JitterJam – Integrated Social Marketing Software for Business

Wonder where people find all those cool websites, videos and blog posts come from that show up as links on Twitter, Facebook and in your emails from your friends? Wonder how you can be the cool person who shares those links? Do you want to click to distraction and find wonderful content you can share with your community? Then try StumbleUpon—or try it again if you haven’t in a while.

StumbleUpon’s premise is simple—find something cool and mark whether you like it or not. That’s nice to help others that are using the platform to find neat things. But given the 10 million plus users of the service, you also have the opportunity to “stumble upon” sites that other people have rated. Click an interest, and let the site direct you to sites and content that other people have liked. It’s easy, it’s addictive (uh oh…) and it’s a great way for you to find sites and content that will wow your friends and contacts.

For you marketers out there, use these discoveries to feed your community. For instance, if you’re a food-oriented company, post links to sites that contain recipes, articles and luscious photos that will interest your current and potential customers. You’ll find that your posts will interest your followers and fans and draw new people to you on Twitter, Facebook and more.

I actually was thinking about the topic for today’s Fun Stuff Friday blog post, and I was stumped. I asked my colleague across the cube wall from me to feed me ideas, and he said, “I think I’ll look at StumbleUpon for some ideas.”

He sent me a link to a cool video, but the spark for this post was the idea that he used a crowdsourcing site like StumbleUpon to find something new. We all can use a spark of new, and StumbleUpon can give you just that.

There’s a bit of social media hype going on in the marketing world today. Many claim that social media is the very best way to reach current and potential customers. I’m not convinced. I do not believe social media is the very best way to reach customers.

I’m sure you find that statement interesting coming from a company that focuses on providing tools for multi-channel marketing with a basis in social engagement. If you look at the the world’s 6.9B people, the 400M Facebook users constitute an impressive capture rate (5.85%). But that leaves about 6.5 billion people unaccounted for—people who could be buying your product but may just not care to Tweet or share their family photos on Facebook. Social media may be one of the ways—and even the very best way—to reach some of your customers, but don’t ignore the fact that it’s not the only way to reach them.

The new frontier of social marketing DOES provide a tremendous opportunity for companies and brands to build close and trusted relationships with their customers and discover new voices on the real-time web. But it’s dangerous to approach the market with a plan that ONLY focuses on the social landscape. You need to look at social media as means to an end, and only one of the means available to you. If you can’t define the end, then you’re missing a critical step that will leave you wondering why you spent all those resources to manage your social marketing activities. That’s where marketing balance comes in.

Marketing balance is utilizing the best practice of creating an overall marketing strategy that includes the most relevant and rewarding tools and channels that are available to us today. The answer to “How should I market my product” should not be “social media.” The answer should be a combination—an artful balance—of those lovely 4 P’s (thanks Mr. Kottler) that we all loved to hate in college. Social media should be part of the implementation of your strategy, not a strategy on its own.

So what are some steps to achieving marketing balance? We’ll cover that in Part 2 of this blog post. And while you’re waiting with bated breath for the Steps to Achieving Marketing Balance that I’ll describe in Part 2, please let know your thoughts on how your marketing strategy has evolved or changed because of social media. How have you altered your approach to marketing strategy, messaging and tactics due to the opportunities afforded by social / new media? Post a comment!

In this series, we’re detailing the steps you should take to find new people to follow on Twitter and to get them to engage with your business. So far, we’ve covered the First C: Customer, the Second C: Credibility, the Third C: Content, and the Fourth C: Community. Today, we conclude the series with the Fifth C: Competition.

The Fifth C: Competition

If your business is on Twitter, there is a good chance that your competitors are too. And, while it may not be prudent to follow a competitor publicly, monitoring their feed privately can provide valuable insights. By keeping an eye on whom they’re talking with and who’s talking about them, you can uncover potential customers, other potential competitors, and journalists to engage with. Here’s how to get started.

Public vs. Private. Make a decision about following your competitors publicly vs. monitoring them privately. If you follow publicly, remember that following someone on Twitter can be viewed as an endorsement of the account being followed, thereby introducing confusion to potential customers. Private monitoring addresses this concern, and hides from public view those companies your business perceives as threats. Yes, the public follow is the more natural, built-in Twitter action, but products like JitterJam make it exceptionally easy to set up social searches that will monitor competitors privately.

Search for Journalists. Begin by searching on terms specific to your market. Group any journalists you find into a Twitter list that you’ll check regularly for mentions of new competitors. You should also consider setting up searches on the journalists themselves, and watching for retweets and mentions to determine whom to target for maximum reach during your next product launch.

