Bridging the Gap: Social Media Conference

Posted on February 22, 2011 by Pam Sahota

Bridging the Gap: A Mashup of Academic Frameworks & Business Applications OR otherwise known as #BTG11 was the first conference I have co-planned, and with months of preparation, Friday, February 18th, 2011 was a great success thanks to the help of my amazing co-planners Sean Zinsmeister (@szinsmeister) and Paul Schmidt (@drumming).

Our main man MC, Joselin Mane (@Joselinmane) kicked it off with great intros and prizes to the audience. Academic Keynote Erik Qualman (@equalman) then started off the conference with a great energy and had the crowd not only roaring in laughter but applause. My fave part of his Keynote presentation was the tools he recommended (sorry for the blurry snapshot). I am a definite fan of some of these tools including all the free fun Google tools, Wisestamp, Hootsuite, and Grader. If you haven’t tried them out, definitely do!

Then the Facebook panel duo, Brian Simpson (@Bsimi) and Dan Zarrella (@danzarrella) were the perfect combo. They were informative, entertaining, and best of all, the complete opposites of one another. They were fabulous at answering the questions of the audience and the crafty ones that Tamsen McMahon @tamadear (our wonderful moderator) threw at them.

Paul Gillin (@pgillin) and Eric Enge (@ericenge) were both fabulous solo speakers who taught the crowd the importance of ROI and SEO, respectively. And although I learned a lot from each, my favorite part was when Meg Fowler (@megfowler) Tweeted, “The only thing in my life with a crystal-clear ROI is coffee. #BTG11″ during Paul’s session. I mean, come on…how can you not agree? Meg also won a kickass raffle prize for that Tweet. Win-Win!

Tamsen knocked it out of the park with her moderating skills for the Content Panel, which included C.C. Chapman (@cc_chapman), Ann Handley (@MarketingProfs), Michelle McCormack (@Michellemmm) and John Deighton (@HBSMKTG). A great mix of on the panel, which allowed for great conversation on how content not only needs to be relevant, but one must take the time to create said content in order to reach one’s target market effectively.

Perhaps I am biased, but I must add that lunch was delicious!

In order to avoid food coma, Julia Roy (@juliaroy ) ensured everyone stayed wide awake with her lively presentation on Twitter for Business. It was not only entertaining but full of great case studies including Best Buy, Whole Foods and @comcastcares. Great examples of how brands should utilize Twitter…but please recall, as Julia stated, “There is no one right way to use Twitter for Business.” Great point!

And to close off the great day, Mike Volpe (@mvolpe) kicked ass and took names. He demonstrated the importance of inbound marketing and how social media is just a “piece of the puzzle”, yet an important piece of course. And one thing, people should definitely remember to take away when focusing on marketing and social media: “don’t dip your toe in the water, jump in all the way!”

But the fun didn’t stop there! There was of course an after-party for mingling, free food and drinks. And lets just say the song O.P.P. began playing…enough said? Bring it back to the 90s?

My last remark is that I am lucky enough to not only know many of these speakers personally, but am honored to know them professionally as well. Great people, Great time. What more can you ask for? #BTG11 Rocked! If you don’t believe me: check out below how much the conference Trended on Twitter. AWESOME!

If you missed out:

Presentation Slides

My Flickr Pics

More pics and videos will be added to the Facebook Page as well.

How to: Start a Company Twitter Account

Posted on February 21, 2011 by Pam Sahota

Is your company ready to Tweet? Well before you get started on the Tweets, hashtag usage, and great consumer engagement through the relationships you will build…and then here are the steps you need to take in order to take advantage of Twitter and all its greatness:

1) Twitter Handle: In my opinion, it is best to keep a Twitter handle as simple as possible, as close to your company name as possible, and without any numbers and/or dashes (if possible). Case in point: @carbonite and @zipcar. That way if someone is looking for your company handle on Twitter or via Google, it is easier to find, and easier to remember when people are Tweeting about you. As the old line goes, “keep it simple stupid.”

2) Profile Picture and Background: Use a picture that’s easy to recognize and coincides with your company’s brand image. Best to use your logo if possible or a variation of it. In addition your background is also great “retail space.” You can customize it to be very visual like @zipcar below or or keep it simple and to the point like @carbonite below. In addition you can use that space to add more info regarding your other links to your other platforms and/or blog(s).

3) Bio and Link: So you have 140 characters to work with for this concise and to-the-point bio of who your company is and why the consumer should care. Let’s take a look at @zipcar again — their bio says “A community of folks who’ve found out that car sharing beats the heck outta car rental or ownership. We’re tweeting from Zipcar HQ Mon-Fri 9am-5pm EST.” They keep it hip and simple just like their company culture exudes. You want to be consistent with your brand image and positioning as well as be creative with this “retail space.” I think @zipcar does a great job at this. They also include their web page in the web address portion – which is vital! The link you include should be the heart of your company’s content hub. You want to lead people to where you want them to go, so they can be converted from someone who is aware of your brand to a consumer who purchases and advocates for your brand.

4) Strategy: Now before you start following every random person you can find…think why you should follow them. Put together a strategy/plan for your investment in social media. It is not about random follows and robotic Tweets. It’s about reaching your target market and engaging with them on a deeper level. Social media, such as Twitterallows companies the capability to listen and respond to consumers in a real-time way which was not possible before. It gives consumers the personal attention they want from the brands they love.

Thus: (1) who is your target market, (2) where are they, (3) what are they talking about, and (4) how can you converse with them. Example: @carbonite would have looked at who they want to sell to and what they want to utilize their Twitter account for. As seen from their stream they talk to current consumers and assist with issues they may have, questions regarding the service @carbonite provides, offers they may have, as well as engaging on a personal level with each follower they have in order to demonstrate they aren’t just another brand on Twitter, but a brand who wants to fully engage with each person who follows them. Still unsure where to start and find the “right” followers? Try out Follower Wonk, which is a helpful tool for following “relevant” people for you. It allows you to find who is following your competition, and in turn you can follow them as well. Useful and easy to use!

Note: Another thing to keep in mind is if you want more than one handle for your company. Some companies such as @zappos have different accounts for different services in order to be more efficient with consumer response. Therefore you can have one handle for customer service, while another for finance issues, and another for the CEO (or a higher up) to Tweet from in order to show that the brand is personal and even the higher ups care about each and every consumer out there. In addition@zipcar has different handles for their different cities they are located in. Great for specific attention to your consumers. This can be great for efficiency as I said, but be sure that you have the manpower to handle each of these handles and do not leave consumers waiting. Twitter is in real time after all.

5) Lists: Helpful to create lists of categories that matter and a great way for your followers to follow those lists as well. Example: if you have different areas of function within your company such as @mashable who focuses on Tech, Social Media and many other things — they have different lists to correspond to those.

6) A few more tips:

Last few tweets: People pay attention to your last few Tweets especially when they are unsure whether to follow you. They may check to see if you are offering relevant content in your Tweets. So it can be useful to ensure that your Tweets are relevant to your industry and target market (as well as some not so serious ones thrown in to be more personal and fun).
Follow back: Do not be one of those that does not follow back. It’s so middle school.
ReTweet: ReTweet other people within your industry or target market. It’s not all about you.
Be Polite: Like in real life, a “thank you” goes a long way.
Do not Spam: I know when I get spammed by companies I either unfollow or block them. Spam = waste of time.
And avoid the common mistakes on Twitter that people easily make.

Wishing you had a helpful guide to keep at your side and familiarize your boss or yourself a bit more? Check out this Ebook: Twitter for Business 101. It’s not only free but super easy to follow and utilize for 101 guidance. Now….Ready, Set, Tweet!

Note: this post was originally written for oneforty, which was acquired by Hubspot

Takeaways from “All Marketers are Liars”

Posted on February 17, 2011 by Pam Sahota

Last time I was in NYC, a good friend of mine insisted I borrow his copy of Seth Godin’s “All Marketers are Liars.” Knowing I am a marketing junkie and social media geek, he felt that this book would be right up my alley. He couldn’t have been more right!

A few points I took away from this insightful book…

“Stop trying to find the formula that will instantly make your idea in the winner. Instead of being scientists the best markers are artists They realize that whatever is being sold is being purchased because it creates an emotional want, not because it fills a simple need.”

From my own experience, this could not be more true. How many times have you bought a product because you want it, and justified it as a “need”, but it’s really a “want?” Example: I decided to buy an iPad. Did I need this when I already have a Macbook and numerous other Apple products? Probably not. However, I realized I would be attending SXSW and may not want to carry around my laptop. An iPad would be perfect for this, right? I can throw it in my purse, go to the sessions I choose to attend, and then out and about afterward with ease. This definitely was not a “need” but a “want” in order to be comfortable and feel that I could take part interactively via Twitter, blogging, Facebook, etc. In addition, it’s an Apple product, which is so much “cooler” right? Furthermore, I hate being left behind in technology, and when it comes to the newest and latest and greatest, I must be a part of this right? Emotional want. Not a simple need.

The marketing team for Apple are without a doubt exceptional. They make each product cool and sleek and an immediate “want.” But how did I connect myself to this enough to purchase it when I didn’t need it? In this case, Apple made me a loyal consumer. I am a complete Mac user (convert from Dell a few years ago) and love the simplicity and ease of use of their products. The innovation is always above and beyond and makes you feel like you are in the “in group.” Does this mean I have an inner need to feel included and part of the cool group? Was this the route of my emotional want of this product? Perhaps. My point? Marketers such as Apple are able to demonstrate and create a want emotional enough within us, that we buy their product. Is this a science? Some argue yes. Godin, says it’s an art. I say, a bit of both.

Do not spend all your time on just your website. “Every point of contact” is what matters. Be consistent. Be authentic. Cover all the possible impressions and allow the consumer to make them into a coherent story, you win.

In short your story is what the consumer believes it to be. It’s not your story, it’s theirs. You, the marketer, may try to “sell a story” but in the end its the consumer who convinces themselves why they “need” such and such product. For example, in Godin’s Puma example he notes, “The way Stephanie felt when she bought the Pumas was the product. Not the sneakers…” Again it was the emotional connection to why the consumer buys the product. Maybe it will make her feel prettier. Maybe it will make him feel richer. Maybe it will make her feel thinner. Whatever the reason, there is a deeper connection to why a person chooses to buy a product, and although the marketer can do a great job at “selling” it — it’s the consumer who really “sells it” to him or herself. Case in point: my iPad.

Godin did a great job in this book and really made me think of myself as a consumer when trying to think as a marketer. In the end, we’re all selling something whether to ourselves or to someone else. Maybe all marketers are liars after all…

How to: Connect Email Marketing and Social Media

Posted on February 17, 2011 by Pam Sahota

Nowadays communication is about being at the fingertips of your consumers. Consumers want to find how they can reach you at the click of a mouse button. Whether it’s via email communication, social media, and/or both. Your place of business should make it as easy as possible for your consumers, so why not connect both together? Combine your mechanism for direct response with your organic communities. Therefore consumers can find, communicate, and engage with you how and when they want to. Thus, you’re not “pushing” yourself on them, you’re “pulling” them in. Awesome.

In addition, some people think that email is old school, while social networking is the “new black.” Truth is, you can leverage both in order to effectively manage your brand and increase engagement and ROI in the long run. Here are some great ways to get started…

1. Make your email more social: When you email your blog and/or newsletter subscribers, make sure your email message includes social sharing options. Leverage your email subscriber’s social networks. For example, if your email subscriber list is 10,000, each of those people may have 100 or so followers and 600 or so Facebook friends and another couple hundred LinkedIn connections, and so on. Therefore, your message’s potential social reach could be millions because of the connections your subscribers have. In short, social sharing buttons in your emails is a huge opportunity! Two tools to help you get started:

A. Constant Contact: A great email marketing service that allows you to include a share bar in your newsletter. Therefore, your subscribers (current and potential) can share what they’ve read in your email on their portals such as Facebook,Twitter, and/or LinkedIn. Word of mouth marketing about your service/product? Yes, please. You can try this service for Free up to 60 days and then subscribe for as low as $15/month with other options included.
B. Mail Chimp: Another great email marketing service which allows you to insert your social site icons in your newsletter/email/etc. Therefore subscribers can instantly click and go to your social platforms and engage in real-time and share with others too. Valuable and key to building relationships with your target market. Mail Chimp is free for up to 2000 subscribers and a send limit of 12,000 but you can have unlimited depending on the pricing plan you prefer.

