JitterJam – Integrated Social Marketing Software for Business

Today marks the fortieth annual celebration of Earth Day, and it is an understandably popular topic across the Web right now. Both the phrase “Happy Earth Day” and the hash tag #EarthDay are currently trending topics on Twitter. But there is one specific Earth Day-related search phrase we’ve been really interested in all day, and that is “Earth Day resolutions.”

Why Earth Day resolutions? Well, a resolution is actionable—it’s something someone wants to get done. And there is therefore an opportunity to help. For a business in the eco-friendly space, Earth Day resolutions offer a wealth of possibilities. To name just one example: a search on this simple term would bring up dozens of potential customers for a cloth bag manufacturer (ditching plastic shopping bags has been a popular resolution choice).

Days like this need not (and should not) be exclusively about direct, immediate conversions, however. For the eco-friendly business, like the client who first turned us on to the idea of Earth Day resolutions, establishing a presence in a holiday- or event-related conversation can be just as much about showing a passionate dedication to the ideals set forth in the company’s mission statement. Letting customers and prospects know you care deeply about the same things they care about is never a bad move.

Either way, if your company is engaged in social media marketing, the opportunity to help or to inspire on a day like today is one that should never be passed up.

According to five separate surveys cited by eMarketer.com, site traffic was the number one metric that marketers used to measure social media marketing success in 2009. But, as eMarketer CEO Geoff Ramsey wrote in his company’s report “Seven Guidelines for Achieving ROI from Social Media,” site traffic “on its own it cannot justify heavier investment in social media.”

So, what other ways are there to measure success in social media marketing? What about contact growth? A contact means more than an IP address in Google Analytics, after all.

I’m not just talking about a growth in Twitter followers or Facebook friends here, however (though that’s part of it). What you really want when it comes to contact growth is a growth in your contact database. Whether you manually input intelligence on your social media contacts or you use a marketing platform that ties directly into a database (like JitterJam), it’s essential that you’re bringing data on your customers into a place where you’re in control, and where data can be stored for the long term (something Facebook and Twitter themselves aren’t particularly good at).  You need to able to add communication channels, to add intelligence, and to segment your contact list. Only then will you be able to effectively turn those followers and fans into customers. And a high conversion rate, of course, is a metric that would certainly justify a heavier investment in social media.

What do you think? How are you measuring your success? Leave a comment below to let us know.

Every company engaged in social media should have a list of high-risk words they’re monitoring. And whenever your company or brand is mentioned in conjunction with one of the words on your list, you should be alerted. Responses to high-risk comments and conversations should be swift, but well reasoned. They should be consistent with company policy and tone, but should never be cold or emotionless. And your responses to high-risk conversations should always make it plain that you’ve been listening to the customer—your messages should never sound like canned or automated apologies.

Here are a few other things to keep in mind:

Bad isn’t always bad. Be aware of your audience and of how they speak and write. In certain situations, something that’s “bad” is actually good. And it’s always possible that the word in question is being used in a comparative way, casting a competitor in a negative light while promoting you (“Brand Y is a total fail! Brand X FTW!”).

Customers can forget you’re out there. In the heat of a rant about a bad cable installation experience or a failed DVR, it’s easy enough for consumers to forget that Comcast is out there. Remind them! Remind them that you are there to listen and help, even though they may have been unsuccessful in getting through to a sympathetic human being via your other customer service channels. And, if you can—and if it makes sense—do this publicly. That way you remind all of your other customers (or potential customers), as well.

Some things just can’t be fixed. Southwest Airlines found themselves in a no-win situation recently, after film director Kevin Smith was removed from one of their flights for being “too fat to fly” (Smith’s words, not SWA’s). Smith was so embarrassed and so upset that it was essentially impossible for Southwest to fix the situation. The director was all over Twitter within minutes of his ejection, recorded two podcasts on the debacle within the week, and publicly picked apart every blog post and tweet that SWA offered in response to his complaint. Could Southwest have handled things more honestly, more intelligently, and with more transparency? Certainly. But, even if they had, there are certain situations where things are so out of a company’s control that to try and control them might do more harm than good. Attempts should be made to fix any situation, but every company needs to establish parameters for when they absolutely must stop trying to fix the unfixable.

How do you monitor and react to high-risk conversations? If you have tips, please share them in the comments below.

With services like Ping.fm, it’s easy enough to blast all of your digital marketing channels with the same message. But is that the best idea? Each channel has its own advantages and disadvantages when it comes to the dissemination of content. So, why not tailor your messages accordingly?

Facebook: Facebook has a lot in common with the dry erase boards my classmates hung on their dorm room doors back in college. As long as you had access to the walled community of our campus—and as long as the dry-erase marker hadn’t run out of ink—you could write on the wall of anyone you chose. Conversations were focused and easy to follow. And because these things were so ubiquitous, you could communicate with almost anyone in the community.

