Do you ever feel a strong urge to update or check Facebook?

Is the desire to Tweet overwhelming and you have this compulsion to “Tweet” for no particular reason?

Are you starting to wonder if you have a social media addiction?

Well joining the self help group “social media addicts anonymous” may not be far away as a recent study by Chicago University has revealed that social media is in fact more addictive than sex, alcohol and cigarettes!

Pinterest the New Addiction

Pinterest is the new addiction in town that has everyone blogging, tweeting and sharing the news on Facebook and it is the new “hot” social network on the block.

It is a social media network that cannot be ignored.

According to Shareaholic’s recent report that used findings from more than 200,000 publishers and 260 million monthly unique visitors, it is driving more referral traffic than Google plus, LinkedIn and YouTube combined.

It is interesting to note the power of Pinterest to refer traffic despite it only having 4.9 million users compared to Google plus with more than 90 million users and LinkedIn with over 130 million members.

I have been using Pinterest for only a couple of months but my traffic stats show that in the last 3 days it is driving more traffic than Google Plus and LinkedIn for the Jeffbullas.com blog.

Forrester claims it is over-hyped but if it is assisting your business to increase engagement, drive traffic and raise your online visibility then I am happy to use an over hyped social network.

What Makes it so Addictive ?

I don’t know if you have noticed or not but Facebook has redesigned its user interface with its new Timeline which allows much larger and engaging images.

Google plus was launched with a design that provides a larger canvas to display high definition images and photos in all their glory.

2011 has seen the rise of the new “Visual” social networks.

Visual engagement addiction has never been more obvious than what has been revealed by Pinterest.

People find photos compelling and will share them much more virally on social networks than a link or text post. Photos are the most shared media on Facebook (250 million a day).

Pinterest has tapped into this and created a visual online pinboard that inspires with images and photos that invite to be shared and repinned.

Some have called it an “Inspiration Network”

Use the Power of Addiction

There is something I have learned over the last few years is that even if it is over-hyped but has addictive qualities, then it is a powerful distribution network and should be considered in your business marketing plans, especially if your business has a highly visual component such as fashion, food or photography.

Even if you don’t think your business has strong visual  elements, then take a cue from General Electric which uses Pinterest to post images of “Badass Machines“.

How do I use Pinterest?

You would think that social media marketing wouldn’t be a very visual topic that would use the Pinterest platform very effectively. In fact there is almost a visual element to anything and you may have noticed the “Infographics” trend that has rapidly grown over the last 12 months which has surprised me.

What I am trialling on Pinterest is pinning “Infographics” that are relevant to my target audience and currently with 60 pins and over 550 followers it is highly apparent that it taps into this visual touch point.

So I would encourage you to have some fun with Pinterest and tap into your creative side and find visual elements of your brand that will inspire and drive some sharing.

How are you using Pinterest?

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The Old Spice campaign has proven to be one of the most memorable creative marketing and advertising concepts ever executed.

It has longevity and endurance that has been achieved through a mix of several reiterations as well as using online and offline marketing, social media and PR that has kept the original content bubbling across the Web.

Wieden + Kennedy created the original ad for the Super Bowl for their client Procter and Gamble the owners of the iconic Old Spice brand.

The ad featured former NFL athlete Isaiah Mustafa and was a a video centric marketing campaign that combined both traditional and social media.

The Old Spice Campaign Facts and Figures

Here are some of the numbers that were the result of the continuous marketing campaign.

• The number one most viewed sponsored channel on YouTube
• 236 million YouTube Views
• 80,000 Twitter followers in 2 days
• Facebook Interaction increased 800% with the personalized videos (Fans now total over 1.5 million)
• Sales figures increased by 107 %

At the end of the day you can have all the noise, buzz and viral success you like but if you don’t increase sales you might as well pack up and go home. The Old Spice campaign achieved both.

11 Social Media Marketing Lessons from the Old Spice Campaign

1. Keep Your Videos Short and Snappy

Originally one of the rules of thumb for on-line videos was that they shouldn’t be any longer than two minutes but the Old Spice YouTube videos were mostly less than a minute and as short as 17 seconds. They have taken “snappy” to a new level.

2. Turn Your Advertising into “Content” that is Easy to Share

A traditional offline video is hard to share, so making your ad into a YouTube video enables it to be shared and the distribution crowd sourced.

3. Make you Marketing Content Searchable

I don’t know about you but sometimes you see a funny ad on TV and you have to wait for it to be replayed to view it again. Publishing on-line as well as off-line makes it searchable and  able to be viewed on demand.

Click here to view the embedded video.

4. Be Everywhere

Marketing on as many appropriate multi-channel and multi-media marketing channels using social media ensures that broadest possible distribution is achieved by tapping into viewers media and platform preferences. The agency participated and promoted across many social media channels and networks including Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. The campaign wasn’t just published on social media channels but also the promoted using social media marketing to spread the brand message.

5. Respond in Real Time

In 24 hours the old spice guy responded to Tweets (including a marriage proposal) with 116  YouTube videos (The crew was given 7 minutes to record each video including the writing and the shooting with only one or two takes). This princilple of real time response can include responding to comments on Facebook and tweets on Twitter  to keep the conversation rolling.

