It is classic marketing advice that people have to hear about you somewhere between 5 and 12 times before they'll actually take action on your product. In the past, that meant that you had to pay to have your commercial on TV enough to ensure that your prospects would see it a dozen times, or that your salespeople had to contact people a dozen times.

The internet has improved things. Now, that dozen points of contact can include multiple visits to your website, repeated emails, or just seeing you around on the web.

How can you get general visibility on the web?

• Your website is the most important thing here. Have a good website that says what you want to say about your company. Make it nice enough that people will want to link to you, and you'll get additional visibility with no further effort.  Also make sure that you're listed in the directories your customers and prospects are likely to use.
• Have a blog. Send your blog to other locations on the web, too -- it's easy to make your feed go to Twitter, LinkedIn, or Facebook, but you can also post your relevant posts on community boards of various kinds. If this is a strength of yours, do guest blog posts. I got my first big SEO job from someone who read a guest post of mine and left a "call me" in the comments.
• Use social media. There's a fantastic array of social media sites out there, and you won't be able to keep up with all of them, so choose a few that you like and find convenient. Make profiles all over the place, though, with links to your website. Do a good job on your profile and then you can ignore that site. What you want to avoid is the occasional dropping in. Posting every few months is less effective than not posting at all, since it makes you look like a slacker. 
• Engage in conversations. Find the forums in your niche, read them, and say something when you have something to contribute to the conversation. The Wall Street Journal wrote about me last year, after having seen something I wrote at a forum. They're not going to call you if you say, "Great post! Keep it up!" but if you make a useful contribution to the discussion, you never know who might see it.
• Share your knowledge. There are a lot of places online that rely on user-generated content. Sharing what you know at such places shows your authority. So, if you have a bicycle repair shop, you can answer questions about bicycle repair at Yahoo! Answers, and show that you know what you're doing. I review things at Amazon.com, myself. I've gotten jobs from people who've read my reviews. I've also had calls from manufacturers asking if they can use my reviews in their promotional materials, which is an opportunity for me to let them know that I can write other things for them if they ever need it. Since I'm a writer, any review will show my writing ability, but you can review things in your particular niche and thereby show your expertise in your own area. Squidoo lenses, hub pages, and YouTube are other great options.

Get in the habit of doing a little visibility-building when you need a break, and you'll see results over time. Or of course you can hire someone like me to do this for your company if this isn't one of your strengths.

Labels: SEO, social media, web content

"Who are all these people following me? I don't know any of them." The speaker was a client of mine, a high-tech guy. Some people think that IT specialists are all deeply into social media, but in fact the technorati often aren't at Twitter, Facebook, or MySpace at all. This client had checked in on his company's Twitter page and felt slightly alarmed. "None of my staff are following me."

I acknowledged that this was so. "None of them have Twitter accounts," I explained. "I tried to follow them all, but they aren't here."

"Then who are these people? Why are they following me? Do they want jobs?"

I allowed as how it was possible that they wanted jobs, but likely not. "They're interested in what you have to say. They find your links useful."

There was silence. The explanation obviously didn't compute.

"Following someone on Twitter doesn't necessarily mean that they want anything. It's less than being Facebook friends," I explained. "It's the smallest commitment one human can make to another. It just means they're kind of interested in you, and willing to see what you have to say."

"Should we talk to them?"

"We could. Sometimes we do. If we have something to say to them. Sometimes they answer, even." I pointed out how we had wished 37signals a happy birthday. "I get job offers on Twitter sometimes, but I'm in an industry where everyone's on Twitter. Your industry is a little behind the curve on this. But when they get there, you'll already be established."

I assured him that I went and blocked people who wanted him to look at their smutty pictures, and followed back those who seemed interesting. "You're getting new followers, you're getting listed. This is good."

We moved on at that point, but it brings up a question: who are those people following you, and what should you do with them?

• Check them out. When you get a new follower, go visit and see if you can tell why they're following you. If they say interesting things, if they seem to be a human being and not a bot that followed you automatically because you used the word "software," if you actually know them -- well, follow them back.
• Read their tweets. If you always post automatically from somewhere else and never make time to visit your Twitter page and see what people are saying, you're missing out on networking opportunities. Set aside a block of time occasionally to visit your followers, including the ones whom you don't follow back, and see what they're up to.
• Talk to them. Watch for opportunities to join conversations. This doesn't mean you should spam your followers with sales messages. It does mean that when you have an opinion, or some encouragement or sympathy or a birthday greeting, it's completely appropriate to have a little conversation.

