We’re on the last article of our 6-part series on social media tools and how you can utilize them for your business. In our previous articles we’ve reviewed the history of the development of social media tools, and discussed specific tools such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Meetup.com. In this last article we’ll discuss the original social media tool: blogs.

Blogs are different from the other social media tools in several ways. While other social media tools such as Facebook and Twitter are specific products and platforms made by specific companies, blogs are a multi-platform medium: you have several products and technologies to choose from to create a blog – you can even build a blog platform yourself if you’re technically inclined. Some tools, like Blogger and WordPress.com, will host your blog on their own servers. Other blog tools allow you to download and install them on your own website, so that you can self-host your blog.

So what makes a blog a blog? Basically, blogs are a series of articles on a website, usually sorted chronologically or by category. Blog posts can be individual web pages, or there can be multiple blog posts on a page, depending on how the blog is organized. Oftentimes blogs will have “commenting” functionality, which means that site visitors can post comments on the blog articles. Comments are typically displayed in a chronological list at the bottom of the blog article, and oftentimes robust conversations can develop in a blog article’s comment area – similar to the format for LinkedIn Discussions, which I wrote about last month.

So why should your business website have a blog? There are several reasons. The first reason is that keeping a blog with interesting, regularly-updated content can be used as the “fuel” for the rest of your company’s marketing. For instance, a financial consulting company could write a blog article discussing changes in capital gains tax laws in the upcoming year, and analyzing the impact on their constituents. They could then put up posts on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other social media tools with an attention-grabbing headline – something like “New Tax Laws: What They Mean for Your Nest Egg” – and a link to their article. Their audience could then click the link to go to the article and read it themselves. After reading it, they might ask additional questions in the blog comments area or on the company’s Facebook page, to which the company can respond. Or they might forward it on to their friends and family, who can then read the article themselves. This can increase loyalty among the company’s existing customers, attract new customers through word-of-mouth, and enhance peoples’ perception of the company as a reliable and in-the-know place whom they can trust to effectively manage their money.

Another big reason for maintaining a blog is for the search engine optimization benefits it can bring. Content – text on pages – is the fuel of search engine rankings, and blogging is one of the most effective ways to increase the amount of relevant content on your website. Blog articles are also much better at attracting links from other peoples’ websites – people are much more likely to link to  informative and timely articles on relevant topics than they are to link to pages that are merely canned sales pitches for a product or service. And finally, search engines will give higher rankings to websites that are updated regularly, and lower rankings to websites that appear to have been unchanged for a long time – the reasoning is that websites that are updated regularly are more oftentimes more likely to be relevant and useful than websites that appear to have been abandoned for a long time. Blogging is one of the easiest and most effective ways to post regular content updates to your website, and thus increase the likelihood of obtaining better search result rankings.

For the reasons listed above, and for many additional reasons as well, it is obvious that blogging is an extremely effective tool for your business. It provides the “fuel” to power the rest of your company’s marketing, it can increase customer loyalty, attract new customers and enhance your company’s reputation as an expert in your field. And it can provide great search engine optimization benefits as well. It is easy to see why your business should invest in a regularly-maintained blog. But as we’ve said before with all social media tools, you’ll never utilize these tools by sitting around and thinking about it — you have to jump in and start using them. Don’t be afraid — just go for it! In the meantime, if you have additional questions or comments about anything in this article, please feel free to contact us.

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As a company and as an individual Twitter can be a very useful tool, if used in the right ways.  We will look deeper at both sides of Twitter: the individual and the company, to see “How to avoid being a fail whale” when it comes to involvement on Twitter.

Back in January we lined out how Twitter works, and a few suggestions for companies on how to involve themselves with consumers on Twitter.

Once a company is involved in Twitter how do they expand their reach?  How does a company become well versed in social media, specifically Twitter?  Here are a four points on how to avoid being a Twitter fail whale.

