You pretty much have the pick of the litter when it comes to resources showing you how to “fully leverage the power of twitter.” There are plenty of guides, FAQs, eBooks, blogs, and experts all sharing their advice and tips. However, very few of these resources really dive into how and why Twitter is such a powerful tool.
Our friend, Justin McCullough, tackled these subjects with the release of his new eBook, “Embracing Twitter.”
Justin’s eBook offers professional testimonials on how Twitter has helped them build real connections, and how the ethics that govern our offline relationship influence the effectiveness of 140 characters. In short, you are given true insight on how Twitter really works, and how it can work for you.
“Embracing Twitter” starts with a great overview by Liz Strauss. You then are given a brief rundown on how to navigate the Twitter lingo followed by suggestions from over 30 communication professionals, including Chris Garret, Kelly Olexa, Phil Gerbyshak, Amber Osborne, and Kristie Wells.
In the spirit of full disclosure, I also provide some insight in Chapter 1: Ready to Shake Hands?
Forty six pages of Twitter best practices. Best part? It’s free. This eBook is available for download at no cost. You don’t have to sign up for anything either. Justin and all the contributors felt that what they learned through Twitter should be 100% accessible, and now you have the chance to learn from them.
Download this free eBook at www.embracingtwitter.com, and learn the “why” on why you should use Twitter.
Posted in
communication,
social media Tags:
Amber Osbone,
blogs,
business,
Chirs Garret,
communication,
community,
ebooks,
Justin McCullough,
Kelly Olexa,
Kristie Wells.,
Liz Strauss,
Phil Gerbyshak,
relationships,
socialmedia,
tools,
twitter
One of the best things about the social media space is that there is always something new to learn. During my recent travels I picked up quite a bit of knowledge at a conference called BlogWorld and New Media Expo. It is held annually in Las Vegas, and as far a big conferences go, it’s a real value.
This year was no exception. I took a book worth of notes while I was there, and thought I would share some highlights from Scott Stratten’s keynote.
We’ve shared a presentation of Scott’s here on our blog, and I’d recommend checking it out if you are not familiar with his presentation style. He pretty much set the stage for the entire conference.
You are always marketing
- Marketing is not a task, if you have a potential engagement w/ a customer, consumer, anyone, then you are marketing.
- Everyone in your company is a marketer
- Stand up for what you believe in when you blog. Blog when you have something to say.
- Your blog is your marketing department.
- If you don’t get people or like people, don’t use social media.
Enable the sharing
- The reasons why people share things have not changed. How they spread it has.
- People don’t spread “meh”, they spread amazing and awesome. Be amazing and be awesome.
- Your job when blogging is to get people excited when you do post and want to share it. Make people stop what they are doing and read your post.
- It’s not your job to tell someone how to consume you content. Your job is to to get them to consume it, period.
What’s New in Social Media Scott?
- Forget about “what’s new in Social Media”. Let’s focus on now.
- Social Media doesn’t change the fact that 1) relationships take time and 2) we need to still focus on products and service.
- If you do not have your blog mobile enabled, you are stopping the spread. You are losing readers. Don’t make people jump through hoops to read your content, because they wont.
- Social Media success doesn’t exist. It amplifies what you have – good or bad. If your products or service suck, then social media makes your product suck more.
The Deal w/ SEO
- Rule #1 – write great freakin content.
- The more you engage, the better you will be with social media. But you have to put in the work. You can’t short cut relationships.
- If you are a business, then your social media channels are an extension of your customer service.
- If you are online, your customers will expect you to be immediately present.
ROI
- We hold ROI to social media much harder. What is the ROI of talking and networking? Doesn’t matter if you believe in social media.
- The time issue is the big one but the return of social media is not immediate.
- If your market is people and your niche are humans, then they are there. If you don’t want to be there, then don’t use social media.
Closing Statements
Scott ended his keynote with a request to ignore the haters.
The people who bait you. Let them hate you. Do what you love. Follow your passions. Don’t feed the haters.
He also stressed that one the best things in business is to have someone give you honest and substantial critical feedback.
—
Solid stuff.
I’ll share more from BlogWorld as I clean up my notes.
Scott recently published a new book, “UNMarketing”, and is currently on a book tour. Picture taken by Allison Boyer for BlogWorld Expo
Posted in
events,
social media Tags:
blogging,
blogs,
blogworld,
communication,
conferences,
content,
customer service,
how to,
marketing,
mobile,
products,
relationships,
roi,
SEO,
social media,
speaking
Anyone who tells you otherwise doesn’t truly understand Social Media.
Social Media is communication, and though I’m not a history major, I’m pretty sure people have been communicating since the dawn of time. Cave paintings were the first blog. Hieroglyphics the first tweets. We’ve always strived to communicate and have our message heard.
