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Tuesday 28 December 2010

5 Ways To Gain & Keep Your Customers Trust Online

Now more then ever, organizations are opening up to the public and becoming transparent due to the impact and evolution of social media. Social media has forced small and large organizations to join in on the conversations that people are having about their brands. If you want to continue growing your business and its brand then you need to gain trust from your customers immediately. Below I listed 5 simple ways to keep and gain your customers trust in an online environment.

  1. Be consistent with all of your branding. In order to keep and gain trust you need to keep a consistent branding strategy across all of your platforms on and offline. What this does is shows your prospects and consumers that you are consistent and clearly portrays who you are, everywhere, all the time. Something to keep in mind is the consistent branding all the way down to the simplest things such as consistent color schemes. These color schemes should be followed through from your website all the way through to your business cards and letter head. Being consistent tells your customers that “this is who you are all the time, with no smoke or illusions”.
  2. Let a personality show through. People trust, and buy, from people. This is the reason its important to let a person, or at least your businesses personality, shine through in your online presence. Especially in your businesses social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter. Be you and tell your story, you may surprise yourself how people will react to this if you are used to hiding behind the curtain and letting only your business speak.
  3. Respond to comments and reviews both negative and positive. I have many conversations with business owners regarding the conversations that are happening on their social media pages. It is very common for the conversation to go right into the direction of customer reviews. If you are looking to keep your customers trust then leave the customer reviews to the customers and don’t think making a false review for your business will help you. This seems like common sense and basic but I have come across a few instances where employees or business owners themselves feel the need to create false customer reviews about their own business. This can shatter the trust and will dilute any real customer experiences especially good ones. On another note, take both negative and positive reviews as a learning experience and use them to show the public how you handle situations. This over the long run will spotlight your business as positively as possible, and the goal is to have that positive outshine the negative.
  4. Capture client testimonials. Create a system where your capturing testimonials from people who use your product and or service. By doing this you are creating a great way for you to gain your future customers trust. In many cases before someone decides to purchase something from you they research your business online and part of that research will be in the form of reading your past testimonials. Don’t just capture the testimonials but make them readily available for your future customers to read and gain trust in your brand before they purchase from you. Post them on all your platforms. Invite people to read about these experiences, so when its time for them to use your company they already are competent in the fact that they made the right decision.
  5. Be transparent and authentic. The many social media platforms that are available these days have made it easier then ever to allow your brand to become transparent and authentic. Being transparent enables your customers to see into your company and gain trust on a whole new level. Social media makes this easy by allowing you to respond to whatever issues that your business is having in a public manner for all to see. This will automatically create the sense of authenticity of your brand and will ultimately create the trust your brand and organization is looking for.

Have you gained the trust of your online community yet? What are your tactics towards creating trust in your organization? Are you using social media as a tool to create transparency and put a face behind your company?

Saturday 18 December 2010

26 Twitter Tips for Enhancing Your Tweets

Almost anyone these days can throw together 140 characters and call it a tweet. But to use Twitter for maximum business impact there are many tried and true content sources ready to be used.

In this post I’ll introduce practical ways to use good content for your tweets, everything from A to Z.

#1: Answers

Think about the questions your customers and prospects asked you this past week. Or maybe there are the repeat questions you’ve already answered on the FAQ page of your website.

To get started, create a list of questions, and answer them in your tweets one by one—paying particular attention to the most relevant at this time. For example, focus on seasonal questions, current rates and discounts, promotions and sales or commonly asked how-to’s in your business and industry. Save the list and add to it as you go along. What you don’t use this week may make even more sense a few weeks from now.

#2: Behind the Scenes

Anne Handley refers to this type of content sharing as the “insider’s view of your company,” where you have the opportunity to share updates about the projects and work you’re currently involved in. You can also use behind the scenes as an opportunity to welcome a new client or feature any other newsy development. Give readers or followers an inside look at your company.

#3: Case Studies

Dust off those case studies and offer them via your tweets for immediate download. Another option is to repurpose the material by pulling out 140-character messages that will wow your Twitter followers.

