Have You Tried a Facebook Promoted Post?

Recently, Facebook has been offering a new, inexpensive way to advertise. I think you should give Facebook Promoted Posts a try. Here's how it works, and why you should test it for your page.

From Flickr user Sean MacEntee.

How it works:


For a little cash - usually, $5, $10, $20, or a little more, depending on how many Facebook fans you have, Facebook will make sure your post is seen by a larger percentage of your fans and their friends. Right now, if you have more than 400 fans on your page, you can promote any post for three days.

Why you should try it:

An average Facebook post will be seen by about 16% of your fans. One of my clients is doing better than that - their average post is seen by about 30% of their fans. They have a small, but very engaged community.

When we spent $10 to promote a Facebook post, we went far beyond that - our promoted post reached six times that many people - more than twice the amount of people than our total fan base. Many more people saw and shared our promoted post than usual.

What's more, we saw a doubling of engagement in the 10 days after our promoted post, gained some new fans, and we continue to see a 30% lift in engagement on Facebook, several weeks after the promoted post. 

What to promote:

I'd recommend testing something entertaining - a video, photo gallery, game, or something else fun. Inactive fans - those who haven't interacted with you in a while - are going to see this post and you want to give them a reason to rejoin your active fan base.

But Beware:

Yes, we only spent $10 and got some encouraging results. But those $10 posts add up. Make sure you're budgeting appropriately - you don't want to be spending money every few days to promote another post unless you're seeing good results. Your priority should be generating quality, engaging content to serve your social media audience - once you have great content, then work on promoting it. 

Let me know how this works for you. I'm looking forward to hearing your stories!

Does your Facebook strategy  need a bit of a facelift? Let me know. I can help. 

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How to Feed the Social Media Content Beast

It can be really challenging to create, manage, and schedule content for your social feeds, especially if you work for a large organization where lots of people are responsible for delivering social media content, but few are actually held accountable for how often you post.

Social Media Beast. Photo: Doug Woods

Here's what I've learned about feeding the content beast:


Mine your email newsletters. If you work in an organization where several divisions publish their own email campaigns, you're in luck. This means each division is already identifying content that's important to them. All you need to do is convert their weekly headlines into social media posts.

Make a schedule. While it's always important that your social media schedule is flexible to accommodate breaking stories, it will give you important piece of mind to know that you have content available each day. Write multiple posts for each piece of content you promote so that you have some to save for later. We live in a 24 hour news cycle, but good stories are still relevant days, even weeks, after their original publish date. 

Repost and Retweet. Social media is a reciprocal environment. Identify partner organizations to your brand that you can share on your own social channels. Use Google Alerts to identify media clips and share those, too.

Share results. One of the best things you can do to motivate your organization to provide great content for social media is to show people what it does to support their goals. If you can explain how social media drives web traffic, sales, donations, or other support, you'll get more great content to share.

How are you feeding the content beast? Please share.

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What Time Should You Tweet?

Recently, a colleague of mine asked me for my thoughts on the timing of social media posts. She has some clients that are just getting started on Facebook and Twitter, and they wanted advice on when to post.

The only rules about timing your social media posts are that there really aren't any rules. Every audience is different and each social network is different.

Photo: Flickr user Katerha.

I recommended she help her clients set up a tool like HootSuite so that they could schedule posts ahead of time, and then see engagement stats for posts sent at different times - morning, afternoon, evening, nights, and weekends.

One of her clients is a school, and they may find that many parents are checking for school news late in the evening - making sure they know the schedule for the next day before bed, or just taking advantage of the hours after their children are asleep. In the case of inclement weather, they'll be up early to find out if classes are cancelled.

I always recommend that organizations test posting on the weekend to see how it does. Lots of people do tend to spend time on social networks on Saturday mornings, while they are at the kids' soccer practice or just relaxing at home.

As a general rule, Twitter seems to be active later in the day, but what's really important is what the best time is for your audience - no one formula works for every organization.

Again, the best thing to do is test - try tweeting or posting on Facebook with similar content at different times of day and see what happens. The most important thing you can do is to keep testing - what times, and how often to post.

One of the best webinars I've seen on timing is from Hubspot, and it's called The Science of Timing. It's a couple of years old, but I find that it's still pretty relevant.

What time do you post and what times of day do you find work best for you? Please share.

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How to Use Twitter for Listening

In my social media travels, I've run into a lot of people who've given up on Twitter. Maybe they don't have time to write a lot of tweets, or they don't have many fans, or they just aren't sure the channel works for them.

Twitter is great for listening. Photo: s1ng0

This tends to be especially true for some smaller non-profits. Budgets are small, staff is small, and there's just not a lot of time to devote to anything that's not achieving immediate results.

I tell these kinds of organizations that they are missing out on a huge opportunity to listen. Twitter is an excellent tool for listening, and for connecting to and influencing larger dialogue.

