One of the biggest criticisms of social media is that people are abandoning ‘real people’ to spend their time online. I see it differently, social media is a great way of meeting new people, forging new relationships and it’s a way of always having a ‘real person’ to hook up with wherever in the world you find yourself.
I’m in Scotland at the moment, my parents live in a pretty remote village on the east coast not far from John O’Groats. On my way here I met up with a friend in Edinburgh, a friend I met online through a mutual friend on Facebook. We had breakfast before I had to catch the train. There used to be a fellow tweeter who lived just up the road from my parents and we were able to meet for a pint and a chat when I visited. Last week in Dublin I went to a TweetUp with the host and listeners of the FIR podcast. It was great to meet new people with similar interests and to chat with some people I hadn’t seen in a while.
These are all real people and they are all people I’ve met online. They’re not strangers, they are people I know I have something in common with and as we’ve chatted online it’s easy enough to bring that conversation into the real world.
How does this translate to business? One of the things I love most about social media is that is able to take the coldness out of cold calling and the fear out of networking meetings. Here’s a few tips on building these relationships.
Linkedin Events
Linkedin is a great place to find out about networking events happening near you. Once you’ve decided which ones to go to check out the guest list and see who you might have a synergy with, who you may have met online before. Remember this isn’t people you want to sell to directly. These are people you can build strong connections with, people that you may be able to refer business to in the future or who may be able to refer business to you. If there is someone you are keen to meet drop them a message or an email before the event and arrange to meet them. It’s great to walk into a room at an event and know you have someone to meet.
Linkedin Connections
I’m quite strict about who I connect to on Linkedin. It might be old fashioned but I still use it as a trusted network. I tend to only connect to people who I’ve met and had a chat with or had a prolonged discussion with online. Of course all rules are there to be broken and if I haven’t met someone personally I sometimes offer to meet for coffee so we can get to know each other better. I’ve met some great people this way, people I can refer business to and people I can just ask a question of if I need help as well as people who might need to ask me for help from time to time.
Building relationships with Twitter
Twitter is a great relationship building tool. You can attempt to get to know anyone you want to on Twitter. Getting into conversations with people, chatting about topics you have in common mean that you can really get to know people. It’s simple to take this one step further and suggest meeting for coffee, a milkshake or lunch. As someone who lives down the country I find this particularly useful during my trips to Dublin and it’s how I found myself having a great chat over breakfast in Edinburgh yesterday.
Going To Events with Twitter
I travel to conferences quite often, most of the time alone. Following the Twitter #tag means that I’m never stuck for someone to talk to in a lunch or coffee break. Recently in London I got to meet to Irish Tweeters, @paulinesargent and @jilloherlihy. You might think it odd that I travelled all the way to London to meet to Irish people but it was a great opportunity to get to know them better and hopefully forge stronger relationships in the future.
I’m really only scratching the surface with this blog post and I’d really like to hear your stories of real people you’ve met offline. Leave your stories and suggestions below in the comments.
A bottle of Champagne arrived in the post for me recently. I was delighted, it was unexpected and of course Champagne just makes you feel happy. Here’s how and why it happened and how being delightful could benefit your company.
Last month, as regular readers might know, I attended Social Media World Forum in London. I will always Tweet at a conference like this, firstly I know there is information on the day that I will want to share with my followers because it is useful, secondly I get to meet people at the event itself. I am always aware however that I might be flooding the Twitter stream with my tweets so try and hold back, only sharing the very best information. The event was great, I met lots of new people both in person and on Twitter and I learnt loads too.
A few days after my return I got a Tweet from one of the event sponsors Synthesio saying that as I’d Tweeted so much they were going to send me some Champagne, could I DM my address. I was sure once they found out I was based in Ireland they would change their mind but a week or so later the Champagne arrived in the post along with a really handy little book ’The Quick Start Guide To Social Media Monitoring’ (pictured above).
Surprising people like this is a great way to build brand ambassadors, you can be sure every time I see the Synthesio logo now I’m going to remember the champagne and how nice it was to get such a surprise. I’ve even looked into what the company do, at the conference I was aware of their branding but didn’t look any closer. Now I know the next time a client is looking for paid brand monitoring their name will make it onto my recommended list.
