February 23, 2012

Posts Comments

You are here: Home / Archives for Social Media

Building a Better Presence: Simple Tips for SMBs

October 11, 2010 By TJ O'Connor View Comments
presence

For those of you too busy to watch the hour segment, here is a summary of what we discussed.

Make Your Presence Felt

For starters — What do we mean by web presence?

Your web presence consists of ALL branded properties on the web including your website, blog, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc…

For this discussion, we won’t be delving into off-brand communities. For one, these communities don’t really count as part of your main “presence”. Also, this topic was covered in detail by Justin Levy in recent NMLTV episode, I highly suggest you check it out.

So, now that we are clear on what your “presence” consists of, here’s a few ideas to get you thinking about how to improve it:

Keep It Consistent

You’d be surprised how many people fail at the most basic of rules: use consistent branding. Many companies create style guides to help employees adhere to branding guidelines, and — speaking from personal experience — it really does help.

A style guide doesn’t have to complex, provide a few versions of the logo (web/print/etc…), choose a font and some colors, and you have already provided a great starting place for any new branded design.

Once you have these guideline, apply them EVERYWHERE. Visit your website homepage. Now your Twitter page. Do the link colors match? If not, you have some work to do with your branding efforts.

Keep It Simple

Another basic principle that seems to elude many companies is a strong call-to-action. For any website to be effective, it needs 2 things:

  1. Clear Goals – This defines what you want your website visitors to do: purchase an item, sign up for a newsletter, read an article, etc… These are the driving factors behind your website. If your website doesn’t have any goals, what do you expect it to do for you?
  2. Calls-to-action – Once you have clearly defined the goals internally, you should work the same language into the site itself. Create big buttons that guide the user toward the intended action: “Contact Us”, “Download File”, etc… This is where design and functionality meet, there is a fine line between distracting the user and drawing their attention.

Humanize Your Website

One of the main reasons behind the rise of social media is a simple principle: people want to talk to other people.

Gone are the days of when corporations would shout down from their ivory towers, it just doesn’t cut it anymore. Stop thinking about your website as a marketing tool, and start thinking about it as a way to engage in the conversation that is already taking place on the web.

A simple way to humanize your website is to get feedback from your audience, whether via blog comments, twitter, or another similar collaboration tool. This allows you to engage with those who matter most — your audience.

Another way to humanize your website it to give a personal touch to otherwise corporate page. Take the contact page for instance.

How you would YOU prefer to communicate: “Chat with Jim” (who you can follow on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc…), or “Use the form below”?

Optimize for People, SEO Will Follow

The final topic deals with the content your website. Here’s a simple test to determine your website effectiveness.

  1. Print out your homepage
  2. Give it to someone outside of your business
  3. Ask them to describe your business back to you using your homepage

The description they give you is exactly what your audience sees when they visit your homepage.

If this clearly and succinctly describes your business (including your industry, objectives, location, contact info), then your homepage content is doing its job. If not, it’s time for a redesign.

Regardless of the application, you should always be focused on including the terms that make the most sense for your business. If the terms help people understand what you do and how to find you, it will help your organic SEO as well.

These tips are NOT a comprehensive web strategy, but should give you some ideas on to improve the overall experience for your users.

How else do you build a better presence for your users?

Photo Credit: LA Cinnamon

Filed Under: Business, Featured, Social Media Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Facebook Goes Down

August 31, 2010 By TJ O'Connor View Comments
FB


rose
Starting last night (and ongoing today), Facebook has been unstable and/or stopped working completely in some cases. This is the first major Facebook outage we have seen since earlier this year when it went down for a few hours on a Friday night.

Overall, Facebook is far more stable than other services such as Twitter, whose infamous “fail whale” is seen on a somewhat regular basis. However, with 500 million users worldwide — many of which rely on Facebook as their sole online service for email, photo sharing, and instant messaging –  the negative response from users is immediate and overwhelming. (My favorite tweet comes from @BestWorstAdvice: “Facebook down, productivity levels around the world increase 80% “)

Whenever there is downtime with a site like this, we are reminded that most web-based services are transitory at best. This is not to say that Facebook is going away anytime soon  — but things change, and the services of today will not necessarily be the services of tomorrow (remember AOL?).  In the short term, a more likely scenario is that Facebook changes its business model, privacy settings, or some other facet of the application and makes it less appealing to businesses.

In either case, we as businesses should learn to keep our options open. We should diversify our social presence the same way we do our portfolio, and for the same reason (to minimize risk). If you spread your presence across the web, using through several different networks, the impact of one network going down is less detrimental to your business.

How has the Facebook outage affected your business?

Original photo: meddygarnet

Filed Under: Business, Featured, Social Media Tagged With: , , ,

The Burden of Information

August 24, 2010 By TJ O'Connor View Comments
CHART


rose

“Information is a source of learning. But unless it is organized, processed, and available to the right people in a format for decision making, it is a burden, not a benefit.”

- William Pollard

Every day, we make decisions based on information. What we often fail to realize is that HOW this information is gathered and presented is equally as important as the information itself.

Let’s take a closer look at information gathering to see how we can eliminate burden and maximize benefit with social media analytics.

Know What You Can Track
This is the most essential step in the entire process of analytics. With all the different social APIs out there, some information can be tracked more easily than others.

For instance, Twitter Search doesn’t include the total number of hits in its results. Even within Google, Blog Search returns the total results in its Feed for the results, and the standard Google Search doesn’t. The record count is accessible through the AJAX API, but that requires some programming to access the data.