6.  Use Other People’s and other Media’s Networks (for free)

The Wieden + Kennedy campaign decided to respond to Tweets with YouTube video responses and when the “Old Spice” guy responded to “The Ellen Show” tweet with a YouTube video then of course this was broadcast to millions on her shows network. Individuals with large on-line influence such as Guy Kawasaki and Perez Hilton had video responses which tapped into their large personal brand audiences globally. Tap into large networks by giving them the attention they want and crave and they will spread it for free to their distribution networks whether that be Facebook, television or Twitter.

Click here to view the embedded video.

7. Use Social Media to Activate Mass Media

This then leads us to another lesson. If your social media marketing is good enough, mass media will pick it up, especially if it has humour and entertainment value and will advertise it for free to millions of their viewers and readers.

8. Keep the Content Pumping

Savvy bloggers know this marketing secret and that is to keep the content pumping. The “Old Spice” campaign which was video centric managed to produce 100′s of videos led by a team of 4 writers, a camera crew and a half naked actor. The approach was certainly quantity over quality which social media advocates will recognise. Don’t wait for your post to be perfect before hitting the publish button because it never will be.

9. Drive Engagement through Personalization

One of the writers behind the Old Spice campaign Jason Bagley said. “No one expects to ask a question and then be responded to. I think that’s where we broke through.” The marketing team responded personally to tweets with custom YouTube videos, this both surprised and amazed the global audience.

10. If it Works Keep Repeating a Proven Formula

The old saying “when your on to a good thing stick to it” applies very much to this marketing success which initially started with the Super Bowl YouTube video which received 100,000 views every few hours has been repeated twice with a new angle every time. The second  time was a 2 day marathon of high quality personalized video responses to questions asked by fans on Twitter and YouTube. The latests reiteration was last month with a rival introduced called Fabio (an ageing male super model) and cleverly called the “New Old Spice Guy”

Click here to view the embedded video.

11. Add a Negative Twist

The creators of the campaign decided  to add a negative twist to rejuvenate the campaign by introducing a rival “Fabio” the “New Old Spice Guy” and had the viewers vote on who they preferred . This produced a lot of “Buzz” online and negative comment (viewers “loved” Isaiah Mustafa the original old spice guy) that continued to drive the viral conversation with the original “Old Spice Guy of course winning the competition. I have found negative headlines to produce much better responses than the positive angle eg “30 Things You Should Not Share on Social Media”

What impressed you about this campaign?

More Reading

• The 10 Best Facebook Campaigns
• The 10 Best Social Media Campaigns
• 50 Social Media Marketing Tips and Tactics
• 9 Secrets of an Online Video Marketing Strategy

Image by houbi

So you are the new marketing manager for an organisation with a 100 employees and you are planning your social media marketing strategy for the next 12 months.

If you are a follow the crowd type of marketer and want to play it safe then the decision of which social media networks to deliver and spread the brand message is is not a tough call.

You will start with a list that will have Facebook at the top and you will work down from there.

If you are a bit more creative, like innovation and living dangerously and are an extreme sports fan then you may consider looking at mobile, apps, and locally targeted advertising strategies and tactics that are starting to make their presence felt as part of the marketing toolkit.

So if  you want to know where the rest of the marketing crowd have been playing for the last 12 months then here is some revealing research from emarketer.com that has some intriguing results at the bottom end of the scale

The Top 10 Social Networks for Marketing

1. Facebook

Facebook was found to be used by 93% of marketers in companies with 100 employees or more and four key elements drive its high participation rate.

1. 750 million plus users
2. Availability of targeted demographic data
3. Self serve ad platform that makes it quick and easy for marketers to launch an advertising campaign
4. Facebook brand “”Pages”

Expect to see competition from Google+ make Facebook even more innovative over the next 12 months

2. Twitter

Twitter is still working out its business model and with only 140 million in ad revenue this year (Facebook’s is projected to exceed 2 billion this year) is still being used 78% of the time by the marketing manager. It is rumored that it will be rolling out a self serve ad function later this year that will make it much more efficient and cost effective to utilize. If the self serve feature is done well then Twitter could accelerate its revenue and value to marketers over the next 12 months.

3. YouTube

YouTube ranks third in the survey at 61% but don’t expect this social media network channel to become a laggard over the next 6 months. One driver for this platform that wasn’t foreseen 12 months ago will be its closer integration into the new Google+ social network which has more than 25 million users. 20% of the marketers in the survey  also indicated they would begin campaigns next year on YouTube.

4. LinkedIn

LinkedIn’s is a less public social network and can provide a great place to market higher value products and services that are more B2B focused ( Business to Business). At 44% nearly half of companies are using its platform to run an ad campaign in this survey

5. Foursquare

The rise of mobiles that are  GPS enabled  is slowly bringing back marketing options for local merchants that want to tempt buyers in the local area with alerts of offers to lure them into a struggling bricks and mortar retail sector. At 10 million registered users as at June 2011 it will need to keep an eye on Facebook’s “Places” feature as its closet competitor. Marketers are using Foursquare 16% of the time for their advertising.

6. MySpace

After having been sold recently for $30 million by the News corporation to a media company (News bought it several years ago for over  $500 million), MySpace is struggling but not quite down and out and I would expect to see it reinvented with its new owners.