How can you be delightful?
So how can you be delightful? Take a look at the most engaged users on your social media channels, why not treat them to something? Don’t make it a competition, don’t even announce it in advance, surprise them and reward them for their loyalty. A discount voucher isn’t enough, it should be something tangible. If you sell a product you could send them a sample and ask for their feedback, if it’s a service can you offer them a short consultation for free. If you want to be really delightful why not research your influencers a bit further. You can find out quite a lot from a Facebook profile or by reading a few tweets. Try to discover what they’re in to and reward them with something that matches those interests. If they are a reader buy them a book from the genre they are interested in, if they are a wine lover find a great bottle that they will love, if they are a foodie an artisan food product would go down a storm.
The result will be a very happy person who will have an even stronger connection to your brand and will talk about you even more pushing your brand awareness and encouraging more referrals.
Have you ever delighted your customers? Have you ever been delighted by a spontaneous gift from a comapny? I’d love to hear your stories.
If you’ve been using social media for business for some time you will start to recognise specific people who contribute to your posts, discussions & tweets the most. They start to become the core of your community and will recommend you, your pages and your services to others they know. These are your ‘Brand Advocates’. This is a hugely powerful group of people and gathering a strong group is essential for increasing the reach of your message. How can you nurture these people? How can you encourage them to share more? Here are four recent examples of businesses using user generated curation or content to engage with and create new advocates.
@Ireland Twitter Account
WorldIrish.com launched a very clever initiative giving people the opportunity to curate the @Ireland Twitter account for a week. It’s totally up to the curator to decide what to post. As I’m typing this the current curator is Jonathan Lynn whose day job involves curating and promoting street art. As you can imagine there has been much talk about street art on the page this week.
The aim of the project according to the World Irish Website is:
…@Ireland is based around the idea that a single voice cannot represent a country. By sharing peoples’ experiences and lives with the world, project curators WorldIrish believe @Ireland can help to further connect Ireland to the world and the world to Ireland.
You can view the tweets from previous curator on the WorldIrish website. I have my hand hovering over the send button on an email applying to be a curator… I’ll keep you informed if I do decide to go for it.
ProBlogger
Another country, this time using user generated content to promote itself is Australia but this time it’s being pushed out by ProBlogger. I love the story behind this one. Darren Rowse, from ProBlogger decided that there were very few products he’d be happy to promote via his extensive social media channels and blog. One of those oh his list was his home, Austrailia. With this promotion he’s managing to fulfil that wish. I first saw it pop up on Google+.
The competition will bring 10 bloggers on an all expenses paid trip to The Great Barrier reef. In return the winners will be expected to blog about their experiences. Sadly the deadline for entries on this one has passed. Those that did enter had to submit their ideas on how they would approach the task as well as submitting links to their own blogs and social media sites. It’s clear they won’t just be selecting the winners on audience size but also on their ideas and how the experience will relate specifically to their readers.
The rules of entry will ensure that they get the best 10 bloggers with the biggest influence to participate in the project. By throwing the net wide and by running it as a competition rather than just researching influential bloggers in the field ProBlogger has already created a buzz around the project, many readers, myself included will be following the stories of the winners avidly.
Irish Rail Blogger
It’s fantastic to see Ireland in the European Soccer finals this year. I doubt many of the people planning to attend have looked further than an aeroplane for getting there, however you can get there by train and Irish rail have come up with an excellent way to promote this service by engaging bloggers and potential bloggers.
The winner will travel over-ground via InterRail , get accommodation on a fan campsite in Ponza, have tickets to the three group games and receive €1,000 spending money. A great budget holiday that is bound to attract the student and the all important Millenial generation. Winners will be expected to produce daily blog posts in return.
To be in with a chance of winning applicants are asked to submit a sample blog post covering a journey they’ve taken or a sporting event they’ve attended.
The good news is that there is still time to enter this one, the deadline is Friday 27th April at 5pm. Details here.