Twitter is more valuable for some companies than for others, and the  degree of value you receive should inform your decisions about how much time you spend on Twitter. But it's worth it for all of us to pay a bit of attention to our followers.

Labels: social media

For me, Twitter serves some important purposes. I follow some useful people who scout the internet and tweet about important things in my field, so Twitter helps me keep up to date even when I'm busy. Twitter is a means of communication for me with a number of my colleagues. I get job offers via Twitter sometimes, but it's mostly about communication for me. The only metric I watch is whether Twitter sends traffic to my website. It does. But if it didn't, Twitter would still be useful for me, so I don't have to debate whether to continue being active there.

But there are people and companies for whom Twitter isn't a tool for communication and information. For these companies, Twitter may be primarily for marketing. How can they determine whether it's worth the investment?

I should say first that I think Twitter is always worth the investment, because the investment is small. Even if all you do is set your blog to post automatically at Twitter, or have a volunteer from your staff tweet something at lunchtime every day, that's 40 seconds you should invest at Twitter. Here's why: you don't want your customers looking for you and not finding you there.

Clevertech is in an industry that hasn't really embraced Twitter yet. I met the whole staff at a virtual meeting yesterday and naturally, I went right out afterward to find them all on Twitter and follow them.

Naturally. In my industry, we do that.

But those Cold Fusion developers weren't there. And this is what I pointed out to the CEO. If your peeps aren't on Twitter, then you're not going to have a lot of tweeps.

It's possible that I phrased that differently.

"They're not there yet," he said, "but when they get there..." By which he meant that when his clients discover Twitter, he'll be established. For him, adding a few followers a month and getting on a few lists can be progress. For me, steadily increasing referral traffic from Twitter is progress.

Want something more?

Josepha wrote about Klout, a Twitter metric program that analyzes 25 factors (how much you're retweeted, the percentage of people you follow who follow you back, whether influential Twitterers answer you when you talk to them -- lots of stuff) and gives you a grade. It also puts you into categories (I'm a Connector) and shows you various stats. If you do those online quizzes that tell you what superhero you are and so forth, you'll have fun with Klout. It's also a good one if you just want a quick number so you can see whether you're progressing or not. One of the interesting things about using metrics is that things which are measured tend to improve, even if the company isn't making much other effort. If you want to improve your Twitter performance, but don't want to invest much, Klout is the quick and handy way.

Twitterholic compares snapshots of your Twitter page over time, so you can see how you've increased your followers and whether the number of tweets you post has increased or fallen. They'll also tell you where you are in terms of friends and followers, both on Twitter as a whole and in your neighborhood. I guess if you're competitive, this one could be amusing for you. I was interested to see that I rank just below the Arkansas Razorbacks in my regional list. This will have no effect on my Twitter strategy, but perhaps you might like to set yourself to beat the person or company ahead of you. The Razorbacks are large, dangerous-looking guys who knock people down, so I don't plan to try to beat them.

Twitclicks gives you analytics on particular URLs that you tweet. If you're tweeting a press release for your company, a story about you, or some other URL to which you don't have access, and you want to see how many people click through, this is your chance. It doesn't tell you about your effectiveness on Twitter as a whole. However, as with any other metric, if you use it regularly, you can see changes over time.

Twitalyzer provides a lot of data, and had the most up to date info I found on my own Twitter account. There are 9 different metrics, so I can see for example that I'm 100% engaged but only 4.5% generous. I can compare these numbers with the most influential people at Twitter or with people in my physical world community, and Twitalyzer will even give me recommendations. However, it really seems to me that these are measurements and recommendations related to how good a Twitter citizen you are, not how much it does for your business. For example, tweeting more frequently automatically gives you more points at Twitalyzer, whereas I know I'm not the only one who unfollows the very frequent tweeters just because they take up too much of my screen when I drop by.

If I left out your favorite, please share your experience with us!

Labels: social media

Recently I read about a company that has found that social media is all the marketing they need. Not the first time I've seen that, actually, but this company had a different strategy from many of the companies we read about. They relied not just on their own company-led blog and social networking accounts, but also encouraged all their staff to write about their work experiences at their own blogs and social networking accounts as well -- and reaped the rewards.

The company has its own fans, but staff members have fans, too, and their fans learn about the company through those networking opportunities.

Not an exotic idea, but how can you make it work for you?

