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Product Spotlight
5 Ways to Build Influential Connections Using LinkedIn Groups
Monday, April 18, 2011To build influential relationships online, you have to find places where you can consistently add value and have engaging conversations with your target demographic audience.
LinkedIn Groups is a great way to do just that, but you must use the right strategy to be successful. LinkedIn allows you to join up to 50 groups. However you can’t spend enough time in all of those groups to make a difference.
It is best to narrow your approach and focus on building deep, meaningful relationships to help build your influence in LinkedIn Groups. This will help enhance your credibility and generate new connections.
1. Identify the Best Group Opportunities.
Start by evaluating the groups that you have joined or are thinking about joining. Which 3 to 5 groups most accurately represent your target demographic? Also, choose groups whose membership isn’t so large that you will go unnoticed. Choose groups that have at least a few hundred members, but not more than a few thousand. This will help maximize your visibility.
Set up a plan to visit each group 2-3 times a week and make frequent, consistent appearances. See below for an example of a Financial Advisors Group Discussion.
2. Target the Most Popular Discussions in Each Group
The most popular discussions within a group will generally get you the most visibility. These are topics where members are the most actively engaged and feature discussions that you will want to be a part of. These are usually featured at the top of the discussion page. See example of a post with comment.
When adding your voice in the conversation, make sure to respond to comments, provide insight and ask thought provoking questions to help move the conversations forward. You can also “like” and “share” these discussions with your exisiting connections.
As you add value to these discussions, members will begin to recognize you as a leader within the group.
3. Follow Up and Follow Through
Make sure to keep up on the discussions you start and join. Don’t let too much time lapse between posts and don’t leave the conversation open. Keep your comments fresh and interesting to show your commitment to the group.
Don’t forget to like other comments made by group members and share their insights with your followers. This helps the other group members and they will return the favor. By promoting and connecting others on LinkedIn, you can build your social influence.
4. Start Your Own Discussion
Starting your own discussion thread can be a powerful tool within the group. However, you must be strategic when doing this. I suggest you wait to start your own discussions until after you have spent time participating in the top discussions first and have been listening for some time to get to know the voices of the people in the group.
Before starting your own discussion, do some research and look back at past discussions. Which topics were popular and which were not? Look at what the top contributors are saying and what is important to them? What are their goals and objectives?
When starting your own discussions, ask a question, ask for advice, or post an interesting article related to the group. Your goal is to encourage as much engagement as possible.
If your posts and comments are engaging members of the group, you will be recognized as a “Top Influencer” on the group page’s side bar. This can help build your visibility and give you authority within the group. You can see below that Stephanie Sammons has been a top Influencer of the week with her active participation with posting comments. Get your name out there for Top Influencers of the Week with timely posts.
It is important that you are adding value to the discussions that you join and start. Avoid trying to sell products or services as that will get you ignored or worse, kicked out of the group.
5. Start Your Own Group
After you have joined groups, contributed to discussions and started your own discussions, you can create your own group. Beware as this takes a time commitment and you will be responsible for managing the group, members and discussions. You will also be able to feature discussions with the “Manager’s Choice” feature.
When starting your group, make sure that you have a well- defined theme or else you may not get much traffic. Focus on bringing in people who can benefit from sharing mutual experiences and ideas.
Using this strategy can help you get the most from your time and energy. Make a commitment to add value to a small number of groups on a consistent basis. This will help you build influence and new connections.
DJ Heckes, CEO & Author
EXHIB-IT! Tradeshow Marketing Experts
www.exhib-it.com
Full BRAIN Marketing
www.fullbrainmarketing.com
LinkedIn Groups is a great way to do just that, but you must use the right strategy to be successful. LinkedIn allows you to join up to 50 groups. However you can’t spend enough time in all of those groups to make a difference.
It is best to narrow your approach and focus on building deep, meaningful relationships to help build your influence in LinkedIn Groups. This will help enhance your credibility and generate new connections.
1. Identify the Best Group Opportunities.
Start by evaluating the groups that you have joined or are thinking about joining. Which 3 to 5 groups most accurately represent your target demographic? Also, choose groups whose membership isn’t so large that you will go unnoticed. Choose groups that have at least a few hundred members, but not more than a few thousand. This will help maximize your visibility.
Set up a plan to visit each group 2-3 times a week and make frequent, consistent appearances. See below for an example of a Financial Advisors Group Discussion.
2. Target the Most Popular Discussions in Each Group
The most popular discussions within a group will generally get you the most visibility. These are topics where members are the most actively engaged and feature discussions that you will want to be a part of. These are usually featured at the top of the discussion page. See example of a post with comment.
When adding your voice in the conversation, make sure to respond to comments, provide insight and ask thought provoking questions to help move the conversations forward. You can also “like” and “share” these discussions with your exisiting connections.
As you add value to these discussions, members will begin to recognize you as a leader within the group.
3. Follow Up and Follow Through
Make sure to keep up on the discussions you start and join. Don’t let too much time lapse between posts and don’t leave the conversation open. Keep your comments fresh and interesting to show your commitment to the group.
Don’t forget to like other comments made by group members and share their insights with your followers. This helps the other group members and they will return the favor. By promoting and connecting others on LinkedIn, you can build your social influence.
4. Start Your Own Discussion
Starting your own discussion thread can be a powerful tool within the group. However, you must be strategic when doing this. I suggest you wait to start your own discussions until after you have spent time participating in the top discussions first and have been listening for some time to get to know the voices of the people in the group.
Before starting your own discussion, do some research and look back at past discussions. Which topics were popular and which were not? Look at what the top contributors are saying and what is important to them? What are their goals and objectives?
When starting your own discussions, ask a question, ask for advice, or post an interesting article related to the group. Your goal is to encourage as much engagement as possible.
If your posts and comments are engaging members of the group, you will be recognized as a “Top Influencer” on the group page’s side bar. This can help build your visibility and give you authority within the group. You can see below that Stephanie Sammons has been a top Influencer of the week with her active participation with posting comments. Get your name out there for Top Influencers of the Week with timely posts.
It is important that you are adding value to the discussions that you join and start. Avoid trying to sell products or services as that will get you ignored or worse, kicked out of the group.
5. Start Your Own Group
After you have joined groups, contributed to discussions and started your own discussions, you can create your own group. Beware as this takes a time commitment and you will be responsible for managing the group, members and discussions. You will also be able to feature discussions with the “Manager’s Choice” feature.
When starting your group, make sure that you have a well- defined theme or else you may not get much traffic. Focus on bringing in people who can benefit from sharing mutual experiences and ideas.
Using this strategy can help you get the most from your time and energy. Make a commitment to add value to a small number of groups on a consistent basis. This will help you build influence and new connections.
DJ Heckes, CEO & Author
EXHIB-IT! Tradeshow Marketing Experts
www.exhib-it.com
Full BRAIN Marketing
www.fullbrainmarketing.com
Grow Your Business With 5 Social Data Tips
Monday, April 11, 2011Social media enables you to match data created by social interactions with individual’s preferences and general interests. This gives marketers profiles with great insights on how to tailor future offers and products to their customer base.
1. Listening Data
The first rule of every social media plan is to listen. Monitoring news related to your industry helps give you a sense of what people are saying about you and your products or services. Social media enables you to expand this information and make it more relevant.
You can gather real time data about the reactions to your products and marketing campaigns by looking at interactions on Facebook, retweets, mentions on Twitter and comments on your blogs. Measuring the volume, emotion and relevance of these interactions, and tracking over time, will allow you to determine how new products, services and campaigns were received by your customers.
Using tools like Google Alerts and HootSuite allow you to monitor the basic volume of interactions. If you have a high volume and manual tracking is not possible, there are paid products such as Radian 6, Meltwater buzz and Scout Labs available.
Companies like Dell and Gatorade have set up company “listening” centers where employees constantly interact and listen within social media about their brand.
2. Strategic Forecasting Data
Companies like RapLeaf allow you to identify your customer base by revealing key insights and trends about which social networks your customers are using as well as which websites they are visiting, location trends and demographic trends.
Using this data will help you to hone your financial performance objections and also assist in product development. You can also use this information to tailor promotions for each social network and then track the revenue. Knowing this information about your customer base allows for more accurate targeting and the option of personalizing campaigns.
3. Real Time Tracking Data
Social media allows marketers to view relevant and real time trends, including how their campaigns are performing at any given time and how changes to these campaigns affect results.
Tracking this data allows businesses to see how a campaign is performing and allows them to identify positive or negative trends and make instant changes as needed along the way. This ability enables your business to curtail any wasteful spending or funding if the campaign isn’t going as planned.
4. Benchmarking Data
Social Media allows you to understand your performance relative to your competitor’s performance, because so much of it is accessible. Once you have gathered your data, compare it to your competitors to gain a better perspective on your performance.
When doing so, be sure to compare the size of your communities to that of your competitors, as well as the level of activity. Do your followers post more or less than your competitors? You can also see who is following you and your competitors and who has more relevant community members for your industry.
If you are receiving either more or fewer interactions than your competitor, but posting the same amount of content, look at the differences in your content and what is driving the results. Don’t forget to account for competitors in each social channel you are active on and if possible, benchmark yourself against competitors that are active across multiple channels.
5. Reflection and Insight
No matter how prepared a company is, there is always a level of uncertainty in social media. The advantage to tracking services is that you won’t find yourself guessing why something worked or didn’t work. Customer feedback is significant and more readily available for companies looking to reformulate their efforts.
By understanding the campaign through your consumer’s eyes and gaining the ability to gauge their evaluation process, social data can be an invaluable tool. How will you use this social data in 2011 to grow your business and eliminate the coming to a “dead end” scenario? Using metrics to “measure and adjust” provides a company the opportunity to evaluate and adjust the social media strategy as needed.
