Social Media

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Stake Your Claim

Thursday, February 24th, 2011

The digital land rush. Remember that?

It was like The Wild West as brand names and keywords were snatched-up. Many brands were caught with their pants down.

Then came usernames. Similar story.

Now, it’s locations. While admittedly different, you still need to act.

Have you claimed your business location pages? If you haven’t you need to.

Why?

So you have control.
Opportunity for further interaction with your customers.
Optimize, customize and augment your listings or location pages.

Here Are 4 Ways to Take Control

Facebook Places:
On a personal level, I don’t like Facebook Places. Why? It seems very poorly planned, as if it was rolled out as a band-aid to take advantage of the increasing popularity of other check-in based services.

Also, there isn’t much in the form of quality control. If a user is impatient, as many of us are, it’s easy (too easy) to add another location. The result? The constant chasing, by business owners, of rogue locations.

Never the less, you can claim and brand your places pages. You will need to ensure that an email address associated with the business is also included as part of your personal profile. Then simply locate the “Is this your business?” link in the left and follow the bouncing ball.

Foursquare:
One of the geo-location leaders, the growth of Foursquare continues at a rapid pace. Finding fresh check-in data on usage isn’t easy. However, if the number of photos posted via Foursquare is any indication , you need to wrap your arms around it.

Claiming your location can be done quite easily, allowing you to add more information to the profile (“Venue”) and create check-in based offers.

To begin the process, simply find your business location and click the “Do you manage this venue? Claim here”.

Gowalla
Very similar to Foursquare, users check-in, can post photos, leave tips and more. By claiming your business location, you can build out the profile and create check-in messages which you can use to provide offers or a simple “thanks for checking in”.

The Gowalla claim process is quick and easy (perhaps too easy!). Simply locate your business, or add it, and click the “Do you run this place? Claim it now”, then once again follow the bouncing ball.

Yelp
By claiming your business on Yelp! you give yourself the opportunity to optimize the profile, add a great deal of information and respond to those leaving reviews.

It’s a bit more involved to claim, as you have to create a business account, however it’s worth the extra effort.

You can start by finding your location, then clicking the “Work Here…” link. Once claimed, add photos, and as much detailed information as you can.

What do you think are some other benefits to claiming your locations?

Tags: facebook, foursquare, geolocation, gowalla
Posted in Marketing, Social Media | No Comments »

The Social Media Newsroom

Saturday, November 20th, 2010

How many of you have an online press room? The password protected, rarely updated, extension-of-a-brochure-ware website. Old school style. They should be named “Jump Through Hoops to Write About us Please. Thank You”.

Fact is, when I think of an online press room, that is what comes to mind. It’s antiquated.

In the world of digital, change is pervasive. Search algorithm updates, the emergence of social media tools like geo-location services. Change is everywhere, in perpetual motion.

It’s time for the online press room to change too. A social media newsroom can help with that. The concept was introduced by Todd Defren at PR Squared, and they have provided a template that anyone can use as a framework in building their own.

The social media newsroom offers a number of benefits to businesses and is another example of the continued blurring of lines between social media and PR (among other things).

Access
You want members of the media to write about you right?

In the past, traditional media-types would visit your online press room, request a password to view photos, select a few, you would burn them a disc and drop them in the mail to appear in an article two months from now. Timely right?

Not only has the timeliness of informational need changed, so has the media. You knew that though, right?

Fact is, bloggers are media too. The emergence and acceptance of “citizen journalism” means you need to make information available to them as well. A social media newsroom provides quick access to everyone.

Give Them What They Need
Provide all the information needed for the job. Compile research, links, whitepapers, reviews, media mentions and pertinent contact information among other things.

Organize the information by product, category etc. in an intuitive, easy to use manner. The easier you can make the job of the media, the better your chances of receiving coverage.

Brand Image
Provide images of your products, team members, logo or whatever else is appropriate. If a blogger is writing a post about your products, don’t make them search high and low for an image to use. Not only have you helped them do their job, you have ensured that the image isn’t something grabbed from a Google image search of low quality.

