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Posts Tagged ‘Twitter’

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5 Common Misconceptions About Social Media – and Why They Are Not True

September 6th, 2012 ::

Lying

Because using social media for marketing is still a relatively young practice, many misconceptions about it continue to float around out there.  Here are 5 that I hear all the time, followed by the truth:

1. Social media cannot be used in my industry

Uh, really? Why not?  Your customers are people, and chances are they are already using Facebook and LinkedIn – and maybe Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest too.  Instead of making broad assumptions, get online and spend 30 minutes searching topics and keywords that are industry-specific. You might be surprised about who is talking about what.

2. My business is too boring to be good at using social media

Yes, it is much easier to come up with fun status updates, contest ideas, photos and videos if you are a salon and spa rather than an industrial metals manufacturer.  So get creative! Ask, “What does my target audience care about? How can I engage them with photos, videos, contests and games?”  For example: your employees could do a spoof on a song, changing the words so they are related to your company or industry.

3. Success is measured by quantity (of blog comments, Twitter followers – you name it)

Measuring the effectiveness of your social media marketing efforts by tallying up the number of comments your blog gets, the number of Twitter followers you have, or the number of times a photo is shared is wrong in so many ways.  What you need to be measuring is the number of leads you are generating, the quality of the leads, and how many are converting into customers. Customers, not popularity, are what pay the bills.

4. I must have a presence on every single social media network

This is only true if your target market is active – in large numbers – on every single social media network.  They probably are not.  Find the 2 or 3 networks with the most activity, and focus on those.

5. I don’t have time for social media

You probably do, actually, and that is because being active is not that time-consuming.  Just as you devote time to checking email, answering customer queries and keeping up with industry news, you can carve out some time for social media.  Set aside 30 minutes to plan out an editorial schedule and decide what you will post when.  Once you do that, you will probably only spend 15 or 20 minutes total on your social media accounts every day.

What other misconceptions do you hear about social media?  Share them below!

Image courtesy of brainwormproductions.com

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Posted in Marketing, Social Media | 9 Comments »

How to Increase Your Influence – and Klout Score

August 23rd, 2012 ::

Klout

Influence.  Everyone wants it, but not everyone can get it – especially online, where there is an impossible amount of noise to cut through.

But it can be done! I just watched a really interesting video interview on Social Media Examiner on how to improve your online influence.  Mark Schaefer is a marketing consultant, teacher at Rutgers University, speaker and author of  Return on Influence and The Tao of Twitter.  In other words, he’s an expert in his field.  Here is what I learned while watching the video:

Schaefer’s new book, Return on Influence, is about the power of your content.  As he points out, no matter who you are, where you live, or what you do, your message can be shared and heard thanks to the Internet, blogs, Twitter, Facebook, etc.

Of course, if you don’t have social influence, no one will hear your message – so it’s really a Catch-22.  However, you can accrue influence online by being authentic and connecting with your audience.

One of the best ways to measure your online influence is with Klout, and companies are figuring out creative ways to influence their Klout scores with great content. Companies are also leveraging word-of-mouth influencers, as it is incredibly powerful to have someone share how great you are with the rest of the world.

Here are 3 things you can do to improve your Klout influence scores:

  1. Surround yourself with people who care about you and who want to share your content.
  2. Create or aggregrate meaningful content that is RITE – Relevant, Interesting, Timely and Entertaining.
  3. Use social media to engage, not just talk.  Social media is social and person-to-person.

Schaefer says that if you do those 3 things, you will increase your social influence – and thus your Klout score.

This next point is only marginally about online influence, but it’s really interesting:

For the first time, Twitter, aka business networking on steroids, is being adopted by young people, one of whom said to Williams, “We enjoy using Twitter now, because mom and grandmom are on Facebook.  They’re not on Twitter, and Twitter is where the action is.”

Twitter is also picking up traction internationally, and Schaefer said that is because Twitter is simple, easy, and you can fit it into your day whenever you want to.

Who do you follow on Facebook, Twitter or elsewhere who is influential in their field?  Why do you follow them?  Share your comments below!

Image courtesy of socialfresh.com

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Posted in Marketing, Social Media, Thought Leadership | No Comments »

How B2B Marketers Are Using Social Media

July 30th, 2012 ::

Marketo published a great infographic (see image) they created with ColumnFive based on the results of a social media marketing survey that Social Media Examiner conducted.  More than 3,800 marketers shared how they use social media – and what kind of benefits they are reaping.

