4 Reasons I Answer College Students’ Emails

24 Oct

If you’re a professional, I’m sure that you’ve received at one point or another an inquiry from a college student asking about jobs, internships or advice. I respond and I think you should too. This is why:

1. People answered my emails when I was a college student.

I’ve written before how I got my first job in Boston. I sent a lot of emails asking people about their companies or for informational interviews. Granted, it was just one of those informational interviews that turned into a job. But all the coffees and email exchanges I had with other professionals provided me with motivation, direction, momentum and confidence. I am so thankful to the people who helped me, in every little and big way they did. 2 or so years later, how could I not pay it forward?

Granted, I can’t offer a ton of long-term career advice or hindsight. I’m too young still myself. But I can offer a pep-talk/confidence boost/talk about what has or hasn’t worked for me so far. Considering similar conversations I’ve had with people just a few years older than me, I know how even that can be quite helpful.

2. The college student you meet today is the employee you hire tomorrow.

In startupland, we talk a lot about how tough it is to hire talent. The right culture fit and the right skillset is tough to come by. Then we also talk about the importance of networking. There’s a missing link, though. We emphasize the importance of networking with people who can help us, like VCs or more experienced professionals for mentorship. I don’t think we talk enough about the opposite end of that spectrum, which is spending time with an up-and-comer who is that future talent you can add to your team.

3. I remember where I came from.

It seems like everyone wants a developer or a community manager/social media whatchamacallit/something-or-other these days. Where are these people? Well, they’re in college. They’re young. They’re doing annoying things that 20-year-olds do, like joining fraternities and drinking for any special occasion possible, like it being laundry day or Monday or maybe signing their emails to you with emoticons. In addition to internships, yes, that’s what some of Boston’s most promising young entrepreneurs did merely four or so years ago. They might not immediately come off to you as a child prodigy in that email or by a first glimpse at their LinkedIn.

That doesn’t mean they’re not an “A-player!” (And seriously, what the hell is an “A player?”) What it means is that they just don’t know what they don’t know, but they want to know and that’s why they reached out. It also means that ambition and drive can come with a lack of focus, because young ambitious people want to conquer the world. But if you have a conversation with someone and steer that motivation towards a clear direction of the right internships and experiences, they grow into the “A-player” people so dearly want to hire.

My favorite interns, and in my opinion the most successful ones, have been those that were hungry to improve – not necessarily the ones that did everything perfect. Perfect plateaus.

4. I’m busy. So what.

Social media/internet burnout is real. I haven’t blogged here in two months, and I’m inundated with a lot of “communication” in general per the nature of running social media accounts for work. Just like you, there are a ton of DM’s, @replies and emails coming at me. Maintaining ownership of my own time, timeline and inbox is important so I have time to communicate and spend time with the people I love offline.

We’re generally too busy and say yes too often, when it really should be a choice between “Hell yeah!” or “No.” I wish more people saw responding to college students as a “hell yeah!” kinda of an opportunity.

Respond to college students. Don’t just reply to the rockstars. Reply to the hot messes who need honest feedback and give honest feedback. Have coffee with someone. It won’t kill you, actually it’s kinda fun. Expect some of them to flake on you and not even respond back to your advice. Roll your eyes and move on, because there’s another student who will take your feedback and could make an absolute rockstar developer or community manager/social media whatchamacallit one day. If we want to find talent, we can’t forget the source of it.

We Are Joining HubSpot!

18 Aug

Today, my company oneforty is thrilled to officially announce we are joining inbound marketing software company HubSpot. You can read the release from HubSpot here and a note from my CEO Laura Fitton on the oneforty blog.

I’m here to tell you a little more about what’s next for me and why I’m excited to join HubSpot. I am honestly, genuinely happy to join them. You’d have to see the goofy grin on my face in person when talking about it to probably fully believe and appreciate that, but I am truly fired up about it.

For those of you who don’t know what HubSpot does, they make software that helps marketers get found by customers through blogging, social media and SEO. Since their Performable acquisition, they now include even more tools that help with “MOFU” or middle of the funnel activities like email and A/B testing. This video helps explain:

Ever since I learned about the company in 2009 and visited HubSpotTV, I’ve chugged the HubSpot Koolaid hard. I read David Meerman Scott’s New Rules of Marketing and PR on spring break in Cancun and Brian and Dharmesh’s Inbound Marketing Book on the T in Boston. I’ve downloaded me some eBooks, graced my followers’ streams with many a HubSpot blog post and gazed longingly into the slides of Dan Zarrella’s science of social media webinars. I am a fangirl who has learned a ton from the free content they offer their community members and tried to replicate that with some things for oneforty.

For me, HubSpot is a great personal opportunity and I feel really lucky to have this in front of me. First off, I look good in orange. :P Also, I’m looking forward to working with and learning from marketing pros Mike Volpe and Jeanne Hopkins. I will also still get to work with my friends and oneforty co-workers Mike Champion, Laura Fitton and Jeremy Crane. I will gain experience in inbound marketing at a much more massive scale. They generate upwards of 40k leads a month and it’s a chance for me to grow in areas like metrics and social media, working with an even wider audience. I hope we prove ourselves with content and customer service to the community I built with oneforty and show them why they should come along for this journey with us.

Throughout the past year at oneforty I’ve learned so much about marketing, building community and startups. Working last night I stumbled into old notes from back in April when we were still thinking of a name for SocialBase.

I gotta be honest with ya, this piece of scrap paper might be my new favorite material thing. It represents a time to me when we were building something from nothing. This. Is. Startup.

