8 Indisputable Reasons To Use Twitter for Business Marketing

January 1, 2012 By Renee Leave a Comment

Twitter started in 2006 and since has expanded to 200 million users and 1.6 billion searches per day. It’s an ideal social media tool for business owners to connect with their customers in real-time, a huge asset to customer satisfaction.

However, many business owners find Twitter to be somewhat complex when first approached. Twitter also has etiquette and best practices far different than that of Facebook and LinkedIn which often leaves business owners perplexed and overwhelmed. But with a little practice and effort, Twitter can be a very effective business marketing tool for the 8 reasons outlined below.

1. Customer Service

Customers sometimes just want a quick question answered immediately….Twitter is the perfect platform for this. If the issue or question can be asked within 140 characters or less, typically it can be answered and diffused in 140 characters or less.

2. Reputation Management

Twitter allows you to easily monitor the sentiment surrounding your brand, it’s products and services. From here you can either thank the person who was singing your praises or intervene and attempt to make a dissatisfied customer happy again, thereby creating customer retention, another major benefit of Twitter

3. Lead Generation

Twitter is an easy platform to share any value-based information such as your company’s blog posts, eBooks and webinars, all essential inbound marketing content that will make your brand stand out from the crowd and appear as an industry expert. If you are using Twitter as a lead generation tool, make sure you are using landing pages that can capture a lead’s information before allowing access to the content.

4. Market Intelligence and Research

Twitter is a great way to gain insight from your customers quickly. Curious how your customers would like to receive sales promotional information, text or email? Ask them on Twitter. Would your customers prefer a downloadable coupon they can print off or a coupon code to be used in a shopping cart, or both? Ask them on Twitter.

5. Competitive Research

Twitter data is open to everyone by default and most companies who market on Twitter do not protect their tweets, so Twitter is ideal for monitoring your competition. Use a third party application such as Hootsuite to set up a stream and monitor keywords and mentions of your competition.

6. Keyword Phrase Opportunities

Another great way to engage with a targeted audience is to use the advanced search option and locate tweets via keyword phrases for a unique opportunity to reach out to people who would benefit from your product or service. For example, if someone tweets, “looking for a plumber” and your business is plumbing, you can monitor these keyword phrases in tweets via a 3rd party software and intervene.

7. Promote Other Social Networks

If you are having a sweepstakes on Facebook, share it on Twitter. If you just updated your company profile on LinkedIn, share it on Twitter. If you have strong engagement on a status update you posted to Facebook, share this on Twitter and encourage your followers to post their opinion. Cross promoting other sites allows your followers to get to know you better on your other networks as well and increase brand awareness.

8. Personalize Your Brand

Probably one of the most valuable reasons to use Twitter is it allows your brand to have a personality. People want to connect with people, not businesses. Your Twitter voice should be genuine and likable. If you accomplish this, you will create long-lasting customers who will likely become brand advocates.

Share a photo of your smiling co-worker, share an image of your trade show booth, ask a question that elicits an opinion from your followers, promote an offer exclusive to your followers, share a compelling quote and why you like it, get excited for the launch of your new product, re-tweet a customer’s kind comment about your brand and thank them, engage in conversations around your niche, share a video of your most recent conference event. This is the real power behind social media marketing and Twitter; you become relatable, valuable and inspire others to buy your products and services.

What other ways have you found Twitter to be a valuable asset to your marketing?

Need help keeping up with Twitter? Bee Social can help. We can completely manage your Twitter account for you, co-manage it with you, or consult with you on best practices, effective strategies and marketing campaigns. Contact Us to learn more.

If you found this post helpful, please share with your social networks!

Filed Under: Social Media, Twitter Tagged With: benefits of Twitter, business tweets, tweeting for business, Twitter, Twitter for business

Social Signals and Their Impact on Web SEO

October 7, 2011 By Renee 1 Comment

Why go to the trouble of having a Facebook fan page for a business? The truth is that social media has become an incredibly important driver of website traffic. Large search engines like Google frequently list sites such as YouTube, Twitter, or LinkedIn among the top organic results for a business name or organization. Even if a business owner has spent tremendous amounts of money on paid advertising, they are more likely to see results by creating free and popular listings on the major social media sites.