Getting to the Euro’s is going to be a big stretch for a lot of people this year and the news has been full of the huge prices of flights and hotel accommodation. This competition should draw attention to the budget options that I’m sure will attract many of the people who otherwise could not have attended.
A-Wear
Engaging your audience this way and encouraging brand advocates is not a new thing. Clothing chain store A-Wear have always been very smart at bringing their audience on board and as I started to read about the ProBlogger and Irish Rail blogging competitions I was reminded of a promotion from A-Wear and the Electric Picnic a couple of years ago. They recruited bloggers via their Facebook page, narrowed it down to a few finalists, styled them in A-Wear clothes and asked their community to vote on a winner.
This competition was hugely engaging to watch on social media, appealed exactly to their target market and although it only produced one blog entry as far as I can work out, it definitely created a buzz around the brand as well as sending customers into the store to pick up their gear for the festival.
Have you seen any clever ways that brands have engaged their communities?
As you may have noticed I’ve been looking forward to seeing Chris Brogan speak at Social Media World Forum for quite some time. When I arrived I sat (almost) right at the front so that I wouldn’t miss a word (see stalker style picture above). Here’s what I learnt.
Define your business goal
I guess people may be getting tired of hearing me banging on about Facebook Likes not being important, and it is true, you do need Likes in order to reach people, if you’re finding it hard to gather them here’s some of my tips. However the number of Likes or followers you have, or your Klout score should never be the goal of your social media campaign. Chris started his talk by revealling a conversation he overheard between two business people at breakfast. ‘Not once did they mention their Klout score or their Facebook Likes… social tools should be used in the service of doing business the same way that a telephone is.’ Apparently a bank manager won’t take your Klout score or Facebook Likes as payment for your mortage either! Using social media needs to be about achieving a measurable goal. This was the theme of Chris’s talk.
Your Website
Does your website have a strong call to action? When someone arrives there is it clear what they have to do next? or are there multiple calls to action? If it’s the latter the site is badly designed. You always need to be thinking about the sales process and guide visitors through it. In the age of mobile you need to make sure your site looks great on all devices, from a small screen phone to an iPad. It’s worth the investment as more and more consumers are accessing the web this way.
Your Email Marketing
91% of consumers over the age of 18 said they would prefer to interact with a brand via email. This is hugely more than any social media channel, email is not as you may of heard dead, it’s alive and well… bad email marketing is dead. Having a beautiful HTML designed email that fits in with your website is not what is important. Segmenting and segregating your email list so that you are sending the right message is. Make sure you are targetting customers, leads etc differently.
If you are putting more than one call to action in your newsletter then you are diluting your message make sure your emails don’t run to longer than 350 words. If it’s too long for you to read on a mobile device it’s also too long for the people you are sending it to. Encourage engagment and interaction by ensuring when someone clicks the reply button the email comes straight to you your email newsletter should be a ‘relationship experience’.
Video
Create interesting searchable content on YouTube. YouTube is the second biggest search engine in the world, it’s important to embrace it. Again it’s not about views it’s about leads and conversions so define your goal, decide who you are trying to reach with your video and what information they will be searching for. Think about how you will turn them from leads into conversions.
Finding time for social media
‘I don’t have the time’ is a common complaint from social media sceptics so we need to look at where we do spend our time. At the moment how do we generate leads? Something like cold calling can reach up to 12 people an hour where as spending an hour on social media has the potential to reach 1,000.
These are the key points I picked up from Chris’s presentation, they may seem a little disjointed but there were so many in his talk I found it hard to keep up. At the end I asked him for examples of small business using Google+ well and I’ll be coming back to you on these. Were you at the talk? What tips have I missed? Remind me by posting them in the comments section below.
I always think that no matter how busy my schedule is it’s worth taking time out to learn, with this in mind I took myself to the Measurement Conference in Dublin last week. It was worth the time out, I was sucking in information all day long, I also got to meet a lot of people, both those I’d communicated with online in the past and lots of new people. Here’s the top tips I picked up on the day.