1. Consistent Interaction

The key to building a good Twitter following first and foremost is to be consistent with everything that is involved in the account. We’ll be the first to say, and many twitter people will back us up, if a company is going to blow up with tweets once a week, or even once a month, we’re going to unfollow them.  A consistent, daily posting time (studies show the 8-10am EST times to be the best), or even weekly posting time (depending on how much content the company wants to have out) in order for followers to be expecting content.  This constant interaction deals with a companies following as well.  If someone ReTweets (RT) the companies tweet or @ replies with a question, a response is expected quickly.  For larger Twitter accounts an immediate to hour response is expected.  On smaller accounts a response on the day of or next morning is typically expected. In this point as well as the following three, both individuals and companies can put these into actions.

2. Useable Content

The best way to have an active account on Twitter is to post content.  The best way to gain a strong following is to post interesting and usable content.  Content that relates to the company as well as the following.  When a company posts usable content, it will get retweeted and followers will share the company account with their followers.  This in turn grows a committed following that looks forward to tweets.  The best way to find content is to follow blogs related to the company, or have the company post their own content.  If a blog post seems worth sharing with the companies twitter following, the company could even set up a scheduled time for the link to post, as long as the company is prepared to interact with its following once it is posted.

3. Networking

Doing networking on Twitter in the correct way can build an unparalleled community.  This works both with individuals and companies.  Follow all of the companies in your chosen field.  As an individual follow the companies you’d like to work for.  Follow people who tweet about the company, or even just tweet about the company’s field of expertise.  Doing these things will build a community of like-minded people.  Having a community like this fosters creativity as well as keeps the company ahead of the curve, because they are able to see trends. They are also able to keep an eye on what the competition is doing.  The proper networking can even lead to jobs as well as job promotions.

4. Account Aesthetics

A company should have a good looking account.  It should be consistent with the company’s website.  Studies have shown that people are more likely to relate to a profile picture of an actual person instead of a company logo — however there are ways to overcome this.  First, if the company is rather small, their Twitter audience oftentimes personally knows the people tweeting for them. Second, if the company keeps the logo and they have multiple social media employees, simply have them tag their first name or initials at the end of each personal post.  Third, the tough part with the photo of a person is that should that particular employee move on in their career, they have built a face but are now gone; this can cause a harder transition.  The profile description is another thing.  Make sure it is professional first and foremost, but also doesn’t appear to be form writing as well.  There should also be a link that leads directly to the company’s website.  The profile should be filled out in such a way that it invites people to follow it.  The profile and profile picture are the first two things that potential followers see and can be the deciding factor in whether they follow the company or not (we know it is for us).

Watching these four things can help a company or individual avoid being a Twitter Fail Whale.  As always, we are here to help with your social media needs. Come and get in touch with us and we will respond back at the earliest time available.

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We’re currently in our fifth installment of our articles series on social media tools and how to best utilize them for your business. In previous articles we’ve discussed the history of social media tools and looked specifically at how to utilize tools such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. In this article we’ll be discussing how to use a social media tool called Meetup.com.

In contrast to other social media tools like Facebook or LinkedIn, the primary purpose of Meetup.com isn’t to connect and interact online – rather, it’s specifically designed to help people connect in person, in real life (what a concept!). It provides a toolset to allow people to create groups based on common professions or interests, and help them arrange meeting times – called Meetups – for common activities. Meetup subjects range from serious and business-focused topics like marketing and entrepreneurship best practices, to hobbies and common interests like learning Chinese or discussing philosophy. These meetups’ organizational structures are also quite varied: some meetups are very organized, with a planned speaker and agenda for each meeting, while others are just a group of people who meet over coffee each month to shoot the breeze. They range in size from a handful of people per meetup to several hundred. It all depends on each meetup group’s administrators and participants.

There are many benefits of participating in these meetups through Meetup.com. The first benefit is that it’s a fantastic opportunity to network with other businesspeople, whether it’s other professionals in your same field or people in your company’s target client industries. In fact, many people who used to involved themselves in traditional networking groups such as rotary clubs and Chambers of Commerce are now spending their time doing their networking through Meetup.com instead.