• Negotiate some boundaries. Lots of people write at their blogs, Facebook pages, or Twitter accounts about difficult people they work with, frustrating assignments, and irritating customers. Do you want your customers to see that and know it's your company being discussed? I'm actually pretty careful when I talk about work, and always have been -- even when I just had a completely anonymous personal blog. But many people feel that these are places for free expression, about their employers as well as other aspects of their lives. And many readers are bored or made suspicious by reports about a company that are all good news all the time. And that's before you even think about ill-judged photos from Super Bowl parties. This is something to discuss before you decide to count this as part of your marketing plan.
• Support staff in their networking. One of the fears companies had (and perhaps still have, though it's not getting much press anymore) about social media was that people would waste work time on it. I've always figured that workers who would waste time on social networking were the same ones who would waste time on physical-world networking, too, or on making things out of paper clips, for that matter. Some people are more inclined to waste time than others, and that's not Facebook's fault.  But if your company website gets traffic from your staff's Spoke profiles, it makes sense to give them some time to work on those profiles on company time. 
• Consider training. Tweets about your projects, discoveries, or special offers from all over Twitter can make your company look pretty exciting. A bunch of abandoned Twitter accounts can make you look lame. A staff development workshop on how to use online networks for the benefit of the company is a good investment, and can make the difference between success and failure. Then, learn from years of research in staff development and make sure that staff members support one another's efforts. Comment at your colleagues' blogs and recommend them at LinkedIn, and online networks can provide another means of communication for your firm, as well as a marketing opportunity.
  

Labels: social media

Recent social media surveys by Abrams Research, PR News, and Business.com show some changes in the way people are using social media for business.

We know it's not advertising, but the big news is that the majority of business users seem to be catching on to that, too.

• Three quarters of the respondents used information gathered from social media in decision-making. A couple of years ago, only half the respondents used social media at all.
  
• Most online networking is with colleagues in the same field but in different companies.
• While most companies still see marketing as the main focus of social media, most individual respondents say they don't like selling at social media -- they don't want to feel marketed to.
• 83% consider online networks a trustworthy source of information, compared with 92% trusting their physical-world networks. The gap is shrinking.
  

Clearly, we can't all be marketers if no one is willing to be a marketee. But recognition that social media networking can have the same value as physical world networking (getting information, sharing knowledge with colleagues in other companies, stuff like that) can help companies get past confusing social media and advertising.

Some interesting smaller news:

• Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and YouTube are the major players-- which order you put them in depends on which survey you read. I say your business needs them all, but don't miss Derek Edmond's post on niche communities.
• Website traffic and general visibility were the main rewards companies saw from their social media use. ROI was lower on the list in each case, hovering at about 15% of respondents listing it as the first metric they used in determining the value of the medium.
• While SEO/SEM is now ahead of online advertising when it comes to where companies plan to put their money, and social media is likely to be included in this cost, companies were also asked about what actual social media services they'd be willing to pay for. Facebook was the winner there, and then LinkedIn (where some people already pay) and then Twitter.
  

Labels: social media

This woman (whom I've never met) may not be an introvert at all. It's hard to say what an introvert looks like, or even to say with complete certainty who is and is not an introvert. But we've been looking at research on the subject in the writing class I teach, so it's natural that at some point I began to wonder: are extroverts better at social media than introverts?

There's quite a bit of evidence that suggests that extroverts market themselves better in traditional business networking situations than introverts do. But think for a moment about the people who follow you at Twitter. You get the announcement of a new follower and you go over to see their Twitter page. You may have no further information about them than what you see on the page, and yet you make a decision about whether or not to follow them.

Since I'm in the business, I tend also to make a judgment about whether or not they're using Twitter well. The ones who aren't don't usually strike me as too shy to tweet. Indeed, they're often pretty brash.

The people who don't seem worth following generally seem too self-centered.

I'm not talking about the people who use Twitter as a micro-journal. They may seem to be talking mostly to themselves, but if they're saying something interesting, then I'm glad they let me listen in. I mean the ones who seem to think that Twitter is a place where they can shout out announcements about themselves because they want other people to listen to them -- talking about themselves.

TV advertisers feel that, since they've paid for the ad time, they have a right to be listened to. When they learned that most viewers leave the room during commercials, they increased the volume so the hapless TV watchers would be forced to listen to their ads as they grabbed a cup of coffee in the kitchen.

As people gained technology that allowed them to avoid commercials entirely, they gave up their acceptance of the idea that having to watch commercials was the price they had to pay for free TV. And in fact, since most of us now pay for cable, we no longer have free TV anyway. Television advertisers have had to recognize that they have to offer something viewers consider valuable: generally, information or entertainment. Some have done well enough that people share their commercials on YouTube. Some have given up.