Learn What To Count And How To Count It – Laurence Veale
It may seen obvious but I find that one of the biggest challenges for small businesses is to define the goal of their social media activities. Lots of us start using Facebook or Twitter without an objective in mind and it’s often those who don’t define these that find it hardest to see the benefits of their campaigns.
Laurence Veale suggested a list of business objectives for using social media including:
Generate sales
- Maximise lifetime customer value
- Creating leads
- Reducing costs by offering self service
Take a step back, decide what you want to achieve and work out what metrics you need to know if you succeed – Dena Walker
Yes this means the same but it’s worth repeating. It’s such an essential part of marketing and always the first thing I ask my clients. I asked Dena at the questions and answers session how she would apply this to small business and she suggested some metrics that could apply including footfall and increased consumer spend.
Fans and followers are a massive ‘so what’ – Dena Walker
The days of counting your followers on Twitter or your Likes on Facebook are gone. It can be a hard mind set to get out of but they no longer have as much relevance as they once did. You have to recognise that the people who ‘Like’ your page will only be a small proportion of your target market, this is why it’s important to foster word of mouth, engage the audience you do have so that they recommend you to others both on and off social networks.
Your Facebook page is not a community – Mat Morrison
Mat showed us some really great analytical examples that prove that Facebook business pages offer far more two way communication that community communication. We talk to our Likers, our Likers talk to us, there is very little chat Liker to Liker. This is partly due to the way that Facebook pages work, we no longer get a notification when users reply to a thread on a business page we’ve been active on unless it’s from the page admin. I can see why this is the case, we don’t want to be flooded with notifications from a popular post but it does inhibit community and fosters one to one communication between us and the brand/business.
Although it’s hard to argue with Mat’s analysis I have seen plenty of community interaction on small business pages. Maybe this is because the customers of smaller businesses are more likely to know each other?
People will not unsubscribe to you if you never post – Mat Morrison
The question about how often we should post to Facebook comes up all the time. We fear we’re going to loose Likers if we post too often but we want to make sure that we’re posting often enough to keep people engaged. The more we post the more our ‘Talking About’ score will rise yet we risk unsubscribes. However as Mat says if we never post we’ll never loose subscribers.
Conversation is already happening online, brands have nothing to lose by engaging – Georgina Bowes
I find that one of the most common concerns that small businesses have is that by embracing social networking they’ll be encouraging negative comments. This is why I’ve picked this particular quote from Georgina. People could already be online talking about you, they will do so even if you aren’t online. By having a social media presence you are able to respond to complaints or negative comments. Customer service and responding to negative comments must form an important part of your social media strategy. Done well it gives you the opportunity to showcase your customer care and turn dissatisfied customers into brand advocates.
Photos are more social than video as there is no barrier to viewing
This came up during the panel discussion. Photos on Facebook are by far the most engaging content, even more so than video. Video requires a further action and an investment of time by a user where as image can be digested and reacted to quickly. If you missed my videocast last week on how to use images to encourage more engagement you’ll find it here. I’d steer away from only posting images as a variety of content will encourage different users and different types of interaction.
Were you at the Measurement Conf? Or were you watching online? What was the top tip you picked up on the day?
Have you ever stopped in the street when you’ve seen something odd and taken a photograph? Been caught in a flashmob and tweeted a quick photo or video from your phone? Have you scanned a QR code in a strange location? I know I’ve done all three and that’s probably why I find the idea of ’shareable objects’so interesting, they capture your attention and encourage smart phone users to share via their social networks. They’re a great way to grab some attention and spread your message beyond your existing community. If you were on Grafton Street in Dublin on Wednesday you may have seen shareable objects in action as Sage Ireland launched Sage shaped fluffy clouds (flogos) into the sky as part of the launch of their new cloud service. This week I talked to Beatrice Whelan Social Media & Content Specialist at Sage Ireland about what inspired the campaign and how well it worked.
You used Flogos to promote the Sage Cloud campaign, what are they?
Flogos are flying logos for sky advertising. They can be made into many different shapes. They have the look of a soft, puffy cloud.