I advise these clients to use Twitter to follow others who do what they do, and to follow the discussion about the issues their organizations address.

For instance, the director a non-profit health clinic might use Twitter to follow other clinic directors and to monitor discussion of #Medicare, #ACA (the Affordable Care Act), #antibiotics, or #healthcare. This is a great way to locate current news and thoughts about these issues, and to contribute to a discussion involving people who are passionate and motivated to act.

Twitter's also a great way for busy professionals, like our non-profit health clinic director, to stay connected to others in her industry even though she can't get out to networking events or conferences as often as she'd like. Using Twitter, she can connect to others in her field and reach out for advice, input, and ideas.

Our clinic director can set up a HootSuite account in a few minutes, and follow those keywords that make sense to her. She'll be able to set up streams for her keywords so she can see them right in HootSuite, track discussions, and schedule replies.

How are you using Twitter? Please let me know @practicalmktr.

Do You Need More Than One Twitter Account?

While many organizations wonder if they are ever going to have enough time to manage the social media channels they have now, there are some people out there wondering if they need to start another Twitter feed. There are actually some good reasons for doing this in certain cases, so let's review:

1) Is your brand big enough to have a lot of sub-brands- like Coke (Diet Coke, Sprite, Snapple, etc.)? You should consider a feed for each of your large projects or product lines.

2) Do you have really disparate areas of work? If you make baby blankets and industrial welding equipment, then you're going to need two feeds for your two different audiences.

3) Do you have disparate audiences for the same lines of work? If your work appeals to college students and CEOs for different reasons, you might want to tailor feeds for each group.

4) Do you spend a lot of time on Twitter keeping in touch with friends? Are you on it while you're out on the town on Saturday night, maybe after you've had a couple of beers? Are you known as a 3:00am tweeter?  Set up a new Twitter account for your professional life, and make your current feed private and accessible only to approved followers. Really, you'll thank me later.

So how do you manage this?

There are several apps out there for social media management. The free one I'm most familiar with is HootSuite - it's easy to use and the free functionality does what you need it to. Additional reports and users are relatively low cost.

How do you manage your social (media) life? Drop me a line and let me know.

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Try it Today: Customized Sharing Links

What makes sharing links better? Customized sharing links, that's what!

From Flickr user Krissen.

Do you work for a non-profit with no social media budget? This isn't that unusual, and non-profiteers have become experts in combining free tools to drive engagement, analytics, and action. I've just come across a new tool that can make your email newsletters (and your whole web site, actually) a better catalyst for social sharing.

When you send out your emails, you want people to share your content on their social feeds, right? Are you always happy with the auto-generated Tweets and Facebook posts that are created when people click your sharing buttons?


Is the resulting Tweet or Facebook post a little too generic for your taste? Is the Tweet missing your Twitter handle? Is the photo that comes up on Facebook the wrong one?

Wouldn't it be great if you could create better Tweets and Facebook posts for people who clicked on your sharing buttons?

OK, that was a lot of questions. The good news is that there is a solution to this problem - a brilliant little tool called Watershed Share.

How?

You can use Watershed Share to write your social media posts, including photos and shortlinks, and then link the resulting URLs to your sharing buttons.

Then, when people share your content, the Twitter and Facebook posts you created - with the right hashtags, Twitter handles, and photos, are populated right on folks' feeds. They can, of course, make some edits before they share with their fans and followers, but they are less likely to do that if you write better content for them.

This is a great tool for multi-article email newsletters, but also can work anywhere on your web site.

Why?

This is just one more way to better control your brand and your message, and one more way to better serve your customers by making it easier to share great content. So, thanks Watershed for the tool!

Have you tried this? How did it work for you? Let me know.

How to Write Great Tweets

Writing for Twitter isn't rocket science, but there's a method to the 140-character madness.

From Flickr user Danilo Ramos.

Here are a few pointers for writing tweets that make sense, have relevance, and drive retweets and other desired actions.

• Simplify – You only have 140 characters, including your link, to state your message. Don’t cram in too many ideas. You can tweet more than once a day, and send more than one tweet about each piece of content. Stick to one idea per tweet. 
• Don’t over-abbreviate. New people join Twitter every day, and new followers join our feeds every day. Assume that folks won't know all the jargon and make the content accessible. If you need lots of abbreviations, simplify the message. Don’t try to mash 500 words of copy into a single, undecipherable tweet. 
• Use keywords associated with your SEO strategy (i.e. the same ones in your website metadata and your ads), but don’t overuse or insert where they don't make sense. 
• Use #hashtags, but not too many. Hashtags help people find your content on Twitter and also can be used to tag tweets that are part of live Twitter chats or ongoing discussions. They also help you identify trends.