Both Positive and Negative. Search for both positive and negative mentions of the competition, and follow users who have something substantial to say either way. Track the features the advocates and power users are shouting about by tagging them in your contact database, and set up searches on the features the critics complain are missing. Engage users who are comparison-shopping or who are actively expressing their disappointment with a competitor, suggesting demos or free trials of your products as appropriate.

The JitterJam multichannel marketing platform is an excellent way to take full advantage of these Five C’s, and to turn social conversations into trusted customer relationships. For a demo, click here. Or, to start a month-long free trial immediately, click here

Google, well-known for releasing special versions of its iconic logo to commemorate holidays, anniversaries, and the lives of luminaries, this morning released its most interactive “doodle” to date: a fully playable version of the 1980s video game Pac-Man, with the Google logo for a backdrop. The release, which coincides with the 30th anniversary of Pac-Man’s debut, is currently dominating Twitter’s trending topics.

Celebrating holidays, birthdays, and historic events with your customers—particularly those events most relevant to your business or market—is an excellent way to demonstrate knowledge and appreciation of culture, history, and the bigger picture. But there is another benefit. On their site, Google admits that, “[w]hile the doodle is primarily a fun way for the company to recognize events and notable people, it also illustrates the creative and innovative personality of the company itself.”

So, how might your business illustrate creativity and innovation in this way? What about a custom homepage or Twitter background? Depending on the design of your Website, you could add an occasion-specific splash page or a banner image. And don’t forget about offline opportunities! A subtle change in packaging for a special celebration or event can build consumer interest and online buzz as well. Make some aspect of your product or brand collectible, and collect it your advocates will. Google reports that some of their users actually collect their custom logos!

And if you’re running out of ideas, get your customers involved! Google invites customers to submit their own ideas for logos, and has even run a contest for K-12 students to bring in new ideas. The Jones Soda company invites its customers to submit photographs to be used on the company’s bottled beverages.

There are, of course, some things to be cautious about. As Google points out in answering the question of why they don’t release doodles for certain holidays, “We have to balance [the doodle calendar] with the need to maintain the consistency of the Google homepage.” So, brand consistency is an issue to consider. Another issue is the potential to be offensive. Events or occasions that are obviously somber should be avoided, as should any that might be misinterpreted by your customers or prospects.

But, those caveats aside, why not give an idea like Google’s doodles a try? Have you already? Let us know in the comments, and then get outside and have yourself and amazingly fun Fun Stuff Friday.

In this series, we’re detailing the steps you should take to find new people to follow on Twitter and to get them to engage with your business. So far, we’ve covered the First C: Customer, the Second C: Credibility, and the Third C: Content. Today, we move on to the Fourth C: Community.

The Fourth C: Community

Just as Twitter is a great way for customers to keep track of and keep in touch with your business, it is a great way for you to keep track of the businesses and organizations you partner and interact with on a regular basis. If your business and channel partners are using the service, Twitter is an ideal platform for keeping track of any retail, advertising, distribution, or supply chain issues which might affect your organization. It is also an excellent place to emphasize the human side of your business. Whether you’re congratulating partners on their accomplishments or supporting them as they struggle through challenging times, the public nature of the Twitter provides an exceptional opportunity to build or reinforce your business’s reputation as a positive member of your community. How do you begin building a business community on Twitter?

Ask. Ask your business and channel partners to follow your business. Don’t forget to follow them back. Make sure to prominently feature your business’s Twitter ID in the footer area of your outbound e-mail messages, as well as on your corporate letterhead and stationery.

Recruit. Recruit members of your existing business community who aren’t on Twitter. Contact them through a channel you’ve used in the past (e-mail, direct mail, text messaging, etc.), explain to them the benefits of the service, and ask them to join you. Suggest the possibility of a market- or geographic-specific Twitter chat using an agreed-upon hash-tag to help the new recruits build their own following.

Search. Search for mentions of professional organizations that your business belongs to, and follow businesses and individuals talking about them. Beyond that, search for terms related to your geographical area and business market. Follow local personalities and pundits, members of the press covering your industry, and any civic or other community group or leader that seems relevant.

The next and final blog post in this series will cover the Fifth C: Competition.

The JitterJam multichannel marketing platform is an excellent way to take full advantage of these Five C’s, and to turn social conversations into trusted customer relationships. For a demo, click here. Or, to start a month-long free trial immediately, click here.

In this series, we’re detailing the steps you should take to find new people to follow on Twitter and to get them to engage with your business. Part one covered the First C: Customer, part two covered the Second C: Credibility, and today we’re discussing the Third C: Content.

