Welcome to the era of Socialism in Communication. While social media is liberating brands and opening up new grass-roots level channels for connecting with the consumers, it is also posing new challenges for companies in terms of managing and controlling all that free flowing external communication. While wide social media participation offers innumerous advantages to companies and brands it also requires constant monitoring and the need to provide clear guidelines to all participants to protect both the employees and the company. Companies are struggling to achieve the balance between liberating the employees and avoiding all the risks and pitfalls of unmonitored conversations.
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It’s not likely that you are going to lose your online data anytime soon, though it is always a present possibility. Your real threats to your online social media accounts are hackers, viruses, user error, disgruntled employees and legal issues. You risk your access being shut off—without warning—if a service suspects you of violating its terms of service. At this very moment, many hackers are targeting online accounts simply because they are easier to access than your computer. On top of that, roughly one third of all data loss is due to user error. Backing up your social media accounts can minimize this risk.

Below are some useful apps and services, mostly free or with low subscription fees, for backing up your social media accounts and more.
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Whether you are a business with brick and mortar stores or a company without borders, you should be tapping into the growing number of local audiences seeking products and services in their own locality. You can increase business exposure and your web and store traffic simply by including geographical information to your digital content. Geotagging and local search optimization are two technology-based solutions that savvy marketers are using to attract the crucial local market segment.
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Being prolific in social media, I am always on the prowl for useful tools, resources and social media platforms to expedite the time involved in producing and sharing relevant content across the social universe. I’ve recently discovered Amplify.com. Amplify is, in my opinion, one of the most useful, powerful yet simple to use free resources available.

A hybrid between Twitter and a blog, Amplify allows you to easily highlight or clip content (up to 1000 characters of text and images &  video) you find relevant, add in your own opinion if you wish, then amplify it to your friends and followers across the internet! Amplify is especially convenient for those who wish to further their cause or share their passion, yet have little time to consistently produce original content.

To Clip or Not to Clip:
Viewers always have the option of clicking through to the original post to read the entire article.  And if you simply cannot choose highlights from the post and want to share the entire article, Amplify gives you the option to “amplify” an entire URL.

A Unique Social Community
Amplify is also a social media platform.  Just sign in with Twitter or Facebook and begin to share content.  Like most social media platforms, you can create a profile, follow sources, view your newsfeed from those sources, recommend clips, comment and share.

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Tools for an Engaged Social Presence

I am always interested in finding the best and latest tools to enhance and expedite the  social media experiences, maintenance and growth for Harp and for our clients.

Following is an abbreviated list of useful tools, resources and/or apps with links and short descriptions that you may want to incorporate into your daily social media practice. Though we obviously don’t use all of these, I have used a good many of them for different reasons.

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This is the second in a series of three posts highlighting bits  from my International Social Media Association (ISMA) teleseminar: Strategies to Ensure an Engaged Social Presence.

ISMA: You talked about ‘employing Best Practices’ techniques just now. Can you expand a little on what this may include – let’s start with Best Practices for Twitter?

Twitter Best Practices for Brands

• Make sure your bio is filled out and have a well-branded page. See how to optimize your Twitter bio for more tips.  I suggest using your business name in the real name because this is what’s indexed by Google.
• Use 120 characters…they say 120 is the new 140. Write your tweets with retweeting in mind. Ideally you’ll want to keep your character count to 120 leaving plenty of room for  retweeting without the original tweet being hacked.
• Use Keywords for SEO in tweets and load them in the front of the tweet. Not always easy to do but worth keeping in mind.
• Use the RT@ at the end of the tweet (helps with SEO)
• Be generous and thankful. Always thank those who re-tweet you, or give you a #ff or shout out.
• Provide useful, helpful information. This will help to establish your Twitter credibility and establish your brand as a leader in its field/industry.
• Try to include a link in 90% of your tweets. Use a URL shortener like bit.ly or ow.ly (from HootSuite). These provide tweet statistics which are useful in determining the most interesting content to your followers.
• Avoid text message abbreviations, pay attention to grammar and spelling.
• Try to be mindful of the 80/20 rule.  That is, 80% of your tweets should be helpful or conversational while only 20% should be promotional.
• Use someone’s first names when tweeting to them.
• Be genuine! Authenticity is the golden rule in social media (via Mashable). You and your brand both need to be believable. Give a human voice to your brand and don’t be afraid to let your enthusiasm and spirit show in your tweets.

ISMA: And how about on Facebook?  Do the same rules apply? Are there Best Practices for Facebook as well?