You know what would suck? An glowing media-mention about your product with a stretched, pixelated image.

Those are three simple reasons to create and maintain a social media newsroom. What do you see as the benefit?

What to Include
There is no exact recipe that will tell you everything to include. The great thing about using the framework provided by PR Squared, is you can simply add and remove elements that make sense for your business.

Think about the things media members in your market need and include them. My Suggestions?

Bookmarks
I love Delicious. There, I said it. Using Delicious bookmarks you can organize a wide variety of information by tag. Spend time planning and determining a tagging hierarchy that will make it easy to provide back-story and additional information in a very straight-forward, useful way.

As a simple example, there are links related to this post (from a presentation at Pubcon) here: http://www.delicious.com/patstrader/pubconpr.

RSS Feeds
If you have something to say and are publishing content, you need to make sure it is RSS enabled. Blogs, tweet streams, YouTube videos, Flickr streams, press releases. You get the idea.

Not only can you provide a clearly-labeled directory of feeds, you can parse them to display recent content from each feed. In a sidebar, you could have a list, linking to each feed, and in the body of the page, display last 10 Tweets, most recent videos and photos, blog headlines and more.

Make it Easy to Share
Is the content you are providing portable? For example, ensure it is easy to grab the code needed to embed a video.

Map Your Outposts
Literally taken, let people know where you are.

Imagine a blogger writing about your event or restaurant. Don’t make them do the legwork of finding directions or location information for their audience.

Additionally, provide links to your other social media outposts. Your Foursquare venue, or Facebook Fan Page for example. By providing links to these outposts, in conjunction with your RSS feed links, you are allowing the media to learn more about you and find additional sources of information which might be useful to them.

Display Your Media Mentions
Another adaptation of RSS feeds, you can multi-purpose your listening feeds, or use something as simple as Google News or Blog search.

Pull the feed, parse the information and display the most recent media mentions or blog posts about your brand or products. For the truly geektacular out there, you can do some creative things with Yahoo! Pipes and RSS Feeds.

Contact Information
If the media needs to contact you to complete their job, it needs to be painfully obvious who to contact and how.

For your media contacts, you can provide the preferred method of contact and the types of questions each person is best suited to answering. Using head shots, and LinkedIn profiles is another great way to provide additional information.

Leverage Your Assets
In these times of content-as-currency, you need to leverage your assets. Photos, videos, white papers, presentation slides or any other form of content you have created. Make it available.

Also, make it clear that the assets can be used by the media through use and display of a Creative Commons license. Again, anything you can do to make the media’s job easier and quicker to complete, the better.

This is just a simple overview of why and what to include if you are working on building a social media newsroom. There are many creative ways this could be implemented, what are some ideas you have?

Tags: social media newsroom
Posted in Social Media | No Comments »

6 Ways to Make Your Fan Page Craptacular

Thursday, October 7th, 2010

The ubiquity of fan pages has, to an extent, eroded their value. As more fan pages are created, more crap is published. It’s the law, apparently.

Those that have built and maintain quality fan pages will continue to reap the rewards for the foreseeable future. However, the value of poorly planned and executed fan pages will have an ever-decreasing value.

Why? Fan pages are easy to create, yet difficult to build-out. Anyone can create a fan page, haven’t you noticed?

6 Ways to Ensure Your Fan Page Will Suck

Care More About the Number of Fans You Have Than the Value You Provide.

Quick, go count how often you ask your fans to pimp your page. Now go tally how often you provided something of value to your fans. Skewed towards the pimp? Suxor!

Post in All Caps.

Your fans love this. Really they do. If your caps lock button happens to be broken, you can always step-up to the ever-popular “Multiple Exclamation Points” tactic. After all what you say is REALLY IMPORTANT!!!! Right?

Never, and I Mean Never, Post Anything of Value.

Talk about how awesome you are, the recent awards you picked-up at the Elks Club Pancake Feed and several times a day ask your fans to solicit their friends to become your fan. Every day. Do this.

Ignore People.

