5 tips for creating a successful social media campaign

Beyond just tweeting, more and more companies are starting to run social media campaigns to engage with prospects and customers.

It seems that the demand for B2C social media campaigns is high and still growing.  If you are preparing for a campaign on Facebook, Twitter, Ning, MySpace, or any other online social community, you might benefit from the advice offered by those gathered at the social media summit.

1. Be very user-centric.
Before you plan your campaign, find out which sites your target audience is visiting, and what they spend most of their time doing.  Design a campaign around the users’ preferences and needs.

2. Communicate with users in their tone instead of a PR tone.
Try to create a relationship with a prospect or customer, don’t feed them PR statements.

3. Make your campaign interesting and engaging by creating contests.
Allow the users to interact with your company and with each other. Give them something to talk about with their friends, because ultimately what you want is for them to become your marketers.

4. Social media campaigns need to be fluid.
You will have to change them frequently (every few weeks) and make adjustments as you go.

5. Build your campaigns to scale.
Be prepared for an explosive growth in hits and plan ahead.

If you do things right, chances are you will get a high response percentage; be ready with an analytics package to measure your campaign’s success.

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50 Social Sites That Every Business Needs a Presence on

If your business limits its online presence to advertising banners and blogging, it’s missing out. The Internet provides powerful networking opportunities that allow users to effectively target their audience by logging on to social sites like LinkedIn, Digg and more. Take advantage of these tools by asserting your company’s presence online and reaching more potential customers, business partners and employees.

Social-Media/Social-Bookmarking Sites

Share your favorite sites on the Web with potential clients and business partners by commenting on, uploading and ranking different newsworthy articles.

1. Reddit: Upload stories and articles on reddit to drive traffic to your site or blog. Submit items often so that you’ll gain a more loyal following and increase your presence on the site.
2. Digg: Digg has a huge following online because of its optimum usability. Visitors can submit and browse articles in categories like technology, business, entertainment, sports and more.
3. Del.icio.us: Social bookmark your way to better business with sites like del.icio.us, which invite users to organize and publicize interesting items through tagging and networking

Professional-Networking Sites

Sign up with these online networking communities as a company or as an individual to take advantage of recruiting opportunities, cross-promotional events and more.

1. LinkedIn: LinkedIn is a popular networking site where alumni, business associates, recent graduates and other professionals connect online.

Niche Social-Media Sites

Consider linking up with one of these social-media sites to narrow down your business’s target audience. You’ll find other professionals, enthusiasts and consumers who are most likely already interested in what your company has to offer.

1. Pixel Groovy: Web workers will love Pixel Groovy, an open-source site that lets members submit and rate tutorials for Web 2.0, email and online-marketing issues.

General Social-Media Sites

The following social-media sites provide excellent opportunities for businesses to advertise; promote specials, events or services; and feature published, knowledgeable employees.

1. Wikipedia: Besides creating your own business reference page on Wikipedia, you can connect with other users on Wikipedia’s Community Portal and at the village pump, where you’ll find conscientious professionals enthusiastic about news, business, research and more.=
2. Wetpaint: If you’re tired of blogs and generic Web sites, create your own wiki with Wetpaint to reach your audience and increase your company’s presence online. You can easily organize articles, contact information, photos and other information to promote your business.
3. Twitter: Is a social networking and microblogging service that allows you answer the question, “What are you doing?” by sending short text messages 140 characters in length, called “tweets”, to your friends, or “followers.”

Job Sites

If you want to secure high-quality talent during your company’s next hiring spree, you’ll need to maintain a strong presence on popular job sites like the ones listed below.

1. CareerBuilder.com: Reach millions of candidates by posting jobs on this must-visit site.

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Four steps for getting more out of Twitter

In its current State of the Twittersphere report, Hubspot is finding what it calls some “surprising things.” The biggest surprise seems to be that many “Twitterers” aren’t actually using it

• 79.79% failed to provide a homepage URL
• 75.86% of users have not entered a bio in their profile
• 68.68% have not specified a location
• 55.50% are not following anyone
• 54.88% have never tweeted
• 52.71% have no followers

Download TweetDeck – go to www.tweetdeck.com and download this free application. It will enable you to manage the conversation from the people you follow and organize them into logical groups.

Sign up with TweetLater – go to www.tweetlater.com and sign up. It will enable you to automatically follow back to those who follow you.

Install BigTweet - BigTweet enables you to distribute interesting information from the web to your followers. Install it on your browser’s toolbar from www.bigtweet.com.

Search for people to follow — you can do this either through your Twitter interface or by using a tool like www.twitseeker.com.

By establishing a systematic approach to communicating through Twitter, it can become great tool for building that word-of-mouth presence that all marketers are looking for.