For our event we choose the Sage logo, a cloud shape to convey the message of Sage Cloud software and a lightbulb shape to sybmolise a new idea. The Flogo clouds can hover at various heights, and as they contain helium this can be controlled so we could keep some low for capturing photos and let others go high to spread our message.
Were flogo’s your idea for the campaign and where on earth did you hear about them?
No, not mine. One of the agencies we work with, Boys and Girls, presented the idea to us and we loved it. I have never seen a medium fit the message so well before. It literally puts Sage in the clouds. I immediately started to think about the social media aspect of using them and how they could be shared and used from a social media point of view. As Flogos are shareable objects they are perfect for social media use.
Flogos have never been used in Ireland before. They are not that ‘new’ in the sense that they have been around for a few years but no one here has used them before. When Boys and Girls presented the idea to us, we did some research online and we got excited about the possibilities.
What made you choose them over other marketing devices?
They were just so well suited to our message that Sage is in the Cloud, Sage have a portfolio of Cloud software and the Flogos look like clouds when they are floating in the sky so it was a perfect fit. The fact that we could also make the Sage logo into a flogo was also very exciting. Ultimately that was what made us choose them. We also wanted to do something innovative and different that had never been done in Ireland before. We wanted to do something that would work just as well outside of social media so even if you are not on Facebook or Twitter, you would hear about our cloud launch via traditional media or you could come across the video when you do a search on Google, or you might just come across them on the day as many people did.
How much work went into the planning of the event?
The event took a lot of planning but we had a lot of help. Our PR Agency, Elevate were a great help and organised a lot of the practicalities. The Flogo machine was brought over from the UK. We had to get permission from Dublin City Council and the Aviation Authority. We had an event schedule and a social media schedule so everyone involved knew what was happening on the day.
Did you have any specific goals in mind at the planning stage?
Our goal was to get the message of the Sage Cloud out to as many businesses as possible. This included getting media interest and also generating interest via social media, before, during and after the event.
Did anything you didn’t expect happen?
Yes, we were happy to see that people took their own video of the Sage Flogos and posted them to YouTube. [I love that this one is labelled as UFO's - Amanda]
This was a nice surprise, it is something that you hope might happen but can’t really expect it as you can’t plan people’s reactions. We were also surprised that people actually followed the Flogos from where they could see them down to where we were to ask us about them. One business man followed them down from Georges Street. We knew that people that were passing by would find them interesting but we didn’t expect people from streets away to follow them back to us. I was also surprised by the number of people that came up to us on the day to ask us about them, people seemed really curious and intrigued.
You used a Twitter hash tag on the day. What was your reason for doing this and did it work?
I wanted to help spread the message about what we were doing on the day via Twitter. We hoped that people would Tweet about them and start a conversation, even Tweeting where they had seen the Flogos and posting their own pics. A #tag allowed us to track this conversation and see what people were saying even if they did not mention @Sageireland in the tweet, once they used the hashtag we could still see the activity. The particular tag we used #followthecloud was also mentioned in the video that we produced as the words Follow The Cloud come up at the end of the video and so fitted nicely into our overall message. It also allows us to tag any future message we put out on Twitter about our cloud offering or cloud news in general without having a need for a separate Twitter account about Sage Cloud.
What do you have planned next?
Lots. Within our Sage Cloud campaign we have a competition coming up on our Facebook page in the next few days that will allow people to enter to win free cloud software for a year, a notebook and a wireless printer, so they can enjoy the benefits of working in the cloud. On Thursday 16th Feb we are hosting our first Facebook expert chats called ‘Lunch ‘n Learn. This one will be about Cloud so people can come onto our Facebook page from 12.30 to 2.30 on the 16th Feb and ask any question they have about using Cloud software for business. You can register and submit a question beforehand on our Facebook page. Our second Lunch ‘n Learn on the 15th March will be about Social Media for Small Businesses.
We also have lots of activity planned on our Blog, YouTube Channel, Linkedin and Google+ page so watch this space!
Although Sage is a big company with a budget there is nothing stopping small businesses using shareable objects. Have you seen any good examples? Have you tried anything like this yourself? I’d love to hear your experiences in the comments below.