Here’s an example of a tweet with too many hashtags, including one that’s totally irrelevant:

• You should read #WaPo! Great #paper! #news #local #finance #business #sports #food #entertainment #JustinBieber 

This tweet might better portray what we want to say:

• Check out today’s #WaPo. Get the latest #news – local stories, business and finance, sports, entertainment, and food. 

But let’s go one step further – this tweet has a LOT of ideas. Let's treat these ideas separately, like this:

• Check out today’s #WaPo for the latest #local news in DC, MD, and VA. http://wapo.st/MknI4S 

This tweet is more relevant, engaging, and actionable. It simplifies the idea, focuses the intent, gives more details, and provides a link (something actionable) for more information. We’ve also limited ourselves to two hashtags, to make our tweet findable, but still readable.


What's your biggest challenge on Twitter? Let me know.

Click here to follow me on Twitter.

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Right now, I'm doing some work with a client that's really starting to use social media more often, and more freely to promote its work and events.

Path from Flickr user Runran.

Recently, I delivered a bunch of numbers to them, using Piktochart, a handy tool I found for creating simple infographics.

The good news was, as a result of promoting our work on Twitter and Facebook, all traffic measures went up. More people watched videos, shared our content, commented on our posts, used our hashtags, and became fans of our pages than ever had before.

So, what do we do with all of this great attention?

It's important to make sure that when we generate a lot of traffic and attention to our content, that we have a goal in mind, and that we're leading people down a path towards that goal.

If we have a great new video, we need to make sure that we think about what we want people to do after they watch it. Watch another video? Subscribe to our email list? Share with a friend? Complete another action?

We (and you) really need to think about the path to conversion.

If you find, for example, that in your businesses, most of your sales come from email, then when you do an attention campaign like we did last week, you should be including an email sign-up call-to-action with the content you're promoting. With your videos, on your Facebook page, in your blog posts and on your site.

If you're not thinking about the path to conversion, you'll be setting the wrong expectations for your team.  It may be that people who like your posts on Facebook just aren't ready to buy your product - they need a little more encouragement. So the conversion goal for your Facebook fans won't be a sale  - it'll be an email sign-up.

Once you've established your conversion goal for each of your channels, then you'll be able to better determine what content goes where and customize it appropriately.

How are you using Facebook? What about Twitter? How do you inform, engage, and convert on each of your channels? Send me a note or let me know in the comments.

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How to Connect Your Facebook and In-Store Marketing

European retailer C&A has introduced clothing hangers that display the number of Facebook "Likes" for each piece of clothing in their store in Brazil. This means that shoppers will already know what's trending when they walk into the store - a far more direct way of using Facebook data than we've seen so far.

Most of us don't have the money to invest in the technology to make this happen at our own retail locations, but we know that many shoppers use Facebook to check trends or share favorite looks with friends.

So what can we do to leverage Facebook activity in store without a major technology investment?

• First, make sure that items from your retail store are indeed being promoted on your Facebook page. For example, you could ask your fans, "What do you think of this dress?" Let them know that it's all about orange this summer and provide sample looks, or tell them that sunglasses are 2-for-1 this weekend only and invite them to come on in.
• Once you have that level of interactivity going, you'll then be able to use in-store signage to highlight items that are the most talked about on Facebook. It's lower-tech than what C&A is doing, but still an effective way to promote popular items for sale.
• Make sure you're set up on check-in apps like FourSquare and Facebook Places, and that you promote their use on your Facebook page.
• Also use in-store promotions to encourage people to join you on Facebook, and vice-versa.

Your customers are expecting a seamless experience these days. They want a consistent interaction whether it's on Facebook, their mobile, or in your store. You can help by integrating your message across channels and inviting your audience to join you, wherever they are.

Want to know more about what C&A is doing? Check out this video from Mashable:

What to Do When Your Client Won't Go Social

I've had a lot of discussions lately with other consultants, and some college students, about what to do when clients just won't use social media - when they are afraid to get started, or won't commit to the channels they've already set up.

So many networks! Photo from socialmediahq.

It can be really challenging to get people to commit to social media as part of their communications strategy. Here are some talking points that can get things rolling:

1) You don't have to be everywhere to be successful. Thinking about Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Pinterest, Google+, LinkedIn, Instagram, Digg, etc., etc. can be really overwhelming. I suggest that clients start on one or two channels - maybe Facebook and Twitter.  Most smaller organizations should set a goal of having a presence on three channels at the most. Any more, and they are going to be completely overwhelmed. Here's more information about how to decide which social media channels are right for you.

2) Social Media is NOT a strategy, it helps you execute your strategy. Twitter is not a strategy. Facebook is not a strategy. Pinterest is not a strategy. Social media is there to help you meet organizational needs. Your need to educate the public about a certain issue, sell a product, or deliver a service that makes people's lives better. You need to help your clients identify the goals they are trying to reach through the use of social media, and then you can craft a social media strategy that addresses those needs.

