By Ron Jones, Search Engine Watch, Nov 9, 2009

http://searchenginewatch.com/3635584

Now that we have the basics of Facebook down, let’s look at one of the best ways to leverage Facebook as a marketer. Facebook started out with the student in mind and soon graduated to cater to businesses.

Many people think LinkedIn is the place to be for professional social networking and Facebook is just for friends and family. However, many organization and businesses reach out every day on Facebook. One of the best ways is through Facebook pages.

Group Pages vs. Fan Pages — Which Should You Use?

People have asked this question many times at my social media marketing training workshops. There is some confusion about which to use because both have overlapping features. It can be difficult to choose the best option.

Think about groups like joining a club. Part of the set-up process for a Facebook group is to appoint officers for that group just like a club or organization. Those who administer the group can send out invitations to others to join that group via e-mail blasts. Groups also have better controls to choose who can join than fan pages. A group page is great for organizing people around a cause.

Facebook fan pages are more suited for companies and brands. They allow better interaction between customers. Fan pages also allow you to have more than 5,000 followers (the limit that group pages offer).

For our purposes, we’ll focus the remainder of this article on fan pages because we’ve just determined they’re more for business owners or brand marketers.

Benefits of Facebook Pages

Facebook started the idea of “pages” when they noticed more people were attempting to reach out to brands and trying to connect with them.

Followers of a Facebook page are considered fans. Just like most fans who pin up poster of their favorite team, Facebook users who join a fan page have that information posted on their wall for all of their friends to see. Now you can start to see the viral marketing benefit for brands that have a fan page.

In addition to the viral marketing aspect, another key benefit is that external search engines index Facebook fan pages. Search marketers should post content that includes targeted keywords you want to be ranked on.

Have you ever had problems getting your Web site updated with new content? Web sites sometimes take time to update with approvals needed and Webmasters or IT staff involvement. Facebook pages are simple to update: just log on and post

Facebook Pages — What Can You Do?

Businesses and brands can’t have a profile, but they can have a Facebook page. This page is designed to house the information about your company or brand.

Think of it like a mini-Web site. You can post company and contact information, post videos, blogs, Twitterupdates, and other relevant content. One impactful feature is the ability to interact and have conversations with your customers.

Just like personal profiles, Facebook pages can have friends (or fans), the ability to upload pictures, walls that fans can write on, and other applications. If you plan to send out any form of communication, you do that by sending “updates” which will then appear on the update tab or on people’s walls if they’re fans.

Those planning events can create events with fan pages (and also with group pages). These events will show up under the users’ request of their profile. If they have signed up or RSVP’d to the event they will also show up in their upcoming events dashboard.

Those interested in advertising on Facebook can purchase ads to promote a fan page (or group page). Next week, we’ll explore more about advertising and other strategies for marketing your business on Facebook.

By Newt Barrett

November 6, 2009 10:47 AM EST

http://web2.sys-con.com/node/1176800

Social media marketing is a trend, not a fad. But,  most small to medium-sized businesses have yet to participate fully and enthusiastically.

We have just written about a powerful new research study that paints a picture of how thousands of smart companies are already benefiting from the inclusion of social media.  What’s clear from that research is that when we evaluate social media, we are not talking about the marketing longevity equivalent of the hula hoop or the Lambada.

Social media marketing is here to stay.  Because you want your organization to be here for the long haul as well, you need to move now.  Not next week. Not next month. But now.

Here are the six reasons that dictate your need to begin social media marketing now:

1. Your customers are using it to make buying decisions. Millions of web users, both in the business to consumer and business-to-business markets, are reading blogs and listening to podcasts daily. They are relying increasingly on social media for buying information in both the b2b and b2c worlds.
2. Smart news organizations are with the social media program. The New York Times and Wall Street Journal and almost certainly your local newspaper have made social media fundamental to how they learn and how they report.  If it’s good enough for their information gathering and sharing where it really counts, it’s certainly good enough for the rest of us.
3. Most small and medium-sized companies are still not using it. You won’t always have the chance to get the jump on your competition.  Imagine yourself back in the early days of TV and you were the first car dealer, furniture store or air conditioning company to run local advertising opposite I Love Lucy or the Lone Ranger. You would have demolished the competition. You still have a small window of time to be early enough to create competitive advantage.   Hi Ho, Silver and away!
4. Your smartest competitors are using it. You’re almost certainly paying attention to your smartest competition.  I’d be surprised if a high percentage of them are not at least putting a toe into the social media waters.  Organizations as diverse as law firms, interior designers, real estate agents, and roofing companies are using blogs, podcasts, videos, and user communities such as Facebook to demonstrate their expertise and thought leadership. Don’t let those tough competitors outmarket you via social media.
5. It can be your most cost effective marketing strategy. The required financial investment in creating a blog, for example, can be close to zero.  The real investment will be in time and thought required to craft a content marketing strategy which provides valuable information to your customers and prospects.  You may need to a hire specific content creation resources either internally or externally.  But this will probably be less expensive than a many traditional advertising outlets.
6. Your old-style marketing is less and less effective. Because buyer behavior has changed, you cannot expect traditional advertising alone to drive buyers to your business as it did a decade ago.  You may certainly want to use it to drive them to your online home. That’s where you can prove to prospective customers that you are a reliable supplier who can be trusted, based on your knowledge and understanding of your their problems.  A regular blog or a series of informative podcasts may be just the ticket to prove that you are the best choice to provide essential solutions.