It is finding some use for social advertisers at 7%

7. Meebo

Meebo is a social platform connecting users with their friends across the web supporting a wide range of instant messaging platforms including Yahoo messenger, Windows Live Messenger and Facebook Chat. At a usage rate of 4% I wouldn’t be rushing to advertise on this channel

8. Zynga

Zynga is the company behind the loved and hated Farmville and Texas holdem poker. The rise of social gaming has created a company that in a few short years is now reportedly valued at $15-20 billion and has 270 million monthly active users on Facebook. It is currently used by 2% of marketers but this may increase in the future as marketers work how to target their audience

9. Gowalla

Gowalla is a competitor to Foursquare and Facebook “Places” and with an estimated 600,000 active  users it will be interesting to watch how it competes in the location based social networking arena. 1% of marketers in the survey had advertised on Gowalla.

10. Mylife

Mylife was started in 2002 (formerly reunion.com) as a social network service. It did claim to be the 6th largest networking site in 2007 with 28 million users but today according to Quantcast it has an estimated 4.2 million monthly unique users and is still the 7th largest social network in the US. Along with MyLife and Gowalla it attracted 1% of marketers attention.

The bottom five is where the numbers drop into the single digits. So the top five are as most people would have predicted and are generally the place to play if you want leverage, scale and a rapidly developing and vibrant ecosystems with many apps and contributors to their evolution.

Expect to see Google+ on this list next year but at what position will be the billion dollar question as it evolves and rolls out its social integration across all its platforms from mobile to mail and adds the highly anticipated Google+ for brands!

More Reading

• 50 Social Media Marketing Tips and Tactics
• 10 Signs You are Addicted to Social Media
• 5 Tips to Build Your Personal Brand with Social Media

Image by Asthma Helper

Social Media Marketing’s ROI (Return on Investment) has been discussed on the web in blogs and websites and comments are frequently heard such as “You can’t measure the ROI of social media marketing”  

One commentator from the Search Engine Land website says that even if you can’t measure the increase in sales or reductions in costs that are an essential element of measuring ROI there are other benefits for placing your content on the highly trafficked Social media sites such 

• Links (sometimes 100′s and 1000′s of links)
• Long-term traffic from linking sites
• Improved search ranking
• Long-tail search traffic

Because you develop these high-value links, you can easily rank prominently for targeted terms in search engines and increase your long-tail traffic which will stabilize at a much higher number than the pre-social marketing campaign numbers.

The talented Peter Kim, a former Forrester analyst, outlined a framework for measuring Social Media and said

“Although social media channels seem to be mostly qualitative in nature, user activities can be easily quantified.  Although users interact with channels in different ways, four common factors quantify social media success:  Attention, Participation, Authority, and Influence.”

Here is his framework for measuring Social Media benefits

1. Attention.  The amount of traffic to your content for a given period of time.  Similar to the standard web metrics of site visits and page/video views.
2. Participation.  The extent to which users engage with your content in a channel.  Think blog comments, Facebook wall posts, YouTube ratings, or widget interactions.
3. Authority.  Ala Technorati, the inbound links to your content – like trackbacks and inbound links to a blog post or sites linking to a YouTube video.
4. Influence.  The size of the user base subscribed to your content.  For blogs, feed or email subscribers; followers on Twitter or Friendfeed; or fans of your Facebook page.

He says that “There’s an “x-factor” that comes into play well:  sentiment”…. but a lot of CEO’s will not buy into the  sentiment game. They will still be insistent…. saying “I don’t care about these sorts of soft numbers show me the hard facts ..show me the ROI on Social Media Marketing and I will give you the budget.” It’s chicken and egg scenario all over again, so how do you approach it.

Well one way is to  one way is to propose a low cost “Proof of Concept” which will allow you to provide a low risk pilot that will provide enough evidence and show a positive “ROI” for the management to take it seriously and give Social Media Marketing a place at the marketing table.   

So where do you get the budget for social media even for a proof of concept as social media isn’t free because it

• Needs People – Wages
• Requires Technology – Software and Hardware
• Takes Time – Money

You need to show a positive “Return On Investment” or ROI. In other words it needs to produce more dollars in profit than you spend on the marketing.

So what are core mangement goals and business drivers? In essence the pilot  needs to produce one of two results

1. Improve Revenue or
2. Reduce Costs 

or preferably both.

So you need to show that it will achieve at least one of these, this is what management will insist on rather than write a blank cheque

So you need to get a budget.. Essentially it is about proposing small reductions in marketing efforts that are experiencing low or negative ROI .. these could be as an example

• Yellow pages print advertising budget
• Reduction in external PR
• Cut back in outbound call centre marketing 

 So now you have a “Social Media Marketing” budget and what are the 8 stages in of ”Social Media Marketing” after you have the go ahead for the “Proof Of Concept” to help you progress beyond pilot and make it an integral part of your companies marketing armoury.

