How to learn from companies outside your industry

     Too often, companies look to learn from industry case studies. However, many great examples of success exist outside your line of business.

Marketing lessons from the grateful dead

     In 2010, Brian Halligan, HubSpot’s CEO and co-founder, and David Meerman Scott published their book Marketing Lessons from the Grateful Dead. Their goal was to showcase the many marketing lessons stemming from the creative minds of these unique musicians.

     This reinforces the notion that no matter what industry you represent, you can learn from totally different business models.

Don’t limit yourself

     So many businesses, David points out, copy the competition or learn from companies only in their own industry. If you are a B2B technology company, for instance, you start obsessing over what other B2B technology companies are doing.

     Stop intentionally limiting yourself in this way! You can learn so much by looking at what an independent consultant or a non-profit, or a rock band, or a church is doing to market its services or products.

Learn from the companies you love

     Ultimately, the practices you want to adopt are the ones you admire. “Think about the companies that you love to do business with,” David says. Their market or category of products don’t matter all that much. What can you learn from them and how do you apply it to your own business situation? That is the focus you need to develop.

     Source: The ultimate how to marketing guide (HubSpot and David Meerman Scott) e-book

How to get found online as a local business

     Trying to get found online as a local business comes with both advantages and challenges. In this chapter, we discuss a few ways to surface in local search engine results.

Connect with industry thought leaders

     Connecting with industry thought leaders offers an effective way to draw highquality inbound links and create buzz around your company name. Have you been following a popular blog in your industry? If so, can you reach out to the author with ideas for creating content together? Such type of collaboration can grow your reach and make you more appealing to folks who research carefully before they make a purchase decision.

Focus on GPS-enabled services

     As people continue to embrace the usage of smart phones, they also start relying on location-based applications with GPS functionality. These apps offer quick ways to find out which transportation services are in your area, whether your friends are nearby and where to go shopping or grab a bite.

     Examples of such applications are Google Latitude, Foursquare and Foodspotting. So pay particular attention to these platforms and the special opportunities they offer to businesses.

Check out some case studies

     Not sure how to start growing your local search traffic and leads? Check out some success stories. One example David Meerman Scott points out is Mike Pownall, DVM of McKee Pownall Equine Services. Mike uses social media, especially Twitter, to reach horse owners in Toronto which leads directly to business growth.

     Source: The ultimate how to marketing guide (HubSpot and David Meerman Scott) e-book

Blogging software

     As mentioned previously, blogs are run by software, so one of your first chores is to determine what software you want to use and get it set up.

     A quick search for blog software will turn up dozens of options. But for the sake of this publication, we are going to focus on just a few of the leading choices:

• WordPress.org: WordPress.org offers a free, open-source blogging tool that has many things going for it. This is the tool I use on my blog and it’s hard to imagine going wrong with this tool. This is software that you download, configure, and upload to your Web host. Because it is open source there are also many beneficial add-ons and plug-ins that can add even more power to the software. The downside, if there is one, is that you must be able to get through a bit of technical tinkering to make it work, but it’s very straightforward.
• WordPress.com: This is a hosted version of the WordPress software that allows you to easily create a blog that is hosted by WordPress. The benefit of this approach is that there is no real setup, you simply sign up (it’s free), choose a theme, and start blogging. The downside with hosted blogging platforms is that they are not as flexible and might not deliver as much search engine benefit because the content does not reside on your website domain.
• TypePad.com: TypePad is another great hosted service with many features and a simple startup process.
• Compendium Blogware: Business-targeted blog system that works around targeting keywords and phrases.
• Windows Live Spaces: Based on simplicity and familiarity, Windows Live Spaces offers users a free, quick, and easy way to get started blogging.

     Source: Let’s talk, Social Media for small busniess, version two (John Jantsch) e-book

A blog primer

     In simplest terms, a blog is software that allows anyone who can type to post content to a website or blog home page. The content is generally displayed much like a journal might be written, in reverse chronological fashion.

     This content can be anything the author chooses to write, or post, as it is referred to in blogging terms.

     Now, on the surface, what this means is that anyone can update a website that has this blogging software installed and that’s a great thing. Websites benefit from change and blogs make it easy to change, update, and add content.

