Spur Interactive

For more than a year I’ve been advising clients on how to use Twitter as a marketing platform.  Surprisingly, it seems that most brand marketers still don’t get it.  With the goal of doing my part to help the industry master this channel, I’m sharing my best practices for Twitter Marketing.  While these may not be comprehensive, they will provide you with 90% of what you need to be proficient at building your brand via Twitter.  In order of priority – here is my list. Enjoy!

Twitter Best Practices for Social Media Marketing (according to @stevelatham)

1.  Interesting and Engaging Content
While Tweeting is easy, it’s important that you do it right, starting with a solid content strategy.  Content recommendations include:

• Based on approved content guidelines, create Tweets that are engaging and relevant to target audiences.  It should be easy for potential followers to see that your tweets are valuable and worth reading.
• Write tweets that will be shared.  Rather than simply posting links, introduce links with compelling copy that encourage clicks.
• Allow time to pass between each tweet (at least 15 minutes) for several reasons: 1) no one likes to have their dashboard of tweets dominated by one account, 2) if someone is not watching they are likely to miss them, 3) spreading them out demonstrates consistency that yields brand benefits.
• Limit Tweets to 120 characters so they can be easily re-tweeted without exceeding the 140-character limit. See “120 is the new 140″ from @BrianSolis for more tips.
• Leverage real-time search by prominently including buzzwords that will picked up by Google, Bing and other search engines.
• For more on Content Marketing check out @juntajoe and his blog.

2. Remember! Engagement = Listening + Responding
Social media is about interacting, and you can’t do that if you’re not listening.  In addition to listening for your brand mentions, you need to keep an eyes on what your network is tweeting about and participate in the discussion.  Here are some tips:

• Use tools to track when your profile or brand is being mentioned on Twitter.  Tools include www.Search.Twitter.com as well as the SM monitoring tools mentioned previously.
• Use the native search feature in your Twitter management tool to follow topics that are of importance to you.  For example, I have a search column in Hootsuite for “Social Media Strategy“.  This is how I keep up to date on the latest tweets on this subject.
• When your brand is being mentioned in a positive way, RT the message, follow and recognize the person who tweeted about you.
• Acknowledge mentions.  Monitor when your Twitter account name is mentioned and RT to thank, and/or acknowledge those who are mentioning you.
• Build credibility and goodwill with your followers by re-tweeting (RT) posts that will be of interest to your audiences.  If you RT a follower’s post, they may acknowledge the RT to their followers, thereby promoting you in the process.

When your brand is being mentioned in a negative way, you can either 1) respond, or 2) ignore it.  If you choose to reply, consider the risks, given the nature of their tweet, their motives and their objectives. A confrontational response is rarely successful.  If you want to address a customer complaint, ask them follow you so you can then send a DM and take the conversation offline.  As mentioned above, ignoring the mention is often best.  You can inadvertently cause much greater damage if you engage in a public scuffle with a crazy person.

3. Building a network of followers
Without a network there is no reach, and without reach there is no ROI.  Contrary to most hopes and beliefs, networks do not build themselves; if you want followers, you have to work on it.  The good news is that with Twitter, the process is relatively easy.  When you follow someone, they will receive an email notification.  Currently, the normal etiquette is to respond by following the person who followed you.  Judicious tweeters will read your latest tweets to determine if your content is worth following.  If the content is good, most will follow you back – at least for a while.

• Start with your own employees, partners, vendors and community.  Announce your new Twitter account and ask employees to follow and share with others.
• Identify the top 50 influencers in your category on Twitter as these people can provide visibility and credibility for your brand among their networks of followers. Use www.TweepSearch.com, www.MrTweet.com and www.Twollow.com to find users with shared interests.  Look for those who have large numbers followers and are active in sharing their opinions with the masses (aka influencers).
• Follow people who follow your Influencers.
• Include a link to your twitter account in email, on your site, on all social networking sites and in all correspondence.
• Remember to maintain a favorable ratio of Following / Followers of +/- 1:1. While building your network, take time to check out who you are following that is not following you back at www.FriendorFollow.com.  For each person who is not following you, you can either: 1) stop following for good, or 2) unfollow and then re-follow.  If they do not respond on your 2^nd attempt to reach out, you may consider unfollowing them for good.
• Be careful with TwitterBots (AutoFollow) tools.  As you’ll quickly learn, building a network takes time.  If you are interested in using an network-building service, make sure  you use a credible tool or service that follows Twitter best practices. Failure to do so will result in suspension of your account.  While there are a lot of cheap bots that to avoid, there are some services that work (full disclosure: we offer one that works well).  Before you buy, do your homework and ask for references.