Know what else folks love? Being ignored. Seriously, what are these people thinking? They come to one of your communication outposts (your fan page) to ask questions? Caveat: Yes, some folks you should ignore (no joke), we describe these asshats in the next tip.

Delete Anything Remotely Negative.

There are a ton of people out there that it would seem, hate themselves. Seems, they hate you too. How do they cope? They play the role of “Negative Nancy” all day on fan pages. Yours is next. Those people probably deserve to be ignored. However, those with legit complaints or issues need to be addressed. Don’t just delete comments because they are unfavorable.

Allow (And Even ‘Like’) Spam.

Your fans LOVE spam. They slice it up and put it on saltines and dance to polka music. They love it. In fact someone just shared a great link about how they struck it rich working from home on an iphone. Also, when Maude’s Cheese Hut does a drive-by post reminding your fans to “Stop in for the best cheese curds!!!!!!!!!”, like it, and leave it for your fans to enjoy.

Jokes, and snark aside. If you are doing any of these things, please stop. You can create a quality page, encourage communication and provide value to your fans. It can be done, yet all to often the example being used as a good fan page, is a really bad one. So instead of pointing you to one, I simply encourage you to use common sense. Follow the 80/20 rule, provide value, interact and please, don’t be craptacular.

Tags: facebook, fan page, sarcasm
Posted in Inspiration, Social Media | 4 Comments »

Using Foursquare Embed Features for Travel and Tourism

Friday, September 24th, 2010

You have likely heard of all the new “check-in-here” social sites. They aren’t necessarily new, however, the launch of Facebook Places has opened the eyes of many to geo-location tools.

Facebook Places, Gowalla, Yelp!, Bright Kite and Loopt are all examples. Foursquare is included in that group and also incorporates game mechanics. Essentially, people check-in and earn badges for a variety of reasons.

You also have the opportunity to leave “tips” at various locations, including your own. It’s the digital way of giving the inside-scoop to visitors.

When you talk to someone that is heading to your favorite restaurant, and you tell them, “make sure you try the….”. It’s like that. Only digital.

A recent development with Foursquare makes it a very interesting tool for travel and tourism businesses. You can now embed tips, and to-do items, on your website.

If you own a restaurant, you can add a button to your site that visitors can click and add your location to their to-do list. If you are a CVB, DMO or other travel resource, you can leave a variety of tips for people to add to their list.

Here’s How You Can Embed Foursquare To-Do Items:

Get the Code:

Find Your Venue:

Visit foursquare.com and do a search for your location to navigate to the “venue” page.

Location or Tip?

Once there you can either embed the location or a tip as a to-do item.

Grab the Code

You will notice buttons on either, which you can click to grab the necessary snippet of code. In the tip section, the button will appear in the bottom right corner, when you hover your cursor. When you click the button, a small window will pop up where you can select and copy the necessary code, which you will then paste into your webpage.

Make it Available to Visitors

Simply Paste

If you know a little bit about your site code, find a suitable location on your website and simply paste it in. That’s it.

Your Visitors Can Now Add It

Once added to your site, a button will appear, which your visitors may click, to add items to their own personal Foursquare account. This item will now be visible when they are out and about on their mobile device.

Seems like a great way to make your event or location known to travelers. What do you think?

Tags: geo location, tourism, travel
Posted in Digital Marketing, Social Media | 1 Comment »

Why Aren’t You Listening?

Thursday, August 12th, 2010

First, let’s just get this out of the way. This is not a post about what listening is, or how to do it. This is simply about why you should, and why some people don’t.

The question which needs to be answered before going any further is this: Do you care what your customers think?

This is, hopefully, a rhetorical question, however, it seems that far too many companies simply don’t care anymore. They might say they do, but their actions tell a different story.

Hopefully, you care. You should. If you hope to have success in today’s trust-fueled thank-you economy, you need to.

Traditionally, businesses use comment cards, or surveys to obtain feedback. These are still widely used, with success. Through the ubiquity of smart phones, and sharing through social media outlets, the comment cards have become real-time.

