Monthly Archives: January 2012

Listen. Discuss. Learn. Publish. Repeat.

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I have clients ask me if it’s at all possible to automate the activities done on social media. Yes. There are more than a few activities that can be automated using Hootsuite or Tweetdeck.

You can schedule:

  • Blog posts
  • Tweets
  • Fan Page updates
  • Direct Message replies on Twitter (not recommended)

They key to automating content is understanding at what times your fans/readers/followers are most active. There are general times when the most people are online, as I wrote about a few days ago. But that’s not really your target.

For example, if you want to know when your blog posts and other content are most seen, you can use a tool like Su.pr to help you determine that. After you’ve used it for a while, it will start showing you the time when your content was most seen.

The Sprinkle Strategy

What I like to do for my clients is schedule tweets throughout the day, a day before. Having a thorough understanding of who your audience is, what content they (might) like, what time of the day they are on social networks and who they talk to, helps you determine what content (either created or retweeted) to publish.

Scheduling these tweets doesn’t mean you ‘set it and forget it’, it simply means you can monitor your feeds knowing you’ve got content setup. It means you can spend more time engaging in conversations and less time thinking about what to publish. This takes time to learn and do, but once you figure it out; you’ll spend your time more productively on discussions and conversations.

Then from these discussions and conversations you can extract more ideas and turn them into relevant content. Why relevant? Because you know for sure that the people you engaged with will be interested. This point is key.

The point is you should curate information for your followers, be in relevant conversations where you add your input and at the same time, create your own content.

This process is continuous.

My principle is very simple: Listen. Discuss. Learn. Publish. Repeat.

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5 Traits of a Social Media Strategist

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Social Media Strategists? Who are they? What do they do? Why does your organization need one?

Everyone claims to be a Social Media Strategist these days simply because they have a Twitter account and a blog. Well, that doesn’t qualify you as a Social Media Strategist. Ok, so what does?

  • Synthesizer of information. Yes. As you spend endless amounts of time on the web you encounter a lot information. You will need to synthesize this information for others to digest and help them connect the dots. This makes you an invaluable asset.
  • Outcome, not process driven. Many marketers try to come up with a detailed process for their social media plans. While useful, these plans need to be constantly rethought. Yes, you read that correctly. Rethought. This means Social Media Strategists are also Social Strategy Innovators because they understand that coming up with a detailed process for something as unpredictable as social media is not useful. What matters is the outcome, not the process.
  • Customer-Centric Mindset. Companies who are customer-centric, like Zappos, understand that Social Media let’s you have a one-on-one conversation with the customer. Companies that are customer focused are breeding grounds for Social Media Strategists.
  • Entrepreneurial. Entrepreneurs build businesses while wearing many hats. Social Media Strategist also wear many hats. From crafting content, analyzing metrics, training and managing a team, spearheading campaigns, working with agencies and managing a budget.
  • Focused yet able to multi-task. This one is obvious. As stated above, the Social Media Strategist role requires you wear many hats and take on several responsibilities.

The Social Media Strategist has many traits, and of course leadership is very important.This is a new role, and being able to fight for your cause is imperative. As a Social Media Strategist you are not just fighting for the customer, but for the long-term relevance of your business.

Understanding what tools to use is imperative too, and a good deal of your time will be allocated to testing and using these tools.

With that said, Google gave you Social Media Strategists a gift. The video below shows how you can use Google’s Real-Time Insights Finder to support your marketing planning process. Discover how our insights tools can be a window into the attitudes, perceptions and needs of your consumers to inform your next brand positioning, media strategy or just look smart in your next meeting. Available at thinkwithgoogle.com/insights/tools.

If you are a Social Media Strategist, what other traits do you think are important for the job?

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Best times and days to publish new content are off-peak times

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Dan Zarrella of HubSpot is at it again. He’s just published some of his research on what the best times and days to publish new content are including, tweets, blog posts, Facebook post and emails.

the most successful times and days to publish new content are off-peak times.

Apparently people are more active on the weekends. This makes sense, although it doesn’t mean there isn’t any activity during the week. What this means is that you should republish some of your stuff on the weekend in an aggregate post. This also indicates why some of the most popular blogs, like Mashable, publish an aggregate post with all the best posts people might have missed during the week.

But, for most of us who have blogs and have a dedicated reareadership, these trends are different. And they should be. If you are in the U.S. and have dedicated readers in England, you’ll schedule your posts to publish at different hours.

Anyway, what do you think of Dan Zarellas research? Does it make sense to you?

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What if we stopped sharing…everything?

