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Archive for the ‘Social Media’ Category

Types of Users of Social Media

Saturday, January 28th, 2012

As many of you know, I talk ‘Social Media’ wherever I go.

It is interesting seeing how the general opinion of people towards Social Media have changed over the three years that I have been ‘going on’ about this fantastic way of marketing your business.

Three years ago, there was much resistance to this new medium – in fact, I think people thought I was on a different planet as I tried to get them to embrace this new method of marketing! Now, there seem to be three schools of thought:

1. Dancing In the Rain

A significant number of businesses are now using Social Media marketing as a key method of establishing their brand, receiving recommendations and yes, generating hits to their website and ultimately increasing their income. In general, these are the businesses who are engaging with their audience using Social Media – having conversations and finding out more about their customers and influencers

2. Under the Umbrella

There are a number of businesses who have profiles and are broadcasting on Social Media. These businesses may not have wonderful profiles, but realise that Social Media Marketing isn’t going away and they need to get involved. I suggest, these businesses now need to take the next steps to improve their profiles, ensure they are using the correct Social Media tools and change from ‘broadcast mode’ to engagement.

3. Staying Dry

I still talk to people who don’t want to get involved. It is a ‘waste of time’ or ‘not for us’ I often get told. I agree that it is not for every business – and certainly every business should take the time to understand which tool is right for their situation.

This is a new way of marketing though, I wonder how many managers or CEOs realise that they can’t or don’t want to use Social Media themselves, but don’t want to let somebody else do it for them as they will have to let go of the marketing message?

I definitely encounter a ‘fear’ of losing control. What is the solution? I would suggest the need for education and training for both the CEO/ manager and the person who will be pushing the content out.

Remember if your employees are engaging around the policies and guidelines you have created, you will have better control of the message than if you put your ‘head in the sand’ as others will still be talking about you.

Where are You?

I encourage you to join us ‘dancing in the rain’ and would love to help you get wet. Where are you at the moment? Do let me know.

Posted in Social Media | No Comments »

Social Media Buttons

Sunday, January 1st, 2012

As part of marketing your presence on Social Media sites, it is a good idea to create Social Media buttons on your website and content. It can be quite confusing though – which button to use in which circumstance. Once you have decided on the button that you want, click on the link to choose your own options in terms of name, size, colour, etc. Then copy and paste the generated HTML code and include in your website – or give to your website designer.

Twitter

1. Twitter Follow Button

Create this button to promote your business Twitter account. Visitors can follow with just one click.

Get the Twitter Follow button.

2. Tweet Button

This button is used to allow your visitors to share a link to your content on their Twitter stream. You can modify the button to add a @mention if you wish.

Get the Tweet button.

3. Twitter Website Widget

This option allows you to create a dynamic widget to showcase your Twitter activity on your website.

There are 4 types of widgets you can create:
Profile Widget – shows your most recent updates,
Search Widget – shows search results in real time (use for a hashtag you are promoting)
Faves Widget – highlight tweets you’ve marked as favourites
List Widget – Showcase tweets from users on a particular Twitter list

Get the Twitter website widget

Facebook

1. Facebook Like Box

You can create a smaller version of this box if you prefer. However, if Facebook is a appropriate place for your audience, it may be appropriate to display who likes your Facebook page.

This widget allows visitors to become a fan or ‘like’ your Facebook Business page without leaving your website.

Get the Facebook Like button

2. Facebook Share Button

This buttton allows visitors to give a virtual ‘thumbs up’ to your content. By clicking the Like Button, a story also appears on the visitor’s Facebook profile and in their friend’s news feeds with a link back to your content.

Get the Facebook Share button

1. Follow LinkedIn Company Profile

Allows visitors to follow your company profile which means they will see your company updates in their stream.

There are two alternatives to this button as you can see.

Get the Follow Us button on the left

Get the button on the right – you will need to use the Follow Us image from LinkedIn and add html code to link to your website.

2. LinkedIn Share Button

Allows visitors to easily share your content with their LinkedIn connections.

Get the LinkedIn Share button.

3. LinkedIn Product / Service Recommend Button

Allows your website visitors to recommend your products and services if you’ve added the product /service to your LinkedIn Company Pages’s Products tabs.

Get the LinkedIn Recommend button

Google +

1. Google+ Page / Profile Button

Allows visitors to follow your Google+ Page. Visitors will need to click the button and add your page to one of their circles to follow you.