This allows your social media efforts to be measured (quantifiable) with the belief that your efforts are working (succeeding). With these components being measured, you can purposefully iterate to improve even more. This data is much better that being a “naïve optimist” with limited ability to measure your social media efforts (fuzzy) and believing that the efforts are working (succeeding).
Most businesses realize that social media is worth the effort, but are not quite sure how best to measure their efforts. I hope this information above helps you get started in your social media campaign and allows you to think strategically, while realizing that tactical measurements are also as important in whatever social media campaign strategy you have in place.
1. Listening Data
The first rule of every social media plan is to listen. Monitoring news related to your industry helps give you a sense of what people are saying about you and your products or services. Social media enables you to expand this information and make it more relevant.
You can gather real time data about the reactions to your products and marketing campaigns by looking at interactions on Facebook, retweets, mentions on Twitter and comments on your blogs. Measuring the volume, emotion and relevance of these interactions, and tracking over time, will allow you to determine how new products, services and campaigns were received by your customers.
Using tools like Google Alerts and HootSuite allow you to monitor the basic volume of interactions. If you have a high volume and manual tracking is not possible, there are paid products such as Radian 6, Meltwater buzz and Scout Labs available.
Companies like Dell and Gatorade have set up company “listening” centers where employees constantly interact and listen within social media about their brand.
2. Strategic Forecasting Data
Companies like RapLeaf allow you to identify your customer base by revealing key insights and trends about which social networks your customers are using as well as which websites they are visiting, location trends and demographic trends.
Using this data will help you to hone your financial performance objections and also assist in product development. You can also use this information to tailor promotions for each social network and then track the revenue. Knowing this information about your customer base allows for more accurate targeting and the option of personalizing campaigns.
3. Real Time Tracking Data
Social media allows marketers to view relevant and real time trends, including how their campaigns are performing at any given time and how changes to these campaigns affect results.
Tracking this data allows businesses to see how a campaign is performing and allows them to identify positive or negative trends and make instant changes as needed along the way. This ability enables your business to curtail any wasteful spending or funding if the campaign isn’t going as planned.
4. Benchmarking Data
Social Media allows you to understand your performance relative to your competitor’s performance, because so much of it is accessible. Once you have gathered your data, compare it to your competitors to gain a better perspective on your performance.
When doing so, be sure to compare the size of your communities to that of your competitors, as well as the level of activity. Do your followers post more or less than your competitors? You can also see who is following you and your competitors and who has more relevant community members for your industry.
If you are receiving either more or fewer interactions than your competitor, but posting the same amount of content, look at the differences in your content and what is driving the results. Don’t forget to account for competitors in each social channel you are active on and if possible, benchmark yourself against competitors that are active across multiple channels.
5. Reflection and Insight
No matter how prepared a company is, there is always a level of uncertainty in social media. The advantage to tracking services is that you won’t find yourself guessing why something worked or didn’t work. Customer feedback is significant and more readily available for companies looking to reformulate their efforts.
By understanding the campaign through your consumer’s eyes and gaining the ability to gauge their evaluation process, social data can be an invaluable tool. How will you use this social data in 2011 to grow your business and eliminate the coming to a “dead end” scenario? Using metrics to “measure and adjust” provides a company the opportunity to evaluate and adjust the social media strategy as needed.
This allows your social media efforts to be measured (quantifiable) with the belief that your efforts are working (succeeding). With these components being measured, you can purposefully iterate to improve even more. This data is much better that being a “naïve optimist” with limited ability to measure your social media efforts (fuzzy) and believing that the efforts are working (succeeding).
Most businesses realize that social media is worth the effort, but are not quite sure how best to measure their efforts. I hope this information above helps you get started in your social media campaign and allows you to think strategically, while realizing that tactical measurements are also as important in whatever social media campaign strategy you have in place.
How to Use Social Media to Enhance Customer Relations
Monday, April 04, 2011I recently watched a video of how Jennifer Love, Senior Vice President of Communications at H&R Block, uses Social Media to engage their customers and relationship build with consumers. They research where their consumers like to go such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Blog writing and want to touch their customers where they are currently talking.
H&R Block has an active fan page of over 16,000 fans in Facebook. They use social media to posts tax tips, help consumers get ready for tax season, post what questions to ask tax advisors, and even if going it alone and doing their own taxes, they post how to prepare your own taxes and post helpful content to help people through the process.
They find Twitter is a great early alarm system for them. They post comments for customers having challenges out there and have had several instances where customers had checked in on foursquare, started Tweeting on Twitter about their experience at the tax desk. If the consumer’s experience was not favorable, they are able to monitor and give the consumer to a different tax pro to ensure their tax experience is what H&R Block wanted it to be. They also use the consumer information to find out when one of their tax pros are not doing what is needed and use that information as a learning experience to train the tax pros and staff to become more customer service related for consumer needs.
Twitter is a great example to use information for monitoring quick content, but be sure to invite a person offline that may be saying negative things about your company to resolve an issue one to one and not turn into a public conversation. H&R Block finds that 6 out of 10 people they invite off line goes back online saying “thank you” for helping them solve their issue. Be sure to protect the privacy of each consumer that you talk offline with.
Since we all work, live and play in an instantaneous world, we need to have a mass adoption of social media. Social media is the wave to make things happen and respond timely as needed to manage your reputation online. Here are some great takeaway tips you can learn from H&R Block to adopt in your own business.
H&R Block has an active fan page of over 16,000 fans in Facebook. They use social media to posts tax tips, help consumers get ready for tax season, post what questions to ask tax advisors, and even if going it alone and doing their own taxes, they post how to prepare your own taxes and post helpful content to help people through the process.
They find Twitter is a great early alarm system for them. They post comments for customers having challenges out there and have had several instances where customers had checked in on foursquare, started Tweeting on Twitter about their experience at the tax desk. If the consumer’s experience was not favorable, they are able to monitor and give the consumer to a different tax pro to ensure their tax experience is what H&R Block wanted it to be. They also use the consumer information to find out when one of their tax pros are not doing what is needed and use that information as a learning experience to train the tax pros and staff to become more customer service related for consumer needs.
Twitter is a great example to use information for monitoring quick content, but be sure to invite a person offline that may be saying negative things about your company to resolve an issue one to one and not turn into a public conversation. H&R Block finds that 6 out of 10 people they invite off line goes back online saying “thank you” for helping them solve their issue. Be sure to protect the privacy of each consumer that you talk offline with.
Since we all work, live and play in an instantaneous world, we need to have a mass adoption of social media. Social media is the wave to make things happen and respond timely as needed to manage your reputation online. Here are some great takeaway tips you can learn from H&R Block to adopt in your own business.
- Engage with customers on their channel of choice. When you engage with customers on their channel, then you have their attention, they feel comfortable and will respond better to your message.
- Use different tactics on Facebook, Twitter and on your blog. Post tips and advice on Facebook. Twitter is used as an alarm system to alert when there is customer service problems. It allows you to be able to respond quickly and move the conversation offline. Blogging is used to have experts answer one-on-one questions, along with getting advice and help.
- Share tips and helpful content as related to customer needs. By monitoring the conversations in social media, you are able to tailor your tips and advice posts to what your customers need.
- Create a one-on-one environment by assigning an expert for monitoring results. Having a dedicated person or full department (if a larger company) that monitors social media for issues and questions. Consider having experts readily available to answer such questions.
- Invite people to go off the grid to find solutions one-on-one. Be a good listener. Get to know the people you are conversing with and let them get to know you. Then they will be more likely to talk with you off of social media. (On average, (6 out of 10 of these people come back online to say how happy they are.)
- Be empathic - think about solutions and try a variety of different things. When people come to you in distress or with problems, offer a variety of solutions to solve the problem.
- Set up an internal social media hub. Have a social media savvy expert ready to respond to questions as they arise Set up a person in your company that has a lot of product and service knowledge or set up teams in each department with experts (if a larger company) so that when a problem arises, you have a quick and timely response ready. Set up a dashboard to be able to monitor conversations so you can be on top and react quickly.
- Determine how to improve the customer’s experience. Jennifer Love uses Radian6 to manage trending topics, know who has answered what and can follow up timely. This is a paid social media listening dashboard. Lots of corporations use it.
- Leverage generic answers to help thousands of people. Because people expect answers fast, be prepared with fact sheets and post answers to questions in easy to find places for more generic questions that arise.
How to Reach Your Audience When Consumers are Revolting Against Traditional Marketing
Monday, March 28, 2011We could all learn from the 2008 Democratic presidential campaign there President Barack Obama faced Hilary Clinton and knew he could not compete with Hillary Clinton financially. Instead of the traditional telemarketing and direct mail campaigns or TV and radio advertising, he made new rules. President Obama had a team to help with blogging and he created profiles on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.
Another smart thing he did was hire co-founder of Facebook Chris Hughes to be his internet strategist. This is how he won the Democratic presidential nomination without spending as much money as his opponent.
At the time of the election, President Obama had five million fans on Facebook, which was over four million more than Hillary Clinton. On Twitter, he had well over 100,000 followers with his opponent having had about 5,000. On MySpace, the numbers ranged around 800,000 to Hillary Clinton’s 200,000.
While I am not trying to turn this blog into a political preference, but am saying that we could all learn in our own businesses how to become successful marketers through this successful campaign strategy.
All this was done just by following the principles of inbound marketing. If you are marketing your business the old-fashioned way, you’re using Outbound Marketing strategies and techniques. Outbound Marketing is the method of throwing your business into the public arena and hoping the “right people” see it and listen to it. Inbound marketing on the other hand is creating a message that only the right target audience would be interested in, and then helping them stumble upon it.
