“I’m on Twitter and Facebook…
now what?”
How to REALLY put social media to work for your
business
Otis Maxwell
@otisregrets otis@otismaxwell.com
www.otismaxwell.com
From DMA’s Social Media Council:
• Facebook is the fun place, the neighborhood hotspot, like
Cheers where everybody knows your name
• YouTube is for people watching, like Saturday night at the
mall
• Twitter is a party for the universe where everyone is trying
to talk at the same time
• Plaxo is the critically acclaimed movie everyone talked
about but no one is really sure anyone watched it to the
end
• LinkedIn is a DMA event where we share info about
ourselves as professionals, but we also can’t wait for the
after party to start
--Andrew Boyd, Aberdeen Research, at DMA Social Media Council 2009
Another point of view:
Social Media is the successor to search,
which nobody cares about anymore.
•Search is no longer attracting much interest... People just
expect it to work
•But with so much content referrals... from friends, from
trusted sources... are key. Your job as a marketer is to be
visible when the referrals are going on
--Tim Armstrong, new president of AOL, who is trying to remake his own
business as a referral source
Why you are doing this social media
thing:
• To get additional exposure to build your business
(and your search results)
• For customer service and to head off negative
comments made by others in social media
• For direct marketing through coupons, events, offers
• To give a human face to your business on the web
• ROI? Just as with search, PR and other traffic
generating and traffic building you need a formula to
convert eyeballs to dollars based on past experience
What we’re going to cover today:
• Hands-on strategies to get the most out of marketing your
personal brand or your business via:
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Twitter
Facebook
LinkedIn
PR
Reputation management
Your blog
• Over 100 links are coming up so don’t try to copy them all, just
DOWNLOAD THE PRESENTATION at
http://www.otismaxwell.com/socialmediaDMA.ppt and run it in
slide show mode to reveal the links
• Or give me your business card and I’ll email you the preso
6 mistakes that can kill your social media
buzz
1. Spamming your friends with business posts on
Facebook
2. Being too self promotional on Twitter and getting
unfollowed by the world
3. Saying the wrong thing about your company and getting
in trouble with your boss
4. Not responding to a groundswell of criticism online
(“United Breaks Guitars”.)
5. Being inauthentic in any way
6. Actually answering the question “What are you doing
right now?” when you tweet
“Who did you say you were, again?”
• Look before you leap: this is a unique opportunity to define
(or redefine) your personal (and maybe corporate) brand
• Your name/”handle”: does it say what you are/do in a
unique/memorable/appealing way?
• Your picture: pick one that will represent you everywhere
• Your persona: the person who means business, but is
interesting to talk to at parties
• Good tips from David Meerman Scott:
– Uses his middle name always because there are too many
“David Scotts” in the world
– Always Googles prospective article titles to see if anyone else is
using them
Or, you could do this....
Twitter: everybody talking at once in 140 cc
bursts
• “I want to have a dispatch service that connects us on our
phones using text.” --@Jack, Twitter founder
• Discovered by geeks at SXSW 2007
– And not by @marthastewart in late 2008
• Appeal: instant short bursts of microblogging from anywhere,
anytime
• The challenge: saying something sticky in 140 cc
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So tweeps will see and read it in the tweetstream
So tweeps (or tweople) will pass it on (retweet)
So tweeps will follow you
So tweeps will help you meet your marketing objectives!
How to look like a social media maven on
TWITTER
How to look like a social media maven
on TWITTER
1. Pick a user name which is:
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Memorable/catchy
Relevant to what you do
A bit informal
Something you would be comfortable being introduced by at a party
WARNING! Once you set it you can’t change it so BE SURE
2. Design your twitter page.
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DON’T use the default background, sure sign of a noob
Do a search for “free twitter backgrounds” or upload your own photo
– I like http://www.twitterbackgroundsbase.com/
Include your web address
Write a 160 cc keyword rich bio
Use lower left to sell some more
Choose a ‘real person” picture not an avatar and not a picture of your
pet
How to look like a social media maven
on TWITTER
How to look like a social media maven
on TWITTER
3. Start tweeting. WHAT? Yes, because you want to have a body of work that
shows who you are
– Rule of thumb, 80/20, ok to do one personal post for 4 business ones but still
needs to be in your business persona.