Twitter isn't about ads. It's about community. It's about interacting with people -- some of whom may need your products and services, so you should share some of that information with them.

If we feel that someone is simply using Twitter to sell us something, we don't follow them. If we like them, and find value in what they have to say, we do.

If you have some blithe spirit in your organization who loves to chat with people and enjoys spending lots of time on Facebook or LinkedIn, making friends and influencing people, then it certainly makes sense to let him or her be your social media maven. If not, go with sincere interest in the other members of your community.

If you're such a misanthrope that you can't accomplish that, check out my guide to faking it.

Labels: social media

Momma Dean's is a soul food restaurant in Fayetteville, Arkansas, the town where I live. They make fried chicken like your grandma did, and you can have fried okra and gravy with it, too. Go in and sit down and someone will come and sit with you and find out which of the dishes they're making that day is your favorite, and whether you want banana pudding or peach cobbler with it.

They have no website, not because they don't think they need one but because they haven't -- with a few tables in a little building they rent from the University -- been able to scrape together the funds for one yet. They have big plans, though, not only to get online but to sell their barbecue sauce and eventually to franchise their food. They also plan to provide food for the homeless -- one meal given away for every meal they sell.

In order to get from here to there, Momma Dean's decided to start with a social media campaign. They have a secret weapon in Chance Chapman, their business manager, who has 1200 Facebook friends and is not afraid to use them.

Chance set up a Facebook page for Momma Dean's and started getting the word out. He told all his Facebook friends about Momma Dean's, set up events that essentially just announce when it's time to get your food for tailgating, and sent his updates automatically to Twitter, too.

That's where I learned about Momma Dean's. There's a joke saying that Twitter is where everyone announces what they're having for lunch. The kernel of truth in it is that a lot of us who work at computers all day do take a break and mosey over to Twitter when it gets close to lunch time. Momma Dean is over there every day telling us they have catfish frying or pie in the oven. I told them they were making me hungry and they responded instantly -- "thanks. Come on down. We can even box it up for you to take home if you'd like." It felt like a real invitation.

Chance only posts once or twice a day, but he answers everyone who interacts with Momma Dean's right away, conducting the entire social media campaign by phone. He feels that immediate response is the most important element. "It has to be, 'I'm talkin' to you,'" he assures me.

Momma Dean's now has 637 fans at Facebook. They've begun adding YouTube videos (shot with Chance's phone) as well. And business has picked up considerably.

Labels: budget, social media

Social media supports your website and extends the value of your investment in that website. Crowdsourced and user-generated content are great opportunities for linkbuilding, wonderful places to meet your customers and show them what great goods and services you offer, and the ultimate in professional networking.

So where's the vs. in "Your Website vs. Web 2.0"?

It came from a question a client asked me yesterday. "If you're good enough at social media," she wanted to know, "could you do without a website?"

It's an interesting question. If your business is adept enough with Twitter, Whrrl, Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, Squidoo, Digg... and so forth ... then that could be your entire online presence. People searching for you could type in your name and see your Amazon lists, your Flickr and YouTube contributions, and your deviantART portfolio, and learn all about you.

There could be advantages to this:

• In general, those sites are free. You save the cost of building a website.
• You can present different sides of your business to different markets.
• You can change and update your information continually even if you have very limited technical skill.

There are also disadvantages.

• Those sites are only free if your time is free. Putting time in at a few sites is great support for your website, great for networking, and good business practice. Managing your business via forum and aggregate site is extremely time-consuming. I know people who spend most of each day maintaining their presence at multiple free sites. They aren't running profitable businesses. These two facts are connected.
• All your different sides will be visible to potential customers at all times. So will all your changes and reinventions. I'm extremely visible on the web, myself, and you could see different sides of my life if you made the effort to do so -- but my website is primary. That means that the professional face I choose to present is the main one. People who search for my business aren't going to happen upon pictures of my family unless they make an effort to find them. If you conduct your life all over the web, you have little or no control over what tops the list when people search for you, and it will change from day to day.
• Even if you maintain a consistent presence across all Web 2.0 spaces you inhabit, you still have very limited control. Some sites will allow you to show products and some won't. Some will give you the option of showing certain information and some will insist that you do. None will let you present a consistent visual effect -- especially if you have limited technical skill. Forget branding your business.
  