4. Managing Multiple Accounts
Many marketers maintain at least two types of Twitter accounts – one for their company and one for their personal tweets.   Twitter management tools (my favorite is HootSuite) allow you to manage multiple profiles.  Since many may follow your personal and work accounts, make sure you don’t tweet the same content at the same time.  Another common practice is to RT your company tweets from your personal account.  Remember that many will follow your brand and personal profiles, so make sure you space them out (no simultaneous tweeting!).

Common Twitter Mistakes to Avoid
Here are some common content mistakes many marketers make when Tweeting:

• It’s all about me!!!  Too many still use social media a megaphone vs. a telephone.  Success requires that you listen, engage and interact with others in the community.
• Using social media as a press release distribution platform.  While there are sites that are great for press releases, this should be the exception, not the norm.  As noted, conversations require an exchange of information.  If all you do it tell the world about your firm, audiences will grow tired of listening.
• Boring content.  You should always seek to include and introduce links to video, articles, audio and other media that will be interesting to audiences.
• Vague content. Doesn’t it bug you when someone posts a link with a cryptic introduction?  Make it easy for followers to see what you are presenting to them.  Introduce your links.
• Sharing information that is confidential, sensitive or not appropriate.  This is especially important if you work for a public company or in a regulated, hyper-competitive or litigious industry.
• Drawing unnecessary attention or being overly defensive when addressing negative comments.  Sometimes it’s best to ignore the haters.  If you respond, you may make something big out of a small issue, which may be exactly what they want you to do.

In Closing…
Again, this may not be all-encompassing, and I’m sure I’ve omitted a few important lessons.  That said, I hope these are helpful and that you find value in them.  If so, please COMMENT, SHARE and SUBSCRIBE to our blog.  Thank you for your feedback!

Steve Latham (follow me on Twitter)

Tweet This Post

The online media landscape is in a constant state of change, and with the growing list of opportunities to use digital media as a marketing channel, the tools are evolving quickly.  Below is my New Media Toolkit – a list of online apps, services and vendors that I’ve found to be of great value.  It is by no means comprehensive, but if you need help today, these are great places to start!

Competitive Intelligence Tools

• Quantcast is an outstanding resource for assessing visitor demographics and user interests for your site and competitors’ sites.
• Compete.com is one of my favorites for analyzing comparative site traffic and levels of engagement over time.
• Alexa.com should be mentioned as well.  While I don’t trust the data for site traffic (see Can You Trust Competitive Site Data?), it is the only free estimate that shows the number of page views per visit.  Since Compete no longer offers this for free, Alexa is still useful.

Search Engine Marketing Tools

• Google Estimator allows you to forecast ad inventory, cost per click and projected media spend for a given set of keywords and geographic market.  While this is better than nothing, the results may vary significantly from reality for a variety of reasons.  Use with caution.
• Google Ad Preview allows you to see how search results appear in different parts of the World
• Search Status Toolbar from Quirk: one plug-in allows you to see keyword density, no-follow links, page rank, inbound links and other great tools (referred to me by Catfish Comstock)
• Google Trends and Google Insights are valuable tools for seeing trends in keyword searches. This is one of the best ways to measure changes in demand due to cyclical or seasonal factors.

Social Networking Sites

• Facebook: join me and 300 million of my extended friends. Just don’t freak out when your mother sends you a friend request (love you mom!)
• LinkedIn – if you are in business and you are not on LinkedIn, you are missing the boat. Seriously.
• Twitter - before you say no, take a test drive.  It’s a great way to promote your content and you may even have fun doing it.
• Slideshare – best described as “You Tube for Powerpoint” slideshare is the #1 place to post your presentations and demonstrate thought leadership.  It also happens to have some powerful Google juice; several of my presentations have top rankings (e.g. “Social Media Business Case“). To see how it works check out my Social Media Strategy preso.

