20 New Social Articles on Business 2 Community |
- Social buzz: How to get market leaders to talk about your content
- Facebook IPO Filing To Come On Wednesday?
- 3 Ways to Cater to Your Niche Through Social Media
- Social Media Echo Chamber – Myth Or Truth
- The Insta-takeover: 7 Things Marketers Should Know About Instagram
- To Whom It May Concern: We Really Miss You!
- A Smart LinkedIn Strategy Can Help Generate Leads
- In the Middle East, is it Really All about ME?
- The Friday#: Facebook vs Google vs Privacy
- 10 Pinterest Ideas With SEO Benefits
- The Social Business Revolution: Are You Ready for It?
- Lessons of the Exterminator: Transforming Your Social Media, One Customer at a Time
- Social Media and Travel
- How Many of Your 100K+ Twitter Followers are Real?
- Reality Check: 5 Things You Should Expect from Your Social Media
- Are Google+ Business Pages Replacing Facebook Pages?
- Social Media & The Hotels Industry
- When Social Posts Go Awry – A Reminder to Healthcare Workers
- How Did 30% of my LinkedIn Network Change Jobs Last Year?
- How to Be Ready for Your Facebook Timeline
| Social buzz: How to get market leaders to talk about your content Posted: 27 Jan 2012 02:15 PM PST Small businesses, startups and entrepreneurs often have a hard time building up a decent amount of social buzz, hype or interest around what they are saying. Last week, I “made Guy Kawasaki’s day“, with this article entitled “Guy Kawasaki’s ‘Art of the start’ outsells other titles by marketing gurus“. Guy’s share on Twitter drove thousands of hits through to my blog. The way the Internet has evolved, it is now crucial to build social trust and authority to help drive traffic, in addition to the organic search traffic that comes from creating SEO enhanced, focused and relevant blog (or other) content. In other words, creating great content on its own is no longer enough. But building up a social media profile takes a lot of time and effort. People have to see you before they can follow you or engage with you. But, how can they see you if they aren’t already following you? It’s a bit of a catch-22. The way out of this impasse is to create content that other people are interested in sharing. What this does is bypass your initial lack of social reach by getting other people to pass on your content to their followers. Since the content originates with you, you still get to take some credit for that content in the form of back-links and increased visibility. The best people to target with your “reach bait” content, are obviously people with well established followings. Like market leaders, visionaries, experts and so on. Some of these people have vast social media footprints and getting noticed by them can help drive traffic, trust and authority back to you via your content. Basically, forget about your perfect customer for now and focus on building up your perfect army of marketers. It is far more difficult to reach individual customers than it is to reach people they follow. 1. Find the right people to target on social mediaHere’s a short list of marketing and social media royalty (according to how many twitter followers each have). These are people you should be following if you want to learn about how to drive and engage traffic and convert it to meet your business objectives:
In fact, anyone who provides content that you find relevant and useful is a great candidate to follow via social media because that content gives you something to interact with and drive further visibility and recognition online. You must use the content that other people share socially as a means to engage with them. It’s the only way to get them to notice you. 2. Find the perfect social angleRemember that you are dealing with real people. There’s no point in pushing sales on them. You have to give them something that interests them on a human level, even though it may seem frustratingly obtuse to spend your time catering for the personal tastes of people in your industry when you should be out selling and marketing. The fact is, that building up your reach and online visibility is one of the best things you can do for driving business online. Besides, with a bit of thought it often isn’t too hard to come up with topics that both appeal to your market leaders, and show you in a good light to all the potential customers and connections that will come to you via that content. Going back to the article cited at the top of this post. The reason that “Guy Kawasaki’s ‘Art of the start’ outsells other titles by marketing gurus” worked, from the point of view of reaching readers far beyond the scope of my own blog, was that I found something that appealed directly to Guy. I showed, using RankTracer, that his marketing book outsells other competing titles by other leading marketing experts by a factor of 3 – 1. Naturally, any author would be proud of an achievement like this. It’s good news, so why wouldn’t he take a second to share it? The post itself also talks about social media and marketing, which is my industry. The traffic that came through to view that post bounced less than my site average – in other words, they were interested in other blog posts, products and services on this site. All in all, everybody won. Guy got some good news about his books that he could share with his readers, and I got plenty of Guy’s readers. Many of whom spent a bit of time browsing around my blog. They may not have converted, but they know who I am. If they see me again, and again, they will eventually convert into followers and customers as trust and authority is established. 3. Build social relationships with market leadersFinally, it is important to note that creating engaging and relevant content that appeals to market leaders has benefits beyond sending traffic to an individual blog post. It’s a chance to establish a proper connection or relationship with the person sharing your content. Take a moment to thank them for sharing your content. Make sure you are following them on Twitter and/or Google+. Be sure to share any follow ups, comments or interesting development regarding that content. By being on their radar in a meaningful way, they’ll begin following you sooner or later. Except if you’re Seth Godin. Here’s an interesting factoid: Seth Godin has 143 665 twitter followers but does not follow a single person. Please rewteet this article and drop Seth a tweet telling him to follow me. It’d be cool to be the one and only person he follows.   | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Facebook IPO Filing To Come On Wednesday? Posted: 27 Jan 2012 01:55 PM PST It's still rumor so far, but the WSJ reports that the Facebook IPO filing we've all been waiting for is set to come on Wednesday. There aren't many details yet, aside from a valuation range of $75 bn to $100 bn, and it appears that Morgan Stanley is in the lead to be the social media giant's lead investment banker. While Facebook hasn't chosen an exchange yet, it has reserved the ticker symbol FB. So, maybe gauging it off Sheryl Sandberg's speaking schedule isn't so crazy after all? Learn how you can reach the pre-IPO market >> Source: WSJ Photo: Andrew Feinberg   | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 3 Ways to Cater to Your Niche Through Social Media Posted: 27 Jan 2012 12:30 PM PST If you're running a small business of nearly any variety, it's incredibly important to understand who your niche market is. Unless you're one of the Wal-Marts or Amazons of the world, you definitely do have a niche and being able to define and cultivate it will help you with improving your web analytics, increased sales revenue, and robust brand management. Here are 3 tips for catering to your niche through social media: Offer promotions, contests and incentives. Creating a verdant garden of discount possibilities, savings, and incentives is one of the best ways to cater to your niche. In short, people like getting stuff for free. They also like to compete for free things, so hosting contests on your social media sites, such as Facebook or Twitter, is a great idea for creating an online stir. Have a logo design contest, or a viral video contest and host it through YouTube. Inviting user generated art and design can be a tremendous boon. Also, promote your brand on Foursquare, where you can offer discounts on products in exchange for check-ins. Promote valuable independent resources. Customers respect a company or site that is not afraid to refer to others. For example, if you're running an online education forum and your site lacks decent tutorials, you should provide links to great sites that do have tutorials such as the Khan Academy or Open Culture. Not only will this enhance your community, it can lead to you getting linkbacks, blogroll features, and considerable street cred. There's always the opportunity that later on you will be to partner with these other sites in a way that is financially agreeable to both of you. In short, put your money where your mouth is—if you claim to be "the leading authority on…" don't tolerate obvious gaps in your knowledge base. Use media effectively. Consider having a YouTube video of the day that is relevant to your niche. See the previous tip about viral video contests. Many companies use online video as vehicle for ingenius marketing campaigns in which the consumer ends up doing your marketing for you. Or consider having a photo contest through Tumblr, Flickr, or Imgur. Beyond just video and photos, investing in some research as to what kinds of visual aesthetics your niche prefers can go a long way. You don't have to get too psychological about it, but your website and company ethos should appeal visually and emotionally to the demands of your community. For example, if your niche is science fiction, a general space-age aesthetic wouldn't be too cheesy would make your fans feel at home. Appealing to your niche market is one of the most important elements of running a small business. Investing considerable effort and resources into defining who your niche is and how you will reach them is an excellent idea for the present and future.   | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Social Media Echo Chamber – Myth Or Truth Posted: 27 Jan 2012 11:30 AM PST
For a long time, it seems, people have been complaining about the online echo chamber effect. Wikipedia has talked about this phenomenon. So has the New York Times. A lot of bloggers I know have also lamented the echo chamber effect, especially when it comes to a major (read popular) blogger saying something that then gets massively shared across the internet, whether the information is good or not. The theory behind the echo chamber is pretty logical. When you have strong ties to a person online, a person who tends to visit the same sites, read the same stuff, etc., you tend to share a lot of what they write. They also tend to share a lot of what you write. As you meet more people like you, you all tend to start echoing each other, and as time goes by, you start to get a bit like a clique. People who disagree with you are viewed with suspicion or may be categorized as "the haters." In short, a lot of negativity can result from the echo chamber effect online. That is, if the echo chamber actually exists. This article that I read, written by Farhad Manjoo, summarizes a study conducted by Eytan Bakshy soley on Facebook. Bakshy studied how information is shared on Facebook, maneuvering EdgeRank results with Facebook's permission. After analyzing the behavior of some 250 million people, Bakshy came up with a surprising result. People are actually highly influenced by those with whom they share weak ties, not strong ties. People you have weak ties to are more likely to share information that you might not have found otherwise. Therefore, Facebook proves that there is no echo chamber. To put it another way, if you see a link in your Facebook feed from a weak tie, you are just as likely to share it as a link from someone you've known for 30 years. Therefore, your world really isn't shrinking online, it's growing because of an exposure to new people and new information. Or, as the study suggests: We found that information shared by a person's weak ties is unlikely to be shared at a later point in time independently of those friends. Therefore, seeing content from a weak tie leads to a nearly tenfold increase in the likelihood that a person will share a link. In contrast, seeing information shared by a strong tie in News Feed makes people just six times as likely to share. In short, weak ties have the greatest potential to expose their friends to information that they would not have otherwise discovered. I've got problems with this concept So, first things first. The author of the Slate article notes that because Facebook is promoting the study, and because Facebook gave Bakshy permission to do the study, the online network is probably pretty pumped that they come out smelling like roses. "We are opening your world. It's the open graph, only, like, it's your life!" Biased studies should always raise the eyebrows, vulcan style. However, I have another problem with this concept, too. As I engage in Triberr and as I subscribe to more and more blogs, the same concepts and the same ideas are appearing again and again. Whether or not these people influence each other, something is influencing people in the online world to write about the same stuff. Maybe it's a desire for traffic – how many articles about SOPA and PIPA did you see this week? Maybe it's to show up well in Google searches – the number of posts about Pinterest over the last few weeks is pretty stunning. Or maybe it is just to try to get on the radar of a popular blogger. With Chris Brogan and Guy Kawasaki highly promoting Google Plus, is it really a surprise that a lot of people are out there writing about the same thing? Methinks not. Furthermore, and I haven't read the entire study so I don't know if it is addressed in there, but at least in the article, there doesn't seem to be a differentiation between some important things like how you got to "friend" those weak ties on Facebook or the types of information people were sharing in their news feeds. For example, let's say I share a lot of stuff from a person who would be a "weak tie." The stuff they post is a lot of funny pictures and videos that amuse me. Is that really widening my world and preventing the echo chamber? I might share stuff from a person I have strong ties to that is about our friendship and not about similar views. I might comment on items that I *have* seen all over the place. To put