Get the Google+ button.

2. Google +1 Button

Allows visitors to recommend your content (to others and to search engines)

Get the Google+1 Button

What do you think? What buttons do you use? Please let me know below.

Posted in Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, Social Media, Twitter | No Comments »

What does your Profile Picture Say?

Wednesday, November 23rd, 2011

Profile pictures are everywhere on the internet. These are pictures that give you a personal side. I know that there is an argument that bigger brands use their logo on Twitter, but I’m thinking of those sites that are about you – Google+, LinkedIn, Facebook, etc.

What does your picture say about you? I was teaching on a Face to Face LinkedIn workshop recently. We were discussing how keywords worked and I arbitrarily did a keyword search for Business Development Manager – or something similar. LinkedIn returned a list of people – one of whom was a senior manager in a large corporate company. The reaction in the room was amazing – “I wouldn’t do business with him” was the over-riding feeling. This was based solely on the picture of the person.

There was nothing essentially wrong with the profile picture – it wasn’t a picture of his dog, which I have seen. It wasn’t a picture of him half-dressed, which I’ve also seen. It was however, clearly a holiday snap – it looked like a zoomed in picture of the person in front of some buildings . He was informally dressed and the picture did not shout ‘professional person’.

This really brought it home to me how important it is to have a professional profile picture. In my opinion, the picture should

Be clear and easy to recognise the individual. Don’t hide behind a desk.
Be professionally taken – not a zoomed in holiday snap.
Your appearance in the photo should reflect who you are. If you ‘suit and boot’ at client meetings, then ‘suit and boot’ in your picture.
Larger brands may want to brand the picture by including the logo
Make you look approachable and friendly (assuming you are!). A passport style photo probably does not give the right impression.
Be consistent – use the same photo everywhere so it becomes part of your brand.

I would love to know what you think. Please share good and bad examples (without naming individuals please!).

Tags: Picture, Professional, Social Media Profile
Posted in Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, Social Media, Twitter | No Comments »

Should you create a Google+ Page for your business?

Wednesday, November 9th, 2011

So Google+ has finally introduced the ability for businesses to create a business page. Should you bother? I’m still trying to decide and can see arguments on both sides.

No – don’t bother with Google+

1. Google+ is yet another tool that you have to update and engage with. We already struggle to find time to update and engage with Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Facebook and LinkedIn both have individual profiles and company profiles all ready. Do we have time to use yet another tool?

2. Where is your audience? How many of your audience are actively using Google+? Yes, they have 40 million people registered but this is nothing compared to the 500 million on Facebook or even 150 million on LinkedIn. I have noticed that I have talking to a different group of people on Google+ though which is interesting.

3. Google+ Pages are not that easy to interact with – at the moment. To follow a Page to need to add the page to your circles – clicking the +1 just indicates you think the page is good – it doesn’t mean that you are following updates. People need to really understand how circles work and deliberately add your Page to a Circle – they really want to follow your page.

Yes – Get a Google + Page now

1. It is really quite easy to set up a Google+ page – the interface is friendly and easy to use. You can rethink your digital marketing and think of some fresh things to put up.

2. I like the idea of ‘hangouts’, you can set up a webinar conversation right within Google + with some of your customers or followers.

3. Great links to video – I uploaded 10 videos very quickly to Google +

4. This is Google – more functionality is inevitable – get in at the beginning and grow with the tool.

5. This is Google. How long will it be before Google + pages are included in search results? Can you afford not to be in the mix?

Overall, I’m quite excited about Google+ Pages. I have a Google+ workshop on January 20th if anybody is in the Faringdon, Oxfordshire area – or I can travel to you.

Take a look at the Concise Training page and let me know what you think – don’t forget to add the Concise Training Page to your circles!

What are your thoughts?

Tags: Google+, Social Media
Posted in Google+, Social Media | No Comments »

What is in a Twitter Username?

Wednesday, October 26th, 2011

When I was presenting at the B4 Networking event last week, I was asked an interesting question about Twitter usernames – “How should you choose a Twitter username?”.

In my mind, there are several things you need to consider:

1. Link to your company

If you are using Twitter for brand building, I think it makes it easier if your Twitter name is linked to your company name. People may well have heard of ConciseTraining because of seeing me on Social Media.