• Your customers will hate you. Seriously. Let's say that I discover your products on Flickr and contact you via Twitter to buy something. A couple of months later, I think what a great gift that item would make for a friend -- but I can't remember your Twitter name. I Google you and find your Ning page -- but with no website, I can't track down your products easily, and I've already spent fifteen minutes getting cross about not being able to find your website. I'm not going to make the extra effort involved in finding you.
• It shows a lack of seriousness. All businesses need websites. If you don't have a website, it's going to be hard for people to take you seriously enough to send you money.

Your business website is the foundation of your online presence. Your participation elsewhere on the web supports it. But you can't do without it. (Want some figures? Check out "Can You Do Without a Website?")

Labels: online marketing, social media, usability

In general, the object of a web site is to allow your customers to find you. You make your site eminently findable with good SEO and SEM, make sure it says what you need your customers to know about you, and get on with your work.

But it occasionally happens that your customers don't actually look online for what you offer.

One of my clients creates custom software for people in the financial sector in New York City. We were talking recently about how he has lots of traffic now, but still would like to see more conversions.

"We need," I said again, risking getting really boring, "to figure out where the people who need you are hanging out online. Then we have to make sure that you're visible from there."

This is another thing that's generally true about online marketing. It involves research. I track down the people who need my client's product. I say to them, "Now, supposing you needed some goat gamma globulin, what would you do?" or whatever the product in question might be.

Sometimes it takes further probing, but at some point you will find out what terms people are going to use and where they'd be likely to begin. You'll then have enough info to begin some in depth research. Or you'll confirm what you, as a business owner and expert in your field, already thought. Or you'll be amazed,and that can really turn around your business.

But in this particular case, we're talking about a small and specialized group. So it's different.

I understand this because I'm a musician. If you're not a musician, and you need one, you might go to your favorite search engine and type in "wedding singer" or "guitar teacher" or something.

If you are a musician, then you are never more than one contact away from the right person. You say to yourself, "I need a tenor -- who might be available?" If you can't come up with anyone yourself, you ask another musician. Conceivably, you tweet it: "Short on tenors for the Requiem. Who's available on the 19th?"

I've literally never Googled for a musician of any kind.

So what if your customers are like this -- such a specialized group that they practically all know one another? Does that mean that you really don't need a website, and can just rely on word of mouth?

Nope. Even in groups where "everyone" knows "everyone," it isn't literally everyone. There's a new person in town. There's a start-up company you haven't heard of yet, but with your help they'll be in the inner circle next year. There's someone in a slightly overlapping circle who could use your services, even though you didn't go to school together.

And there are also people you know -- even current clients -- who need something else from you, and they've been meaning to call you, but haven't yet. Or your competitors' current clients, who aren't completely happy right now and are considering a move.

So the fact that you may need to go out and find your clients doesn't mean that your website is irrelevant. Here's what it means:

• Your website probably won't be the first place people encounter you. Don't assume that your visitors know all about you, but do assume that they'll be prepared to read more, and will want more information. They're deciding, after all, between you and some small number of specific other people. The idea that people will decide to stay or leave within a few seconds may be less true for your website than it is for most. You may need more content than another site
  
• Your website needs to come up first on search for your name. When people hear about your business from someone else, they'll still look you up online before they call you. They're just very likely to look for your name rather than your business name. Having your business website at the top of search for your name allows you more control over how people see you. Sure, they can still check out your Facebook page or Amazon profile, but a good website can make them feel that they don't need to.
  
• Don't neglect social media. It's the new word of mouth. An online follow-up after some face time at a conference, tweeting the link to an article you discussed, or adding someone to your network can remind them of you and help establish a mutually satisfying business relationship.
  

Even when you need to find your customers, your website still speaks for you.

Labels: online marketing, social media, web content

I had the opportunity to read a pre-publication version of Mitch Joel's new book, Six Pixels of Separation: Everyone is Connected. Connect Your Business to Everyone. Click on the link for some previews.

Back when I was an in-house marketing person seeking to figure out how to make our website profitable, unlike those of everyone else in our industry, I tried very hard to find a good book on SEO. No luck. Now there are books on the subject, but they tend to be out of date as soon as they hit the shelves, so I haven't yet found one that I'd recommend to anyone who knows where to find blogs on the subject (for example, you).

Six Pixels is a worthwhile book on social media and its use for business.