Communication is social media.
By communication I am referring to the internal desire to share stories, our history, news, what excites us, and what frightens us. These are human connections that drive our offline relationships, and it is the same connections that make up the social web.
The internet is simply the tool we use to communicate, and now technology has allowed us to break the 3rd and 4th walls into a new realm of connecting. You can talk to you neighbor down the street, or someone on the opposite side of the globe. Social Media defies geographic limitations.
Technology has enabled this to happen. But again, technology is not social media. Twitter, Facebook and other tools are inventions of technology. But they are just the instruments we choose to share our voice. The goal is still connecting. When Twitter disappears, rest assured we will find another way to connect.
So again, the tools are new, but they are not Social Media. Social Media is communication, and this is not new.
I keep harking on this because I’m very passionate about communication and what the Social Web is capable of. I don’t like to see companies or organizations fall into the deep side of the pool because they didn’t take the time to discover the rules that govern the social web.
Just remember the rules of engagement and honest communication that govern our offline relationships, transfer online. If you can get away from thinking of the digital landscape as bulletin board, you will be in a better position to humanize your brand. Then you will be able to connect with a far bigger audience than you imagined thanks to the social web.
Now that is something new!
Posted in
social media Tags:
advertising,
advice,
blogging,
blogs,
branding,
brands,
communication,
digital landscape,
facebook,
relationships,
social media,
social web,
strategy,
technology,
twitter
We don’t really have a blog policy. We let our team weigh in on topics relevant to our business in their own words, with their own opinions. Sure, we check to make sure there isn’t anything slanderous or mean, licentious or libelous. But if one of us wants to say they like or don’t like something, that’s okay. If we didn’t have strong opinions individually, we’d be a lousy communications partner all together.
Unfortunately, some people take offense very, very easily. So if we do offend, we do apologize. But we do not tell our people they can’t have a viewpoint of their own.
Discomfort can be a catalyst for change, or it can be a reason to hide. What makes blogs valuable is that they are written by real people with real thoughts and opinions. How you make use of the insights they offer is up to you.
Posted in
new media,
press Tags:
blog policy,
blogging,
blogs,
opinion
Many of our clients have expressed an interest in learning more about social media. So we’ve compiled a recommended reading list.
· Books – ranked by number of Amazon reviews
o The New Rules of Marketing and PR: How to Use News Releases, Blogs, Podcasting, Viral Marketing and Online Media to Reach Buyers Directly – David Meerman Scott (178 reviews)
o Word of Mouth Marketing: How Smart Companies Get People Talking, Revised Edition by Andy Sernovitz, Guy Kawasaki, and Seth Godin (132 Reviews)
o Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies – Charlene Li, Josh Bernoff (94 reviews)
o Twitter Power: How to Dominate Your Market One Tweet at a Time – Joel Comm (91 reviews
o Trust Agents: Using the Web to Build Influence, Improve Reputation, and Earn Trust – Chris Brogan and Julien Smith (42 reviews)
o Six Pixels of Separation: Everyone Is Connected. Connect Your Business to Everyone – Mitch Joel (27 reviews)
o Secrets of Social Media Marketing: How to Use Online Conversations and Customer Communities to Turbo-Charge Your Business! – Paul Gillen (23 reviews)
o Socialnomics: How Social Media Transforms The Way We Live and Do Business – Erik Qualman (23 reviews)
o Open Brand: When Push Comes to Pull in a Web-Made World – Kelly Mooney and Nita Rollins (18 reviews)
o Putting the Public Back in Public Relations: How Social Media is Reinventing the Aging Business of PR – Brian Solis and Deirdre Breakenridge (15 reviews)
Blogs, etc.
o Brian Solis – briansolis.com, twitter.com/briansolis
Principal of FutureWorks, an award-winning PR and New Media agency in Silicon Valley. Solis blogs at PR2.0, bub.blicio.us, and regularly contributes marketing & tech insight to industry publications.
o Chris Brogan – chrisbrogan.com, twitter.com/chrisbrogan
Chris Brogan is President of New Marketing Labs, a new media marketing agency, and co-author of “Trust Agents.” He works with large and mid-sized companies to improve online business communications like marketing and PR through the use of social software, community platforms, and other emerging web and mobile technologies.
o Charlene Li – twitter.com/charleneli, altimetergroup.com/blog
Charlene Li is the Founder of Altimeter Group and co-author of the business bestseller, “Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies,” published by Harvard Business Press in May 2008.
o Joseph Jaffe – jaffejuice.com/jaffejuicetv/, www.crayonville.com/
One of the most sought-after consultants, speakers and thought leaders on new marketing, Joseph Jaffe is President and Chief Interruptor of crayon, a conversational marketing company, specializing in community, dialogue and partnership.