3) You don't need thousands (or millions) of fans to do it right. It doesn't matter if you only have 200 Facebook fans if they are the right fans. Social media isn't about getting the most followers, it's about building a community of people who share the same interests and helping people learn more about things that make them curious.

4) It's not too late. You didn't have to start your Twitter feed back in 2007 for it to have an impact. You're not too late to the party, and the fans aren't all used up.You're here now, and you're ready now, so do it now.

How are you helping your clients (or your own company) to go social? Please share or drop me a line to tell me your story.

Removing Barriers to Social Media Engagement

In your travels, you've probably seen some big brands who are barely active on social media. It seems weird, doesn't it, that a Fortune 500 company or a trade association with hundreds of thousands of members would only post on Facebook a few times a week, or that it would never retweet anyone, or never post a video on YouTube, right?

It's a challenge. Flickr user brewbooks.

Here's what's going on in these organizations, and if you work with one of them, what you might do to help:

1) The debilitating approval process. I have a colleague doing some work for a big company right now. There is a 5-layer approval process for Tweets. The end result? The product SME's responsible for generating content can't be bothered with Twitter, so the channel goes largely unused, except by HR, which retweets the same "We're Hiring!" tweet every few days.

How to help? If the approval process can't be flattened, sometimes it's possible to help the product people package Twitter with other content. For example, this company does a number of whitepapers and other reports. If each report was packaged with publicity  - perhaps including a blog post, press release, and then some content for LinkedIn, Google+, and Twitter - then everything could be approved in one process. At that point, five layers wouldn't be as much as an imposition, since everyone would only need to look at one package.

2) The feeding of the content beast. Some organizations  just don't have a lot of new content every week. In fact, MOST organizations don't, unless they traffic in the news and current events. Belief that you can a) only broadcast your own content, and b) you can only promote each piece of content once, can really hold you back.

What to do? Twitter, especially, is a community full of people interested in any number of things who support each other in what they do. Find some organizations with similar goals and retweet some of their tweets. Also, find some news outlets in your industry and retweet important industry news. Last, anytime you get positive media pickups or people from your organization are quoted in the media, post it. Facebook is a wonderful place to engage with your customers - while you'll definitely want to share your media pickups there, it's also a great idea to request user-generated content. Ask your Facebook fans how they feel about issues important to your organization, how they are using your product, or run a video or photo contest. Finally, consider the stock and flow social media strategy. That way, you'll always have content but you'll be ready for breaking news.

3) The fear of true engagement. Many people work in organizations where they aren't allowed to thank people for comments or retweet their followers, or even follow most people back on Twitter. It's not surprising that executives from organizations like this don't see a lot of results from social media - how can they when these tools aren't being properly used?

What's your strategy? You've got to be firm in explaining to your organization that it's violating the social contract implicit in social media by not showing any love. Does that mean you have to follow back everyone who follows you on Twitter? No, but follow more than you've been following, especially influencers. When there's multiple comments on a Facebook post, thank the commenters for their support and feedback, and provide more information if needed.

How are you helping your organization grow with social media? Let us know in the comments.

Make Your Content Go Viral

It's every marketer's worst nightmare:

Hope this isn't contagious. Flickr user eviltomthai.

Your next assignment from the C-Suite? "Make it Go Viral!"

That's right - they want you to guarantee that your next piece of content sails around the Internet like wildfire, faster than a Kate Middleton pregnancy rumor.

Usually, this command from on high comes about content like whitepapers, a new product, or a single Facebook post - content that's simply unlikely to go viral. Uh-oh, right?

But don't despair.

Here are some things you can do to raise the chances of getting viral marketing to work for you.

• Video, video, video. Videos are more likely to go viral than most other types of content. Check out this article and video about a men's razor blade subscription service called Dollar Shave.The product itself didn't go viral - the video introducing  the product did. Make sure that all of your videos are shareable. If you haven't already, consider starting your own YouTube channel and integrating it with your marketing efforts.
• If video isn't an option for you, consider other visually-oriented content, like slideshows, interactives, and infographics.
• Be funny. People need to laugh, and they like to make each other laugh. So if your content is funny, it's more likely to be shared.
• Be timely. If you can capture the zeitgeist of what many people are thinking about right now, then your content is more likely to be shared widely because it's newsworthy. You can check Google Trends or Twitter to see what's trending right now.
• Be useful. Entertainment is great, but is there other value you can add? The Dollar Shave video isn't just entertaining, it provides relevant information about this new company and the problem they can solve, which is how men can get convenient, cheap, quality razor blades.

How are you solving the viral problem? Please share in the comments.