1. Investment (Time and Money) followed by
2. Planning
3. Baseline measurements are taken for important indicators so trends can be shown that will support your proof of concept
4. Measurements are taken at regular intervals to show trends to ensure you are on track and and adjustments can be made 
5. Action (Marketing commences)
   • Blogging
   • Twitter
   • Facebook
   • LinkedIn
   • YouTube
   • Plus Optimizing all of the above
6. Reaction by the market to the action which will produce two results in the following sequence
7. Non-Financial Impact (also called pre-cursors to the financial impact) such as increased
   • Website visitors
   • Click throughs
   • ReTweets
   • Positive and or Negative WOM (Word Of Mouth)
   • Facebook friends
   • Twitter Followers
   • Delivered emails
   • Positive or Negative Press
   • Blog CommentsYouTube Views
8. Financial Impact are elements like 
   • Increased sales
   • Increased average sale value
   • Reduced service centre costs

Note:  The  major hurdle along this journey will be the question “Where are the increased sales” after a few months. The answer to this is to be able to provide  analytics providing facts and figures that show the precursors to the financial impact such as

• Website visits increasing
• ReTweets numbers going up
• Positive comments on the blog

as compared to your baseline measurements that you took prior to the Social Media Marketing project

So the analytics need to be in place to capture these indicators that will ensure that mangement will keep the project live so that you can produce the final evidence that there is a positive “ROI” in Social Media Marketing. You will need a 6- 12 month timeline that will allow you to show that the pre-cursors do lead to the promised positive ROI.

The figures from your analytics will show the results are trending up and are the the “Pre-cursors” to the financial results. It will take time but as a good manager knows that the positive non- financial impact will certainly lead to a positive ROI.

So how do you measure the ROI of Social Media Marketing?

I have been talking to people about how the world of marketing has changed over the last 5- 10 years and how they need to be found online. Research shows that 98% of clients use an online search engine when they are looking to buy.

So I ask them a few questions about how they went about buying their last purchase over $1,000  

• Used the yellow pages
• Got on a plane to go to a trade show
• Responded to a print advertisement –
• Responded to a direct mail advertisement 

         or

• Did a search in Google or another search engine –
• Asked a friend for advice, and they emailed you a URL as a response

Guess what.. they don’t answer in the affirmative for the first four questions. So if you cannot be found online, then you need to change what you are doing  

So really the  interesting question is, “If your product or service cannot be found when you type it in to a search engine, how are you going to survive in the new world of online business”.

The short answer: You won’t be around in 5-10 years and “Your competitors may already be ahead”.

So when I speak to my clients I ask them 2 other questions

1.  What are 5 key words or phrases that your potential clients would put into a search engine to find your product or service?
2. Who are your 2 main competitors?  

I then grade them with an online tool to compare their website as a marketing medium compared to their competition using Hubspots Website Grader and measure them against their competition.

Quite often the results are not very flattering. ( I have clients measuring 14 out of 100 and their competition scoring in the 70′s or 80′s )

So what is the solution to this  dilemma?  It is actually not that hard to do but it does require that you do a few things a bit differently to what you are curently doing, and it may be out of your comfort zone, but you need to start.

13 Tips To Get You Found Online.

1.  Start a Blog and do it 3-4 times a week

2.  Delete Duplicate Content on Your Website- produce unique and regional content about your company.

3.  Follow Up on Inbound Links - compare inbound links and used alt tags for those with higher ratings. Follow up on inbound links to help build great SEO authority.

4.  Stop or Modify PPC & Ad Words Campaigns: Work on being seen in organic search rather than in paid content. You will get more clicks from organic search than PPC, take your existing content and repurpose it and post it on your Blog. It is a  great channel for event information and direct communication with customers. Cover industry-specific news, not product information. Do not try and sell, just provide really interesting news that your clients want to hear about. 

5. Create RSS Feeds: RSS feeds enable people to get in contact with your company without visiting the site. Now that everyone has BlackBerries, it is easy to push information anywhere and keep people informed on-the-go.

6.  Create a Twitter Profile: Use this to publish RSS feeds, comment on industry-related news and build networks. Thus, it brings up relevant questions to your clients and engages them in conversations. On Twitter, you can also monitor your competitors’ performance.

7. Update Your Companies Profile in Online Directories: In order to keep your site consistent and correct, update your profile in many online directories. Keep track of the accuracy and appearance of yours Google images. In short, it has make it a priority that company information — web addresses, logo, SEO links, etc — is correct everywhere.

8. Buy Relevant Domains: Create satellite sites (.com, .net, etc) and regional pages with local languages. These pages feature in-depth content and point to landing pages. When you release a new product(or service), create a domain name for it. Multiple relevant domain names enable the company to track what gives it the most inbound traffic.

9. Create Well Structured Landing Pages: Create a set of enhanced landing pages. Make the new pages ”short and sweet, and to the point.”Make the landing pages customized to different audience segments, and offer critical information for targeted buyer personas.

10. Check Analytics: Regularly monitor your data — comparing web pages, following site traffic, and evaluating customer engagement and keyword performance. What works in America might not work internationally.Try something, look at the results and if the results don’t work go back and change it.

11.  Add, Update, and Archive Content: This keeps your content fresh. In order to feature the most up-to-date content, plan on adding a content timer of six months. Thus, authors will receive email alerts to check the accuracy of their six-month-old content. Archive content as opposed to deleting it, this allows the site to keep its inbound links.