2. Add sign-up options to your social sites: In order to reach out to more of your target market via email, make sure your social sites such as Facebook, have a link to subscribe to your blog and/or receive a newsletter via email. Make sure this option is easy to find, and easily seen when new potential consumers visit your social site. In addition, if you have a blog and a newsletter, add a “sign up for our email newsletter” on your blog’s sidebar. Great use of ” social real estate”. TIP: Keep your sign up fields short and sweet. That way the target consumer will be more likely to take the 2 seconds to enter their email. Afterwards follow up with your sensational email marketing campaign which promotes your product/service. In addition, this allows your consumer to choose between receiving information via your Facebook page, their inbox, or however your target market decides they would prefer to learn and keep up to date on what’s going on with your company. This prevents your company from pushing one mode of communication, and instead allowing the consumer to choose what they prefer. Pull them in!

3. Two tools that will rock your socks off:

A. AWeber: Allows you to instantly send a link to your Facebook page and Twitter account and share your newsletter with your followers and fans. That way new and potential target market consumers have a chance to subscribe and/or keep up with your “happenings” via the channel they prefer. First month sign up is for $1.00(normally $19.00/month for up to 500 subscribers).

B. Rapleaf: Takes a unique approach where they assist marketers in understanding “the social connectivity and influence of existing members in their online databases.” Each member has value and can spread the word positively or negatively. Staying on top of the influencers is key and Rapleaf can assist by customizing emails to each member of your audience. Personalized emails? Great way to engage on a higher level. Try out for free here.

Want more social contact management tools? Rapportive, Hoverme, and Gist help to connect the contacts you have from your email and find them on their social networks. Great tools and ways to engage and build relationships and utilize both email and social marketing together. Utilize this “social inbox” because every social media user has an email address for each of their social mdia platforms. In short, “email is the glue that ties social media together” and your company would be wise to make the two work together. To get started, feel free to check out my Toolkit for your convenience…

Note: this post was originally written for oneforty, which was acquired by Hubspot.

How to: Find a Job Using Social Media

Posted on February 10, 2011 by Pam Sahota

Tired of using search engines and massive jobs sites to find a job? Wishing you could find great job opportunities a little easier? Join the club! I have been utilizing social media tools for job searching quite often lately because they help bring possible jobs right to your fingertips rather than searching for hours.

A. Google Reader and Google Alerts: Not only is this tool great for subscribing to blogs, but it can help job seekers subscribe to job listing by keyword and position. This way you aren’t doing a Google search everyday for the same type of position, but the search findings are delivered to your Reader or your inbox. Convenient, easy and free.

B. Five ways that Twitter can help:

(1) Utilize the Twitter reader Tweetdeck to keep tabs on job postings via job related search terms.

(2) TwitJobSearch: A search engine that aggregates job listings and posts on Twitter.

(3) There are specific people who post about jobs frequently. Find those in your neck of the woods that do so, follow them, create a conversation so you can build a relationship and seek help from them when needed.

(4) Follow the brands and places of business that you hope to work for. Engage with them, so you have a basis to show your deep interest before, during, after you have applied to work there.

(5) Twitter Advanced Search: A great way to search on the platform you already utilize and dig deeper into the job postings that are on Twitter in the past few days. You can do so easily by using hashtags (keywords that people add to their Tweets), search terms, etc. Also helpful to make sure you click “contains links” when deciding on your search, because job postings are more helpful when they click a link to the website posting. Want to know more…check out the quick 3 min video below by Mashable.

Note: Please remember to not spam when looking for a job on Twitter. It’s clutter and people won’t “listen” to you.

C. Three ways to optimize your LinkedIn Profile and Search:

(1) Use the 120 character headline to your disposal. Say something unique and catchy for when prospective employers check out your background. Nowadays your LinkedInprofile is virtual resume and pertinent to be updated frequently.

(2) Use the 3 “hot links” to your benefit. If you have a blog, link to it! Have a great profile on another platform? Link to it! Show your personal brand off!

(3) Use the job search and when you find a job that interests you, find someone in yourLinkedIn network that could recommend you. Network, network, network — the people you know are your biggest asset.

D. Facebook App – BranchOut: Like the appeal of people you know being able to recommend you? BranchOut is awesome for this. Although I am not a fan of usingFacebook apps often, this one is pretty handy.When you search for a job and click on a position you may be interested in — BranchOut shows who you know that can recommend you to the job. How much easier can it get? Dig it!

Two other items to consider…

E. Email Signature: Use WiseStamp to add your links from other social platforms in order for people to find you more easily. Emailing with a HR person at your possible future job? Now they can see how to link to your blog, website, LinkedIn (and more) at the click of a button via your email. Very convenient!

F. Blogging: Are you looking into a specific niche/industry? It could be helpful to start a blog on the topics of interest. Therefore, when the hiring manager takes a look at your background and Googles you (which they will do), and sees your blog, he/she will realize you are not just knowledgeable about this industry, but passionate about it too. It is important to manage your online presence and having a blog is a great way to demonstrate your expertise on the content. You can become an individual not only worth hiring, but a must hire.

As always, if you have other tools that you utilize to make job searching easier, please feel free to share. I, as well as my fellow readers would love to learn more tips and tools. And in the meantime, check out my Toolkit for your convenience.

Note: this post was originally written for oneforty, which was acquired by Hubspot.

Five Influential Boston “Tweet” Hearts

Posted on February 9, 2011 by Pam Sahota

Having lived in Boston for ten years now I have had the pleasure of meeting some amazing people in every field of business. Looking at the social media and marketing scene specifically — I have met many unbelievably talented people and I could make this list miles long, but I will save the novel for another time…

And since the well-loved/hated Hallmark holiday is around the corner…here are five KICKASS “Tweet” hearts for your drooling pleasure!

1) Tamsen McMahon: A gorgeous woman who the second I met, I knew I we were going to be friends for years to come. She is not only a delight to have a coffee (although she does not drink caffeine – major warning folks) with, but one of the most intelligent and inspiring women in digital marketing here in Boston. She spoke to my MBA social media class last Fall and every student raved about her presentation on the science of social media. Yes, the scientific method is not just for chem class folks — it is actually applicable to everything you do in social media marketing. Thankfully you don’t need safety goggles this time around. Want to know more about Tamsen – check our her work for Sametz Blackstone Associates or catch her Tweeting away via @tamadear…you will not be disappointed you “checked her out.”

2) Mike Troiano: A man I describe as a mix between the Sopranos and Mad Men. You may catch him with a Manhatten in hand after toiling away for many hours at the office of Holland-Mark (HM), but otherwise he is kickin’ ass and takin’ names as the digital man of HM. I admit, I had the pleasure of working with Mike, and I can say full-heartedly that it was one of the best learning experiences of my marketing career. Sssh dont’ tell my profs of my MBA program, but Mike may have taught me more invaluable lessons than some of them did. A HBS alum, a previous ad guy, and now rockin’ the digital scene and preachin social media wherever he goes, he is a man who doesn’t just talk the talk, but walks the walk. Also found at @miketrap.

3) Janet Aronica: This young 24 year old, may be young in age, but she is wise on social media unlike most females I have met. She rocks the oneforty scene with her content strategy, marketing genius, and quirky personality that would make even the most pessimistic person crack a smile. She is a female who has come a long way in a short time and is not just a community manager…I think a new title must be made for her to truly show her unbelievable work for the startup. If you haven’t conversed with this young social media hottie yet, check her out on oneforty or @janetaronica before you miss out!

4) Alison Zarrella: When I met Alison, I almost did not recognize her because her Twitter avatar does not do this chica justice. She is not only hot (obviously), but she is a talented community manager, blogger, and now author. Did you know she co-wrote the Facebook Marketing book? If you haven’t you must pick a copy and peruse it because Facebook is not a fad, people. Neither is Twitter. But maybe I’m biased. This female rocks the social media scene in Boston helping out the Brand management of the company she works for with social strategy that is not only valuable but relevant to their target market. Aka, Alison is a Tweet heart to follow at @alison and in her many influential efforts to demonstrate she does not take her career lightly. She is passionate about it every step of the way.

5) David Gerzof: This gentleman is not only easy on the eyes (sorry he’s married, ladies), but he knows how important it is to teach students social media and how it impacts the life around them. Not only is David a social media professor at Emerson College, but he also runs Big Fish. Yes, another over achiever who likes to make sure he has no time to sit and take a breather. But hey, you may be able to catch him with a beer at a local Tweetup where he is not only easily approachable, but a pleasure to hang with. But if you cannot seem to find the time to catch him at Emerson or Big Fish or at the next local event, hit him up at @davidgerzof for a Tweet or two.

Hope you enjoyed drooling over these five amazing folks…I know I sure did!

5 Ways to Tie Social Media to Business Goals

Posted on February 8, 2011 by Pam Sahota

Money is not only valuable, but vital to the success of each business operation. Companies attempt to cut costs and raise revenue in order to be successful. Social media can help! Social media is about the relationships we build and the ability to listen and communicate in real time. This is unbelievably resourceful to so many facets of a business operation including support, HR, PR, lead generation, and marketing research. Here’s how:

1. Customer Support: No company wants consumers to have tech/product/service issues, but it happens and should be dealt with as soon as possible. As much consumers do not want to wait on the phone for hours when they could be doing something better with their time, nor does a company want to spend extra money on phone support, especially when there’s an easier and cheaper solution (i.e. cut costs). For example, Twitter is a great resource for consumer support. Dell is a great example of using Twitter as a resource to their benefit. They have a specific Twitter handle, @dellcares, just for consumer support, which allows consumers to reach them 24/7 with issues they may have. First, I must add a disclaimer — be sure your company can handle monitoring and answering questions on a timely basis, otherwise there may be backlash by consumers who do not receive a response to their Tweet. So, how can your company take advantage of this FREE platform for customer service?

a) Get a handle that is either for your company or specifically for support such as @dellcare

b) Monitor conversations going on about your company regarding complaints, issues, etc.

c) Circumvent issues to the right person (finance, tech, etc), which allows for a timely response and solution

d) Respond in real-time. Less waiting. Less frustration.

Then, you may just have a successful and reputable customer service which consumers rave about.

2. HR Recruiting: Is your office looking for some new blood? Why hire a staffing agency or recruiter to search for new hires, when you can do it in-house for less money? Twitter, Facebook. and LinkedIn to the rescue. How these 3 platforms can help? You can get the word out a lot faster on these social platforms. In addition, your employees can Tweet, share and/or post on their personal channels (if they are so inclined) in order to bolster the word of mouth that there are great job openings available for your place of business. For example, recently HubSpot Tweeted they were looking for developers and people (employees and followers) ReTweeted it like crazy! Great promotion for a job opening, and without breaking the bank.

3. PR: Thinking about hiring a PR agency to help your company? Hiring one can be a great idea especially for companies who have the funds to do so. PR agencies offer help with strategic messaging and consulting during crisis communication. However, for those looking to do PR in-house, social media can be a great asset to build relationships. Businesses can reach out directly to journalists and infuential bloggers through Twitter and other social channels. That way your company can build a relationship with these journalists and bloggers and maintain them over time. Or you can use this as a way to augment PR efforts, which is great, especially for smaller businesses. First step is to ensure a company Twitter account is up and running. Then utilize it to reach out to bloggers in your brand category as well as prominent journalists who you want to work with and reach out to. If you already have a social media department and/or community manager, this is a great item to add-on to their job description instead of hiring a consultant from the outside. Save the money, cut costs, and create more revenue!

