Archive for the ‘Twitter’ CategoryBrown Sugar Kitchen is an absolutely wonderful “new style down home” cafe in West Oakland. I’ve watched them with increasing admiration since they appeared both on Mandela Parkway and on Twitter and Facebook. I’m doing an interview with Phil Surkis, one of the owners of BSK on his social media strategy, which is wonderful to behold. I should explain. BSK is in the middle of an industrial area, which is to say, almost nowhere. There is no foot traffic, no retail buzz, no reason to be in the nabe except to pick up pipe for that construction project, or to drive by on your way to IKEA or Best Buy. But somehow (and my bet is thru Tanya’s excellent food So, in my new series of interviews on the use of social media for small businesses, I’ve asked Phil to share his secrets. If you have any kind of small biz, retail store or restaurant, I’m sure you will get lots of great ideas to incorporate with your social media marketing plan. And maybe a recipe or two…can’t promise, though. When: Monday June 14th, 1 pm Pacific time If you would like an audio file of the interview, please sign up below.
I’m doing another free teleclass on using Social Media to generate leads and build sales on Wed, May 12 at 1 pm Pacific Time, 4 pm Eastern. Register here to join me. I’ll send you dial-in information the day before the event. I started this class because, after conducting a monthly breakfast meeting on Social Media for the SVAMA, it became clear to me that the small business was not getting the kind of strategic direction that they really needed. Everyone will say that they are using Social Media. They are on Twitter, or have a Facebook profile, but few really understand how to use Social Media strategically. It’s a marketing powerhouse if used effectively and I want to give all businesses the tools to do just that. So please join me. If you can’t make the class live, sign up anyway! I’ll be recording the class and will send everyone who signs up an audio file the following day. Hope to see you there!
I started using Social Media to promote my business 3 years ago, without much real knowledge about the whys and wherefores. I wasted a tremendous amount of time – Tweeting now and then, connecting on Facebook with whoever seemed like a likely prospect and getting distracted by numerous small and unimportant social media sites. Does this sound familiar? I was tired and frustrated with the trial and error of “trying” social media. I had no real strategy, or understanding of the power of the medium and knew I was missing out on a lot of potential business and can’t even imagine the Over the next 3 years, I made it my job to take classes and webinars, read blogs, and follow the thought leaders of social media. Now, I am armed with the critical knowledge needed in order to take advantage of all of the social media tools that help businesses grow, and I want to share it with you. Did you know that social media is the number one source for lead generation for our company? And these are WARM prospects – people who are coming to us ready to sign a check…or pretty close. Let me save you all of that wasted time and money. Why make the same mistakes I made? I’ve put together all of that hard earned expertise into a content rich and action directed teleseries. I’ll take you step-by-step through the process of setting up a social media strategy without the headaches, miss-steps and wasted time. Grab your spot NOW…the class starts on Tuesday April 27th and I don’t want you to miss a thing! Hope to see you on the call.
Customer Service problems can be daunting for any company. But the last thing you want to do is pretend that they don’t exist or will never exist. The best thing to do is meet them head on, resolve issues, make the customer as happy as possible, and move on. The last thing you want to even consider is ignoring an unhappy customer or client. Customer Service and Twitter.com were made for each other. The immediacy of Twitter, coupled with the accessibility of the customer-service “fixer” creates a terrific tool for staying in close and concerned contact with customers. And they feel the love. Below are a few tips to make this successful:
Twitter aside, one of the best things you can do to build and reinforce your brand is to take customer service very seriously. A problem will only get worse, and a customer will only get increasingly unhappy if the issue is not acknowledged. Companies will get far more “points” for being proactive in their efforts to resolve even horrendous problems to the best of their ability. The resolution may not be perfect in the customer’s or the public’s eye, but a true and strong effort to resolve will go far towards saving the loyalty of that person. Hopefully, they will spread the word and Tweet about the positive outcome, not the bad experience.
I’m thrilled to be the guest speaker at renown business coach Kellie D’Andrea’s weekly “Marketing Mondays” tele-class on April 12th. Here is Kellie’s write-up:  Business Coach Kellie D'Andrea Q: Are you curious about social media? A: Well, you don’t want to miss this call! “Generate Leads and Increase Sales with Social Media” during Marketing Mondays with Kellie D’Andrea. WHEN: MONDAY, April 12, 2010, 6 pm Eastern (NY) time (That’s 5 pm Central, 4 pm Mountain, 3 pm Pacific.) WHERE: Virtual Sign up to get call in information TIME: 6 pm Eastern (NY) time (That’s 5 pm Central, 4 pm Mountain, 3 pm Pacific.) Today the owner of a small business is struggling with a bad economy, declining sales and not enough resources to get the job done. Marketing for small business usually takes a back seat – just when it’s needed most! Social media adoption by small businesses doubled during the last year, from 12% to 24%. And among those, nearly half anticipate it will be profitable within the next 12 months, according to the Small Business Success Index. During this call, you will learn:
About our Guest Speaker: - – - – - - Thanks Kellie! Hope to see lots of you on the call!