#4: Daily Deals

Use tweets to announce a daily deal you’re offering or one you’ve signed on with Groupon (or another daily deal site) by pushing out a message to gain optimal attention (e.g., “Today $6 general admission ticket to Museum of Science and Nature—up to a $12 value.”)

#5: Events

When you’re hosting or attending an event, you can send out a tweet to let followers know about it. Perhaps your company has a booth, so you might send out multiple tweets during the event to let know conference attendees where they can find you.

#6: Factoid

These types of tweets are the one-liner statistics that impact your industry or are current events and newsworthy for a variety of reasons. They demonstrate your company’s commitments and interests, and add personality to your business.

#7: Guide

Customers may be new to Twitter, blogs and social networking sites. You can use your tweets as a way to educate them about the process and integrate your blog posts with your Twitter messages. Tweets themselves can be teaching tools about social media marketing.

#8: Hashtags

Hashtags consist of using the # symbol followed by subject words; e.g., #followfriday. They help organize information and make tweets more searchable. They’re commonly used at conferences and live events. You can search hashtags to see what people are talking about. It’s also useful to do an advanced search on Twitter using hashtags as one of the search operators.

#9: Interviews

Twitter messages don’t need to be confined to single 140-character messages. An interesting way to use tweets is in conversations via Twitter interviews. Cindy King’s informative post offers 7 Steps to Successful Twitter Interviews.

#10: Joint Venture

Good Twitter content consists of certain netiquette—giving credit where credit is due by retweeting, or by using other mechanisms such as the word “via”— indicating that you came across the information somewhere else and are now writing about it, too. Twitter is naturally viral and as long as you “pay it forward” and think of Twitter as a joint venture, your tweets will become an important component of your social media strategy where you won’t simply be pushing out messages, you’ll be conversing with others and building your social network.

#11: Keywords

Web content (and print content for that matter) has always been about the use of keywords. Twitter is no exception. Good Twitter content makes use of relevant words and messages. Make a list of keywords that best describe your business and industry. Use these words as you compose your 140-character posts. Think quality over quantity. Make every character and tweet count!

#12: Live Events

Tweeting about live events fits Twitter like a glove. The immediacy of getting out messages about start times is particularly useful in the business world, especially when you’re at an in-person conference or hosting a live webinar. Sending out follow-up tweets about an event is also a great way for webinar hosts to answer questions that may not have been fully addressed during the event.

#13: Meme

In a recent post, 5 Ways to Get the Support of Social Media Influencers, Sam Rosen discusses the importance of memetic content. He writes, “No Fear is a meme. The Red Bull Flugtag is a meme. It’s something that people can identify with, make their own and share with others.” Think of the possibilities of short memetic-type tweets. If you have a tagline that speaks to people and gets your company and brand noticed, you can further expand its reach by including it in a series of tweets.

The point being that tweets can have a theme to them. You can extract messages from larger bodies of work and group them together in an ongoing series.

#14: News

Twitter has been instrumental in helping break important stories about local and global events. As Greg Sandoval writes on CNET news, “One-quarter of all Twitter posts include a link to another piece of content, such as a news story or video. Twitter has 190 million unique monthly visitors, so that’s a lot of content zooming across the platform.”

Want to announce important company and industry news? There’s great potential for getting the message out there on such a large platform and you can do it very simply and cost-effectively by pressing the “Tweet” button.

#15: Opinion

Using opinions in tweets is a good way to make it possible for your customers and followers to get to know more about you and your company. Opinion tweets can be seen as brief editorials. For example, if your product is environmentally friendly, you can create green-oriented posts that reflect issues beyond your product. It’s important to convey the image you want to be known for.

#16: Photos

As the saying goes, "Sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words," or in this case, sometimes a picture is worth 140 characters!

Let’s face it, there are times when a photo is more effective. One industry that uses photos a lot is real estate. How nice it would be for people looking at homes not only to hear about an open house happening in their neighborhood but also to see a photo of the property?

Josh Catone describes five ways to share images on Twitter:

  1. Twitter image sharing services
  2. SMS or email
  3. Brightkite or FriendFeed
  4. Skitch
  5. Encoded Tweets.

#17: Quotes

Business tweets can also be inspirational. They can motivate and influence thinking by using some of your favorite quotes.