The Third C: Content

Twitter is an extraordinary tool for sharing compelling, relevant content with your customers and prospects. The trick is to find time to write that content yourself or to find reliable sources that are regularly producing content you judge to be worth sharing. How do you do that? You can evaluate worthiness based on the pure volume of tweets about a user’s content, but that strategy ignores the fact that part of the usefulness of Twitter is its ability to help users discover and connect with new voices. Certainly you should be highlighting the users and content that are widely agreed to be worth reading, but injecting a healthy dose of fresh perspectives into your followers’ streams is a way to differentiate your business and provide added value.

Start With Who You Read, But Go Further. If they’re on Twitter, follow the blogs and news sources you’re learning from outside of the service. As we recommended when discussing the Second C: Credibility, check for “Follow Us on Twitter” links in their sidebars, footers, and headers. But go further than that! If the blog features multiple writers, examine the author list, click on the names, and see if there are links to individual profiles there. If there are not, use a Google search to conduct a search on the author’s name alongside the word Twitter. These authors may be writing for other blogs that you haven’t discovered yet.

Find New Voices & New Perspectives. Search for industry-specific keywords, and make sure to require the abbreviation http in order to bring back only those results that include links. JitterJam’s powerful social search capabilities offer decided advantages for blog consumption over RSS readers. First, if you’re already using Twitter in other areas of your business, using it as your primary content discovery tool means you’ll have one less application to open. And second, discovering the new voices we discussed above is far easier with a social search than it is with an RSS reader—with an RSS reader, your potential discoveries are limited to those new voices recommended by the bloggers you’re already following.

Make It Easy. Create a Twitter list to group all content providers together for easy access. Not everyone you follow will be a providing content on a regular basis. Group together those who are providing content regularly and make it easy for yourself to find something to tweet when you need something to tweet.

The next blog post in this series will cover the Fourth C: Community.

The JitterJam multichannel marketing platform is an excellent way to take full advantage of these Five C’s, and to turn social conversations into trusted customer relationships. For a demo, click here. Or, to start a month-long free trial immediately, click here.

Pitching a business or product in person is a skill that every marketer and salesperson works hard to perfect. But often the circumstances under which you are required to make your pitch are out of your control. That’s why the ability to think on your feet is crucial. And perhaps this is why we’ve seen a rise in so-called presentation challenges in recent years. With the growing popularity of PechaKucha and Battledecks, there has never been a better time to hone your improvisational skills.

PechaKucha is a challenge to presenters to present their ideas with just 20 slides, which they are allowed to display for no more than 20 seconds each. Events have been held in 304 cities across the globe since February 2003.

Battledecks takes the PechaKucha concept one step further by requiring presenters to improvise a presentation based on a set of slides they’ve never seen before. It’s been a big hit at the South By Southwest Interactive Festival and at Podcamp events in both Boston and New Hampshire.

Both challenges force presenters out of their comfort zones and provide an excellent opportunity to improve on a presenter’s ability to think fast and adjust to unfamiliar situations. If you have the opportunity to present during either of these events, do take the time to do so.

Have yourself an amazingly fun Fun Stuff Friday!

In this series, we’re detailing the steps you should take to find new people to follow on Twitter and to get them to engage with your business. In part one, we discussed the First C of Following People on Twitter: Customer. In today’s follow-up, we’re covering the Second C: Credibility.

The Second C: Credibility

In the years since its debut in 2006, Twitter has provided an excellent platform for helpful, knowledgeable users to establish themselves as thought leaders and subject matter experts. By tweeting tips and best practices on a regular basis, and by utilizing the public (and therefore searchable) @ message system to engage directly with followers, Twitterers like Tamar Weinberg and Jason Falls have established themselves as leading authorities on social media. Weinberg has authored the book The New Community Rules and provided consulting in Internet marketing for M80 (whose clients include Ford and Microsoft), while Falls has consulted for major brands like Louisville Slugger and Jim Beam, as well as for organizations such as The National Center for Family Literacy. And those are just two of the more high profile examples. Twitter is an ideal place for your business to learn more about social media, about your marketplace and about how those two things intersect.

Start With Who You Know. If they’re on Twitter, follow the people you are learning from through other channels. Check the sidebars, footers, and headers of their websites for “Follow Me on Twitter” links. Look for similar information on the covers or inside flaps of any books they have written. And, when all else fails, use Google to conduct a search on the individual’s name alongside the word Twitter.

Search For People You Should Know. Search for industry-specific conversations and take note of the users whose content is being constantly and consistently retweeted. You can follow these users with just two clicks from within one of JitterJam’s powerful social searches.