Social Media is about 3 things — connecting, creating, and engaging. Sounds easy enough, but the value of everything you do using social media will all go back to who you are engaging with. This is a real case of “garbage-in, garbage-out.” If you “friend” or connect with anyone and everyone without any concern about who or why, you won’t get much out of all the time you may invest in your social media strategy. To make your social media strategy productive, efficient and successful, here are tips on creating a strong network.
My own Point of View: beware of the applications that promise to connect you to hundreds and thousands of people. They will. But so what? Quality and relevance trumps quantity. It’s important to keep expanding your connections in social media. But always be sure there is a well-thought-out strategy every time you go through the exercise. The quality of your network, and the payback it will give you, will be worth the extra time.
I’m delighted to announce the agenda for the March meeting of the Morning Forum on Emerging Media. SVAMA Presents: Twitter for Marketers: Lessons from the Enterprise
Learn about the best practices of how big brands use Twitter to engage in real life conversations with customers. You will be presented with real case studies from the social media managers who are responsible for driving customer engagement at Cisco and HP. They will present case study examples of how they drive consumer engagement on the social web. We will discuss:
Moderator: Tatyana Kanzaveli
Panelists: LaSandra Brill, Sr. Manager – Digital and Social Media Marketing, Cisco; Tony Welch, Lead Social Media Strategist and Community Manager for HP PSG, HP WHEN: March 30 , 2010, 8:30 – 10 AM WHERE: [NOTE NEW LOCATION] COST: Currently $5 SVAMA members, $15 for non-members RSVP: info@elymedia.com Speaker bios: Tatyana Kanzaveli, CEO of Social CRM World, has broad experience in sales, marketing and business development, technology and professional services. She held executive roles in number of start-ups and large multinationals. She was an early adopter of social media and social networking channels, using them to build successful online and face-to-face communities. Tatyana runs strategic Social CRM and social media marketing consultancy – http://scrmworld.com. She can be reached on Twitter: @glfceo LaSandra Brill, Sr. Mgr, Digital & Social Media Marketing, at Cisco Systems, is a social media enthusiast, avid blogger and marketing innovator. As Senior Manager of the Service Provider Digital & Social Media Marketing group, LaSandra Brill shapes Cisco’s marketing strategy to include a mix of social media marketing techniques leveraging Web 2.0 technologies. At Cisco she is known for building and executing the social media strategy of one of the top five product launches in company history. LaSandra holds a Bachelors of Science in Business Administration with a concentration in Management from San Jose State University. Tony “Frosty” Welch is the Lead Social Media Strategist for HP PSG, and the Community Manager for The Next Bench – http://www.thenextbench.com. His Twitter handle is @frostola Hope to see you there!
“Two of the biggest challenges for new users have been finding accounts to follow that appeal to their interests, and finding their friends and colleagues who tweet. Over time, we’ve learned that by making suggestions of who to follow, we can help users get going more easily on Twitter. In our new design, we’re taking some steps to continue to improve this process. Once a user signs up and selects what they’re interested in, we show them some accounts that relate to that interest. Next, we help them find their friends and colleagues by checking their address books, and third we give them a chance to search for anyone we or they missed in this process.” I’m all for that. Anything that helps a newbie use Twitter in a strategic and useful way is all good. But why only the new user? I’d love the benefit of their algorythmic magic to make good suggestions for me. But I’m not the only one with that thought. (love John Battelle) Twitter promised more changes to come. As a true evangelist, I can’t wait. Thanksgiving is coming and, as I spend more and more time in front of my computer or with my cell phone — hopping between Twitter, Facebook and what feels like millions of blogs and RSS feeds — I’m careful to be thankful and not to lose track of what’s really important (too easy to do in the race to keep up with the “media” world). A quickie compare-and-contrast…. The real purpose of social media: Connecting - I’ve made many friends, virtual and otherwise in the past year, either on Social Media sites, or around the topic of Social Media — at meetings, events, Tweetups. I’m humbled and grateful. Providing value – It’s a constant mantra — to be sure that what messages I’m sending, tweeting or posting have something to offer to someone. Intelligence on the media industry, news items, items I find quirky and worth sharing, a link to a great song or recipe (what’s life, especially online, if you don’t have a sense of humor?). Creating community - Groups, tribes, clusters, pods of like-minded people who can share. Find them, join them, create them, link to them. And then translate the above values into what my husband calls “wetware” — real live human interaction…. Connecting: Pick up the phone instead of sending an email, go OUT to lunch instead of eating it at your desk, wander down the hall and talk to a compadre if you are destined to be in the office. Flesh — press it. Providing value: Donate time to a local charity, or give a few cans to the Boy Scouts food drive this year, read to your local kindergarten class — and even if just once, explain once again to your dad what it is that you do for a living. Talk to people, talk talk talk. Creating community: Invite two new people to dinner or for a glass of wine at your house who didn’t know each other before (takeout food is OK; Martha Stewart is not taking notes). Extra points if they bring their kids (then pizza is really OK!). Happy Thanksgiving, both online and off. May the latter continue to prevail.