it succinctly, it seems to me like there are too many variables to actually be able to state that 1 + 1 = 2. What is this "information" we are speaking of? What do you think of this study? Do you think it's just out there to prove Facebook is really awesome, or do you think there really is no echo chamber in the online world? I'd love to hear your thoughts! Image Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/digitaljourney/5573215501 via Creative Commons   | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| The Insta-takeover: 7 Things Marketers Should Know About Instagram Posted: 27 Jan 2012 11:25 AM PST Instagram was launched less than a year and a half ago, but if you haven't heard of this popular photo sharing application, you might have been living under a rock the last few months. The free application, which allows users to snap, edit and share photos to the Instagram network and other social networks, has quickly become a popular tool among consumers and brands. While the fashion industry was one of the first to swear by the application, brands ranging from Ben and Jerry's to Southwest Airlines to Intel have joined ranks as successful "Instagraphers." With so many seemingly similar applications out there, what makes Instagram different? Why should brand marketers pay special attention to this one? Check out these seven reasons why it's necessary to understand the relevance of Instagram and decide if your brand should be part of its Insta-takeover. 1. Monumental Growth Rate 2. Mobile Focus 3. Only for iOS… but not for long 4. Natural Brand Advocacy 5. Ease of Integration with Social Marketing Plan 6. Contests, Contests, Contests 7. Personality is Imperative   | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| To Whom It May Concern: We Really Miss You! Posted: 27 Jan 2012 11:00 AM PST
You Haven't Logged in to [insert name of service] for 12 Months (Account Deactivation Warning)The content of the email was short and sweet, and somewhat redundant: You haven't logged in to [insert name of service] for about 12 months now. We have to warn you that your account will be deactivated within 7 days from now. Please let us know if you need any help. Now I have to say, I only have vague memories of creating an account, and I don't even remember what the exact purpose or function of the site is. I'm guessing I signed up to check it out, as I do with a lot of services, because that's part of my job. I need to stay up on the these things. I'm also guessing that I was underwhelmed by the service because I probably left it immediately and stayed away, hence the above email. Now I understand that I'm probably one of thousands, if not more, of account holders who are receiving the same email. I understand that they can't really provide individual customer service to all those people, but couldn't they at least tried to have won me back? I'm assuming they want people to use their service. And I'm sure they also don't want dead weight (which is what I was), but how about some flowers? Or chocolate? OK, not really, but a nice "We've missed you" would be cool. And how about trying to do a better job of explaining to me who you are and why I might want to return. If I haven't been there in a year, I probably don't remember. Oh, and why not tell me about all the great new features you've added in the past year that might draw me back in. I mean, you have added new features, right? And that "Please let us know if you need any help" rings kinda empty. No, thanks. I'm good. I think I can delete your email without any help. Heck, I get more love from MySpace in an email that I delete every few months. At least they act like they miss me and really want me back. But this email was more like a stern, "Hey! Are you in or out? Make up your mind, and either way close the door, there's a draft in here!" It's 2012 and we're rapidly pushing past web 2.0 to whatever you want to call the next iteration of the social web. It's time to use people's names, be friendly, tell me who you are, explain why I should come back, and what I'm missing out on. It's like getting an email or phone call from someone saying, "Hey, I'm that girl you met at that party a few years ago. Wanna get together?". Um, Could you be more specific? (oh, and just for clarification, I didn't meet any girl at any party!) When your customers walk away, they walk away for any number of reasons. Maybe they just don't need your services anymore. Or they were unhappy with any combination of things from product quality, pricing, or customer service. Perhaps they even moved to a different area. But if you are going to take the time to contact them, even if it's a pre-programmed "contact them once a year" situation, take advantage of that contact. Don't waste that moment, because it's probably your last chance to even get them to consider coming back to you. Don't warn me. Woo me. But even better, perhaps we should just up our game and conduct business in a way that keeps people coming back for more without us having to beg, cajole, or threaten. If they don't leave in the first place, we won't have to worry about how we're going to entice them to come back. How are you keeping your customers? Have you found effective means of bringing them back into the fold once they've gone?   | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| A Smart LinkedIn Strategy Can Help Generate Leads Posted: 27 Jan 2012 09:15 AM PST
Step 1. Start slow and aim low. Consider getting your feet wet using one of two approaches: 1) Substitute this "online networking" for a piece of your traditional "offline networking" — perhaps a networking event that isn't producing results; or 2) Set aside 10 minutes after work or first thing in the morning to do LinkedIn tasks (joining groups, updating your profile, making contacts, answering questions, etc.). Be patient: you won't see results overnight, but with consistent effort, LinkedIn will yield good prospects, referral sources, business partners, and valuable information. Step 2. Create a solid profile. Assuming you already have a LinkedIn account, sign in and click on your profile, then click "Edit." Fill in important information about past positions, accomplishments, goals, etc. LinkedIn helps you with suggestions for a more complete profile, and you want to keep at it until LinkedIn shows that your profile is complete. Look at other people's profiles (especially those with lots of connections) to see what kinds of information you might include. And don't forget about recommendations from peers; it's critical to your credibility. Step 3. Add connections. Connect with people in your office, vendors, partners and former coworkers – anyone with whom you've worked or knows you professionally. LinkedIn allows you to send a request to connect, and it includes a default message, but don’t take the easy way out – click on the default message and type your own personalized note (i.e., "Hi, Sam – I thought it was about time we connected, since we both know so much about the engineering business and this makes collaboration easy.") Don’t accept requests from people you don't know (they're either trolling for connections or spammers), and the same goes for asking for connections from people you don’t know (don't do it). Step 4. Find relevant groups.