Social Signals

Facebook and Twitter in particular have become excellent social signals for what is popular or respected. A business without these sites will have difficulty attracting respect or bolstering their SEO. Although Facebook may seem like a giant distracting waste of time, its ubiquitous nature makes it easy for people to share and find sites they like across a much wider platform than traditional advertising. People tend to trust the recommendations of their “friends” more than they trust random advertising. When they see their friends “like” a business on Facebook or “follow” a particular business on Twitter, they are more likely to rate that business as being worthy of further notice.

Produce Content With Value

There is an art to attracting visitors and creating a following. Each of the popular social sites have certain unwritten rules that business owners should observe when trying to boost their overall web traffic. The first is that blatant “salesy” techniques are abhorred. The business owner must entice people to a sale or special offer without being condescending or overly promotional of his particular business. Secondly, content placed on the sites must be of some inherent value. Jamming any channel with low quality filler material will only alienate visitors, and may in fact result in the loss of “likes” or followers. Finally, learning how to interact with visitors is key to maintaining a good public face and keeping web traffic high.

The Value of Social Interaction

Business owners should set aside a time each day to respond to any comments, messages, or other responses they receive from the social sites. Google ranks pages not only by their SEO, but also by visitor interaction. If a page receives a higher number of page hits, and the average page view time is high, the search engine will subsequently classify that site as having greater relevance and boost it in the search rankings, which will only lead to more page visits. Responding to user commentary is one way to keep page visits high. A business that never interacts with its customers will lose valuable momentum. People won’t want to visit nearly as often, and the comment thread will grow dusty. A business that interacts with its customers will only encourage more visits and longer page views.

Sending out positive social signals is increasingly an important part of every business. In the past, there were receptionists whose entire job consisted of interacting with the public. Now, social media has become the new public face of a business. It’s time to learn how to smile, digitally.

If you found value in this post, please share with your social networks and send some SEO love my way

Best,

Social Media Manager

President, Bee Social, Inc

Filed Under: My Blog, SEO Tagged With: Google+, SEO, social media, social signals

Facebook Adds Subscription Button to Personal Profiles

September 19, 2011 By Renee 3 Comments

Yes, another Facebook change! How exciting! <—–sarcastic tone. This one mimics Twitter and the new Google+ Circles feature. Looks as if Facebook is trying to be everything every other social network is.

2 Benefits of the Facebook Subscription Button

You may have noticed the “Subscriptions” link under your profile picture. This new feature allows Facebook users to be able to ‘subscribe’ to other’s updates without even having to be their friend. This will help those who have capped out their friend limit at 5,000.

Also, more importantly, the new ‘subscribe’ button allows filtering out some status updates from your activity streams that have become too “noisy” or annoying or just simply not of interest to you without un-friending them.

Editing Subscription Update Preferences

By default, you are subscribed to all your existing friends. You can change this setting by clicking on “Subscriptions” under your profile picture, then you will see ‘Public Subscriptions’ and ‘Friend Subscriptions’.

Click on “Subscribed” next to your friend’s name to edit the updates you will see from them. Below are the options:

How many updates?

All updates
Most updates
Only important updates

What type of updates?

Life events
Status updates
photos and videos
games

Unsubscribe

Public Subscriptions

‘Public Subscriptions’ are those people whom you aren’t friends with but who provide entertaining or interesting content. I have subscribed to a nationally known social media marketing expert as well as a project manager at Facebook due to the nature of my business.

Hope that helps with understanding the new ‘subscribe’ button on your personal profile!

Share the Love!

If you found value in this post, please share with your social networks. Leave a comment below with your questions or personal experience/insight with Facebook subscriptions.

To Your Social Success,

Filed Under: Facebook, My Blog Tagged With: facebook, Facebook changes, Facebook subscriptions

Google+: All the Google Goodness and Then Some

August 3, 2011 By Renee 16 Comments

Many people have asked my thoughts and opinion on Google+, so I decided to write a post to share all that I know, all that I like and what’s on the horizon.

OK first off, it’s Google, so you might want to take it seriously. As have 20 million users within the first 3 weeks of its debut. Secondly, I loathed thinking I needed to be on yet another social platform. So just know, that I entered into Google+ with a bad attitude. But all in all, it has been a smooth and worthy transition.