Summing up

You may still think it’s risky or unproductive to make an investment in core social media components such as blogs, videos,podcasts–or communities such as Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn.  I suggest that the real risk is in waiting too long and being left in the dust. After all, some very smart marketers have already proven the power of these online tools.

NOVEMBER 6, 2009

http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?R=1007366

Gaining visibility as thought leaders

// eMarketer estimates nearly 28 million US Internet users write a blog in 2009, and those bloggers run the gamut from hobbyists and part-timers to self-employed and corporate bloggers.

According to a Technorati survey of bloggers worldwide, most are men, ages 18 to 44, affluent and well-educated. About one-quarter work for a traditional media outlet in addition to blogging, and most still don’t make any money from their self-publishing activities. But there are other ways to create value.

Fully 70% of bloggers polled by Technorati said they talked about products or brands on their blog. The most common activity was to post about brands they loved—or hated—as well as to write reviews or post about experiences with stores or customer service.

Bloggers who post about products and services may get some attention from brands in the form of free items and other perks—enough to attract the notice of the US Federal Trade Commission, at least—but the visibility they gain through publishing their thoughts also helps them in less-tangible ways.

Nearly six in 10 of all the bloggers surveyed said they were better known in their industry because of their blog, and one-quarter had used their blog as a resume or sent it to potential employers.

Further, bloggers who post for a business reported even higher levels of success: 71% had increased visibility for their company, 63% had converted prospects into purchasers through their blog, and 56% have seen their blog bring their company recognition as a thought leader in the industry.

Negative personal consequences, such as losing focus on work or getting in trouble on the job, were far less common than gaining visibility or even changing professions entirely based on blogging activity.

NOVEMBER 3, 2009

http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?R=1007359

Status update services catch on with Gen Y

More evidence of Twitter uptake among young people comes from the Pew Internet & American Life Project. According to a September 2009 survey, 33% of online adults ages 18 to 29 use a status update service, a significant difference from the research firm’s previous poll on the subject.

This meant young adults were more likely to tweet than users ages 30 to 49, who had previously been considered the core group for Twitter.

Overall, Pew found that 19% of online adults used Twitter or another status updating service. This is higher than eMarketer’s estimate of 11.1% of adult Internet users; however, eMarketer does not include the use of other status updating sites in that figure.

Status updaters were more likely to belong to other social networks in addition to Twitter, and users with multiple Internet-connected devices participated in services such as Twitter at a higher rate.

Several other researchers have found Twitter skewing younger in 2009. Sysomos reported that in May, 66% of users who disclosed their age were under 25, and another 15% were ages 25 to 29. AndcomScore Media Metrix found that 13.5% of Internet users ages 18 to 24 visited Twitter in July, up from just 0.3% a year earlier.

Posted by B.L. Ochman on 11.02.09 @ 10:23 AM

http://adage.com/digitalnext/article?article_id=140128

mid the endless pronouncements about social media — often shortened to “social” these days by consultants trying to sound like they know what they are talking about — is the reality that social media is not a solution, or a sure bet.

Social media can’t:

1. Substitute for marketing strategy.
   A Twitter campaign or a Facebook page that announces your weekly specials is not a marketing strategy.
2. Succeed without top management buy-in.
   Social media requires a way of thinking that includes willingness to listen to customers, make changes based on feedback and trust employees to talk to customers.

    

   The culture of fear (of job loss, of losing message control, of change) is ingrained in corporate cultures. Top management has to want to change.

3. Be viewed as a short-term project.
   Social media is not a one-shot deal. It’s a long-term commitment to openness, experimentation and change that requires time to bear fruit.
4. Produce meaningful, measurable results quickly.
   One of the complaints about social media is that it can’t be measured. But there are many things that can be measured, including engagement, sentiment and whether increased traffic leads to sales.

    

   Those results can’t be produced or measured in the short term. Like PR, social media marketing often produces its best results in the second and third year.

5. Be done in-house by the vast majority of companies.
   A successful social-media campaign integrates social media into the many elements of marketing, including advertising, digital and PR. Opinion and theory are no match for experience and the best social media marketers now have more than 10 years of experience incorporating interactivity, blogs, forums, user-generated content and contests into online marketing.

    

   You need strategy, contacts, tools, and experience — a combination not generally found in in-house teams, who often reinvent the wheel or use the wrong tools.

 

 

6. Provide a quick fix to the bottom line or a tarnished reputation.
   Social media can sometimes provide quick results for a company that’s already a star. When a well-loved company like Zappos or Google employs social media, its loyal fans and followers pay attention.