Joel explains some of the key points that bloggers like me keep making and businesspeople keep ignoring -- like, this isn't an overnight thing, you have to be sincere, and it's more like networking with other humans than it is like advertising, so quit thinking you can do it with an automatic program. He gives a lot of background and persuasive detail, and also a lot of specific, practical advice to get from "Huh?" to success with social media.

You'll find definitions and explanations of key terms that may stump you if you're new to the topic, checklists to think about if you've been using social media for a while and aren't quite sure you're doing it right, and ideas for the near future (are you really taking mobile devices into account when you plan?) if you're successful with social media and want to keep being successful.

There are in this book history lessons going clear back to 2000 when, Joel says, the common view of bloggers was that they were members of the lunatic fringe holed up in their basements writing about cats. There are insightful discussions of major social media platforms and sites. There are intriguing case studies.

There are also thought-provoking discussions of some of the tougher questions around social media. How can you monetize your involvement, or measure its value to your business? What kind of community is developing around social media, and how does it relate to your community in the physical world? What about privacy?

I'm planning to share Six Pixels with my colleagues, and I think our discussions of it will have a positive impact on our businesses. I'd love to discuss it with you, too.

If you're interested in social media, you should read this book. You can pre-order it at Amazon.com, and you probably should.

Labels: books, social media

Sure you do! You just haven't thought of it yet. When you're twittering for the sake of business networking -- and also taking care of your business -- it can be challenging to come up with that daily tweet. But consistent presence is the backbone of good social media marketing.

Here are some suggestions for you:

• If you're one of those over-zealous twitterers who started off tweeting every few minutes, calm down. Once or twice a day is plenty to keep you on the radar of most of your followers. The ones who follow hundreds or thousands of people may miss your tweets, but -- do the math -- they're not really reading all those tweets anyway. The people with whom you're actually networking will appreciate the fact that you don't take up their entire screen every time they look. A few tweets a day over the long run will be more effective than spurts of intensive tweeting followed by silence for weeks when you run out of steam.
• Join conversations. See what the people you're following have to say, and respond to them. If the people you're following aren't talking about things that interest you, you're following the wrong people. Try using the search box to find people who are talking about things that interest you.
  
• Share information. Twitter has become one of the best places to go to find cool blogs and articles, since people tweet the things they enjoy and find useful. You can do the same. When you find an interesting article online, or a book (search for the author's website to link to) you'd like to tell people about, tweet about it.
• Report on your company. Seriously. Your customers want to know that you have a new product, or a sale, or a new version of your software or whatever it might be. They're your customers. They don't want to see ads all the time, but they want your news. They may even like to see your link on their Twitter screen often enough that they can be reminded to go and visit your website now and again.
• Be a little frivolous. Don't be frivolous all the time if you're tweeting for business. You don't want your customers to get the impression that your new phone or the flavor of yogurt you're having for lunch is the main thing on your mind. You also don't want to Tweet as you get arrested or cope with a hangover. But an occasional glimpse of the personal is nice. I set up a new Twitter account for Clevertech yesterday (see how easy it is to make a custom background that sets you apart from the other Twitterers?) and the very first bit of news was that the CEO is headed to Amsterdam. I'm intrigued, aren't you?
  

Think of Twitter as being like those little conversations you have with people as you ride in an elevator together in your building at work -- not time enough for anything earth-shattering, but plenty of time to start developing a bond.

Hey -- come and visit me at Twitter, too. I want to know what you're doing.

Labels: social media

Marilyn Robbins, a smart cookie from Liquid Dispatch ,was telling me about her company's goals for their online presence.

"In our business, " she said, "it used to be all about relationships. People come to us because they know us -- or they used to. Now, they go online."

I was able to assure her that it's still about relationships. It's just online relationships as well as physical world relationships.

That clerk at the chemical company, when the boss says to get a truck for the feedstocks, is just as likely to Twitter about it or IM someone for a suggestion as to call someone or to walk down the hall and ask. And when the answer comes, it may be based on someone's blog or Meetup group, but that's still about relationships.

Networking skills are just as valuable. It's a matter of getting used to a new form.

Managers who worry about people wasting time at Ning in the guise of marketing or networking could be right. People who would, a decade or two ago, have wasted time over lunch or the Chamber meeting may waste time over LinkedIn now. People who are determined to waste time are going to waste time.

But people who used networking opportunities to learn more, share ideas, and develop good working relationships at those Chamber meetings -- they'll make good use of online opportunities now.

If you've grown up with Facebook, you're probably comfortable with online networking. What if you didn't grow up with Facebook? What if, like Marilyn, you find this sort of a new idea? How can you gain the skills you need?