It’s not parties with brogrammers at SXSW, launch day when you get that one big press hit because you got funding and everyone loves you or anything at all like the movie The Social Network. This is hard work. It’s confusing. Like slow dancing in middle school. Know what I’m saying?

Most days in startuplife are unremarkable and they aren’t for the faint of heart. It means being up at midnight thinking about the name for a new product or coding. If the idea of the everyday and the creativity doesn’t excite you, with or without the glamour of press and “startup” label, then this isn’t for you. (And that’s ok.)

At oneforty I, along with my amazing freelance team, have written a lot about the tools you should use to manage and measure social media strategy for the oneforty blog. Blog posts have included:

I have something to admit: none of this actually matters. Tools, timing, keywords and ROI aside – community is really about making people feel like they are a part of something special. You need to understand people to do marketing and build community. The rest is details, but without this foundation, you’re screwed.

People want to feel validated – People not only want answers to the questions they have, but they like feeling as though you have had the same questions yourself before. Being a community manager is about striking the balance between being the thought leader and the informed friend.

People want fantastic customer service – On social media, just being responsive can win. For years we have emailed customer service “contact us” emails and not gotten so much as a peep. We’ve waited on hold. Twitter is real-time – it feels more immediate. Just feeling heard by a company when you’ve got a question or you’re complaining about an issue goes a long way. Usually in my experience, those who take the time to complain have also taken the time to thank us, publicly. It’s social proof.

People want you to have an opinion – It surprised me when our negative blog posts highlighting “common mistakes” or “things to avoid” did so well, but then as I learned about people more, it really didn’t. People want to know specifically what they should or shouldn’t do. They want actionable takeaways. B2B? Tell them what email marketing tactics suck. B2C? Tell them what nutritious food to buy to lose weight or what clothes to buy to “get the look for less.” Tell them. That’s why they visited your site.

Joining HubSpot means joining an organization that lives and breathes this. These are the cornerstones of inbound marketing. They have an opinion, offer educational content that helps community members learn about marketing long before the sale and deliver incredible customer service. They get people, engage them and help people with their businesses. I’m thrilled to be a part of an exploding company that aims to be nothing less than the “Salesforce of marketing” and can’t wait for this next chapter to begin.

To close, I would just say thank you to the oneforty community. Getting to know many of you one-on-one has been a joy and continuing our friendships with the HubSpot community will be a fun journey to take together. And last, but most importantly I offer an admittedly vague “thank you” to my (*real*) friends and family, as you know who you are. Regardless of any professional success, there are people who loved me when I was an unpaid intern and a waitress. There are new people in my life who didn’t know me then, but would love me no matter what I did for a living. Those people have encouraged me and supported me throughout this journey. I’m like a freaking walking Hallmark card, but I love you to the moon and back.

“Where we’re going we don’t need roads.”

To the next chapter!

How to: Decide When to Pay for Social Media Monitoring

16 Aug

This post originally appeared on the oneforty blog. It’s being reposted here as part of my blogging portfolio.

Often times, people are hesistant to invest in a social media monitoring tool of any kind. This is understandable: When you are unsure of the value of social media, it’s hard to justify throwing money at it. This is why measurement is important. But therein lies a catch 22: paid monitoring tools offer better metrics.

In his recent blog post, Jeremiah Owyang recommends that organizations invest in social business tools and talent based on market research and scale investment by their experience with social media. On page seven of his report he offers a quiz that’ll help you bench mark your social business maturity and then see where you should be investing.

There are plenty of free and cheap ways to monitor mentions of your brand in social media.  You can set up search terms in Tweetdeck, Seesmic or Hootsuite for your brand, competitors and industry keywords and track Twitter conversations that are relevant to your company. You can use this monitoring for lead generation by responding to those conversations. Try Twilerts for an email digest of these search terms, or Tweet Alarm to get notifications so you don’t have to constantly be watching Twitter for these mentions. To track news of these search terms, set up Google Alerts and subscribe to an RSS or email digest of your searches through Social Mention. For local searches, use Twitter’s Advanced search. Want to hack together a free monitoring dashboard of your own? Add an RSS feed of your Twitter searches to iGoogle.

Ultimately, though, these really are only temporary solutions. Eventually you are going to want to crank up the volume on your monitoring and get a solution that offers deeper analytics, more integrations and more versatility.  Here are some indicators that you have reached that point:

1. You aren’t just doing Twitter anymore.

Maybe you aren’t just managing a Twitter account, but you are also managing a Facebook page for your business. Or, you also have a blog or are tracking keywords for SEO. Upgrading to a tool like Raven Tools can consolidate your efforts all in one place. This can save you time and help you close the loop between all of your online marketing efforts. Integrate the keywords you are trying to rank for into your Tweets and blog post headlines, compare your mentions on Facebook to your mentions on Twitter. Raven Tools offers three pricing plans, $19/month, $99/month and $249/month.

2. You want to keep track of the interactions you have with Twitter followers.

If you are doing all of this work to monitor keywords on Twitter and engage with prospects, all of that lead generation is going to waste if you aren’t keeping record of the conversations you are having. A CRM tool has contact management features to help you take notes and add tasks to your Twitter contacts. BlueCamroo has a Social Network Scout feature included at all pricing levels that searches for leads on Twitter according to the search terms that you set up. It them loads them into a prospect form for you to follow up with. BlueCamroo also has some pretty sophisticated email marketing features ingrained to help keep your web leads engaged in your pipeline. That’s a lot more than a little old Twitter client to offer for just $24/month to $149/month. Other options to look at? Social CRM tool Nimble, which is in private beta. Also consider how your company’s Twitter account can help with your support tickets and sales pipeline – look for tools with Zendesk and Salesforce integration like CoTweet (Enterprise level), Hootsuite Pro and Radian 6.