Another benefit of meetups is that they provide a fantastic opportunity for continuing education in your profession. Oftentimes meetup groups will have a featured speaker or facilitated discussion groups to discuss the latest industry developments. This is extremely important for people in highly technical and fast-changing industries such as web design and online marketing, where technological advances and novel business models rise and fall so rapidly. These meetups have been an invaluable learning tool for us in our own work, helping us learn new tools and services that we can then offer to our own clients.

In addition to the benefits of attending meetups as an attendee, there are also many benefits to taking a leadership role yourself, such as arranging to be the featured speaker at a meetup, or even organizing your own meetup group. Similar to how being involved in LinkedIn discussions can raise your profile in your industry and demonstrate you or your company’s expertise in your field, being a featured speaker or meetup organizer does the same thing. It shows your leadership skills through your ability to organize and lead the meeting, and it give you an opportunity to display your subject matter expertise about the topic of discussion. For instance, our friend Todd Barrs specializes in online conversion optimization: helping business turn more of their website visitors into paying customers. He hosts conversion optimization meetups around this topic, where he and/or another speaker will present on the principles of their practice to interested business owners. Those businesses who recognize their need for additional help in this area can then hire him for his conversion optimization consulting services.

We hope this article has given you some good starting points on how to utilize Meetup.com for your business. As with any social media tool, how much you get out of Meetup.com depends on how much you put into it, so don’t be afraid to set up an account for yourself and try it out. Next month we’ll be discussing how to best utilize blogs. In the meantime, if you have additional questions or comments about anything in this article, please feel free to contact us.

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We’re in the middle of our article series on social media and how you can utilize it for your business.  In previous articles we’ve reviewed the history of the development of social media, and discussed ways that your business can utilize Facebook and Twitter. In this article our focus will be a social media tool called LinkedIn.

In contrast to Facebook, which started primarily as a means of personal communication between friends, classmates and family, LinkedIn has always specifically focused on business networking. In fact, LinkedIn’s original functionality was primarily that of an online resume service. This leads into one of the predominant ways that LinkedIn is used for business today: as a recruiting tool.  Recruiters and human resources managers use LinkedIn extensively. Recruiters use it to find and connect with potential job candidates. Human resources managers use it to research those job candidates.

Conversely, just as LinkedIn is used for internal recruiting, it’s also an effective tool to use in the business-to-business selling process. When meeting with the representatives of potential client companies, it’s prudent to take a minute to look up their profile on LinkedIn, to see how long they’ve been with their company, what their background is, and so on.  Look around for other people working in that company, to see if the person you’re meeting with is the main decision-maker for the deal you’re pursuing, or if it would be better to try to meet with someone else in the company instead. In business meetings like this, a little research can go a long way.

In addition to LinkedIn’s usefulness as a recruiting and research tool, it has another set of tools that is useful for business: Groups and Answers. Groups on LinkedIn are exactly what they sound like: networks of people within LinkedIn, based around a common profession or interest. There are groups for everything from marketing practices to software development topics to college alumni groups. LinkedIn Answers (also called Discussions) exist inside these groups and are similar to website message boards: someone posts a question or a statement of news or opinion, and other people can respond and discuss it. These discussions can either be public and visible to the world, or private and only visible to group members, depending on the groups administrator’s privacy settings for that group.

Groups and Answers on LinkedIn are valuable tools in many ways.  One of their biggest benefits is that they allow you to stay current in your industry – industry news and trends, hot topics within your industry or your clients’ industries, and so on.  By reading through the various discussions, you can see which topics are generating the most interest, which topics and subject matter recur most frequently, and see peoples’ opinions on the latest industry happenings. This can then inform the topics of your own marketing content such as your own company’s white papers and blog articles – if your own marketing content focuses on those issues which are generating the most interest, it will attract more people.