12. Optimize Keywords: Investigate what people were actually looking for when they think of your company. Use the stuff that not many people are searching for, thus your company should be looking for for the long-tail keywords that will improve your SEO strategy.

13. Increase Activity in Social Media: Visitors are coming to sites not only via traditional channels like Google and MSN, but also through Twitter and Flickr. In order for people to stumble upon your brand, your company needs to become active in the social mediasphere.

Note: One last interesting fact: 75% of all searches involve organic SEO, Paid SEO (PPC, Pay Per Click) makes up the other 25% . So Organic SEO is 300% more effective.. makes you think, doesn’t it?

Here are some of the best blogs and posts that I came upon last week on my web journey, that I managed to tweet about. I hope you find them useful and enlightening 

1. “How Companies and Non Profits are Monetizing Social Media”

This article by Laurel Papworth  is about the various social media monetization strategies and the powerpoint presentation (embedded) shows some case studies and examples, including social network size, the revenue streams, valuations and profits.

2. ” 10 Twitter Best Practices For Non Profits ”

This Blog by DIOSA Communications discusses how non profits who are most successful at utilizing social networking Web sites like Twitter, Facebook, and MySpace and how they know from trial, error, and experience that a “marketing and development approach” on social networking sites does not work.

It’s about community building around your mission and programs. Just having profile on Twitter (or MySpace, or Facebook) does not magically produce any results. You have to work these profiles. Find the person on your staff who loves Web 2.0 and enjoys working the sites and/or find a marketing/pr intern from your local university that needs to do a senior project! If they are getting college credit, then you know they have to stay around for at least a semester.

3. “8 Non Profit CEO’s That Tweet”  

Beth Kanter reveals some good advice and  insights along with 8 Non Profit CEO’s that tweet

Recently, BusinessWeek published a slideshow of CEO’s who use Twitter, noting the dramatic rise of CEO’s who use Twitter to clue customers in on new services, help them with questions about their products, and generally get a little bit personal with customers, business associates, and the public.

There are some other benefits to having your nonprofit’s CEO be on Twitter, these might include:

• Source of news
• Brand Building
• Focus Group/Research
• Networking Tool
• Monitoring
• Drive Traffic to web site
• Humanizing your communications

Of course, if your CEO is going to Twitter, they have to be keep a consistent schedule and be authentic.    There’s been a bit of debate about celebrity Twitter users who have “ghost” twitterers or simply people helping them tweet.

She did a brief scan to see if there any nonprofit CEOs who Twitter.  Here’s a few that she found:

4. ”26 Great Social Media Presentations For Non Profits”

This post by Rebecca Leaman lists 26 great new presentations on social media with more coming out almost daily, now that we’re deep into conference season, and many are directed specifically to the needs of non-profits. If you’ve been thinking of launching or expanding your organization in social media, Slideshare is a good starting point for information and advice. But it can be time-consuming to pick through a wide range of slideshows to find those that are up-to-date, actionable, and appropriate to nonprofits.

Here’s a hand-picked selection of presentations to get you started.

5. ” 7 Tips For Effective Call to Action – For Your Web Site or Blog”

This Blog by “Hubspot” highlights 7 tips on a calls to action and how nearly every website should have a goal and some action they want their visitors to take. The goal may be to generate leads, buy products, click on ads or even just subscribe to an RSS feed.

A call-to-action is the copy or graphic you use to entice and persuade your readers to take that action. Well-designed calls to action can dramatically increase a site’s rate of conversion to its goal.

So what’s a well-designed call to action? Here are 7 Tips.

Twitter has gone mainstream in the last few months and with it the multiple ways and means of using it to promote your product, brand and service has escalated. The tools available are burgeoning and maturing (thats for the next blog). Its being linked into facebook, blogs and websites. Its being used to help customer service, in fact Zappos has nearly all its staff on their own twitter accounts to help interact and support their customers.

Its also being used to promote a Pizza brand and its increasing sales by 15% in some cases. 

But, its not as widespread in other locations as it is in San Francisco and other high takeup areas - “yet” … so its not maybe as useful at this point in time for your suburb, city or country, never the less it cannot be ignored and  its ability to broadcast in real time, to tens of thousands of people and customers at no cost except your time is something  that has to be seriously considered. Twitter can tease and tempt you. It invites you to click on that link and see where it goes, or to listen to that track of music from Blip.fm,  (Great if you are a band or a singer and want to promote your Gig or song and let people hear your music).

So as a business, its ability to deliver your message is something you ignore it at your peril.    

1.  “Twitter Proves Its Worth as a Killer App for Local Businesses”

New Orleans’ own Naked Pizza (@NAKEDpizza) is changing the minds of experts and engaging its local community – using Twitter – in a profitable way.  Naked Pizza is effectively using Twitter for communications, customer service and most importantly, new sales. 

There has been a LOT written about Twitter in general and as a marketing and branding tool.  But as yet, there is no primer, no “Twitter for Business for Dummies.”