    

   However, there’s a lot of desperation in a lot of corporate suites these days, and many companies seem been convinced that a social-media campaign can provide a quick fix to sagging sales or reputation issues. Sorry, nuh, uh.

7. Be done without a realistic budget.
   Building a site that incorporates interactivity, allows user-generated content and perhaps also includes e-commerce doesn’t come cheap from anyone who knows what they are doing.

    

   Even taking free software like WordPress and making it function as an effective interactive site, incorporating e-commerce and creating style sheets that integrate with the company’s branding, takes more than time. That takes skill, experience, and money.

8. Guarantee sales or influence.
   Unless your effort can pass the “who cares” test — and most simply can’t — your social media efforts will fall flat.

    

   And unless you know how to drive traffic to your contest, video, blog, event, etc., you’ll have little more than an expensive field of dreams.

9. Be done by “kids” who “understand social innately”
   You can climb Mount Kilaminjaro without a sherpa guide, but why would you? Experience and perspective can make the trip easier, or even save your life.

    

   Companies trying to run social media without experienced consultants waste time, money and reputation on their efforts. And then, sadly, many decide that this new-fangled approach doesn’t work.

10. Replace PR.
    No matter how great your website, video contest, blog, Twitter strategy, etc., you still need publicity. Or you may end up with a tree falling in the forest and nobody hearing it.

By Allison Perlik, Senior Editor –Restaurants and Institutions

http://www.rimag.com/TalkBack/Comments?talk_back_header_id=6631517&articleid=ca6661655&article_id=6661655

Stories abound of enterprising restaurateurs finding new customers by posting promotions on Twitter or garnering thousands of fans on Facebook. Understandably, however, not all foodservice operators are convinced that social-media tools such as these are a viable way to boost business.

But try this on for size: Nearly one-third of Americans use social-media Web sites and tools at least twice a week, according to the 2008 Business in Social Media Study from Cone, a Boston-based marketing and branding consultancy. Additionally, more than half of social-media users say they feel a stronger connection with the companies and brands they can interact with online—and feel better served by them.

“Web 2.0 is all about going to where your customers are, because they’re not just going to come to your dot-com site and spend time,” says Van Vandegrift, president and emerging-media consultant with Matrixx Pictures, a Santa Monica, Calif., production company whose clients include Austin, Texas-based Schlotzsky’s Deli.

The real opportunity of social media, for foodservice operators and any other business looking to connect with its audience, lies in reaching consumers where they’re already interacting: microblogs (such as Twitter), social-networking sites (such as Facebook) and sites for sharing videos, photos and opinions.

Not only do these tech-based avenues offer a forum for one-on-one conversations between brands and consumers, but also they give customers the chance to choose how they want to receive information from the company, says Crosby Noricks, a social-media strategist with Red Door Interactive in San Diego. The Internet-presence-management firm’s clients include locally based buffet chain Sweet Tomatoes/Souplantation.

Given its low cost of use compared with traditional marketing vehicles such as print, television and radio, social-media marketing can be a good fit for foodservice operations of all sizes, whether the goal is to drive traffic and sales or strengthen brand awareness and loyalty.

“For smaller chains like us, it’s an easy and inexpensive way to reach our customers,” says Stacey Kane, director of marketing for California Tortilla, a 37-unit fast-casual chain based in Rockville, Md., that builds buzz—and sales—with Twitter- and Facebook-driven promotions such as Secret Password Day (see “Follow the Leaders” on page 37 for details). “And it’s a way to reach people instantaneously. There’s no big backup on producing artwork or a radio spot. You have the idea and you can send it out.”

OCTOBER 30, 2009

http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?R=1007352

Tweeting while driving

Despite the slowing growth of Twitter after its explosion earlier in 2009, many users still cannot get enough.Crowd Science reports that in August 2009, although only 27% of Twitter users posted daily, 46% checked for updates every day. Almost one in five social media users reported using Twitter in the past week.

Although 60% of Twitter users reported using only their computer to access the service, microbloggers are highly mobile, accessing social media from the washroom, the car, the theater and even during a religious service.

Twitter users were more likely than other social media users to feed their addiction from every location but school, including hotels, libraries, public transportation and restaurants.

A September 2009 study from Retrevo found that among those under age 35, 39% of Twitter users and 27% of Facebook users checked the sites at least 10 times every day.

The under-35 crowd dramatically outpaced older users in usage from different locations. Younger users were more than twice as likely to check Facebook or Twitter at work, and more than four times as likely to do so while driving—not to mention their propensity to “kiss and tweet.”

October 28th, 2009 | by Ross Kimbarovsky

http://mashable.com/2009/10/28/small-business-marketing/

Ross Kimbarovsky is the co-founder ofcrowdSPRING, a community of 43,000+ graphic designers that helps small businesses from around the world with graphic design needs. You can follow Ross on Twitter@rosskimbarovsky and @crowdSPRING.

