
4. Give the page a username for unique and memorable Facebook URL (facebook.com/”brandname”). Go to facebook.com/username – select your page from “My Pages” and then apply for username. MAKE SURE YOU’RE NOT SELECTING FOR YOUR PERSONAL PAGE. Then double check, because you can’t change it. Maybe even have someone watch you do it, really.
5. Don’t forget there may be a larger community discussing your category, you can join and post there, too. Feel free to post respectfully.
6. Monitor daily at best. Weekly at worst. Set alerts so you know when someone has written on your wall.
7. Facebook should only part of your online presence. Use it to capture fans and then drive them to deeper content on a blog, connect on Twitter, and promote video on YouTube. But, most importantly, they need to be moving toward business goals.
8. Use other online vehicles to recruit Facebook fans including links on your homepage, ads, promotions and other social media sites.
9. You are only a small reason your fans are on Facebook. Be respectful and don’t over-promote or you risk losing them.
10. Put fans first. Consider what is valuable to them and link to it or post about it.
11. Consider promoting others on your page who have done something significant in your area.
12. Listen, converse, energize, help, support, or embrace are six things you should ask if your post do.
13. Keep things as positive as possible.
14. Promote offline and integrate with other marketing materials. (Example: Put that unique URL on your ads.)
15. Respond to comments.
16. Thank people for becoming fans.
17. Ask people to use the “share” button if it’s a particularly important post.
18. Ask fans what they think about a subject or post, when appropriate.
19. Consider using apps to give your fans something interesting to do.
20. Promote real-world events. This connects online and offline.
21. Facebook isn’t just for kids anymore – consider that FB is getting more mature, less edgy. Don’t treat fans like kids.
22. Put a fan box on blog and site.
23. Take notes. Make an Excel spreadsheet with stats. (Don’t rely on Facebook to store your data.)
24. Occasionally use Fan Page as focus group and consider giving a prize for participation.
25. Track fans. See if you have people leaving or coming. Try to figure out why.
26. Frequency is key. You can’t ignore fans and expect them to stay interested.

jimmy-gilmore.com, Jimmy Gilmore, Feb 2010

You should read the whole article.

While no one can confirm when — or if — Facebook might surpass Google as the top source for traffic to brand Web sites, recent data from Compete suggests the social network has surpassed Google when it comes to sending more people to content portals, such as MSN and Yahoo.

The referrals are not necessarily done through links or widgets, but by typing in a new URL in the browser. So, the real question becomes: what do people see on Facebook that drives them directly to portals such as AOL, MSN and Yahoo? Some marketers might suggest paid-search ads, friendly chatter, Fan pages and widgets influence consumers.

No matter what drives the traffic from Facebook to portals, the findings make Facebook the No. 1 referrer with 14.80% market share in January — up from 13.04% in December, according to Compete.

EBay follows, contributing 7.27% in January; google.com, 7.24%; myspace, 3.01%; craigslist.org, 1.84%; youtube.com, 1.23%; microsoft.com, 1.16%; comcast.net, 0.84%; and monster.com, 0.46%.

“The data analyzes cross visitation between Facebook and content portals,” says Jessica Ong, director of online media and search at Compete. “As Facebook continues to grow, it will cross paths with some of the larger sites like portals. That’s why we see Facebook sending more traffic to the portal category of Web sites.”

Facebook’s growth catapulted the social network past Yahoo to become the No. 2 online site in January 2010, with about 133 million unique visitors, just under Google’s 147 million unique visitors. Facebook experienced 121.41% growth in December 2009 compared with the prior year, according to the research firm.

Ong points to Yahoo’s redesigned home page that supports a “My Favorites” section down the left rail where people can add content, including Facebook. She says that’s another factor driving cross-visitation between Facebook and Yahoo.

Evidently, Google recognizes this, too. Google recently listed Facebook as a competitor in its annual 10K U.S. Security and Exchange Commission filing, according to Search Engine Land.

Measuring traffic from friends’ posts to portals and Web sites has been difficult, according to Ong. “Compete is trying to figure that out based on our data, but Facebook probably can,” she says. “We have had many requests for that data.”

Originally Posted on Media Post by Laurie Sullivan

We talk a lot about the rapid adoption of social media in a wide array of industries. According to an August 2009 survey by Mzinga and Babson Executive Education, 86% of professionals in a variety fields said that they have adopted social media in some way.

While the survey results are great in that they indicate an enhanced role social media in many industries, it also indicated that some professionals or companies are adopting social technologies without having a way to actually measure how effective or useful the measures actually are. In fact, 84% of respondents said they don’t currently measure the ROI (return on investment) of their social media programs.