4. Lead Generation: Instead of wasting money on buying a prospect list for Lead Gen, why not try some cheaper/easier social media tools for lead gen such as Twitter,Facebook, Follower Wonk and more. These tools are helpful to search quickly and efficiently regarding influencers in your brand category. You can compare stats and followers of these people to see who’s worth your while and who you’d rather pass up. Although buying a list may be quicker, these tools are less expensive and if you social media experts in your company at your disposal, why not give them more responsibility and have them assist with lead gen efforts?

5. Marketing Research: No company/business can afford to fall behind its competition. Competition can be cut-throat and your business has to be able to stay on top, rather than get “cut.” Marketing research is key in these efforts to stay ahead — in order to know what the consumers are saying, how they feel towards your brand, how they feel towards your competition, and what your competition is doing. It is not enough to know on a monthly or yearly basis anymore. Businesses need to know in real-time what’s going on so they can act accordingly. Luckily, there are many social media tools for competitive analysis. These apps along with the employees to oversee these channels are key in efficient and effective marketing research that stays ahead of the curve.

So, don’t be afraid to try something different — embrace social media, because nowadays businesses and consumers alike prefer things in real-time for a cheaper cost. Utilize it, Share it, Save Costs, and Increase Revenue!

Note: this was originally a post written for oneforty, which was acquired by Hubspot.

8 Ways to Use Social Media to Track Your Competition

Posted on February 2, 2011 by Pam Sahota

Your brand may be awesome in your brand category, but I am sure you have some key competition out there that you’d love to have a better handle on. Nowadays with social media being the norm and most brands increasing their transparency, it has become easier to track what your competition is up to, how consumers feel about their brand, and how often consumers engage and interact with the competition.

Topsy: A convenient search tool that assists you in searching through a stream of conversations. It is able to look through people’s web pages and conversations and detect relationships, who influences who, and what people are saying about a brand (your competition) and where. It also assists to detect what content is being ReTweeted the most — thus demonstrating that this content is of value and shows what people feel towards it. This is useful to see how your competitor is influencing its target market, what the target market feels towards the content put out by the competition and how often and how they engage with the competition. Thus, allowing you to see what they are doing better than you, and how you can compete on a similar, if not higher level.

Twellow: “A directory of public Twitter accounts, with hundreds of categories and search features to help you find people who matter to you.” This is super helpful in order to see which competitors of yours are on Twitter and are using it on a regular and consistent basis and engaging with their target market as well. That way, you can see how far ahead or behind you may be in your brand category in regards to online engagement.

Wefollow: Similar to Twellow as a Twitter directory. It also has categories such as tech, news, and music as well as by follower counts. Once again, this tool is helpful for determining what your competition is doing on Twitter, if they’re on Twitter, and the engagement they have with their consumers. Do you feel like a detective yet?

Tweepi: This tool is helpful to get info on the followers of your competition. You can see details on each follower such as bio information, number of followers, number of updates, previous tweets, etc. Why is this cool? It allows you to get inside the consumer’s conversation with the competition and other people in the target market in your brand category. You can see what the target market thinks about the competition, how they’re conversing, what they like and don’t like.

Backtype: Great tool that allows you to get alerts about where and when your competitors are talking online. You can see what they are promoting, who they are engaging with, and what they’re saying to your mutual target market whether on their website, Twitter, or other social platform. All you have to do is enter the URL, topic or person to see the impact they are having and where. Free.

Website grader: Grades your website and your competition so you can compare how well they’re doing in comparison to you. Helpful to see who is linking to them, what their Google PR is and more! Free for web version and iPhone!

Feedcompare: 2 easy steps: (1): Type in the FeedBurner Feed Name Or Full FeedBurner Feed URL;

(2): Simply Press “Compare” Button ( Click and Drag to Zoom In ). Once you do this for free — you can compare your feedburner subscriber numbers with that of your competition and see how well you’re doing!

Xinu returns: Helpful to get and analyze statistics on website SEO, in order to gain insight on how well or how poor your competitors’ sites are doing in Google (and other search engines), social bookmarking sites, etc. Unbelievably helpful in order to stay on top and move beyond your competition on an online and offline level. Free.

Every brand in each brand category has to think about its competition and make sure they are staying on level, if not ahead of what the competition is doing. This isn’t always easy, but with the help of these social tools, it is slightly easier to ensure you know what your competition is doing online, how they’re engaging, where they’re engaging, and what your mutual target market is saying. It may feel like spying, but being a detective and strategizing is part of the fun and game of competing.

Note: this post was originally written for oneforty, which was acquired by Hubspot

How to: Find Great Social Media Events to Attend

Posted on January 28, 2011 by Pam Sahota

In every town/city there are Tweetups, Meetups, and other great networking and social media events going on. Especially in the winter, when we are stuck inside due to the snow and/or bitter cold, it is great to get out and “meet up” with fellow social media friends (and new friends to be). But how do you discern the “awesome” events from the “not so awesome” ones? There are so many events sometimes, that it’s hard to choose, especially when they’re on the same night. Luckily for both you and me, there are some great ways to keep on top of what’s going on, when it’s going on, and who’s attending (great to know prior to an event) such and such event…

Plancast: Want to know what your friends have “planned” for this upcoming week? Well Plancast is awesome for that — it allows you to see what events your friends are “planning” to attend and the details of those events so you can “plan” to attend as well. You can also add your own plans so your friends can stay on top of what you’re doing and attend with you. Also a great way to promote an event you want a little more awareness for. Another useful part about Plancast is that you can search by category, whether it be big conferences like SXSW or local startup events, etc. Useful, free and simple to use.

Meetup: Great way to keep up with what’s going on in your neighborhood on a regular basis. If you sign up for a specific type of “meetup” – whether it be social media related or wine or sports, you can have alerts sent to your email when people post about upcoming meetups. It’s helpful that you can decide how often you would like these alerts. In addition, you can sign up for however many meetups as you would like and/or set up your own if you don’t see one there that you want. New to the area? This is great for meeting new people and getting involved in your social media community. And what I think is super cool – is that it will show you events that are “trending” in your area (see below). Free to use.

Eventbrite: A kickass tool for finding, sharing, and planning events whether in your neighborhood or nationally. Great to see what your friends are attending, sharing events on Facebook and Twitter (whether you can attend or not) and seeing what’s the hottest event in your local neighborhood. Going on a business trip but need ideas of what to do in the evening? Use Eventbrite to see what’s going on and sign up for events while you’re away too. And if you decide to plan a local event, it has a great interface that’s easy to use, compatible to share on Facebook for a Facebook event invite, and great analytics to see what’s going on behind the scenes with attendees and tickets. p.s. Free.

Foursquare: You’re downtown and can’t decide which event to go to? See where your friends have “checked-in” and which event they decided to attend. A great way to meet up with your friends at events and/or see who’s attending which event. This is also useful for those who do not necessarily like to attend events solo and would love a friend or two to hang out with while mingling and meeting new friends. Free to use!

Facebook and Twitter: You’re most likely already on these two sites, so you don’t even need to sign up. I find that I hear about events I want to attend through my friends on both of these platforms. A friend is usually Tweeting about an event they plan to attend and/or sharing a link on Facebook to the Eventbrite or Plancast event page. Useful for both local events that are happening each week and/or national events such as conferences. You can set up a search on Twitter for specific events too. Example if you want to be kept on top of everything happening around a certain conference, like SXSW, do it up. And/or make a list of your local friends so you can keep tabs on what events they’re attending. One word: Awesome.

Another thing to keep in mind is that there are people in your social community that are Tweeting and Blogging and Sharing events on a regular basis. For example in Boston we have people like Tom O’Keefe (@BostonTweet) who shares everything and anything going on around the city from free ice cream to events. In addition we have Joselin Mane (@bostontweetup) who shares events on his website and Twitter handle regarding conferences, Tweetups, networking events, and more. Great way to keep up with what’s going on in your local community, because these guys make sure you know by making it simple and easy for you. As in Boston, I am sure each city and town has people like Tom and Joselin who share event info for your convenience. How to find them? Twitter is definitely one way.

What about once you’re at an event? Or after? My recommendation (if you’re shy) is to go with a friend so you can move around the room together. Don’t have a friend to go with you? See who’s going from the attendee list. Found a person you’re excited to meet? Most likely their Twitter handle was shared on the registration page, and you can Tweet them to say you’re looking forward to meeting them. Then when you get there, you have someone to talk to right away and can ease into the mingling with others. In addition, don’t forget to follow-up after the event whether via Twitter,Facebook, LinkedIn, email, etc. Building relationships takes work, and the networking events are just one part of this process.

Note: This post was originally written for oneforty.

5 Ways to Sell Social Media Internally

Posted on January 27, 2011 by Pam Sahota

Unfortunately, not all organizations/offices/companies are ready to jump on the social media bandwagon. There are still places of business which are hesitant to have a social presence on platforms such as Twitter and believe it is a waste of time and not worth the effort for their brand. So how do we get the CMO and other management on board? Is it possible to not have every blog post and/or Tweet reviewed by legal? It is definitely a battle for some offices, but not impossible. Here are some suggestions to help you persuade your office management that social media isn’t something to avoid, but something to embrace…

1. Internal Communication: With some places of business it may be best to ease into social media with an internal social system first. That way the management can see that social media is valuable for engagement and how it is not a threat, but useful. For example, Yammer – an internal communication tool for companies (used at many companies including Groupon, claims to be as simple to use as Facebook and Twitter. It includes microblogging, profiles, direct messaging, and other useful work tools. Thus, Yammer allows the ease of external social media but keeps items private to the company interaction only. Hopefully with an internal start, a push towards external use will be less difficult. For pricing info, view packages here, which include Basic for Free and Enterprise for $5/user/month.

2. Social Media Policy: When easing your company towards external social media a social media policy may help in order to ease the stress factors of upper management and the legal team. Items to consider in this policy include the following:

a) Purpose of using the social media platforms

b) Cite name and sources when relevant/necessary

c) Do not share confidential information about the company and/or clients/consumers

d) Exercise good judgment when sharing content

e) Be respectful

Of course there can be more specifics, but this a good start to ensure that using social media will not mean falling off a cliff. The use of social media would be to benefit the company by demonstrating to their target audience who the brand is, what the brand is capable of, and how the target audience should want to engage and be a part of the community the brand is building.

3. Social Media Plan and Involvement: Putting heads together and coming up with a social media plan/strategy would be helpful in order to ensure that blog content, shared posts, and Tweets are all on topic and relevant to where the company is hoping to be and heading. It will reassure management that there is a purpose and set of goals rather than randomly posting content. And a part of this plan, many companies include higher-up management such as CMOs and CEOs to be involved in the customer engagement such as Tweeting. Consumers have more respect for a brand when a higher-up is taking part in the conversation. For example, Zappos is a great example. The @zappos Twitter account is the CEO who Tweets on a regular basis with a mixture of professionally related items and personal – to show he is in fact just another person (humanizing the brand) and is willing to follow and chat with consumers. Then, of course, there is also @zappos_service which handles all the consumer service issues, questions and comments specifically. I think this is a great technique to show the brand is not just a name, but personable, and cares about each consumer. Higher-Ups and social media teams should use this as a possible model when putting together their social media plan because social media strategy is a part of marketing strategy, which is a part of the business strategy, which is how a business is successful. I think Zappos is showing us how success is more than tangible when you put in the effort.

4. Community Manager: Designating a specific community manager to be in charge would be key. That way this specific person would be the one in charge of ensuring: (1) valuable content is on the blog; (2) posts on Facebook and Twitter are on point; (3) comments (whether negative/positive) regarding the company brand are being “heard” and responded to in a timely manner. Therefore an experienced social media expert would be positioned to assist with the success of marketing for the company, and able to report to the head of marketing with success factors, issues, and potential growth. Just like any other department in a company, a specialized expert is helpful to ensure things run smoothly.