Advice for Businesses Just Getting Started on Social Media

Earlier this week, I had the wonderful opportunity to speak to some college students about social media. All of these students had communications internships with local businesses, which they were trying to promote. I gave them an overview of what social media is good for and they told me about some of their challenges. I hope I get the chance to do this again! Here are some highlights from our talk:

College students. From Flickr user Sterling College.

Many of the students wondered how to break through their clients' resistance to using social media. Some suggestions:

• Remember, you've been hired by this client to help them improve their reach and messaging. Social media is a tool that can help with this.
• Most brands are now discussed somewhere on social media. If you can prove that there's a discussion out there about your client that the organization can't  join because they're not participating in social media, then there's a compelling reason for your client to get on there to join, influence, and help the discourse.
• It's always good to talk about lost opportunities. Think about current events and how they might relate to your clients' work. For example, a client that makes healthy snacks could be taking advantage of increased focus on children's nutrition - contributing recipes, providing expert advice, and introducing their product to people who want to give their kids healthy foods.
• Finally, don't be afraid to show clients what the competition is doing. Sometimes, realizing that they're late to the game is enough of a kick in the pants to get people moving.

One student explained that her client was a small private Christian school that did not even have a web site. The principal was overloaded already and didn't want to add to her workload with all of these online channels.

• I wondered if a business like this might begin their online journey with a Facebook page. Since Facebook easily accommodates things like events, announcements, and information sharing, this may be far easier for the school to manage than building a regular web site. Fundraising, also a concern of the school, can be managed with apps like Facebook Causes.

Finally, students wanted some pointers about their own social media presence. Do they need Twitter feeds? Should they start blogs? I don't think that every person everywhere needs a Twitter feed or blog, but if you're going to pursue a career in communications, then you need to be out there communicating.

• I recommended to students that they think about their hobbies, interests, and passions - are they photographers, travelers, foodies, bakers, or knitters - and blog about those things. The key to social media is quality content. Also, since your clients might not let you write for them in your own style or voice, having your own blog is a way to show people who you really are and how you really communicate. 
• In terms of policy - just remember that if it's illegal in real life, it's illegal on social media. Plagiarism, libel, slander, and copyright infringement aren't OK in print or online. My other rule of thumb - if I can't share something with my Mother-in-Law, then I can't share it on social media either.

What have you learned lately about social media and what are you trying that's new? Please share in the comments.

Social Media Trends for the Next Year

A few days ago, I attended a fantastic webinar, State of Social Media Marketing 2012, with Kipp Bodnar of Hubspot and Michael Seltzer from Social Media Examiner.

So many networks, so little time: Flickr user socialmediahq.

Much intelligence was shared, and I came away with a few nuggets to share with you, dear readers:

1) This year is about video. 76% of marketers surveyed said that they wanted to expand their video presence this year. Video helps your SEO numbers (don't forget that Google owns YouTube), provides sharable content to your fans, and helps your customers get more engaged with your product.

2) Google+. Most marketers want to explore Google+ but haven't had the time just yet. Those of us who are on there sometimes feel a  bit lonely. Seems like there are a lot of members but not a lot of engagement. That may change as marketers figure out how to connect their websites and blogs with the Google+ badge. Connecting the two means that marketers are then better able to control how they are viewed in search results - content posted on Google+ will be near the top of the results.

3) Ubiquity. Nearly 25% of time spent online is spent on social media sites. Only 10% of small business say they won't use social media this year. So if you're still shunning channels like Facebook or LinkedIn, it might be time to rethink a bit. And according to this article, 91% of adults use social media, with Pinterest growing quickly to become the No. 3 network, after Facebook and Twitter.

4) Targeting. Some of the people on this discussion thought targeting wasn't too important. This is valid - one of the wonderful things about social media is that anyone with an internet connection can participate. HOWEVER, one of the more amazing things about social media is that as time goes on, opportunities to target really specifically abound. Extremely targeted advertising opportunities are now available on both LinkedIn and Facebook. Have you tried this yet?

5) Time: There's a correlation between how many years of experience people have using social media, how much time they are spending on it, and how much success they see. Basically, the more the better. It's true that we all can't spend 24 hours a day on Twitter, but you may see some improvement by just dedicating a little more time to join conversations about your industry and your business.Try adding a few more posts on Facebook each week, and see what happens.

Here's the link to the 2012 State of the Social Media Marketing Industry webinar.

What do you think the next year holds in store for you?

How Facebook Ads Can Work for You

If you've tried online advertising and you're having trouble seeing any returns, you might want to give Facebook Ads a whirl. I think you'll find, like my clients have, that the targeting is easier to manage, easier to test, and can even be more affordable than other ad networks.

Creative Advertising Photo by Flickr user rooneg.

Say, for example, like the people installing a new window in my dining room, you run a local home improvement business. Like them, you're not seeing a lot of results from advertising in the phone book.