3. There is more than one person running your company’s Twitter account.

You may get a lot of Twitter followers or start to get a lot of mentions. Running your company’s Twitter account could become a time-consuming thing, and it may not just be a task for one person any more. Tools like Hootsuite Pro or CoTweet‘s Enterprise version offer Tweet assigning features that ensure your community is attended to and that all questions are answered by the right person. Plus, the right monitoring dashboard will keep track of your conversations with each customers so you have a record of that relationship.

4. There is more than one Twitter account for your company.

Perhaps your CEO now has a Twitter account, or you have a Twitter account wholly-dedicated to PR.  Maybe you have a Twitter account for support questions. There comes a time when you need to select a social media dashboard that everyone can work off of. Create unity in your organization so that everyone is on the same page with what your social media policy is. Your technology should enable someone from the marketing team to assign a Tweet to the support team if it is a question that pertains to them, and vice versa. This is what the challenge of being a social media strategist and evangelizing social media in an organization to establish a social business means. Investing in the right tool and getting internal buy-in is a huge process.

5. You want to measure more than just Bit.ly clicks.

For free, you can get Facebook Insights. You can also sync your Bit.ly links with most clients and track how many people are clicking on your links. You can get some analytics for free. Tweetreach is free for up to 50 Tweets. As you know, that’s not a ton of Tweets. To get really good measurement of your efforts, you’re going to have to pay a little bit. Tweetreach is a great tool for measuring your Twitter account, and it offers several pricing plans from $84.00/month to $899.00/month. First, decide what you want to measure, and that will help you choose a tool that best delivers those metrics. Ubervu is one lower-cost ($49/month, $179/month, $399/month) social media monitoring tool that offers competitive and sentiment analysis. Argyle Social tracks conversions from your Twitter and Facebook campaigns so you can track real ROI from your social media efforts. Argyle Social offers three plans: $149/month, $199/month or $499/month.

What other things should a company consider when it is taking the leap into a paid social media monitoring tool? What were the first tools that your company invested in? I would love your thoughts in the comments.

What Social Media Metrics Matter?

15 Aug

This post originally appeared on the oneforty blog. It’s being reposted here as part of my blogging portfolio.

I really enjoyed this recent post from @Forrester Research in which Nate Elliot previews his latest report on social media metrics. Specifically, the focus is on assigning social media marketing measurement within an organization. In the post, Elliot smartly points out that if you are defining success by “fans and followers” you’re doing it wrong. Social media measurement is most successful when it is tied to actual business goals.

Elliot’s breakdown of the metrics are very simliar to Jeremiah Owyang’s ROI Pyramid that we’ve previously explored. Community managers and social media strategists focus on “digital metrics” like clicks, fans, followers. Marketing and business executives focus on awareness and share of voice. Finally c-level executives focus on “business metrics” like revenue – aka dolla dolla bills ya’ll.

Here are the two charts:

Jeremiah Owyang’s breakdown of metrics

Forrester’s breakdown of metrics

I like comparing and contrasting both of the breakdowns. I think the recommendations for frequency on Forrester’s analysis aren’t what I’d do. Daily check-ups on number of followers doesn’t seem like the right use of time to me – I think personally think weekly is more scalable. (Perhaps he means daily or hourly check-ups on comments though.) On the contrary, to me it doesn’t seem like an annual analysis of conversions is frequent enough for the c-suite. Quarterly tracking of this at the least makes sense to me. After all, social media really is still new. Not all of us who live in this social media echo chamber and chug the Koolaid remember that sometimes, but it’s true! We’re still testing what campaigns work, and you manage what you measure.

Something I’d love to see discussed more in these reports and in blogs (maybe it doesn’t exist yet) is measurement of the money you save with social media. That to me demonstrates positive return on investment. Can businesses measure x amount of dollars they saved on support phone calls by taking care of customer service via Twitter? Can businesses save on recruiting costs by having their employees share job postings with their networks on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter? Can companies measure the time they save and increased productivity by using Yammer and having their employees communicate through instant message? (Hence, enabling the social employee with a tool like that versus them walking to the other end of the office to ask that question and getting distracted by the coffee room, the water cooler, their friend is the sales department along the way…)

It’s a can of worms to dive into, but I like to ponder it because that relates to measuring social media’s value beyond fans and followers and beyond the marketing department. That’s what a social business is: social media delivering value throughout an entire organization.

Another thing I’d like to see researched is how organizations are coordinating measurement between their agencies. Your PR agency is delivering you metrics like media value each month, then maybe you have a separate social media agency delivering another set of metrics like impressions and share of voice. How are these things being considered together to give a complete view of competitive analysis across not only social media but also with media placements?

Another thing worth exploring: There is a whole set of companies sometimes called Listening Service Providers that are a “tool + consulting” combination. The thing is, some tools and the analytics they provide have a steep learning curve. You have this new interface to work with, then you need to understand what all these graphs mean and then you need to get actionable insight from those metrics. Companies like Synthesio, Cymphony and NM Incite are a few examples where they offer not only the social media monitoring tool but also the team of consultants that analyze the data and offer recommendations to your team. Which organizations are using these and which team members are they reporting to? Also, how are the insights that these companies provide used in combination with agencies?