Capacity – especially to plan and execute effective marketing strategies – is a big challenge for every small business. In this post, I’ll offer 10 suggestions for how small businesses can supercharge their marketing efforts by leveraging social media. For each suggestion, I will discuss a basic strategy – for those who simply want to get their toes wet, as well as an advanced strategy – for those who want to spend a bit more time and go a bit deeper in their social media marketing efforts. These tips are based on my experience leveraging social media marketing for my company, crowdSPRING.

I suggest you begin by outlining clear goals for your social media marketing efforts and figuring out how you’ll measure success. Once you’ve outlined your goals, let’s look at 10 great ways you can begin to leverage social media for your marketing efforts.

1. Facebook

Facebook offers exceptional, low cost marketing opportunities for small business. Facebook now has over 300 million users, and while that seems like an outrageous number for small businesses to be targeting, Facebook offers a very powerful platform on which to build a presence. If you’re not already active on Facebook; you should get started right away.

Basic Strategy: If you haven’t signed up for Facebook yet, you absolutely should as soon as possible. Once you’ve signed up, you should also consider securing your company’s username. Be aware, however, that if you reserve your company name for your personal account, you won’t be able to use it for your Business Fan Page (more on those in the Advanced Strategy), so you may want to create a Page before registering your company’s name. Fan Pages have special rules regarding usernames, which you can read here.

You should do one other thing: search for your competitors and evaluate their Facebook presence. What types of Pages have they built? How many fans or “friends” do they have? Spend 15 minutes (per competitor) looking at their posts, photos and/or videos to understand how they’re using Facebook.

Advanced Strategy: You may already have a personal Facebook account, but how do you extend that presence for your business? You have several options. You can register a Business Account – which is designed for a very simple presence on Facebook. There are many limitations on such accounts (read the FAQ here), however, so you’ll most likely prefer to have a Business Fan Page. A Business Fan Page lets you create a page where customers or fans of your business can register as a “fan” — expanding the presence of your business (because your updates will also flow to their pages). You might also want to consider running hyper-local ads on Facebook.

2. Twitter

Twitter has grown tremendously over the past year. For some small businesses, it offers an incredible marketing platform. BusinessWeek’s recent profile of 20 ways businesses use Twitter might give you some ideas about how you can leverage Twitter for your business.

Basic Strategy: If you haven’t signed up on Twitter yet, you should sign up today and reserve an account in the name of your business. While you might ultimately tweet in your own name, you’ll want to have the option to tweet from a business account. More importantly, you don’t want your competitors to register your business name. Twitter has put together a simple guide to help you understand what Twitter can do for business. You can also check out Mashable’s Twitter Guide.

Next, you should spend 15-30 minutes on Twitter’s homepage, doing basic searches to become familiar with the type of content available on the service. For example, if you are operating a small gift basket business, do some searches for various terms and phrases such as “gift basket,” “gifts,” “gift basket business,” etc. You should also search for the names of your competitors to see whether they’re on Twitter and if they are, how they’re using it. And don’t forget to search for your small business name – your customers may already be talking about you! Once you become comfortable with the content that’s already available and how your competitors are using Twitter, you can begin thinking about a strategy for how you’ll leverage Twitter for your business.

Advanced Strategy: To truly leverage Twitter, you’ll want to learn and use a few more advanced tools. This includes desktop and mobile Twitter clients like TweetDeck, Seesmic, and Tweetie. Desktop clients give you more flexibility and more control over your Twitter strategy than you’ll have on the Twitter website. Among other things, you’ll be able to pre-define searches (so that you can monitor certain keywords, including your business name) and group people you follow so that you can minimize the noise and focus on the real content. You might also consider using a web tool likeTwitterfall, which will allow you to define (and color-code) various custom searches that you can review from time to time, and also to follow trending topics. For example, I use Twitterfall to identify helpful graphic design and industrial design resources to share with the crowdSPRING community.

3. Company Blog

Although there’s more attention focused today on social networks than on company blogs, blogs continue to offer great value for small businesses.

Basic Strategy: At a minimum, you should consider reserving a domain name for your blog – if you don’t already have a custom domain for your business. If you’re comfortable enough to set up your own blog, that’s generally the best way to proceed – although this requires a bit more technical knowledge (many hosting providers offer a 1 step easy setup for blogs that will automatically installWordPress for you). You can also setup a blog directly at WordPress.com (it’s easier to do, but you don’t have full control over everything that you would on your own site).

One easy alternative is to set up a simple blog at Posterous – a place to post stories, photos, videos, MP3s, and files. There are pluses and minuses to all of these options – you should take some time to compare them and do what makes sense for your business. I caution you only about spreading yourself too thin.

Advanced Strategy: Now that you’ve decided to start or improve your small business blog, how do you build an audience for it? It all starts with great content. Decide on a focus for your blog, and write awesome content that people will enjoy. For example, some months ago at my company, we decided that we wanted to write more about small business issues, so we’ve been writing original posts focusing on issues affecting small businesses. Think about your expertise and more importantly, think about the things that you’re interested in writing about. A blog requires a long term investment of time (and resources), and you don’t want to be stuck writing about things that bore you.