Here's what to do:

First, write the ad. Keep it simple. Use a headline that pops - I like to try a question, and then a call to action, like "Great deals on quality home repairs - windows, floors, more. Click for current specials."

Then, add an engaging photo. I like pictures of people. If you don't have any good photos of people, consider a membership in a site like iStockPhoto, where you can choose what you need from millions of photos with practically any subject matter.

Now, let's talk targeting. This is what's so amazing about Facebook ads, and one reason why people are valuing its upcoming IPO so highly. Anyone, yourself included, can deliver highly targeted ads to a group that's self-identified as interested in what you might be offering. How?

• First, you can target by location - by country, then by state, city, and/or zip code. For a business like this, I'd target by city - you're free to chose more than one.
• Next, you can target by demographics, including age, sex, interested in (for dating purposes), relationship status, and language. For an ad like this, I might choose people 30 and up, since they are more likely to own a home, and maybe test ad response for single vs. engaged or married people. I might change the photo to something more group or family-related for the engaged and married folks.
• Then comes the most exciting part - I can target this ad by likes and interests. I can choose fans of things like the DIY Network, Martha Stewart, Home Depot, and HGTV, since people interested in these kinds of things might want to fix up their houses. After I do this, Facebook will continue to suggest more opportunities for targeting. As you can imagine, this makes Facebook a powerful way to identify and connect with very targeted audiences.
• Finally, you can target by education and work. You can target people by level of education, by school attended, and also by where they work or worked in the past. I don't think we need this kind of targeting for the ad we're working on today, but it can come in handy for other things.

All that's left to do is set our budget by impressions (how many people see your ad), or clicks. Facebook provides suggested bids. We'll also set a daily budget for each ad campaign.

And finally, once your ads are up and running, Facebook provides reporting on who has responded, by gender, age, and location, to further help your future targeting. How cool is that?


So, are you advertising on Facebook yet? Why or why not? 

Let me know in the comments, or send me a note and I'll help you get set up.

Do Some Spring Cleaning for Your Online Channels

So, this week is the beginning  of spring, and if you’re here in DC, the Cherry Blossom Festival is getting well under way – the warm weather we’ve had has them blooming earlier than usual.

Tulip. Photo: Leah Ibraheem.

It’s also time to start your Spring Cleaning – clear out the clutter that’s been accumulating since last year, airing out the rooms, and get a fresh start.

Yes, your online properties could also use some decluttering. 

Let’s start with your web site: 

1) Is the contact information correct? Did you add or change any locations, phone numbers, or social media feeds since your last update? Don’t let missing or incorrect contact information stand in the way of a great customer experience.

2) Are the products current? Remove any items you’re not selling anymore. It’s also a good idea to suppress things you don’t have in stock right now, but might bring back later. You always want to point customers to things you have on sale now – things they can get right away.

3) Do you need to refresh your imagery? If you’ve had exactly the same images on your web site for several months now, you might want to refresh your hero photos and stories. A web site that doesn’t have rotating content can seem stagnant, like you aren’t really paying attention.

How about your Facebook page? 

1) Have you updated with the new timeline structure? Do you have the images and other content you need to do this? Here’s a handy primer from Social Media Examiner on the new look and feel, and how to make it work for you.

2) Are you using Facebook Insights? Facebook’s reporting can tell you the basic demographics of your fan base and how engaged they are. You can use this data to get more fans by advertising to people who are similar to your fan base. You can also use this data to talk about things that will interest your core demo in a way that appeals to them. It’s critical to know whether your Facebook fans are 20-year-old guys or 40-year-old women, and if they are in Topeka, Trenton, or Tuscon.

3) Are you using Facebook Ads? I find that Facebook ads can be more effective than Google ads at driving traffic – I have the option on Facebook to advertise to fans of other brands and of specific topics, so it’s can be easier to identify prospects on Facebook than on Google Adwords, where I have to decide what keywords my audience might be searching.

What about your Twitter feed? 

1) Should you keep tweeting? I love Twitter, but it can be a time-sponge. Now’s a great time to decide if you want to invest a little more time in Twitter by tweeting and retweeting every day.

2) Are you using twitter management tools? I use HootSuite to schedule and monitor tweets, but there are other tools that help you do the same. Scheduling tweets ahead of time can save you a lot of time, and keep you from ignoring Twitter for days at a time, which can be tempting.

3) Have you thought about a Twitter event? Hosting a Q&A with a product expert can be a highly effective way to get new followers. Try it and see what Twitter really can do.

How’s your spring cleaning going? Share in the comments and let me know.

What You Need to Know About Pinterest

Pinterest, the newest thing in social media, is really exploding these days - people are joining left and right, pinning their favorite stuff to personalized pin boards online.

It's all well and good for it to be so popular, but the real question is, does your business need to be on it? Here's a few facts and figures to help you decide.

1) Who is using it? 