     But, there’s much more. Blog software also allows:

• Readers of the blog pages to make comments and add their own content.
• Readers of the blog to subscribe to the content so that they are automatically notified whenever the content is updated.
• Search engines to receive notice or pings whenever the content is updated.

     All of the above items happen automatically once the software is configured. Blogging is such a great tool because it allows you to more easily accomplish many of the marketing objectives that today’s small business must address.

     A blog is your ticket to creating:

• Content
• Context
• Connection
• Community

     And if that isn’t enough, know this—search engines love blogs! If for no other reason, consider creating and frequently posting relevant, keyword-rich content to a blog, hosted on your domain, because it will dramatically improve your changes of ranking well in the search engines.

     Source: Let’s talk, Social Media for small busniess, version two (John Jantsch) e-book

Facebook: what should you be monitoring?

     We use it for fun. We use it to check out our kids’ and grandkids’ photos. We use it to share our love for brands, engage in online contests organized by various companies, or let a company know when its customer service has failed us.

     These days, the content on Facebook almost fully mirrors many individuals’ lives. People make their personal profiles their homes for their likes and hates, and businesses can use Facebook Pages as a gateway to interact with people.

Facebook business page wall

     Your Facebook Business Page wall is the “home” where your business’ fans, friends, customers, and critics can all interact directly with your company. They can post questions, comments, feedback, or fan mail. Fellow fans of your business may interact with each other. Many individuals will interact with the content your business has posted itself.

     There are four ways people can interact on your Facebook Business Page that you should be monitoring:

• Wall Posts: Facebook users can post content to your Page’s wall. They can say good things, complain, talk about a recent experience they have, anything! People can even post photos straight to your Facebook wall. These remarks are user-generated content about your brand.
• Comments: Comments are an opportunity to react to a wall post. Both you and your fans can comment. Consider it a mini conversation that spurred from the original post.
• Likes: The classic thumbs up! If someone “Likes” a wall post, this means they like the content of that post. This can also be translated to mean “I agree”.
• Recommendations: One of the latest features Facebook has introduced is the opportunity to leave recommendations on a business Page. In order to take advantage of this functionality, you need to install the Recommendations plugin, which will display personalized recommendations from other Facebook users.

     Another important thing to understand about the content that gets posted to your Page’s wall is that the more people interact with a specific wall post, the more viral that post becomes. For example, when an individual posts something to a Page’s wall, that action is also referenced on the wall of that individual’s personal profile. Same goes with liking and commenting. Also, wall posts that receive an exceptional amount of “likes” and comments often show up in other Facebook users‟’ News Feeds. Let’s talk briefly about that...

Facebook news feed

     Your “News Feed” is exactly that: a feed of what Facebook assumes is the most relevant and important items occurring in your network. Your goal should be both to react to important items in your business’ News Feed and get your wall posts featured in others’ News Feeds.

     Source: How to monitor your Social Media presence in 10 minutes a day (Rebecca Corliss, Hubspot) e-book

Twitter: what should you be monitoring?

     Oh, Twitter. While we love you and the benefit you can provide, the mad clutter that you produce is sometimes overwhelming, daunting, and hides the valuable information we as marketers should catch.

So what type of information and tweets should you be looking out for?

• Relevant questions about your company: If someone tweets, “Should I buy X product or its competitor’s product?” you want to be ready to respond. If not directly by offering helpful content about your business, perhaps you could point that person to a customer of yours.
• Relevant questions about your industry: Being helpful by answering someone’s question is a great way to develop credibility with that person. In the event they need a product or service related to the one(s) your business provides, they might end up coming to you!
• Requests for support: If a customer tweets a request for help (either directly to you or perhaps to their network), you should notice that tweet and respond accordingly. Happy customers are essential for the long-term results of your business.
• Complaints and feedback: Critics are always out there, and it’s important to acknowledge and resolve issues as they come up.
• Praise: Please sir, can I have some more? Praise is a wonderful thing to receive! Why not say thank you? Retweet it. Save it to your favorites. Send that person a t-shirt! It’s wise to appreciate those who appreciate you.
• Competitor mentions: Competitor intel, anyone? Other people are praising, complaining, and asking questions about your competitors, too. You should monitor those conversations, if only for the information and data.