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Top 10 To Do’s for Twitter small businesses

If you are a small retail business, here are some tips for setting up Twitter:

1. Use Your Real Name - People know you from your store or business name, use it.

2. Specify Your Location - You want people to stop in, they need to know where you are. If you have multiple locations make sure to list them.

3. Be creative - customize your avatar and Twitter page so it stands out.

4. Check out the competition and listen- use TwitterSearch to find out what others in your industry are doing. But … before you jump in, start following others to see how you can approach the market.

5. Tweet – Post a few related industry posts along with trivia or other business information.

6. Let people know – make sure to promote that you are on Twitter to your customers. Include it on receipts or make a special flyer to include with their purchase.

7. Reward your followers - Give them a special deal for just being your follower. Also encourage them to retweet (RT) and share the savings. This will help grow your followers.

8. Be committed. When you set up your twitter account, make sure to have a plan on how you are going to use it, who is going to update it and what you are going to say.

9. Get Connected. Resources are tight for small businesses. Make sure you download a mobile application so you can update from anywhere.

10. Show your followers. Make sure to use Twitpic, or any other application to upload photos of events, your product, etc.

Be sure to check out 100 Twitter Tools to find other way to help you achieve your goals.

© LaChapelle Design

Ten Ways To Decide If Your Business Should Tweet

Here are ten factors you should consider when deciding whether to tweet:

1.Domain squatting
Is there any value for you to register your business name or even real name as a Twitter user name?

2. Brand mentions
Is anyone talking about your actual business already?

3. Topical mentions
Are people on Twitter discussing topics relevant to your business?

4. Location mentions
If your business is based in or focused on a certain city or region, search Twitter to see what people are saying about it.

5. Target audience
If there are lots of relevant mentions, click the user names to see if they look like they could be in your target audience.

6. Competitiveness
Twitter could be a competitive advantage, or a necessary defensive strategy.

7. Sales cycle complexity
How involved is the purchase decision?

8. Purchase frequency
How valuable is it to stay top of mind?

9. Acquisition vs. retention
If most of your business comes from existing customers, then just ask them if they use Twitter and if they’d want to keep in touch with you that way.

10. Bandwidth and resources
Even if your target audience is on Twitter and there are a million reasons to connect with customers there, do you work with anyone who understands Twitter well enough to participate, or can you afford to pay someone else to train you or run your Twitter program?

That’s the long answer. The short answer is, “Are your target customers on Twitter, and do you have the resources to reach them?”

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Top 13 Twitter Don’ts

Want to keep your Twitter followers happy? Avoid these microblogging faux pas.

The number of new Twitter users has soared over the past few months, as the microblogging service has taken the media by storm. If you’re one of those new users, you may be baffled by Twitter’s peculiar culture, or nervous that you’ll commit some kind of microblogging faux pas.

1. Don’t live-tweet TV shows.

2. Don’t say anything that could get you fired or prevent you from getting a job.

3. Don’t be boring.

4. Don’t forget the Twitter lingo: RT is retweet, and @name is how you respond or give props to someone.

5. Don’t tweet more than ten times a day, or more than five times an hour. It gets annoying and takes space and attention away from other Twitterers’ links and observations.

6. Don’t reply to every single tweet.

7. Don’t tweet drunk.

8. Don’t tell us about something cool or life-changing without a link or picture.

9. Don’t retweet something and leave off the original Twitter poster.

10. Don’t ignore people who send you a direct message or a reply #hashtag every topic. After a while, your topics will be ignored.

12. Don’t whine about people not following you, pleads.If you’re good at providing interesting stuff and you’re patient, you’ll get the followers you crave so badly.

13. Don’t tweet your bathroom habits. Seriously. Just don’t do it.

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6 Steps for small business to build a social network

Follow me on Twitter. Join my Facebook group. Link to me on LinkedIn. See my video on YouTube.

It use to be enough for a small business to market its services with advertising and public relations. But in the last few years, an avalanche of new opportunities has cascaded on the Internet in the form of social networking sites.

These sites give businesses more opportunities to get the word out about their companies, but they’ve also made most of us feel overwhelmed, trying to keep up.

1. Identify the advantages and limitations of social networking sites. Identify the sites where you should be putting your time. You can’t be everywhere, by researching the advantages and disadvantages, you have a better chance to reach them your audience.

2. Research the competition. What is your position in the market and how are you going to convey that to your customers online. See who else is out there and what they are going. It may not just be a local business, but a similar business in another city may be doing something you can leverage in your market.

3. Listen. Before you can do much more, get on the email lists, join the groups, connect with people, and follow them. Get involved by listening to what others are doing. Be cautious when getting into social media, you don’t want your first impression to be a bad one.

