Tips on Marketing on Twitter and Facebook

Writing for Facebook and Twitter isn't that different from other web writing. It's likened to micro blogging.

Writing a tweet is similar to writing a good headline - action words, leave out the articles (a, an, the) and start with the specific key words.

LinkedIn is more B2B, where as Facebook is more B2C when it comes to companies using it.

Using Facebook and Twitter for marketing always has to be for the customer, not the company. The customer is always listening to WiiFM (what's in it for me?).

So, tweets and wall posts always have to provide a benefit for the customer or provide for their needs not be marketing the latest product or service for the company.

You can get away with that occasionally provided there's lots of other stuff for the customer.

If you're not already on Twitter, I'd suggest signing up and searching for "social media" for people to follow and learn from them. Follow me on Twitter @jason_clements

Copyblogger (http://www.copyblogger.com/) is a good place to learn about writing titles and blog posts.

Have any other tips on writing for Twitter and Facebook?

Ultimate Guide to Facebook And Netiquette and tips for Twitter

Here's 2 great articles I came across today that I wanted to pass on:

The Ultimate Guide to Facebook (from Gizmodo)

So I’ve set up my Twitter account: now what? Netiquette and tips for Twitter

I've already set up Twitter Feed, so (cross my fingers) you may have actually ended up here from my auto tweet.

A note on Facebook, privacy, the article is really long, but I really encourage you to take a look at your privacy settings. And the ability to set up groups for your friends so, for instance, your grandma doesn't see this weekends party photos, is a really good idea.

(Though when I tried to go into my privacy settings it hung and the page wouldn't load. I guess loading the 1300 page privacy policy was hanging things up.)

The Superbowl for Hollywood

The Oscars are Sunday night and everyone is trying to take advantage of the captive audience at this live event.

"Marketers are paying $1.75 million for each 30-second slot on ABC's Sunday night telecast."

With big names like Jennifer Lopez, Justin Bieber and Cindy Crawford, marketers are betting on the audience using Twitter, Facebook and other social media to get even more bang for their commercial dollars.

Procter & Gamble has already seen it's Facebook membership increase 25% since announcing Jennifer Lopez as the star of an Oscar spot.

And Best Buy actually made the Superbowl connection with an online vote to pick an alternate ending to it's Justin Bieber Super Bowl ad. The new ending will air Sunday night during the Oscars.

And I'm sure many of these big-name commercials will end up on YouTube very soon after if they aren't there already for more exposure and sharing.

How a Topic Trends on Twitter

Interesting article linked from this Gizmodo post.

I'll admit that the format it was posted in is not very readable and the whole academic aspect of it turned me off. So, I didn't read the whole article, but the Gizmodo post is a good enough synopsis to explain it.

Basically if a tweet originated from a news agency then it is more likely to be picked up and retweeted. Also the resonance the topic has with people helps.

The report also reaffirms how fleeting it can all be and that even though something is picked up and retweeted a lot it isn't going to stick around for long.

I'm sure the six degrees of separation is fairly evident on Twitter so it wouldn't take long for something to make the rounds.

Fear of Commitment

It's a common theme in movies today. The hero or heroine has gone through life single and enjoying many short-term relationships. Then along comes "the one" and the person does everything they can to sabotage the relationship.

It usually falls to the best friend in the movie to point out the good points of the new love interest and help the hero/heroine see that this person is the one.

Businesses can be like the hero only going half way or doing something to sabotage the relationship with their customers, like starting a blog but turning off comments. The blog then becomes like every other newspaper or TV ad with the message pushed to an audience and no way to get feedback.

Social media specialists need to be like the best friend to the businesses that we work with. We need to talk up the benefits of social media and the benefits of the two-way communication with customers.

Social media is great, it's like running a focus group where you're getting feedback from your entire customer base not just some small (hopefully) representative sample base. Like when GAP put out a new logo. They listened to their customers and quickly scrapped the new logo when customer feedback was negative toward it.

Too often companies are stuck in the traditional, familiar mind-set when it comes to marketing and dictate to the customer what the business thinks the customer needs.

Like any relationship, there needs to be a two-way communication with your customers and social media can help facilitate this.

What do you think? What are some benefits that we can highlight to companies to show them the benefits of social media and the two-way communication?

Social Media Needs to be a Part of Your Communication Strategy

"Social media is part of our communications strategy so, ... we didn't have a big powwow about it saying, 'oh, we need to get out the message via social media'. It is already assumed that is one of the channels we want to use," says WestJet emerging media advisor Greg Hounslow.

This quote totally sums it up.

Marketing special report: Social media by Mary Kirby is a great article discussing how airlines are using Facebook, Twitter and other social media sites to get their messages out.

"Social media isn't the way of the future - it's now," says Jessica Green of Greenwin property management.

Mobile phones (and even cars now) give your customers easy access to social media and the online discussions are immediate.

You don't have time to debate about a response, so a social media policy needs to be in place and the people monitoring them need to have the authority to respond immediately.

Why do companies prevent staff from being effective!?!

I could go on and on about the benefits of letting employees have access to the Internet and social media, but this is a really good post and the commenters also have some great feedback.

So rather than me ranting and raving, just check out this post by LaDonna Coy.

7 social media lessons from Nestle's Facebook missteps

Just wanted to share this post from Ragan.com's top 5 stories on social media.

In this case study Nestle doesn't get that they no longer own or control their brand.
Your brand now is the top 10 results in Google when your customer searches your company name or your product name.