We have been working on a large lead-generation campaign for a new consumer-biz client, and we were delighted that they allowed us to incorporate social media into the plan. I know, it seems counter-intuitive to use social media for a mainly commercial objective, but if it is handled delicately and with respect for both the brand and the SM audience, it can be done very well. Below are a few pointers that should be taken into consideration: – Social Media is all about creating and joining community and adding value. Keep this ahead of everything else. – First join the community – join many groups and participate, linking back to your offer every now and again. Build your network with keyword or category searches to find good prospects and interested followers. – Be strategic – your messages should vary by target audience, the landing page should echo the content of the original message or post, and the ultimate call-to-action wording should support both. – Content – Decide what issues and topics are interesting for your target audience. Invest some time to become a member of the community. First listen in, then ask questions, and only then define whatever your target group is excited about and what topics you should be addressing. Your content is about establishing a relationship with your community, not about re-purposing your sales presentation. – Be sure your posts are a combination of conversation and links to your offer. We aim for at least 50% posts providing info on relevant topics, asking questions, responding to followers, and 50% talking about our offer and providing a link to our landing page. – Standard lead-gen practices hold for Social Media – convert with the landing page. As is true with any lead-gen strategy, the landing page does the heavy lifting. It should be clear and simple, with a crystal-clear call to action. Don’t offer options or links taking the reader off the page. The registration form should appear above the fold. Assume your reader will not be scrolling down, so keep all the salient points up top. – SM offers wonderful opportunites for viral content to happen. You can’t control it, but here’s some clues on what gets shared and what doesn’t…. Rarely shared: product info, free trials, hard offers, selling posts. Often shared: New Data, trends, funny videos, reference to top-notch blog posts. We will continue this topic in future posts with more specifics on how to use Twitter, Facebook. and LinkedIn for lead-generation with specific tactics for each. The key is to be a participant in a community, and provide value to create enough interest so that your followers and readers will want to find out more about your offer. It CAN be done.
Another wonderful example of Social Media blending with hard copy is the evolution of Food52, a crowd-sourced social-media recipe/food site started by Amanda Hesser (of NY Times fame) and Merrill Stubbs freelance food-writer and recipe-tester. This site invites viewers to submit recipes — themed each week, for a contest. Amanda and Merrill test each recipe, come up with 2 finalists, and the readers will decide the winner. At the end of 52 weeks, the winning entries will be entered into a cookbook (hard copy — ink and paper!) that will be published by The HarperStudio. In the meantime, the cooks, readers, and contributors get to share recipes, chat with each other, add additional content on related issues (ingredients, cooking tools, cookbooks etc) in an ongoing collaboration. I was lucky enough to get an interview with Amanda and Merrill in between their frantic bouts of cooking. Click below and find out why Merrill’s mother is NOT, NOT, NOT allowed to submit recipes….
So at the end, there is a hard-copy cookbook that will have had a full year’s worth of preliminary buzz. The Food52 team is busily tweeting, uploading videos to Vimeo, linking to other food blogs. It’s a win-win for the publisher, the reader/contributor, and the Food52 team of Merrill and Amanda. Food 52 Intro from Food52 on Vimeo.
