JitterJam® Social CRM

When it comes to listening in social media, searches on common terms can produce an ear-splitting amount of volume. Here at JitterJam, we’re trying to sell a product that incorporates social media listening and engagement, and that means that we’re searching social media channels for the term “social media,” which, it turns out, is a term that gets used a whole lot.

A human being can only participate in so many conversations per day, and a search on “social media” alone brings in too many results to be useful to us, so refining our social searches makes the conversation load much more manageable.

Possible refinements include adding words (like marketing and best practices), and modifying words (like searching on “social CRM” or “social marketing” instead of “social media”). But something I hadn’t experimented with as much before today was adding limiting words to a search to restrict results.

What’s the biggest cause of clutter for us when listening for mentions of the words “social media”? Links. Plain and simple, the amount of links being shared via social media about social media is immense. This is useful to us when we’re looking for great content to share. But, when we’re looking for people and companies who we think could benefit from the use of our product, the links get in the way. So, this afternoon, I did something simple and tried excluding “http” from a search.

The results narrowed substantially, but were still so vast that I needed to further refine them. I added the word “help” (figuring that this would bring up users searching for help with their social media efforts) and Bingo, I had a manageable search (about 300 results expected per day) to begin mining for potential customers.

What search terms are giving you fits or have given you fits in the past? How have you refined your searches to get more useful results? Let us know.

“[W]hen you give engineers the chance to apply their passion to their company, they can do amazing things.”

That quote comes to us from Google software engineer Bharat Mediratta (in a 2007 interview with Julie Bick of The New York Times), and Google has certainly proved the statement accurate. Google’s 20% time policy encourages employees to spend 20% of their time working on projects that they’re passionate about but which don’t necessarily fit into their job descriptions. And the projects that have resulted from this (to one extent or another) include big name products such as Gmail, Google News, and Google Reader.

This is nothing new, of course. As Scott Berkun points out in this 2008 article, 3M’s 15% time rule in the 1950s helped usher into existence both masking tape and Post-It notes.

As you can imagine, this is a much-beloved perk of working for Google (big enough that it appears on Google’s Jobs page). And companies big and small could benefit from some version of it. Lifehacker has some tips, as does Google developer Joe Beda.

Ever produced anything awesome in your spare time at work? Are you encouraging your employees to follow their passions on the job (within reason, of course)? Leave a note in the comments below, and let us know.

Then get out there and have yourself a fantastic Fun Stuff Friday!

Last month, I wrote about the importance of measurement in social media campaigns. In that post, I identified three things you should be tracking in particular: the buzz building around your company and industry; the ROI on the special promotions you’re running; and trends in the development of your contact list.

We’ve already talked about trends in the development of your contact list. This time, let’s focus on the buzz building around your company and industry. Here are three tips on how to handle it.

Contribute without selling. Don’t enter into the conversation looking to sell. As with any social media interaction, enter the room with the aim of being helpful first and foremost. Be subtle and tactful as you try to raise awareness of your product or service. This is especially crucial if the conversation is about your industry in general and not your company specifically.

Don’t duck in and duck out. Become a presence in the conversation, not just the person who sneaks into the picture to get noticed, then leaves. This ties in with the point above: Show your potential customers that you are engaged in this conversation for the long haul, and that your first interaction was not just a token appearance or some kind of marketing stunt or trick.

Research the origins of the buzz. A key piece of reacting to buzz is anticipating and reacting quickly. If you didn’t react as swiftly as you’d like this time, the key to reacting quicker next time is in understanding where the buzz started, how it started, and who started it. If you’re seeing buzz consistently originate from the same people or sites, it might be time to start tracking what they’re saying more carefully. Use tagging or segmentation features in your marketing platform (like those found in JitterJam) to create a group of contacts you should be checking in on more regularly.

Those are just a couple of the strategies that come immediately to mind when thinking about buzz management. Have anything to add? Drop a note in the comments below.

Creating a compelling, reusable email template should be a high priority on every marketing department’s social media To Do List. After all, in the words of eMarketer senior analyst Debra Aho Williamson, “[social media and email] can help each other, offering the opportunity for marketers to create deeper connections.” So, here are a few tips on what a good template should include.

Social Links. Wherever you put them—the header, the footer, or the sidebar—make sure to include links to your Facebook and Twitter pages. For the JitterJam email template I’ve been setting up over the past week, I’ve also included a link to our Make Me Happy contact preferences page, where contacts can tell us through which channel they prefer to be contacted (as well as how often they wish to be contacted). Give your readers every opportunity to extend the conversation beyond their inboxes.

Plenty of White Space. Don’t cram your profile full of extra content. Do make sure to include social links and a logo, but don’t over-embellish. In my experience, a busy, headache-inducing email is an email swiftly deleted. Leave room for the content to speak for itself. And be sure to use a big enough font! Don’t make your readers strain their eyes to see your message.

A Compelling Plain-Text Alternative. Not every email client is capable of displaying HTML emails, and not every user is interested in reading HTML emails even if their client is capable of it. So, be sure to take some time to craft a compelling plain-text alternative to your message (assuming the email broadcasting platform you’re using is capable of including one).

Once you’ve crafted your template, don’t forget to test, test, test, and then test again. Test different desktop clients on different operating systems, plus every Webmail client you can get your hands on. Make sure that your message is going to look beautiful and be intelligible when it reaches your readers.

April Fools’ Day is serious business. Because of the nature of the day, it’s hard to launch, announce, or write about anything effectively. Take, for example, the trouble Netflix had yesterday in announcing their app for the iPad.

On the other hand, if you decide to go with the flow and try to pull an April Fools’ Day prank yourself, there are all sorts of issues to consider—long term impact on SEO is just one that I’ve been warned about over the years. YouTube is so careful in determining what their annual prank will be that, before the stunt is finalized, a “panel made up of engineers, product managers, and PR reps congregates to figure out which ideas are feasible (and won’t offend anyone).”

Both TechCrunch and PC World have nice write-ups on all of the shenanigans that went on yesterday, while Museum of Hoaxes has compiled The Top 100 April Fools’ Day Hoaxes of All Time.  Enjoy! And then get out there and have yourselves and incredibly foolish Fun Stuff Friday.