• “Car covered with ice, missed the train to #Adtech. Welcome to November in upstate
NY.” tells what I am doing but ties it to a business event. Shows a persona, somebody
striving but not always succeeding. Gives a shout out to my old friends in the sunny bay
area.
– Links to your OWN web content, plus a clever line, are great
• Be sure to use bit.ly or another shortening tool for web links. (built into some Twitter
tools like TweetDeck but not the Twitter web interface.)
– Retweet somebody interesting; they will often thank you by name which gets
your @handle out there and helps build your authority and they may very well
follow you as a courtesy
– Retweet something interesting. Do a hashtag search for #craftbeer or
#sunkenship, you may be interested in what you find
– Say something meaningful in 140 cc... this is the hardest one. And it actually
needs to be 120 cc because you need to allow space to be retweeted
A well balanced tweetstream...
How to look like a social media maven
on TWITTER
4. Get you some followers... you need at least a few dozen, why this
is important in a moment
– Family and friends, now’s the time to ask for a small favor
– #followfriday, find others who are trying to build their base
– You’ll inevitably get auto followers of specific topics by tweeting that topic
with a hashtag, eg #iphone, #wii
– NOT people who are actually important to you, you want to build up your cred
a bit
5. NOW you are ready to have an “open house” and start following people
who will:
– Make judgments about your authority based on the confirming email they
receive
– Go to your home page to see who you are and what else you have tweeted
– Follow you in return if you are interesting
Shall we follow DBRadway?
How about AlyssaStevens?
How to look like a social media maven
on TWITTER
6. Get in the tweetstream by following lots of (hopefully) interesting tweeps:
– Do a # (hashtag) search for a topic of interest to you, like #copywriting or #toyotafail and
see who tweets in an interesting way on that.
• Follow them and also follow the people they talk to who are represented in their
tweetstream
– Use a directory like http://www.twellow.com/ the “Twitter Yellow Pages”, easy to look
up tweeters by category
– Similar app: http://wefollow.com/ to find people on Twitter by category
– http://twitter.grader.com/ lets you see how influential you are on Twitter but more
important, see lists of “Twitter Elites” in a geo region
– http://dossy.org/twitter/karma/ Twitter Karma, easy way to see on one screen who is
following you and vice versa and when they tweeted last
How to look like a social media maven
on TWITTER
7. You also need to decide how many people you are going to follow and how
many you want to follow you. This is not a trivial task.
– Biz Stone, founder of Twitter, talks about “curating” your tweets as if you were the
owner of an art gallery. But the fact is if you do not continually finetune your
tweetstream it is going to be worthless to you
• Following boring people reduces the quality of your Twitter experience
• Following people who never tweet may reduce your ability to follow other,
interesting people
– To prevent spam, Twitter puts restrictions on users who follow many people
but have relatively few of their own followers.
– Dunbar’s law says 150 is the maximum you can actually keep up with, maybe double
that since not everybody posts all the time.
– 10,000 and up, your really can’t see individual tweets.
• Recently-added Twitter Lists may change this, but then how do keep track of your
Lists?
"Truth be told, there are only two kinds of
Twitter users: those that want more followers
and those that lie.” –Guy Kawasaki
How to look like a social media maven
on TWITTER
8. Ok, say you want a LOT of followers!
– (inspired by a great article at http://www.wikihow.com/Get-More-Followers-onTwitter )
– http://tweetadder.com/ and http://www.socialoomph.com/ (I tried this and got
hacked) are two services that automate the process
– http://localtweeps.com/ and http://nearbytweets.com/ to find followers close to
you geographically
– Wait until a spam follower follows you, then follow everyone who follows the
spammer.
• Spam followers will have 1,000 + people they are following but only 5 to 150
followers in return.
• Spam followers are likely to be people who autofollow or are following anyone
to boost their own follow count
– This seems like a crazy game, but look how many on Twitter are playing it!
How to look like a social media maven
on TWITTER
9. Now you must tweet, tweet, tweet.
– How often? as much as you can come up with something meaningful and useful to say
or retweet. Several times a day is good. Build recognition in your followers’ inbox
– One thing not to do is to blast tweets one after another, clogs up the inbox
– There’s nothing wrong with re-broadcasting (not retweeting—do it as if new) a good
tweet a couple days later. just like a DM package, people either saw it or they didn’t
What about unfollowing?