I’d love to open up the comments to you folks to let me know how you assign measurement on your team. Do you measure your social media marketing at all, and if so, what metrics matter to you?

5 Common Blogging Mistakes and How to Fix Them

12 Aug

This post originally appeared on the oneforty blog. It’s being reposted here as part of my blogging portfolio.

Whether your company is just getting going in social media or you’ve been at it for a while, there are some common mistakes people do every day with blogging that makes for a missed opportunity. Luckily, there’s typically a simple tool or tactic you can use to do more with your blog and fix whatever you are doing.

1. Blogging All About You

When all you blog about is you – your product, your service, your achievements etc – you don’t teach your community anything about your industry. You don’t have any sort of thought leadership or real takeaways. When people Google for information about your industry or when they’re asking questions like “how to ___” related to your industry, you won’t have any articles that explain that.  It’s only when the Google specifically you, that you’ll come up. That’s a missed opportunity.

HOW TO FIX: Monitor your industry. Read blogs and set up Google Alerts for relevant search terms and your competitors. Use Twilerts and set up search terms in a Twitter client like Tweetdeck for Twitter searches related to your product or service. See what people are talking about. What are their pain points? What are their questions? Blog about that.

2. Blogging About… Wait, What Exactly ARE You Blogging About?

When you blog about random or off-topic things, you draw in the wrong audience and therefore the wrong leads for your business. It’s inconsistent branding and you rank for the wrong keywords on Google. Subject matter counts, and by not focusing your content you are missing an opportunity to show your thought leadership in a specific space.

HOW TO FIX:

Find relevant people in your industry to follow with tools like Listorious. Use Cadmus to find the most popular articles that they are sharing and use that as an indicator of the types of subject matter you should blog about. Also try Twoolr and see what words are already used in conjunction with your brand on Twitter.

3. Ignoring Your Blog Comments

When people swing by your blog to engage in conversation with you, make sure you are being responsive! They came by to comment, and responding to what they have to say is a good way to build a community around your content. If you respond, they are more likely to remember you and subscribe to your blog and come back again.

HOW TO FIX: Use a commenting platform like Disqus or LiveFyre that makes it easy for people to comment on your blog and makes it easy for you to moderate and respond to comments.

4. Focusing on the Wrong Blog Features

I’ve seen some businesses pour a ton of time into dressing up the look and feel of their blogs. They get their graphic designer to make a sexy blog header, they’ve got sparkly fonts and custom this and that. This is important. You want to look official, professional and have consistant branding with the rest of your website. But don’t ignore the social sharing and subscription features that will get your content in front of your audience.

HOW TO FIX: Pick a simple theme and make sure your blog has these features before you get too caught up in the look and feel of your site.

  • Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn share options
  • RSS and email subscription options

5. Blogging Infrequently

If you’re going to do social media, you need to jump in with both feet to reap the benefits. Your audience will be more consistent and your community will grow and share your content if your content is there for them on a predictable basis. That might not be daily for your company at the onset, but if it’s less than weekly you might not see the benefits of your blog. And why waste your time if you aren’t going to commit to this?

HOW TO FIX: Create an editorial calendar and assign which blog posts will be written by which member of your team. You can use something as simple as Google calendar for this. Schedule Tweets and Facebook posts promoting your content with a tool like Hootsuite or CoTweet.

These are just a few common blogging mishaps we see out there in social media. Any other ones you see? Let me know in the comments.

4 Twitter Tips for Engaging Your Community

11 Aug

It’s simple enough to get started on Twitter for your business or client. Using tools like Listorious and Mashable’s Twitter Lists you can find people to follow on Twitter according to topics they Tweet about. Using a client like Tweetdeck or Seesmic, you can set up search terms for your company and for keywords related to your industry.

But what about the less tangible, “human” elements of running a Twitter account? The words you say and how you interact with the people you talk to? Here are five tips to help:

1. Be Responsive

Be sure to set up a search term for your brand on Twitter as well as monitor your @mentions. If your company has just signed up, a perfect way to “stake your claim” on Twitter and define your presence is to start responding to those mentions. This means:

  • Answering questions and offering suggestions – You can also answer questions not just about your particular product, but about your industry. Think of Twitter as a cocktail party. Use a human voice and mingle.
  • Apologizing – This is the not-so-fun part. But, did you guys mess up? Respond to unhappy customers. You only have 140 characters, so there isn’t space for any of that “We apologize for the inconvenience this may have caused you” garbage. A genuine, first person, “I’m sorry” is a better way to go. Plus, I’ve personally found that the people who take the time to complain are the people who take the time to advocate for your when you handle the situation well.

2. Be Gracious

Are you creating content to draw people to your blog? Do you see people sharing your ebooks, blog post or webinars? Engage them and say thank you. I think one company that does a fantastic job with this is social media monitoring company Radian6. If you share their blog post or ebook, you can expect a friendly Tweet back saying thank you with a little smile.

The nice thing is that the way Twitter is built, only your followers who follow the person you are thanking via @reply will see these Tweets. So you don’t have to worry about clogging people’s streams with tons of “Thank you!! :) ” Tweets. Figure out a way to work these aspect of engagement into your Tweeting in a way that scales for your team.

3. Be consistent

Once you start in social media, you have to keep it up and stay committed. If you build up an expectation of responsiveness and then you let it fall off the wayside, your community will look to you on Twitter with their questions and they will go ignored – which will only alienate them more than if you hadn’t engaged in the first place. How can you remain consistent?