If you extend that metaphor to include the notice boards that dotted campus hallways, it was also theoretically possible to communicate with organizations you were a part of (groups) or a fan of (fan pages).

Facebook, like those dorm room doors of old and their bulletin board counterparts, also has the advantage of being able to hold additional content alongside text. So, in addition to near ubiquity, the service offers the opportunity to communicate through a variety of media. The same can’t be said for Twitter and mobile marketing, and can barely be said for email.

The service’s major disadvantage is the wall that surrounds it. On Facebook, you have to be invited to join a conversation, or you have to start one yourself (and recruit others to join in). This may change in the future, but, for now, it’s much harder to serendipitously stumble across a relevant discussion than it is on Twitter.

Key Takeaways: Posting your Twitter feed to your Facebook Fan Page and doing nothing more with it is not taking advantage of all that the platform can do. Try including photos, audio, and video. And take advantage of Facebook’s ability to handle multiple links if it makes sense. Also, remember that your audience is limited to those who have already signed up to receive your updates. So, target accordingly.

Twitter: Twitter is like an enormous open-invite party where you can join a conversation about just about any topic, so long as you listen carefully enough to find it.  And, because conversations on Twitter can be shared and discovered much easier than they can be on Facebook, there is a potential for wide, fast dissemination of content.  Quantity of followers on Twitter counts for far less than quality. A select group of influencers can help spread your message much further than you could by yourself within the walled garden of your Facebook Fan Page or group.

Of course, the upside of Twitter is also its downside. Because everyone in the room is talking, all at once, it’s much harder for one voice to be heard. Your efforts on Twitter need to begin with a small conversation over in the most relevant and receptive corner of that overcrowded party hall. You should never begin by pulling out your megaphone and trying to get everyone’s attention all at once. On Twitter, anyone can turn your personal volume knob down to zero. And once one person’s done it, it’s likely that more will follow. Remember that.

Key Takeaways: Content posted to Twitter should be short, relevant (and/or entertaining), and easy to pass on. Yes, you technically have 140 characters to play with. But, if you use all 140 characters, you’re making it that much harder for your followers to pass your message on via retweet. And the viral nature of Twitter is one of its key strengths.

And, while you should certainly take advantage of Twitter’s ability to include links, you should make sure those links aren’t always sales pitches. Don’t be that guy (or gal). Be helpful, be educational, and, most of all, be cordial—eventually, someone will ask you what you do, and then you’ll have your chance to pounce.

In 140 characters or less, of course.

Tomorrow: Part 2: Email and Mobile

If you’ve just signed up for a Twitter account for yourself or for your business, figuring out who to follow can seem daunting. Aside from friends or customers who are already on the service and businesses you patronize or partner with, it’s not immediately obvious who’s worth adding to your Twitter stream. So, here are four tips to get you started:

Create Social Searches
First and foremost, run social searches on the subjects surrounding your brand or product, your market, and the communities you serve. This is an ideal place to find individuals and organizations to follow. And, while you’re at it, be sure to try following “conversation trails” (see our previous post on finding relevant social conversations). If one person or company tweets about something of interest, search for anyone who retweets that message. And if a link to a blog post arrives in your stream, check the comments section and see if there are any people leaving comments who seem worth following up with.

Find Recommendations
If you have contacts who are well established on Twitter, visit their profile pages and check out any Twitter lists they’ve created. This is especially useful for those individuals or companies who are following a lot of people and who aren’t likely to remember every name worth mentioning when you’re asking them for suggestions over a drink or a cup of coffee.

If there are just too many lists to plow through, consider checking out the Mr. Tweet service. It suggests users for you to follow, based on the people and companies you’re already following.

Follow Local Users
Services like Twellow, Localtweeps, and Twitter Local can help you uncover Twitter users in your area who you are not already connected to. When I began to consciously expand my network in the spring of 2008, Twitter Local was one of the places I spent a lot of time, and here’s why: I was much more likely to bump into a local user in the real world, and real world interactions were a primary goal for me as an author and self-publisher/distributor. As I’ve written before, I believe translating online relationships into real world transactions should be a primary goal of any social media marketing campaign. So, get local!

Manage Your List
Services like Manage Twitter and Friend or Follow are springing up to help those of us whose Twitter streams have grown out of control. Both services allow you to easily see which of the folks you’re following aren’t following you, which followers of yours you aren’t following, and more.

But, while a service like Manage Twitter can be useful, it doesn’t offer the kind of rich contact information that an integrated marketing platform can. Maybe there’s a reason you aren’t following @So-and-So anymore. Manage Twitter can’t tell you why, but a system tied to an intelligent contact database (like JitterJam) might shed a bit more light on the subject.

Got any tips on who to follow on Twitter? Please leave a comment below and let us know.

Unless you’re able to step away from your desk on a regular basis (which can be useful, but might not be possible), conversation overload in social media can seem downright inevitable. Here are three tips to help keep your head from spinning off your shoulders.