If you are having trouble seeing and relating to the difference, consider this:
Outbound marketing - A great example is the 2012 Lexus LFA commercial during the Super Bowl. They probably spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to advertise during the Super Bowl when only a tiny fraction of that audience would qualify financially for their vehicles.
Inbound marketing – The 2012 Lexus LFA could help people who have the income and desire for their vehicles by blogging, posting a video on YouTube and direct to their website through lead generation channels for qualified future customers.
Both Consumers and Existing Customers are Revolting against In-Your-Face Marketing.
Did you wake up today and want to have someone just “drop in” your office while you are busy at work to sell to you? Many consumers are fed up with traditional marketing techniques and want to avoid so much interruption throughout the day. They have turned their collective backs on traditional advertising and are looking to friends and family members for advice instead. Consumers know any ad they see is just a sales pitch and probably don’t even need whatever is being advertised.
However, when they do need a product and/or service, they know their friends and families can help provide them with unbiased testimonials about the products and/or services they like. Tapping into those conversations is one of the new rules of marketing for businesses today.
With all the spam-blockers for emails, TiVo and Mute buttons, getting found doesn’t mean spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to create a prime-time commercial that many viewers will mute or fast forward to avoid. Just like putting on an online banner ad for a product that is targeted for an audience of 40+ will not work if put in front of a 21 year old.
Getting found online means writing extensively how your solution to someone else’s problem will work for that target audience. Write to help people with a problem find your online documents. When moving from outbound to inbound marketing, you need to stop interrupting people within your target market and instead “get found” by them.
Market in a Way that People Search for Information.
Do your due diligence research and read and really listen to the way others are shopping for similar products. According to Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah, authors of Inbound Marketing: Get Found Using Google, Social Media, and Blogs, “To be successful and grow your business and revenues, you must match the way you market your products with the way your products learn about and shop for your products.” Interruption based marketing is coming to an end due to people becoming much more efficient at blocking out traditional methods of marketing and they are becoming equally efficient at finding trusted information online.
You no longer need to spend a lot of money interrupting potential customers and instead you need to create remarkable content, optimize the content, publish the content, market that content, and measure what is working and what is not working. Becoming a savvy inbound marketer is half traditional marketer and half content creation marketer.
According to Halligan and Shah, “On average, inbound marketing leads are 61 percent less expensive than Outbound Marketing leads.” So take a tip from the Democratic election campaign of Barack Obama and cut your marketing bill in half and start a conversation with your customers!
Another smart thing he did was hire co-founder of Facebook Chris Hughes to be his internet strategist. This is how he won the Democratic presidential nomination without spending as much money as his opponent.
At the time of the election, President Obama had five million fans on Facebook, which was over four million more than Hillary Clinton. On Twitter, he had well over 100,000 followers with his opponent having had about 5,000. On MySpace, the numbers ranged around 800,000 to Hillary Clinton’s 200,000.
While I am not trying to turn this blog into a political preference, but am saying that we could all learn in our own businesses how to become successful marketers through this successful campaign strategy.
All this was done just by following the principles of inbound marketing. If you are marketing your business the old-fashioned way, you’re using Outbound Marketing strategies and techniques. Outbound Marketing is the method of throwing your business into the public arena and hoping the “right people” see it and listen to it. Inbound marketing on the other hand is creating a message that only the right target audience would be interested in, and then helping them stumble upon it.
If you are having trouble seeing and relating to the difference, consider this:
Outbound marketing - A great example is the 2012 Lexus LFA commercial during the Super Bowl. They probably spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to advertise during the Super Bowl when only a tiny fraction of that audience would qualify financially for their vehicles.
Inbound marketing – The 2012 Lexus LFA could help people who have the income and desire for their vehicles by blogging, posting a video on YouTube and direct to their website through lead generation channels for qualified future customers.
Both Consumers and Existing Customers are Revolting against In-Your-Face Marketing.
Did you wake up today and want to have someone just “drop in” your office while you are busy at work to sell to you? Many consumers are fed up with traditional marketing techniques and want to avoid so much interruption throughout the day. They have turned their collective backs on traditional advertising and are looking to friends and family members for advice instead. Consumers know any ad they see is just a sales pitch and probably don’t even need whatever is being advertised.
However, when they do need a product and/or service, they know their friends and families can help provide them with unbiased testimonials about the products and/or services they like. Tapping into those conversations is one of the new rules of marketing for businesses today.
With all the spam-blockers for emails, TiVo and Mute buttons, getting found doesn’t mean spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to create a prime-time commercial that many viewers will mute or fast forward to avoid. Just like putting on an online banner ad for a product that is targeted for an audience of 40+ will not work if put in front of a 21 year old.
Getting found online means writing extensively how your solution to someone else’s problem will work for that target audience. Write to help people with a problem find your online documents. When moving from outbound to inbound marketing, you need to stop interrupting people within your target market and instead “get found” by them.
Market in a Way that People Search for Information.
Do your due diligence research and read and really listen to the way others are shopping for similar products. According to Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah, authors of Inbound Marketing: Get Found Using Google, Social Media, and Blogs, “To be successful and grow your business and revenues, you must match the way you market your products with the way your products learn about and shop for your products.” Interruption based marketing is coming to an end due to people becoming much more efficient at blocking out traditional methods of marketing and they are becoming equally efficient at finding trusted information online.
You no longer need to spend a lot of money interrupting potential customers and instead you need to create remarkable content, optimize the content, publish the content, market that content, and measure what is working and what is not working. Becoming a savvy inbound marketer is half traditional marketer and half content creation marketer.
According to Halligan and Shah, “On average, inbound marketing leads are 61 percent less expensive than Outbound Marketing leads.” So take a tip from the Democratic election campaign of Barack Obama and cut your marketing bill in half and start a conversation with your customers!
Social media is used as a marketing tool
Monday, March 21, 2011Social media is used as a marketing tool to establish a presence and build relationships online with potential customers and maintain existing relationships with customers in a timely and consistent manner. Social media has opened the door to social media marketing (what I like to refer to as interactive media marketing). Interactive media marketing is the method of using social media to draw traffic to your business or face-to-face event. Rather than pushing your message into a potential customer’s space (as traditional marketing does), social media marketing focuses on relationship building and development to attract your target market to learn more about you and your company.
Social media can be a great tool to use when preparing to exhibit in a trade show for targeting potential customers to come visit you at the show. Before doing that, search both yourself and your company name and see if people are talking about you. Are they mentioning you in passing? It allows companies to get ahead of an angry blog, social media site, or e-mail and handle customer service issues. That little bit of communication can build a rapport online for others to see. It allows people to build personal relationships that may have nothing to do with a company, but that little bit of empathic communication can lead to more business referrals.
After you have listened for awhile, now try getting involved in communication with groups and to the community you have already built in the social media space. Some great best practices that I would like to share with you:
1. Offers - What are you offering at the show? Try posting a video online and start building a buzz and tweet about the video to build awareness about your show and educate people about the show.
2. Tweeting - Be sure to send out tweets of what you are offering and send out “sound bites” of why they would want to visit you at the show. What is in it for them?
3. Retweets - Post retweets to your Linked In and Facebook pages with driving overall traffic back to the landing page where our videos are. This can create attention for an offer you may have.
4. Blogging - While at the show blog and use social media while live on the show floor. Ask exhibitors if you can interview them and post online how the show is going or attendees’ comments about your booth and activities. Always get permission first, but you would be surprised how many people love the camera interview.
5. Facebook - Is your Business Fan Facebook page customized and do you have a tab to set appointments with you at the show? This is a great way to personalize your meetings at a local show or even at a regional or national show if you have your target audience list and can invite people to set appointments with you during the show floor online.
6. Social Media Branding - Build your brand both on your website and in Facebook and customize your tabs to meet the needs of your audience and make it personal with your brand.
7. Educational Tips - Do you post tips in your LinkedIn or Facebook pages and use Twitter as a billboard to create awareness for people to visit your tips pages?
8. Scavenger Hunt - Try creating a Scavenger Hunt like we did here to list exhibitor tips and have visitors look for the hints and go to your website to learn more about you and develop interest. Be sure to have a prize at the end that is valuable for the viewers: http://www.facebook.com/TradeShowExperts?v=app_11007063052
Are you posting valuable content for readers to be perceived as an expert? If so, they will want more information from you when at the show.
Social media opens the door for communication with almost anyone. You can reach out to complete strangers, get advice, or even share your advice online to create a following. These conversations are often stored digitally and made available over time for others to read or participate in. Each of us has probably received or given advice but it may be forgotten after a week or so. Now you can connect with others online and save this information indefinitely. The switch to social media marketing allows us to communicate more effectively, efficiently and timely.
Social media enables users to build relationships in an easier, faster manner. You can also use social media to draw people to face-to-face events such as conferences and trade shows. Many conference attendees “tweet” or mini blog about the event during the presentation, creating chatter and relationships that may be built upon long after the event is over. At EXHIB-IT! , we blog at events and shows and report how the event or trade show is going and work on delivering content that others may want to hear. You can upload a video, images at the show, or interview attendees and post the video and images online and blog about them. Just be sure you have their permission!
Before you go into the social media environment and start blasting away with information about you, your business and start promoting your product or service, listen first. Get involved n groups and community areas so you can hear what is being said and respond to build your confidence.
Social media can be a great tool to use when preparing to exhibit in a trade show for targeting potential customers to come visit you at the show. Before doing that, search both yourself and your company name and see if people are talking about you. Are they mentioning you in passing? It allows companies to get ahead of an angry blog, social media site, or e-mail and handle customer service issues. That little bit of communication can build a rapport online for others to see. It allows people to build personal relationships that may have nothing to do with a company, but that little bit of empathic communication can lead to more business referrals.