Social Bookmarking and News Sites

• While there are many social bookmarking sites, I prefer Digg.com, Delicious, and Propeller.  Stumbleupon is also worth exploring. I tried using Newsvine but they suspended me for linking to my own blog (now that’s an interesting policy…).
• In terms of online marketing news, I like the eMarketer, Online Media Daily (MediaPost) and IAB SmartBrief newsletters
• There are many social media news sites, but if you have time for only one, subscribe to Mashable for the latest in social media news and other cool things of interest.

Social Media Tools
No media toolkit would be complete without recommending some tools to help you manage social media activities. Here are a few for your Tweeting and Posting pleasure:

• URL Shortening: http://bit.ly allows you to truncate links and track click-throughs
• Post / Tweet Aggregators:  Over the past 12 months I have used numerous post / tweet management tools including Ping.fm, Twitterrific, TweetDeck and TweetLater.  But I now use and recommend Hootsuite for several reasons: 1) ability to post to multiple profiles on Twitter, Facebook, Facebook Fan pages and LinkedIn, 2) scheduling capabilities, 3) great stats, 4) intuitive interface and 5) good iPhone app.  I also use Twitter Selective Status Facebook app as it allows you to selectively update Facebook status when tweeting old-school style (using Twitter.com) simply by adding #fb at the end of the tweet.
• Social Media Bookmark aggregator: Onlywire is a decent plug-in that allows you to share once and post across most social bookmarking sites.  If you have a blog you can use it for free (just add some code to your blog).  Or you have to pay $2.99 per month.
• Blog Monitoring: several vendors offer solid toolsets.  The more robust and comprehensive, the more expensive, ranging from SM2 and Addictomatic (both are free) to the not-so-free social media monitoring tools BuzzMetrics and Radian6.

Twitter Tools

• Search.Twitter.com is Twitter’s native search engine; use it to find out how much you or your competitors are being discussed on Twitter. Using tools like Hootsuite you can now access Search.Twitter through the dashboards.
• For charts showing how many users are following you (or your competitors) over time check out TwitterCounter.
• If you are trying to keep your ratio of Following to Followers in check, use FriendorFollow to find out which of those you are following are not returning the favor.
• If you are seeking to find influencers on Twitter (users with lots o’ followers), TweepSearch is a great place to start.
• MrTweet connects you with others on Twitter based on interests and industries
• Twitpic allows you to upload pics with your tweets (and we all like pictures!)
• Everythingtwitter is well… I guess the names says it all

Call Tracking Tools

Your web site should use dedicated numbers that allow you to track the source of inbound calls.  Two vendors we’ve used are Voice Star and Mongoose Metrics.  Both allow you to track the source and duration of inbound calls at a relatively low price.

Again, this is not intended to be the all-encompassing New Media Toolkit, and I’m sure there are many great tools that were overlooked.  That said, I hope these are helpful in becoming a more prolific online marketer.  Please feel free to COMMENT, SHARE with others and SUBSCRIBE to our blog. We look forward to your feedback!

Steve Latham (follow me on Twitter)

Bookmark & Share

Tweet This Post

Success begins with a plan. Yet when it comes to social media, many marketers dive in without a thorough understanding of objectives, platforms, tactics, requirements, responsibilities and metrics for measuring performance.

Many marketers also fail to understand the pitfalls and shortcomings that can prevent them from achieving their social media marketing goals, including:

• content that is overly promotional
• content that is not engaging or relevant to target audiences
• a one-way outbound approach to communicating (it’s all about me!)
• failing to build a network (without reach, there is no ROI)
• one-off isolated efforts vs. an integrated approach

What many lack is a comprehensive social media strategy.  To address this growing need, I developed a new presentation entitled “Social Media Strategy” you can view below or on slideshare.

The goal of the presentation is to help marketers understand the opportunities, challenges and pitfalls of social media marketing while providing a framework for developing a social media strategy.

“Social Media Strategy” includes the following:

• 5 point business case for social media
• 7 common pitfalls of social media (and steps to avoid them)
• 10 point outline for a social media strategy

This presentation provides the information you need to craft a social media strategy.  If you find it valuable, please feel free to comment below and share with others.  Enjoy and good luck with your social media strategy!

Steve Latham
Follow me on Twitter

Related posts and presentations
Business Case for Social Media
New Media Toolkit
Social Media: Shiny Object or Killer App?