The issue and online conversation was around Nestle using palm oil in its products and palm oil being linked to environmental harm. Nestle's response was to tell people not to post their logos.

One commenter sums it up: "It’s not OK for people to use altered versions of your logos but it’s OK for you to alter the face of Indonesian rainforests? Wow!"

In the post, Ragan.com provides 7 really good lessons that any professional communicator needs to know and ensure their executives or clients know.

To sum them up:

• You need to listen and understand both the issue and the tools before jumping in.
• It's a conversation and sharing of ideas with your clients, it's not one-way (push) like traditional advertising.
• You need to give up control of the message and take the good with the bad. You're not going to please everyone and there will be bad feedback.
• It will require time commitment and dedicated resources (people) to follow, listen and participate in the conversations.

By the Numbers: Internet 2010

Here's a great article with some stats on Internet use and growth in 2010.

Notably, here are some social media stats.

Twitter doubled the number of accounts and Facebook grew by almost a third.

(Although as a side note, I noticed my nephew adding Facebook accounts with reckless abandon on the weekend just so he could create more towns for some game! That's just wrong. He also pumped up the number of email users by creating random Hotmail accounts for the Facebook accounts.)

Social media

• 152 million – The number of blogs on the Internet (as tracked by BlogPulse).
• 25 billion – Number of sent tweets on Twitter in 2010
• 100 million – New accounts added on Twitter in 2010
• 175 million – People on Twitter as of September 2010
• 7.7 million – People following @ladygaga (Lady Gaga, Twitter’s most followed user).
• 600 million – People on Facebook at the end of 2010.
• 250 million – New people on Facebook in 2010.
• 30 billion – Pieces of content (links, notes, photos, etc.) shared on Facebook per month.
• 70% – Share of Facebook’s user base located outside the United States.
• 20 million – The number of Facebook apps installed each day.

Always Learn and Share

I'm sharing a post from copyblogger about the new age of teaching.

He has some good points when it comes to online marketing. You can't always be shilling your wares online. People will be quick to "unfriend" you if that's all your messages are.

"Your authority and credibility no longer depend on credentials — it depends on mastering skills by practicing them in the real world. You must be sensitive to what your prospective students want to learn, instead of forcing them to learn whatever you decide to teach them. And there’s no such thing as tenure. You stay relevant and useful or you lose all your students."
Specifically Josh Kaufman is talking about his online teaching business, but the same goes for your clients. You need to know what they're interested in and provide solutions that meet their needs and desires, not push your latest product or service.

You always need to be sharing something new that people want to learn or that will benefit them. Then, as I'm doing with the copyblogger post, your followers will share and spread your message.

Immortality through our online connections

I started this blog a few years ago with the greatest of intentions to write every day, but as my archive of posts shows I haven't been successful at that.

My blog title, "ego scriptor proinde ego sum," along the lines of I think therefore I am, means "I write therefore I am". In a way social media and all the self-published content is a way for everyone to achieve a bit of immortality.

Today this really hit home for me. A coworker has been battling cancer for the past year. To keep everyone up to date and I'm sure as a way to help her, she started a blog to keep track of her journey. (Thankfully she's just received the official diagnosis that her cancer is in remission.)

However, through her blog she came into contact with someone else fighting cancer and who is also blogging about her life and battle with the disease.

Today, my coworker's post was that this person who had touched her life, and yet had never met, passed away this weekend.

Until today I had never heard of Daria Maluta, and yet through these online connections I was made aware of her life and how she touched other's lives. A note of caution, when I followed the link I was left with a lump in my throat after reading the last few posts of her life.

Getting started in social media

To follow up to my commitment to social media and writing in this blog, I plan on working my way through these four stages.

Four stages to marketing and promotion.

1. Sign up, observe, and educate yourself (sometimes called lurking). Many people stay at this stage for a long time, simply soaking up good information.

2. Participate. Start to make yourself known. This could be as simple as making status updates, posting photos or sample writing, or creating a profile.

3. Share something and grow relationships. Focus on what you give people or what you can share that's of value. As you participate and share with others in the community, and do things for each other, relationships grow and develop.

4. Ask for help. This is when you might actually put your connections to work as a means of soft or hard marketing. Maybe you want to tell people to pre-order your book on Amazon on a specific day. Or you're hoping that your network will spread the word about an upcoming event you're hosting. So you ask.

People who know you and trust you will be more likely to help you. That's why it's important to establish relationships far before you market and promote a product/service. The relationships have to be meaningful before they have value in a marketing/promotion effort.

Note: The above is from my own notes from a workshop or seminar but unfortunately I didn't note the source when I wrote the notes. So, I don't profess to the above being entirely my own thoughts. It's probably came from Groundswell.

A New Year, A New Commitment

We're already half way into January of 2011. My last post was early January 2010! :(

I've signed up for two social media courses through Algonquin Colleges distance education and renewing my commitment to take on this social media storm front on.

I'm on Twitter (@jason_clements and @moviesinlondon) and I'm on Facebook and LinkedIn but I've never fully committed to any of these and have never regularly logged in or posted to any of them.

So, there you go, I'm putting myself out there and the social media courses will be my inspiration and will make me accountable to post here regularly and hopefully dive into the other sites.

The Most Memorable Web Videos of 2007

We are now a world of consumer generated media.

Instead of turning to CNN to see a biased, edited version of the world, we now turn to the Web with the likes of YouTube, Wikipedia and even FaceBook to find out what's going on in our community...

... our community that now encompasses the entire world.

The video on this page is a synopsis of the most memorable Web videos of 2007.