All the Google+ Goodies That I Like

Targeted Sharing

Love this. Finally I can post something and not worry who I may be offending. Google+ has the concept of “circles” where once you make a connection with someone, you add them to a category of circle that you have created. For example: family, friends, colleagues, social media superstars, clients, high school friends, college friends, geeks, shutterbugs, etc. could be individual circles that you can choose from to put them in. Now you have the ability to target your message to groups of people it is relevant to.

Easy Access to the Google Peripheral Applications

Google Docs, Google Reader, Google Calendar and of course Google+ are easily accessible within my Gmail email account. If you are like me, I pretty much live from my Gmail account and have it open all day long. (See my future blog post on how to import all your email address into Gmail and have a cool email signature). So having easy access to all the other Google tools I use is very helpful. Also is allows for more efficient data dissemination as you have the ability to publish Google Docs to certain groups of people (or circles of people).

Hangouts

Google is pretty much the champion of video chat compared to Facebook. Google lets you video chat with up to 10 people at the same time, Facebook has Skype now, but its capability is limited to one-on-one video chat. Another cool feature is you have the ability to launch a YouTube video right within the group chat and all participants can watch video simultaneously.

I am already imagining the usefulness of Hangouts with my clients weekly or monthly meetings, especially those who have multiple decision-makers. Also, I create video training tutorials for the business owner who wants to tackle social media on their own with my consultation. In this way, if they are having difficulty with a concept or set up, we can view the video together and I can help assist them where they are having an issue.

To start a hangout is easy, there is a “Start a Hangout” button on the right sidebar of your Goolge+ homepage. You will need a web cam (most newer computers already have these built in), Google Voice and Google Video plugins installed to initially use it. Once you launch it, it will prompt you to do this.

Huddles

This is a group-based text messaging feature where you have the ability to chat with several friends at once from your smart phone. The interface is easy to understand and super simple, just like Google+. There is a downside, at least for right now, you can only “huddle” up with Google+ friends. But of course that will change once Google+ gets more popular. This app is good for Android and iPhone devices.

I could see this being helpful at business conferences similar to Twitter, but a much more tighly-focused audience or “circle” of your colleagues.

There’s a “Go Mobile” button on the right sidebar of the homepage if you want an install URL sent to your phone.

Sparks

Sparks are a way to catch up on your favorite topics. Once you click “Sparks” in the left sidebar, it will prompt you to enter a keyword of your topic of interest, then just click “Add Interest” From here it will create and save a feed of the topic that is generated from many different websites.

This is a great way to quickly find content to share with your circles. I use Google Reader similarly. Yet another way Google+ is a one-stop shop with everything at your fingertips.

What’s to Come: Google+ for Business

This feature is rolling out soon, within a few months, and should prove to be even better than Facebook Pages with regards to branding and messaging. Plus there is rumor that Google Adwords will be integrated. We shall see and I will keep you posted, literally, on the topic.

If you found value in this post, I would love for you to share it with your social networks. What are your thoughts on Google+, yea or nay?

Socially Yours,

Renee Harrison

Social Media Manager, Bee Social, Inc

Filed Under: Google+, My Blog Tagged With: Circles, Google Plus, Google+, GooglePlus, Hangouts, Huddles, Sparks

Facebook Sponsored Stories

April 2, 2011 By Renee Leave a Comment

Facebook recently introduced Sponsored Stories. Yeah, I know, ‘Sponsored Stories’ may sound sweet and innocent, but it clearly is another way for Facebook to get yet even more wealthy and another way for brands to advertise on Facebook. Sponsored stories leverages interactions that people have had with your brand and publishes it as an ad on the right-hand side of the news feed. It works remarkably well because essentially it is a word-of -mouth recommendation of your brand, which is the best kind.

A 2-Step Process

1) Someone “likes” an app, “likes” a brand, or checks into a location via Facebook Places.

2) If the brand or app they “liked” or the business they checked into is set up in Sponsored Stories in a Facebook Ads campaign, then the friends of the person who “liked” or “checked in” will see the activity in the right column on the feed page.

The Value is 2-Fold

1) to users: a trusted recommendation from a trusted friend is the best kind

2) for businesses: it produces word-of-mouth marketing that is scalable and predictable

4 Types of Stories

The following 3 options work exceptionally well for larger, more popular brands that are looking to increase their fan count. Someone is more likely to act on a friend’s recommendation of a brand they already like and trust and will prompt them to “like” it too for possible deals and specials and timely updates.