Best Practices for Facebook

• Facebook is about community around a brand – it’s about creating relationships with your customers or potential customers.
• Make sure your Fan page is branded. People should be able to have instant recognition with your page.
• Monitor your wall (make sure your notifications are on) (not a feature for fan pages not associated with a profile)
• Provide good unique content – start conversations, chat, ask questions, and always respond to any comment on your wall…positive or negative.
• Be conversational vs. corporate (again, speak with a human voice vs. a corporate voice)
• Create events
• Ultimately you want to make an enjoyable environment for fan page

And nuggets of Best Practices for Social Media.

• Understand, you do not control the message.  Old habits die hard and there’s a tendency to want to treat social media participation like advertising where the ability to control messaging is the norm.
• Commit resources & time to be successful or you may very well fail. It’s important to forecast labor hours, who, what, when, how and where with the intention of succeeding, not just experimenting.
• Be fun and visual: Visuals play a big part in the user experience you provide. They engage and help you capture consumers’ attention for a longer time.
• Relationships first. Business second: Remember that social media is relational, not transactional.
• Give to Get: A well-executed social media strategy requires reciprocity, relevancy, transparency, authenticity, but perhaps above all other things, commitment.

It was my extreme honor to be a guest in yesterday’s tele-seminar with the International Social Media Association (ISMA). My topic, in case you missed it, was “Propel your Social Media Marketing to New Heights: Strategies to Ensure a Winning and Engaging Social Presence”.

Below I recap some of the highlights from the hour long interview:

This is part 1 of a 3 part series…

ISMA: What do you mean by “an Engaged Social Presence”?

Brian Solis describes engagement as:

“Engagement is essentially the first step in building a relationship between your customers and your brand.”

Brian goes on to explain that initially, early on in a brands social media experience, that it’s more about establishing a presence and less about strategic engagement and the engagement resembles traditional broadcasting of messages.

In it’s most simple explanation, an Engaged Social Presence is when you are actively participating in the social media platforms in which you belong.

More specifically, however…engagement encompasses two strategies.

Re-active engagement and Pro-active engagement, both necessary for  a truly engaged social presence.

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This blog post is the second in the 2 part series on brand monitoring. In case you missed the first blog post,  here is the link: Monitor Your Brand Online.

Online Reputation Monitoring can be as simple as creating alerts on Google or as comprehensive as subscribing to a syndicated monitoring service like Radian6 that  gives you a complete platform to listen, measure and engage with your customers across the entire social web. You can hire a Social Media Monitoring company who will not only use syndicated or subscription tools like Radian6 and employ a combination of techniques and report on what’s being said but will also formulate effective response strategies and implement reputation management techniques.
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One of the main objectives for all social media marketing initiatives for a brand is to “navigate the narrative”. In other words,  to ensure that your competitors or disgruntled customers don’t steer conversations in a way that put you on the defensive.

In order to cultivate the conversations taking place in the social media arena, you need to know that they’re happening! Social media monitoring is the somewhat new but indispensable tool that all serious marketers should use in order to keep track of what people are saying about their brand, their products and their competitors.

The first step to monitoring your brand reputation is listening. Whoever said “eavesdroppers are never happy” could not have been more wrong. You might not be always be happy with what you hear about your brand but I guarantee that you will be a lot unhappier if you don’t listen in!

Social media is the speakeasy for all those incessant public conversations that you must listen in on and eventually join.

One simple way to discover what people are saying about your brand is to simply create a Google Alert so that you’ll get an email anytime your brand name is mentioned.

However, Google Alerts are limited – and aren’t designed to be a comprehensive online brand management tool. That’s why you need to use a variety of online tools to find out what people are saying.

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Online retailers plan the holiday sale season months in advance; designing and executing special promotions and marketing campaigns to promote these sales events through various media channels. Businesses primarily rely on email, CPC & CPM campaigns besides traditional marketing.

As the Holiday Sales season comes to a close, the effort is intensified in order to capitalize on the last minute shoppers (substantial). And because there is so much going on, there is a chance that some crucial details can get overlooked! Read the full post here…

Using your status update on your wall to communicate is great. But if someone doesn’t log on frequently to view the latest stream, they may miss your message or update. You can use the “Send an Update to Fans” feature to remind them of an important event, a new blog post, a poll and more. Read the full post here…

When it comes to growing your  followers on Twitter, you have approximately 2 seconds or less to grab someones attention and positively influence them to click the “follow” button.