5. Email Marketing: It is helpful to use email marketing as a tool to help the launch of social sites for your company. For example, you want the people who subscribe to your newsletter and/or people in your email list to be aware of your presence – whether on your website, blog, Facebook, Twitter, or other social platform. For example, MailChimp is a great tool to design your emails, and more importantly, track the success of your emails that went out. Did people open it? How many times? When? Etc. It’s a very useful tool for sending out bulk emails to make an announcement, such as your new social platform launch and/or just to spread other cool news and company updates to your audience. Then you can also track the success of those who opened the email and then went to your Facebook page and “liked” the page, among other things. A great way to show management, that this easy way to spread brand awareness is not an option anymore, it is critical for companies to be involved or fall behind.

Although it may be difficult to get some higher-up management on the social path, it is definitely worth the effort. Whether you start out with an internal social network to show the ease of use, demonstrate the caution that can be used (without restricting or restraining) via a social media policy, explain the plan of attack that will be utilized (hopefully with the CMO/CEO taking part in some way), and/or designate a community manager who knows how to handle social media like he or she knows the back of his/her hand — social media can be implemented in even the most conservative places of business. Just look at law firms, who used to avoid it, and now embrace it. Best of luck implementing social media in your workplace, and when you do, do not forget to promote it, whether via MailChimp or another useful marketing tool.

Marketing Ahead of its Time

Posted on January 27, 2011 by Pam Sahota

So I stayed in last Friday night and saw that Minority Report was on HBO…thinking “Oh I’ve seen this before, I can keep this on in the background while I catch up on work.” Silly me. I immediately got sucked into the awesomeness that is this movie — having not seen it in years. But it wasn’t just the action and plot that had me watching — it was the marketing within the movie. Great job Spielberg…you caught my “eye”!

In the movie, every time Tom Cruise’s character walks by a digital ad, it is catered directly to him due to recognition through the character’s eyes. It states his name and acknowledges his interest in certain products (previously) and asks questions re: future use. For example, there was a virtual Guiness ad asking about his thirst. Made me thirsty, for sure.

As Tom’s character walked into the Gap to grab some clothing (and at this point he had new eyes – see the movie for explanation) and a voice welcomes “him” and asks about the pair of pants that were purchased last time and if “he’ would like another pair. My question…impressive or intrusive? I was impressed by the marketing used in this movie when it was made in 2002 (obviously it was meant to be far into the future, but still). The geo-location used, was not via mobile but your eyeballs. How crazy is that? I think it’s kind of intrusive at times. For example, if you’re walking into a store and the last item you purchased was a “personal” item – would you want that stated out loud for all to hear in the store as you enter? Would their be restrictions on what is said? Could people opt out? Thoughts to consider as we get deeper into geolocation through mobile…and maybe one day our eyes?!

What are your thoughts on this? Please share!

5 Ways to Better Manage Your Online Presence

Posted on January 25, 2011 by Pam Sahota

When managing your online presence – it is not enough to just have a Facebook profile page, a Twitter Handle, LinkedIn profile, and a website/blog up and running. There are at least a few social media management items you want to make sure you have tackled in order to increase your personal brand awareness.

1. Email and Social Profiles: How many times a day do you use your email? Countless, correct? Well, WiseStamp is a simple tool for adding your social links to your email signature — so every time you compose an email and/or respond people will see where else they can find you with the click of a button (see image below). For other options you can check out this Toolkit on virtual business card options. In addition to your email signature, make sure your website has the links to each of your social profiles, and is easily visible to new visitors. People like things at their fingertips, and having your social links easily visible is key to driving more traffic to your social profiles. In addition link your social pages, such as on your on your LinkedIn, have a link to your website, Twitter, etc. Make it easy and simple for people to find you, with the click of a link or a button.

2. Consistent Personal Brand Image: A consistent image across social platforms can be helpful. For example, if you have a different pictures for each platform, people may be confused and unsure if it’s really you, when searching. If you have a consistent image across your platforms, it will be easier to find you and it will create a cohesive and consistent message about your personal brand. A helpful tool is using Gravatar, which allows you to have “an image that follows you from site to site appearing beside your name when you do things like comment or post on a blog” as well as on your own sites. Not only is it a globally recognized avatar, but it’s easily linked to WordPress.

3. Search: When you Google yourself, what is the first result? If it’s not your website, blog, and/or other pages, then you have a problem. If your name comes up first, it will also demonstrate that you are an authority in your brand category. Thus, some effort and time may be needed for SEO marketing. You can learn to do this for yourself, or you can get some assistance by companies who are pros at this. A couple things to remember when getting started: identify keyword opportunities (for your blog, your videos you share, etc) and do not forget the importance of inbound links to your site.

4. Balancing Professional and Personal Presence:

Part (1): I know some people believe that it is good to differentiate, keep your personal stuff, personal and your professional stuff professional. If you have two Facebook pages, it appears you have a double life and it can be confusing and it definitely adds to the clutter. I understand if you’re afraid to share certain things like particular pictures or videos. However, that’s what privacy settings are for. They allow you to be smart, and still share be “human” with your brand. So why live a double life, when you can live one great one?

Part (2): If you are focusing on your personal social sites, do you identify who you work for in your Twitter bio and in your blog? My suggestion would be to add a disclaimer on your blog. For example, Julia Roy has such a disclaimer on her blog which states, “The views expressed on my blog and social networks are mine alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of my employer, Manilla.” This way you protect yourself, and the place you work with against any issues that may occur regarding tweets, posts, and/or other items shared on your personal social sites.

5. Protecting Tweets: Afraid to share your tweets with anyone and everyone? Well that’s the point of Twitter community — sharing you tweets is key to (1) building your personal brand awareness on a main social platform, (2) letting people find and follow you easily, (3) sharing relevant content to all those who may be interested, and (4) engaging with people in a real and open-door manner.

Here are some additional tools I thought would be cool for you to check out when managing your personal brand online:

About.me: A newer tool that is awesome for pulling all your social platform information to one place, one profile, and best of all – with a clean and crisp presence. This tool allows you to create a profile page that contains a succinct bio, and links to all your other social platforms and web pages. Thus, it’s everywhere you exist, but in one place — making it even easier for people to find you and be aware of your personal brand. And the price is awesome: Free.

Flavors.me: A platform that allows you to show all that you are on one page including photos, videos, blog posts, feeds, and even your resume if you so wish. The pull of this tool is that it is very interactive and visual. It gives you the opportunity to be creative with your one page of content, yet keeping it simple for people to view who you are and where you are present on the web. Free sign up.

6 Tools for Engaging your Top Influencers

Posted on January 20, 2011 by Pam Sahota

Let’s say you are opening a new restaurant which is focused on your wine selection and your cheese plates. Let’s say you are also considering launching an iPhone app and/or participating with FourSquare or Groupon and giving cool offers to consumers. What would be included in your marketing strategy? Finding the local bloggers who write about wine and cheese? I think so! Influencers in your brand category are not just useful and handy to have in your back pocket, but essential to a marketing strategy. These influencers can speak on your brand’s behalf (and probably already are) and “influence” other potential consumers to check out your brand and/or also Tweet, blog, and comment about your brand. Tools to determine the influence you or your business has is important but aside from knowing the type your reach, it is important to find the “influencers” in your brand category. But how? You could use the search options in Google, Twitter and Facebook to initially take a look. To do so you want to first:

1. Determine keywords for your brand category (to make search more concise and easier)

2. When/if you find possible “influencers” on Google, Twitter and/or Facebook you want to see how active and influential they really are. Are they blogging consistently? Getting a lot of comments? Have a lot of subscribers and/or followers?

Problem is this can take more time than you may be willing to put in. Thankfully for those of us who prefer things at our “fingertips” there are other tools out there that can assist with this process and do most of the “harder” work for us!

Traackr: I had the privilege of meeting Pierre-Loic Assayag from Traackr last summer and received a hands-on tutorial on how Traackr works for brands. With Traackr you can find out who leads the conversations in your brand category. The key to their madness? The team does not resort to “dogmatically defining influence” but instead they have “built a process to progressively discover what drives influence.” The team at Traackr, focuses on 4 things: 1. Search (crawling of social media platforms for most active users); 2. Identify (aggregation of user accounts across platforms); 3. Qualify (calculations left to the brainiacs); and 4. Report (Data of top ranking ‘influencers” and what to do next). Their metrics focus on Reach, Resonance, and Relevance. 3 very key things! Traackr has different subscription models and you can request a demo in order to learn more about their options.

PostRank Connect: In short – this tool “connects” brands and influencers. The team makes a valid point — “You need influencers to run a successful campaign. But the fragmented Social Web doesn’t make identifying, validating, and measuring influence easy. And before you can develop relationships with influencers, you have to find them.” And the goal is to not waste hours twiddling our thumbs and only finding one or two possible influencers. The goal is to find the top influencers in the specific brand category your brand is in — in an efficient amount of time.This nifty tool does the work for you by measuring the value of online users and their followers. It will analyze “influencers” by certain metrics such as topic, georgraphy, and engagement across multiple social platforms. Intrigued? PostRank Connect — “connect” with them here to find out how they can help you!

Buzzstream: A company that realizes that businesses should be focusing on building relationships (such as with influencers) rather than taking the time to find each influencer for their brand. BuzzStream finds them, you build that awesome relationship by using their detailed influencer profiles, delegating engagement activities, and tapping the lists that are made just for you by BuzzStream. At your fingertips for your ease. This tool is focused more for PR and Social Media folks, and has easy-to-use tools that can be utilized right from your web toolbar (in order to stay better organized with each particular “influencer”). Plans for Buzzstream start with a free “test drive” and start from $49.99/month.

Attensity: A powerhouse of information. They monitor 37 million blogs and forums, have access to the full firehouse of Twitter content, support the discussion content on public Facebook Fan Pages, in addition to MySpace, LinkedIn,Craigslist, all major news sources, review sites and they are always looking to and willing to add more. Will they be able to find the key influencers in your brand category for you? Most definitely! Finding these key influencers will not only help you know how you can better your service/product but also stay ahead of the competition. Attensitycan be contacted directly for pricing and plan information.

Teramatric: The team at Terametric believes that influence should be measured relative to your peers. Otherwise, or it loses its value considerably. Thus, their measurements are centered around this principle so that your business can get an accurate sense of why type of influence you need (in other words, WHO should be considered influencers that you interact with, what type of relevant information you provide to your audience, how often you post it, and so on). In addition, Terametric will break down influencer identification by industry, products and brands so that you can get a more detailed understanding of how to increase your influence within these groups. The tool makes it simple for you and identifies the influencers on a scale of 1 (low) to 5 (high) and segments them by industry, product, and brand. You and your competitors are also scored on your level of influence which includes an analysis of your followers’ influence. Most importantly, you can track historical “tweets” that these influencers have made in the past and in real time, the tool will filter the twitterverse for you so that when an influencer tweets, you’re alerted to respond. Terametric starts at $500/month for Enterprise Product Marketing and Agencies with a 1-month, no-risk, Free Trial. SMBs should contact Terametric directly for pricing.

Twendz: Want to know who on Twitter is already talking about your brand and/or brand category? And what they’re saying? Twendz can help! This nifty tool can help your brand identify the top Twitfolks who are saying positive, neutral or negative things re: your product/service/category. Then you can take these lists, follow them, engage with them,. and “influence” your “influencers” to be kickass brand ambassadors. You can take part in the conversation with them and build relationships with these influencers and ensure that the key influencers in your brand category are talking great and awesome things about you. Twendz can be contacted directly for their plans and prices.

Of course there are many more tools out there that help find the key influencers for your brand category. But can you imagine how long this blog post would be if I kept on going? Rather than making this list like a novel, feel free to comment, question and let me know what you think.