  • Be on call – Is managing a community a 24/7 job? Well, it’s important to at least keep an eye on things. You’ll need a mobile app on your phone for when you’re away from your desk to at least monitor brand mentions. If anything major comes up, you should respond. On vacation? Make sure someone covers you.
  • Put “hours of operation” in your Twitter bio – This could be helpful, although I’m sure you still obviously get questions after 5pm. At least you are setting expectations properly at have a way to switch a conversation with a community member to email or phone if need be.
  • Scale your Tweeting – What is your goal? Are you promoting your blog posts and answering questions through your Twitter account? Maybe scheduling Tweets of your blog posts is a way to save you time. Being efficient will help you be consistent.

4. Use a Personal Tone

Some companies are not certain how to go about running a Twitter account and are afraid to allow their employees to Tweet on behalf of their brand – and with good reason! There have been a handful of well-documented “face/palm” moments in social media where an employee sent out a bad Tweet on a company Twitter account and didn’t represent the brand well. However, I think playing it safe with an overly corporate and cautious tone isn’t the always the right approach. Pick a tone that is consistent with your brand. Keep in mind: People like talking to people. Show human things with your words like personality and excitement and gratitude, just like you would on your own Twitter account – but be consistent and responsible and balance that with representing your brand.

Why the Twitter vs. Facebook Marketing Catfight is Dumb

10 Aug

This post originally appeared on the oneforty blog. It’s being reposted here as part of my blogging portfolio.

There’s been a consistent thread in the blogs and news recently where people are calling into question the true value of Facebook pages for businesses.

  • Forrester Analyst Sucharita Mulpuru says Facebook will never become a powerful eCommerce platform. Mulpuru’s study found that the average Facebook metrics are a 1% click-through rate and a 2% conversion rate. Comparatively, e-mail marketing offers an 11% click-through rate and a 4% average conversion rate.
  • Gawker offered a sassier recount of the study, delivering this takeaway: “The main problem is that Facebook treats brands a lot like people. So when you “like” a brand’s Facebook page, your newsfeed fills up with corporate adspeak, drowning out important news of what childhood friends’ babies are up to and resulting in an uneasy sense of foreboding: It’s disconcerting to see “Ford Motor Company” congratulate random people on their marriage in your newsfeed; did Henry Ford rise from the grave and bless their union, or the board of directors, or what?
  • People say don’t waste time with Facebook for your startup.

But then again…

Some food for thought:

Researchers don’t know your business or your goals

You need to have some idea of what you want to do on these platforms, use them in a way that gets the most value and scale your time accordingly. (A social media strategist can help.) Before you write of an entire platform altogether, consider that.

Here’s an example: If I was a small, local, photography business, I’d want more people in my area to see my awesome photos and hire me to take photos of their engagements and weddings and babies. I’d most definitely be cranking away at a Facebook page and leveraging the connections of my customers who were in the photos I took. Spreading awareness for that business happens to lend itself to two really popular features of Facebook – photos and tagging. I wouldn’t ignore Twitter, but I might just use it slightly differently (maybe Tweet about what photo sessions I was going to that day (@mentioning my customers of course) and Tweet links to our photo blog.) I might join other LinkedIn groups for professional photographers to learn about best practices etc, but I honestly wouldn’t make one for my business.

On the contrary, oneforty for example is a different kind of business than that. We get a ton of engagement from our LinkedIn group, but we actually get more traffic from Facebook from people sharing our blog posts there. Twitter, however, spanks both traffic source-wise.

Know Your Audience. Tools Can Help.

This is why listening in social media is so important. Find where your current and potential customers are online and really invest your time in building a presence where you see the most value for the goals you have for your business. Monitoring with Facebook is admittedly trickier. Even paid social media monitoring tools like Sysomos that pull brand mentions from Facebook can only pull from public Facebook wall posts (many users have private Facebook walls.) Kurrently is a free tool monitors your public mentions.

Paying attention to your referring sites (under Traffic Sources in Google Analytics) is another good way for you to pay attention to how people are discovering your website and see where you are getting the most value – Twitter or Facebook. Traffic is traffic, though. What are people actually doing when they get to your site? Think a little deeper about what kinds of activities people who come from Twitter or Facebook are doing. What platform offers the most value for your time spent?

Using Argyle Social, you can track how many people perform a conversion (like registering for an event, making a profile or buying something) on your website from Twitter and Facebook campaigns using in-page analytics on your website.

In conclusion, keep up on the reports and social media news regarding the value of Facebook. Read the blogs, but don’t be afraid to be skeptical about said findings. Most importantly, when your boss asks – or when you question yourself – about your presence on Facebook or any other social media platform, I think your own metrics and business goals should be the major focus of the conversation as opposed to an article you saw ReTweeted a bunch.

How to Build Community With Better Content

9 Aug

Creating interesting and informative content is a fantastic way to build a community within your target audience. Why is this important for your business? There are several reasons:

  • Content draws the right people to your company’s website by leveraging the right subject matter and keywords.
  • People share great content, and how much people share your content counts for how you rank in Google.
  • Helpful content builds trust. It shows your expertise in whatever your company is selling and gets your community excited about your brand. Content offers something of value to your audience before you ask for something in return (like an email address… or a credit card).

So what are some ways that you can do this at your business?