Even without a primer Jeff Leach, co-owner of Naked Pizza, seems to be well on the way to figuring it out.  That’s not to say that Jeff’s approach would map to the “best practices” of Public Relations (PR) and Social Media (SM) pros but it’s working for @NAKEDpizza and most importantly Jeff is tying it to metrics which matter to his business

2. “How To Build Your Personal Brand on Twitter”

 Today, Twitter has roughly 6 million users and is projected to grow to 18.1 million users by 2010. With all those people, the chances for networking are endless and connecting with new people can lead to career opportunities, so it is essential that your personal brand exists on the service. Last blog I showed you a step-by-step process for building your personal brand on Facebook, and today we’re going to show you how to do the same thing on Twitter. By leveraging the Twitter platform to build your brand you can showcase yourself to a huge and growing audience.

3.  “10 Essential Twitter Tools For Business” 

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

4. “7 Questions Some Brands Are Asking About Twitter”

 Here are some of the excellent questions organizations and other brands are starting to ask:

5. “How To Use Twitter For Customer Service”

Customer service can evoke some serious misgivings or negative emotions. Although customer support is designed to help the consumer, the pain of waiting for a phone representative and the impersonal emails can cause more damage than good for a brand. People are turned off by the term and companies have begun to use different terminology to describe their efforts.

This is not how customer service has to be. With the connectivity made possible by social media, companies have found a new way to engage their customers, solve their problems, and build goodwill for their brands: Twitter. Understanding how Twitter can transform customer relations for the better can be substantial for reducing costs and improving brand image.

Facebook  has been adding new functions and features that enable Companies, Non Profits and Individuals to promote their brand, raise money and increase sales and have conversations with their communities and networks. The following posts are some of the latest reviews and studies of what is unfolding in “Social Media” in the Facebook space, that I have come across and provided updates on my Twitter site . Facebook’s user base is reportedly  approaching 300 Million and still growing fast. Twitter is becoming mainstream. Online video usage is up 53% in the last 12 months on sites such as YouTube as Social Media continues to revolutionise the Web. How to use this fast emerging media is a constant challenge. These are some posts from bloggers such as Beth Kanter, John Haydon and others that will help you develop your own strategies for working and enabling this technology.  

1. Facebooks Application Profile Pages Might Give Brands a Boost  

This post covers how pages are valuable in helping brands? Similar to users’ own profile pages, these public pages feature a stream of information about the brand, including notes, photos, or items from other applications. Users can comment and like items that brands share, such as a video, and see activity about the page in their own home streams. And, in terms of applications, brand owners can already integrate third party applications — a video application could be used to feature a brand’s video in the page, for example.

 2. 5 Lessons Celebrities Can Teach Us About Facebook Pages

 This post covers some of the “good and the bad” that celebrities who are on Facebook can teach us about promoting Your “Personal Brand” including lessons on being authentic and offering fresh content. It includes examples of  how the celebrities use Facebook including Britney Spears, Ashton Kutcher, Vin Diesel, Michael Phelps, and Lady GaGa

3. Here is The Low Down on How Non-Profits Can Use Facebook… from Facebook   

This Page is a resource for non-profits and other organizations for the social good. It  The page was built to harness the power of Facebook and bring positive change to the world according to Facebook. This is facebooks own hints and recommendations to use facebook for NGO’s. 

It includes What can other non-profits learn from ONE? ONE is an advocacy and campaigning organization of over 2 million people and growing, from all walks of life all around the world, uniting as one against extreme poverty. It is a non-Profit with 84,464 fans

If you go to http://www.facebook.com/ONE you’ll see that the default tab you land on is a tab called “JOIN ONE” rather than the tab “wall.” This provides a more customized experience and also promotes sign-ups for ONE’s email list, something that is important to many organizations.

 4.” So you Want a Facebook Fan Page for Your Nonprofit? Here’s the Scoop!” 

 A question that everyone asks – “When should my group set up a Fan Page versus a Facebook Group?
Best Answer yet:   Set up a Facebook FanPage as your main presence or outpost and use a group for more adhoc, smaller organizing. Some great examples of how Non Profits are using Facebook check out these 3 NGOs use of Facebook.  Red Cross Fan Page,  One Campaign and Stanford University.

 5. “How To Create A Powerful And Engaging Facebook Page”

 Facebook is undoubtedly one of the most popular social media services used by individuals, businesses and non-profits to connect with people. Groups and Pages are excellent options to leverage the large network and reach of this popular platform. Lately, Facebook Pages have become quite popular among businesses to show their presence in a much better way building engaging and long lasting relationships with users and fans. Let’s see how to make an interactive Facebook page that gives a reason to your fans to stay, interact and promote your cause.

 6. “New Facebook Pages: A Guide For Social Media Marketers”  

As more and more marketers use Facebook as a key conduit for brands online, it is important to note some of the new changes to their Business Pages. Following last fall’s overall redesign, these pages will now migrate to the same Wall and tabs design that personal profiles have used.

7. “How To Build Your Personal Brand on Facebook”

 With over 200 million active users, Facebook has become a personal, product and corporate branding hub. Every brand that exists on Facebook  has the same core features and benefits, such as the ability to create a page, share resources, add multimedia and much more. You have a unique opportunity to leverage this platform for career success or as a playground for you and your closest friends.

Look out for my next post which will have another 6 more great resources on using Facebook, for companies, personal branding and NGOs.