Whether it is lead generation, brand awareness, reputation management, search engine optimization or any of the other many benefits you can enjoy with Twitter, one fact remains, you need followers. And the more qualified followers you have, the better your results.
Below are  some proven tools, tactics and ideas to pump up the volume on your Twitter style and successfully build your Twitter following.
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The web is an great platform for publicity; unfortunately not all of it is positive!

If you have a website that depends on traffic from search engines then your reputation is vulnerable to external forces. Negative websites whose sole purpose is to provide a platform for your disgruntled customers to malign your brand (your keyword) can show up in Google search results and invade your search real estate. These sites become popular because they use certain techniques that attract searchers who are typing in keywords associated with your brand. Potential customers who might be searching for your product or service, comparing prices, or looking for your product reviews on the web, may also come across negative publicity that is displayed on the first page of Google search results along with your legitimate website! Google search results page will list these negative sites if these sites have gained momentum and are optimized for relevant search terms/keywords. Read the full post here…

As the saying goes…if you’re going to do something, do it right.

This tried and true philosophy rings just as true today for any businesses entering into social media marketing.

For small businesses and entrepreneurs, it is not uncommon to find the owners and employees wearing many hats – from new business development to accounting to customer service. And now, if they don’t also dawn the social media marketing cap…they’ll be left behind.

According to Maria Veltre, Executive Vice President of Citi’s Small Business Segment…

“While social media can provide additional channels to network and help grow a business, many small businesses may not have the manpower or the time required take advantage of them.”

Social Media Marketing is more vital than ever for businesses of any size to gain exposure and compete in the marketplace. When a business attempts to undertake this type of marketing themselves, they can set themselves up for failure and summarily dismiss an impactful, powerful marketing tool.
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Writing effectively for online media and social networks is an evolving art.  As print becomes redundant, social media emerges to fill the gap with its short form communication style that is meant to engage non-readers.  There are numerous articles with tips on writing for the web and writing-guides and rules for individual platforms like Twitter and Blogs.  But there is definite dearth of information on the actual process of writing:

OK, so you have set up a Twitter account.  What next? What should you talk about 4 times a day? What language and style should you use? Where do you get the ideas?

Instant messaging. Twittering. Facebook updates, Blog posts, all  provide social platforms for businesses to communicate with their customers in a more informal environment while effectively promoting their cause.  For the social media writer it can be an onerous task to consistently deliver such effective messages  in a conversational style.  Here are some tips on making the process a little easier.

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What are the top five things beginners should know about social media?

The question was asked in one of the social media groups that I belong to on LinkedIn:

“I’m giving a speech for … and would like to know five hot topics you think
beginners would like to know.”

This is a very good question which got a lot of response from many members (me included). Following are some of the more insightful responses:

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If you’re using Twitter as a tool to promote your brand or products, it’s crucial that you write retweetable tweets. The shareability of your message makes it viral and extends the reach of your message beyond your own Twitter followers. The trick is to make sure that the content you are writing provides immediate payoff by entertaining, giving useful information, provoking or sharing experiences that help your followers. If your tweet provides some kind of value and is not another “me-too” , it has a good chance of being passed on. Once it’s passed on, your message gains momentum through a wider audience and increases your influence. If you use your 140 characters wisely you can compel your followers to spread the message and help you develop your following.

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Social media isn’t always the right tool for the job. Not every company needs a blog. YouTube worked for BlendTec, but it might not work for your company. And yet, there’s something to this. Over the last three days, I’ve spoken to four HUGE brands in America that are considering social media for one project or another, and there are many more out there working on how these tools might integrate into their business needs. Here’s a list of 50 ideas (in no particular order) to help move the conversation along.

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You may be familiar with Dell, Starbucks and Jet Blue…a few well-known brands that have been trumpeted for their brilliant use of social media. But what about lesser known and smaller businesses? Does social media marketing “work” for them too?

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The uses and benefits of Twitter are growing and expanding everyday.

Below I’ve listed some of the top 10 reasons why all businesses, no matter how big or small, no matter what your industry, should be on Twitter.

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Strategy is Key
While it is free, and relatively easy to build your Facebook public page, attention to detail in set up, naming and business apps are important. There are certain apps to avoid that will end up weighing down your page and creating long download times. And once you have your page up, you’ll need time to invest in updates, social ads, event ideation and page growth.

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Facebook has significant implications for business owners, marketers, and entrepreneurs. This highly successful online social networking platform currently boasts 200 million active members and is predicted to be at 500,000 million members by 2011 or sooner. Over half of all active members log in daily for an average session time of 20 minutes – that’s a huge captive audience! Plus the demographics are a more mature and wealthier audience.