1. Blog Often

If you check out our friends from HubSpot’s Science of Blogging webinar by Dan Zarrella, you’ll learn some more specific reasons (like website traffic) why blogging frequently matters. Basically, switching from blogging once-a-month or once-a-week to every day will completely change the blogging game for you.

Hubspot and SEOMoz are two examples of businesses that create daily blog content, and hence have created communities and positioned themselves as experts in their fields.

 

HubSpot’s inbound marketing blog has helped build a community of marketers.

 

SEOmoz creates daily blog content about SEO, offering value to their community of marketers and SEOs.

We’ve recently shared some tips on how to organize your blogging team and how to set up an editorial calendar to scale this strategy for your business.

2. Monitor Social Media to Discover Your Community’s Pain Points

Understand the types of questions that your community members are asking on social media regarding your industry. Respond to those questions with good content. Set up a search terms and Twilerts for appropriate hashtags and industry terms. On Twitter, you can make conversational searches and see what people are really asking about. Here are some example searches:

  • “(industry keyword) + sucks”
  • “competitor + sucks”
  • “I hate _____”
  • “Is there a ______?”
  • “Anyone know of a ________?”
  • “What is the best ________?”
  • “How do you _______ with ______?”

To enhance your content even more, do some research with Google Insights to make sure you’re targeting the right keywords with your content. “Pain points” + keywords make your posts highly searchable. If they’re asking about it on Twitter, your community members are probably Googling for it, too.

3. Write a Decent Headline

So we make fun of link-bait headlines like “What Every Entrepreneur Could Learn from Justin Beiber” and the like… but you clicked it, and you ReTweeted it, didn’t you? Yep. Caught ya.

Clearly we don’t have to be this severe in our headline writing, but listen: There’s a lot of clutter out there and a ton of content being shared. If you write a headline that makes your content sound appealing and helpful to your community, you’re much more likely to get them to read it. See how Copyblogger and Problogger write great headlines for their content, but back it up with great content. They are role models to follow with this.

Most important: If you’re going to have a catchy headline like “10 reasons to ___,” first make sure they are 10 good reasons! No one cares about your catchy headline if your content is garbage.

4. Shake it up with different types of content

Offering a variety of content to your community is a great way to keep things fresh on your blog and keep your community coming back for more. It’s easy to get writer’s block when you’re writing about the same industry, products or company each day, but using a variety of tools and leveraging your community are ways you can continue to keep things interesting. Here are some content ideas:

1. Write how-to articles

2. Do a screencast of your product. Screenr is a free screencast-creation tool that helps you make Tweetable screencasts

3. List common mistakes in your industry and offer ways people can fix them

4. List hypothetical problems that your product can solve

5. Talk about recent industry studies and your take on them

6. Make an infographic

7. Dissect a couple key points from a webinar or ebook and repurpose that into blog content

8. Discuss a recent industry-related event or current news

9. Give takeaways from a conference

10. Do video interviews with community members and post them to the blog

11. Offer guest post opportunities to expert community members

12. Curate content from resources that your community cares about and do a “news-roundup” style blog post

13. Top-ten lists, Top 20 lists… Top 30…

You can also try digital storytelling tools like Storify and Tweetwally to offer a new way to show Tweets in your posts. So, if you had a particularly useful Twitter conversation with community members, include that in a blog post. Or, maybe refer to some great Tweets from a webinar, and refer to that in a blog post. These are two very beautiful ways to display that.

Here’s Tweetwally in action:

Here’s Storify:

Content is huge for us at oneforty. What has worked for us? We try a lot of different things and see what sticks. We blog every day, so we have the room to do that. If something didn’t work that great, we try again tomorrow (we don’t wait a month.) Some posts are more popular than others, but trying different things each day has given us the freedom to search for, and discover, what seems to resonate with our community. But that’s just my take.

How do you use content to build your community? Let me know in the comments!

Using Social Media in Regulated Industries

8 Aug

This post originally appeared on the oneforty blog. It’s being reposted here as part of my blogging portfolio.

Think selling social media to your boss is difficult? Try being a marketer in a regulated industry. You know what the benefits of social media are. Listening to customer conversations on Twitter and Facebook means engaging with and learning from current and potential customers, defining your brand and tapping into a major market research opportunity. However, there are significant restrictions with what you can communicate online.

What are some regulated industries?

  • Publicly traded companies
  • Finance
  • Healthcare
  • Insurance
  • Pharmaceuticals
  • Spirits

For those of you working in these regulated industries, the first step in your social media strategy should be to understand what restrictions apply to you. Here is a brief overview and some examples of how some other companies are still getting involved in the conversation while complying with these important guidelines.

Publicly Traded Companies

Is your company publicly traded? You need to keep these restrictions in mind, including anything that applies specifically to your industry. The Regulations Fair Disclosure policy states that publicly traded companies release material information to investors and the public at the same time. If you don’t comply, charges of insider trading or selective disclosure could result.  Publicly traded companies should be mindful about about providing forward-looking statements.

A clearly-communicated social media policy for employees is essential for these companies.

For a few examples of social media policies at companies, read:

Finance

Promotions on social media from financial institutions have to be fair, clear and not misleading. Most of the regulations have to do with full disclosure of terms and features or availability of products and services (including pricing, rates, rewards, eligibility). Financial companies have to follow advertising rules pertaining to truth-in-lending and truth-in-savings and overdraft protection. This could affect how their social media strategy works.

Financial organizations must be careful of how they handle confidential information. Because of the risk of identity theft or phishing, financial companies should not use social media to collect personal information from customers or prospects.