You’ll also want to consider how you can make it easier for your readers to help promote your content. For example, install helpful plug-ins, such as a TweetMeme button, which makes it easy for people to retweet your posts on Twitter. Don’t be afraid to experiment with plugins to add to the functionality of your blog, but keep it simple. You want to keep the blog focused, and easy for your readers to use.

4. LinkedIn

LinkedIn is a business oriented social network for professionals, and it’s huge, with nearly 50 million users from over 200 countries.

Basic Strategy: Once again, you’ll want to at least reserve your business name (or your personal name) so that others can’t use it. Similar to the way you might start exploring Facebook and Twitter, you should look around on LinkedIn to see how your competitors are using the service. You might also look up your customers and connect with them.

Advanced Strategy: LinkedIn has some powerful features that most people don’t use. For example, you can encourage your customers, clients or vendors to give you a “recommendation” on your profile. Recommendations are useful because they’ll make you and your business more credible with new customers. If you’re a roofer, for example, ask your customers to recommend you after a successful job. You’ll find such recommendations useful – particularly since your LinkedIn profile will come up high in search engine results. I recommend that you read Chris Brogan’s post from last year discussing theelements of a good LinkedIn recommendation.

Another strategy involves the many subject matter groups on LinkedIn. Find some groups that have a connection to your small business and become involved in the conversations. Answer questions when you can, and help to establish yourself as knowledgeable about specific topics related to your business. There are many small business and general marketing groups that will be very useful resources for you, and if there isn’t a group that interests you, consider starting one.

5. Participate On Other Blogs

It might seem counter-intuitive for you to spend your valuable time by participating in discussions on other people’s blogs, but the payoff can be very valuable. Remember that it takes time to build a reputation and establish your credibility, and you can’t always expect everyone to come to you. Sometimes, you have to go out and build your own credibility and reputation.

Basic Strategy: Identify 2-3 blogs in your industry, or those that focus on small business, and get into the habit of regularly reading the content and participating in the discussions. Whenever you can, try to add value by sharing a personal story about what has/has not worked for you. Get to know the writers – they’ll be valuable contacts for you. One strategy for identifying good blogs is to use Guy Kawasaki’s Alltop, which is a directory of popular blogs across many different subject areas. For example, for blogs focused on crafts, you might follow this page on Alltop. If you want to participate in blogs focusing on small business issues, you might start at Technorati’s list of the Top 100 Small Business blogs.

Advanced Strategy: Once you’ve spent some time on other blogs and have participated in discussions, you’ll find that you’ve built a level of credibility and trust, based on your participation. You should consider reaching out to the blog owners and asking whether they’d allow you to guest post an article on their blog (kind of like this post). This is a nice way for you to get in front of a bigger audience, and many blog owners will invite guests to post from time to time. Agree on a topic in advance and provide a draft of your post sufficiently in advance of the publication date to give them an opportunity to review.

Alternatively, ask if they would consider guest posting on your blog. Since you’re looking to attract more readers (and more potential customers), either option works well for that purpose. Don’t worry so much about going after the A-list blogs right away. There are many excellent blogs and it might take a bit of time to build your reputation to such a level that you’ll have opportunities to post in the top blogs. That doesn’t mean you should wait, though – make opportunities for yourself and offer to guest write whenever you can find a new audience. I recommend you read How To Guest Post To Promote Your Blog from blogging expert Darren Rowse.

6. Mobile Social Networks and other Local Strategies

Yelp publishes millions of reviews about local businesses. Foursquare is a combination city-guide, friend finder and competitive game. It allows users to “check in” by cell phone at a local venue and announce this via other social networks such as Twitter.

Basic Strategy: Yelp, Foursquare, and other mobile social networks can be powerful marketing channels for small businesses. You should at the very least register accounts on the popular services and get to know them. If you have a restaurant or a retail store, for example, you’ll want to get to know Yelp pretty well. You can set up a business account on Yelp (no cost), which will let you answer questions about your business, track how many Yelp users view your business page, add information about your business, and announce special promotions. Similarly, you’ll want to sign up with Foursquare to take advantage of local advertising opportunities. Using Foursquare, you’ll be able to push promotions to potential customers who’re in the vicinity of your business.

You should also consider other local strategies. For example, you can add your business to Google Maps, or update your listing to include additional details. You can do the same on Bing.

Advanced Strategy: If you believe that your business can truly benefit from a presence on Yelp, Foursquare, or similar networks, you’ll want to do more than just register accounts with those services. For example, Yelp allows you to include a website URL for your business. Nearly all sites will let you upload photos to your profile, and photos will make your profile more trustworthy.

You can also proactively use Yelp and other similar services to promote your business. Ask your customers, friends and family who have used your services for a review on Yelp. You can encourage reviews by running promotions or discounts – offering free appetizers, for example, to a customer who will write a review about their meal at your restaurant (or to one who already wrote a review), or a small discount to a customer who hires you for carpentry work and mentions that they found you through Yelp.