After you have listened for awhile, now try getting involved in communication with groups and to the community you have already built in the social media space. Some great best practices that I would like to share with you:
1. Offers - What are you offering at the show? Try posting a video online and start building a buzz and tweet about the video to build awareness about your show and educate people about the show.
2. Tweeting - Be sure to send out tweets of what you are offering and send out “sound bites” of why they would want to visit you at the show. What is in it for them?
3. Retweets - Post retweets to your Linked In and Facebook pages with driving overall traffic back to the landing page where our videos are. This can create attention for an offer you may have.
4. Blogging - While at the show blog and use social media while live on the show floor. Ask exhibitors if you can interview them and post online how the show is going or attendees’ comments about your booth and activities. Always get permission first, but you would be surprised how many people love the camera interview.
5. Facebook - Is your Business Fan Facebook page customized and do you have a tab to set appointments with you at the show? This is a great way to personalize your meetings at a local show or even at a regional or national show if you have your target audience list and can invite people to set appointments with you during the show floor online.
6. Social Media Branding - Build your brand both on your website and in Facebook and customize your tabs to meet the needs of your audience and make it personal with your brand.
7. Educational Tips - Do you post tips in your LinkedIn or Facebook pages and use Twitter as a billboard to create awareness for people to visit your tips pages?
8. Scavenger Hunt - Try creating a Scavenger Hunt like we did here to list exhibitor tips and have visitors look for the hints and go to your website to learn more about you and develop interest. Be sure to have a prize at the end that is valuable for the viewers: http://www.facebook.com/TradeShowExperts?v=app_11007063052
Are you posting valuable content for readers to be perceived as an expert? If so, they will want more information from you when at the show.
Social media opens the door for communication with almost anyone. You can reach out to complete strangers, get advice, or even share your advice online to create a following. These conversations are often stored digitally and made available over time for others to read or participate in. Each of us has probably received or given advice but it may be forgotten after a week or so. Now you can connect with others online and save this information indefinitely. The switch to social media marketing allows us to communicate more effectively, efficiently and timely.
Social media enables users to build relationships in an easier, faster manner. You can also use social media to draw people to face-to-face events such as conferences and trade shows. Many conference attendees “tweet” or mini blog about the event during the presentation, creating chatter and relationships that may be built upon long after the event is over. At EXHIB-IT! , we blog at events and shows and report how the event or trade show is going and work on delivering content that others may want to hear. You can upload a video, images at the show, or interview attendees and post the video and images online and blog about them. Just be sure you have their permission!
Before you go into the social media environment and start blasting away with information about you, your business and start promoting your product or service, listen first. Get involved n groups and community areas so you can hear what is being said and respond to build your confidence.
Develop a Social Media Content Strategy That Works For YOU!
Monday, March 14, 2011We all live in a world where the entire globe can have access to your name, photo, IP address and all of your public information with a simple search.
Social Media is taking this one step further. Not only are we able to find your past exploits online but we can hear the conversation that the globe is having about you, your company – right now, with a simple click and typing key words.
What are you doing now for your social media outreach strategy? Does it involve your inputting content? Should it?
Does every business really have a Facebook Page? Unfortunately, no. Few businesses have a strategy for their Facebook page and are struggling with their social media activity.
Businesses tweet, blog and even set up a Facebook Business Fan Page out of fear of being left behind. But do they engage their audience when doing all this or just create busy content that no one wants to read?
If your social media strategy engagement is reactive rather than proactive, it may be time to step back and take a deep breath and decide to develop a content strategy that will engage your community.
You may be asking – What is Content Strategy and how do I get started?
It is impossible to have a social media strategy without first developing a content strategy. According to Susan Cato, Senior Director of Web and New Media Strategies at CompTIA, you need three important elements to develop an effective content strategy.
Know what your audience, customers or community wants to talk about and be willing to engage in those conversations.
• Twazzup, Addict-o-matic and SocialMention are three platforms that allow you to measure your social media conversations or buzz surrounding your brand online at any given time.
1. Twazzup is a bridge between Twitter and a search engine. If you stick with the “what you know” mantra, Twazzup mostly plays in the Twitter world but plays very well there. From logging your Tweets per hour to giving you mug shots on the top influencers of any search, this application gives you a full circle view of how your brand is performing in the twitter space environment.
Twazzup pigeonholes itself by being Twitter-focused. Looking for influencers? If you look up a topic such as “Gulf Oil Spill,” you fill find the Top 10 people you need to talk with right there at the tips of your research.
This application lets you see who is talking about your niche quickly with little effort. What links lead to your keyword search?
2. Addict-o-matic is a social search application. It lets you see how your brand is presented on a number of different social platforms all on one page. Like all search engines, aggregation sites like Digg, Flickr and YouTube are for media searcher, but Addict-o-matic takes a platform called Trending.com and puts a more comprehensive spin on your social platform information.
Not only can you create and customize an interface and keep track of a number of sites that many others may not be thinking about. You can create your own page for your selected keywords, but you can also add tons of popular, and not so popular, social sites to give you as much or as little detail overload as you require. You can also see the latest buzz from Blinkx, Truveo and Twingly which are not being harvested daily by most marketers and content sharers.
See below a lookup I did on “Sarah Palin” and then clicked on the second tab for all the social media sites. Wow, I had not heard of at least 30% of some of these sites until today!
This application allows you to get all the latest info on a subject matter from tons of platforms. You can move any content box around to position the most important info on top.
I did a search on my name “DJ Heckes” and found this information all on one page and even though you cannot see all the elements, this is a snapshot of what is being said about a person online.
3. SocialMention is a little more simplistic and has a very professional design but sticks to words that have been made popular by today’s social media thought leaders, while Twazzup and Addict-o-Matic are very straightforward platforms. Measuring words such as “passion,” “Sentiment,” and “reach” and having the ability to quantify these subjective words makes SocialMention the platform your boss would approve you using daily.
This application gives you tons of features to play with, but unfortunately if a beginner, you will need to see their FAQ to catch up before you really appreciate what they have done for you. Instead of selecting one social network, or grouping the info by network, SocialMention chooses to give you a stream timeline to include content from places like Stumbleupon, Twitter a nd Google Blogs. This application also lets you know how many mentions and how many different people mention you or your business.
My favorite feature is called “tattletale.” If you click on the word “negative” under the sentiment area, it sends you to a list of so-called “negative” posts waiting for you to join in on the conversations at any time. There is no real specific answer on how they determine why it’s negative but check out all the information and be safe instead of sorry.
I did a look up of my book “Full BRAIN Marketing: and found this information . Wow, this is amazing!!
The disappointing fact is I am unable to click on the unique authors or retweets section. This would be a great bonus if we were able to see a list of those authors. As a marketer, I would want to have a list of who is talking about me to make it easy as pie to connect and grow these relationships. SocialMention makes you dig through their timeline and their data but this may not necessarily be good for us. You can export the top users, but the data requires some 4xtra effort to turn into a hit list for getting involved and building relationships.
Now that you have hopefully learned about three great applications that most marketers are not familiar with, let’s size them up.
• SocialMention seems to be the best for being a complete solution of the three applications discussed.
• Twazzup only focuses on Twitter. If they could find a way to integrate other platforms or even partner with other niche-specific platforms for a more robust solution, this application could vault to the top. If using Twazzup, you would need multiple other solutions to use in conjunction with this application to be completely covered.
• Addict-o-matic falls short in many ways. Other than having a cool and catchy name, there is not much difference between Alltop.com or Popurls.com except the search bar. Similar to Twazzup, you will need more tools and this application.
Social Media is taking this one step further. Not only are we able to find your past exploits online but we can hear the conversation that the globe is having about you, your company – right now, with a simple click and typing key words.
What are you doing now for your social media outreach strategy? Does it involve your inputting content? Should it?
Does every business really have a Facebook Page? Unfortunately, no. Few businesses have a strategy for their Facebook page and are struggling with their social media activity.
Businesses tweet, blog and even set up a Facebook Business Fan Page out of fear of being left behind. But do they engage their audience when doing all this or just create busy content that no one wants to read?
If your social media strategy engagement is reactive rather than proactive, it may be time to step back and take a deep breath and decide to develop a content strategy that will engage your community.
You may be asking – What is Content Strategy and how do I get started?
It is impossible to have a social media strategy without first developing a content strategy. According to Susan Cato, Senior Director of Web and New Media Strategies at CompTIA, you need three important elements to develop an effective content strategy.
Know what your audience, customers or community wants to talk about and be willing to engage in those conversations.
• Twazzup, Addict-o-matic and SocialMention are three platforms that allow you to measure your social media conversations or buzz surrounding your brand online at any given time.
1. Twazzup is a bridge between Twitter and a search engine. If you stick with the “what you know” mantra, Twazzup mostly plays in the Twitter world but plays very well there. From logging your Tweets per hour to giving you mug shots on the top influencers of any search, this application gives you a full circle view of how your brand is performing in the twitter space environment.
Twazzup pigeonholes itself by being Twitter-focused. Looking for influencers? If you look up a topic such as “Gulf Oil Spill,” you fill find the Top 10 people you need to talk with right there at the tips of your research.
This application lets you see who is talking about your niche quickly with little effort. What links lead to your keyword search?
2. Addict-o-matic is a social search application. It lets you see how your brand is presented on a number of different social platforms all on one page. Like all search engines, aggregation sites like Digg, Flickr and YouTube are for media searcher, but Addict-o-matic takes a platform called Trending.com and puts a more comprehensive spin on your social platform information.