– You can unfollow people without penalty. In most cases they won’t even know
– Notice how the # of your followers continually changes on the Twitter web app. These
are people who autofollowed so you would follow them and are now jumping ship.
When the numbers stabilize, that’s good
Final thoughts on Twitter ...
Vs. FACEBOOK
• Both social media but they couldn’t be more different.
• Facebook is a Mac, Twitter is a PC (actually more like a Unix workstation)
• Twitter is an API, not a full blown platform.
– Which is why so much geek love.
– And so many add-on applications. Find them all at http://twitdom.com/
• Facebook is what AOL wanted to be if it grew up: the world’s largest gated
community where you are welcome as long as you play by the rules.
Facebook: the 400 million pound
gorilla in the room
• Started out as a college “look book” at Harvard
– “Hot or not” photo rating feature got it temporarily banned
by administration
– Later expanded to general .edu use
– Opened to public in 2006
• As of early 2010 approaching 400 MILLION active users
– Not counting people who signed up but didn’t do anything
• Half of users sign on every day!
• A single FB application, Farmville, has more followers
than Twitter does
How to be a social media maven on FB
• Facebook “Fosters deep relationships in which
people interact with their friends”—FB management
• As a marketer you should “create a presence that
looks and behaves like user profiles to connect and
engage with your customers and amplify your voice
to their friends.”— FB management
• This means starting with a fan page (aka “Facebook
Pages”) that looks like the familiar personal profile
page
Personal profile page on Facebook
Fan page on Facebook
FB personal pages vs fan pages
• Best practice: If you’re going to use Facebook for business,
you need a fan page
– So you don’t spam your friends with business advertising.
• Fan pages used to look quite different, now very similar to
personal pages
– Also, now they’re just “pages”
• Facebook friends have to be approved, fans don’t
• Facebook limit is 5,000 friends, no limit on fans
• Fan pages can have multiple admins
– So you’re not SOL if the person admin’ing your page quits
• “News feeds” handled differently on personal vs fan pages
– Personal pages can have “recent” vs (filtered) “top news”
– Fan pages have option for “everybody” and “just fans”
Your goal: get FB users to fan your
page
• So your updates will appear on their profile page as viral
marketing to those who follow them
• So they can interact with applications used to distribute
coupons, make special offers, promote sticky behavior eg
sharing recipes
• Best practice, just as with your Twitter page, you should do a
little stage management before you go live:
– Populate it with a few updates
– Get employees, family members etc who are on Facebook to fan you
and then comment on your updates
Your reward: get your updates in your
fans’ news feeds
• Viral recommendation goes out to everybody who
visit their friends’ profile pages!
Facebook application: Adidas Star
Wars
Facebook Connect: set of APIs to
recruit fans
Facebook Connect: set of APIs to
recruit fans
Facebook Connect: set of APIs to
recruit fans
Facebook Advertising
• “If you’re marketing on Facebook, you should be advertising
on Facebook.”—Brad Ruffkess, Coca Cola
• What you can advertise:
– Your FB page, with a link to it
– A specific offer or promotion
– Off-Facebook link to your primary website
• Facebook Ad Manager interface makes it very easy to create
ads and micro-target your audience
– 35 cc head with keywords
– Image (mandatory)
– 180 cc body
Facebook Ad Manager
Facebook Ad Manager
• Total time to create and
deploy: 5 minutes
• 35 cc head
• Jpg image
• 180 cc body
– “Likes” added automatically,
gives ID without using up cc
• Visible only to FB users 18+
in ZIP 12866
Facebook marketing links
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Facebook Pages http://www.facebook.com/advertising/?pages
Facebook Connect http://www.facebook.com/advertising/?connect
Facebook Advertising http://www.facebook.com/advertising/
Facebook Share
http://www.facebook.com/advertising/#!/advertising/?share
– Buttons and code for off-FB linking
Also:
• Explanation of format changes as of 2/4/10
http://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=287459122130
– Read the blog because FB constantly changing
• Facebook privacy settings
http://www.facebook.com/advertising/#!/settings/?tab=privacy
– Because FB management obsessive about privacy
How to be a social media maven on...
LinkedIn
How to be a social media maven on...