Visitors are posting to Facebook, or Twitter, or sharing photos while they are using your product, visiting your location or making plans.

By making use of simple listening tools, you create an opportunity to answer questions, share information, or simply say “thanks for stopping in”. Your customers have choices now more than ever, and they will be spending their money with those businesses which value them and listen.

Why Some Don’t Listen
“I don’t know how”
A common way to rationalize not listening, is not knowing what to do. While often an accurate statement, it is not a legit excuse. Folks, Google can be your friend. It can teach you how to juggle or tell you how to raise a pet monkey. It can also help you find lots of useful information on how to listen.

“I don’t have time”
Fact is, none of us have enough time. For anything. I’m not sure if we are busier, or if the time-space continuum kicked it into overdrive. Either way, we know, you don’t have time. That being said, you need to make time.

Remember way back when? I call it P.E. No, I’m not meaning the class where nerds got drilled with screaming-fast dodge balls (sorry if that was you…getting drilled). I am meaning Pre-Email. When email became a standard part of daily business, you didn’t have time for that either. But you made time, and eventually it became part of your daily routine. Same thing needs to happen here. Make time. Listen.

These are just two, I’d love to hear some more. However, I’d really love to hear about how you are integrating listening.

Posted in Digital Marketing, Social Media | No Comments »

How To Write A Facebook Update For Your Business

Wednesday, August 4th, 2010

So, you know there’s this thing called Facebook, right?

Of course. You probably have a personal profile. And a fan page for your business. Lots (and lots) of people do.

But how are you using it?

That’s the real question. And it’s worth asking, because what most small businesses have done is gone right out and started a fan page with no idea about what to use it for.

Because they don’t ask, they use it for the same thing they use everything else for: shameless self promotion. Which is great, if Facebook were direct mail. Which it’s not.

So what is it, then?

Well, for starters, it’s the most popular social network in the world. But you already knew that. It’s more worthwhile to think about what that means. Social Network. It’s people sharing their lives, sometimes with passion, and staying connected with one another.

Staying connected. For a small business, that’s a tall order. Just because the tools exist doesn’t mean anyone wants to hear from you. Especially if all you’re going to do is talk about yourself.

In fact, it’s probably best to flip that idea around completely: Facebook is a way for your fans to talk about themselves. If you make it that. And that’s how to stay connected.

Here are some simple ways to make Facebook updates that help you stay connected to your fans:

-Post everyday, or almost everyday. A great way to make a connection is to be consistent. If you post at about the same time everyday, all the better. People will start to be able to trust that their time is being well spent connecting with you, because you’re there.

-Establish a tone. Remember that it’s social. Meaning, you need a voice. Be a person. Talk, don’t write. People are going to trust you a lot more if it’s you they’re trusting, and not just a logo.

-Be brief. Attention spans are short. Get to the point in a sentence. Two, tops. If you have more to say than that, write it in a note, then post the link to the note. Or better yet, blog. The people that trust you will follow your links. But shoving out big updates doesn’t do them any favors. Your big posts become a burden.

-Be interesting, and failing that, helpful. People want information, yes, but on Facebook, they want social information; what’s your business doing that makes them better informed socially? What kind of people do you cater to? (The answer better not be “everybody”). You know your business intimately, and there’s no one better prepared to answer that than you.

-Ask questions. Statements have endings; questions have openings. If the goal, as stated above, is to give your fans a way to talk about themselves, how better to do that than with a question?

-Follow up. If there’s a comment, or a long list of comments, on an update you posted, weigh in. Show people that you’re paying attention. Validate the fact that they’ve given you their time, the most precious resource any of us have. Yes, even on Facebook.

Some of that info is pretty elementary. But you also probably know just how many people are doing it wrong. And I really mean that. Spamming, pushing, shouting- that’s the wrong way to use Facebook.

If you want to give your fans something, that is.

Thoughts?

Tags: content, facebook, getting started in social media, how to, marketing strategy, writing
Posted in Social Media | No Comments »

Is Social Media Your World Cup?