A whopping 93% of B2B marketers use social media, an increase of 10% from 2 years ago, and those marketers are experienced: 38.5% of them have 1-3 years of experience using social media.

See how you stack up against them:

Benefits of social media marketing

  • 69% gathered insights on the marketplace
  • 60% improved their search rankings
  • 56% acquired new business partnerships
  • 53% developed loyal fans

Top 6 social media networks used

  1. Facebook (87%)
  2. Twitter (84%)
  3. YouTube or other video site (56%)
  4. LinkedIn (87%)
  5. Blogs (66%)
  6. Google+ (44%)

Looking forward, they want to improve their efforts in 3 areas…

  1. LinkedIn use (76%)
  2. Blogging efforts (71%)
  3. Facebook fan building (68%)

…and they want to learn more about

  • Measuring social media effectiveness (77%)
  • Converting activities to sales (72%)
  • Learn best practices (74%)

So, how do you compare?  Leave a comment below and let us know what social media networks you use and how they are benefiting you.

Image courtesy of Social Media Examiner

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Posted in Marketing, Social Media | 2 Comments »

Yesmail Study Uncovers How to Drive Engagement on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube

July 17th, 2012 ::

Yesmail

Want to know exactly how to drive engagement on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube?

Well, you’re in luck, because Yesmail Interactive conducted a study of 20 leading retail brands (Gap, American Apparel, H&M, Urban Outfitters, etc.) from January 1 through March 31 of this year, and they made some interesting discoveries on what you can do to drive consumer engagement and build brand loyalty.

Jason Warnock, VP of Marketing Intelligence & Measurement at Yesmail, walked me through the study’s results:

Facebook

Day of week: The majority of marketers were posting on Facebook on Fridays, but engagement was pretty low that day.  Surprisingly, Tuesday campaigns generate the highest level of engagement, yet that day was fourth in terms of when campaigns were deployed.

Time of day:  Another surprise: the time between 10pm and midnight had the highest level of engagement but was the least utilized by marketers.  Apparently, that is when the target demographic of 18-35 year-olds are on Facebook.

Frequency: The 5 most engaging brands posted once/day, and the 5 least engaging brands posted twice/day.

Most engaging content: Photos generated the highest level of user engagement, proving that a picture says a thousand words.  Photo content, however, makes up only 43% of all campaigns deployed.  “This explains why Facebook was so eager to acquire Instagram,” Warnock noted.

Video, meanwhile, was only utilized by 6.5% of all campaigns, even though engagement was almost higher than for photos.

Effect of email on Facebook campaign engagement:  When an email campaign was deployed right before a social media campaign, brands saw a 50% improvement in Facebook engagement, while 2 emails led to 100% improvement.

Twitter

Day of week: Though 20% of all Twitter campaigns were deployed on Friday, they garnered the lowest engagement.  Turns out Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday are the best days to tweet.

Time of day:  Think super early in the day.  The times between 5 – 6am and 7 – 8am garnered the most engagement.  “Just like the emails at the top of your inbox get read first, the tweets at the top of your Twitter stream get read first,” pointed out Warnock.

Frequency:  The best engagement came from 2 tweets per day, while the lowest engagement came from 3 or more tweets per day.

Most engaging content: Asking Twitter follows to retweet something in exchange for a giveaway; mentioning or quoting a celebrity; or tweeting a famous quote all garner the highest level of engagement.

Effect of email on Twitter campaign engagement:  Twitter enagement is 20% higher if an email campaign goes out that same day.  If you send out 2 email campaigns, Twitter engagement increases 40%.

YouTube

Day of week: Mondays generate the most engagement, though that day lagged in the bottom 3 days of when campaigns were deployed.

Video length: Shorter is definitely better: Videos that are 16-31 seconds long generate the highest level of engagement.  Any longer, and people stop watching.

***

Warnock said this study had inspired Yesmail to produce more information like this on a monthly  basis – and I look forward to sharing upcoming findings with you!

Image courtesy of Yesmail.