How to: Keep up with Social Media News

Posted on January 19, 2011 by Pam Sahota

Ever log onto your computer in the morning and sift through your Tweet lists of favorite folks, your Facebook news feed, your RSS feeds, and wonder where the time just went? I know I do! We also need to keep in mind that as social media marketers the landscape changes every day. If you take a two week break from Twitter… you would’ve missed that Quora had blown up so much and wouldn’t have realized that it can now be used as a marketing tool, and that maybe your competitor is? That’s the value prop of staying on top of the most trending and important news, so you don’t miss the stuff that you *really* need to know while not getting bogged down or distracted by LolCats and…. this kid. Luckily, for me – and you – there are some applications made for just that. Making it easier for us who are ravenous for information and actually able to absorb it all without the hassle and time wasting. Efficiency is one sweet concept and here are some helpful ways to start rolling with more time on your hands…

Trunk.ly: A “personal” search engine for all of your links…how cool is that? Basically, Trunk.ly takes all your links that you share online, in any capacity (Twitter, Facebook, Posterous, delicious, Tumblr, wordpress, instapaper, and RSS feeds), and makes them easily searchable for you at a later time. This would be super helpful for those who curate content and want to refer back to links in order to curate more easily and in a timely manner. Trunk.ly is the answer and you can sign up online for free.

Instapaper: You have 5,000 emails in your inbox, your friend just posted pictures from last night and you need to make sure you de-tag yourself, your sister just shared an awesome YouTube video, and you are catching up on Twitter about the Tweetup you missed…when do you have time to read all those awesome blog posts? Instapaper helps you breathe a little easier. Basically a simple way to save articles to read when you have time – whether at your computer, on your iPad, or your smartphone. News at your fingertips, when and how you want it. Isn’t that how simple and awesome life should be? I think so! Sign up with Instapaper online for free.

Cadmus: Ever miss a whole day from being on Twitter and feel out of the loop? Cadmus will help you “catch up.” This nifty app will group similar posts into conversations and puts the most important at the top of the list for your convenience. In addition it will find the trending topics from within your friends and the “@mentions” from your stream and groups them in convos for your convenience. This also helps with content curation. See what Tweets you should ReTweet from your community – build stronger relationships when you shine the light on others with RT’s and “hat tips.” Cadmus is great concept and free to sign up online.

Flipboard: Too lazy to check all the sites you have a profile for? Wish you could sit on your couch with your iPad and have it all fed to you on a platter? Or want your Social News (from the platforms you care about) on the go, and at your fingertips with the ease of flipping a page? Flipboard is the “flip” master. Known as the social magazine – it allows you to “flip” through news, photos and updates your friends are sharing on Facebook and Twitter. Basically this sweet magazine gives you an easy-to-read and access layout so you don’t have to sift through information and updates nor do you have to go from one site to the other. It’s all in one place. Now that’s “flippin” awesome — and so is the free download.

Packrati.us: I know I share a lot of links and sometimes I wish I could easily find and go back to them. Packrati.us will bookmark all your Tweets that contain links for you. That sounds pretty helpful, doesn’t it? It will bookmark links you share, links others share with you as well as the Tweets you “Favorite.” To put it simply,Packrati.us is a Twitter + Delicious app. However, now it also supports Historious,Instapaper, Pinboard.in, and Diigo accounts. Sign in through Twitter and be a “pack-rat” with you links. Easy as 1, 2, 3.

my6sense: Going at full speed ahead, coffee in hand, from one meeting to the next, from dinner party to Tweetup to conference to family get-together to bed to gym to doing it all over again? The hustle and bustle can be fun and rewarding, but it always leaves us little time on our hands. My6sense realizes that and makes it so you have your Twitter, Facebook, news, blogs and RSS on your iPhone,Android and/or other mobile device. This nifty app automatically filters your Twitterstream so that the tweets containing your most relevant content (links) are presented first due to its relevance ranking system which is made to be fully compatible with the most popular platforms like Facebook and Twitter (among others). Free app for your “on the go” pleasure.

Reeder: Love your Google Reader but wish you could access it while you’re bored on the train or waiting for a doctor’s appointment to begin? This app is basically your Google Reader but an on-the-go version for your iPhone and/or iPad. On top of this easy on the go quality, the app also allows you to send to Instapaper (see above for details). save to Delicious, post to Twitter, and email to friends. Sounds pretty convenient and useful to me. This app is available in the App store for $2.99 for any of your apple devices.

Take a few minutes out of your crazy schedule to breathe, decide on an app (or two or three) that you like, throw them on your iPad or iPhone or whatever you prefer, take it with you when you head to your next busy appointment, and see how much more convenient and easy your life has become at the touch of a download/sign-up. Let me know what you think of these “time-saving” options for having your social news where you want it, and when you want it.

How do you “watch”?

Posted on January 18, 2011 by Pam Sahota

Aside from my social media geekdom and love for being out and about in our great city of Boston — sometimes it’s nice to just be a couch potato and watch some “good” TV. Now I do not mean “reality” tv shows…(no offense to all my friends who love Jersey Shore and the Bachelor) — I prefer Mad Men, Grey’s Anatomy, How I Met Your Mother, True Blood, Friday Night Lights, and other “real” shows.

Like the social media world, the TV and Movie world has many many many options for our “viewing” pleasure. Got your hands full with Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, FourSquare, Yelp, Quora, and all the other myriad of sites? How do you view your favorite shows and movies? Sometimes I am not sure where to start – like with social media – there is so much to keep up with – every minute there’s a new site, app, option to chose from. For viewing, we have Netflix, Hulu, DVR, On Demand, iTunes, surfthechannel, Red Box, and even those dvd rental retail stores — remember those? Do you prefer free, or the paid options? Do you have one or two or three?

I weighed my options:

1. On Demand and/or DVR: holy expensive on Comcast. I pass.

2. Hulu – I stick to regular Hulu (over Hulu Plus) and watch for free. If I miss a show – I’ll watch it the next morning (unless it’s House and then I have to wait 8 days..ouch!). And as long as the buffering isn’t having issues, I can watch wherever there’s wifi. Perfect.

3. Netflix – monthly subscription — cheaper then retail renting and can watch however much I want online or via mail. Awesome. And I have the app on my iPad now too. Loyal subscriber.

4. iTunes – want a season sooner than it’s available? This was my savior when I wanted Mad Men Season 4. Downloaded – on my Mac, iTouch and iPad and ready to watch when and where I wanted. Kickass.

5. Surfthechannel — not the best quality and you can only watch for 72 minutes at a time — but you can get almost any season of almost any show. I caught up on multiple shows this way!

6. Purchase or rental — my suggestion is go to Best Buy when they have their kickass sales and buy them. On Black Friday I got Mad Men and Heroes for ridiculously cheap (10 bucks a season!) – it was like taking candy from a baby (imagine I said this in Robin William’s voice from his Live on Broadway skit).

7. Red Box – I have yet to try this option but I hear great things including cheap and convenient. Can’t beat that, right?

There is also: casttv.com, myeasytv.com, xfinity (for those who have a subscription) and others out there…

What do you prefer? Any other fun/cheap/free/easy ways to view shows/movies? I love the ease and flexibility of Netflix but like in social media – am always exploring new and kickass options.

How to: Use Social Proof to Drive Sales

Posted on January 14, 2011 by Pam Sahota

Traditional businesses use customer testimonies such as in a brochure at the Dentist’s office or on a page on their website in order to give a human voice to a brand. It allows a business to demonstrate “someone else recommends this, you may like it too.” Social proof is the idea that people are already talking about your brand online. Oftentimes, they are saying positive things! Thus, it would be beneficial for businesses to take those conversations and use them to their advantage with the easily accessible social media tools at their fingertips.

Facebook has made it simple for your audience to express interest in your business, your content, and anything else related to your brand. People can “like” it, “share” it, and “comment” on just about anything posted on the platform, which in turn can be seen and shared by anyone else on Facebook. For example, if I’m on Facebook and I see a friend has “liked” and/or “commented” on a blog post by your business, I may be more apt to check out the post because a friend has “advocated” on behalf of your brand. It is social proof via New Media (which people get at their fingertips all across the globe within seconds). I may be just as apt to check out a post or brand that has comments or likes by numerous people, and/or a person who is “influential” and has shown his or her interest in your brand. If he/she likes it, I may too.

A great example is Amazon (below) — a business that regularly posts on Facebook such as this upcoming announcement (see below). It has 219 “likes” and 174 “comments” — I don’t know about you, but I’m pretty intrigued and I would assume that I’m not the only one. These numbers, this “proof” of interaction, can reel in more of your target audience if you pump out valuable content and use Facebook and Twitter to your benefit. Now the key is to show your audience how people are interacting with you and how often they are.

Twitter is a great way to show off your numbers and real-time engagement. And there are a bunch of helpful & free tools to make it easier for you:

Tweetizen: You can use this web-based app to embed a Twitter widget in your blog and have your stream rolling in real time, (all the time) for people to see when they visit your blog. Therefore when someone visits your blog, they will see the positive commentary going on about your brand in “real-time.” For example, if I visit a blog for a new service I am considering and see that someone just Tweeted “wow, what great easy-to-use app and great/reliable customer service available for questions or issues that arise,” I am more apt to invest further into the app. I would more likely trust a fellow consumer’s praise on a brand than what it says on the brand’s website about themselves. Consumers trust consumers – who doesn’t look on Yelp before they go to a restaurant? Social Proof. Tweetizen is great for this because a simple and easy-to-use widget, which allows you to stream recent tweets, or specific hashtags. Best part: it’s free.

TwitStat.us: Believing that Twitter is “one of the biggest hubs of activity on the Internet” the team of TwitStat.us wanted to assist users with the use of Twitter. The service allows people to utilize Twitter badges and widgets which can be your “latest tweets” and/or search results from a stream. Thus, you can tailor what your target audience sees when they come to your site/blog. For example, if you are having a conference and want to show conversation is going on, you can focus on conversation with the conference hashtag to be streamed. Then visitors to your site will see in “real-time” the tweets of people want to attend, are attending, and those who are “pumped” about this certain conference. They’ll talk about speakers who are going to be there, what they learned, who they met — advocating on behalf of your brand. Awesome. TwitStat.us is also a free tool.

Twubs: Not only does Twubs have a super cute mascot, but it has an embeddable widget feature which allows photos and videos. This photo and video option is awesome because it gives the opportunity to add a human face to your product/ service/ business by highlighting the community. If you have an event, embed a Flickr slideshow of pictures from it on the blog and show people having fun. This proves people like your brand and are proud to show it! And if you preferFacebook over Flickr, Facebook allows you to tag people easily so you can add more value to each picture and event album. In addition, rather than Twubs being a typical Tweet stream, the stream would be built around a particular hashtag (aka subject you are focusing on such as a product name you may be launching) so your audience can see what’s being said about whatever it is that you want them to know about. If there’s a large chatter going on, your audience will see it through this widget in real-time. Social Proof. (p.s. It’s Free).

Tweetmeme: Part of me just loves saying the name of this Twitter app, but aside from that it is known as the “retweet button” app. It allows for a button to be placed on your blog or website so people who visit can retweet content on Twitter. Awesome, right? And…the button allows for people who visit your blog/site to see a real-time count of how many times your content has been Tweeted. So, if I see great content (that other people are also commenting and raving about) — I may retweet it too! Social Proof. Tweetmeme also has this exact same option for a “follow” button for people to instantly follow and to keep a real-time count of the amount of followers as well. There is also integration capability with Twitter Counter, Twitalyzer, andTwittergrader. Free but there is also a Pro version which you can Sign Up to find out more details regarding.

Twitter Counter: A great way to show of f the number of Twitter followers you have on your site. Simple and to the point. If you have a lot of followers, people will notice and check out what you have to say and talk/Tweet about it too. Social Proof. In addition, there are further options such as a Twitter Feedburner (like for your RSS but for Twitter). Pretty cool and its free for the widget but to get your analytics there are 2 pro plans: $15 or $25/month depending on the plan you prefer.

Zuberance: A great tool to “energize your brand advocates.” It’s a platform that is basically made for you to give your current/future loyal consumers the chance to be “brand advocates”and to talk even more awesome things about your brand (including ratings, reviews, and stories) on your behalf across the social sites like Twitter andFacebook. Then you can track how this progress is going and see how beneficial it has been for your brand. For Pricing and Plans: Contact Sales.