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Sharing is exploding. But I think we’re sharing just about everything. It’s become business-as-usual to just click on one of those Tweet, Like, +1, Stumble buttons; that you really do have to ask yourself if people are really sharing because they feel it’s important to others. Not just to share because it’s become an ingrained habit.

Let’s stop sharing everything that doesn’t matter. This is hard to evaluate but this post by Valeria Maltoni got me thinking: Does sharing mean endorsing? Continue reading →

Social media is for conversations and broadcasting

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We like to say that social media is all about the conversation; not about broadcasting.

Dan Zarrella of HubSpot, posted new research that indicates that broadcasting works better on Twitter than conversation.

60% - 80% links is the sweet spot for retweets

All this data, while useful, should be examined objectively. Why? Because everything depends on what your objective is for using social media tools.

Problem is how we define broadcasting

I think the problem with all of this is how we define broadcasting. If all you do is post stuff about yourself, then that’s spamming. If we define broadcasting as becoming a resource for interesting content, then that’s different.

People like good content, and if you can become a resource by curating interesting content for them, then you will become a very important source in the online lives.

So, is social media for conversations or for broadcasting?

It’s for both. Why? Because if your objective is to create brand awareness, to get leads or to become a thought leader; being in the conversation and posting interesting links are key activities.

When you’re part of the conversation, it doesn’t mean you just have to be in conversation mode all the time; it means you can also post content; either links you find on the web that you think are interesting to your followers, or your own custom made content.

What do think? Do you think the problem is with definition? How do you define broadcasting?

 

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The Golden Rule to being relevant on Twitter

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Want to be informative, original, relevant, valuable?

Teach me something I didn’t know before.

That’s it. That’s how you achieve value!

As Twitter has evolved, it’s also gotten a lot more noisy. If you were not one of the early adopters of Twitter, it’s even more imperative that you add value; that you be interesting.

How can you be interesting and teach people something they didn’t know before? Here are 3 ways:

1. Do something: Everybody online is trying to say something important, but very few are trying to do something important. If you want attention, dare not to just give advice to others, but to live that advice yourself. Then blog about it.

2. Be wrong: The world is full of people trying to do the right things. It’s become so common that many of us are bored by it. We long for someone that is willing to do the wrong thing, say the wrong thing, be the wrong thing. If you have the courage to be that person, you’ll find lots of people paying attention to you.

3. Be right: You can also gain attention by being right… but only if you’re more right than everyone else. Run a mile faster than anyone else, explain your topic more clearly than anyone else, be funnier than everyone else. Embody perfection, and people will take notice.

Interesting huh? The way to be interesting and teach people something they didn’t know is to always be learning, experimenting, trying new things out, failing and repeating.

Teach people how not to make the same mistakes you did and they’ll be knocking on your door.

One more thing, these principles don’t apply just to social media; but to your entire life :)

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Recipe for a powerful engagement strategy on Twitter

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Last week I wrote about how the first thing marketers should worry about being successful on Twitter is being trustworthy.

But how do you measure trust? Or, how do you know if people trust you?

The obvious answers is to look at your number of followers. And, that’s what most folks look at as a measuring stick. ‘We want more followers. How do we get more followers?’ is a question asked a lot.

Actually, your number of followers doesn’t matter. What difference does it make if you have a million followers, but only a handful of them click on your links?

Getting followers isn’t the challenge; there are a handful of tactics that you can do to get more followers. But, the challenge is developing an active and engaged following.

Great; but, how?

I’ve already shared with you a few ways to get more retweets; here are a few tactics to take it to the next level:

  1. Twitter chats. Participating or hosting your very own Twitter chat will immediately help you get useful followers who a very likely to engage with you in the future. Plus, this immediately puts you in the Thought Leadership category.
  2. Answer questions on your blog and invite people to respond. People have questions and you may have the answers or a distinct point of view. When you publish the post on Twitter, invite people to respond by cc’ing their Twitter handle; this is sure to generate comments and retweets because people like to be asked for their thoughts :)
  3. Respond to retweets. If someone retweets you with a comment, don’t just say ‘thank you for the RT’. This is an opportunity to engage and either follow the conversation or create one.

Another key point is don’t be afraid of giving your ideas away:

You don’t give ideas away because it’s cool, but because it’s part of what one does in social networks like Twitter and LinkedIn. Adding value to the conversation is how you contribute and build your reputation. Think about it like a real-time wikipedia entry; lots of people adding their own perspective.

If you are helpful, people will become more than your followers. They’ll become your advocates.

A good engagement strategy is about connecting with others and contributing to the ongoing story. That’s really all you need to do.

What would you add? What’s your experience with creating engagement on Twitter?

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