This is a belated post for Blog Action Day that fell on a Sunday this year. I’m rarely online on a Sunday and even though I had a nagging feeling that I was missing something I couldn’t pinpoint it until today. So apologies for my tardiness, but this is what I would have said.
The economic slow down in Ireland has affected the food industry here in many ways. We’ve seen restaurants close down, a resurgence of nostalgia foods – most recently old-fashioned sweets – and a whole host of new artisan producers rise. Cooking has become a massive pass time. People may not be eating out as much but there is more cooking going on in the home. I’m not sure we can blame all of this on the re**ssion but maybe there are positives we can take away from it.
Social media and blogging have become a great cost effective way for food producers, venues and enthusiasts to communicate with their customers. Sites like Any Given Food and the Irish Food Bloggers Association have sprung up and events like Savour Kilkenny have become massive social media events as well as physical events.
So how can food businesses leverage social media?
Venues
Restaurants and cafes have the opportunity to engage customers on premises. Mobile applications like Foursquare and Foodspotting may not have a huge reach in Ireland, but the users they do have are pretty passionate about utilising them. Both of these applications can be linked to Twitter and Facebook so users have the opportunity of spreading the love beyond their fellow food geeks and into the Twittosphere. By offering deals for checking in or becoming a mayor of the venue you are encouraging more visits and more shares from these hardcore users.
Incentivise your customer to stay in touch. Have you dropped your business card into the bowl in Wagamama? I know I have and I’m always delighted to get the deals that arrive in my inbox because of it. But can you be more creative? I love this example from Jay Baur’s Convince And Convert blog of a sandwich bar that uses QR codes to get you signed up to Facebook whilst waiting in the queue.
Food producers
Recipes are hugely popular online. And what better way to promote your product than sharing recipes that require its use. Text recipes are great but putting a face on the brand by making a video could be even better. As often as possible include a photograph as this will get your followers tastebuds working.
Incentivise customers to Like your Facebook page by offering exclusive taster packs in a competition. Take a look at Keith Bohanna’s Irish Artisan Food Producers Facebook page for a collection of really good giveaways. (If a little out of date).
Feature the suppliers of your product and link to their Facebook pages, twitter accounts or blogs.
Tell the story of your product, what inspired you to create it, people love to hear stories and will feel more connected with you and your brand if you share.
Ask your fans to review the product – have a competition for the best review or recipe including it. Again this gives your potential customers some ownership of what you do and they will be delighted to see their recipes featured on your Facebook page or blog.
Food writers
Recipes again! give a way a little bit of what you have to offer. Blogging and sharing recipes from other social media users is a great way to connect with people and give a taste of what you do. I’ve always loved Kieran Murphy’s Ice cream Ireland blog. The recipes are mouth watering and when I saw Murphy’s Ice Cream shops start to appear in Dublin I was straight in to try some of the flavours he’d been talking about. Two food writers Mona Wise from Wise Words and Marian Hearne from Dairy Free & Spelt Living are launching cook books and their Facebook pages and blogs are great advertisements for what will be inside.
My Top tips
Connect with as many other Irish food businesses as you can; through Twitter, through Facebook business pages, through blog comments and anywhere else you find them online.
Tweet during as many food events and TV shows as possible. #rtemc (RTE Masterchef) for example was a great way to connect with other passionate foodies.
Share – don’t just post about yourself, share the love, link to other foodie Facebook pages, share their recipes and their blog posts. Interact and converse to become part of the community.
Recipes, recipes, recipes! People love recipes so whether they are your own or someone else’s you are sharing, make sure people know that your page or blog is the place to come for the best recipes within your category.
Do you have any tips to add? I know that I must have missed some. I’d love to hear what has worked or not worked for you.
I found an interesting post on Inside Facebook today about using Hootsuite to post to Facebook. Those of you who have been following my blog for a while will know I’m a big fan of Hootsuite (affiliate link). I rarely use it for Facebook but from time to time I need to schedule posts if I’m not going to be around, It’s important to be consistant and Hootsuite scheduling allows me to do this even when I’m with clients or teaching a course.