In addition to using LinkedIn Answers to inform the content of your own marketing materials, you can also take an active part in the answers yourself. Join in the conversation by posting your own comments in the discussions. You can give your own opinion on the discussion topic or respond to other peoples’ comments. Oftentimes other people will then comment on your comments, and soon you are an integral part of the conversation. This has two benefits: it increases your name recognition in your industry or your clients’ industries, and (if your contributions to the discussions are well-informed and compelling) it will demonstrate your subject matter expertise and establish you as a thought leader.

We hope we’ve been able to give you some good starting ideas into how to effectively use LinkedIn in your business. Next month, we’ll be writing about how to effectively use a social media tool called Meetup.com. In the meantime, if you have additional questions or comments about anything in this article, please feel free to contact us.

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Last month we discussed different ways that your company can use Facebook as part of your marketing efforts. But Facebook is only one of the social media tools at your disposal — one of the other dominant tools in the marketplace is Twitter.

So what is Twitter? It is similar to Facebook in some respects — in both tools you set up a personal account and build lists of people to communicate with: friends or fans in Facebook, and followers in Twitter.  Both tools are designed for short, 1-2 sentence messages rather than long essays (in fact, Twitter messages have a 140-character limit).

But there are also key differences between these two tools. One of the main differences is that, while Facebook posts are oftentimes private and only visible to that person’s friends or fans (dependent on each account’s security settings, of course), messages posted on Twitter (called tweets) are usually publicly available to the world. In addition, tweets can include certain key phrases preceded by a hashtag (#), which can then be used to organize and sort the tweets. For instance, if you wanted to see what people were saying about an upcoming election, you could do a search on all tweets containing the hashtag phrases #election or #politics. There are other more everyday hashtag phrases as well, such as #amazing, or #fail.

For instance, here are some sample tweets that might be commonly seen:

• The new album from (band name) is #amazing!!!
• My lousy (brand name) laptop just broke. #fail

This publicly-accessible stream of conversations means that one of the most effective business uses of Twitter is using it as a listening tool: seeing what people are saying about your company, your products, your competitors and your industry. For instance, a home appliance company could run regular keyword searches on their company name, their product names, their competitors’ names, and more generic terms such as “broken dishwasher” or “replacing washing machine.” This allows your company to stay informed and ready to respond in case consumer sentiment toward your products suddenly shifts, for instance, or in case one of your competitors rolls out a new product or service that you need to respond to.

Regular use of Twitter as a listening tool opens up another useful application of this tool: customer service and public relations. Suppose, for instance, that a serious flaw was discovered in one of the shipments of your company’s products.  The people who bought the defective products are furious, and complain about the problems on Twitter. Other people might start re-tweeting these messages in their own Twitter accounts, and pretty soon bad news about your company is spreading like wildfire across the internet.  If your company is actively engaged with your customers on Twitter, however, you would be able to see these customers’ tweets about their faulty product, and immediately respond to them apologizing for the mistake and offering a free replacement. These people will then most likely be impressed with your prompt and personal customer service, and will have finish your conversation with an improved impression of your company in the future, rather than a negative impression. Maybe they’ll post tweets speaking highly of your company’s service, which might then be re-tweeted by others as well. Multiply this scenario several times over, and suddenly you’ve avoided lots of negative sentiment about your company spreading across the internet, and instead have positive sentiment going out instead.  In this way, Twitter’s impact on your company’s public relations process is invaluable.

These are just two of the ways that companies are incorporating Twitter into their business plans. In addition to these two examples, there are hundreds of other innovative ways that businesses can use Twitter to communicate with their company’s audience, announce new promotions, gain publicity and enhance customer loyalty. As always, the best way to learn how to best use utilize Twitter for your business is to jump in and start trying it out.

In our next article we will be writing about how to best utilize the third major social networking tool on the market: LinkedIn. In the meantime, if you have additional questions or comments about anything in this article, please feel free to contact us.

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