Not only can you create and customize an interface and keep track of a number of sites that many others may not be thinking about. You can create your own page for your selected keywords, but you can also add tons of popular, and not so popular, social sites to give you as much or as little detail overload as you require. You can also see the latest buzz from Blinkx, Truveo and Twingly which are not being harvested daily by most marketers and content sharers.
See below a lookup I did on “Sarah Palin” and then clicked on the second tab for all the social media sites. Wow, I had not heard of at least 30% of some of these sites until today!
This application allows you to get all the latest info on a subject matter from tons of platforms. You can move any content box around to position the most important info on top.
I did a search on my name “DJ Heckes” and found this information all on one page and even though you cannot see all the elements, this is a snapshot of what is being said about a person online.
3. SocialMention is a little more simplistic and has a very professional design but sticks to words that have been made popular by today’s social media thought leaders, while Twazzup and Addict-o-Matic are very straightforward platforms. Measuring words such as “passion,” “Sentiment,” and “reach” and having the ability to quantify these subjective words makes SocialMention the platform your boss would approve you using daily.
This application gives you tons of features to play with, but unfortunately if a beginner, you will need to see their FAQ to catch up before you really appreciate what they have done for you. Instead of selecting one social network, or grouping the info by network, SocialMention chooses to give you a stream timeline to include content from places like Stumbleupon, Twitter a nd Google Blogs. This application also lets you know how many mentions and how many different people mention you or your business.
My favorite feature is called “tattletale.” If you click on the word “negative” under the sentiment area, it sends you to a list of so-called “negative” posts waiting for you to join in on the conversations at any time. There is no real specific answer on how they determine why it’s negative but check out all the information and be safe instead of sorry.
I did a look up of my book “Full BRAIN Marketing: and found this information . Wow, this is amazing!!
The disappointing fact is I am unable to click on the unique authors or retweets section. This would be a great bonus if we were able to see a list of those authors. As a marketer, I would want to have a list of who is talking about me to make it easy as pie to connect and grow these relationships. SocialMention makes you dig through their timeline and their data but this may not necessarily be good for us. You can export the top users, but the data requires some 4xtra effort to turn into a hit list for getting involved and building relationships.
Now that you have hopefully learned about three great applications that most marketers are not familiar with, let’s size them up.
• SocialMention seems to be the best for being a complete solution of the three applications discussed.
• Twazzup only focuses on Twitter. If they could find a way to integrate other platforms or even partner with other niche-specific platforms for a more robust solution, this application could vault to the top. If using Twazzup, you would need multiple other solutions to use in conjunction with this application to be completely covered.
• Addict-o-matic falls short in many ways. Other than having a cool and catchy name, there is not much difference between Alltop.com or Popurls.com except the search bar. Similar to Twazzup, you will need more tools and this application.
Improve YOUR Public Relations Efforts to Create More Buzz
Monday, February 28, 2011Writing press releases can offer you the most influential publicity at affordable costs more than any other way of promotion. It is significant in this hyper-competitive environment we all live and work in and can be a vigorous advertising means for any business. The success behind effective PR is the way it is written and needs to serve as a good reading piece for your targeted media audience.
A press release can be used to announce a variety of information:
• Changes in corporate identity, such as company name or logo
• Changes in corporate structure (new division or subsidiary)
• Corporate opinion (opinion on industry trends)
• Corporate philanthropy (volunteer work, donations)
• Events (open houses, tradeshow involvement, speaking engagements, award ceremonies)
• Features • Hiring of agencies (public relations, accounting, law firm)
• Increase in market share or revenue
• Joint venture
• Media advisories
• Milestones (customers served, years in business)
• New funding
• New partner
• New product
• Personnel changes
• Round of funding received by the company
• Significant new customer
• Significant modification to an existing product
If your press release does not contain breaking news, you may want to consider submitting your release as a feature distribution. Feature releases often get play in the "lifestyles" or "living" section of local newspapers and are designed for verbatim pickup. You can distribute your press release as a feature any day of the week or you can take advantage of topical packages from the distribution company.
PR marketing work wonders if your PR hits the proper audience at the proper time. It is used to foster interest in products or services that you market through your business venture. Your PR news release can be used as a useful tool to make people aware of recent happenings, interesting events and new products or services that are launched by your company. However, PR should be written using these components:
• Source – Location to send Press Release
• Publication Date
• For IMMEDIATE RELEASSE should appear in upper left-hand margin with all letters capitalized
• Headline - Should include a strong hook in headline
• Dateline - Should include a Dateline with the city your press release is issued and date
• Lead Paragraph – A strong introductory paragraph that grasps the readers’ attention and should contain your most relevant message to include the five W’s (who, what, when, where, why) • Body – develop a strategy story to support the Lead Paragraph
• Company Boilerplate – A short paragraph that describes your company, products, services, history
• By expert writers who know the formula of writing a purposeful news material. Your PR should be newsworthy and not like an advertisement object of your company.
Although press releases are an important marketing tool, some may not be relevant and have a great story to tell. Writing a press release is not a cup of tea for all, it needs proper skill and perfect expressions. If you do not have qualified skills to build the buzz about your story, then hire some expert press release writer who has innate qualities of constructing theme based news release. When writing your own Press Release, you must consider that your PR must attract editor's interest and it must also contain the essential news item information.
Knowing when and how to write press releases for one’s company can be as overwhelming and confusing.
Creating “buzz” can be defined as anything which makes people talk about your business! See below some suggested ways to use Public Relations to get more buzz/media coverage:
1. Work with a designer or programmer to create a cute object that can animate your name, product, service, and at the end, give your email, phone number, URL, etc.... This is a great way to use Buzz as a publicity stunt?
2. Invent a new process, system, cycle, or technique for your product or service. Send out a Press Release for it.
3. Invent a new word for your industry that is catchy. This actually WORKS!
4. Don't confuse Buzz with Hype. Hype is bull. Buzz is truth and builds excitement about something folks want to believe in.
5. Negative Buzz is not necessarily good Buzz. Bad PR is still considered Bad PR, and no PR is just as bad.
6. Sponsor something that is considered high tech, creative and wild. Protest something which has a majority favorable / positive public response. Get your company branding up on a billboard, and bring a radio station, and do the show from 80 feet up.
7. A continual flow of Press Releases to your target audience helps keep your brand in front of companies and creates a greater, stronger 'Buzz'. It also helps if you can get an endorsement, by someone who is respected in the marketplace that you are advertising. This does wonders for giving your 'Buzz' a boost.
After you have newsworthy information to write about, be sure to use different outlets for your press release and information. It is important to know how to reach your target audience through traditional, digital or social media marketing methodologies.
We use our website to post all Press Releases written and also send them out to the publication sites or use two of the national public relations press release distribution sites.
Then I recommend go into your social media community to tweet about the press release with a link back to the landing page where the actual press releases resides. After you have tweeted about it, go into some of your LinkedIn Groups and create discussions about the topic to create more viral buzz around the topic. When that is working for you, go into Facebook and post the links with building awareness and comments in that community. Have you tried writing an article or blog and post the information about your story and submit the 700 words+ blog to many of the free online distribution sites? This also helps with the press release buzz.
I have written many guest blogs on national sites and then written a press release about the guest blogs posted that focus on a story. See here for the March guest blogs that will be on the S.C.O.R.E. National website.
1. The Powerful Match: Social Media and Online Content- March 7: <http://blog.score.org/2011/03/marketing-the-powerful-match- social-media-and-online-content/>
2. Develop a Social Media Content Strategy with Metrics- March 14: http://blog.score.org/2011/03/marketing-develop-a-social- media-content-strategy-with-metrics/
3. Create Meaningful and Effective Online Content- March 21: http://blog.score.org/2011/03/marketing-create-meaningful-and- effective-online-content/
4. 6 Ways to Improve Your Blog with Inbound Links- March 28:
You can build a lot of buzz around your business IF you have a compelling story, innovative new way to do business or a new product and grow your business. All it takes is a strategic mind, a little work and a focus with metrics in place.
DJ Heckes, CEO & Author
EXHIB-IT! Tradeshow Marketing Experts
www.exhib-it.com
Full BRAIN Marketing
www.fullbrainmarketing.com
A press release can be used to announce a variety of information:
• Changes in corporate identity, such as company name or logo
• Changes in corporate structure (new division or subsidiary)
• Corporate opinion (opinion on industry trends)
• Corporate philanthropy (volunteer work, donations)
• Events (open houses, tradeshow involvement, speaking engagements, award ceremonies)
• Features • Hiring of agencies (public relations, accounting, law firm)
• Increase in market share or revenue
• Joint venture
• Media advisories
• Milestones (customers served, years in business)
• New funding
• New partner
• New product
• Personnel changes
• Round of funding received by the company
• Significant new customer
• Significant modification to an existing product
If your press release does not contain breaking news, you may want to consider submitting your release as a feature distribution. Feature releases often get play in the "lifestyles" or "living" section of local newspapers and are designed for verbatim pickup. You can distribute your press release as a feature any day of the week or you can take advantage of topical packages from the distribution company.
PR marketing work wonders if your PR hits the proper audience at the proper time. It is used to foster interest in products or services that you market through your business venture. Your PR news release can be used as a useful tool to make people aware of recent happenings, interesting events and new products or services that are launched by your company. However, PR should be written using these components:
• Source – Location to send Press Release
• Publication Date
• For IMMEDIATE RELEASSE should appear in upper left-hand margin with all letters capitalized
• Headline - Should include a strong hook in headline
• Dateline - Should include a Dateline with the city your press release is issued and date
• Lead Paragraph – A strong introductory paragraph that grasps the readers’ attention and should contain your most relevant message to include the five W’s (who, what, when, where, why) • Body – develop a strategy story to support the Lead Paragraph
• Company Boilerplate – A short paragraph that describes your company, products, services, history
• By expert writers who know the formula of writing a purposeful news material. Your PR should be newsworthy and not like an advertisement object of your company.