     Now that you know which types of tweets to specifically monitor, you can create your plan accordingly. Also, don’t be afraid to be proactive with your social media lead generation efforts. Make sure you are posting your fresh content and always link to landing pages that will help you capture more information about your prospects.

     Source: How to monitor your Social Media presence in 10 minutes a day (Rebecca Corliss, Hubspot) e-book

LinkedIn: what should you be monitoring?

     I would argue that LinkedIn is the most business-focused social media site out there. There are more than 135 million professionals around the world using LinkedIn as of November 2011. Its purpose is for networking, recruiting, content promoting (when relevant!), and generating thought leadership. Let’s focus on the last two.

     LinkedIn is a great platform for individual employees to develop thought leadership and grow a company’s reach as a whole.

So what should you be monitoring on LinkedIn to do just that?

• LinkedIn Answers: This section of LinkedIn is a great way to showcase your expertise. Many LinkedIn users use this feature to request information,  resources, business tips, and advice. Similar to Twitter, LinkedIn enables you to monitor questions that are relevant to your business and industry. By taking a moment to respond with a thoughtful answer, you could win “Best Answer”. When answering, you also have the opportunity to link to relevant resources. Did you or your company recently publish a blog article that addresses the topic in question? You should link to it!
• Group Discussions: LinkedIn members also interact often within LinkedIn Groups by posting discussion questions, topics, and more to the group. These discussions offer other opportunities to answer, comment, and link to your resources when it makes sense and is valuable to the community.

     Source: How to monitor your Social Media presence in 10 minutes a day (Rebecca Corliss, Hubspot) e-book

Google+: what should you be monitoring?

     Google+ is not just another social network. It’s a network tightly connected to the world’s leading search engine. Such an explosive combination is certainly going to impact the life of marketers.

     For instance, Google is introducing Direct Connect, a feature that will let searchers call up a Google+ page by simply adding a "+" before their queries. In addition, the +1 button will also remain present not only on search, but also on company blogs and elsewhere. “We introduced the +1 button as a way for your customers to recommend your business across the web - on Google search, in your ads, on sites across the web and on mobile devices,” wrote Dennis Troper, Product Management Director at Google+ Pages.

So what should you be monitoring in regards to Google+?

• Comments: Once you set up your Google+ business page, make sure you are monitoring the comments you might be getting on posts. What are people saying? Are they liking your content or do they have feedback for improvement?
• Circle Streams: Don’t forget to monitor the stream of information being shared across your different circles. There could be interesting discussions that pertain to your industry and can give you opportunities to jump in the conversation with further insights.

     Source: How to monitor your Social Media presence in 10 minutes a day (Rebecca Corliss, Hubspot) e-book

Quora: what should you be monitoring?

     Quora is becoming the new go-to place to ask questions and get answers.

     The quality of the community is quite high. A person may ask, “Why did company X make Y business decision?” Oftentimes, the most highly voted answer is given by the CEO of the company. For users, it’s a great opportunity to learn collectively from a large group where the best answers rise to the top through voting.

What should you be monitoring on Quora?

• Questions: Your primary goal for monitoring Quora, similar to LinkedIn Answers, is identifying questions relevant to your business and industry that you should answer. If someone posts a question about your company and there is no representation from your company among a stream of answers, that is a lost opportunity to guide the message (or deflect negative sentiment).
• Topics: Topics are broad categories of questions like “marketing,” “business,” “books,” etc. If you are a marketer, you should be monitoring the “marketing” sections for opportunities to respond to questions that give you the opportunity to flaunt your and your business’ expertise.

     Source: How to monitor your Social Media presence in 10 minutes a day (Rebecca Corliss, Hubspot) e-book

Blogosphere: what should you be monitoring?

     It goes without saying: blogs (writing, reading, and commenting) should be a major part of your social media and marketing strategy. Maintaining a blog is a great way to create content that drives visitors to your website. Reading quality blogs keeps you in the know of industry trends, news, data, and more. Commenting is a great way to expand your reach by appearing below someone else’s content as well as causally introducing yourself (as a brilliant commenter) to the author of that blog.

     It’s also very important to be aware of what others write about your company in order to respond properly. Even if only to celebrate quality articles written about your organization when they periodically appear, you should know what the blogosphere is saying about you.

Make sure that within your monitoring campaign you are tracking relevant...