Connect with Spur Interactive

Tweet This Post

How do you use social media to sell?  This was one of the questions on LinkedIn Answers today (BTW LIA is a great forum for sharing insights with industry experts). Actually, this is the full question that was asked:

QUESTION:
“How do you find business via social media? It can be a full time job, between LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook, to stay updated, checking out what’s happening the with groups you’ve joined, posting questions, answers, etc. How do you increase your revenue/sales via social media?”

I thought it was a great question and am hopeful that some will take time to think about it.  I replied with my thoughts and recommendations, and thought it was worth sharing on our blog.  So here it is – verbatim.

ANSWER:
In my opinion, it starts w/ understanding the difference between marketing (creating opportunities) and selling (closing opportunities).  You also have to realize there is no silver bullet or quick fix.  And you need to think of business development as fishing vs. hunting.

Before I share my thoughts on how to do this, here is what you should NOT do:
1. Be overly self-promotional in your posts / tweets
2. DM followers with a sales pitch
3. Talk too much about yourself

Retailers have found that coupons and special offers (communicated via Twitter and Facebook) work well for impulse purchases.  But that doesn’t work for everyone.

For the rest of us who market / sell strategic products or services (considered purchases), I believe the best way to use social media as a marketing/sales platform is by building your brand via thought leadership, engaging content or being memorable (in a positive way, of course).  The tactics you employ depend heavily on your audiences, market and products.

While I can’t illustrate this for every business, I can provide an example of how professional services firms can leverage social media to develop new business.  For a discussion on this please read “Social Media: Killer App or Shiny Object” at http://bit.ly/XUp4c

Please feel free to comment, share with others and subscribe to our blog. Your feedback is appreciated!

Follow us on Twitter!
Find us on Facebook!
Contact us for more information

Tweet This Post

Online surveys, email, blogs, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube all represent new ways for customers to express what they think and how they feel about your brand. In this increasingly digital age, new media is becoming mainstream, creating new challenges and opportunities for brands to communicate with their customers.  How are leading brands doing it today?

A few months ago I was asked by IQPC to put together a panel discussion on how brands can use social media to listen to customers.  I reached out to thought leaders from great companies and recruited Paula Berg, Manager of Emerging Media for Southwest Airlines and Andrew Knight, Director of e-Commerce for Case-Mate.  In the session I presented some stats to frame the discussion (see at end of this post!) and then conducted a Q&A with Andrew and Paula.  Here is a recap for your reading pleasure.  Please note I am going from notes and memory; the quotes are paraphrased and may not be 100% accurate.  But you should get the point.

How did your company come to embrace social media?

Paula: we had just wrapped up the fourth season of Airline! (SWA’s reality TV show) and we were thinking about new ways to engage our customers and provide a transparent view of our company.  The blog NutsAboutSouthwest evolved from this idea.  At the time it was pretty new and pretty risky.

Andrew: I saw how social media platforms could be used as brand-building platforms and customer engagement tool.  One day I proposed to our CEO that we create and manage a blog as well as accounts on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.  I was fortunate in that I had a CEO who understood that social media was going to be very important.

How are you using social media to engage your customers?

Andrew: In my previous role at a cosmetic company, we used YouTube to showcase our products.  We were fortunate to have a relationship with Michelle Phan who built a following of women who wanted to learn how to apply makeup.  Each time she released a video on YouTube, we saw a spike in traffic to our site.  At Case-Mate, we have an active Blog and accounts on Twitter and Facebook.  We use the blog to profile customers, employees and products.  When we feature customers and employees, they tend to share it with their networks which creates more visibility and traffic for us. We used Twitter and Facebook to promote the content on our blog and engage our customers.

Paula: we focus on our Blog, Twitter and Facebook.  Our blog tends to skew to older males whereas our Facebook page skews towards younger females.  Twitter is all over the board. We have one person responsible for all Twitter updates and a team of 30 who contribute to our blog.  Since the blog evolved as a continuation of our reality tv show, our primary goal is to showcase the people and culture of Southwest.  We use each platform as a channel for engaging our customers and building our brand (vs. just selling plane tickets).

How do you handle negative comments?

Andrew: We allow negative comments on our blog, as long as they don’t contain inappropriate language.  I explained to our ceo early on that if we don’t allow the negative comments, our blog won’t have credibility.  And if you disallow feedback from someone who is already upset, you risk them taking even more drastic action.  If they are going to say something negative, I’d rather they do it on our site where we can participate in the discussion.  If I see a negative tweet about our brand, I follow the person and ask them to DM me to discuss.  I then try to move the conversation to email – there’s only so much you can write in 140 characters.