The processes involved in creating a social media campaign has been open to many discussions by many people as to how to do it effectively and as I indicated in my last blog I would give a further insight  into one type of approach to social media marketing after my recent discussions with Fi Bendall.  Her approach requires initially setting a baseline so that the success of the campaign can be measured. It also requires that thorough background research be done before the campaign is implemented. Following is an overview of her processes and strategy. 

Step 1: Research & Prepare

This involves the following Activities

• Identify social network channels, e.g; social media neighbourhoods, third party influencers, etc
• Identify activists target habits – online by segment
• Identify Opinion leaders in the group – This is done  by targetting activists who frequently offer or are elicited for category-related advice through Self Designation (opinion leader scales*),  Key Informant,  Professional Activity,  Digital Trace and Sociometry
• Identify the best “Social media marketing” practices against each group and their habits
• Listen and monitor the tone of the communications online, so any social material we create is in the “tone and speak” of the online communities.

Step 2: Engage Due Diligence

No social media campaign should be undertaken without due diligence. The community not organisations owns the social channel. Due diligence in social media is to “listen”. Providing a clear insight into “What’s on our minds”; “What’s our emotive triggers”; “How are we speaking – tone and language” ; “Where are we hanging out online – What is the online social neighbourhood?”.

This research and preparation grounds any strategy and recommendations, it is also a process of ongoing analysis to keep up with our society and their thoughts to best serve the right message, the right engagement, at the right time, for maximum viral input.

Step 3. Monitor Blogs and Provide Feedback

• So you can use blogs for ongoing research and, following the conversation threads to track influencers and engage with them as advocates
• Posting feedback, helping your client through training to conduct an ongoing, resource light post back strategy and implementation
• Providing snap-shot tracking reports
• Monitor the activity with access to your own analytics to see where the uptake and successes are to prove:
• Measure the volume of traffic
• Breakout the volume of uptake generated by the social media marketing activity as opposed to the normal traffic
• Measure the impact of the social media marketing activity

 Step 4. Engage with Blogs

We will engage with specific elements of the blog community to create new highly emotive conversations and useful content pieces to the online wider audience than the traditional activist base you already has. We will create debate to the broadest reach of audience who may not even be aware of the issues. We will put the issues front of mind through powerful emotive commentary that they can connect with. We will understand the emotive arc through the initial research phase of the activity, because we will ask them.

Step 5. Enable Social Media Online Consumer Relations through

• Listening to online conversations
• Identifying opinion leaders
• Developing content based on what is learnt
• Participating, commenting and generating interest
• Becoming a resource
• Supporting your client to build your online personality through the training program
• Syndicating RSS content
• Using your social media user generated content, cut up and repurposed for Online Consumer Relations.

 Step 6. Optimise the Social Media by

• Increasing your linkability
• Making tagging and bookmarking easy
• Rewarding inbound links
• Helping your content travel
• Encouraging the mash-up
• Implementing “Keyword” strategy incorporation
• Developing contextual links within the body of the content
• Citation strategy

Step 7: Reporting

1. Pre-activity word of mouth benchmark report will be supplied at the start of the research,

2. Ongoing snap-shot reports to measure results. The reports will measure social media marketing & advocacy success

3. Ensuring Check’s and Benchmarks are  enabled by:

• Using ‘control areas’ where the word of mouth campaign is run in order to measure the effect of the campaign
• Measuring changes in word of mouth pre-and post-actions and track online word of mouth to measure changes of the ratio of word of mouth
• Tracking recommendation rates and how they change over time
• Including an online element that allows use of web statistics and online feedback to measure reach and participation levels
• Reporting on the brand behaviour within the environment and the impact on the brand as a result of the new social contact methods

4. Final Report 

In Summary What Should be the Outcomes of  the Social Media Marketing?

• Extending communications beyond the organisations traditional borders
• Speaking the voice of the individual
• Targeting influential’s
• Encouraging engagement with the community
• Being sensitive to “social speak”
• Creating critical authenticity
• Becoming highly interconnected
• Make news travel fast
• Enabling feedback and interaction as a fundamental core of your activities

The use of Social Media and its role in helping Charities and Not For Profit Organisations engage with their community is becoming very evident. I was talking to Fi Bendall the other day who has worked in this area extensively, including Amnesty International Australia and Earth Hour Global and below is a snap shot of her findings.

“The impact of social media, from blogs, to video, to the rise of user-generated content has been widely reported. The impact of the social web on society has had a major impact on how the public are addressing global problems, and how citizens are becoming social activists to raise money and support for social causes through the power of social media.

Online sites, such as Kiva.Org, Causes on Facebook, DonorsChoose and Change.org have been pioneers in the way humanity views philanthropy and activism, as well as how many individuals go about trying to improve life on our planet. Online social activism has become a sector bound together by a growing critical mass, in online usership, online community with an expanding acceptance in the worlds of philanthropy, politics, activism and marketing.