Thus, social proof is awesome and can be shown off even more via free (or cheap) tools at your disposal. Why worry about what to say about your brand to sell your product/service when people are already saying great things for you? Your loyal consumers are your brand advocates and the key (the social proof) to gaining future consumers (driving more sales). When consumers talk – other consumers listen. Use their words to your advantage with the ease of the widgets and apps discussed above.

So take a chance, check out my Toolkit, and give these helpful apps a try…did I mention they’re mostly free?!

3 Ways Other Than Klout to Measure Influence

Posted on January 13, 2011 by Pam Sahota

Twitter influence of an individual is not just about the number of followers that he or she has. Is it ever that simple? Klout has a cool set of algorithms they use to calculate the influence someone has on Twitter, which includes the ability of a Twitter user to “make people act.” Can someone with 500,000 followers make you retweet and mention more? You’d think so, right? Not necessarily.

For example, actor Ashton Kutcher has over 6 million followers, but it doesn’t mean he has high Twitter influence. More likely than not, people who just Tweet and do not mention or retweet others, will not be retweeted or mentioned either. In addition, their topics discussed on Twitter are more likely to become trends. So how do you figure out if you have amazing and astounding Twitter Influence (other than checking your “Klout” — because you know you already have)? Keep reading…!

Twitalyzer: A great analyzing tool to help you determine the influence you have in the Twitterverse. It measures a person’s (or brand’s) influence via their followers, references by others, retweets and others retweeting their posts. Thus, it’s not just about the number of followers but a bunch of metrics which together allow Twitalyzer to come to your “influence” percentage. Don’t be disheartened if it’s not as high as you had hoped. It doesn’t mean you aren’t “influential’ in your twitter circle. However, it is awesome to see who you can influence, who influences you, and other great analysis that comes along with this tool. If I am promoting my brand via my personal Twitter account, it’s important for me to know what my influence is on the Twitter community, and why my percentage is that high or low. Then I can analyze who I am able to influence and use that to my advantage when building awareness and/or working on a social media strategy for a product/service/brand. Twitalyzer has 3 pricing plans ranging from $4.99 to 99.99/month.

TweetLevel: A tool that gives your “tweet level” based on your “importance” which gives you 4 result metrics including your influence, popularity, engagement and trust. In order to determine one’s “influence” with this tool,TweetLevel looks at a “combination of the number and authority of someone’s followers together with the frequency of people name pointing an individual (via @username) and the how many times an individuals posts are re-tweeted. Other attributes were included in the final score but were given a lower weighting.” I know I couldn’t figure this out on my own, and its helpful to have a tool which will do the analysis, algorithms and funky stats for you. Once you have the “level” you or your brand is at, then you can use that to focus further on where you have more influence, and/or try to expand the influence you already have. One tip that TweetLevel (and other strategists) emphasize is that you shouldn’t “protect your Tweets” (despite privacy concerns) — it will lower your influence and make others less “trustworthy” of who you are and what you have to say. TweetLevel is currently in Beta and Free.

Twitter Grader: A cool tool that measures the “power, reach and authority of a twitter account. In other words, when you tweet, what kind of an impact does it have?” The factors that go into this tool’s algorithm include # of followers, power of followers, updates, update recency, follower/following ratio, and engagement. However, Twitter Grader won’t tell us the specifics on how they “calculate” — there’s a “special sauce” and I’d be killed if I were to find out and blog about it! So… when you get your “grade” – awesome – but what does it mean? This tool analyzes all parts of your grade for you and gives you a detailed response to help you realize how “influential” you are. “The grade is calculated as the approximate percentage of other users that have an equal or lower score.” For example, if I received a Twitter Grade of 96.6, it means that about 96.6% of the other users got a lower score than I did. Didn’t get A’s in high school, maybe you can with your Twitter Grade. Best part: it’s Free.

And for all you fellow social geeks out there, here’s a BONUS 4th tool:

Terametric: Has a new function called Optimizer for Twitter which allows for a great deal of Twitter analysis on your brand. But what I thought was really cool was the industry tracking feature. It helps brands get real-time tracking on Twitter handles, brand mentions, competition, influencers, themes, hashtags, and more. Thus, it is ideal for identifying influencers who are Tweeting about your brand/industry that you should engage with.

So instead of finding your own influence, you are focusing on others who are influencing the community within with your brand/product is targeting. Terametric starts at $500/month for Enterprise Product Marketing and agencies with a 1-month, no-risk, free trial. SMB’s should contact them directly for pricing.

Ready, Set, “Influence!” And here’s the Toolkit you need to get started…

Tags: Klout, terametric, Tweetlevel, Twitalyzer, Twitter Grader, twitter influence

Zipcar: At your Fingertips “on” and “offline”

Posted on January 11, 2011 by Pam Sahota

Are you familiar with Zipcar? Well let me ask a simpler question – do you own a car? No? Zipcar is the solution. When I was in college (not too many moons ago), my best friend and I wanted to rent a car to go away for the weekend (as much as we loved Boston, it was nice to get out of the city once in a while). BUTTT….as many know, you need to be 25 to rent a car (and not get charged up the ass). Solution: Zipcar. The alternative car rental service, which allowed you to rent at 21 (awesome) and didn’t make you go to a car rental location (and abide by silly restraining open/close hours) – even more awesome. And as many fellow “zipsters” know – it gets better. Most likely a zipcar is located right around the corner of your apartment/job/gym/school for your utmost convenience. Whether for a couple hours to run to Wrentham Outlets for that “shopping spree” or head to the beach or the slopes – my zipcar membership became “clutch.” It may get pricey if you rent for longer periods of time – but for me, the convenience was worth the extra cost — especially with the gas and insurance included. High Five!

My best friend and I – who lived together for multiple years during and after college – used Zipcar anytime we needed a “getaway.” We tried out the Mini (cute for the beach), SUVs, hybrids, and the always reasonable Honda. Kind of an awesome way to test-drive to see what car you may want in the future too.

To this day, I am pleased with my membership because I am a woman of having things at my fingertips (convenience is key). And being a social media geek, I am all about having my news, info, and chatter at my fingertips too. So as I randomly tweeted today “@Zipcar Been a member since I was 21 (ok so that’s almost 7 years)… had some great trips and memories. cc: @juliaroy” — I was impressed by the fast and speedy response by the “person behind the handle.” The community manager was friendly and interested to hear more. So hear I am, Zipcar — telling you more. I am impressed by your product, service, and now even more with your friendly banter online – in “real-time” – just the way I like it.

And as promised here are a few pictures from my adventures back in college.

7 Ways to Monitor Social Media for Less

Posted on January 8, 2011 by Pam Sahota

This is an excerpt from my post for oneforty…

Although social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter are free in order to engage with your target audience — the tools to monitor are not always so “free.” We’ve written before about the things you need to keep in mind before choosing the right tool. There are many things these tools can track, and it’s best to narrow down what your specific needs are and then find the best tool for you and at the price you can afford. Here are a few tools that could be useful for your “specific” or “many” needs:

PostRank: A great inexpensive tool for analytics, which can also be linked to Google Analytics for an even more detailed look into your metrics. You can use it to discover your influencers, measure your performance, track online content, benchmark competition, and have a better eye on the social web. This is especially a great tool for bloggers and community managers in a company to monitor social engagement. Keep in mind that social engagement can include anything related to (for example) your blog post, such as a comment, tweet, or trackback and any of these would be tracked by PostRank. Why not try the free trial and see the potential for yourself? PostRank comes with a free trial and has 3 pricing plans: Free for Influencer; $15/month personal; and $500/month agency.

Beevolve: A social media monitoring tool allows all types of companies and agencies to track social engagement in order to get a handle on what consumers are saying, thinking and feeling. According to Beevolve, the types of companies who will find this the most useful include: startups, PR agencies, corporate, social media agencies, digital marketing and search engine marketing agencies. Beevolve makes it easier for your company or agency to better isolate trends and use these results to figure out whether your product, service and/or marketing may need certain improvements. Highlighted tools include: real-time monitoring, sentiment analysis, demographics & geography, competitive analysis, influencer identification, and engagement workflow among other things. Thus, this is a crafty tool to help “mine” through review sites, Twitter, and other sites on the web to get a better insight into the products, brands, and trends that consumers have sentiment towards. Beevolve includes a 14 day free trial and has numerous pricing plans starting from $29.95/month to custom made plans.

Viralheat: As many of the others, Viralheat has benefits including extensive social platform and web coverage, influencer analytics, finding consumer sentiment, analytics to determine the best ROI for your campaigns, and more. Viralheat also has some sweet clients (aka they’re on “fire”) using their tools including HP, Coca Cola,MTV, Disney, and NHL among others. So, Viralheat must be doing something pretty impressive. And as of this past year, Viralheat integrated with Facebook, Twitalyzer, and Klout. And another great thing? The pricing isnt bad either. Viralheat offers a 7 day free trial and 3 pricing plans including Basic: $9.99/month, Professional: $29.99/month and Business: $89.99/month.

eCairn: A tool to help marketers monitor not just the real-time web but find influencers and leverage communities they want to target and focus on. Thus making it easier to listen and engage efficiently with those that you care to engage with. For example, eCairn assists marketers to identify influencers for blogger outreach, monitor brands, get to the specifics of what’s being said, in order to revise strategy and report back to upper-level management on how marketing is going, and what can be improved. To learn more about what eCairn can do for your company, you can also watch live demos and webinars, which are featured on their blog. It’s key when a social media based company is using social media tools, don’t you think? eCairn hastwo pricing models: Basic: $99/user/month or Pro: $199/user/month.

BrandsEye: The tool to help you protect your online brand reputation. Their monitoring can help single bloggers, small businesses as well as large enterprises. Considering brand reputation can be attacked at any moment and multiple times online, it is up to the brand to keep an eye on what is being said, why it’s being said, and what they can do to rectify such situations. A prominent example is Domino’s Pizza and their YouTube debacle and United Airlines and their issue with “mishandling a guitar” — whatever the issue may be — people talk! So your brand most likely needs a helpful monitoring tool to keep track of what’s being said, as soon as it’s said, in order for your brand to respond promptly. BrandsEye promises to be the tool to do just that. And if you run into a crisis, they also offer assistance in fixing situations too. BrandsEye is $1/month for bloggers, $95/month for small businesses and $350 for enterprise.

Trackur: As the name suggests, Trackur “tracks” down any and all mentions of specific keywords your company would like to keep “track” of. In addition, like other social monitoring tools Trackur assists with finding the influencers, what’s being said about your brand, sentiment tag (who’s saying positive and/or negative things), have alerts kept in your dashboard or emailed directly for ease of use, among other perks. The tool offers a quick and easy service that allows you to “get running” within minutes rather than waiting for setup and demos, etc. And for those of us trying to keep up with “real-time” that could be pretty handy! Trackur offers 4 pricing plansstarting at $18/month up to $377/month depending upon the extensive use and needs you may have.

Ubervu: The second I went on to their website I saw a livechat option, which is very helpful nowadays when one wants “real-time” assistance to go along with an applicatoin/tool/service to help with keeping up with “real-time” social media interaction. Ubervu is modeled for either businesses or PR agencies to use. Businesses can “understand customers, be on top of the competition, and get leads from social media” and PR agencies can have “all the social media in one place, white label solution for consumers, and automated sentiment analysis.” According toTechCrunch, Ubervu helps to “organize the mess.” Who needs an assistant, when you have Ubervu “assisting” your social media organizational and monitoring needs?Ubervu has 4 pricing options beginning from $49.99/month for a solo user up to Enterprise pricing options which Ubervu will need to be contacted for.

Remember: it’s strategy first, tools second. There are so many tools and so many options to decide from. Take the time to research what your company, agency, organization needs are. Do you need assistance finding influencers, monitoring what’s being said about your brand or keeping an eye on your competition? Whatever your need may be, there is a tool for it. The key is deciding what’s most important for your company/brand to invest in.