This doesn’t always work. At the moment, Concise Training is just me – how will this work if and when I expand? If it is appropriate for more than one account to be linked with the business, I think I would create linked names so MaryAtConcise for example – but still keep ConciseTraining as the main account to keep the brand link. If you use a name that is completely different from your company, then people may find what you say really interesting but will not associate it with what you do for a living.

2. Use Your Personal Name

There is a school of thought that says Twitter should be person to person so the Twitter name should be a personal name. I agree with this to an extent – My ConciseTraining account currently has a link to my name with a photo of me which is how I make it personal. You do need to make sure though that your Twitter name is clearly linked to your real name. If you are known as MaryThomas then use that (in the unlikely chance it is available), don’t use mdthomas – I might not know your middle name so how would I find you / or remember you if I wanted to mention you?

3 Uniqueness

Twitter names need to be unique. This is causing a problem for a few businesses as the relevant Twitter name might have already gone. You will need to identify a suitable alternative. When I was talking about Social Media a couple of years ago, I urged businesses to ‘grab’ their Twitter name. In some cases, it is too late, but I still think it is important if you can.
As a new business, you need to create an identity with a unique Twitter / Facebook name as well as a unique domain name. Try to make it easy to remember though – if I have to use marythomas for anything, I tend to always use 66 at the end which I think makes it slightly more memorable than 1 or 2

4. Length

You are restricted to 15 characters when creating your Twitter name – with no spaces. This is causing problems for businesses with great long names. You need to identify an appropriate shortened version.

5. Easy to Remember

One of the things we want to happen on Twitter is that people talk about you. Make it easy for people to talk about you on Twitter by using a name that is easy to write and easy to remember. People won’t search for you all the time if they can’t remember who you are – they just won’t mention you. Use a version of your business name or personal name or nickname that is easy to associate with you as a person and easy to remember. See comments under uniqueness above.

There is no easy answer to a Twitter name and everybody has a different case – do put some thought into it however, and think about how it reflects your brand and values.

I would love to know if you have you got any tips to share regarding Twitter usernames.

Tags: Twitter, usernames
Posted in Social Media, Twitter | 2 Comments »

Six Changes to Facebook Business Pages

Sunday, October 2nd, 2011

In the last couple of weeks, Facebook has implemented a number of changes. These will have an immediate impact on how you use Facebook at a personal level, but how will the changes affect the way that businesses use Facebook?

1. Content is King

The jury is still out and not all changes have been fully implemented but it is immediately clear that brands are going to have to put much more work into the content of their updates. Before the updates, if you got people to ‘like’ your page then you were able to get your updates in front of your ‘fans’ because the fan’s newsfeeds was ordered by most recent.

Now the individual’s newsfeed is ordered by Top Stories. Facebook will automatically order the feeds based on the connection between the individual and the author, and individuals can indicate which posts they consider are their top stories. Brands who have boring or irrelevant updates will have lower visibility.

The emphasis now will be on brands with interesting content who get clicks and comments from a varying group of people.

2. Friend Activity Tab

Pages now have a friend activity tab so when a user goes on to your page they can see which of your friends commented and what was said. This gives weight to the viral nature of pages – but is dependent on getting somebody to your page to start with.

3. Anyone can Post

Users can now post on your page without first ‘liking’ it. This could give rise to more negative comments or spammers – you may have to spend more time monitoring this.

4. Larger Photos

There appears to be more emphasis on photos. Photos posted appear as a larger thumbnail in the newsfeed. Businesses posting relevant, amusing photos are more likely to be noticed.

5. Length of Updates

The length of posts has been increased from 500 characters to 5,000 characters. On the one hand, this enable more detailed thoughts – but longer posts makes it harder to scan read. Facebook seems to work best when status updates are easy to read and comment on.

6. Tabs Must Now be SSL compliant

From 1st October 2011, all user tabs on Facebook Pages (e.g. welcome tabs) must have an SSL certificate (work with https) to confirm that they are ‘safe’. You may find that your user tabs no longer work. It seems to be taking a time to roll this out – but it is worth checking that your tabs will work in the future. To do this

1. Login to Facebook with your personal account
2. Click down arrow on the top right and Account Settings
3. Click Security Setttings
4. Enable Secure Browsing

Check your user tabs are still displayed on your Facebook Page. If an error message is displayed, you need to look at how the welcome page was created. I used the wildfire app to create mine and it is still working – at the moment! I believe that I will eventually have to change it to include an image from a secure website – watch the blog for information if and when I have to do it.