• Blog Articles: You should consider blog articles just as important (if not occasionally more important) as news coverage! You should know who is writing about your company and what they are saying. Are you generating major coverage regarding a product launch or another piece of news? Is there some sort of controversy occurring around your industry? Competitors?
• Comments: What are people saying in response to articles about you, your competitors, or your industry? Should you weigh in as well?
• Links: Links make the inbound marketing world go round! Do the blog articles written about you also include links back to your website? If not, perhaps you should send the author a friendly note. If you created content that a blog article is referencing, you should be credited with a link.

     Source: How to monitor your Social Media presence in 10 minutes a day (Rebecca Corliss, Hubspot) e-book

Kony 2012

     Invisible children’s Kony 2012 campaign has been one of the most successful campaigns using social media in history. If you don’t know what this is about, you can watch the video they wanted to spread and an explanation of their objective: make Joseph Kony (the world’s worst war criminal) famous, not to celebrate him, but to raise support for his arrest and set a precedent for international justice. In this case, notoriety translates to public support. If people know about the crimes that Kony has been committing for 26 years, they will unite to stop him. Secondly, we want Kony to be famous so that when he is stopped, he will be a visible, concrete example of international justice. Then other war criminals will know that their mass atrocities will not go unnoticed or unpunished. (www.kony2012.com)

     Invisible children used this video to make their message circulate on the Internet as a typical viral marketing campaign. Although the most important is the cause for the one they are fighting for, to the one we give all our support from Viral Marketing Blog, we are going to analyze this phenomena under the marketing point of view: as an excellent example of the way social media has to be used.

     Althoug the campaign is still current, it’s a long time since it started to spread in the Internet.  But it’s now the best moment to take into account it’s results; it’s impact.

     Anthony Wing, a Forbes contributor, proposes 12 lessons that social media can learn from Knoy 2012 (Link to the original article: www.forbes.com/sites/anthonykosner/2012/03/09/12-lessons-from-kony-2012-from-social-media-power-users/):

• Be Positive: The first part of the video just shows people connecting with each other, the birth of a baby, the pride of parenthood and the value of friendship. Joseph Kony doesn’t even appear until 8:46.

• Get Their Attention: Early on [1:38] the voiceover tells you, “The next 27 minutes are an experiment. But in order for it to work, you have to pay attention.” A bit presumptuous, but you’ve been warned.

• Make It Personal: At 1:55 we see a child being born in what looks like an American hospital, and by 2:39 we understand the identity of the voiceover and the baby: ”My name is Jason Russell and this is my son, Gavin.”

• Invoke the Mainstream Media: KONY 2012 is peppered with references to “old media” for validation. ”This has been going on for years?” Russell says on camera in Uganda. “If that happened one night in America it would be on the cover of Newsweek.” [5:56] There’s and a fake TIME cover of Kony that reads “Worst in the World,” next to a real TIME cover of supporter George Clooney [23:35] and a fabricated New York Times front page that reads “KONY CAPTURED” [22:27].

• Pull the Heartstrings: Russell uses his son, Gavin, and his young Ugandan friend, Jacob, for raw plays on emotion: Jacob’s is introduced through Gavin’s pointing to picture on wall and saying, “Jacob is our friend in Africa” [3:56]; Jacob is the first thing you see on the Invisible Children’s Facebook timeline [4:00]; Jacob breaks down in wailing sobs when discussing his despair at living and the murder of his brother [7:14]. It’s manipulative, yes, but boy does it work.

• Make it Time Sensitive: At 8:40 the screen announces, “Expires December 31, 2012.”  There is no explanation in the video of what that means, or what the benefit would be of the video being vaporized from the internet at the stroke of midnight, but the expiration date is clearly meant to convey a sense of immediacy. The theme song also reinforces the sense of compulsion with the refrain, “I Can’t Stop” [26.52].

• Make It Simple: In what is perhaps the video’s greatest coup (and also, perhaps, its undoing) we see five-year-old Gavin’s reactions to father’s explanation of who Joseph Kony is and what the war’s about [9:19]. The “bad guy” forces these children to do “bad things” against their will. How does he feel about that? “Sad.”