  • There are websites that categorize famous quotes by topic, and by Googling “quotes,” you’ll find thousands of sites to choose from.
  • You can also use a quote from a book or magazine article you’ve been reading.

When planning your tweet, leave extra room for characters so you can be sure to give credit to the source.

#18: Real-time

To keep up with the flurry of information on a given topic, you may find it helpful to use a variety of tools to manage the influx of tweets. For example, on TweetDeck you can have a number of columns open to follow groups of people, see direct messages sent to you via Twitter, and organize by topic. That way you can stay ahead of the game and compose the most real-time tweets possible.

#19: Share Links

Many blogs and online news services offer integration with your Twitter account so you can share the link of the article with your followers as you read it. This is one of my favorite uses of Twitter. On the occasions when you come across a link you’d like to share and there isn’t a Twitter share widget already integrated for you on the web page, you can copy and paste the URL into a number of URL shorteners such as bit.ly or tinyurl, and add a few words about why you’re tweeting out the link.

#20: Tips

Got a product-related tip? A useful tidbit of information you’d like to share with your customers and followers? People are often looking for quick and easy solutions to manage their time and be more productive. Why not share some of your useful tips with them?

#21: Updates and Announcements

Updates and announcements from your business can be categorized as good to know, better to know and need to know. The Red Cross, for example, uses Twitter to broadcast important messages about emergencies and relief efforts.

#22: Value

When in doubt about what to microblog, think about what will add value to your audience today. What makes you the go-to company or service provider for your customers? Value tweets will remind them of why you’re an invaluable resource.

#23: White Papers

Ah, white papers. A list of content ideas for Twitter would not be complete without mention of white papers. Michael Stelzner, Social Media Examiner’s founder, is the author of Writing White Papers. White papers provide value to your readers and linking to them is an excellent cost-effective promotion tool. Why not get the word out on a frequent basis about your white paper offerings? Twitter makes it possible.

#24: Christmas Gift Ideas

If you’re a B2C business, you can use Twitter to give customers ideas about Christmas gifts and keep your products before their eyes through the holiday shopping season. With Twitter, you can continue to promote your products up to the last minute that they can be shipped in time to guarantee Christmas delivery.

#25: YouTube

Twitter can be used to link to a YouTube video. Videos are especially viral and people love them. For example, here’s a great YouTube video by Mari Smith on Twitter Hashtags.

You could tweet, “Checkout video on Twitter hashtags, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aAHitI26MmE”. (As discussed above, you can save on character real estate by using a URL shortener.)

#26: Zippy Writing Style

Twitter messages need to make the best possible use of 140 characters. This is where writing style comes into play. Good tweet content is not only useful in terms of all the types covered up to now. What makes a good tweet stand out is how the message is delivered. In other words, tweet lively and entertaining messages.

Friday 10 December 2010

New Facebook Profile - An Overview

The social media space is all a buzz about Facebook's latest update.

If you missed the 60 minutes interview with Mark Zuckerberg, there has been a makeover of your Profile page. Everyone is chiming in about what they like and don't like about the changes as well as speculating about the true rationale behind these changes.

According to Facebook, the changes are intended to help people connect by making it easier for Friends to share more about who they are and what they are up to. There is some dispute about this, but more about that later.

I've checked out the new Profile page and reviewed many of the comments. Following is a quick review of the changes and my take on what these changes mean to the small business using Facebook.

The Introductory Profile Snapshot.
The top of the page now includes a snapshot of who you are: where you live, where you work, where you went to school and what important thing you are currently working on. A collection of recently tagged photos also shows what you've been up to lately. (Note: This is automatically populated when you convert to the new Profile page. To change these photos, click on "Photos" under your Profile photo, upload new photos and/or tag yourself in existing ones.)

Navigation

Under your profile picture you will now find:

•Wall
•Info
•Photos
•Friends
The Info section now provides an opportunity to provide more detail about you, what you are doing and what you are interested in. For example, in the Education and Work section, you can add details of an interesting project you are currently working on. Based on your interests and activities, you can provide more info on the sports you play, the movies and books you enjoy and the activities and interests you pursue. You can then connect with Friends that share similar interests and activities.