The disadvantage of using Hootsuite for Facebook according to the article is that Facebook penalises your content as it comes from a third party app. This means posts sent from it are less likely to appear in the ‘Top News’ feed of Facebook users and may get overlooked.
I do use Hootsuite scheduling far more frequently for Twitter, in fact I use it on a daily basis. Unlike Facebook there is no penalty for using third party apps to post on Twitter.
Whenever I mention scheduling it usually sparks a debate. There are advantages and disadvantages but used properly I believe it can help you create an effective social media strategy.
The argument against scheduling
The idea of scheduling makes some people prickle and I think I understand why, social media is social, users value authenticity and interaction, the perception is that if you schedule you don’t care, you are not there to respond. However I don’t believe we should all be chained to our computers or phones all day long to interact on Twitter. Scheduling doesn’t preclude interaction, it just guarantees you are able to reach your audience when they are online even if you are not. Those who schedule must respond and interact live too but if you schedule you can do this when it suits you without loosing your audience. In this respect scheduling tweets actually makes you more social not less so.
The advantages of scheduling
I find scheduling invaluable for many reasons. As I mentioned in my opening paragraph I can’t always be at my computer, If I’m out of the office I’m still able to share with my followers, I’m able to be consistent. If I kept my tweeting to when I had computer access I’d be in danger of flooding my followers streams with my tweets. There is nothing worse than logging into Twitter and seeing it dominated by a string of tweets from a single user. By spacing my tweets out I’m giving people time to digest them. As the tweeter this means followers are more likely to look at the links I tweet . The biggest advantage of all is that scheduling is a massive time saver and it helps me avoid those procrastination moments. I spend time in the morning scheduling and then dip in throughout the day to converse and engage.
How to schedule
Before you start scheduling I’d recommend analysing your followers using a tool like Tweriod or CrowdBooster, this will give you a rough guide to when your followers are online and you can create your content calender around this. Use Hootsuite (affiliate link), Buffer or Crowdbooster to schedule your tweets and assign timeslots during the day to check in on your account and read tweets from others.
Do you love or hate the concept of scheduling? I’d love to hear your opinion so please leave a comment below.
This week Domino’s Pizza made a really brave and innovative move by posting live customer feedback on a display in Times Square. The comments were edited for language and relevance but not for positive or negative opinion. This kind of transparancy has become one of the hallmarks of social media.
It made me think about how important it is to get real and believable testimonials from customers. It is no longer good enough to have a ‘Testimonials’ page on your website full of glowing, well thought out recommendations. People need to believe that they are 100% real. Social media gives us the opportunity to prove the validity of our customer feedback and although we aren’t all going to be as brave as, or have the budget of Domino’s Pizza there are a few ways we can collect convincing testimonials.
Twitter
If someone says something good about you on Twitter mark the tweet as a favorite. Once you have collected a few you can link to your favorites page from your website, blog, Facebook page or email signature. You can even embed the live stream of your favorites directly onto your website.
YouTube
If someone is speaking their praise direct into camera there can be no denying that it is real. Video testimonials can really work. Try to keep them short and to the point and most importantly in the words of the person giving feedback. Try not to put words into their mouths.
Channelship have done this really well as have the Kerry County Enterprise Board however I do feel the Enterprise Board could have benefitted more from a lot of short videos rather than editing them all toghther. Internet Video viewers have a short attention span and an 8 minute long video would be enough to put some people watching.
Blogging
We’ve mentioned Buyers Broker’s Blog here before. They use blogging to display customer testimonials, written in their own language and including a photograph. They are very believable.
Screen Grabbing Facebook posts
It can be frustrating if people compliment you on Facebook as even though they have gone out of their way to recommend you the post is only visable to people who visit your page, it will not appear on the news streams of people who like your page unless they happen to be a friend of the person posting it.
To share these comments with your Facebook likes you can screen grab them and post them as photos to your Facebook page.
You can grab recommendations from anywhere on the Internet forums and add them as a photo album to Facebook or even Google+.
What creative ways do you have of collecting testimonials from your customers? I’d love to hear your ideas so please leave a comment below.