All print media are struggling these days, from the New York Times to the local newspaper. As the readers are moving online, print might seem more and more irrelevant, and publishers are struggling with ways to keep their readers. I came across a wonderful example of how to do it right. 7×7 Magazine, a San Francisco-based, glossy lifestyle pub invited their readers to submit all of the photos and much of the copy for a neighborhood review (August 2009 issue) of our beautiful city. The 7×7.com website provides far more content — videos, more pix, more reviews of each neighborhood’s strengths, and on and on. But the print magazine stands alone for its visual beauty and is definitely worth the cover (or subscription) price. The integration of the magazine with its social-media and online versions only magnifies that content and doesn’t detract from it. Job well done! Major take-aways from this? Not all brands or pubishers are so content-rich or gorgeous (I know, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. and all brand managers love their children). Where can you extend your brand or publication into social media, and then involve the reader or customer with the content that is most easy to create and receive from them? If you are a publisher, initiate the dialogue in print, then move it online. Sell cat food, walking shoes, lead-gen services? On your product labels, in your print ads, on your boxes and packages, invite your customers to participate in a contest related to the topic. Have them send in videos or photos, reward the winner with something related to the brand. And then publish (well-tagged) vids and pix on your Facebook Fanpage, Tweet to direct people back to your website and/or the fan page, upload videos to video sites, along with publishing them on your site. The more you involve the reader/customer, the more engaged they become with the brand — the true definition of “dialogue”.
Elymedia is starting to work on social-media strategies to create buzz for more local companies, brands, and venues. It’s quite gratifying to plug into the local community and make a difference — not just for the client, but to share great info within the community. Brand recognition is high, and loyalty strong. It’s a good thing. Below are 7 quick tips that might help small businesses, local retailers, and restaurants and those crafty and creative food-carts:
Want more detail or help on how to build a plan, using some or all of the above? We would love to help.
I keep searching for new/more/different methods of measuring activity in Web social media. I just starting using Bit.ly to shorten all of the links that I include in posts that don’t feed back to Elymedia so I can track results.
Twitter itself now uses bit.ly and it has taken a lead in the url shortening market over Tinyrul and others. It’s still a bit wonky — some stats are inaccurate, but their blog clearly states that they are hammering out bugs. The analytics are the fun part — if you put a simple “+” on the end of any bit.ly link, you will see, in real time, the pace at which that link is getting shared and clicked on as it moves around social-media networks. Bit.ly has growth plans and will provide more features rapidly. Techcrunch did a great post on the future plans for the company and details the sophistication and intelligence it will bring to the user regarding overall use of links, their popularity, and distribution. For now, I’m just happy to watch how much traction my links are getting and knowing that people are enjoying my content. Good stuff. This past week, two ethics issues caught my attention in the media. The Washington Post apologized to the paper’s readers for their plans to organize sponsored “salons” that would be attended by Washington-DC lobbyists, governent officials, and the paper’s own journalists. In short — anyone who might be influential in our nation’s capitol. The sponsorships, with fees ranging from $25,000 for one session to $250,000 for an entire series, seemed to imply that attendees would get paid access to these elite movers and shakers. The controversy erupted last Thursday after the website Politico.com disclosed the contents of a promotional brochure from the Post that solicited corporate sponsorships for the dinners, with fees ranging from $25,000 for one session to $250,000 for an entire series. Writing on his blog last week, the paper’s ombudsman Andrew Alexander called the disclosure “pretty close to a public relations disaster.” The first salon dinner, focusing on health care, was scheduled for July 21. The Post publisher Katharine Weymouth stated that it was all a misunderstanding but has called for an external review. The Post has said a marketing employee, Charles Pelton, sent out the brochure without vetting from either Ms. Weymouth or Marcus Brauchli, the paper’s executive editor. The brochure suggested that a single corporation could sponsor the dinners. Ms. Weymouth, in her letter to readers, said the brochure “was not approved by me or newsroom editors, and it did not reflect what we had in mind.” If a paper as revered as the Washington Post can behave with dubious ethics, what’s a reader to think? And where do readers go these days for credible, unbiased news and reporting? Who do you read/listen/watch for accurate reporting? Where does Social Media fit in? Do you still read “treeware” (print newspapers and magazines)? Have you given up on CBS, ABC, NBC, even PBS TV news? Do you sip a blend of Internet news-blogs and user-generated videos and completely ignore TV? Do we trust any major news organizations any longer?