Bank of America takes on the challenge of participating on Twitter as part of a regulated industry. If you look at their customer service account, @BofA_help , you’ll see they respectfully request that their customers not share account information via Twitter.

Bank of America asks their community not to share account numbers via Twitter.

Citizens Bank has a disclaimer in their Twitter background regarding this topic. Bank of America does as well.

Citizens Bank includes a disclaimer in their Twitter background about sharing account numbers on Twitter.

The risk for identity theft or phishing is all the more reason for these types of companies to be responsibly involved. Claiming their brand names on social media sites and making sure that they – not the scammers – are engaging with customers and defining their brands with great customer service (and not a PR backlash from a scam) is important.

Financial institutions are also usually required to keep copies of customer conversations. If there was ever a case for social CRM – this is it. Being able to connect Twitter conversations to customer profiles in an offline database with account numbers would be especially beneficial for this industry.

An especially helpful tool for these professionals would be Backupify – a social media and cloud data archiving tool. This would keep record of customer conversations from Twitter and Facebook.

Pharmaceuticals

Pharmaceutical companies are in a tricky spot. The FDA requires that all reports of adverse effects communicated to a manufacturer are reported to the FDA.Comments made on social media accounts could count as adverse effects notifications that need to be reported.

You’ll notice that Pfizer’s Twitter account is mostly used for outbound news messages from the company. Communication of adverse effects could be a reason why.

pfizer Twitter

Likewise, Pfizer uses its Facebook page to share news with its audience, but the public is not able to comment or post anything on the wall.

Pfizer Facebook

There are some very logical reasons why adverse effect reporting isn’t as big of a threat as it may first appear. However, that doesn’t mean that companies shouldn’t be prepared with a plan of how to handle it. If there ever was a need for social business maturity - all departments of an organization buying into social media, from marketing to safety to research and development to legal – this would be a situation that calls for collaboration.

Marketing directly to consumers is tricky, but some drug companies are choosing online and digital marketing to supplement or replace their face-to-face sales efforts when marketing directly to physicians. AstraZeneca uses AZ Touchpoints to engage physicians. Novo Nordisk, which sells insulin and diabetes products, offers medical professionals an insulin measurement app in the iTunes app store. Sanofi-AventisMerckPfizerGlazxo Smith Cline and Novartis AG all offer medical-related iPhone and iPad apps to market to doctors.

Insurance Companies

Health insurance

Healthcare companies need to be sure they are not disclosing personal information through social media communications. The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) ensures that medical information is kept confidential and protects the privacy of patients. According to Jason Fall’sarticle “Leveraging Social Media in Regulated Industries,” there is a strict, government-mandated approval system for communications with the public. In his post, he points to one social media professional for an insurance company who is taking on the challenge with an innovation approach: Anticipating common questions, she wrote Tweets to be pre-approved by compliance officials so she could still communicate with people in real-time on Twitter.

Insurance (non-health)

Each state has different laws for home, auto, life and other insurance policies. For this reason, insurance brokers can only give out advice to people in the state in which they are licensed.

GEICO and Statefarm Insurance are both very active on Twitter and Facebook engaging with customers. A lot of their Twitter communication focuses on thanking customers for becoming/being a customer or answering questions. With its customer service account, @GEICO_Service , GEICO appears to reply directly to people Tweeting about accidents or flat tires and asking if they should follow up about their claims. I noticed several times they ask for the customers state. They also try to take the conversation offline with an email or phone call.

Geico customer service Twitter
GEICO helps people with their car insurance via its customer service account.

Spirits

The most important rule that alcohol companies must follow is that they only market to customers of the legal purchasing age, which as we all know, is 21.This is particularly challenging in social media because Twitter, Facebook, YouTube etc. are global platforms. When marketing on your company’s own website, it’s a little easier: You can at least cover yourself on this rule by requiring that visitors fill in a birthdate form. Twitter and Facebook for these businesses are a little more challenging as there isn’t this kind of control.

Maker’s Mark navigates this rule in a way that is responsible and yet fun and consistent with its brand. The phrase: “We’ve never been much for following the rules, but this one’s a must! You must be of legal drinking age to peruse this page” is found on their Facebook page and Twitter.

Makers Mark Twitter“We’ve never been much for following the rules, but this one’s a must! You must be of legal drinking age to follow us on Twitter!”
Maker's Mark Facebook page
Maker’s Mark marketing responsibly on Facebook.

Does this guarantee that all of their fans or followers are 21? Probably not. But just like the aforementioned industries, it’s their way of putting a disclaimer out there that complies with the market they are in.

How to Engage in Social Media as a Regulated Industry

Knowing these rules for your business or client before you establish a social media strategy is key. They aren’t reasons not to participate in social media, just all the more reason to have an experienced strategist guiding you. Some overaching takeaways for several industries seem to be:

1. Take conversations offline - For things like finance, healthcare or insurance, communicating with customers who have questions on Twitter is a great way to be helpful, especially if they are upset. Retaining a customer is, after all, less expensive than getting a new one, and social media is great for this. However, social media isn’t the best for having some public conversations that could involve private information like medical records or bank account numbers. When customer service representatives can take the conversation to another format like a phone call, that’s when they can best resolve any issues.

2. Have a clear-cut social media policy for employees - Zappos is well-known for it’s simple policy of “Be Smart!” Admittedly, that’s our policy at oneforty as well. When more intricate legal implications are involved, you may need something that covers more bases than that for your company. SHIFT Communications offers this PDF template for a social media policy guidelines builder to get you started.