1) Page ‘Likes”

2) Application interactions

3) Place check-ins to a physical location

For 1-3 above, friends of fans will see this content or Sponsored Story. (i.e. Renee Harrison just “liked” Social Media Examiner”). If you think about it, this is very valuable. I have 4,468 friends as of this posting. When I like an app or a fan page that is featured on “Sponsored Stories,” I have just exposed that brand or app to that many people. And I am just one person who “liked” it.

4) Page posts-which is your latest published post on your fan page. This one is a little different than 1-3 above. It is the only one that will only be seen by people who are already a fan of the page. The benefit of this is that it will re-engage your fans to come back to your page, or simply continue to build brand awareness and exposure and keep your brand top of mind. Even though your fans could see your page posts in their news feed, this isn’t always the case, especially if they have several friends with several updates or if your post wasn’t a popular one, these kind of posts can quickly get buried and never seen again. Sponsored Stories allows the update to be seen for a longer time so the majority of your fans will get a chance to see it.

I feel option #4 is best for smaller or younger brands as it keeps your fans engaged and exposed to your brand which is essential for building a following. Use this with Facebook Ads for optimal results.

Incorporate With Facebook Ads

Facebook encourages brands to use Sponsored Stories in conjunction with Facebook Ads for the most effective marketing. This is especially true for brands with smaller fan bases. Sponsored Stories is a message from fans of the page, Facebook Ads are a message from the business. Two different strategies that work for different reasons. Sponsored Ads has the same pricing and structure as Facebook Ads. You can also run both simultaneously and combine to meet your ad budget.

Facebook News Feed Optimization: 3 Tips On How To Get Your Updates Into Your Target Users News Feeds

March 24, 2011 By Renee 13 Comments

Every wonder if your status updates are even being seen by others in your network?

That is a topic that I investigated for my own purposes and came up with a wealth of information I felt every business page admin should know about.

Many Facebook users don’t even know that when you view your news feed, you can view it by the default setting which is ‘Top news’ or by switching it to ‘Most recent’. ‘Top news’ is all the updates Facebook deems most important to you, where ‘Most recent’ is all updates by all of your friends and pages you’ve ever liked. So the vast majority of Facebook users are viewing their home feeds in ‘Top news’ because 1) they don’t pay attention to this and don’t know it exists or 2) don’t know or care to know what the differences are.

Which leads us to a bit of a problem…..how can you get on Facebook’s most popular list and get your updates seen in the ‘Top news’ feed?

Facebook has a well-planned algorithm called EdgeRank which determines which updates actually get shown and to whom. It assigns points to your posting (which they refer to as an ‘object’) by how many interactions you are getting (which they refer to as an ‘edge’). The more edges your object has, the more likely you will be featured on the ‘Top news’ feed of your friends who have liked your page.

So to break it down:

Increased EdgeRank = Visibility
Decreased EdgeRank = Obscurity

News Feed Optimization Tips to Achieve Increased EdgeRank

1. Relevancy/Relationships-how much engagement you are receiving and the frequency of these interactions

2. The Type of Engagement Activity-this will determine how many EdgeRank points your post receives.

Friends that stalk you=good. If you have a friend who is repeatedly seeking out your page and interacting on it (i.e. clicking on links and viewing photos, etc.), this will help you get seen not only more often in the their newsfeed, but others as well.

You stalking a friend=not good. You will not appear more often in their news feed by doing this, so quit being weird like that

Links to other content on the web trump normal status updates. Facebook values this more as it drives user engagement. When someone clicks that link-you get EdgeRank points.

Photos and Videos trump links. Because both of these deliver more clicks as compared to a regular text update or a link, Facebook loves videos and photos postings and will give extra brownie points when someone clicks on these.

The power of a comment on your post is better yet. This will get you even more points and seen on even more target user’s feeds. Ask your audience an engaging question from time to time to elicit comments.

Here is a bit of advice to keep in mind when adding friends who you will want to suggest your business page to: the more popular they are (i.e. 600+ friends) the less likely your status update will make it to their ‘Top news’ feed as you are then competing with many more updates. So when possible, add friends who have a network of less than 200 friends which will increase the chances that your update will get seen.