Ask For Further Suggestions. Use Twitter’s @ message feature to ask the influencers, experts and thought leaders you follow already who they trust most and who they are learning from. If they prove difficult to reach, examine any Twitter lists they may be following for clues. They may have a VIPs list, an Inspiration list, or a list specific to your industry. Once you have the list’s name, you can use JitterJam’s social search functionality to monitor all tweets by members of that list, and to add any user of particular interest to your database.

The next blog post in this series will cover the Third C: Content.

The JitterJam multichannel marketing platform is an excellent way to take full advantage of these Five C’s, and to turn social conversations into trusted customer relationships. For a demo, click here. Or, to start a month-long free trial immediately, click here.

Businesses looking to engage new individuals on Twitter are often at a loss when determining which people and companies to follow, and how to find them. This is especially true for businesses just getting started with social marketing. The question of why to engage in social marketing has largely been answered—it opens up potential new markets, and provides a way to build deeper, more trusted relationships with an increasingly vocal customer base. But when it comes to the mechanics of social marketing, there are few answers to be found for the questions of how to engage, and whom to engage with.

Of course, JitterJam can help you with the process to find people to follow, but you still have to judge whom to follow. In this series of five blog posts, we’ll give you the rationale and steps in finding people to follow on Twitter—and getting more people to engage with your business.

The Five C’s of Following People on Twitter

1. Customer: Your current and potential customers
2. Credibility: People who provide you with an opportunity to learn
3. Content: Great stuff that your followers will love to read
4. Community: Business partners, channel partners, and other members of your business community
5. Competition: Keep an eye on what they’re doing

The First C: Customer

Twitter provides your business with a great opportunity to find out who your customers are—AND to develop direct communications with them. You also have the opportunity to find potential customers through searches and outreach. How?

Ask. Ask your customers to follow your business. Don’t forget to follow them back. Social media is all about being social, being part of the conversation. Make sure you ask on all your consumer-facing communications—on your website, in your advertising, on your collateral, prominently on your outbound promotional and personal emails. Create a fun graphic, or just say “Follow us on Twitter” with your Twitter ID and/or a link to your Twitter ID.

Search For Your Business’ Fans. Search Twitter for conversations that include your business’ name, brand and/or product and follow the people who are engaged in those conversations. People might be mentioning your brand, but if they’re talking about you and not to you, you might miss that opportunity to engage with your customer. JitterJam’s powerful social search function finds and saves these conversations for you and enables you to review them and act upon them when it’s convenient for you. Take the opportunity to engage these people in direct conversations (@ messages are nice—they’re public, and they enable others to see you engaging with your customers).

Get Permission. If you’re going to use Twitter as a marketing channel as well as a communications channel, make sure that you ask permission to market to them through Twitter before you send a Twitter direct message (DM) or @ message with a promotional message. Using best practices to market to consumers—regardless of the channel—is essential to building trust with your current and prospective customers. JitterJam’s Make Me Happy™ permission marketing system makes this easy and puts the consumer in control.

The next blog post in this series will cover the Second C: Credibility

The JitterJam multichannel marketing platform is an excellent way to take full advantage of these Five C’s, and to turn social conversations into trusted customer relationships. For a demo, click here. Or, to start a month-long free trial immediately, click here.

Show and Tell - explaining the rain game, by woodleywonderworks on Flickr. CC BY.

Much of social media is a giant game of show and tell. Whether users are sharing photos on Facebook or brief anecdotes on Twitter, they are, to one extent or another, doing the same thing they did when they stood in front of the class in elementary school to explain why they loved their new Transformer toy so much. Businesses engaged in social media can use this predisposition toward sharing and storytelling to discover new, valuable information on consumers. The key is to get directive.

What if, once a week, your business encouraged its customers to engage in a game of show and tell with some specific parameters? Here are a few examples:

• A performing arts center might encourage its patrons to describe the best concert they’ve ever attended, and then use that information to tweak and modify the concertgoing experience accordingly.
• A health-conscious food company might solicit its customers for their guiltiest culinary pleasures, then post healthier alternatives that utilize the company’s products.
• An outdoor supply company might ask its following about the one piece of camping gear that’s saved the day more than any other over the years, then highlight that item (and items like it) more prominently in their online store.

Yes, this is what businesses are doing every day when they ask questions on Twitter, on Facebook, and on their blogs. But by framing the question as a game, by calling back to an activity that many customers will remember from their childhoods, businesses can develop intelligence on their consumer base in a fun, unique, and far less overtly sales-driven way.

What do you think? Let us know, then get out there and have an amazingly fun Fun Stuff Friday!