The online world is always “turned on” and always “connected” and delivers results, for example:

The US 2008 presidential campaign generated tens of millions in contributors supporting candidates, in particular the social media campaign by Obama being the most famous. Kiva.Org, a not-for-profit start up uses social networking to direct loans from everyday people to small-scale entrepreneurs in the developing world. It grew from zero to more than 270,000 leaders in less than three years making loans of $26,149,810 USD. DonorsChoose, hot-housed in a Bronx public school just after the year 2000 delivered more than $25million USD to school teachers. GlobalGiving a not-for-profit founded in 2002, has funnelled more than $6million USD to 900 projects around the world. Cause on Facebook leveraged social networks most popular hub, to sign up 12 million supporters and raise $2.5 million USD for various causes.

People have the ability to get vocal, be part of a solution and lobby governments in a way they never have before. Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans sent the online social community into a frenzy of donations, missing persons posting and consequentially firing up American society’s horror and sheer anger at the latency of their governments response to the disaster. The online call to action became so loud that the Bush Administration had to make a public announcement on the issues of getting aid into the State so late. The online social environment is a fertile ground for fast-moving social activism, allowing for an individuals charitable involvement that is both personal and open to the world. Together through social connections, Ben Rattray, founder of Change.org calls them the “mega-public” a vast inter-connected army of people, who at least in part, want to change the world.

Of late, Australia’s own natural disaster, the Victorian Bushfires is still generating a mention every 9 minutes online as the author types, within 24 hours of the major centre of the fires hitting, tens of thousands of people joined a supporters group on Facebook, millions in donations were generated through Twitter and Tweetfestivals alone.

Social media has allowed for “self-organisation” and it delivers online social activism, non-profit fundraising, connected social entrepreneurship, political organising, flash causes and digital philanthropy. It overlaps into the larger world of organised charity and non-profits of politics and policy organisation and changes them. Millions are using social networks to raise money, push for votes, bring attention to some cause, big or small, that will make the world a better place. It is important to note that the most successful organisations using the social media channel are the ones who adjust their business and social models as they go along to keep in tune with the online highly emotive community chatter.

Social Media Audiences and Social Causes

There are distinctive differences emerging between the generations online, that any social media cause campaign should consider, in terms of content and strategy.

• 12-24 year olds – To their generation they live online, their causes are online and there is no separation between virtual and reality. They wear “the badge” even if their donations are the smallest of other demographic groups to make a statement.
• 24- 55 year olds – The most likely group to pass a message on, get vocal and behind a message, they will collaborate to move the wider collective group into making an action.
• 60 years old plus – The fastest growing audience online in Australia today and are recorded as being the most similar to the “tech savvy” as the younger audience demographic.

Sources: Mckinsey; Nielson; Audit Bureau of Circulation Au.

Social Media Demographic and Insights
Courtesy of the following Foundations: The Columbus Foundation, The Saint Paul Foundation and The San Francisco Foundation.
The analysis of social media power users revealed the group was younger than the traditional composition of donors one would find in a charity’s database. Forty-seven percent were aged 30-49, 40 percent were under the age of 30, and only 13 percent were 50 or older. Almost two thirds (62 percent) were female.

• 30 years and younger were not a high dollar donor generation: Only 4 percent donated $5,000 or greater in 2008, and only 11 percent donated more than $1,000.
• 20 percent of those between the ages of 30-49 gave more than $5,000 and 41 percent gave $1,000 or more, demonstrating potential for higher dollar contributions.
• 50 years and older, 47 percent gave more than $5,000 and 66 percent gave $1,000 or greater.
• The rest of the analysis focused on the 30-49 and over 50 age brackets as they represent the greatest opportunity for online cultivation of high dollar donors.
• 30-49 age brackets and the over 50 bracket have used social media to discuss philanthropy.
• 84 percent of the social media savvy aged 30-49 and 55 percent of those older than 50 used conversational media for these purposes.

N ote: This confirms social media is a potential growth area through which major donors can be cultivated.

Some of the statistics that show that “Trust” in social media is significant among social media savvy would-be donors.

Sixty one percent of those aged 30-49 trust social networks and blogs to provide important information, as is the case with 44 percent of those 50 years or older.

With 30-49 year olds, social media use is also very high with
* 91 percent of users participating in social networks
* 81 percent participating in blogs
* 56 percent participating in message boards.

Among those 50 and older
* 94 percent participate in social networks
*78 percent participate in blogs
* 60 percent participate in message boards.

Of all the forms of social media used by 30-49-year-olds, “only social networks and blogs received greater than 40 percent rankings” for “trust.” Specifically, 66 percent trust social networks and 50 percent trust blogs. In the over 50 bracket, 62 percent trust social networks and 42 percent trust blogs.

One of the most interesting learning’s from this data was that both the social media savvy groups in the 30-49 age bracket and the over 50′s prefer social media, with Blogs being the second most trusted source.
Whether for personal use or trust in third party sites, blogs represent the second most viable source of information next to social networks (among both the digital rich and the traditional brackets). After blogs, message boards, forums, wikis and review sites were all deemed more credible than videos or podcasts.

Social media savvy respondents demonstrate a significant opportunity for NGO’s to provide social media. Among 30-49 year olds, 81 percent said they would participate if the information was highly credible and of strong quality, and 77 percent said they would participate if it came from a trusted source. Even more telling, 86 percent of those 50 and older said they would participate if the information was highly credible and of strong quality, and 84 percent would participate if social media came from a trusted source.”

In the next post we will cover some of the processes involved in creating “Social Media Strategies”.