• Make It Real (Briefly): After he explains Kony to his son in a simplified manner, he gives the grownups a bit more detail. “Kony abducts kids just like Gavin,” we are told [10:50]. “For 26 years Kony has been kidnapping children into his rebel group the LRA, turning the girls into sex slave and the boys into child soldiers. He makes them mutilate people’s faces.” We see a rapid fire slideshow of ten horrifically slashed faces. “And he forces them to kill their own parents.” OK, I get the point, really bad guy.

• Give it Scale: “And this is not a few children. It has been over 30,000 of them.” We zoom out from a closeup of a few Ugandan children to a crowd of thousands. [11:39] Similarly, the point of the video is to get Kony’s name and picture in front of millions of people around the world through hundreds of thousands of posters, stickers and (since it’s election time) lawn signs.

• Use Celebrities: IC has identified 20 “culture makers” and 12 “policy makers” to “target” to help get the word out (20 + 12, get it?) [23:16]. The 20 culture makers run the psychographic gamut: Oprah, Mark Zuckerberg, Lady GaGa, Angelina Jolie, George Clooney, Bill O’Reilly, Bill Gates, Jay-Z, Justin Bieber, Rick Warren, Ellen Degeneres, Ben Affleck, Rihanna, Stephen Colbert, Warren Buffet, Taylor Swift, Ryan Seacrest, Tim Tebow, Rush Limbaugh(!) and Bono. The 12 policy makers cant somewhat to the right: George W. Bush, Condoleezza Rice, John Kerry, Bill Clinton, Harry Reid, John Boehner, Kay Granger, Mitt Romney, Stephen Harper, Ban Ki-Moon, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Patrick Leahy. Although Clooney appears on camera, it is unclear what the rest of these people’s relationship is to IC, though their visual inclusion does imply a certain assumed validation.

• Create Events: The video wheels out poster artist (and now convicted criminal) Shepard Fairey to say, “Here are these really simple tools. Go out and rock it.” [25:00] This sets up the major focus of this viral video effort, to get people to sign up and receive “action kits” to be used on the night of April 20th for an overnight postering session called “Cover the Night.” [26:36] Widely publicized public vandalism in the name of political change is not the kind of event every social media entity would choose, but it seems to fit the ethos of this group. The fresh faced activists in the video seem to be unconcerned that some of their wheat pasting might be considered vandalism, but so be it.

• Make It Easy: The video ends with the obligatory call to action: “The better world we want is coming. It’s just waiting for us to stop at nothing. There are three things you can do right now.” [29:25] “1. Sign the pledge to show your support” (that’s easy) “2. Get the bracelet and the action kit” (how?) “3. Sign up for Tri to donate a few dollars a month” (oh, that’s easy too) BUT, when you click on the donate button there’s a message below the donation options that says, “A minimum monthly commitment of $15 is required to receive the Kony 2012 Action Kit with your TRI membership. Due to the overwhelming response to KONY 2012 your kit delivery is not guaranteed before April 20th.” Not quite the same the “few dollars a month” they keep referring to in the video! And if you don’t sign up for the monthly plan you can’t order a kit a la carte. You can, however, download and print kit materials for free (easy!)

Tools for the approach

     For each of these six approaches to the buying process, let’s look at some examples of tools.

Find the customer

     Here are some listening and search tools:

• http://blogsearch.google.com
• http://www.technorati.com
• http://search.twitter.com

     Use these tools to build searches on your company’s name, your products’ names, your competitors, but MOST importantly, think of what someone would type into Google at the moment they needed you most. Search for that.

Be there before the sale

     Build profiles on social networks and websites, and update them. Have an account on:

• http://www.twitter.com
• http://www.facebook.com
• http://www.linkedin.com
• http://www.flickr.com
• http://www.upcoming.org

     (You might have some other recommendations here.)

     Put up YOUR picture, not a corporate logo. Represent by being you, and by being a good employee.

Be (or empower) the influencer

     Have a blog, a lively blog, a place where you talk not just about your company and product, but instead, you talk about the space your customers inhabit. Luis Suarez talks about social computing - not just IBM products, but the ways in which companies use social computing.

     Make sure your blog is nicely designed, is professional, and that you’ve pointed your online points of presence to it so you can encourage conversation. Make it easy for people to share your material off-site, too.

Shift behavior

     This is more of a “how” you should do it section. To shift behavior, be helpful. Starbucks became our “third place” because it was inviting, because transactions were easy, because the place was configured for our business.