• Remember that it's not really different from face-to-face networking. The same skills are involved. Be your business-casual self, and you'll be just as happy in your web business relationships as in your face-to-face ones.
  
• Give up the idea that you personally won't be able to do it. Different people have different reasons for deciding they can't do it -- they're too shy, too old, too lacking in computer skills -- but believe me, you can do it. Start with just one place where you feel comfortable -- and you can shop around to find such a place. There are plenty of abandoned profiles around the web, and you don't have any particular responsibility to keep up with all of yours. Settle in and get to know people. You can add more sites if you feel like it later.
• When you think about where to start, consider trying a personal social media site first, till you get the hang of it and feel confident, and then search for the virtual water cooler where your industry hangs out. Just don't share the wet T-shirt pics at the personal one in mistaken confidence that no one from work will ever see them.
  
• Don't try to do everything. I promise you, you can't keep up with all the social media sites, any more than you could hit every single conference in your industry. You can automate some things, of course, but I don't follow-back or pay any attention to those legions that follow me at Twitter with ads vaguely related to some word I used -- do you? I thought not.
• Hire someone if you need to. I don't do social media for very many clients, but I have a couple of companies that I'll be sociable for. I can introduce you to people in my industry who do this kind of work, too. You might have someone on your staff who'd enjoy taking on this task, or you can be like Pizza Hut and hire students to hang around your office and tweet.

If you're ready to jump in, check out the list of social media sites from Trafikd for a starting point. It'll be fun.

Labels: social media

There's plenty of controversy over whether the use of Twitter is beneficial for businesses or not. I've had clients contact me from Twitter (as in, "I read about you at Twitter and I'd like to hire you") so I think it can be, but statistically speaking, social media marketing may not give you the best bang for your buck (and SEOMoz's Rand Fishkin lays out the data for you in "Getting Honest About Social Media Marketing").

So, if you're going to use Twitter, it's essential to use it right. Avoiding those very basic Twitter errors from the beginning will maximize your return on your Twitter investment. I'm not going to tell you to be sincere and get involved, because you already know that. I'm not going to tell you to have good, useful content, because you already know that, too, right? I'm talking about the very basic structural stuff.

I've seen these errors in the tweeting of some of the wonderful companies I'm working with right now. Here's the first:



It's a nice Twitter background, there's a nice group of followers, and you might think that if you clicked on those things up there that look like links and buttons, you'd get to visit the website.

Nope. There's actually no permanent link to the website at all. There are links in the tweets, but the apparent links in the background are just a tease. Your Twitter page ought to link to your website, so that people who find you that way can readily visit your website. True, they can type in the URL, but research tells us that making it easy to visit increases the visits significantly.

And yes, that image above is a link. Go ahead, check it out! Sweetique needs a more user-friendly website and a linked-up Twitter page, but their products are very cool.

Here's another innovative product with a Twitter page:



Problem is, they're using it like ads. These people have a lot of interesting things to say, as it happens, but they're not saying them at Twitter. If the immediate visual effect of your Twitter page is that it's ad copy, people won't hang around with you much. Instead, try using facts, occasional links to other, related information, or announcements of specific events. You'll get a more varied, authentic look that will encourage people to stay and read.

The next example has a similar problem -- but it's worse:



Here we're not seeing just ads, but something rather like spam. When you use @ and the name of another Twitterer, it looks like a conversation. If you check back on these, you see that they're not in fact conversations at all -- the other participants aren't tweeting. They're ads being directed toward individuals. The effect of a whole page of this is -- a slightly disguised page of ads. You get the drawbacks of using Twitter for ads, plus the additional drawback of looking as though you're being sneaky, even if that's not your intent.

Another thing about the last two: they're both using the default background. You can change your Twitter page background with settings>design. Upload an image, remembering that much of it will be covered up by the center panel of tweets, change the colors to match your website, and you won't blend in with the crowd.

Twitter is the least time-consuming social media option, and perhaps the most widely used. It's great for authentic networking or as a virtual water cooler. And, just like physical-world authentic networking and water coolers, it can sometimes lead to good things for your business. So if you don't already have an account there for your company, go set one up. Spend a little time making your page look the way you want it to, set your blog up to go automatically to Twitter, and then -- well, get involved, be sincere, and provide some good and useful content.

Stumble It!

Labels: social media

A common thread runs through a lot of current discussions on SEO: being nice.