Finally Joining the eBook Generation

Posted on January 7, 2011 by Pam Sahota

When Ugg boots came out, I did everything in my power to avoid the “fad.” They may be comfy, but they are “ugg”ly! Well, I now have 3 pairs – brown, black and gray. And yes, they are still not “attractive” persay, but they are amazingly warm and comfortable. I conformed. Crap!

Then, came along the skinny jean. They looked awkward at first, and made your feet look huge! Why would I do such a thing to my feet? Well…all I practically wear now are skinny jeans and they make you look amazing – especially your butt and thighs. Gentlemen – I do not recommend for you, though.

So, then all the eReaders came out, including the Kindle, Nook, iPad, etc. Despite being an internet and social media junkie as well as an avid blogger — I love the idea of having a book in my hand, turning the pages, and actually having the collection of books I’ve read in my apt. And then I was reading The Trilogy of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and when I got to the third book, it was still in hardcover. It was huge! And heavy! I love taking books with me while I’m on the go to read on the subway (the T as we call it in Boston), but that book was like a brick and a half! Suffice to say it took me forever to finish reading b/c I refused to carry it around. And recently I was in nyc with good friends and was interested in The 4 Hour Body – have you seen the size of that monster? Holy crap! That did it! Well I now own a Kindle and an iPad. And I am loving the convenience, the lighter weight on my shoulder, the amount of books I can “carry” at once, and most of the all the price of each of the books. So much cheaper! I still believe I’ll buy some books in paperback for the ones I love and want to keep around, but for regular reading, I believe my Kindle and iPad will be the way to go. And the fact that I can read on either and it keeps track – amazing!

First the Ugg, then the Skinny Jean, now the eReader. I am sold! What next?

How to: Use Twitter for Customer Service

Posted on January 6, 2011 by Pam Sahota

Companies today realize (or are realizing) that customer service is more than the in-person and over-the-phone help that it once was. Today, your brand has the free tools available to help in “real-time” and prove to your current and future consumers that your customer service rocks and you truly care for each consumer on an individual basis. Want to be the next Zappos with their witty and real-time quality customer service via Twitter? Keep reading!

Zappos has shown its consumers that each one will receive the care and service they deserve. As seen from the image above, “@xtraRegularRyan” had a convo with @zappos_service on Twitter after a purchase was received. This conversation after the fact demonstrates that the consumer was not only pumped but ecstatic to share this news. Could that be a loyal consumer? I think so!

As Frank Eliason commented in Social Media Examiner, “Be human about it. Let your team service your customers. Let them do what they do well and allow them to be who they are.” That’s exactly what Zappos does on Twitter– the customer service teams not only assists customers with what they need, but they have an actual conversation with them – whether it’s about “growing a mustache” or whatever suits your fancy — being “human” is key to building a customer relationship with your brand and maintaining it.

What tools can help?

Hootsuite: Keep track of what your consumers are saying on yourcomputer or while you’re running from meeting to meeting via iPad or smartphone.Hootsuite allows your company to manage Twitter and other applications on a simple platform where you can monitor multiple conversations/accounts at once. Afraid of a consumer question or request getting lost — Hootsuite helps you keep keep it organized! (p.s. Also integrated with Zendesk!) Hootsuite has 2 pricing plans: Basic = Free: Pro = $5.99/month

Zendesk: A web-based service to help you engage with your consumers in a simple and effective way. It has Twitter integration which allows you to connect easily with your consumers/tweeps (we really need a Twitter word for consumers….). You would be emailed and can accordingly manage customer service requests in order to respond more efficiently – whether you answer yourself or have another member of your team do so. A great tool to make sure your customers are kept happy because you can respond to each request rather than getting lost in your inbox. Zendesk has a Free Trial with 3 pricing plans: Starter: $9/month; Regular: $24/month; Plus: $49/month.

MarketMeSuite: is more than just a social media marketing dashboard forTwitter and other apps. It allows you to have unlimited accounts, schedule tweets, focus on following and unfollowing the right users, geolocation, among many other fun options. MarketMeSuite has 3 pricing plans: $5.99/month; $59.99 a year; $99.00 (pay once for lifetime).

CoTweet allows you to focus on specific conversations so you know when is best to respond; track exchanges and assign them to certain departments (like Zappos who has a customer service twitter account, @zappos_service, separate from the regular zappos account, @zappos) in your company so you can ensure that your brand “humanizes” its engagement and you can even include signatures so you know who’s responding (aka stay organized). CoTweet has a standard version for free and an enterprise offering for $1500/month.

p.s. Both MarketMeSuite and CoTweet integrate with Zendesk too!

Radian6: Known to power the likes of Dell and others in assisting their community listening, engaging and monitoring needs. Radian6 helps companies keep track of what’s being asked and said in an organized manner in order to ease the process of answering and commenting to your consumers on a regular basis. In addition, Radian6‘s Engagement Console allows you to listen more efficiently and has a sweet interface too! Radian6 asks you to Register for a Demo before getting pricing details.

Valuevine: A nifty tool to listen to what consumers are saying about your brand and also share promotions with target consumers. Has helped retailers realize the importance of Twitter and Facebook in social media marketing and the ease and use of both in listening and engaging with their target consumer. Valuevine asks you torequest a demo before receiving pricing information.

Tools such as Radian6, CoTweet, and ValueVine are great Social CRM tools for your company to utilize. What is Social CRM exactly? Many social media experts have their own versions for this definition, but here’s a great simple explanation– It is CRM for the social customer. The customer who is “savvy” and gets his or her information via the social channels such as Twitter and Facebook. Therefore, your company must be “savvy” as well and be able to engage he or she on those channels by listening, conversing, and monitoring. Tools like the ones above assist with keeping track of conversations so you have a better handle on responding to the customers’ needs and can also get to know each customer more personally by having a record of what social platforms they are on and what they are commenting and questioning.

Here are two more Social CRM tools at your disposal:

BantamLive is a contact management system plus Twitter client that also allows for Social CRM in order to track and engage contacts on social platforms. The tool has many integrations including Twitter, Google Apps, and others. It even includes some light project management features appropriate for small businesses. The best part of this tool though is its ease to keep track of your leads on the social platforms, get details about them and then engage each in a personal manner. And as we know, each consumer wants to be treated in a personal and unique manner. BantamLive has a Free Trial and 5 Pricing Plans: Personal for $19/month up to $140/month for a deluxe business plan.

Sprout Social: Their tagline is “turning social connections into loyal customers.” What company wouldn’t want “loyal customers?” The tools appears to cater toward the smaller brands and agencies who want a tool that is a bit more affordable. In addition, Sprout Social helps to organize your social networks in one easy to access place, helps organize messages by current and potential customers in order to respond and engage in real-time, and helps you measure your social reach and potential success with your target clients. Awesome! Sprout Social has a Free Trial and 2 Pricing Plans: $9/month for Personal and $49/month for Business.

As Lars Asbjornsen, VP of Online Marketing of Robert Half International stated: “Social media can alert you to customer-service complaints before you heard them in traditional channels. And that’s how most CFOs are using social media. Ignore the customer complaints on social media at your company’s peril.”

So, “listen up”, “respond well” and in “real-time!”

10 Branding & Marketing Tips from “Mad Men”

Posted on January 3, 2011 by Pam Sahota

I have recently become obsessed with the show Mad Men and watched Seasons One through Four in about a month. Crazy? No! Dedicated? Yes! While watching the well written, directed, and addicting show, I couldn’t help but relate it to my life and career in marketing. Here are a few of things I took away from the show…

(1) Just because you think the slogan/pitch is awesome, does not mean it is. It takes practice (and many errors) to get things fine-tuned and “awesome.”

(2) Don Draper is the Man.

(3) Having your brand featured on Mad Men is kickass brand exposure and awareness.

(4) Losing a large brand, could potentially lead to losing other brands unless you react and turn the situation around quickly.

(5) If the story is making your brand look bad – change the story.

(6) Traditional Media can still be effective if used well.

(7) “Sex sells.”

(8) How your consumer views your brand may not be the same way you view your brand.

(9) If you are a secretary on Mad Men you will get laid and/or married.

(10) An efficient and creative marketing/Ad team is not only important, but essential.

And did I mention, Don Draper is the Man?!

Brands who Blog: Win

Posted on December 30, 2010 by Pam Sahota

Some blog to talk about their thoughts and feelings regarding things in their daily lives, others blog about their wedding plans, some about their cooking adventures/endeavors, many about their career focus, and others about their life passions and hobbies. Whatever the reason, I truly believe that the chance to express oneself is key for both individuals as well as brands.

It is a perfect “tool” for brands to “humanize” themselves and show their audience that there are “real people” behind their name, not robots clicking away.

1. Humanizing a brand is unbelievably important to show one’s audience a personal touch. For example give your brand’s audience a chance to get to know the team behind the name. Holland-Mark does a great job at this when they share cool facts about their interns, holiday party photos, and other things you wouldn’t normally know.

2. Engaging one’s audience after a post has been published is a crucial step. This way you can have an actual conversation after your blog has been tweeted out like BostInnovation does on a regular basis and build a loyal readership/consumer/fan.

3. And, then hopefully building “loyal” relationships which will stand the test of time — like withstanding brand backlash such as the Toyota fiasco, Dominoes youtube mess, and others.

So whether blogging for personal or brand reasons – take the time to go a little deeper and share a personal side and allow your audience to get to know the person(s) behind the name.

Lead Generation Made Simpler

Posted on December 29, 2010 by Pam Sahota

Creating lead generation is essential to all B2B and B2C companies and can be very time consuming! However, there are some simple and easy-to-use tools for doing so that can hopefully cut down some of that time. Want to know the best part? You’re probably already using some of these tools! But now lets discuss how to use them effectively for lead generation.

Twitter: First and foremost, Twitter itself is a great asset for lead generation. Consumers and companies are both on Twitter for many purposes – whether it be to build their brand, create contacts and followers, increase engagement and promotion, and/or all of the above. First make sure your Twitter account is set up, you are utilizing it regularly, and your blog or web address is in the bio (whichever you use more for lead generation). What is needed to best utilize Twitter effectively: time and effort. It is a free social media platform, and it kicks butt at being in touch with the target market you are hoping to reach.

Need help on finding your target market on Twitter? Look at the next 5 tools below!

Twitter Search: the first place to start out is normally Twitter Search which is a part of your Twitter Account. I recommend going beyond the basic search options and utilizing the advanced search option in order to get more precise and relevant results to your specific company. Using advanced you can focus on people, places, dates, attitudes, etc. The places option may be key for companies looking for leads in a particular area, and people option may also be helpful when looking for people an “influencer” has mentioned.

Follower Wonk: A simple free tool that allows you search keywords in Twitter Bios in order to filter out individuals/companies you may or may not want to follow for lead generation purposes. You can search for individuals based on a specific keyword or you may use locations/names and/or filter out those who have a certain amount of followers (ability to find the influencers). In addition, this tool allows you to compare up to 3 Twitter folks and compare their stats, who follows them, their activity, and their unique versus shared followers. Interesting capability of this tool in order to see how a certain individual or company can be useful for lead generation or not.

Tweep Search: A tool that allows you to search through bios of all the “tweeps” on Twitter with specific key words. In addition, when you find someone or a company that you find to be relevant – you can then limit the search to their followers and search through there specifically. Narrowing a search is always helpful as there are so many people on Twitter.

Twithawk: If you couldn’t tell by the name — this app is like a “hawk” — looking out for you and your target marketing on Twitter. Unlike the aforementioned tools, this one is a paid service, which allows the Twithawk team to find the best target market matches for you from your specified search terms. Example: “TwitHawkperiodically (at the frequency determined by you) find tweets that mentioned “I need coffee” by users that are actually, currently, located within 5 miles of Queens such as‘@cracksh0t I need a coffee or anything with caffeine NOW’ or ‘@loxly This is so boring, I need a coffee… my one true love’ Then, TwitHawk will grab the tweets, and pop them in a list for you to check over, and you’ll be notified that you’ve got new matches to check over.” In addition, the TwitHawk team and app can help you keep track of tweets sent, noise, link tracking, and Google Analytics.