     Be helpful. If you’re trying to sell more product, how can you reduce friction to the purchase? What else can you do that isn’t directly tied to a sale but that still helps? Can you point to other people’s services when it makes a difference? Shift behaviors by being online and by being helpful.

Warm up the funnel

     Use LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and commenting on people’s blogs as a way to keep relationships “warm.” Never underestimate the value of comments and general, non-sales-minded conversations. Some tools to help you stay on top of this:

• http://www.backtype.com - commenting tracking.
• http://www.friendfeed.com - lifestream hub.
• http://search.twitter.com - search for your name, company’s name, product’s name, etc, and subscribe to it via RSS.

Measure - Hubspot, Radian6, BuzzLogic, more.

     There are many ways to measure social media’s impact. You probably already think of pageviews, unique visitors, comments. Here are some more:

• http://www.radian6.com
• http://www.buzzlogic.com
• http://www.crimsonhexagon
• http://www.vibemetrix.com - sentiment and comments.
• http://www.hubspot.com - site search quality, value oflinks, more.

     Simple point: there’s more than numbers to consider.

     Source: Fishing where the fish are: Mapping Social Media to the buying cycle (Chris Brogan) e-book

How to help your e-book get shared via word-of-mouse

     Wondering how to pull all that off? Here are some tips for executing a successful e-book.

• Present your e-book in a landscape format, rather than the white paper’s typical portrait format. This design choice signals to your readers that the content inside is interesting, unlike a boring old white paper.
• Include interesting graphics and images with the text.
• Consider writing in a lighter, more conversational style than you would in a white paper, marketing brochure, or Web page.
• E-books (as viral marketing tools) should always be free and should never have a registration requirement.
• Think like a publisher by understanding your audience. Consider what market problems your audience has, and develop a topic that appeals to these readers.
• Try to make the e-book easy to read. Keep things fun and interesting.
• Open with a story. Use examples and stories throughout.
• Find a great title that grabs the reader’s attention. Use a subtitle to describe what the e-book will deliver.
• Hire a professional editor to help you through multiple drafts and a proofreader to finalize the copy. Have the e-book professionally designed.
• Put a Creative Commons license on the content so people know they can freely share your copyrighted material.
• Create a landing page from which people can download your e-book. For an example, check out the Pragmatic Marketing, Inc. e-book The Secrets of Market-Driven Leaders: How technology company CEOs create success (and why most fail) by Craig Stull, Phil Myers, and David Meerman Scott.
• Promote the e-book like crazy. Offer it on your Web site with easy-to-find links. If you have a blog, write about it there. Add a link to your employees’ email signatures. Get partners to offer links.
• To drive viral marketing, alert bloggers, analysts, and members of the mainstream media that the e-book is available, and send them a download link. Don’t send the actual PDF document directly unless asked.

     This is a new world for marketers and corporate communicators. Never before has a medium allowed an idea (or a product) to spread instantly to millions of consumers the way that the Web does. E-books are true examples of thought leadership at work, and they hold the potential to influence many thousands of people in ways that traditional marketing cannot.

     E-books are a great way to dip your toes into the word-of-mouse ocean. If you’re a thought leader—a person recognized as having innovative and important ideas—go ahead and write an e-book.