Your social media marketing efforts won't work, we're cautioned, if you're not sincere. You can do well by doing good, as consumers increasingly base their spending decisions on social responsibility and an increasingly flat-world sense of community. Google assures us that anything we do to improve the user experience will improve our search results.

There is, in these discussions, an underlying assumption that the readers are nice. You have to wonder why all these things are being written, since they merely remind all of us nice people that our niceness is to our advantage.

What if you're not nice? What if you're a grasping, covetous, money-grubbing swine? Should you be locked out of the benefits of SEO, social media marketing, and the online business community?

I'm not going to touch the moral question. I'm just here to help.

Here, for those who are not in fact nice, is a quick course in how to pretend to be nice, for the sake of your online business:

• Feign interest in other people. Nice people don't look at all their Facebook friends and LinkedIn connections as potential customers. They actually want to know about those little triumphs and new launches and even the really funny video their electronic friend feels compelled to share. If you're faking niceness, be sure to read these things and make an occasional response.
• Construct a human persona. As more online things are automated, being a bona fide human being grows in value on the web. While you might most often tweet about your company, you will be more valuable at Twitter if you can manage a pretense of having some sort of life outside of work. Pizza Hut is hiring students to hang out at their headquarters this summer, crafting bons mots for Twitter, and you can do the same if need be. But making an alarm at Outlook to remind you every couple of days to go type in a sentence about your thoughts or activities will also work.
• Become concerned about some issue. Even if you're not very nice in real life, there is probably some issue that can touch your stony heart. I care a lot about the environment, myself, and also about child labor. I'm moved to do pro bono work for education and the arts. I have clients who quietly support suicide hotlines or juvenile diabetes research or the Heifer Project, and it increases my respect for them. None of these issues may move you, but a couple of hours searching online will probably net you at least one issue that you can care about. Donate some time or money to the cause, give some links to organizations at your website -- you can show support with a fairly small investment, and it will help you deceive people into thinking you're nice.

Of course, I'm teasing. I know that you are actually a nice person. You know what? That's an advantage for online marketing these days. If you started out in business in the days when being neutrally, inhumanly professional made a company look bigger and more impressive -- or if you've just been so busy that you haven't taken the time to let your nicer side show -- let this tongue-in-cheek list inspire you to show that nice side.

For the good of your search rankings.

Stumble It!

Labels: social media

Do you like elephants? Lots of people do. We visit them in zoos, admire their exploits in the circus, take the chance to see them in their natural habitats when we can.

You've probably never heard anyone say, "No, I don't want to go see the elephants. I've already seen an elephant."

Even if we've seen elephants before -- even if we've seen them many times -- we still want to see them again. They're interesting. They do different things on different occasions. They cause us to think different thoughts when we see them in one context or another. Even if they cause us to think the same thoughts, they might be thoughts we enjoy and are willing to have in our minds again.

For example, did you know that elephants can swim, but can't jump? And that, according to Lao tradition, you can make elephants stampede by saying, "Big ears, small eyes" to them?

I knew you'd want to know that.

Here's the thing: people will also come back to your website, if you do a good job. You know that your customers need five to twelve contacts with you and your offer before they'll take action. If your business has a brick and mortar presence, it speeds your sales process and improves conversion if some of those contacts are between customers and your website. If your business is entirely online, then it's all the more important to encourage repeat visits.

• Have more content than people can read in a single visit. Just as we notice new things about the elephants on subsequent visits, visitors to our websites can get more out of their multiple visits. Since we also want our content to catch the eye of the web surfer spending a few seconds deciding whether or not to stay, we need to plan our navigation so that visitors can get an immediate message, and also realize that there'll be more to read when they return.
• Update your site with new content. Whether you choose to use a blog like this one, a dynamic homepage, or just go with regular updates to the pages of your website, new content brings more visits. If you update regularly, people will come by to see what's new. If you update occasionally, you can do emails, electronic newsletters, or even press releases to let people know they should come visit.
• Participate in the online community. Twitter, Facebook, and similar tools allow you to spread the word when you have something new and exciting going on. A new section at your web site, a new white paper available for download, a new product in your catalog can all be interesting news to your customers. Even a reminder of something that has been on your site for a while can bring new visitors and remind the old ones to come and check it out.

Imagine that you'd been to see elephants several times at the zoo. If there were a new baby elephant, or a chance to ride on an elephant, or you could get as close as the picture above, that would encourage you to go for another look, wouldn't it? Keep your web site fresh, interesting, and on your customer's minds, and they'll come and see you, too.

Labels: online marketing, social media, web content