Paula: we allow negative comments unless they use profanity or are about a specific person.  We agree you have to be transparent and authentic.  We also seek to address any negative comments directly and let the customer know we are listening and that we care.

Steve: you are both very lucky that your c-level execs understand the importance of giving up control of your brand.  Unfortunately this isn’t the case in all companies.  In some companies, the person who allowed a negative comment to be posted on the site may lose their job over it.  It’s still a big problem for a lot of brands.

Paula: you definitely need an exec to champion the cause at the c-level.

How do you measure results and justify the ROI?
Paula: we measure traffic and other stats, but this isn’t a very important part of our program.  Every day we see the value in conversations with our customers.  We can’t calculate how many tickets were sold but we do know that word of mouth is critical and social media is a very important tool for building brand loyalty.

Andrew: our ceo also understands that the medium is very important, and that cost of not being there outweighs the cost of the time and energy invested.  We use free tools including Search.Twitter.com, Google Analytics and Google Alerts.

Steve:  again you are both fortunate that your management team doesn’t require you to directly attribute results to justify the investment. (sidenote: in such cases, we seek to measure impact by translating online activity to intent and measure the value of intent – see Social Media Business Case for details).

Regarding monitoring tools, we’ve done a lot of research in this arena.  There are free tools such as Collecta and Addictomatic that aggregate social media mentions across sites. On the paid side, Nielsen Buzz Metrics and Radian 6 are great tools.  SM2 from Techrigy allows you to report on up to 1,000 results for free, making it a great option for mid-size companies who want to monitor mentions of their brand.

How do you address legal issues?

Paula: We take a pretty relaxed approach and our legal department is not involved.  We have general guidelines but we don’t worry too much about legal risks.

Andrew: since I manage our posts and tweets, I don’t have to worry about someone saying something that could get us in trouble.  You have to use good judgment.

How do you see social media as a customer service platform?

Paula: we use social media to solicit feedback, respond to complaints, disperse rumors and announce news.  It’s the fastest way to get the word out when something happens.  We do virtual focus groups and we find that it’s great for search rankings.

Andrew: I think Twitter will become third method (along with phone and email) to contact customer support. We’ve seen companies like Comcast and Best Buy use Twitter for customer support.  Over time we think this will become the norm.

In Closing…
Social Media is a platform you can’t afford to ignore.  While the platforms may change, social media is quickly becoming a critical channel that all brands must master.  The social media stats I presented at the session are shown below.  As always, your comments are welcome and feel free to share with others!

Steve Latham
(follow me on Twitter)

Tweet This Post

I recently presented at Gulf Publishing’s conference “Marketing in the Oilfield” on how energy marketers can leverage online marketing and social media to engage audiences and build their brands.  My presentation is embedded below for your viewing pleasure

For those who want the cliff’s notes, the key takeaways are:

1. Why B2B marketers (including oil and gas / energy service companies) need to be marketing online
2. Roadmap for incorporating online into your existing marketing programs
3. Business case for incorporating social media into an energy marketing program
4. Common social media pitfalls and tips for successfully avoiding them

Here is the presentation.  If you can’t view please visit http://bit.ly/2CEUr

I hope you find it to be of value. Please feel free to comment below and share with others!

Steve Latham
http://twitter.com/stevelatham

Tweet This Post

While preparing for an interview I was reviewing questions I received from the journalist. One question was “how does your firm leverage social media?” It seems that social media is the latest shiny object that is on the wish list of most brand marketers.  Yet if you ask them why they need it, you’re likely to get a pithy, high level response such as “because we want to engage and interact with our customers.”  Ask how they plan to do that and you’ll often get blank stares.

Don’t get me wrong – I’m a huge fan of social media and I believe it is a killer app for many companies. This is especially true for professional services firms like mine.  At the same time, I frequently see a lack of planning, coordination and understanding of how to best use social media to achieve marketing objectives.  So now let’s go back to the opening question…

How do we use social media? We work in an industry where the cobblers kids (sans shoes) run rampant.  And for the most part this is fine; we can be great media planners and campaign managers, even if we don’t do a lot of advertising ourselves. However, when it comes to social media, I believe we have to lead by example.