     Source: The New Rules of Viral Marketing (David Meerman Scott) e-book

5 tips for getting more from Facebook

• Fan page. Facebook had personal profiles and groups from the start, but a few months ago they added to the function called fan pages and made them more business friendly. Any business on Facebook should create a fan page for their business and start optimizing additional content there. The cool thing about fan pages is that it’s now a lot like having another website. You can add applications, newsletter sign-up pages, and events, and promote them to your friends on Facebook. When someone becomes a fan of your page, your updates on the page show up on their wall giving additional exposure.
• Custom HTML. This one’s a little more technical but when you create a fan page you will see that your page comes with tabs for various categories of content you create (each tab has its own URL so you can promote each section on your fan page around the Web). Using the Facebook Mark-up Language (FBML), you can create custom boxes of HTML content, like newsletter sign-up pages, blog RSS feeds, and white paper downloads just like you might on your website.
• Special content. Give your Facebook fans a little something extra they might not find on your blog or website. Upload images from your PowerPoint presentations, articles from the local publication you contribute to, or on-the-fly videos created using the Facebook video application. You’re bound to find some crossover from other social networks like Twitter, so give the Facebook users something unique. I know some people caution about reposting Twitter here, but I think it’s perfectly fine. I get lots of comments from people who just happen to like to use Facebook more than Twitter and this way they still get updates.
• Events, videos, and apps. Use the heck out of all of the Facebook applications. Promote events, upload or record video, hold contests and polls. All of this extra engagement is so easy to do using pre-built tools. And don’t forget to integrate your Facebook activity back to your website and blog using a Facebook Fan Box.
• Ads for awareness. I think that Facebook has built one of the better ad targeting tools going. You can target ads to Facebook members on all kinds of criteria and run pretty low cost campaigns. The trick though is to run campaigns that are compelling and promote your Facebook Fan Page instead of trying to sell something. Promote your white paper, events, and educational content—create awareness about your great content and you will get the chance to earn the trust it takes to actually sell something to someone.

     Source: Let’s talk, Social Media for small busniess, version two (John Jantsch) e-book

5 tips for getting more from LinkedIn

     A pretty common question these days is: “Which social network is the best?” And to that I usually say, “The one that helps you meet your marketing objectives.” And in that regard, many are great, but for different reasons.

     LinkedIn: It has always tended toward the serviceoriented professional, in my opinion, but it has plenty to like in the brand asset optimization world that all businesses live in as well. My advice for most business owners is to find a social network or platform that seems most suited to your business objectives and dive in pretty deep, focusing more casual attention on the others, at least initially. Going hard and deep into one network, like LinkedIn, is the only way to gain the momentum delivered by consistent work and engagement.

     So, when it comes to LinkedIn, here are five tips to get more:

Your profile

     This is a great brand asset so don’t waste it. Make it informative and optimized for search.

• Add a photo: Nothing says nobody’s home faster than the default icon.
• Get the branded URL: Something like this is what you want http://www.linkedin.com/in/ducttapemarketing—it’s something you pick during editing.
• Use links with Anchor text: Link to your blog, products, workshops, etc., through the “other” tab and you can add anchor text for the link.
• Be descriptive: Use the “Summary” to tell your story in a compelling way and add lots of keywords in the “specialty” section.
• Keep it active: LinkedIn has a status update feature, much like Facebook and Twitter, that you should update routinely.
• Link to it: Put links to your profile in your email signature and other online pages. Optimization is a two-way street.

Give to get

     When people view profiles one of the top features is something called recommendations. While these may feel a little fluffy when you read them, lack of them can be a competitive issue. You should acquire some recommendations and I find the best way to get them is to give them. Choose people in your network that you’ve worked with and write an honest statement of recommendation. Don’t be surprised if you receive some in return.

Show what you’ve got

     An overlooked feature on LinkedIn, in my opinion, is the Question and Answer function. By jumping in and answering questions thoughtfully you can demonstrate a given expertise while potentially engaging contacts that are drawn to your knowledge. The key phrase is thoughtfully answering. LinkedIn even has a rating system to reward people who give the best answers with some added exposure.

     The flip side of this tip is to ask thoughtful questions. This can be a great way to get useful information, but it’s equally powerful as a tool to create conversations, discussion, and engagement with like-minded connections.

Lead a group

     Anyone can launch a group on LinkedIn and lead discussions and networking on a specific topic of interest. If you take this tip to heart and put some effort into a niche group you can gain added influence with your network, but groups are also open to the LinkedIn universe as a whole and some folks find that this is one of the strongest ways to build their network. Building a group around an established brand is also a great way to bring users or customers together.

Repurpose content

     Since members of your network, and those of the larger LinkedIn community, may only experience your brand on the LinkedIn platform, it’s a great idea to enhance your profile with educational information. This is best done using some of the third-party applications that LinkedIn has collected for this purpose.

• Blog Link: displays your latest blog posts on your profile
• Box.net: allows you to create links to files such as resumes and marketing kits
• SlideShare: embeds slideshow presentations and demos
• Company Buzz: scrapes Twitter for mentions of your brand or other topics you assign

     Source: Let’s talk, Social Media for cmall busniess, version two (John Jantsch) e-book