A super-majority of women, which is great, because women make 85% of household purchasing decisions, and in some cities, are better educated and make more money than men.

According to this post on Quora, 80% of users are women, the key age group is 25 to 44, 25% of users have a bachelor's degree or more, and household income ranges from $25K to $75K.

There are three main groups using the site:

• Boomers and who are interested travel and their DIY Babies.
• Working moms who are power shoppers and want coupons on upscale or upscale-looking items, and prioritize convenience.
• Young, middle-class, active families who want to balance work and parenting, need recipes, child friendly activities, advice for healthy living.

2) What are people pinning? 

A quick drive through Pinterest shows people doing a lot of wedding planning, style picks, household and craft things, cool photography, and, of course, kittens. This article from PC Magazine asserts that there's a growing variety of categories on the site. There's a lot of crafting (knitting, collage, etc), food, interior design, and especially fashion and beauty, but also tattoos, cars, art photography, travel, pets, and humor. The better the photographic quality, the more likely it is to get pinned. There's a growing community of teachers on there trading lesson plans and ideas.

Pinterest is also more aspirational than some other networks. On social networks like Facebook, people talk about what they are currently doing, making, wearing, etc. On Pinterest, users can show people what they wish to do, wear, eat, sew, go to, look like, etc., but they may or may not have the means to obtain any of those things. See this slideshow to learn more about what people are doing on the site.

3) Is there an e-commerce connection? 

People certainly are pinning a lot of buyable things, but there don't seem to be any hard numbers out there yet on how much revenue Pinterest could be driving. There's quite a bit of potential, though. A certain number of people who pin things they like will eventually buy those things, and since the URL stays with the image, pinned images do drive site traffic.

4) How many people are on it? 

ComScore reported 11.7 monthly Pinterest users in January, 2012, part of a steep user growth curve. According to this TechCrunch article, there were ten million users on Pinterest as of February 12, 2012, with 20% using the site daily.

5) What's the Double-X Factor?

Per the same article, as many as 97% of these users may be women - a higher number than PC magazine provides. This isn't a bad thing. Though I've heard more than one person describe Pinterest as a "pacifier for women," I think these people are missing the big picture. Businesses have a huge opportunity on Pinterest to appeal to their primary audience demographic -women. She-conomy shares some pretty amazing facts about female buying habits - I think these are worth a reprint:

In the US, women account for 85% of all consumer purchases including everything from autos to health care:

• 91% of New Homes 
• 66% PCs 
• 92% Vacations 
• 80% Healthcare 
• 65% New Car
• 89% Bank Accounts 
• 93% Food 
• 93 % OTC Pharmaceuticals 

American women spend about $5 trillion annually…Over half of the U.S. GDP

• 22% shop online at least once a day 
• 92% pass along information about deals or finds to others 
• 58% would toss a TV if they had to get rid of one digital device 

So, women flocking to Pinterest to keep track of things they might like to buy is worthy of sexist ridicule because...? I know, I couldn't answer this question either.

For a rundown of sexist coverage on Pinterest's success, click here for Mary Sue.

6) Are there businesses with successful Pinterest presences? 

Yes, in fact, Pinterest has started its own pinboard of case studies of people who've driven traffic and sales with Pinterest.

A few examples: 

Kate, a hairstylist and jewelry maker had a small blog that now has millions of pageviews because she has been posting photos of her hairstyles with links back to her site to the how-to videos to make the styles.  I posted about how-to videos a few weeks ago. Here's another great way to use them.

A UK flooring company is using Pinterest to show off their product and help people connect with them across other social networks as well. McKay flooring says that Pinterest has driven a high amount of traffic to their web site and blog, even allowing them to find ideas for blogging, and to help them get DIY tips out to customers.

According to Mashable, 9% of the top 300 retailers now have a Pinterest presence. Some of the most followed users are graphic designers, interior designers, and other creative folks.

How are big brands using it?

• Whole Foods is pinning foods and recipe ideas. 
• DIY queen Martha Stewart is pinning entertaining and decorating ideas. 
• Better Homes and Gardens has multiple boards with recipes, decorating, and holiday tips. 
• Bergdorf Goodman is serving your inner shopaholic 
• The Today show is one of few non-stuff oriented boards - showing news and related images 
• Travel Channel - for the aspirational traveler in you. Where would you like to go? 

7) How can you use Pinterest to grow your own business? 

If you have your other social media presences straightened out and you’re looking for new territory, Pinterest might be a good tactic…. If you're in a creative business, whether you're a graphic designer, photographer, interior designer, fashion designer, restauranteur, travel planner, knitter, crafter, or anything else in that vein, take pictures of your stuff, post them to your blog or web site, and pin them on Pinterest. Link it back to how-to-make, how-to-use, or how-to-wear ideas and see traffic climb. Follow and support other users - many PInterest success stories mention that they get great ideas from Pinterest all the time - it's another way to dialogue with people who love doing what they do. According to this Shareaholic study, Pinterest Drives more traffic than Google+, YouTube, and LinkedIn Combined.