3. Timeliness-It is best to receive your comments, likes and clicks the day of or the day after the posting. Facebook values recent activity.

The Game Plan

The Problem: So how does one get people to interact with their postings if they aren’t even getting seen in the first place?

The Solution: Get a posse of friends and employees who will volunteer to help you in your quest to get ranked better and get your content seen. Make sure they all obviously have a Facebook account and that they currently “like” the business page. This should only have to be a temporary period of time. How long it will take will depend on the commitment to quality engagement and the number of volunteers. Just have them start engaging per the above outlined tips and over time, you will start generating some of that natural social buzz that you deserve. Facebook will start taking notice of your increased popularity and award you with a ‘Top news’ worthy ranking and your post’s exposure will vastly increase to your target market.

If you found value in this post, please share with your social networks or kindly leave a comment below.

President, Bee Social, LLC

Social Media Manager

Filed Under: Facebook, My Blog, Social Media Tagged With: facebook, facebook business page, facebook fan page, Facebook news feed, Facebook news feed optimization, news feed optimization

4 Reasons To Claim Your Local Business Listing on the Web

March 14, 2011 By Renee 8 Comments

Remember the yellow pages not too long ago, when nearly every business could be found all in one place?

Well, now we have online yellow pages, in a sense.

If your business does not have a website, isn’t active on social media, and you aren’t listed in any directories, then you are virtually non-existent on the web. Even when you do have a website, being listing will dramatically increase traffic to this website as you will be able to highlight it in the directory.

So how much did that yellow page add cost you? Well guess what? Most of the directories are F-R-E-E, yes those lovely word every business owner loves to hear. Best of the Web is $149.99/yearly. But the other 5 sites I share below are free.

So, wait no longer and get listed today!

Here are the top 4 reasons you need to list your business online:

1. It will give you control over how the search engines index you.

2. It will prevent spammers from hijacking your business.

3. It will improve your SEO rankings-the more directories Google can find you at, the better. Search engines favor directory sites.

4. Increase web and foot traffic to your business. Your business listing allows you to add detailed information about your business, including your website URL as well as photos and sometimes video.

Most directories allow for reviews of your business, but don’t let that stop you from getting listed. Look at it this way, if someone posts a negative review about you, you can’t stop it, they are going to whether you have your business listed or not. However, if your business is listed, you will have a better chance of defending your good name. (Learn how Reputation Management can help you with this.)

Here are 6 of the top places on the web where you can claim your business listing, click on the website name and it will direct you to the proper location:

Check out our other blog posts on Yelp and Google Places for more information on these sites.

If you enjoyed this post and found value in it, please comment below and/or share with your social networks.

To Your Social Success,

Filed Under: Location Marketing, My Blog, Online Business Directories Tagged With: business directory listing, directory listing, location marketing

8 Facebook Business Fan Pages Done Right

February 10, 2011 By Renee 20 Comments

Why should your business have a fan page?

Well, first off Facebook is the 2nd most trafficked website in the world according to Alexa and Compete. Facebook has 500 million active users, 150 million of those active users are currently using Facebook via mobile devices and the average American spends 7 hours per week on Facebook according to a recent Neilson report.

That combined with poor ROI on traditional marketing methods is reason enough to consider having a Facebook business fan page.

The advantages of engaging with existing fans and new fans is something that can be easily accomplished on a Facebook fan page, when done right.

Here are 9 examples of business fan pages who have nailed the Facebook fan page concept effectively. They are engaging with their audience and bringing in new business because of it.

1. ChickfilA
Starts off as the menu as their landing page with clickable images and text to their actual website. If you are a brick and mortar business it’s a good idea to have a store locator widget, like ChikfilA does here.

2. Russ Robinson Photography
There is a clear call to action the minute non-fans land on the page, plus the owner has added in a 10% coupon incentive for liking the page. He also has a “Share Us!” tab which easily allows for the user to invite their friends to like your page as well. Also notice the Foursquare tab Place Widget. It shows an actual map and address to his studio. Russ also spotlights his work and creates promotions based on fan feedback.

3. 1- 800- Flowers

The feature I think is great on this site is the tab called “Guy’s Guide To Flowers”. Through Facebook insights you are able to get demographics on visitors to the page, obviously more men were visiting the site and 1- 800 – Flowers had a great idea providing this male specific how-to tab. They also do a great job of encouraging fans to comment, give their thoughts, ideas and feedback. If you are an eCommerce store you can integrate that into your fan page as they did here in their Facebook shoplet via Alvenda.