Although press releases are an important marketing tool, some may not be relevant and have a great story to tell. Writing a press release is not a cup of tea for all, it needs proper skill and perfect expressions. If you do not have qualified skills to build the buzz about your story, then hire some expert press release writer who has innate qualities of constructing theme based news release. When writing your own Press Release, you must consider that your PR must attract editor's interest and it must also contain the essential news item information.
Knowing when and how to write press releases for one’s company can be as overwhelming and confusing.
Creating “buzz” can be defined as anything which makes people talk about your business! See below some suggested ways to use Public Relations to get more buzz/media coverage:
1. Work with a designer or programmer to create a cute object that can animate your name, product, service, and at the end, give your email, phone number, URL, etc.... This is a great way to use Buzz as a publicity stunt?
2. Invent a new process, system, cycle, or technique for your product or service. Send out a Press Release for it.
3. Invent a new word for your industry that is catchy. This actually WORKS!
4. Don't confuse Buzz with Hype. Hype is bull. Buzz is truth and builds excitement about something folks want to believe in.
5. Negative Buzz is not necessarily good Buzz. Bad PR is still considered Bad PR, and no PR is just as bad.
6. Sponsor something that is considered high tech, creative and wild. Protest something which has a majority favorable / positive public response. Get your company branding up on a billboard, and bring a radio station, and do the show from 80 feet up.
7. A continual flow of Press Releases to your target audience helps keep your brand in front of companies and creates a greater, stronger 'Buzz'. It also helps if you can get an endorsement, by someone who is respected in the marketplace that you are advertising. This does wonders for giving your 'Buzz' a boost.
After you have newsworthy information to write about, be sure to use different outlets for your press release and information. It is important to know how to reach your target audience through traditional, digital or social media marketing methodologies.
We use our website to post all Press Releases written and also send them out to the publication sites or use two of the national public relations press release distribution sites.
Then I recommend go into your social media community to tweet about the press release with a link back to the landing page where the actual press releases resides. After you have tweeted about it, go into some of your LinkedIn Groups and create discussions about the topic to create more viral buzz around the topic. When that is working for you, go into Facebook and post the links with building awareness and comments in that community. Have you tried writing an article or blog and post the information about your story and submit the 700 words+ blog to many of the free online distribution sites? This also helps with the press release buzz.
I have written many guest blogs on national sites and then written a press release about the guest blogs posted that focus on a story. See here for the March guest blogs that will be on the S.C.O.R.E. National website.
1. The Powerful Match: Social Media and Online Content- March 7: <http://blog.score.org/2011/03/marketing-the-powerful-match- social-media-and-online-content/>
3. Create Meaningful and Effective Online Content- March 21: http://blog.score.org/2011/03/marketing-create-meaningful-and- effective-online-content/
4. 6 Ways to Improve Your Blog with Inbound Links- March 28:
You can build a lot of buzz around your business IF you have a compelling story, innovative new way to do business or a new product and grow your business. All it takes is a strategic mind, a little work and a focus with metrics in place.
DJ Heckes, CEO & Author
EXHIB-IT! Tradeshow Marketing Experts
www.exhib-it.com
Full BRAIN Marketing
www.fullbrainmarketing.com
8 “Must Do” Metrics for Social Media
Monday, February 21, 20111. Conversion Rates
Everyone talks about wanting to measure the volume of leads generated for bottom line ROI of social media efforts, but don’t forget to consider the value of the conversion rate! While you may not be seeing the volume yet, the propensity to convert may be looking you right in the face.
Be sure to have a mechanism in place to know when a lead comes from social media. Most businesses use the combination of a URL shortener and “cookie” history to attach a campaign to an incoming lead. Hootsuite has now integrated Google Analytics into their URL shortener for a more seamless transition for metrics in analytics. Some companies are still using proprietary shorteners and other companies are still trying to future out how to do it at all!
An important step in understanding where your lead comes from is to know the metrics for when someone clicks on your social media link and then converts. A reliable way to do this is to put a “cookie” on your machine with a campaign name for the social media channel that generated the click. Use your campaign reporting method to track the number of leads and conversations you generate.
This number may be fairly low in the beginning but by looking at your conversions divided by your leads, you can get your conversion rate for social media leads and compare this information to the amount of time and effort used. Compare this data against other marketing channels to see if it is higher or lower.
2. Customer Acquisition Costs
Everyone states how “cheap” social media is, but this may be somewhat of a fallacy. Even though social media is cheaper than many other traditional channels, be sure you are measuring the full campaign history as stated above and then assign a cost per conversion and compare this cost against your control group. Examples of how you can do this:
• When someone clicks on a link in one of your tweets and goes to your site and converts as a new customer.
*Example: the cost to generate the customer could be less than a standard customer who comes through your website through paid advertising.
• When someone clicks on a paid advertisement on Google and does not convert. Then later decides to clock on a link in one of your tweets and goes to your website and converts to a new customer.
*Example: The cost will be higher than the standard customer who comes through the paid advertising channel. However, even if slightly higher, the incremental cost of social media will most likely be less than trying to replace the unconverted lead with a new lead.
3. Control Group
Social media has a massive impact on you’re ability to convert leads if you are using the metrics. This makes it easier to justify your budget dollars to integrate social media into a sales process.
To add a control group, use the same metrics you use to run against a group that has never interacted with social media and compare the stats. Look for how social media companies in areas such as lead conversion rates, retention rates and costs. See example of CareOne below.
4. Marketing Campaign History
Review how your company reports on “cookies” related to a sale. Look at the big picture of the first cookie the prospect received and report on the originating campaign, along with the campaigns responded to in between and the converting campaign.
This will help you know and determine all the drivers to the sale and adjust your costs related to the sale to get closer to a true ROI as well as look for the right mix in reaching your target audience. Even if your sales process is not online, you should be sure your CRM system allows you to track your marketing efforts through the entire sales cycle and your team is appropriately trained to track the information.
5. Growth Rate
When building volume, be sure to measure the growth rate over a given amount of time. Review your metrics in place to show that the volume is growing at a healthy rate to prove that your efforts are generating an impact. In reality, it takes time to build a sustainable social media channel and it is important to set proper expectations for all your efforts.
6. Retention Rates
Just as important as the ability to convert a customer is the ability to keep a customer. Compare the fondness of new customers to staying customers with and without social media interaction. You will see that those participating in social media are more engaged and likely to retain as better long term customers.
To do this, keep all leads converted in (1) Conversion Rates above and track them over time. If there is an ongoing fee, measure how long the customer stays. If your company is focused more on one time sales, measure if the customer comes back and buys something else and how often this happens. Compare this data against the control group of those who did not interact with social media and determine if there are any improvements worth noting.
7. Cross-Selling
Determining if social media customers are more or less likely to purchase additional serviced is an important element of using social media. First, determine how much revenue per customer was generated using social media compared to non-social media customers. Then, determine how much revenue was generated from additional purchases and/or additional products for social media customers. After you compile this information, compare this to your control group and you will be able to determine if social media has an impact on up-selling or even cross-selling for your company.
8. Customer Saves
Many companies are using social media to help online customers and this often includes managing complaints and being reactive in a timely manner. Measure how many times a customer is saved from cancelling or returning your products or services. This may also help you develop a great internal quality assurance program through using social media channels.
DJ Heckes, CEO & Author EXHIB-IT!
Tradeshow Marketing Experts
www.exhib-it.com
Full BRAIN Marketing
www.fullbrainmarketing.com
Everyone talks about wanting to measure the volume of leads generated for bottom line ROI of social media efforts, but don’t forget to consider the value of the conversion rate! While you may not be seeing the volume yet, the propensity to convert may be looking you right in the face.
Be sure to have a mechanism in place to know when a lead comes from social media. Most businesses use the combination of a URL shortener and “cookie” history to attach a campaign to an incoming lead. Hootsuite has now integrated Google Analytics into their URL shortener for a more seamless transition for metrics in analytics. Some companies are still using proprietary shorteners and other companies are still trying to future out how to do it at all!
An important step in understanding where your lead comes from is to know the metrics for when someone clicks on your social media link and then converts. A reliable way to do this is to put a “cookie” on your machine with a campaign name for the social media channel that generated the click. Use your campaign reporting method to track the number of leads and conversations you generate.
This number may be fairly low in the beginning but by looking at your conversions divided by your leads, you can get your conversion rate for social media leads and compare this information to the amount of time and effort used. Compare this data against other marketing channels to see if it is higher or lower.
2. Customer Acquisition Costs
Everyone states how “cheap” social media is, but this may be somewhat of a fallacy. Even though social media is cheaper than many other traditional channels, be sure you are measuring the full campaign history as stated above and then assign a cost per conversion and compare this cost against your control group. Examples of how you can do this:
• When someone clicks on a link in one of your tweets and goes to your site and converts as a new customer.
*Example: the cost to generate the customer could be less than a standard customer who comes through your website through paid advertising.
• When someone clicks on a paid advertisement on Google and does not convert. Then later decides to clock on a link in one of your tweets and goes to your website and converts to a new customer.
*Example: The cost will be higher than the standard customer who comes through the paid advertising channel. However, even if slightly higher, the incremental cost of social media will most likely be less than trying to replace the unconverted lead with a new lead.
3. Control Group
Social media has a massive impact on you’re ability to convert leads if you are using the metrics. This makes it easier to justify your budget dollars to integrate social media into a sales process.
To add a control group, use the same metrics you use to run against a group that has never interacted with social media and compare the stats. Look for how social media companies in areas such as lead conversion rates, retention rates and costs. See example of CareOne below.