Have you given Pinterest a whirl? How was it? Please share.

Your Twitter Plan for 2012

What are your Twitter resolutions for 2012?

Twitter. Image: Flickr user Danilo Ramos.

If you're like most businesses, you have a feed, but you're not sure if it's really worth the time and effort. The more I use Twitter, the more useful I find it, and I encourage you to give it another try this year. Why?

1) Tablet users. 39% of tablet users use their tablet for social networking every day, and 87% use their tablets for shopping purposes. Because the tablet browsing experience is so much more comfortable than the smartphone browsing experience, tablet users can easily read your tweets and follow your links while they are shopping.

2) Thought leaders. Twitter is full of bloggers, journalists, influencers, and other thought leaders. People who are looking for trends, story ideas, and the next big thing are on Twitter. Provide them some inspiration and see your traffic rise. Don't be afraid to connect to influencers on Twitter - just follow them and reply to their tweets with a related thought.

3) Idea followers. Not everyone can be a thought leader all the time. Twitter is also full of people who are looking for news, interesting content, and practical advice, as well as good material to share with their own followers. Provide retweetable content and you'll find yourself with a solid following in no time.

Best way to get started on Twitter?

1) Follow and follow some more. If a Twitter feed looks interesting to you, follow it. What are you interested in? Where do you get your news? Which blogs do you read? Start there. Twitter will also suggest feeds for you to follow. Most people follow back.

2) Retweet and retweet some more. If you want people to share your content, you need to share theirs. Twitter is a reciprocal culture.

3) Be interesting! Here's some great advice from Forbes on how to be more interesting every day.

Need help encapsulating yourself in 140 characters or less? Let me know. I can help!

Five Steps to a Better Facebook Feed in 2012

Like two thirds of small businesses, you probably put up a Facebook page at some point in the past couple of years. Maybe you're not keeping it up so much anymore because you don't really see the point, and your management doesn't see the results.

From Flickr user Max-B.

This is kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy - if you don't see the point of your Facebook page, then you'll never see any results.

Re-evaluate your Facebook presence and determine how to use your feed more effectively this year.

Here's five easy steps to a better Facebook feed:

1. What are you hoping your Facebook page will accomplish? Do you have a goal for the number of fans you want, their level of engagement, or how much they buy? 
2. How much traffic is Facebook giving you each week, and what do you want those people to do once they get to your web site? If the path is unclear, help people find their way to where you want them to go. 
3. Add more variety - post special deals, videos, blog posts, contests, photos, questions, and surveys to add interest to your page. 
4. Post more often - if you've only been posting once a day, try posting 2 or 3 times. If you don't post on the weekend, consider trying a weekend post to see what happens. 
5. There are many ways to customize your Facebook business page. Think about adding some graphical interest for your fans. 

Need help making your Facebook presence work for you? Let me know- I can help.

PS - on a related note, a recent article in eMarketer discussed a BzzAgent study which found that social campaigns give a long-term boost to brands. Brand advocacy and purchase intent can remain elevated for a year following a social campaign. Food for thought.

How Do Your Customers Use the Internet to Find You?

If you haven't seen it yet (and even if you have, it's worth another look), check out this great infographic from Business Insider - Incredible Things That Happen Every 60 Seconds On The Internet. 

Infographic by Shanghai Web Designers.

Among other things, there are 98,000 tweets, 695,000 Facebook status updates, and more than 1500 new blog posts.

How much of this action are you getting? If you're like most smaller businesses, probably not much.

And that's OK - you don't need to own Twitter, you just need enough people tweeting about you to dive traffic to your site.

The best way to get people tweeting about you? Tweet about them. If you don't do much on Twitter, think about setting a new year's resolution to spend 10 minutes on Twitter each day. Tools like Hootsuite and Buffer can help you to schedule your tweets and better understand your traffic.
In the mean time, there's a new version of Twitter out there that's generating some positive buzz - here are the highlights from Social Media Examiner.

If you feel like kind of a Luddite these days, don't despair, among other things, people send 168 million emails every minute. If you don't have a robust email program, you probably need one, unless you're letting coupon sites like Groupon and LivingSocial do your email marketing for you.

Even if you are, do you really want to pay for your email by discounting your product by 50 percent? It's time to price out this tradeoff - there are a number of email services geared towards list building for smaller businesses, including Constant Contact, but there are others.

Do the math - how many customers have you gotten through these coupon sites and what did it cost you in discounting? What would happen if you invested this amount of money on an email program?

Need an experienced eye on your email, Facebook, and Twitter strategies? Wondering what the heck Pinterest is? I can help. Drop me a line.