Similarly, you can find ways to promote your business using Foursquare and similar networks. If you have a TV display in your store connected to a computer, you can display the people who are checking in. You can offer specials or discounts to the person who visits your location the most (this is similar to frequent buyer cards that many businesses have used for years).

Don’t forget to also consider how you can improve your use of other basic local strategies. For example, many small business websites are optimized for specific keywords or subject areas, but are rarely optimized for local searches. If you have a gift basket business, you’ll want to be sure that users searching for gift baskets in your geographic area will find you.

7. Comments and Conversations About Your Company

Whether or not you are a party to the conversations, people will talk about your company. How do you monitor and, when appropriate, join those discussions?

Basic Strategy: There are five simple steps you can take today to begin paying attention to conversations about your business.

First, set up Google Alerts. Google Alerts are free email updates from Google search results about any topic you’re interested in tracking. For example, I track, among other alerts, the names of our competitors, the name of our company, and certain other terms I believe are important to my business. Anytime Google adds something to its index that mentions my company or the other terms I’m tracking, I receive an immediate email notification with a link to that item. Alerts can be set up for web, blog, news, video, or groups searches.

Second, review the results in your web analytics data. At my company, we use Google Analytics. Google Analytics is a free tool from Google that provides detailed and very useful information about your website traffic and the effectiveness of your marketing efforts. When we run social media campaigns, we’ll often attach tracking tags to those campaigns so that we can properly monitor them in Google Analytics. This is important because without such data it will be nearly impossible for you to evaluate the success of your social media marketing efforts. But analytics are important for another reason: they’ll tell you which sites are sending traffic to your site.

Third, search Facebook. In August, Facebook rolled out a real-time search engine (the search box is on the top right of any Facebook page). One effective way to take advantage of Facebook search is to search for your company’s name to see who is talking about your company and what they’re saying. In several months, you’ll be able to search Facebook updates directly from Bing, which will be integrating Facebook public updates into Bing’s search results.

Fourth, search Twitter. You currently can search Twitter for real-time results (if you’re not logged in, just go to Twitter’s homepage). One easy way to monitor conversations about your company is to search for your company’s name. You can also currently do this on Bing, which is indexing Twitter updates. Very soon, you’ll also be able to search Twitter updates (and other social media content) via Google’s Social Search (Social Search was rolled out to Google Labs recently, as an experimental product). You can also use Twitter clients like TweetDeck or Seesmic to save searches and monitor in real-time whenever someone uses a specific word or phrase in a tweet.

Finally, take advantage of services that will, similar to Google Alerts, push data to you. I use and like BackType, which is a real-time search engine that indexes online conversations in thousands of blogs and social networks. I use BackType primarily to keep up with conversations in blogs. Every day, I receive emails from BackType with links to comments that include the keywords I’m monitoring. Without these alerts, I would be unable to monitor so many blogs, and my ability to respond to posts about my company would be very limited.

Advanced Strategy: If you’re having trouble keeping track of your various search strategies, you should consolidate your efforts and leverage one of the many applications that will help you monitor the social web. I have not personally used these services, but they appear to be held in high esteem by knowledgeable people who have. For example, truVOICE provides keyword monitoring of the social web with an emphasis on blogs and forums, while Radian6 pulls in a lot of information from the social web, analyzes it, and provides consumer sentiment ratings for your brand. A good resource to learn about paid social media monitoring tools is Mashable’s post Top 10 Reputation Tracking Tools Worth Paying For.

In addition to monitoring, you’ll need to decide how, when, and where you’ll engage in conversations. It’ll be very difficult for you to engage in conversations everywhere, so you should spend some time learning the various networks and deciding where you should focus your efforts. Looking at your website analytics data — if you own an online business — will help a great deal because it’ll help you to better understand where your traffic is coming from. If much of your traffic originates from Twitter and Facebook, for example, you’ll want to spend more time on those services.

8. Multimedia

Multimedia (video, photos, audio) is a bit more complicated for many small businesses to execute, but can provide excellent social media marketing opportunities.

Basic Strategy: YouTube has been constantly evolving and adding features that make it an attractive social site for small businesses. Although you don’t have to produce videos to participate onYouTube, you should consider whether simple videos can help your marketing efforts. For example, if you’re already posting videos to your blog, you can upload them to YouTube to reach a broader audience, and embed the video content in your blog posts. YouTube has also been adding more comprehensive activity updates for its users and has made pretty powerful analytics tools available so that you can evaluate the effectiveness of your video content.

Similarly, you could start a Flickr account for your business and post photos of your customers or your products (or both). Flickr offers a place where people can share photos with others, but also has discussion groups, many focused on local markets, that offer additional opportunities for you to market your business. You can also consider setting up your own Internet radio talk show usingBlogTalkRadio, which is another way to use multimedia to speak directly to your customers. Get creative with it — own a restaurant? Start a call-in show for people to ask cooking questions. Are you a piano teacher? Perhaps you could start a show to talk about classical music.