If you are reading this, you may know that I blog, twitter, slideshare, facebook, link in, stumble, digg and tag things that are delicious.  Yes, it takes time, but I enjoy it. But above all, I do it because it creates value for my personal and agency brands. Through my investment in social media, I’ve expanded our network of partners, booked speaking opportunities, built awareness for our brand and generated several new client opportunities.

Social media can be a great platform for most businesses.  But as a professional services firm, social media offers some additional benefits that one could argue make it a killer app for marketing purposes.  In my world, the #1 benefit of social media is that it provides a platform for demonstrating thought leadership.

It’s important to remember that social media is a platform, not a message.  While awareness and visibility are great benefits of social media, they don’t build your brand.  You can get great visibility with a flurry of self-promoting posts and annoying solicitations for your services, but you aren’t building credibility.  You can use social media to connect with business acquaintances, recruit employees and show the world that you are a forward-thinking firm, but it probably won’t matter to clients. In my opinion, the true value of social media for professional service firms is the ability to demonstrate thought leadership on a large scale that gets even bigger if you have something unique and valuable to say.

Here’s another way to look at it: any firm can hire a web site copy writer to create a compelling message that says who you are, what you do, how you differentiate and why clients choose you.  While this used to be a key factor in engaging visitors, clients do not make decisions based on your home page. Case studies are great but we all know they present an air-brushed image of the results you produced for a client. On the other hand, a blog or tweet stream provides a relatively unfiltered view into how you think and how you act.  If you routinely produce strategic insights, unique perspectives and practical knowledge that are perceived to be of value to your clients, you can establish credibility and thought leadership in their eyes.  Clients hire consultants, agencies, bankers and lawyers because of their people.  Social media enables you to build your brand by showing off your greatest assets in a way that is much more transparent and authentic than it used to be.

In the past we relied on the static html, flash intros, polished copy and powerpoints to educate clients on who we are and how we can help them.  Blogs, Twitter, Facebook, Slideshare, LinkedIn and others now offer us a much more effective and efficient means for demonstrating thought leadership, regardless of your size, budget or location.  It’s not often that those of us in client services can point to a competitive advantage that we enjoy over other types of businesses.  But in a world where clients are seeking knowledge, insight and trusted advice, the social web gives us a unique opportunity to show them what we have to offer.

I’d love to hear from other service providers on this topic.  Comments are welcome!

Steve Latham
Follow me on Twitter
Find me on Facebook

Tweet This Post

I recently learned about WORDLE which is a very cool tool that allows you to create word clouds for any body of text.  What’s a word cloud? Similar to a tag cloud, the word cloud is a graphical representation of a body of text.  Here is the Wordle word cloud for our Social Media Blog:

It’s a great way to describe a blog, whitepaper, report or email, and it rates very high on the eye-candy chart.  For the time being Wordle is free so go get your WORDLE on!

If you like this, feel free to share it with others!

Steve Latham
Follow me on Twitter!

Tweet This Post

I saw a very good question today on LinkedIn Answers (great place to ask, answer and learn about things in your industry!) and thought it was worth writing about in my blog.  The question was “Why aren’t more companies testing social media marketing?“  I thought about it for a few minutes and crafted what I thought was an insightful answer.  Hopefully you will agree!

What are the barriers to Social Media Marketing?  In addition to legal  (liability? truth in advertising)? and brand management issues (what if our tweets violate our brand guidelines!), I believe there are three primary issues that impede companies from leveraging Social Media:

1. The Business Case for Social Media
While most intuitively believe social media is a low-cost way to extend your reach, build your brand and drive new business, most need hard data to justify the investment of time, energy and resources (people). And in this climate, few are going to stick their neck out to try something that isn’t embraced by CXOs.  BTW – I heard there’s a very insightful presentation available for viewing on the Business Case for Social Media.

2. Limited Understanding and Resources
In my experience, most brand marketers are overwhelmed and confused by social media. They usually don’t know what to do, where to start or how to plan and budget for it. Ask 5 members of your team what you should do, and you’ll probably get 5 different answers.  In better times, brands would hire an agency to help them figure this out (psst – I heard this agency rocks), but when dollars are tight and the risk threshold is low, it’s easy to push this off until the business climate improves.