Knowing what information is available is a great first step.

Know What You CAN’T Track
Knowing the ins and outs of the various social APIs is extremely helpful in information gathering, but even more useful is knowing what you can’t track. Some of the most important metrics are often the most difficult: number of actual leads generated, number of visits to brick-and-mortar store, etc…

In social campaigns, hard metrics like ROI are often overlooked, even though they are the true measure of success. No amount of Twitter followers is going to help your business if you aren’t making money.

Don’t just throw your hands up and give up on these hard metrics — sometimes it is simpler than you think. Talk to the people in your organization who manage your databases, and see if there is a way to integrate that information into your social analytics.

See the Forest For The Trees
Some of the most important insights are gleaned from combining information from various sources. For instance: Google Analytics says you had a 900% increase in traffic this month, with a majority of the new traffic coming from Twitter.

Awesome, right? Well, not necessarily. What if most of that traffic was driven to your blog to make negative comments? Traffic does not necessarily denote success — and this is where aggregating metrics becomes a powerful tool. The more information you have, the easier it will be to step back and see the big picture.

Show Me The Data
Through visual charts and reports, it is easy to make it look like a campaign is succeeding, even if it is not. There are a few things to watch out for here.

First, make sure you know exactly what the numbers mean. Sure, your fancy new “Buzz” score sounds cool, but how is it being calculated? Some metrics include generic search terms that don’t include anything specific to your brand, and this should be made clear in the reports.

If lots of people are buzzing about “cars” in general, that doesn’t mean much to a local dealership, and it probably won’t impact sales. These types of metrics are important of track overall trends, but unless they are targeted to your brand, they don’t represent success of the campaign. Knowing exactly where these numbers come from allow better insight into their significance.

From Strategy to Action
In the end, having the right information will make the business decisions much easier. It will allow you to monitor the trends, build an informed strategy, and execute that strategy with confidence.

Do you use analytics to make better decisions? How has it worked (or not worked) for you?

Photo Credit: Ben Weiner

Filed Under: Analytics, Business, Featured, Social Media Tagged With: , , , ,

Think Like a Five-Year Old

July 21, 2010 By TJ O'Connor View Comments
think


rose
Most children go through a phase in which everything in their surrounding environment is met with simple question: “Why?” I would contend that those of us in the social space could better help our clients if we all thought a little more like a five-year old.

Build with Purpose

This philosophy extends beyond social marketing, and into web design, user interface development, etc… As a developer, when someone came to me with a piece of code, I would always ask them: Why did you build it this way?

If their response is a blank stare, I know they won’t last very long on my team. Good developers always have a reason why they build something in a particular way, even if it isn’t the best reason (sometime it is just “easier that way”). Great developers have generally thought about several different possible scenarios, weighed the benefits of each, and made the appropriate choice for the circumstances.

With that said…let’s talk social.


Social Icons Everywhere…But not a Drop to Drink.

Everywhere I look, I am being bombarded with social media icons: Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, etc…
As a social media marketer, this is a great. It shows that traditional media and large corporations are listening to what we have been shouting from the rooftops for the last several years. To use the old cliché, they are starting to “get it.”
As a consumer, nothing is more disappointing then taking precious time out of my day to check out a company’s Twitter account, only to see a single tweet: “Trying to figure out this Twitter thing”.
For anyone considering a social presence, ask yourself a simple question…why do you tweet?

Do it Small….but Right

Earlier this week we spoke with a client about a website redesign, specifically the integration of social into the website. After a brief discussion, we decided they would better off with Facebook and YouTube, but without Twitter.

I can almost guarantee this campaign will be successful, because the client has a clear sense of its audience, and we found the right platforms to reach that audience.

Next time you are planning updates to your website or social presence, be sure to ask yourself, “Why?”

————–

Photo Credit: hmk

Filed Under: Business, Content Management, Featured, Social Media, Web 2.0 Tagged With: , , ,

Explaining Social Media to Non-Natives

May 12, 2010 By TJ O'Connor View Comments
social


While speaking at the ITEC conferences, I talk to lots of folks about social media. Interestingly enough, some STILL don’t see the value.

Here’s my advice for how to respond to the common argument against social media:

  1. “We block Facebook at our company”
    Yes, I understand your company blocks Facebook.  They block it because employees would spend a lot of time there, yes?  Well, if your employees (and other workers) are active on Facebook, then your customers are likely active on Facebook as well. They may even be having conversations about your products or services. Isn’t that worth investigating?
  2. “Twitter is for my kids”
    Actually, your kids are probably on Facebook or MySpace, not Twitter. The average age for Twitter users is around 30 years old, making Twitter the “oldest” platform other than LinkedIn.  Also, for all the “noise” on Twitter, it has consistently been the first source of information for organizations ranging from Boston Police to the NFL Draft.
  3. “We have a website, we have no need for a blog”
    Well…not exactly. Your website probably serves as a good source of information about your products, company, etc…, but, chances are, it isn’t very engaging. Take a look at your homepage. What has changed this week? This month? If your website isn’t changing, there isn’t any reason to come back. Using a blog to provide frequently updated content keeps users engaged, brings them back to your site and builds you up as a trusted industry resource.

Interestingly enough, these are the people I enjoy speaking to the most. There’s something really great about seeing someone’s eyes light up when they finally “get it”.

So, the next time you encounter someone who isn’t convinced about social media, take a minute to explain it to them. You may be surprised.

Photo Credit: Webtreats

Filed Under: Business, Featured, Social Media, Web 2.0 Tagged With: , , ,