Step 5. Weed out groups. Eliminate groups that don’t interest you or that don’t generate much activity. The goal is to find just a few that have enough activity by the right people to make it worth your while. Adding and weeding out groups takes some time at first, but slows down once you find where you truly fit. Step 6. Start to comment. After you've followed a few groups for a while, you'll get a feel for what a good comment looks like: cordial, concise, valuable…and not overly self-promotional! If your comment is all about you and your company, it's too much. You're trying to establish relationships and credibility, not sell (do the relationships part well and the sales will follow). Step 7. Start discussions . After a while you'll see which discussions have ongoing interest and attract comments and you can start discussions yourself. One of the best ways is to ask a question. But don't just ask the question and watch from the sidelines; respond respectfully and encourage further interaction with additional questions. Your engagement is how people learn your name and understand your value. Step 8. Share content. Now it’s time to share relevant content with your groups. This content can be a blog post, article, survey results, white paper or PowerPoint presentation — anything you can link to. Make it relevant to an ongoing discussion or tie it directly to a question you asked in order to start a discussion. Don’t just promote your latest blog post (unless it's relevant to a discussion); it comes across as promotional and will dilute your credibility. Content doesn’t even have to be your own (though that's ideal) – by providing valuable content, regardless of the source, you become recognized as a valuable contributor prospects will seek out. Step 9. Deepen relationships. Your strategy should now be resulting in new prospects because you're engaging with potential clients, referral sources and business partners. Feel free now to initiate an email exchange using the LinkedIn email, and try to set up a casual meeting or simply talk about opportunities to work together. Most everyone on LinkedIn is there to connect, so chances are you'll get a positive response.   | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| In the Middle East, is it Really All about ME? Posted: 27 Jan 2012 08:50 AM PST A few days ago, a client sent me an email asking me to weigh in on what domain names her company should register to correspond with its presence in markets in the Middle East. While she was planning to register the core brand name in the relevant ccTLDs, or country code top-level domains (Brand.ae for the United Arab Emirates, Brand.co.il for Israel, etc.), her distributor in the region had advised her that local Internet users tend not to direct navigate to domains in their ccTLDs. Instead, she said that consumers typically type in the brand name followed by "ME" in .COM. So, the distributor advised, our client should register BrandME.com. The client asked me if I agreed that this was a common practice, and if other major brands followed this naming convention. To my knowledge, it was much more common for brands to stick with ccTLD domains. Off the top of my head, I couldn't think of any big brands that follow the BrandME.com practice my client had described. But it sounded interesting, so I wanted to look into it further. I decided to take a sample of the biggest brands and see whether or not they used BrandME.com domain names. For a quick reference, I looked at the top 20 brands on Interbrand's Best Global Brands of 2011 list. Of those 20, I found that only four owned their BrandME.com domain names: Coca-Cola (Coca-ColaME.com, but not CocaColaME.com or CokeME.com), Google (GoogleME.com), McDonald's (McDonaldsME.com), and Disney (DisneyME.com). Of those four, only two, McDonald's and Disney, actually direct those domains to content. McDonaldsME.com redirects to McDonaldsArabia.com; DisneyME.com displays Disney content in English. Of the other 16, some brands' BrandME.com domains had been registered by third parties. Most pointed to Pay-Per-Click ads or parked pages. Others did not resolve to content. The rest of the BrandME.com domains were not currently registered. Because the client is a cosmetics company, I checked about five other cosmetic brands' BrandME.com domains as well. None resolved to brand content. In fact, none resolved to content at all. So what did I end up telling the client? Basically, it won't hurt her to make sure all her bases are covered by registering her BrandME.com domain name. But the standard practice is to stick to registering the brandname in the ccTLDs of the relevant markets. If a company has a presence in Saudi Arabia, in other words, it should go after Brand.com.sa.   | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| The Friday#: Facebook vs Google vs Privacy Posted: 27 Jan 2012 08:35 AM PST The Sizzle: FBI social plans. The Fri-Up: Google vs Facebook. The Sauce: 'Find another idiot' The Sizzle
The Fri-Up The two corporations we most love to hate collaborated in 'privacy updates' this week. The first, when usually friendly Facebook, threatened users that their pasts would be horifically exposed. In what feels slightly like a Facebook obituary it was announced that Zuckerberg (et al) would decide which were the most important events of your life, if users refused to spend the weekend creating an elaborate Timeline. (Should you ask Faceboook – they didn't have a life before Facebook.) Also this week, Google has told users that it is simplifying its privacy policies by getting rid of 60 of them in exchange for one you have signed up for by trying to access your gmail this morning! The Washington Post seems to think Android users should be most wary of Google now but which is more alarming according to the social media demographic? Here we look at them side by side hour by over the last couple of days: We can see the rumblings on the Facebook timeline appear first – as their announcement did. Google's privacy policy quickly picks up the chat, overtaking concerns as we head into Friday. After which, people resume worrying about their Facebook timelines and their murky pasts circa 2006. The Sauce Something for the weekend: Hope you enjoyed the Friday#, have a great weekend.   | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 10 Pinterest Ideas With SEO Benefits Posted: 27 Jan 2012 08:35 AM PST If you haven't heard of Pinterest, it does what it says on the tin – a virtual pinboard of interesting things. You find something you like, you Pin it to one of your Boards for others to see, comment on and share (or "re-pin"). What's special about Pinterest from a marketing point of view is how fast it is now attracting attention. (For the purposes of this piece I am capitalising "Pin" and "Board" to highlight the features of Pinterest.) One reason for that growing interest is because Pinterest offers brand owners several SEO benefits and grow traffic. These ten content marketing ideas will help you to optimise your Pinterest content – not only for SEO but also for social media. 1. Pinterest offers better reporting in Analytics. 2. Show Pinterest activity on Facebook 3. Add Pin It buttons to your web pages 4. Excellent backlink building opportunities 5. Remember your keyword strategy 6. Use words and phrases people look for 7. Create a brand channel 8. A picture paints a thousand words 9. Remember, friends don't do sales meetings 10. Run a Pinterest competition Content-driven search marketing just got more interesting.   | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| The Social Business Revolution: Are You Ready for It? Posted: 27 Jan 2012 07:30 AM PST For too many businesses, the discussion of social media gets stuck on debates about which platform is the best to use. But launching a Facebook page or a Twitter account is a small part in the much larger shift that needs to happen within a company to make social media happen. Carol Rozwell, a Gartner VP and analyst, writes that companies need to understand that social media will be as valuable a communication channel as phone and e-mail. Increasingly customers want and expect their favorite businesses to be reachable through social means. If your business is socially deaf and blind, it could hurt your customer retention and acquisition in the near future. For businesses wondering how to best orient themselves for 2012, Rozwell lists three important social business trends to keep in mind. Emergence of what Gartner calls the nexus for four forces: The convergence of cloud, social, mobile and information into a unified set of forces shaping almost every IT-related decision. The key is that social does not live alone. Increasing customer expectation for engagement via social channels: By 2014, refusing to communicate with customers via social channels will be as harmful as ignoring emails or phone calls is today. Increased interest in social analytics: This includes not only the collection of social intelligence information but also the organization competency to use the intelligence for more informed decision making. Yes, we've been talking about data-driven decision making for years, but now its feasible and there is additional insight to be gleaned from social network interactions. For more on social business in 2012, read Rozwell's post on the Gartner blog.   | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Lessons of the Exterminator: Transforming Your Social Media, One Customer at a Time Posted: 27 Jan 2012 06:30 AM PST