3. Lack of Capabilities
There is a lot of noise in the social media space, and no shortage of self-proclaimed SM experts. But don’t forget great players are not necessarily great coaches. While there are thousands of individuals who have used social media to build their own brands, I believe most are very tactical in their approach. They can create a Twitter account and show you how to Tweet, but few have the knowledge and skills to develop a strategic plan that defines the audiences, objectives, resources, tactics, tools and metrics for measuring and optimizing results.  When your goal is to build your brand and grow your business, you need a strategy.  As reported last week in one of many articles I read, “Twitter is a tool, not a strategy”.  I couldn’t agree more.

As the market matures and the economy improves, more marketers will dip their toe into the Social Media stream (excuse the pun!). This creates opportunities for those who can secure C-level support, develop a solid plan and execute against defined objectives. IMHO these cases are quite rare these days.  But there is always hope!

If you like this post, comment and share it!  If you hate it, please keep it to yourself

Steve Latham
Follow me on Twitter
Follow me on Facebook

Tweet This Post

Last week I put together a summary of stories that I thought would be of interest to those who are in the interactive marketing industry.  Here are some other clips relating to Social Media that I think are interesting and informative.  Hope you enjoy.  Feel free to share and comment!

UniLever CMO Throws Down the Social Media Gauntlet
Takeaways from speech recently made by UniLever’s CMO about the importance of Social Media to brands. Includes his “5 New Rules of Marketing”. Great to see one of the world’s largest companies embracing social media.  I hope they can make it work!

Facebook Overtaking MySpace
Facebook is now the most trafficked global social network. Claiming 200 million users, it now reaches all demos and ages. Now it needs to figure out how to make money in a way that doesn’t infuriate its large and vocal community.

Facebook Grows Up Fast!
Glad to know that my group (26-44) accounts for 41% of all Facebook users. But surprised to find women over 55 are the fastest growing group on Facebook. Will being friended by your mom make you leave Facebook? Maybe… or maybe not. I think the new design is a bigger risk.

Teens on Social Networks
This just in: teens are heavy users of social networks! Okay you may know that. But did you know that 60% acknowledged that the things friends wrote in their profiles could harm their careers and that 38% said they regretted some of the items that had already appeared on their pages. Hopefully they will learn from public examples of how your personal views can blow up in your face… Like it did for this chucklehead!

Mommy Bloggers On the Rise! (AdWeek)
At the “Meet the 21st Century Mom” event, BabyCenter.com released results from a 25,000 person survey showing that 63% of women reported being active on social networks (vs. 11% in 2006).  Women with new babies cut back on media consumption by as much as three hours, with print taking the biggest hit. According to the report, 49 percent of respondents claim to read magazines less after giving birth, and 46 percent said the same about their newspapers.

How Edelman Manages Mommy Bloggers (AdAge)
Great interview with Edelman Chicago’s senior VP for consumer brands social media, Danielle Wiley on how they manage 2.0 digital (aka Social Media) practices and strategies for big name clients. I especially like their views on refusing to pay bloggers to write favorable reviews of their clients’ products.  I wish more agencies upheld the same standards.

Twitter Soars, but Does It Stick? (AdWeek)
Pop quiz – how many users will be on Twitter by 2010? Answer: a lot! The good folks at eMarketer report that 18 million of my closest friends (10% of Internet users) will be on Twitter by 2010 (read the article). If Ashton Kutcher has 1.5 million followers and Oprah is gaining ground with 700,000, the number may actually be higher. However… the jury is out as to how many will actually stay on Twitter. Nielsen recently reported that Twitter’s audience retention is only 40% – meaning more than 60% of its users fail to return the following month (read the article). So will Twitter last or is it a flash in the pan? I believe you can make a case for either outcome.

7 Marketing Mistakes to Avoid on Twitter
Good article by Rodney Rumford (hola So Cal!). Or you can eliminate the “don’ts” and learn 7 Tips for Succes on Twitter. Either way it’s a good way to learn how to use Twitter as a branding channel.

Be Careful What You Tweet!
You can’t help but laugh at the irony of this story. A social media consultant may have ruined his career with one errant tweet (if you haven’t heard about the FedEx / Memphis story, click the link above). The lesson: be careful what you tweet. Anything and everything you write is public, and it may be taken out of context.

All for now folks! Please share your thoughts, questions or comments. Just keep it clean and constructive. And if you like what you read, please share it with others!

Steve Latham
Follow me on Twitter
Find me on Facebook

Tweet This Post