Advanced Strategy: Advanced strategies using multimedia are complicated and typically benefit from using experienced consultants. One effective way to leverage video, for example, is to create content that has the potential to become viral. While I don’t believe you can set out to make a viral video (an incredible amount of luck is typically involved), there are a number of things you can typically do to build awareness about your small business using viral video (these strategies are beyond the scope of this post). Once you’ve created good content, you’ll want to distribute it using as many social networks as you can.

When you consider how you can leverage social networks, think about whether each network provides an audience or a technology solution (or both). For example, YouTube provides both a huge audience and a solution for uploading video files. Flickr can also provide both an audience and a technology solution, but not for every business. While your customers might not be on Flickr, you can still use Flickr as a place to store and tag your photos, and then distribute those photos to other social networks where you prefer to invest more time and effort.

9. Maintain Brand Consistency

We’ve discussed only a small handful of social networks. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of others, and new ones spring up every day. That means that your customers will have many different ways to find you. But they won’t find you if your brand is scattered across social networks using different usernames and profiles. Let’s review some strategies for making sure that your brand is consistent across social networks.

Basic Strategy: Usernames and user profiles are already showing up in search results. Do a search for your company’s name on Google right now — if you also have a Twitter account with the same name, odds are pretty good that the Twitter account will appear very high in the search results. This means that having a consistent username across the various social networks is very important. At a minimum, if you haven’t registered your company name on the major networks (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.), you should do that today. For many small businesses, their user accounts on social networks will be the highest ranked pages in search results.

You should also evaluate your email and web presence strategies. For example, are you using aGmail email address when you can very easily be using a custom email address with your company name as your domain? Compare: restaurantname@gmail.com with john@restaurantname.com — which looks more professional? Similarly, are you hosting your blog at WordPress.com instead of on your own custom domain? Little details can make a difference.

Advanced Strategy: Things get a bit more complicated when you consider that there are many different social networks, and it’s tough to predict which of them will become popular and which will fail. Use a service such as namechk or KnowEm to see whether your username is available on dozens of popular social networks and if it’s not, to see which username could be registered across all social networks.

Maintaining name consistency is important, but isn’t enough by itself. You’ll also want to make sure that your brand speaks with a common “voice” across the social networks. This may be easier said than done. Social networks differ in significant ways from one another and present unique challenges for interacting with customers and potential customers on those networks.

Speaking with a common “voice” doesn’t mean that only one person should execute your company’s social media marketing strategy, but it does mean that everyone who speaks on behalf of your company in social media reflects your brand in a consistent way. I recommend you read Shel Israel’s recently published book “Twitterville,” for excellent tips and stories focusing on how large and small businesses can develop a consistent voice in social media.

10. Leverage Combinations of Social Media Tools

Basic Strategy: At a minimum, you should do several things today to cross-market across the various social networks you’re most likely already using. Here are three suggestions:

First, connect your Twitter account to Facebook so that your tweets will appear in your public updates on Facebook. This will let you leverage your time on Twitter to also update your Facebook fans.

Second, connect your LinkedIn profile to your WordPress blog. LinkedIn allows you to publish, in your profile, synopses of the most recent blog posts on your blog. This application will automatically update your LinkedIn profile with your most recent blog posts.

Third, integrate Twitter tools into your blog. I like and use the TweetMeme retweet button on my blogs to make it easier for users to tweet about the blog posts. I also use the ShareThis tool to enable readers to quickly share content on multiple social networks.

Advanced Strategy: Advanced strategies require careful planning/execution and appropriate tools. In nearly all cases, your goal is to maximize the value of your content. For example, if you’re posting videos on YouTube or Vimeo, you can blog about those videos on your company’s blog. Then, you can tweet about the blog posts on Twitter (which I assume is integrated with your Facebook account). This way, you’ve taken one piece of content and found a way to leverage it across multiple social networks.

You’ll also want to consider ways that you can optimize the distribution to multiple social networks at the same time. Leverage tools to help you do this. For example, Ping.fm lets you update multiple social networks all in one go. Keep in mind that not all social networks will make sense for every business. Learn which networks are best for your business and find ways to leverage combinations of those networks to make your marketing more effective.

Conclusion

And if you have additional resources to share or other helpful advice that’s worked for your small business (or thoughts about things to avoid), please take a minute and leave a comment. We’d love to hear from you.

OCTOBER 26, 2009

http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?R=1007347

Online shopping is more than just transactional

People have long shared product opinions with friends and family through word-of-mouth. Today, social media tools enable consumers to extend their connections and conduct commerce in powerful new ways.

As people spend more time on social networks, retailers feel pressure to be there as well. Twitter is a hotbed of experimentation for retailers that see it as a channel for customer service, promoting the deal of the day and more. Facebook and its third-party developers are creating e-commerce applications on the site. Meanwhile, retail Websites are bolstering their social commerce features.