What recommendations do you have for social media professionals in regulated industries? What companies do you see doing this well? Would love your ideas in the comments.

10 Tips for New Community Managers

7 Aug

This post originally appeared on the oneforty blog. It’s being reposted here as part of my blogging portfolio.

Community managers are becoming an increasingly important role for all types of businesses, from tech startups to major corporate brands. Most commonly, community managers are responsible for engaging current and potential customers via social media, growing vibrant and enthusiastic communities around their products and services. This is, however, just one kind of community manager. Some community managers facilitate conversations in private online forums, work with internal company intranets, or don’t use social media at all.

Community managers must strike a balance: externally, community managers are the voices of their brands in social media, serving as social media strategists,customer service managers, content creators, product managers and evangelists. Internally, they are voice of their communities at their own companies. Community managers bring the conversations they have with community members to the forefront of marketing, customer service and product discussions, epitomizing the value and function of a social business.

Because community manager jobs vary at each company, there is no one magic thing that makes a community management program work. But with more and more community manager jobs showing up every day, here are some tips for new or aspiring community managers, and maybe even some fresh thoughts that the seasoned community manager can benefit from.

1. Fish Where the Fish Are

When it comes to social media, it’s very easy to get caught up in tactics. It’s easy to think, “we need to Tweet” or “we need a Facebook page” just because. Establish your own presence, yes, but prioritize. Take the time to figure out what blogs, Twitter hashtags, conferences, meetups or social media platforms matter to your audience and be involved in those places.

2. Identify and Delegate to Your Power Users

Use a tool like Tweetreach to identify who your most engaged Tweeters are in your community. LinkedIn will show you your top influencers each week in your B2B community’s LinkedIn group. Leverage your most engaged community members from your target audience by offering them a guest post, curating one of their blog posts in a news roundup, or offering them a position as a community moderator in your forum.

3. …But Don’t Play Favorites Too Much

Loyal community members are great resources: They are the first people to provide feedback, share your content, and refer you to others. But make sure to keep an even playing field for new, quieter community members. Each new blog commenter or forum member matters. Challenge yourself by engaging with them too. It’s your job to build a community – not a clique of power users who make your job easy.

4. Say “I’m Sorry.”

Community managers are typically the ones running Twitter and Facebook accounts, and will be the ones responding to complaints. The book REWORK by the founders of 37 Signals covers the “how to say you’re sorry” point best. Their advice? “We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you” is BS.

If your service isn’t working and a community member is ranting about it on Twitter – trust us, you disrupted that person’s day and there was an inconvenience caused. No “may” clause is needed.

Like REWORK says, if you spilled hot coffee on someone’s lap, you wouldn’t say “I apologize for the inconvenience.” You’d say, “I’m SO SO sorry!” Speak in first person and be genuine.

5. Stay Calm. Keep it in Perspective

It’s natural to get frustrated or stressed out on busy days when responding to complaints online or answering a lot of questions. Remember: It’s just the internet!

Credit: http://xkcd.com/

Plus, your biggest critics can turn into your biggest fans if you successfully resolve any issues they have. Those that take the time to offer negative feedback will take the time to be your advocate. Get zen and keep this in mind.

6. Anticipate Common Questions and Know Your Product Inside and Out

Answering questions about your product or service through social media or email will probably be a major part of your job. Be prepared ahead of time. This is especially important if you work in a regulated industry in which you may need your Tweets or Facebook communication to have prior approval.

Anticipate common questions. Go over them with your product or support team to make sure you have your answers (including your 140-character ones) accurate.

7. Don’t Forget About Email

Email may seem old-school compared to sexier tools like social media, but remember: Every single Facebook “fan” or Twitter follower has an email address!Email is the glue that makes social media stick, and if you offer helpful content with an email newsletter, it can be a great way to engage your community members.

8. Engage Offline

Even with global, online communities, community starts at home. Connect with your local audience with a meetup. This is important because you can inspire evangelists who will vouch for you as they get to know you better as a local company, and as they get to know you face-to-face. Those people are most certainly connected to a larger global network through social media. This is where your first network of power users can stem from.

9. Your Social Media Accounts Are No Longer Your Own, But Your Time Is

Are you sure you want that social media job?

As the face of your brand online, people will inevitably identify you as the community manager for that company. The number of Twitter followers you have may grow, and you may begin to get more Facebook and LinkedIn requests from people you don’t personally know from real life. Even if you put “Tweets are my own” in your Twitter bio, people see your thoughts aligned with your company.

Be who you are and represent yourself online as someone you are proud of. Have a ranting Tweet or Facebook post you really really really want to send? I’m sassy, I can relate. Remember: We regret the rants we do post on social media, but when is the last time you regretted not Tweeting something?

Despite the challenge of personal/professional balance, take control of your experience on social media and don’t stop enjoying this. Use Twitter lists, Facebook lists and filters. Own your privacy, your time, your newsfeed, and your personal network.

10. Use the Right Tools to Be Efficient

Community managers where many hats.  Sometimes managing several Twitter accounts, plus a blog, plus delegating to an intern, plus responding to community members… it can be a lot to handle. Here are some of the tools that community managers from the oneforty community use, as featured in their Toolkits.

Rachel Happe – Principal at Community Roundtable - Tools she uses

Suzanne Marlatt – Community Manager at Edelman Digital – Tools she uses

Stacey Acevero – Community Manager at Vocus/PR Web – Tools she uses

What other community management tips do you have? Add yours in the comments!