Tweetdeck: This client can be used on your desktop or on the-go and allows you to organize your followers and filter Tweets in order to assist in lead generation. Set up a column for saved search terms and question phrases (whether related to a product item, your company, a competitor, etc). Then, you can monitor and interact with people who are talking about your industry in a more organized and simpler fashion.

Three other tools you won’t want to miss:

LinkedIn: This is not just a platform for networking – it is an awesome lead generation asset! How to utilize this to your benefit? A few simple things: (1) customize your page; (2) Connect to Twitter (3) Create answer feeds (4) create an industry group (5) follow your target market (possibly those you already found via Twitter?) and (6) Share curated and created content! As corny as it sounds – Get Linked!

Your Blog: This is the content you create and then distribute through your channels such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. It is a great asset to have in order to create lead generation, especially when people subscribe and give their email address to do so!

Facebook: Considering Facebook has more users than the population of some countries, it is definitely a tool you want to utilize to make connections, and hopefully convert those connections into leads. As with your Twitter page, LinkedInpage, and Blog – customize your Facebook to increase the amount of “likes” you may receive and engage those individuals to sign up for a newsletter or the blog you have (aka lead generation). In addition, when someone “likes” a page, others will see it, and may be prompted to do the same!

Recall that it takes time to build connections and more time to convert these connections and followers into leads. However, these tools can help decrease that time and make the time you spend on finding these connections (who will hopefully become leads) more effective.

You’ll never know how truly effective each tool is for your company until you experiment and play around with each of them. Enjoy!

The Necessity of a Brand Audit

Posted on December 22, 2010 by Pam Sahota

Conducting a brand audit on your brand is not only smart, but necessary. Having recently conducted a brand audit for my MBA global branding class on Sony’s brand (focus on electronic products), I was able to realize the importance of these audits to a brand’s success and future. You may think your brand is doing well and that consumers are happy with the product because sales seem lucrative, but is that truly the case? Do consumers really see your brand the way you see it? Are they loyal? Do they regard your brand as a quality service/product? Do they understand your brand message and logo and equate them to your brand accordingly? Are you sure?

These questions were just a few we investigated for Sony and we realized there was inconsistency regarding the brand message “make.believe” and what consumers perceived of Sony. In addition, from a survey we conducted, most did not even equate their new product “Google TV” with Sony. Yikes!

Although a brand audit can be extensive here are a few of my main recommendations:

1. Have a consistent brand message (Ex. Sony has the Sony Style and Sony logos)

2. Make sure your target market is aware of the connection between your logo/slogan and your brand (Ex. Survey: consumers did not understand connection between make.believe and Sony products)

3. Investigate if your target market thinks what you think of your brand (Ex. Survey: Consumers felt Sony was over-priced for what they offered)

4. Check to see if your target market believes your service/product is “quality” and why they do or do not purchase your product/service (Ex. Survey: consumers did feel the products were quality and have felt so since the “walkman“)

5. Compare and see what your competition may be doing better (Ex. Sony Survey: Apple is big competition and great at innovating)

6. Determine if your target market loyal or not loyal to your brand (Ex. Survey: It’s a toss up)

7. Find out if consumers feel an emotional connection to your brand (Ex. Survey: no specific emotional connection)

7. Revise accordingly.

Thus if you want your brand to do well, you should stay on top of what is perceived about your brand, how consumers “feel” towards it, and consistently innovate your product/service/campaign.

Isn’t branding fun?

How to Connect with your Current Customer on Social Media

Posted on December 16, 2010 by Pam Sahota

NOTE : I started freelance blogging recently for oneforty and this was originally a post I did for their blog. This was my first for oneforty so please check it out here or on their blog and please feel free to share comments!

Whether you are a B2B or a B2C, connecting with your current customer is crucial. Those current customers are needed for consistent business and through word of mouth may lead to future customers as well. One loyal consumer who boasts about a company’s customer service reputation, can lead to their friends — whether on Facebook, Twitter, or in person — becoming aware of your company and possibly converting to customers as well (for more details on converting people to customers see: The Zen of Social Media Marketing by Shama Kabani).

So how do you connect with these current customers on the social platforms on which they reside, play, comment, tweet, and post? I created this Toolkit to guide your efforts.

Here’s the run-down:

Rapleaf: Want to know the most relevant criteria about your consumer? Rapleaf does this by providing your business with the Who (demographics, location), What (interests, lifestyles, brands they love), Where (online platforms), With Whom (friends), and Weight (their online influence). A tool to help your business improve its customer outreach accurately, easily and in real-time! As quoted by Stephanie Olsen from CNET: “Rapleaf is among a new generation of people search engines that take advantage of the troves of public data on the Net–much of which consumers happily post for public perusal on social-networking sites and personal blogs. The search engines trace a person’s digital tracks across these social networks, blogs, photo collections, news and e-commerce sites, to create a composite profile. Unlike Google, which might link to the same material over pages of search results or after trying different combinations of keywords, these sites attempt to “normalize” personal data so that it’s easily digested by the searcher on one page.”

Flowtown: Although under-going renovations, currently, Flowtown has received much praise for its “goldmine” of consumer information they are able to provide to business owners. Have emails of your current customers? Flowtown takes those emails and helps your business engage with each consumer. As in real life, engagement online is about the personal touch, and building each relationship as you would in real life, is key. Kelly Robertson from 6S Marketing raves on how Flowtown gave her the personal insight needed to reach out to specific users: “By targeting specific users with relevant content to one of the social networks we knew our readers were on, we obtained our highest ever open rate (67.1%) and click rate (31.5%). Both of which, were well over the industry averages (17.9% and 4.1% respectively).” Awesome!

NetProspex: Claim to be the key tool for B2Bs that want to communicate on a more personal level with their customers. This tool gives companies the ability to find the social profiles of their consumers and then leverage that information for their sales team to find the influencers among those customers. In addition, NetProspex lets companies buy or trade contacts to earn credits to find what the company needs from a vast user-contributed directory. According to KillerStartUps.com, “Netpropex would appear to have come up with a dynamic and workable model that should ensure that its database continues to grow and improve over time.”

Klout: This app has 750 partners utilizing the data it is able to retrieve. Want to know the “reach” a customer has in their twitter network? Klout is the go-to app to determine how valuable each customer is and how they can impact your brand with what they say, tweet, etc. Note: an initial score is given when you go to the site, but an actual score is emailed later after you sign up and further calculations have been done. Thus, this is a great tool that helps companies identify their most influential customers in the social space in order to engage effectively.

Zuberance: A “word of mouth marketing platform” that allows you to find the perfect brand advocates for your company. Then you are able to utilize those advocates as brand ambassadors and hopefully to the benefit of your company and brand. Although there have been some reviewers who do not believe in Zuberance, others seem more objective and give consumers/brands the chance to judge for themselves.

Tweetdeck: Want a tool to stay in great touch with your consumers? Tweetdeck allows you to connect with consumers on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and other platforms via one simple application. Tweetdeck also lets you organize your consumers in a simplistic way in order to reach out to people in a consistent, relevant, and easy-to-use format. Worried about missing a chance to be connected? You can access this on your desktop, browser, smartphone, and iPad! Engage away!

Hootsuite: A great social media dashboard for multiple accounts, which allows you to engage, monitor, and track the effectiveness of messages. In addition it has WordPress integration, ability to schedule tweets, and manage followers with ease. Shoutmeloud calls it the “ultimate twitter web client.” A great tool, which allows companies to reach their customers from anywhere such as via smartphone or iPad, which is important for a small business owner who is constantly on “the-go” as well as those who travel often.

How do you know which app is best to utilize? Watch a demo. Try it out. Experience it for yourself and tell us what you think. Like it? Love it? Hate it? Share!

Repeat: Good Customer Service = Loyalty

Posted on December 16, 2010 by Pam Sahota

As I entered Island Creek Oyster Bar in Kenmore Square with a girlfriend of mine, I was impressed with the layout, decor, and atmosphere. Then the hostess spoke – and it was all ruined. Just kidding. Actually the two hostesses were delightfully polite and were able to seat us sooner than we expected. We took seats at the oyster bar further back — which gave us a great view of everyone who entered and was seated — and of course of the delicious oysters being shucked. The bartender who served us was not only kind and knowledgeable about the oysters, menu, and wine list, but very attentive, well-mannered, and a joy to be seated near. And by the time we were stuffed and ready to be rolled out of the restaurant, the chef came out to speak with us. Now I must say, I felt slightly like royalty at this restaurant, and it was only my first visit.

What’s my point, you ask? Great customer service is key to bringing about a loyal consumer. Everyone who I encountered in the restaurant was polite, friendly and a pleasure to speak with. There was not one person who did not smile and say hello. Thus, whatever brand you may be – a hotel, a retail store, a website, a phone company, a law firm, or a restaurant — customer service is not only a key point in consumer loyalty, but a necessity. As I had mentioned in my previous post about Amazon, it was the “service” that made me “loyal.”

Thank you Island Creek Oyster Bar – you have a fan in me. And to all those out there who wonder how they can win over more consumers who will speak praises, just walk into this restaurant and learn.

Content Rules at Hubspot

Posted on December 11, 2010 by Pam Sahota

Not only was there HubSpot TV with hosts Mike Volpe and Karen Rubin on Friday, Dec. 10th, but the guest stars of the show were CC Chapman and Ann Handley who co-wrote the book Content Rules ! Killer team or what?! Although the banter of the show was entertaining, my favorite part was after the show when everyone had a chance to catch up with new and old friends. Always great to see the likes of Tamsen McMahon, Doug Haslam and Laura Fitton among the crowd, but I also had the pleasure to meet some new faces such as Margot Bloomstein and Maggie Rulli. It was a pleasure to catch up and get to know folks during this fun-filled whiskey drinking casual setting at the Hubspot offices. I would chat more about the awesomeness of the book (which I just received an autographed copy of at the event) and how great Hubspot is, but I believe Cheryl Morris did a great job and urge you to read her post!

What I can say is every time I step into the Hubspot offices, I have great engagement with the folks who work there, the friends who stop by there, and it’s a pleasure to know folks such as Mike and Karen truly take the time to get to know each person. I also commend CC and Ann on being so personable and easy to chat it up with and look forward to hearing more about their book tour.

Keep rockin’ guys!

Communication of Message

Posted on December 6, 2010 by Pam Sahota

“How to communicate a brand message” for a product takes effort to be creative. 3 creative methods that I researched for the Sony brand (for a global branding study) include:

1. Creative Product Placement: Honda did a fabulous job at placing its CR-Z in a Facebook game in order to create brand awareness. It was also a very unique way for its audience to engage with the brand. In addition, HP placed its computers in Project Runway, which was a great way to show how easy the computers were to use and how cool they were for designers and others who love to geek out.

2. Consistent Spokesperson: Sony has had an issue with being consistent with its brand message. Using a consistent spokesperson could be helpful as Apple had done with Justin Long in its successful “Apple vs. PC” ads. Can you blame Apple for being named “Marketer of the Decade?” Although Sony used Justin Timberlake for its 3D TV ads, it was short-lived. It may behoove the brand to find a new “cool” spokesperson such as from a popular TV show like Glee. Just a thought.

3. User Generated Content: Nowadays UGC has become the norm and many brands are taking advantage. Sear, Chevy Tahoe and FreeCreditReports.com are just a few of the brands who have utilized UGC. For example FreeCreditReports.com had a summer long contest where bands would compete to become the new band for the ads. The winner would debut at the 2010 mtv awards. How cool is that? Sony could do something similar like having contestants produce songs and the winner could appear in a Sony Studios movie.Therefore, keeping the promotion of “innovation” consistent and utilizing the brand message “make.believe” where what you can imagine can come true.

In short – communicating a brand message requires effort, creativity, and consistency.

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