I've personally tweeted negative comments about experiences with big companies like United Airlines and Chase Bank, with no response (vs National Rental, which responded quickly to my tweets about a mishap at one of their rental locations). By comparison, I'll bet you'd respond if you're a small business owner and your business depended on it. Why? Because you're closer to the customer. Bigger companies-ok, let's say marketing and communications departments-are several degrees away. They're detached from the customer. This will have to change. Getting to know and help your customers-customer service- isn't rocket science, but it does take work. Entrepreneurs and small firms who depend on repeat business get this. I was reminded of this recently when I hired an exterminator to get rid of some pesky ants around my house. "Pete" had already come out 3 months ago and sprayed, but a few ants were starting to pop back up so I had him return. He said he'd be glad to do it, and said he often came back and sprayed months after a homeowner's warranty period had passed. "The idea is to keep the customer happy, that's all that matters," he said. But the other reason was this tended to generate extremely positive reviews on Yelp and Angie's List, which Pete monitors like a hawk. He's now #1 pest control company in Portland with 21 reviews on Yelp, all five star. The next competitor has three, and Pete has more coming. Reviews are a powerful marketing tool and Pete is doing what big companies struggle with-turning customers into raving advocates. He even launched a new section on his website for reviews and feedback, thinking that if people are complaining he'd rather see it first-hand. "If they complain on my site I can do something about it vs being out there somewhere else where I can't do anything. Plus I can use it to talk about my services, my approach"- in other words, "turning lemons into lemonade," as Baer put it. This is a great judo approach-using negative comments to connect with customers. The Maritz study found that 83% of the complainants that received a reply liked or loved the fact that the company responded. Yet some companies still resist, thinking they can control negative feedback. Look at what happened to Chapstick when they deleted some negative comments on their Facebook page: A PR fiasco. Note to these companies: we're in a new world. The consumer is now empowered, so deal with it. Sure, Pete is just a simple, single-dimensional example. He doesn't have to deal with layers of corporate bureaucracy, inertia, lawyers, corp. politics, and battle-worn senior managers. But he is a great example of staying close to the customer and meeting their needs. Customers like his positive, direct demeanor: "I tell people if you're not satisfied, give me a chance to make it right," he says. Bigger companies are often missing this connection with the customer, and social media is beaming a giant spotlight on the issue. "Customer service" should go well beyond responding to comments. You can use your blog, Twitter or Facebook page to glean tons of insight about your customer-what they think about your company, your product, the overall market and so on. You can use this to improve the product or figure out better ways to market it. Of course, you can also use it to share valuable content that will help them run their businesses, and endear them to you. The ultimate goal is to transform the customer experience across all touch-points, and how they view your brand. When the company thinks of your company, you want them to think … (fill in the blank). This will require a massive transformation of the way we do business, and deal with our customers. We've come out of a world of mass production, mass marketing and advertising, mass…everything. Now we must figure out how to develop 1:1 relationships with our customers and scale these, a new type of relationship marketing. And we must leverage subject matter experts and others who until now have been buried behind the corporate walls. Yes, we need to develop an army of authentic, corporate-like "Petes." So far this has been a challenge with the companies I've worked with. Many want to rush ahead, launch a few quick programs and emerge as a major online industry influencer. Those that have succeeded realize that, in the end, customer service is about relationships, and trusting relationships take a long time to develop and nurture. You're not going to do it with slick marketing or PR- or just throwing up a Twitter or Facebook page. Social media is a marathon, not a sprint, and we have a long way to go.   | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Posted: 27 Jan 2012 06:15 AM PST
The pervasiveness of tablets and smartphones (in addition to the already ubiquitous laptop) is growing daily. Just this week, Apple announced that it sold 37 million iPhones and 15.4 million iPads in the fourth quarter of 2011 alone. It means that more of us are doing things on the web (or mobile web, as the case may be) while we’re on the go, and there are certain things those of us in the digital world look for when we travel – at least with regard to infrastructure. The Airlines JetBlue made a name for itself in the social media space after a difficult travel situation thanks to severe winter weather in 2007. Their CEO David Neeleman was direct and honest in his approach, the video of him was sincere and emotional, and JetBlue made it clear that it put customers first. And to think that my colleague Morgan Johnston at JetBlue had started his job on that very day… Delta got a late start in social media (and was the subject of its fair share of complaints, including a dramatic rant ), but now has @Delta and @DeltaAssist looking after its customers on Twitter. Not to mention some personal interaction from a certain member of the crew from their famous safety video. That finger wag gets me every time. The other airline that’s going above and beyond in social media is Virgin America. Based out of Silicon Valley, they’re in the thick of the action from a technology standpoint. And their use of Groupon, Loopt, Foursquare and more prove it. But their always-on monitoring is essential when it comes to catching consumer complaints, especially after their switch to a new reservation system last year. Overall, customers want interaction – they want to be heard, certainly, but they also want action – when they take to Twitter to voice a concern. According to an eMarketer article, the expectation that a company will respond increases by age cohort from 38% of 18-24 year-olds all the way up to 65% of those in the 55+ age category. And it clearly matters in terms of satisfaction:
Staying Powered – and Connected
Then again, a number of airports have recognized that passengers travel with gadgets and need places to charge. Thanks, Delta! If you happen to have a non-3G iPad or a laptop without an air card, you depend on local wi-fi networks for connectivity. I’ve been in my share of airports that have had plenty of network access, but I didn’t want to spring for a Boingo account to get connected. For that reason, it’s helpful to know which airports have free wi-fi. Here’s a quick list for your reference: Airports with free wi-fi: But it goes farther than wi-fi and charging stations. FareCompare has developed a list of the top 12 airports for social media power users, with a list of the top airports that are also known to take good care of their customers. I’ve reproduced the table here.