Whether you are participating for personal reasons or for business, an objective (or objectives) will make the whole experience more enjoyable, and certainly less chaotic — which Social Media can be. Below are a few ideas in each category — and I’m sure there are many more. Personal Objectives: Personal Branding Corporate/Business Customer relations/customer service The item that demands the most attention among audiences is how to provide customer service. The immediacy of Twitter, coupled with the accessibility of the customer-service “fixer” creates a terrific tool for staying in close and concerned contact with customers. And they feel the love. A few tips to make this successful: 1. Let your customers know about your presence on Twitter, at least to resolve issues. Post your Twitter “handle” throughout your own website. 2. Be proactive. Search out your company names frequently. Use the Tweetdeck search tool for your company name, create a column, and keep it live. Tweetbeep is one of several applications that will alert you when your company is mentioned. 3. Take the right tone. Be authentic in your attempts to solve the customer’s problem. Be sure the end result is positive — at least in feel — for the customer. 4. If it can’t be resolved in 140 characters of Tweet text, then give directions for a next step — an 800 toll-free phone number, a specific email address (spelled out) so that a final solution can be achieved. 5. Be very timely. Twitter happens at the speed of light. Negative info travels even faster. Check Tweets frequently for any hint of problems, and jump right on them.
I will be speaking to the Morning Forum of the SVAMA in April: “A Deep Dive into Twitter” Twitter has become the media darling in the past few months, and with good reason. Come to learn more than just the basics about creating an intelligent Twitter strategy, whether for branding, new business development or lead generation, as well as thought leadership. We will discuss: Speaker: Elyse Tager, President – Elymedia LLC Bio: Elyse Tager is founder and Principal of Elymedia, an online- and traditional-media planning and buying agency that has worked with many of the world’s most recognizable brands from Microsoft to PowerBar. With twenty years of executive marketing experience in direct response, coupled with ten years in Internet marketing, Elyse has gained a thorough understanding of all types of media and how they interact. This depth of experience and knowledge has benefited her clients as they strategize marketing objectives in Social Media. When: April 28, 2009 8:30 am – 10 am RSVP: please email info@elymedia.com or on Twitter: elysetager
If you haven’t dipped your toe in the water with Twitter, you are missing the boat. Start now! It’s the perfect tool for branding, displaying thought leadership, promotion, fund raising, and even lead generation. An odd combination, I know, but if handled correctly, and with proper tweet etiquette (hereafter referred to as TE), all can be accomplished. If you are new, Jeremiah Owyang’s very thorough version of FAQs are a great place to start. Below is my short version and key points: Its not about “what are you doing” as their tag line says, as much as “what’s important to you”. 140 characters of pithy info on what you are reading, what trade events you are attending, what speakers you are learning from etc, to get at some pithy thinking and trends Share, comment, talk. It won’t work unless you participate in both directions. Tweet and respond to other tweets. Also proper TE. If you just take, but don’t give value, you will lose credibility and followers. The beauty of the retweet. AKA share the love. Knowledge is best when shared. If you find posts that are of value to you, retweet them. Retweeting info here. The retweeter will be greatful, you will be providing further value to your followers, indicating your intelligence, and thought leadership as well as your generosity. It’s all good. The importance of your profile. I’m astounded by how many people either don’t have a profile description or don’t fill it out in a meaningful manner. The profile is key to letting people know why they should be following you, reading you, listening to you, and just caring about your tweets. It’s also branding, you can and should link to your website or blog for more credibility. Twitter backgrounds add to the branding. I’m in the process of getting my background custom designed. It’s yet another piece of real estate for branding, establishing credibility and setting a tone for who you are. Some resources for custom backgrounds are here. Have an objective. Very important. Perhaps most important. Twitter will be a silly waste of time unless you decide how you are going to use it. And we will all have to read about what you did over the weekend unless you do. If your objective is to create thought leadership, then follow people who are meaningful in your field. If you are interested in branding, be sure your profile and background speak to your brand, and tweet on topics related to your field of expertise and your products and services. (but be very careful of the hard sell – not good TE) Some very helpful Twitter tools: Tweetdeck, a way of organizing your tweets. Here also is a tutorial on how to use it – lots of info here. Tweetlater How to have presence on Twitter w/out sitting by the computer or your iPhone all day. TinyURL since you only have 140 characters to work with, making a link smaller is very useful. And the last self proclaimed Ultimate List of Twitter Tools – more applications than you could ever want, but will be glad to at least consider. Now, go play.
OK, I have to confess. I’ve become absolutely addicted to Twitter. In a good way. I think. I love the immediacy. I love the ability to follow very smart people and find out what they are thinking and doing. I appreciate the sophistication of the humor, and the trade buzz and political commentary. But it’s an addiction nonetheless. I’ve neglected blogging. Mea Culpa. I vow to return to the real world on Monday. Really. After a weekend more of tweets. OK, OK. For a little meat, I’ll also include my version of how to use Twitter for business. Stay tuned. |
and Phil’s wonderful touch with their social media efforts) they have built a standing-room-only crowd on weekends — and some weekdays as well.