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Posted in Email Marketing, Marketing, Social Media | No Comments »

4 Super Useful Twitter Apps to Add to Your Social Media Marketing Toolkit

July 12th, 2012 ::

Twitter bird

Twitter a great way to reach a lot of people at once, but did you know your tweets lasts about an hour before they are sucked into the social media void?  Here are 4 Twitter apps I heard about recently that can really boost the reach, and therefore effectiveness, of your tweets:

Twylah

What it is: Platform that lets you create custom websites and widgets out of your tweets

Best features:

  • Automatically organizes your tweets based on trending topics
  • Extends the life of your tweets
  • Allows you to host Twylah pages on your domain and own the content and traffic
  • Lets you create custom-landing pages for Power Tweets (tweets sent through Twylah), giving you a very powerful way to increase engagement

NewsMix

What it is: Social newsstand that lets you view news by topic, providing a great way to easily find shareable content for Twitter (and other social media channels)

Best features:

  • How easy it is to use – under Business, I found tweets curated by Mashable’s founder, curated online marketing tips and tricks, and social media marketing news from a range of experts – in one spot
  • Share content from within Newsmix

SocialBro

What it is: Comprehensive Twitter management and analysis tool

Best features:

  • Visualize statistical information about your Twitter community
  • Find out the interests of your community
  • Learn the best times to tweet
  • View recent unfollows
  • Find your target social media community and influential followers
  • Filter out spammers and people who post way too much
  • Track and analyze competitors

Tweriod

What it is: Twitter analysis tool that tells you what time to tweet

Best feature: By analyzing your tweets and your followers’ tweets, it tells you what time to tweet so you’ll be more likely to reach others

***

Other there any other Twitter tools out there that you like to use?  Share your favorites in the comments below!

Image courtesy of wonderoftech.com

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Posted in Marketing, Social Media | 2 Comments »

How to Host a Twitter Chat

June 25th, 2012 ::

Twitter bird chatting

Hosting your own Twitter chat can help you build online community, promote your business, and get to know your followers. By creating a unique hashtag, you can connect people around your brand and encourage community participation. A Twitter chat can also provide instant feedback from your customers and followers, which can lead to insights that improve your products and services.

Starting a Twitter chat isn’t as difficult as you might think. Here are seven steps to lead you through the process of hosting a Twitter chat for your community.

1.  Study Twitter Chats

Unless you already participate in Twitter chats, you will want to observe a few chats in your industry. Participate where it feels natural for you, and take notes on how the chat is structured, how well the conversation flows, and what the moderator does to keep things moving. Think about how you would like your own chat to go, and learn as much about the process as you can.

You can find Twitter chats on this Google Spreadsheet, which was started by Robert Swanwick and is user-generated.

2.  Decide on a Hashtag

Once you select a hashtag for your chat, it will be difficult to change – so choose carefully. Make sure the hashtag is unique by searching Twitter and Google to see if it comes up.

Your hashtag should be as short as possible so it won’t take up valuable tweeting space. Also, make sure it is easy to remember, reflecting your brand or topic, as well as easy to type (avoiding underscores and symbols, etc.).

3.  Schedule Your Chat

Schedule a day and time for your chat that works best for you so you will not have to change it later. There will always be people who cannot attend on the day and time you choose, so just be sure it is something YOU can stick to.

Check the Twitter chat schedule linked above to be sure there isn’t a major chat on a similar topic happening during your scheduled time. You may want to create a schedule of all the major chats in your industry to help you find an open space for your own chat.

4.  Recruit Moderators

Hosting a Twitter chat involves many variables, so you’ll want to recruit someone to help you keep it all straight. You can invite active members of your Twitter community to become moderators, or you can reach out to other social media-savvy people at your company for help.

Moderator duties might include welcoming new members, keeping the discussion focused, and summarizing key parts of the discussion. Moderators can also lend a hand with promotion, as well inviting new members so your chat will grow.

5.  Promote Your Chat

Speaking of promotion, you will want to announce your Twitter chat and encourage interested people to join. Use your company’s blog, social media communities, press releases, and newsletters to promote your chat.

Consider creating a reference page, containing all the information about your Twitter chat, that you can link to in all promotions about your chat. You can also encourage your followers to promote your chat by creating badges and videos for them to share.