4. Kampgrounds of America (KOA)

Again, a great call to action landing page is visible to all non-fans of the site. You only have a few seconds to get someone’s attention, you want them to click that like button before they leave and may never find you again. KOA also have an Involver Facebook app that shares all their other location-based fan pages. This fan page also offers a YouTube tab with fan videos of family camping trips. Also they incorporate fan camping photos at area KOA Campgrounds.

5. Intel

Great use of promotions and contest that engage fans and keep them coming back. The Facebook Wildfire app is a great for running contests. Intel will sometimes interview their employees and have them explain the quality of the products they create.

6. Firehouse Subs

Great landing tab for non-fans promoting their birthday subs. They have their other social sites prevalent and share button obvious at the top. Anything you can do to make it easy for someone to share and connect will dramatically increase their chances of doing just that. They do a good job of engaging fans in the Notes tab where they ask their fans opinions and include exclusive offers.

7. Ritz-Carlton

The landing tab for non-fans immerses them into their various amazing resorts and services by using beautiful photography. Another way of engaging their fans is by sharing interesting location-based resort factoids creating stories.

8. Teavana

The non-fan landing tab has the like button visible and obvious as well as the great benefits of their products which in itself will help to immediately engage the user. There are obvious links to their other social sites. They also add some social proof by displaying photos of famous people that like their page. A great way to engage their fans is by a Tea of The Week tab along with a What’s In Your Cup tab where fans send in their photos and can win a contest.

Hopefully you have gained some great insight and tips on how to create or spruce up your Facebook fan page. Bee Social has Facebook fan page customization services that can help bring out the best in your business and engage your fans. You can learn more on our Services tab.

Just remember these pointers when you create your Facebook fan page:

choose a strategy that fits your brand
create multiple custom tabs to highlight your products/services
ask interesting and fun questions
try to create an experience for your audience-spread your passion about your brand
make it fun with activities, polls, and contests that will keep your fans coming back
use video
take risks-you can always go back and change it
always, always publish great content that offers value

What are some fan pages that you have found to be particularly engaging? What apps or widgets did they have that made it work better?

If you found value in this post, please share with your social networks and/or comment below.

To Your Social Success,

Filed Under: Facebook, Facebook, My Blog, Social Media Tagged With: Facbook fan page, facebook business page, facebook fan page customization, facebook fan page examples

Google+: All the Google Goodness and Then Some

All the Google+ Goodies That I Like

Targeted Sharing

Easy Access to the Google Peripheral Applications

Hangouts

Huddles

Sparks

What’s to Come: Google+ for Business

4 Reasons To Claim Your Local Business Listing on the Web

About Us

About

Follow Us Here:

Like our Fan Page:

Welcome to Bee Social!

Social Proof

Take our poll!

The Ultimate in Syndicating Content

I Use FreshBooks for Invoicing

Hootsuite makes my life sweeter!

I Heart Aweber!

Fully Automate Twitter

Best Web Hosting

1. Customer Service

2. Reputation Management

3. Lead Generation

4. Market Intelligence and Research

5. Competitive Research

6. Keyword Phrase Opportunities

7. Promote Other Social Networks

8. Personalize Your Brand

Social Signals

Produce Content With Value

The Value of Social Interaction

2 Benefits of the Facebook Subscription Button

Editing Subscription Update Preferences

Share the Love!

All the Google+ Goodies That I Like

Targeted Sharing

Easy Access to the Google Peripheral Applications

Hangouts

Huddles

Sparks

What’s to Come: Google+ for Business

A 2-Step Process

The Value is 2-Fold

4 Types of Stories

Incorporate With Facebook Ads

Sponsored Story Quick Facts

Every wonder if your status updates are even being seen by others in your network?

News Feed Optimization Tips to Achieve Increased EdgeRank

The Game Plan

About Us

Follow Us Here:

Like our Fan Page:

Welcome to Bee Social!

Social Proof

Take our poll!

Categories

The Ultimate in Syndicating Content

I Use FreshBooks for Invoicing

Hootsuite makes my life sweeter!

I Heart Aweber!

Fully Automate Twitter

Best Web Hosting