Photos
There is more emphasis on photos in the new Profile Page. Recently uploaded or tagged photos appear under your profile snapshot so people can get a glimpse of what you've been up to lately.

Friends
The intent here seems to be to facilitate grouping of Friends based on criteria that you find meaningful (i.e. Work, School, Interests etc.)

As far as I can tell, these changes apply only to your personal page - not your business/Fan page - yet.
However, from a business perspective, these changes may provide additional opportunities to advertisers. As Facebook obtains more detailed information about its users, advertisers will be able to better target ads and further refine their messages to appeal to their target audience. Some are speculating that this is the real reason behind the changes.

At a minimum, this change is another signal that Facebook is on the move towards becoming much more than a place we connect with Friends. I think it is safe to say that the future of SEO and search will look very different. Will Facebook lead the way? I'll be watching this space closely and helping to sort things out as developments occur. If you've invested heavily in SEO, it will be important to monitor these trends and make changes in your online strategy accordingly.

Mark Zuckerberg on the new Profile layout

Checkout Mark Zukerberg as he speaks about the new Profile page layout
Click below
==> http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7120522n&tag=contentMain;contentBody

Sunday 5 December 2010

5 Tips to Rock Twitter like The Beatles

Twitter is one of the fastest growing social media channels today. And in the marketing world, Twitter can reap serious benefits to companies large and small if used well. If Twitter is part of your social media strategy and initiative plan, taking a few simple tips to heart can help you succeed on the channel. Taken from the “10 Tips to Rock the Twittersphere” here are the first 5 tips you should integrate into any Twitter activity in your social media content. To all you Beatles fans: enjoy.

1. Provide value. In a sea of more than 65 million tweets a day, how are you making your voice stand out deliver value that draws people to you?

2. Leave room for the Retweet. On Twitter, the retweet is one of the sincerest forms of flattery. Keeping your content short enough to retweet means followers don’t have to take the time to tweak your message to share it.

3. Don’t shy away from showing personality. We’re all people behind our Twitter handles. That’s what makes the channel so personal, fun and interactive. If you are running a personal account, personality is crucial. And if you are running a corporate or organizational account, personality is highly recommended.

4. Embrace the hashtag. We all have to curate the most important information to us in different ways on different channels. The Twitter hashtag is one of the best ways to sort content, or Tweets, into buckets of similar topics. Find hashtags valuable to you, follow them, and use them when appropriate to add to the stream. Whether you like the humor of #socialmediacrush, need the utility of #bargains or want to help advocate that #cancersucks there’s something out there for everyone.

5. Insert links. 
Sharing a thought is great. Sharing a resource is even better. Insert links in your Tweets helps share resources in more than 140 characters and secondarily helps you to see what content is most interesting to your followers with link shortening click data.

Wednesday 1 December 2010

Six ways to innovate with social media

Here are six ways to use social media with innovation in mind:

1. Take an interest in other people – and pass on their content. It will get you noticed – the Law of Attraction. It really does work: these people will notice you back, in time, and reciprocate.

2. Take risks – be authentic, speak with your actual voice on social media platforms. Get the vibe of your business or Agency out there: let people know what working with you looks like, feels like.

3. Be real – don’t tell me about how many new widgets you manufactured this month, let the person who actually makes them tell their personal story. Your business is brilliant, but you have to get this story out there – from each employee outwards.

4. Be selective – don’t set up a Facebook page if you don’t have to. Select which social media platforms are best – it may be that your business or Agency only needs a real presence on one or two – and focus your attention, effort, and energy there.

5. Be unique – don’t copy what your competitors are doing: show your audience the uniqueness in your business or Agency, give them your biggest unique asset, your people. Get everybody involved, to tell their stories in a way which makes your business or Agency so attractive, natural engagement form others will follow.

6. Stop talking and start listening – too many Agencies (PRs are the worst culprits) are so busy shouting about how brilliant they are, and how many industry (navel-gazing) awards they’ve won, they forget the audience. Less broadcasting, more listening please.