Monday, June 14th, 2010

Here’s what I think:

For most small business owners in America, digital marketing is like soccer. They don’t understand it. They don’t see the strategy. They don’t have the skills it takes to implement their tactics. They can’t execute.

I grew up with a superstar soccer player in my family. My brother was a force to be reckoned with on the pitch. He was a huge, fast, and often angry defender who would make strikers fear a breakaway if they heard is terminator-like stride chasing them down. My bro stopped more goals with his feet than most keepers ever will with their hands.

I, on the other hand, sucked.

Slow and clumsy, I was an easy target for anyone with a half decent handle on the ball. I stopped playing soccer when I was about 10, and the world rejoiced.

But I have a huge appreciation for the game. I understand it on a deep level, and I know what the players are trying to do as they move the ball.

Most Americans don’t. Or, actually, most American’s didn’t, until now.

Soccer has moved out of it’s infancy in America. Right now, we’re seeing a revolution in the game where it’s no longer really acceptable to say, “I don’t really get it,” or worse, “It’s just so boring.” America is moving on.

The same thing is happening with social media. As a small business owner, it’s not okay to not understand social media marketing anymore. You must get in the game, understand your strategy, create ideas in the space and execute them.

Or here’s your result: you’ll get burned. Juked. Nutmegged (google it).

If you don’t become a social media marketing player, or at least an avid fan, you’re going to lose. As the rest of the country celebrates, you’ll be the one wondering what the big deal is. Your business will pay a price.

Here’s how social media is like World Cup soccer:

-It takes time. There’s a lot of work that goes into a goal. Set plays (strategy) and constant practice (tactics) eventually produce a payoff.

-It takes skill. You can’t expect to walk on the field and be successful without putting your time in to learn the game. Be persistent and skills will grow.

-It takes care. No two ways about it. You have to change your perception of what the game means before you can see any benefit. If you don’t care about it, it won’t ever work for you.

-It takes a team. If you try to do it alone, you’ll fail. The whole point is to build the best team you can, people that will share the ball and work together.

-It takes ideas. The most brilliant plays are inventive, new, beautiful. Ideas move fast. The best ones turn into goals.

What are your thoughts? What are the consequences for ignoring the world as it changes?

Tags: content, Digital Marketing, getting started in social media, Goals, World Cup
Posted in Social Media | No Comments »

How I Use My Social Media Schedule

Thursday, June 3rd, 2010

Very few people at small businesses are dedicated to full-time social media marketing (it’s coming).

So between balancing all of your other responsibilities, you have to find some time, some dedicated time, to participation. Plain and simple. If you don’t, here’s what I predict will happen: You’ll get bored on the slow return (ROI and otherwise), you won’t follow the metrics, and, most tragically, you won’t make any worthwhile connections with customers that are reaching out to you.

It’s the digital equivalent of sticking your head in the sand. Before you do that, try this: use a schedule.

I work first hand with a whole lot of technophobes. These are people that don’t like tech under the best of circumstances (irony alert: now it’s their job!). I can guarantee you that a schedule clears the clutter, sets the bar low, and allows for a path into the world of social media marketing.

Ever see people in the gym staring at the equipment? Those people don’t have a plan. They won’t see any results. But what about the woman who goes at 6 a.m. for 45 minutes on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for aerobics and at 3 p.m. on Tuesday and Thursday to lift weights? Better, right? That’s the way to do it.

Here’s roughly how I use my social media schedule:

1 hour in the morning: When I get to work, I spend the first hour catching up on social media. Mostly, I use my RSS reader and Twitter.

I go through my reader to find blog posts that might be interesting. Of these, I choose 4 or 5 to make comments on. They’re often the same blogs, because I like what the authors have to say (though I branch out, too). I’ll also post to twitter anything I find that’s interesting.

As I do this, I’m also searching Twitter. I’ve set up different feeds to bring me information on what people are saying about different subjects. I can comment on what those people say, or, most often, re-tweet what they’ve posted to show it to anyone listening on my network.