Even less encouraging, more than 40% of respondents said they didn’t even know whether they could track ROI from their social tools. This is worrisome because it indicates that industries and professionals are adopting technology without actually taking into account how it will impact their business and what value it will add.

It’s easy to say, “social media will improve customer retention” — and in fact that might be true for a number of businesses, but without proper ways to measure how these tools work, making them more effective and efficient becomes difficult. Moreover, without having an ROI strategy in place, businesses might be more willing to drop social technologies or treat them as a short-term fad. For social media and social technology to really work, businesses need to be able to measure its impact, positive and negative.

How do you or your businesses monitor your social media ROI? If you don’t measure your ROI from social media, why not?

[Photo Courtesy of Make Us Smile Tees]

Originally posted on Mashable

“It’s not rocket surgery.”

That malapropism became a bit of a mantra at last week’s Inbound Marketing Summit.

Social media isn’t complicated. When you boil it down it’s about listening to your customers, being helpful by offering your knowledge and giving them interesting content to share and thereby advocate for you. The IMS speakers shared several case studies (yes, too many of them mentioned Comcast and Zappos) on how organizations have embraced social media to connect with and built trust and affection among customers. None of the examples required hyper-specialized knowledge or technology for a company to connect with people.

So why is it so difficult for so many companies to successfully integrate social media? I dug through my (30 pages of) notes to try and find some themes in what the speakers shared and came up with a this list of why organizations might be getting hung up.

1. They can’t talk about anything broader than their own products

Chris Brogan shared how Citrix Online created the Workshifting community to address the rise of telecommuting and remote work. Sure, it ties in with Citrix’s GoToMeeting/Webinar/PC product line, but the blog isn’t a commercial for its products. The same holds true for Kodak’s photography blog that Chief BloggerJenny Cisney talked about. It’s about photography and creativity in general, not about Kodak cameras. Greg Matthews shared how Humana developed the Freewheelin bicycle sharing communities with plenty of online and “real life” components to the program. Bicycles don’t have much to do with health insurance specifically, but they are about being healthy. If a company is only talking online about its specific products and not looking for ways to connect to the bigger picture, it’s pretty difficult for people to be engaged.

2. They listen to customers but don’t take any action

If you’re going to listen to your customers, you’d better be ready to do something about what you hear.Valeria Maltoni noted that if a company creates an online presence that’s open and allows customer feedback, it creates the expectation that the company is going to do something with that feedback. Worse than not being heard is being heard and then ignored. Paula Berg from Southwest Airlines shared how a simple blog post stating the airline was considering assigned seating amassed tons of customer comments showing a lack of support for the idea. This feedback changed the direction of their internal debate and led to a new boarding procedure that maintained the open seating arrangement.

3. They aren’t calibrated internally with the technology

Jason Falls chastised corporate Web sites for being little more than online brochures. Customers expect interaction. Content creation is key to social media success, and every company should have a Web site with a content management system that allows for quick, easy content creation without the IT department needing to recode a Web site. Anyone in the organization should be able to publish via a CMS. And companies can’t expect to have a strong social media presence when social sites are blocked internally to employees.

4. They’re not framing risk accurately

Dharmesh Shah reminded us all that a corporate blog has never been fatal to an organization. NBC cameraman Jim Long said the often a company’s entry into social media is a clumsy, shotgun blast and that there’s an equal chance of looking foolish by having a ham-fisted marketing department launch a social media presence as there is if a rogue employee “goes off” on Twitter. The risk of social media is not abated by not participating. And really, while there have certainly been some hiccups and miscues along the way, social media has yet to be the undoing of any company.

5. Their internal culture isn’t aligned for social media success

In Shiv Singh’s presentation, he discussed how the customer should be at the core of the brand. When policies, procedures, products and processes become more important than the customer, there’s no way social media efforts can be effective. When your employees are more concerned with what’s in or out of their job description than doing the right thing to help the customer, that’s not a culture that’s likely to build trust and advocacy for your brand. Yes, Zappos was cited time and again as a case study, but largely because it has a culture that makes social media work. All of its employees are focused on customer service at the core. The same holds true for Southwest Airlines.

I could go on and on. So many of the speakers at IMS shared great examples of simple, effective social media strategies that have humanized organizations and allowed them to build better relationships with customers. But time and again companies are either rejecting social media or participating in a way that defeats the purpose.

It’s not rocket surgery.

Original post by AmeyMengel.com

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]]> http://www.markappeal.com/create/35/feed 0 http://www.markappeal.com/create/6 http://www.markappeal.com/create/6#comments Tue, 13 Oct 2009 02:40:15 +0000 Mark E. Ting http://www.markappeal.com/?p=6 WANT MORE CUSTOMERS but BUSY TOO SERVING YOUR CURRENT ONES?

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