4. Determine your goals. What do you want to get out of the social networking site? Realistic expectations will lay the foundation for success. Do you want to drive 10% more traffic to your site? Increase the number of download a white paper by x number of visitors? Drive traffic (x customers) to your location ? Be specific in your goals and make them realistic. You should have both short and long term goals.

5. Make a plan. Managing your social networking visibility can be a full-time job. Making a plan and strategically integrating it into your marketing efforts will help to define your expectations and make your social networking intentional. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn are a start but don’t forget on commenting on blogs and posting to groups.

6. Build on results. Keep track of where you are getting leads, comments and responses.

While there may be an attraction to “free” social networking, you can waste time and efforts if you are not intentional and have a plan.

© 2009 LaChapelle Design

10 Essential Twitter Tools for Business

Do you use Twitter? That’s a hot question these days. With more than 11 million users, the microblogging service is becoming an incredibly popular networking tool.

Still, most people struggle when it comes to using Twitter effectively. This may be especially true for businesses, which tend to feel pressure to join Twitter, but don’t quite know where to begin. If you want to use Twitter, but aren’t sure how to use it well, these process by using these 10 essential Twitter tools for business may help smooth the learning curve:

1. Tweetdeck

With Tweetdeck, you can not only tweet, reply, direct message, and retweet, but create groups of followers, shorten URLs, send pictures, and execute customized searchesBiggest benefits: Saving time and streamlining Twitter functions.

2. Tweetie / Twitterberry

Tweetie is kind of like a Tweetdeck for your iPhone

TwitterBerry, which is quite similar. Biggest benefit: Having a time-saving Twitter dashboard in your mobile device.

3. Twitt(url)y

Twitt(url)y tracks and ranks URL shared on Twitter by popularity. Biggest benefit: At-a-glance access to the hottest Twitter trends.

4. TwitterFriends

If you Twitter frequently, and Twitter is important for your business, this stats tool will help you take the next step towards becoming a master tweeter. Biggest benefit: Improving the efficiency and efficacy of your Twitter use.

5. SocialWhoIs

SocialWhoIs helps you find out more about people by entering their nickname and social media service. Biggest benefit: Finding new, relevant contacts.

6. TweetGrid

You don’t need to be a Twitter user to cull value from TweetGrid, which lets you follow topics, people, groups, events, and more in real-time on a search dashboard.

7. GroupTweet

Allows users to send tweets that only end up inside a designated group. Biggest benefit: Keeping potentially confidential tweets within a designated group.

8. OutTwit

TwitterMail, a similar service, lets you post tweets and follow replies through Web-based email. Biggest benefit: No need to download, open, or learn a new application to use Twitter.

9. Twellow

Twellow calls itself the Twitter Yellow Pages. Biggest benefit: Finding people to follow who will inform you, teach you, and help your business grow.

10. Follow Cost

How annoying will it be to follow a certain person on Twitter? Follow Cost answers this question for you.

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7 Habits of Highly Effective Twitterers

1. Filters and searches

Using Twitter Search and filters for your searches save you a ton of time when you’re looking for information via Twitter. The value in utilizing the filters is they help you to fine tune the results of your searches.

2. There are no rules, but establish your “twitter goals”.  What do you want to get out of Twitter?

3. Understand prime tweet hours for conversations and traffic Recommended Prime Tweet Hours: Twitter has replaced the morning email time for some.

4. Setup your workflow and apps

5. “Always a tweet away”. You want to appear to be always thinking about your followers or the entire twitter community.

6. Sharing information and being helpful.  Be consistent with your sharing habits and try not to make too much noise.

7. Understand what Twitter really is. What is Twitter for you?

Bonus: Attend tweetups or understand how to use twitter offline as much online for your personal life or busines

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Is There A Difference Between Social Media And Social Networking?

There is a big distinction in the terms Social Networking and Social Media. While many use these two terms interchangeably, you can separate them and the websites that represent one or another or even both effectively.

You can parse out the word Social from Media and Networking in each term. Social Media can be called a strategy and an outlet for broadcasting, while Social Networking is a tool and a utility for connecting with others. Essentially, you can lump both terms together under the umbrella of Web 2.0.

The difference is not just semantics but in the features and functions put into these websites by their creators which dictates the way they are to be used. There’s also a kind of, which came first, the chicken or the egg kind of argument to be made here. I suspect that Social Networking came first which evolved into Social Media.

Social Networking.LinkedIn is a good tool for Social Networking.

Social Media. YouTube is a really good Social Media website.

Twitter and Facebook are Web 2.0 sites with the whole package. They straddle the Social Media and Social Networking divide perfectly.

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