Apparently more changes are promised, particularly introducing the new Timeline to pages. How do you think these changes will affect you and your business?

Tags: Facebook Changes
Posted in Facebook, Social Media | No Comments »

5 Useful Twitter Tools

Monday, July 25th, 2011

As we know, Twitter is a great tool to use to listen to and engage with your customers. There are additional tools around the basic Twitter.com interface that you should be aware of to make your use of Twitter more time efficient.

1. HootSuite (www.hootsuite.com)

I use Hootsuite to monitor all the Twitter accounts that I am managing as well as monitoring Facebook and LinkedIn. I have upgraded to the paid option, but I would recommend (and teach) the free option to get started. HootSuite is useful to monitor Twitter lists or groups, schedule tweets as well as monitor mentions of your own Twitter account. There are other tools including TweetDeck and SproutSocial, but I choose HootSuite as I like the user interface and the fact that you can access it from the internet. No downloads and the internet access means that I can access the same setup from my mobile, my desktop, my laptop and any other internet location.

2. Twilert (www.twilert.com)

I run Twitter workshops in Oxfordshire. I use twilert to inform me whenever anybody mentions similar workshops or training within 50 miles of Oxford. This means that I can keep an eye on my competition as well as see anybody who is looking for training. I can setup a number of keywords and receive a daily digest of tweets mentioning the keywords.

3. Tweepi (www.tweepi.com)

Shows
a) Who you are following who is not following you back and
b) who is following you that you are not following you back
There is nothing wrong in following people that are not following you back – you might find their tweets interesting. It is worth going through the list every so often to see whether you need to remove anybody from the list – spammers for example.

You might want to keep an eye on those people following you who you are not following – particularly if you don’t automatically follow back using tools like SocialOomph (see below).

4. SocialOomph (www.socialoomph.com)

I have used Socialoomph for a couple of years. I only use the tool for automatically following , setting up automated welcome messages and keyword email digests – but it can do much more. I personally prefer the user interface of tools like HootSuite. Setting up automated messages and automatically following are now paid options on SocialOomph – but I do get interest from my automated welcome messages, so personally I think it is worth the small fee.

5. Tweet Chat (www.tweetchat.com)

A tool which enables you to chat with others on Twitter in real time focused around a

particular #tag. For example, I occasionally take part in the #lrn monthly chat. If I setup Tweetchat to monitor the #tag, it will show all relevant tweets. You could use a search term to do this, but tweetchat allows you to pause the stream, change the speed of the refresh and automatically adds the # tag to any post that you send.

This isn’t an exhaustive list – there are other tools being developed all the time. What tools do you find particularly useful when you use Twitter?

Posted in Social Media, Twitter | No Comments »

What do I say on Social Media?

Thursday, May 26th, 2011

One of the things I am often asked during my Social Media Workshops is what should I say?

The exact content and frequency of your updates is dependent upon your audience and your type of business and also the Social Media tool that you are using. For example, I would recommend a quality update once a week on LinkedIn using the 160 characters available, whereas Twitter lends itself to more frequent, informal updates.

Suggestions for content

- Add Value, give people a reason to follow you

- Give people tips that are relevant to your product or service

- Give answers to questions you are frequently asked about your product or service

- Promote events that you are attending / have attending or are presenting / exhibiting

- Ask people their opinion of a topical subject

- Give ideas of questions that people should ask if they are going to buy your type of product or service

- Celebrate your successes (keeping client confidentiality)

- Ask for help (in finding a supplier or solving a problem)

- Link to / comment on interesting news items

- Share articles that you have read that are related to your product or service

- Personal, real time information (infrequent, but come over as a person)

- Reply to other’s comments.

- New products or promotions that you are selling (but be careful not to overdo this)

I would suggest that you write down a list of things you could talk about and then identify which update should appear on which of the tools that you are using and which can be scheduled to happen automatically in the future.

Take the time to set up scheduled updates on your tool of choice every week or every month. Make sure you put time aside each day (if possible) to engage in real time conversation with your followers.

Over time, monitor the results – which type of update do you get the most engagement from? Do make sure you review and update every few months.

What do you talk about on Social Media – do add your suggestions for everybody to learn from.