o Guy Kawasaki – blog.guykawasaki.com, twitter.com/guykawasaki
He was one of the Apple employees originally responsible for marketing the Macintosh in 1984. He is currently a Managing Director of Garage Technology Ventures, and has been involved in the rumor reporting site, Truemors, and an RSS aggregator, Alltop. He is also a well-known blogger.
o Groundswell – blogs.forrester.com/groundswell/
Presents ongoing insights from Josh Bernoff and other analysts involved with the ongoing Forrester’s Social Technographics® study.
o Jeremiah Owyang – web-strategist.com/blog/, twitter.com/jowyang
Jeremiah Owyang is a Partner focused on customer strategy at Altimeter Group and author of the popular blog “Web Strategy,” which focuses on how corporations connect with their customers using web technologies.
o MediaPost Social Media Insider http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Archives.showArchive&art_type=66
Social media news from the media, marketing and advertising professional’s leading resource for complete news coverage, engaging events, a focused social network, and comprehensive industry jobs, directories and research.
o SmartBrief on Social Media – smartbrief.com/socialmedia/
SmartBrief on Social Media delivers the best news and insights on the business of social media. The editors become your personal research assistants, handpicking and distilling the most useful information about new and established social networks, user-generated content, blogging, wikis, media sharing, and more.
o Advertising Age DigitalNEXT – adage.com/digitalnext/
The Ad Age DigitalNext blog is a collection of news and opinions on the emerging media and technology space and its opportunities and impact on marketers. The group’s esteemed (and opinionated) contributors run agencies, startups, and creative departments and hail from all sorts of disciplines, including design and user interface, social networking and community, mobile, gaming and virtual worlds.
Articles, posts, whitepapers
o Top 10 Social Media Tools for Entrepreneurs – mashable.com/2009/10/26/social-media-entrepreneurs/
o Social Networking for Businesses & Associations by Cerado – www.cerado.com/…/Cerado-Haystack-Executive-Briefing-Social-Networking-for-Businesses-and-Associations.pdf
o Four Ways Social Networking Can Build Business – bnet.com/2403-13070_23-219914.html
o How to Get Started With LinkedIn – bnet.com/2403-13070_23-219860.html
o Metrics for Social Applications in a Downturn – courses.washington.edu/com529/page2/page7/files/page7_1.pdf
o 50 Ways to use Social Media, listed by Objective – web-strategist.com/blog/2008/07/15/50-ways-to-use-social-media-listed-by-objective/
o A Draft Social Media Metrics Model – webwalker.ca/2008/05/19/a-draft-social-media-metrics-model/
o Social Media Marketing Campaigns: How to Set Goals and Define Your Target Market – http://www.doshdosh.com/social-media-marketing-campaigns-setting-goals-defining-prospects/
o How to Measure Social Media ROI for Business – mashable.com/2009/10/27/social-media-roi/
o 19 sites that can make Twitter soar for you – networkedinc.wordpress.com/2009/07/01/19-sites-that-can-make-twitter-soar-for-you/
Posted in
general Tags:
blogs,
facebook,
interactive,
twitter
Some Thoughts on Social Media and Social Media ROI
Lately I’ve been immersed in discussions about Social Media and figured it’s a good time to share my perspective. From a marketing perspective, the ultimate goal of Social Media, is to have a positive effect on business. Surprising as it is, this is sometimes debated. Some will argue that it’s all about the consumer and not about the corporation. Some will say that Social Media ROI cannot be measured.
I argue, that by approaching social media with the proper attitude – first it’s customer centric and about the corporation second, we can overcome consumer skepticism and be accepted into the community. This can provide the opportunity to connect to consumers on deep levels that other marketing channels have not been able to provide. The result: creation of brand advocates leading to a positive effect on the bottom line.
I look at Social Media as falling into 3 primary categories:
Participate in the existing conversation
· Listen
· Engage
Enter brands within existing communities
· Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, Twitter, etc.
Create your own conversation
· Corporate blogs
· Corporate communities
Social Media Measurement ROI
Okay, so you make the leap and figure that using social media could be good for your company. How do you measure it? Some argue that you can’t or don’t need to. Well, we’re in the business of doing business and we do things to have a positive effect on business, so let’s look for ways to make sure that what we do makes a difference.
This table is based on a model by Forrester Research.
(http://blogs.forrester.com/groundswell/2007/01/new_roi_of_blog.html)
Here we can begin to consider the value (ROI) of our Social Media efforts:
Posted in
general Tags:
blogs,
online community,
return on investment,
roi,
social media roi
You pretty much have the pick of the litter when it comes to resources showing you how to “fully leverage the power of twitter.” There are plenty of guides, FAQs, eBooks, blogs, and experts all sharing their advice and tips. However, very few of these resources really dive into how and why Twitter is such a powerful tool.