6.  Lead Your Chat

As you host more chats, you will develop your own approach and leadership style. For now, here are some ideas from blogger and community manager Ann Smarty:

  • Welcome your chat participants, and allow them to introduce themselves
  • Announce the week’s chat topic to keep your discussion focused
  • Tweet about your own ideas and thoughts on that topic
  • Allow at least five minutes for your participants to share their own thoughts on the topic, and retweet the best ones
  • As you move through the chat, summarize key points to keep everyone up to speed
  • Ask questions to encourage participation, and retweet the best answers
  • Share related links, and ask your participants to share some as well
  • Thank everyone for participating, and tweet the chat conclusions
  • Announce the next chat day and time, as well as the topic

7.  Archive Your Chat

It’s a good idea to keep an archive of your chats for reference and to analyze for future planning. When you create a chat transcript, remove all the retweets to streamline the chat. Here are a few tools to help you transcribe your chats:

  • Storify lets you choose which tweets to include in the transcript and add context for future reference.
  • Twilert emails you a list of tweets containing your hashtag.
  • SearchHash lets you create an Excel spreadsheet of tweets containing your hashtag.

Have you hosted a Twitter chat successfully? What other tips and advice can you share with our readers? Please share your comments in the box below.

Image courtesy of interviewangel.com

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Posted in Marketing, Social Media | 4 Comments »

Automate Online Marketing and Stay Organized With IFTTT

June 6th, 2012 ::

Ifttt

In order to manager social media, small business owners do a lot of things, from downloading various apps to using social media dashboards.  I just read about another tool that you might want to consider using called Ifttt.

Funny name, cool service: Ifttt is short for “If this, then that” – basically, it’s a very easy way to automate your social media accounts.  Think of it like a game of dominos: You simply set a trigger for one service, and when that occurs, another action is immediately carried out.

Here are 3 ways Ifttt can work for you:

Link accounts so specific actions are automatic.

For example, post news and updates on Twitter, Facebook, and Google+ at once and link your RSS feed so new blog posts are automatically shared.

Administrative grunt work will be easier.

Instead of changing account profile pictures one by one, all of your profile pictures will update across accounts – or on only two accounts.

You can keep track of your social media updates and shared links by sending them to Evernote and posting them on your Google Calendar.

If you use Google Reader, send blog post ideas to Evernote before you forget about them.

Organize yourself once and for all.

Keeping up with email is a never-ending task, but Ifttt makes it a lot easier.  Emails can be cleared out of your inbox by adding labels to Gmail messages and sending them to Evernote or your calendar.

Backing up documents, pictures, and email attachments can be done by sending them to Dropbox, and you can cross-post images on Instagram and Flickr, thus creating two archives.

Instead of juggling calendars and communication channels, notifications can be set up to keep you up-to-date.  For example, you can be informed of changes to your flight’s departure time and reminded about regular events, like your weekly staff meeting.

***

If you use Ifttt, what other ways has it made your life easier?  Share your ideas in the comments section below!

Image courtesy of socialmediarology.com

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Posted in Marketing | No Comments »

Tweriod: Online Twitter Scheduling Program: Small Business Resource

May 3rd, 2012 ::

Tweriod

When should you Tweet to get the best results? That is the question on every entrepreneur’s mind. But the answer may not be the same for every entrepreneur in every industry. Tweriod personalizes your results by checking for the best periods throughout the day to tweet based on your followers. Tweriod tracks retweets, replies and the engagement level of your followers, then analyzes your account to figure out your optimal posting times. You’ll get an email or Direct Message once your analysis is ready. Oh, and did we mention, it’s free?

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Posted in Marketing, Resources, Small Business, small business, Social Media, social media, Uncategorized | No Comments »

3 Reasons Listening Is Critical to Social Media Success – and How to Get Better at It

April 26th, 2012 ::

Listening

Marketers are getting pretty good at joining conversations on social media, interacting with customers, and communicating information about their products and services. But just like all effective communication, listening is as important as talking, even on places like Facebook and Twitter. In this article, I’ll show you why listening is so important for social media campaign success, along with ways you can become a better listener.

3 reasons why listening is critical to social media success

1. Listening makes customers feel important

Don’t you feel better when someone listens to you? Your customers do, too. Listening helps customers feel valued and strengthens your relationships with them. Feeling heard usually leads to feeling happier, so make your customers and clients happy by taking the time to listen.