LinkedIn
• Started as resume site, expanded to general business
networking site
• Be sure your profile is complete and business friendly
• Use groups to connect with your colleagues and prospects
– Check out emarketing (largest on LinkedIn) and direct mail groups
– Ok to promote yourself in an occasional post, maybe following 80/20
rule
• Use “company” section to research markets
– Selectable by geo plus keyword
• “Answers” is another place to gain visibility
– Pose your own questions or be an expert answerer
Southwest CEO on LinkedIn
And speaking of customer service...
• United Airlines broke Dave Carroll’s guitar, wouldn’t fix it, he did a
video on YouTube
• Over 7 million views, now available on iTunes
• Estimated cost to United Airlines: $180 million
Social media customer service
best practices
Social media customer service
best practices
• Give customers a way to actually have their issues dealt with
in a public setting
• Showcase your brand
• Show the real people behind the brand
• Resist the temptation to filter: the negative comments make
the conversation more authentic
• Respond rapidly and completely
• Don’t ignore your customers (“United Breaks Guitars”)
“What are people saying about me,
anyway?"
“What are people saying about me,
anyway?”
Reputation management in social
media
• Download this guide by US Air Force of how to engage online:
http://www.usafa.af.mil/news/socialmedia.asp
• Google alerts: http://www.google.com/alerts
• Radian6
– Considered better at gauging emotions
• Tegrity SM2
– Considered better at historical data
– “Freemium” version probably sufficient for most small businesses:
http://sm2.techrigy.com/main/
SM2 report overview
SM2 report “emotions” view
Blogging as a social media exercise
Agilent “Signal Integrity” blog
• Started to solve the lack of visibility for Agilent in search
results
– Keyword “signal integrity” went from 4th page to 1st on Google
• Allows the product manager/engineer to connect on a
personal level with the universe of 50M signal integrity
engineers
• Changes, updates, news posts can be made rapidly without
going through IT department
• Blogger conforms to corporate guidelines with copyright
notice and link to Agilent privacy policy
• Thanks to David Meerman Scott for this story
It’s easy to get started with blogging
• A website has pages, a blog has posts which are usually
organized in chronological order
– And can be searched by keyword, category or other factor
• Provides a conversational tone to match your other social
media efforts
• Use a corporate blog to:
– Respond quickly to customer complaints or praise
– Give your management a voice by letting them talk as humans about
the process.
– Leverage news (your own or your industry’s) by talking about it on
your blog)
– Gain search visibility through additional content
It’s easy to get started with blogging
• Most use Wordpress, which can be hosted or you can have a
blog for free at http://www.wordpress.org
• Read this book: Wordpress for Dummies, 2nd Edition
• If you don’t like Wordpress, it’s generally easy to migrate from
one platform to another
• Don’t forget your RSS feed
– Otisregrets gets ~100 pageviews per day, 500 RSS feeds
– http://feedburner.google.com or use your blogging software’s built in feed
The new rules of PR in social media
(PR=visibility)
• The value of press releases is multiplied by the web because they get
picked up as search fodder to add to your visibility
• Your blog is a form of press release because posts will be picked up as new
content about your company
• Smart idea: put your press releases on a pressroom area of your website
where it will be seen by both the press and your customers/prospects. In
addition to the actual information this provides additional search bait
• New rules: write for the end consumer of information, not the media
– So journalists can comment on it rather than just picking it up directly
• Old rules make you look like a spammer:
– No “for immediate release”
– No email attachments
– No broadcasting of irrelevant information
• More at http://www.otismaxwell.com/blog/2010/01/new-rules-of-pr-atces-2010/
Cheap and free PR and visibility tools
• PRweb: distribute your press releases for $80 each
http://www.prweb.com/
• outbrain.com: a month of visibility for $10 per article
http://www.outbrain.com/
– Tip: their business model includes installing a bunchof their stuff on YOUR site that you
probably don’t want. it’s easy to disable but you have to do it manually
• HARO.com: “help a reporter out” by responding to article queries
http://helpareporter.com/
• Comment on public articles at sites like http://www.nytimes.com/
including an appropriate link to your own content
• Free downloads from David Meerman Scott:
http://davidmeermanscott.com/products_ebooks.htm
We still haven’t talked about...
...among others...
You can’t do everything!
• Doing social media right takes a LOT of effort.
– At Tegrity, the 5th person hired was their social media manager.
• Best practice: be sure your contact information and
links are correct on any directory where you show up
– And remember to use the same picture everyone.
• Time to get started.... Thanks for sticking around!