4. Marketing Campaign History
Review how your company reports on “cookies” related to a sale. Look at the big picture of the first cookie the prospect received and report on the originating campaign, along with the campaigns responded to in between and the converting campaign.
This will help you know and determine all the drivers to the sale and adjust your costs related to the sale to get closer to a true ROI as well as look for the right mix in reaching your target audience. Even if your sales process is not online, you should be sure your CRM system allows you to track your marketing efforts through the entire sales cycle and your team is appropriately trained to track the information.
5. Growth Rate
When building volume, be sure to measure the growth rate over a given amount of time. Review your metrics in place to show that the volume is growing at a healthy rate to prove that your efforts are generating an impact. In reality, it takes time to build a sustainable social media channel and it is important to set proper expectations for all your efforts.
6. Retention Rates
Just as important as the ability to convert a customer is the ability to keep a customer. Compare the fondness of new customers to staying customers with and without social media interaction. You will see that those participating in social media are more engaged and likely to retain as better long term customers.
To do this, keep all leads converted in (1) Conversion Rates above and track them over time. If there is an ongoing fee, measure how long the customer stays. If your company is focused more on one time sales, measure if the customer comes back and buys something else and how often this happens. Compare this data against the control group of those who did not interact with social media and determine if there are any improvements worth noting.
7. Cross-Selling
Determining if social media customers are more or less likely to purchase additional serviced is an important element of using social media. First, determine how much revenue per customer was generated using social media compared to non-social media customers. Then, determine how much revenue was generated from additional purchases and/or additional products for social media customers. After you compile this information, compare this to your control group and you will be able to determine if social media has an impact on up-selling or even cross-selling for your company.
8. Customer Saves
Many companies are using social media to help online customers and this often includes managing complaints and being reactive in a timely manner. Measure how many times a customer is saved from cancelling or returning your products or services. This may also help you develop a great internal quality assurance program through using social media channels.
DJ Heckes, CEO & Author EXHIB-IT!
Tradeshow Marketing Experts
www.exhib-it.com
Full BRAIN Marketing
www.fullbrainmarketing.com
Facebook Launched Their Redesign of Pages with Upgrades!
Monday, February 14, 2011On February 10th Facebook launched some new designed pages and upgraded features that you will want to be know. The new features help you manage, communicate, express yourself and increase your social media engagement in Facebook. So why did they do this?
• Better Communication: Facebook introduced a set of features to help you manage your Page Communications. You can now navigate and interact with other areas of Facebook as your Page. This means you can now choose to receive notifications about fan activity, Likes and Comments on other Pages and receive your own News Feed where you can engage with the latest and most important news from other Pages that you Like.
• More Opportunities for Expression: There are new opportunities for Pages to share. Facebook launched what they are calling a new Profile design to give users more ways to tell their stories with people. They claim the Pages will now benefit from many of the same enhancements. You can now feature Photos for Your Page’s most recent experiences at the top of your Page. You can also highlight other Pages you are connected to as well as the people who are managing your Page.
• Improve your Relevancy: The “everyone” filter on your Wall provides a new way for people to see the most interesting posts first. Facebook created a place for people to discover the friends and interests others have in common with your Page.
Be on the lookout for even more features and improvements for Pages over the course of the coming months from Facebook. Be sure to update your Pages today as all of this takes place March 1st! Facebook users are seeing the new discovery of custom Facebook designs.
Facebook users can preview the new design and have the option to upgrade or wait until March 1st when ALL Pages will automatically upgrade to the new design. The new design allows the custom pages to be linked and shown below each profile image on the left side of your Page. When first coming on to the Page, it is not apparent that you can do this.
The new layout allows users to navigate between a Page’s wall, info and third party tab applications, using a menu of links on the left side of the page under the profile photo. The menu permits longer tab names even though you can only see six tabs above the fold. The tabs are no longer front and center and the redesign seems to reduce the frequency with which users visit the tabs other than the default landing tab. This will help you by using longer, more descriptive titles for when your application is installed as tab.
Each Page has a photo strip above the wall that displays latest photos the page has tagged itself in. The five thumbnail tabs appear in a different order with each reload that prevents pages from creating a continuous banner out of the Photo strip. The profile photo is now slightly reduced in size from the 200 x 600 pixels to 1890 x 540 pixels. The about blurb has moved form the wall tab to the info tab. The about blurb has now moved from the wall tab to the info tab.
You can now select between an “everyone” and a Page Posts only default tab for the wall. What this means is instead of showing a “reversed” chronological stream of posts, the Everyone tab shows users posts that Facebook thinks will be the most relevant. Recent posts by friends or posts by other users in the same language or country, and posts that receive a lot of Likes and Comments will bubble to the top. You can also see through the back end for the administration most recent feed of updates in reverse chronological order and see the hidden feed of posts that Facebook’s spam detectors or the administrator filtered out of public view area. You can select to unhide posts from this feed.
When setting up your profile under the administration area, you can choose to “use Facebook as Page” from the Account drop down menu in the top right corner of Facebook. This will allow you to see a special version of the site chrome where you can post and comment around the site under your Page’s Alias. Now that Pages can Like Other Pages, administrators can see news feed of updates from Liked Pages here.
You can also turn the notification alerts on by the drop-down in the top navigation bar to show the latest user posts and comments to the Page the admin is using. You can see the Friend request drop-down area that shows how many Likes your Page has received as the admin last used the site as their Page.
Turn on email notifications to alert you to activity on your Page through “Your Settings” tab of the Edit Page admin interface. Be careful as these emails may be overwhelming for more popular pages that receive thousands of posts. However, this will help smaller Pages stay attentive to your fan community.
Another cool feature is the roll out of “Live” Commenting in real time without having to refresh your Page.
Facebook considers these changes as an Upgrade and not just a redesign. They feel this will create a more consistent browsing experience for users. The potential downside is there is less prominent placement of links to tabs to reduce their use. Facebook feels these changes will ensure users see high quality content each time they visit a Page.
Facebook also feels it will bolster confidence in brands and businesses that users directed to their Page will have a more enjoyable, engaging experience. Facebook feels this will lead people to spend more time on Facebook ads that drive traffic to Pages, generating more revenue for Facebook.
I would love to hear from you and receive your comments of what you think about all these changes. As for me, I feel it lessens the brand awareness and differentiation, but let’s see if this will increase the traffic flow with deeper and better communication that will generate leads and build long lasting relationships. I think this will definitely streamline the communications and let the companies that post great information grow and the companies that do not, will feel the crunch.
DJ Heckes, CEO & Author
EXHIB-IT! Tradeshow Marketing Experts
www.exhib-it.com
Full BRAIN Marketing
www.fullbrainmarketing.com
• Better Communication: Facebook introduced a set of features to help you manage your Page Communications. You can now navigate and interact with other areas of Facebook as your Page. This means you can now choose to receive notifications about fan activity, Likes and Comments on other Pages and receive your own News Feed where you can engage with the latest and most important news from other Pages that you Like.
• More Opportunities for Expression: There are new opportunities for Pages to share. Facebook launched what they are calling a new Profile design to give users more ways to tell their stories with people. They claim the Pages will now benefit from many of the same enhancements. You can now feature Photos for Your Page’s most recent experiences at the top of your Page. You can also highlight other Pages you are connected to as well as the people who are managing your Page.
• Improve your Relevancy: The “everyone” filter on your Wall provides a new way for people to see the most interesting posts first. Facebook created a place for people to discover the friends and interests others have in common with your Page.
Be on the lookout for even more features and improvements for Pages over the course of the coming months from Facebook. Be sure to update your Pages today as all of this takes place March 1st! Facebook users are seeing the new discovery of custom Facebook designs.
Facebook users can preview the new design and have the option to upgrade or wait until March 1st when ALL Pages will automatically upgrade to the new design. The new design allows the custom pages to be linked and shown below each profile image on the left side of your Page. When first coming on to the Page, it is not apparent that you can do this.
The new layout allows users to navigate between a Page’s wall, info and third party tab applications, using a menu of links on the left side of the page under the profile photo. The menu permits longer tab names even though you can only see six tabs above the fold. The tabs are no longer front and center and the redesign seems to reduce the frequency with which users visit the tabs other than the default landing tab. This will help you by using longer, more descriptive titles for when your application is installed as tab.
Each Page has a photo strip above the wall that displays latest photos the page has tagged itself in. The five thumbnail tabs appear in a different order with each reload that prevents pages from creating a continuous banner out of the Photo strip. The profile photo is now slightly reduced in size from the 200 x 600 pixels to 1890 x 540 pixels. The about blurb has moved form the wall tab to the info tab. The about blurb has now moved from the wall tab to the info tab.
You can now select between an “everyone” and a Page Posts only default tab for the wall. What this means is instead of showing a “reversed” chronological stream of posts, the Everyone tab shows users posts that Facebook thinks will be the most relevant. Recent posts by friends or posts by other users in the same language or country, and posts that receive a lot of Likes and Comments will bubble to the top. You can also see through the back end for the administration most recent feed of updates in reverse chronological order and see the hidden feed of posts that Facebook’s spam detectors or the administrator filtered out of public view area. You can select to unhide posts from this feed.
When setting up your profile under the administration area, you can choose to “use Facebook as Page” from the Account drop down menu in the top right corner of Facebook. This will allow you to see a special version of the site chrome where you can post and comment around the site under your Page’s Alias. Now that Pages can Like Other Pages, administrators can see news feed of updates from Liked Pages here.
You can also turn the notification alerts on by the drop-down in the top navigation bar to show the latest user posts and comments to the Page the admin is using. You can see the Friend request drop-down area that shows how many Likes your Page has received as the admin last used the site as their Page.