Twice each week, 1 hour in the morning: I blog. I have a good idea who our audience is, so I like to plan in advance what subjects I’m going to cover here. I talk about content, mostly, and how it relates to digital marketing as a whole. Most of it is basic, and I try to offer actionable items that people can put into practice right away. Pat writes about SEO tips mainly, sometimes high level, but most often it’s stuff that everyone can use. Again, he’s including actionable items.

Once we have a post up, we announce it on Twitter. It’s nice to see that people that I’ve RTed will often return the favor, so our content gets spread around

20 minutes mid-morning: Just before noon, I’ll check in on Facebook. There’s some research that shows that around 11:30 is the best time to post updates on Facebook for business pages, so I look around to see what our clients are up to, how they’re posting information, and what other businesses in their vertical are doing. I check metrics on pages that I’m an administrator on twice a week, so I know exactly what kind of communities are being built.

20 minutes in the afternoon: Time to check back in with Twitter and Facebook. If anything weird happens, or if there’s a problem, the earlier we catch it, the better. Also, there might be some direct messages or posts that I want to respond to.

15 minutes in the afternoon: I’m subscribed to several linkedin groups, so I’ll usually read the threads. I do more lurking there than anything else, but meeting @LewisHowes at SOBCon 2010 inspired me to get more involved. I’ll update you.

And that’s about it for the social media part. The rest of my day I spend writing and managing projects. (I know- I must be living right!) There are other things that will be incorporated as time progresses; mobile marketing is becoming a much bigger part of our content strategy, for instance. And that’s all part of it; it will have its place on the schedule just like the rest.

A note about timing: For me, it’s just as important to step back from social media as it is to participate. IT’s easy to get caught up in the conversation, and before I know it, I’m missing out on my writing and management work. That’s why the schedule is so helpful; it works for off time, too.

I’ll also say that I never separate one from the other. Participating in social media is just as much a part of my work as writing. Anyone who told you that social media will take care of itself lied.

What’s your schedule look like?

Tags: blogs, content, getting started in social media, social media schedule, writing
Posted in Social Media | 2 Comments »

What The Hell Are Location Based Services?

Monday, May 31st, 2010

For many small and travel/tourism businesses it can be a daunting task to keep up with emerging technology and social media platforms.

Things are not going to be getting any easier. Cue location based social networks or location based services (LBS). While they are not necessarily new, they are gaining users quickly.

The ubiquity of GPS enabled phones and our seemingly insatiable desire to stay connected has fueled a boom in social networks that allow you to share your whereabouts with friends.

In a nutshell, you create your user account, connect your phone to your account, and when visiting a location (everything from gas stations to hotels) you check in by using a few simple hand gestures to post to your account. While checking in you then notify friends, or those nearby, of your whereabouts and what you may be doing, or what you think of where you are. You can also do a variety of other tasks, depending on the platform. You can earn points and badges, you can share photos, post reviews, collect items, participate in a scavenger hunt or even earn rewards from businesses.

Many businesses are already finding ways to leverage these services. Here are two you can get started with, including a quick tip for each.

Foursquare
Combine location based check-ins with game mechanics and you have Foursquare. Check-in, earn points, earn badges, share to-do lists. This service is growing very quickly. Last week it was reported that nearly 1 million check-ins occur every day.

Tip: Create a company account, and sign up as the manager of your business. You can create a virtual customer loyalty program with rewards for check-ins and frequency.

Yelp
A stalwart in the review networks, Yelp now allows users to “check-in”. This is a powerful combination, that I think will serve as a model for others. It combines location based check-in with reviews. Users can also upload photos.

Tip: Be sure you have claimed your business on Yelp. Build out your profile with as much information as possible and monitor your page. If you are fortunate to receive your “people love us on Yelp!” decal, display it prominently! Also, don’t be “one of those guys” and review your own business. It is petty, and you’ll end up with pretty bad karma.

I’m interested to find out if you’re using any location-based services, personally or for your businesses. If so, what’s your take?

Tags: getting started in social media, marketing strategy, online reputation management, Pat Strader
Posted in Social Media | No Comments »

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