There seems to be a lot of talk about crowdsourcing at the moment. It can be a great way to get input into your business, brand or product. This week I’ve been having a closer look at what crowd-sourcing is and how it can be applied to small business.
What is crowdsourcing?
Crowdsourcing is the outsourcing of a task to a wider community – in our case a social media community. This allows you to utilise the knowledge of a large group of people and apply it a specific problem, product or design.
Still confused? I found this great video from What Is Crowd Sourcing that explains it all in very simple terms:
What are the benefits of crowdsourcing
1. Getting your customer invested in your idea. By allowing your community to contribute to a product, design or even name you are giving them a sense of ownership of it, this will encourage them to share and actively promote what you are doing, they are also more likely to become a customer.
2. Talent. Crowdsourcing allows you to gain expertise from people you wouldn’t normally have access to. Other designers or expert opinion can help turn a good product, service or blog post into a great one.
3. Knowing your customer. When we are creating something whether it is a product, a new service or even a blog post it can be hard to know exactly what the customer wants. Crowdsourcing helps you understand your customer fully.
Examples of Crowdsourcing
The BBC and 3G coverage
It was this story about the BBC crowdsourcing UK 3G coverage that inspired this blog post. In this case the data is collected electronically via an Android phone app and is being promoted via the BBC. It will rely on a huge number of users installing and running the application and only an organisation with the reach of the BBC could provide this volume of people. The result will be a map of the UK with 3G coverage highlighted. This will be a fantastic resource as I have found the mobile carriers maps hard to navigate in the past.
Quirky and the Ice Scraper
It was a harsh winter everywhere last year. Social Product Development Company Quirky crowdsourced an impressive Ice Scraper for cars. The Quirky site is designed specifically to crowdsource products, users submit ideas and the community works on them. Users place orders up front and if enough people order it goes into production. So far the ice scraper has received 928 of the 1,200 sales it requires to be manufactured. There are a number of innovative crowdsourced products available on the Quirky website
Dell and Idea Storm
Idea Storm is a Dell customer driven website. It encourages users to submit ideas for products. This enables Dell to engage with their customers, get feedback and innovate new products or services based on customer ideas. Users are able to vote on ideas the most popular are implemented. According to the website out of the 10,000 ideas submitted they have already implemented 400.
How can a small business crowdsource?
Blog research
I use crowdsourcing a lot for my blog posts. This helps me develop ideas that may be based on my own experience I am always interested in how other people have found a service or what tips and tricks they have used. It can be hard to understand how others uses social media, I am so immersed in it every day I often have a very different view to consumers or clients. For that reason I often go to my Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin communities to get input. It can be a real eye-opener to get other opinions and views.
Naming products
When I sold hampers I used to get major writers block when it came to naming them. To help me I asked my Facebook fans to come up with some names and I picked the best of the bunch for new products. It saved me time and got my customers involved in the brand.
Discover what to sell
If you are a retailer deciding what and how much stock to buy can be a major challenge, asking your community what they want can help make sure that you have the right stuff and the right amount of it. It’s also a great way of finding out if there is a popular product you had overlooked.
Designs
If you’re designing a product or having your website revamped putting a number of solutions to your social media communities and asking them which they prefer can help make difficult decisions. Asking them what features they would like to see before you even start creating is even better at making sure you are creating a customer friendly design.
The Downside
1. You need a large community In order to get the full benefit from crowdsourcing. Getting input from one or two people is great but knowing which ideas are really valuable requires a mass of responses. This way you can filter the best ideas and ask your community to vote on the best ones. You will need to spend time building and engaging with your community before you can get results from crowdsourcing.
2. Too many chefs spoil the broth. It may be a cliche but cliches often come from experience. By crowdsourcing you could get lots of ideas and lots of differing ideas, implementing every idea that is given to you could result in a hotchpotch of conflicting ideas. You need to make sure everything you implement is consistant and works well together. Filtering ideas and implementing the most popular and the best should help avoid this.
Have you tried crowdsourcing for your small business? Have you any tips I’ve missed or want to share? Let me know by leaving a comment below.
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