2. Listening provides valuable insight about your products and services

Listening in on social networks can reveal how customers are using, or not using, your products. You can use this information to improve products based on what customers would like to see. Also, you can glean insight into how to market your products and services by presenting how they fulfill a need your previous campaigns may not have addressed.

3. Listening helps you plan future marketing communications

Instead of launching right into an expensive campaign, you can listen first to determine which offers and promotions might drive more sales. And, you can learn which types of communications strategies build buzz online. Use social media as an inexpensive “focus group” to inform your communications planning.

How to be a better listener

While there are numerous paid options for social media listening, you may want to start with the free tools that are available to you. Popular choices include Google Alerts, Twitter Search, Technorati Blog Search, YouTube Search, Facebook Search, Monitter and TweetBeep. You can search keywords on any social network to see what people are discussing around that topic. You can also do a simple web search, filtering by geographical location if you are a local or regional business. Think of terms your target audience might use, such as “need to hire a financial planner” or “want to build a sundeck.”

If you’ve got the cash to spend, consider a paid listening solution such as Vocus or Radian 6. These platforms can handle large volumes of conversations and present you with reports on mentions, sentiment and more.

What to do with what you’ve “heard”

Once you’ve been listening for a while, you’ll notice that the information generally falls into three categories. Sometimes you may hear complaints or negative comments about your products – and you’ll want to respond and fix the situation as quickly as possible, of course!

Often, people talk about features they’d like to see in the next version of your product. This is your cue to see if the features are realistic and act accordingly.

The best conversations to hear are those singing your praises. Customers may talk about their favorite features or new ways they are using your products that you haven’t thought of before. As I mentioned above, take notes and include these valuable assets in your future marketing promotions.

Since listening is so easy, and can even be totally free, there’s no reason not to include it in your social media strategy. If you don’t listen to your customers online, you could be missing opportunities for connecting with your customers and smoothing over bad customer experiences. After all, if you don’t listen to your customers, your competitors might!

Image courtesy of jamesnathan.com

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Posted in Marketing, Social Media | 2 Comments »

Survey Says: Inbound Marketing, Social Media, and Blogs Are Surpassing Traditional Channels

April 9th, 2012 ::

Inbound Marketing

In January, HubSpot surveyed almost 1,000 professionals about their businesses’ marketing strategies. Below are some of the findings, which drive home the fact that inbound marketing, social media, and blogs are the way to go.

Focus on Inbound Marketing

Businesses are tweaking their marketing strategies to focus more on inbound marketing, which involves pulling relevant prospects and customers towards a company and its products using blogging, content publishing, SEO and social media. These channels have the advantage of providing a low-cost alternative to pricier tactics like direct mail and purchased advertising. In fact, companies that focus on inbound marketing experience a cost per lead that is 61% lower than those of outbound-focused companies. Businesses are leveraging this advantage; of the companies surveyed, 89 percent are either maintaining or increasing their inbound marketing efforts.

Traditional Channels Slip

More traditional marketing channels – such as trade shows, direct mail, and telemarketing – are decreasing in value to businesses. HubSpot’s survey showed that 30 percentof respondents judged these channels as less important than newer ones. Not only are these channels becoming less influential in marketing strategies, but they also tend to be more costly than Internet-based forms of marketing.

The Rise of Social

Businesses are becoming more social – they are increasingly using blogs, YouTube, Facebook and Twitter to get their message out and to engage with customers. Both the 2012 and the 2009 HubSpot surveys showed increased importance for these social platforms. Company blogs were most cited as the social channel that is “critical” or “important” in both 2012 and 2009. Facebook gained importance by a margin of 15 percent since 2009, and Twitter gained 15 percent. However, other social media channels have decreased in importance, including StumbleUpon and Digg.

The Importance of Blogs

As I mentioned, blogs are holding steady as the most important social media channel. In fact, 25 percent of survey respondents said their blog was “critical” to their business. Blogs offer tremendous SEO value, as fresh content and links are supplied through a steady stream of blogging. Blogs also allow companies to feature new products in detail, highlight upcoming events, and show a more personal side of the company to customers and prospects.

How about you? Has your businesses shifted its marketing efforts to more social channels such as Facebook and Twitter? Are you giving your blog the time and attention it deserves?

Image courtesy of creative design agency Arrae

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Posted in Marketing, Social Media | No Comments »

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