* Airport has free Wi-Fi I’ve had experience with some airports that are downright personal. For example, I traveled to Kansas City last year and was pleasantly surprised at the greeting and send-off that I got from the Kansas City International Airport (@KCIAirport) on Twitter:  Followed by a warm greeting waiting for me at home (@DTWeetin):  When you’re travel-worn and checking in on Foursquare or commenting on a queue, sometimes it’s heartening to realize that there are teams of people looking out for you. For example, Logan International Airport (BOS) in Boston has a team of five peoplehandling their social media; @LAX_Official gives travelers in Los Angeles tips, newsletter and other helpful information. For a roster of over 130 airports on Twitter, see @Kayak’slist. What’s your experience with regard to social media and travel? Do you have any other examples of airlines, airports or other entities who get it right, campaigns that resonated with you, or personal touches that made the difference in an otherwise difficult circumstance? Please leave a comment with your input. Image credit: ~Oryctes~ (Flickr)   | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| How Many of Your 100K+ Twitter Followers are Real? Posted: 27 Jan 2012 06:00 AM PST I often marvel at Tweeps that have a follower count north of 100K. I'm talking about non-celebrities of course. This is quite a feat no matter how one arrived at this number. While there are hundreds of Twitter tools out there that can assist in getting followers, it still takes time. You could use every trick in the book, including automated services (usually a no-no which violates Twitter's TOS), and it would still probably take a year to get over the 100K line. While I've always found it to be an impressive number, I know it's not a real number. Our followers include Bots and inactive users. Everyone has their own definition of an inactive follower, but I would say someone that hasn't sent a Tweet in an over a month to be inactive. So how many inactive followers do you have? SocialBro is a tool that allows you to manage and analyze your Twitter Community. It helps in getting your arms around the question in the title, and plenty more. Other Tools include monitoring a hashtag, analyzing your lists, Best time to Tweet, and analyzing competitors. SocialBro also provides a dynamite filtering system where you can isolate certain groups of users. The chart above from SocialBro shows number of followers and when they last sent a Tweet. Twitter Followers – 12,018 So based on my definition of an Active Follower (Tweeted in last month) my percentage is 75.3%. It is actually a bit higher than I anticipated. However, it also means that almost 3K or 24.7% of my Followers are dust. Valuable information that gives you a better grasp of your Twitter account. There isn't any reason to follow these inactive Tweeps. If you're serious about your Twitter account, this Tool in SocialBro gives you the foundation to do some cleanup. Real-Time Analytics – Drum roll please…Earlier this week SocialBro unveiled a Real-Time Analytics feature to its Tool set. This allows you to view active users, and shows their total number of followers, that have tweeted in the last 5 minutes. The screen updates automatically every 10 seconds. This is some great stuff. The picture a below is a screenshot from Tuesday. Damn, only 86. I actually watched over the last two days, and 97 was the highest it reached. So with over 12K Followers (yes I know about 3K are inactive) there are only 75-97 actively using Twitter at any one time. Ugh. Just to give you some perspective, my 2nd Twitter account started a month ago and just shy of 300 followers, was running between 15-20. This account is primarily filled with people I know. So 86/12,018 versus 17/291. Well, you can do the math. While you can't control who follows you, being more selective of who you follow should lead to a more efficient Twitter account. So do you really have 100K followers? Well not really. Go over to SocialBro and find out your real numbers.   | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Reality Check: 5 Things You Should Expect from Your Social Media Posted: 27 Jan 2012 05:45 AM PST Questions that make us cringe: "I posted a promo code on Facebook and nothing happened, why?" or, "I don't get how Twitter will make my business grow and produce higher revenue?" These are valid marketing questions, but in order to generate success in the realm of social media marketing- we need to start asking different questions and reevaluating our expectations."Social media is almost like a return to old-fashioned business practices. A time when you knew your customers, when you were more connected to who was buying your product and services," /excelamktg Operations Manager, Meaghan Emery explains. Many business owners need to reevaluate their relationship with social media in order build stronger relationships with their social consumers. /excelamktg CEO, Ashley Ranger, stresses,"If your only goal is to increase sales, you should look at something else before you look at social media." So before we delve into the sure fire things you should expect, we need to get something off our chest: social media does not equal sales. It cannot replace your other marketing strategies, no, there isn't a perfect equation to master your social media ROI (yet!), and lastly, having an automatic 5,000 fans and followers overnight isn't going to happen. When we direct our focus to seeing an increase on our return on influence, rather than investment, sales, and numbers, the benefits of social media become more accessible. Now that we've extinguished the unrealistic expectations of social media, here are 5 things you should expect: 1. Expect to Use Social Media as a Valuable Aide to Increase SEO "Your website still needs be the "hub" of your business- properly tagged and coded for optimal search results. Facebook and Twitter can't replace this crucial aspect of your company, but they can aide in a stronger SEO," Ranger explains. Social media is a necessary medium, that when implemented into your overall marketing practices will increase your brand's traffic and backlinks- improving your Google ranking. To ensure optimal SEO utilizing social media, make sure your platforms are streamlined (consistent logo, bio, keywords, vanity URL's, etc.) Here are basic aspects you should consider a necessity for optimal SEO utilizing your social media integration:
2. Expect to Think in Long-Terms You've heard the expression, "Rome wasn't built in a day," and the same is true for your social media."You can't expect to put in three months of social media and ask, 'now where is my return'?" Ranger explains. It is a living, breathing, growing platform that increases in value every year depending on your engagement and effort. The relationships you cultivate with consumers is a process, that when executed with strategic planning, time, and care, can reap huge benefits for your brand. To illustrate the process, check out this inforgraphic created by the excela creative team on the four stages of a Facebook fan: The conversion from the Potential Fan stage to a Brand Advocate simply won't happen overnight, nor would it be beneficial to you if it did. You want to attract quality consumers to your platforms in order to build an effective community. Having a bunch of "likes" does not mean that those people care about your brand- the goal is to build a captivated community- which takes strategic interaction, engaging campaigns, and other creative components. 3. Expect to Build A Community Social media has the power to build an army of brand advocates as seen in the above infographic. The worth of a single brand advocate in the realm of social media redefines the phrase "word of mouth." One brand advocate means that you've cultivated a relationship with a consumer- and now they're sharing, talking, tweeting, RTing, posting about your brand with their community. That's huge.A community also makes your brand accessible in human way; it gives you the power to learn from consumers in order to produce the types of products that they want to buy. "A social media platform like Facebook acts as an excellent customer service tool,"explains Operations Manager, Emery. You now have a venue to answer questions, sway opinions, and have real-time conversations with your consumers. In fact, when you put forth the daily energy it takes to be successful in social media, you will build acommunity of consumers who care about your business because you care about them- hence a valuable brand advocate. To take the power of a brand advocate a step further, a study conducted by Social Commerce Today found the correlation between a loyal fan and potential sales is huge:
Be a student of your community and you will undoubtedly become an authority in your business field, because you are offering what your consumers really want to purchase. 4. Expect to Be Heavily Involved "Social media sites aren't just platforms you have, they are platforms you USE often and with the intent to provide value" explains Emery. When you decide to venture into social media as a marketing tool, a healthy reminder is that it is time consuming. There are various tools that can aide in scheduling branded content, but for the most part, in order to acquire social media success, you must be heavily involved in the real-time conversations that are taking place. Consumers can easily spot spammy content, which is often grounds for a consumer to "unlike" or "unfollow." Remember: people don't like to be sold; they do like to feel listened to, appreciated and exclusive. This takes time and creativity. For a better picture of what you should be doing daily with your social media, check out Get with the Social Media Game Plan. 5. Expect to Look Better Than Your Competitor "Especially if you offer a service, brands with a strong social media presence will automatically be positioned better online against competitors" Ranger explains. When a consumer is searching for your specific service, if your business is active on social media platforms, the likelihood of the consumer choosing you over your competitor is major. More so, you have now positioned yourself as an authority in your genre of business- creating confidence in the consumer to choose the service you offer above others who lack involvement in social media. While these are elements you, as a business, can expect from your social media, the biggest point to remember is that consumers expect you to be utilizing these platforms (and to be doing it well). Here are 5 key takeaways about social media:
How will you move forward with your social media efforts?   | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Are Google+ Business Pages Replacing Facebook Pages? Posted: 27 Jan 2012 05:00 AM PST
Here's the thing. Google+ is a social network with huge potential for businesses, but it's best value is as an individual user, not a business page. If it had any of the following features it might be a contender, but as it is today? No way.
Now there's more, but after all Google+ is still in beta, I'm cutting it some slack. They're working on it and it keeps getting better and better. For now though, here's how you CAN use it for your business. Research and outreach Building the brand of your company through the intelligence of your staff Customer support Hangouts Micro-blog Collaborative meetings SEO So, what do you you think? Are you ditching your Facebook page for a Google+ business page yet? Will you? Why or why not?   | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Social Media & The Hotels Industry Posted: 27 Jan 2012 04:50 AM PST One of the biggest industries impacted by the prevalence of social media is the hotels industry. Ultimately, it's a question of who do you trust more? The hotel website telling you how clean and comfortable they are, or the third party review site that details the grim details of their dirty laundry? Marketing vs User Reviews In 2010, Accorhotels - the owners of Motel 6, Sofitel and more – made a daring move; they decided to skip their own review selection entirely. Instead, they integrated TripAdvisor's reviews directly on their website. It was a bold step, and a shining acknowledgement that most people don't even notice the hotel marketing information at all. They effectively cut out the middleman and provided the information, good and bad, right there on their page. In the digital age it's the equivalent of letting their hotel speak for itself. Harnessing The Power of Social Media Another novel approach a few companies are taking is to use social media itself to guide the reviews. For example, Carnival, of Carnival Cruises, uses their Facebook page to ask leading questions like "What is your favorite port we visit and why?" This is an opportunity for pleased customers to speak about their favorite Carnival memories, while avoiding the negative comments. Carnival gains a lot of positive press, and drowns out the few complaints that might crop up. Carnival uses other social media outlets, such as Youtube and Twitter, but they direct traffic back to their Facebook page. They keep it all contained and guide people there for information, as a central hub for their social media activity. Interactive Tourism Global brands, like Four Seasons hotels, have a bit more work to do. Some of their more far-flung destinations lack the social media infrastructure to really influence anything. Therefore Four Seasons have taken it upon themselves to establish these social media presences. Not only do they offer local people in those locations a social media presence to contact, but they also offer potential travelers an "armchair tourism" experience. People don't have to wonder what a hotel or city looks like: they can view the series of pictures online and make their decisions from there. Even though it involves training people to use Facebook or Twitter, Four Seasons believes it's worth the effort. Word of Mouth Many companies are hesitant to use social media as deeply as some of the above companies. One negative review can have far more impact than a dozen negative ones. Positive reviews could be seeds written by the company, and it can be impossible to tell sometimes. Negative reviews rarely lie, though they may exaggerate or simply have a second side of the story left untold. Who wants to risk booking a hotel with bad reviews and potentially ruin a one of a kind vacation? Social media has had a huge effect on travel companies and hotels, and it's not likely to change. Travelers these days will have to do some careful research and a little guesswork to pick the right hotel. Then again, that's no different than it used to be, only now the discussion takes place online, rather than in the real world. Travelers will just have to disregard the most extreme reviews and check the ones in the middle of the road, for the most reasonable expectations.   | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| When Social Posts Go Awry – A Reminder to Healthcare Workers Posted: 27 Jan 2012 04:25 AM PST Social media is becoming an increasingly valuable tool for many healthcare professionals. But legal issues can arise when healthcare providers using social media platforms send posts that constitute HIPAA violations. This important privacy law protects the patient/provider relationship, but limits a medical provider's ability to engage with a patient through social media.