“While user ratings and reviews are a mature form of social commerce with proven benefits, e-commerce on social media platforms, such as Facebook and Twitter, is in an early stage,” said Jeffrey Grau, eMarketer senior analyst and author of the new report, “Social Commerce on Facebook, Twitter and Retail Sites.” “People are spending more time on social networks and are able to conduct more of their regular activities on these platforms. E-commerce on social networks has barely tapped that potential.”

But forward-thinking retailers want to bring their Web stores to the environments where their customers like to spend time. As a result, almost three-quarters of the merchants in the Internet Retailer Top 500 Guide have a presence on at least one of the major social networks or social shopping sites.

Social network users are a highly coveted group of consumers. Across all age brackets, they were more likely than average to make an online purchase, according to a May 2009 survey by Anderson Analytics.

What’s more, social network users are sharing recommendations with greater frequency than generally expected. A Q1 2009Razorfish survey of social network users found that some 29% reported sharing their views online at least every few weeks, while 10% said they made such contributions at least every few days.

“Leading companies know they cannot afford to wait for customers to visit their sites,” added Mr. Grau. “They need to place their virtual storefronts where their customers congregate. This implies the nature of e-commerce is shifting from a transactional experience to a social one.”

The full report, “Social Commerce on Facebook, Twitter and Retail Sites” also answers these key questions:

• What is the outlook for social commerce?
• How are marketers engaging customers on social media sites?
• What social shopping features are retailers adding to their sites?
• Which retailers are paving the way in social commerce?

By: Clint Boulton
2009-10-24

http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Web-Services-Web-20-and-SOA/Facebook-Offers-Realtime-Highlight-Reel-News-Feed-For-The-Homepage-298115/

Facebook Oct. 23 changed its homepage again, offering users a highlight reel view of the most interesting activity that’s happened in the last day and a real-time view that shows users what is happening now. This move takes on an interesting light in the wake of Microsoft’s announcement at Web 2.0 Summit Oct. 21 that Bing would begin serving up public Facebook status updates. Facebook also tweaked the Suggestions section to let users help their friends find their friends, or upload pictures and video. Facebook is also prodding users to help their friends become more active on the site, displaying a “progress bar” below their profile pictures on their profile.

Facebook Oct. 23 delivered the previously reported home page changes, offering users a highlight reel view of the most interesting activity that’s happened in the last day and a real-time view that shows users what is happening now.

Facebook began offering the real-time feed in the home page in March. Now it has moved the Highlights section from the right-hand rail to the middle, so that users can toggle back and forth between the fun and the fresh at the click of a button. Facebook engineer Raylene Yung explained:

“News Feed picks stories that we think you’ll enjoy based on a variety of factors including how many friends have liked and commented on it and how likely you are to interact with that story. Once you’ve caught up on what you missed, you can click through to “Live Feed” to see what’s happening right now.”

Users can edit what appears in the Live Feed view by clicking “Edit Options” at the bottom of the home page. Why is the News Feed view a highlight reel?

Facebook explained on its developer’s blog that News Feed serves up popular content, determined by an algorithm based on interest in that story. The idea is to boost engagement, and thus, the likelihood that users will spend more time and see more advertising.

This move also takes on an interesting light in the wake of Microsoft’s announcement atWeb 2.0 Summit Oct. 21 that Bing would begin serving up public Facebook status updates. Facebook, hungry to capitalize on Twitter’s success in providing up-to-the-minute information, clearly sees the real-time as the big time.

Based on feedback from some of its 300 million users, Facebook also brought back features, such as when friends have been tagged in photos or have become fans of Pages, and when they RSVP for events, or join groups and make new friends.

Yung allowed that while it can be “disruptive when things are moved around,” the social network put a lot of testing with small user groups and thought into the changes.

She’s right about the disruptive part; many users are venting that they hate the changes at the I Automatically Hate The New Facebook Home Page group.

Does Facebook have a mini-revolt on its hands? It’s tough to tell, as many users also complained about the addition of the real-time News Feed in March. People as a rule tend not to like changes in services with which they have become comfortable.

The question then is: Will people become comfortable before the cries of discontent force Facebook to return things to the way they were? Read more about the changes on TechMeme.

Meanwhile, Facebook also offered another less reported, but still interesting change that lets users crowdsource advice on how to navigate the vast, sometimes nebulous frontier that Facebook has become.

The Suggestions section in the right-hand corner of the homepage has been refreshed to let users help their friends, well, find their friends, or do other Facebookian tasks like upload pictures and video.

Facebook is also cleverly prodding users to help their friends become more active on the site, displaying a “progress bar” below their profile pictures on their profile. This could effectively guilt users into becoming more active, which will be good for Facebook, if embarrassed users don’t revolt.

“Facebook is only useful and relevant if you can connect with friends that matter to you, and so we already use this space to show you other people that you may know and want to share with,” wrote Facebook product manager Naomi Gleit.

“Now you also will begin seeing new Suggestions about people with whom you are already friends, including those who are new to the site. For instance, we may suggest that you help a friend by suggesting friends for him if he’s only connected with a few people so far.”