Turn on email notifications to alert you to activity on your Page through “Your Settings” tab of the Edit Page admin interface. Be careful as these emails may be overwhelming for more popular pages that receive thousands of posts. However, this will help smaller Pages stay attentive to your fan community.
Another cool feature is the roll out of “Live” Commenting in real time without having to refresh your Page.
Facebook considers these changes as an Upgrade and not just a redesign. They feel this will create a more consistent browsing experience for users. The potential downside is there is less prominent placement of links to tabs to reduce their use. Facebook feels these changes will ensure users see high quality content each time they visit a Page.
Facebook also feels it will bolster confidence in brands and businesses that users directed to their Page will have a more enjoyable, engaging experience. Facebook feels this will lead people to spend more time on Facebook ads that drive traffic to Pages, generating more revenue for Facebook.
I would love to hear from you and receive your comments of what you think about all these changes. As for me, I feel it lessens the brand awareness and differentiation, but let’s see if this will increase the traffic flow with deeper and better communication that will generate leads and build long lasting relationships. I think this will definitely streamline the communications and let the companies that post great information grow and the companies that do not, will feel the crunch.
DJ Heckes, CEO & Author
EXHIB-IT! Tradeshow Marketing Experts
www.exhib-it.com
Full BRAIN Marketing
www.fullbrainmarketing.com
37 Apps You Should Know About to Enhance YOUR Facebook Page (Part 1 of Part 2 Blog)
Monday, January 31, 2011Facebook and Social Media changes on a daily basis. Be in the know and be sure to use these applications to enhance your own Facebook page. Become the Leader in Social Media.
There are thousands of Apps to help you engage with your fans. Here are 75 to become familiar with. These Apps show you how to customize your landing tabs, add videos and photos, add a blog, add chat, add contests, polls, relocation, email, ecommerce, scheduling and much more.
Why Facebook Apps?
By using Facebook Apps you can enhance the experience users have on your page. You will be able to keep them engaged and coming back. You will also be increasing your viral visibility, which means every time someone interacts on your page; it posts on their page, showing their friends that they were on your page. This is FREE advertising!
You can find the Apps in the Facebook App Directory
There are literally thousands of apps so make sure to click Business on the right hand menu to narrow your search. Also make sure to focus on Apps that actually publish content to your page. This will help people find the Apps.
There is also appbistro.com that allows you to browse their comprehensive directory of Apps for businesses.
With Facebook not allowing us to have custom content/apps on the Wall tab (left column), we need to become more creative to ensure the content on the tabs is actually seen by viewers.
A great tracking App via Facebook Insights allows you to see which of your tabs gets the most clicks.
Focus on the Apps that publish content to your own Fan Page stream. Which would be the page wall and news feed of your fans. Add a few Apps that allow for more engagement at specified times, such as a live streaming video and live chat Apps that are listed below.
Custom Landing Tabs
It’s important to have a custom branded landing tab that visitors see the first time they go to your page. Jeff Wildman, founder of BrandGlue reported on InsideFacebook that having a custom landing tab doubles conversion to fans:
“We ran an A/B test just four weeks ago to guesstimate the efficacy of a landing tab. We drove visitors to the fan page of a major brand using ads. Those ad-driven visitors converted to fans at a rate of approximately 47% WITH a landing tab. When we turned off the landing tab, those same ad-driven visitors converted to fans at approximately 23%. A VERY noticeable loss in conversions over the course of the campaign.”
The most popular App for creating your custom content is the Static FBML App. You are able to design your own landing pages using html code. Below is an example of the EXHIB-IT landing page:
There is also TabSite: They offer a free version as well as two paid versions where you get step by step help designing your own pages.
These sites offer easy-to-use templates for putting together your tabs:
These Apps offer suites of Apps including custom landing tabs. Some of these Apps are free, while others have a fee.
These are hands on customization services for designers/developers that will essentially do the work for you with affordable rates:
Custom Fan Page Designs
FanPageGenerator
HyperArts
KickApps
Likeable Media
SayItSocial
140ology
Ways to incorporate YOUR blogs into Facebook:
A great app for importing your blog onto your Facebook page is Networked Blogs
Once you add the App to your page, you place the widget on your blog and you can track how many followers you have on your blog. Try adding the Networked Blogs App to your personal profile in addition to your Fan Page.
RSS Feed and Content Publishers – see these Apps that can easily import any of your content that has an RSS or Atom Feed. You can import your Twitter favorites and Google reader shared items by using the RSS Graffiti App.
RSS Graffiti
Social RSS
Involver – RSS Feed (free version posts to your Tab and a Pro version post to your wall)
North Social – RSS Feed
Objective marketer (complete publishing platform – used and recommended by a great marketer named Guy Kawasaki).
Twitter
Selective Tweets – This App allows you to post your tweets to your Facebook page by including #fb at the end of your tweet.
To publish your Facebook content to Twitter, use the Twitter App.
Another great Twitter solution is to install an App that pulls in all your tweets onto a tab but does not publish in the stream. Not sure if you want to do this since a primary goal of tweeting is to view the tweets in your news Feeds to your fans.
• Involvers Twitter Facebook App
• North Social Twitter Feed Facebook App
Flickr Photos - Display photos using Flickr Tab App.
SlideShare
If you have presentations on SlideShare, you can display them on your Facebook page by installing the SlideShare app.
You can also set up your SlideShare account so that when you publish new slides it will automatically post the like to your wall. In the next blog we will cover more Apps to use in Facebook!
DJ Heckes, CEO & Author
EXHIB-IT! Tradeshow Marketing Experts
www.exhib-it.com
Full BRAIN Marketing
www.fullbrainmarketing.com
There are thousands of Apps to help you engage with your fans. Here are 75 to become familiar with. These Apps show you how to customize your landing tabs, add videos and photos, add a blog, add chat, add contests, polls, relocation, email, ecommerce, scheduling and much more.
Why Facebook Apps?
By using Facebook Apps you can enhance the experience users have on your page. You will be able to keep them engaged and coming back. You will also be increasing your viral visibility, which means every time someone interacts on your page; it posts on their page, showing their friends that they were on your page. This is FREE advertising!
You can find the Apps in the Facebook App Directory
There are literally thousands of apps so make sure to click Business on the right hand menu to narrow your search. Also make sure to focus on Apps that actually publish content to your page. This will help people find the Apps.
There is also appbistro.com that allows you to browse their comprehensive directory of Apps for businesses.
With Facebook not allowing us to have custom content/apps on the Wall tab (left column), we need to become more creative to ensure the content on the tabs is actually seen by viewers.
A great tracking App via Facebook Insights allows you to see which of your tabs gets the most clicks.
Focus on the Apps that publish content to your own Fan Page stream. Which would be the page wall and news feed of your fans. Add a few Apps that allow for more engagement at specified times, such as a live streaming video and live chat Apps that are listed below.
Custom Landing Tabs
It’s important to have a custom branded landing tab that visitors see the first time they go to your page. Jeff Wildman, founder of BrandGlue reported on InsideFacebook that having a custom landing tab doubles conversion to fans:
“We ran an A/B test just four weeks ago to guesstimate the efficacy of a landing tab. We drove visitors to the fan page of a major brand using ads. Those ad-driven visitors converted to fans at a rate of approximately 47% WITH a landing tab. When we turned off the landing tab, those same ad-driven visitors converted to fans at approximately 23%. A VERY noticeable loss in conversions over the course of the campaign.”
The most popular App for creating your custom content is the Static FBML App. You are able to design your own landing pages using html code. Below is an example of the EXHIB-IT landing page:
There is also TabSite: They offer a free version as well as two paid versions where you get step by step help designing your own pages.
These sites offer easy-to-use templates for putting together your tabs:
These Apps offer suites of Apps including custom landing tabs. Some of these Apps are free, while others have a fee.
These are hands on customization services for designers/developers that will essentially do the work for you with affordable rates:
Custom Fan Page Designs
FanPageGenerator
HyperArts
KickApps
Likeable Media
SayItSocial
140ology
Ways to incorporate YOUR blogs into Facebook:
A great app for importing your blog onto your Facebook page is Networked Blogs
Once you add the App to your page, you place the widget on your blog and you can track how many followers you have on your blog. Try adding the Networked Blogs App to your personal profile in addition to your Fan Page.
RSS Feed and Content Publishers – see these Apps that can easily import any of your content that has an RSS or Atom Feed. You can import your Twitter favorites and Google reader shared items by using the RSS Graffiti App.
RSS Graffiti
Social RSS
Involver – RSS Feed (free version posts to your Tab and a Pro version post to your wall)
North Social – RSS Feed
Objective marketer (complete publishing platform – used and recommended by a great marketer named Guy Kawasaki).
Selective Tweets – This App allows you to post your tweets to your Facebook page by including #fb at the end of your tweet.
To publish your Facebook content to Twitter, use the Twitter App.
Another great Twitter solution is to install an App that pulls in all your tweets onto a tab but does not publish in the stream. Not sure if you want to do this since a primary goal of tweeting is to view the tweets in your news Feeds to your fans.
• Involvers Twitter Facebook App
• North Social Twitter Feed Facebook App
Flickr Photos - Display photos using Flickr Tab App.
SlideShare
If you have presentations on SlideShare, you can display them on your Facebook page by installing the SlideShare app.
You can also set up your SlideShare account so that when you publish new slides it will automatically post the like to your wall. In the next blog we will cover more Apps to use in Facebook!
DJ Heckes, CEO & Author
EXHIB-IT! Tradeshow Marketing Experts
www.exhib-it.com
Full BRAIN Marketing
www.fullbrainmarketing.com
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