The National Council of State Boards of Nursing recently released a white paper to encourage appropriate use of social media by nursing professionals – without compromising patient privacy and confidentiality. The social media guideline is an extensive document and includes suggestions for healthcare practitioners, such as:
In one scenario, a licensed practical/vocational nurse used his personal cell phone to take pictures of a group home resident. He later showed these photos to a former hospital employee outside of work and discussed the patient's condition. Although the nurse had permission from the resident's family member to take the photos, the patient was physically unable to respond herself. Further, the nurse later acknowledged he had no legitimate (or patient care related) purpose for taking the photos or discussing the patient's medical history. It was purely a social discussion. The Board of Nursing (BON) determined the nurse's actions to be a breach of patient confidentiality and imposed disciplinary action, requiring the nurse to take a course on patient privacy and ethics. Fortunately, this incident did not result in harm to the patient or damage to the group home. Many similar scenarios, particularly those that involve social media, end in negative publicity for an organization, loss of licensure for caregivers, even jail time. Many issues with online communication begin when the lines are blurred between professional and personal relationships. As a medical professional, the nurse has an obligation to maintain professional boundaries in the digital environment. So what can hospitals and healthcare organizations do to ensure employees and medical staff members appropriately engage in social media?
You can find the rest of the NCSBN's social media guidelines here. For more healthcare examples, visit Ed Bennett's blog, the leading resource on hospital use of social media. From best practice techniques to crisis communication in the digital era, Found in Cache can be a valuable resource for healthcare marketers looking to stay informed of the latest social media strategies and statistics. Does your organization have and enforce social media guidelines? Let us know which methods are successful at your company in the comments below.   | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| How Did 30% of my LinkedIn Network Change Jobs Last Year? Posted: 27 Jan 2012 04:10 AM PST I got this email from LinkedIn today and was rather surprised to see that 2,188 people in my network changed jobs in 2011. My network is roughly 7.5k strong so this works out at about 30% job hoppers – a very interesting figure. But before we start thinking about how on earth all these people found new jobs in a recession, we have to remember that this report is generated based on people updating their job titles. Merely updating your profile doesn’t necessarily mean you are in a new position. Lots of people tinker with their profiles for various reasons. Not to mention everyone who is a freelancer or business owner, these users certainly change their profiles but don’t actually move anywhere. The purpose of this email from LinkedIn is of course to drive more activity to their network. The idea is that you will a.) want to see who has moved where, b.) compare their profile to yours and look to improve it and c.) think about new opportunities for yourself. It’s funny how emails are still the killer app of the Internet, even in this social world that we live in. And by the way, if you know people looking to move jobs have them check out the LinkedIn Resume Builder which is a very handy tool that automatically generates a neat resume from your LinkedIn profile. And as if that tool weren’t enough, if you want to keep a real time eye on what your network is up to and who’s moving jobs when, you can use the Job Change Notifier which scans your connections and tells you when somebody moves on. How many people shifted gigs in your LinkedIn network last year? Please let me know!   | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| How to Be Ready for Your Facebook Timeline Posted: 26 Jan 2012 05:45 PM PST So the greatly anticipated 'Timeline' is here folks, get ready to see a barrage of negative status updates from your many Facebook friends complaining about the hefty change. The Facebook Timeline will be featuring on your profile whether you would like it to or not and the social media gods are giving us 7 days to preview your profile before it goes live – giving you some very much needed time to clean up your profile. How the timeline works is like this – The new Facebook profile is divided into two main columns, with a line down the middle representing the passage of time. The passage of time throws up any saved status updates, friendships, photos, events or wall comments – going right back to the birth of your profile. Everything is there and everything can be viewed by your friends until you decide to 'hide it from your timeline'. We, the Facebook public, are being encouraged to add life events which were not captured by Facebook, in particular those that occurred before users joined the social network. Whatever you love and whatever story you want to tell, you can add that to your Timeline. Your profile now also contains a large banner that Facebook are calling your 'cover photo' – this is a large image, of your choice, that remains public to everyone on Facebook, including non friends – so choose wisely. If you're like many of us at Carvill Creative and have been on Facebook for what seems like forever – I would suggest you put aside a good couple of hours to sift through your Facebook past and ensure you're happy for it to be regurgitated to your present. Get ready to click "Hide from Timeline" a fair amount in these hours You can find this very important button under the "Edit or Remove" pencil icon that appears when you hover your mouse over the top right corner of every Timeline post. You can remove anything on your timeline that you would rather people didn't see by simply using this button. Remember, it's not just photos that Timeline digs out and highlights— it's every inappropriate status update you've ever posted and every message your so called university 'friends' may have written on your wall at some ungodly hour. You can also remove or hide posts through your "Activity Log," which presents everything posted on your profile in a more compact, easy to understand form. In order to ensure that all your Facebook albums have the privacy settings still intact – visit your albums page and look at the tiny icon on the right hand side of each album. This is where you will have the option to change the privacy on your albums; Facebook explains what each symbol means and should ensure that pictures are only seen by the right people. If you are concerned about what is appearing publicly on your profile then just opt to, 'View As …' On your Facebook Timeline, you should see a little gears icon with an arrow next to it on the far right. Click on it, and then choose the "View As" option. This will let you look at your profile as if you were a stranger or let you pick a specific person to see what is viewable to them on your profile. If you want to get the timeline now, simply click here. Or you can wait until you see an announcement at the top of your home page.   |
I found an article from Slate Magazine this week that really caught my attention. The title is rather much an attention grabber – it's called 
The other day I received an email from some blogging service of some sort with this in the subject line:
LinkedIn isn’t just a great networking tool; it’s a powerful Inbound Marketing tool, too. We’re following up 
I guess it was inevitable, but we're quickly seeing companies dividing up into two social media camps: those that get it, and those that don't. Take one indicator: how companies respond to customer complaints. As Jay Baer pointed out, an amazing 70 percent of companies 
There are a few gadgets that I’d recommend as well. If you’re travelling internationally, it’s essential to have 
I speak a lot about Google+ as a tool for business. In fact I've just written a book called "
Last month we learned about the tweet that postponed 
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