Tag Archives: oneforty

5 Ways to Sell Social Media Internally

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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.


5 Ways to Better Manage Your Online Presence

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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

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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

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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 to: Use Social Proof to Drive Sales

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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

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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


7 Ways to Monitor Social Media for Less

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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.

 


Lead Generation Made Simpler

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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.

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.

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!

 


How to Connect with your Current Customer on Social Media

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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!