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Monday, August 9, 2010

Social Media in One Hour A Day


Overwhelmed with social media demands? Unclear where to invest your time? Ill informed about the tools that can help? Social media management requires planning, preparation and the right tools, otherwise the demands of social media involvement can consume too much of your most important business resources.....you!


Step I: Decide Where To Concentrate Your Efforts

  • You can’t be everywhere at once – start slowly and build
  • The most frequented social media sites are, in order: facebook, twitter, youtube, linkedin, wikipedia, flickr and blogs - after pinpointing the best networks, spend time developing a working understanding of each (E.G., What it’s about, its features and how users interact within the space)
  • Learn best practices from industry experts
  • Before starting, be sure to secure your brand’s username on each site and check to make sure no one else is illegitimately representing your organization
  • A simple search on google ornamechk (http://namechk.Com/) will tell you if your preferred username is available




Step II: Define Objectives and Strategy – Establish Quantifiable Goals

What are you looking to get out of this investment today and in the future? What steps do you need to take to make it happen? Consider how to:
  • Expand brand or product awareness: how you will get your brand name out there (advertising, promotion, integration with other media, blogger outreach, and initiation of peer sharing and user-generated content campaigns, etc.)
  • Build community: how you will attract fans (awareness building, advertising, promoting, appealing to a specific target audience, etc.) and keep them engaged (tailored content plans, tone, frequency and types of interactions, special offers and activities, etc.
  • Engage qualify fans and convert them to customers: how you will solicit information from users (surveys, contests, facebook applications, conversation starters, measured content views, data mining and analytics, etc.) and use that insight to further the relationship (sales team involvement, product sampling, boosting the one-to-one nature of the conversation, etc.)
  • Improve customer satisfaction: how you plan to offer exceptional service and support, and how you will go above and beyond their expectations
Step III: Measure Your Efforts Against Factors That Impact The Bottom Line
  • Number of fans, followers, readers (or number of high-quality/targeted fans)
  • Number of video or other content views
  • Volume of user comments posted to your blog, profile or posted content
  • Retweet or peer-sharing statistics for related content and posts
  • Comment or retweet resonation (number of user comments multiplied by how many followers or friends each user has)
  • Engagement (duration of video views, time spent on your blog site, time spent playing your branded game application, etc.)
  • Media coverage
  • Media impressions (mentions on blogs or other media multiplied by the size of the audience)
  • Advertising click-through rates
  • Company website traffic statistics
  • Quantity of new qualified leads or sales
  • Volume of customer service issues handled.
Step IV: Research Available Tools - Select The Appropriate Ones Based On The Task At Hand
  • Listening - use tweetdeck, google alerts
  • Networking - use seesmic desktop,plaxo
  • Publishing - use friendfeed, social oomph, twit pic, tiny url, tweetbeep, mobile twitter, ping fm
  • Sharing - use stumble upon, del.icio.us, digg

Stay informed; social media constantly changes - continuous learning will enhance your success










































Friday, August 6, 2010

Foursquare - The Next Twitter??????

Who is the Mayor of your store?





There is a new tool gaining momentum with mobile shoppers; it's called Foursquare. Do you want to dramatically increase store visits and customer loyalty? Looking for ways to inexpensively but effectively build your brand? If you're still playing catch-up on the usage of Facebook and Twitter to drive sales, Foursquare may be exponentially more productive. Get on the trend early and maximize the impact of Foursquare on your business...before your competition beats you to the punch and your potential customers.

Foursquare is a location-based social networking service, used mostly on smartphones. The idea is that people "check-in" to venues they're at (restaurants, bars, stores, etc.) which lets their friends keep track of where they're hanging out. Essentially, Foursquare aims to encourage people to explore their neighborhoods and then reward people for doing so. If you check-in the most to a particular venue, you become the "Mayor" - although someone else can become mayor if you neglect your venue; wouldn't that be a great concept in real world public service? There's also a game involved, where users earn points for their activity and unlock "badges."

Foursquare is in a position to be a boon for businesses. In the same way that savvy business owners have utilized the Yelp community to promote and encourage reviews, they can tap into Foursquare check-ins to get people talking about their establishment and rewarding them for their patronage.

As a business owner, you can also use Foursquare to engage your increasingly mobile customers with Foursquare "Specials". When they check in on Foursquare at your venue reward your loyal customers. Give the current Mayor of your venue extra attention to encourage others to want to be Mayor.

What if you owned a bar. You could put up signs indicating that the Foursquare Mayor drinks for free. Imagine how the competitive elements of the game could manufacture a social contest like no other. You would get intense mayoral races, which means more frequent check-ins, and a bunch of free online exposure. The occasional free drink would be a pretty inexpensive marketing investment for all that exposure.

Foursquare has developed an easy to use toolkit that allows you to set up specials:
  • Mayor Specials: unlocked only by the Mayor of your venue. Who's the Mayor? It's your single most loyal customer! (the user who has checked in the most in the last 60 days)("Foursquare has deemed you the Mayor? Enjoy a free order of french fries!")
  • Check-in Specials: unlocked when a user checks in to your venue a certain number of times.("Foursquare says you've been here 10 times? That's a free drink for you!")
  • Frequency-based Specials: are unlocked every X check-ins.("Foursquare users get 20% off any entree every 5th check-in!")
  • Wildcard Specials: always unlocked, but your staff has to verify some extra conditions before awarding the Special.("Show us your foursquare Swarm badge and get a free drink!")
Seriously....remember the early days of Twitter when everyone mocked it. The early adopters really got Twitter, tweeted their enthusiasm, took to their blogs to evangelize the benefits of Twitter, and started to break down why it would be a game changer. The majority laughed and/or misunderstood - “why would I want to share or read mundane information about myself on the web. What pointless drivel.”

But Twitter didn't go away. It gained momentum. One by one more and more people started to tweet, started to figure out for themselves why it was important, and then repeat the same cycle as the early adopters before them. The media was initially quick to judge. Full of fantastic puns, and naysayers, until they started to use it and figure it out too. Long story short, Twitter, as simple as it is, was (and to some extent still is) misunderstood - but enormously popular.

Foursquare today is very much in the same boat as Twitter was a couple of years ago. The early adopters have started to utilize it, but for the most part it remains a service completely misunderstood, and even mocked from time to time. But here’s the thing, it is starting to catch on and people are starting to sit up take notice, and actually use it. Maybe it's time you did too! It might be great for your business. Maybe I could be Mayor!!!

Tuesday, August 3, 2010

Are you struggling with how to write good blog posts? Does it take you forever to get your "creative juices" flowing? I know how you feel. But I just read this great post from www.socialmediaexaminer.com about writing a GREAT post in 15 minutes.

I HAD to share it. These guys know what they're talking about.

Read on and start writing!!!  http://bit.ly/cfSR0T