1. Narrow Your Searches
When it comes to seeking out new conversations to participate in, search can be either a powerful ally or a dastardly interloper. The key is to narrow your search terms so that the results returned to you are small and manageable. Searching for “books” isn’t going to be nearly as helpful as searching for the particular genre of books you’re selling, or a specific title that you’ve identified as competition.

As with segmenting existing contacts into groups, you should schedule time to work on conversations in each of your major search areas. Alternating topics on a regular basis will help keep you fresh. After all, it’s hard to talk about the exact same aspects of a product or service day in and day out. Change it up!

2. The Four Ds: Delete, Delegate, Defer, Do
In 2007, Merlin Mann delivered a now-famous talk about the concept of Inbox Zero. In it, he proposed an email management system that would keep a user’s inbox message count at zero 100% of the time. Why not apply those same techniques to your social media workflow? Once per hour, do this: A) Delete irrelevant messages; B) Delegate questions that can be fielded by others; C) Do tasks that will take less than 60 seconds; and D) Defer those tasks which will take longer.

How you manage to do these things will depend upon the software you’re using to run your social media marketing campaigns, but each should be possible. And when you clean out your social media inbox on a regular basis (whatever that inbox might look like), that feeling of conversation overload can be avoided. Then you can move on to the rest of your job without feeling like you’ve dropped any balls along the way.

3. Measure Effectiveness and Refocus Accordingly
Measuring ROI in social media marketing doesn’t have to be difficult, and it is necessary if you’re going to successfully avoid conversation overload. So, the first step here is to make sure that you can track the effectiveness of your campaigns. If you can’t, you need to find a product or service that will allow you to do so. (Might I suggest JitterJam?) Next, examine your results on a regular basis. Find a schedule that works for you and stick with it. Then, once you see what’s working and what’s not, reevaluate how you’re approaching things. Keep plugging away at what’s working, and either step away from unproductive conversations or find some new way to interact.

Got any other ideas on how to manage conversation overload? Please leave a comment below.

This video, featuring Barry Judge (CMO of Best Buy), is worth a few minutes of your time. In it, Judge raises two points crucial to success in social media marketing.

Talk With Customers, Not At Them. Like many brick & mortar companies, Best Buy’s marketing strategy used to center around television and print media. They ran ads that targeted every consumer within earshot, shouting to the world about their low prices. But then came the rise of Wal-Mart. And after that, of course, came Amazon. And suddenly low prices — best buys, if you will — were no longer as unique a value proposition as they once were.

As Judge points out, the target can’t be everyone anymore. There are too many people to reach, and those people have too many alternatives to choose from. So, the strategy can’t revolve around you and your company controlling and disseminating the message. The truth is: you can’t control the message, and you might not even be the best person to spread it. You are just one part of the conversation about your brand and your product. The customer is another part, and a far larger one. With the rise of social media outlets like Twitter and Facebook (and even blogs), customers are now able to share what they think about a product or service at anytime, in any number of places, and with a potential army of like-minded fellow consumers.

Hence, the importance of social media monitoring and expeditious social media response. You can and should be getting your message out there. But you need to be constantly monitoring how that message is coming across to your potential customers and how that message might be transforming as it’s passed from one person to the next.

Every Mobile Phone Is Now A Response Device. Whether the device in question is a simple messaging phone, a more advanced smart phone, or one of the newer, so-called app phones, I think Judge is right-on when he talks about the power of our mobile devices. Customers can now respond to ads instantaneously, and from anywhere. Whether they see a billboard at the subway station or a full-pager in a magazine at their dentist’s office, they have a device in their pocket that allows them to act on the offer immediately. In many cases, they can buy something right then and there from their phone. And they can also pass on the offer to friends in any number of ways (text message, email, Facebook, Twitter, etc.).

Something Judge doesn’t mention: phones with ubiquitous Internet access are also making it easier for customers to comparison shop without even leaving your store. If a customer has doubts about whether you’re offering the best price, and if you don’t give them a good enough reason to stay and shop with you, it’s all too easy to find someplace else that will give them the buying experience that they crave.

Many of the products we use (or are advised to use) in social media are free to access. But no product, regardless of the price tag or lack thereof, is free to use. It doesn’t matter if you’re talking about WordPress, Twitter, Facebook, or the latest and greatest service that bloggers, Twitterers, and Facebookers are raving about — there are always costs involved, particularly in staff time.

Here are four particular cost areas to consider:

Resources. You need people to make these things look good, and you need people to keep them running. WordPress blogs come out of the box looking very much like thousands of other WordPress blogs. They also end up looking like very lonely places if they’re not updated on a regular basis. It’s blatantly obvious to even the most casual Web user — whether they’re 100% conscious of this or not — when the blog or Website they’re looking at has a cookie-cutter design. And users are also well aware of the virtual tumbleweeds rolling by on sites where there’s less life than they’d find in a ghost town.

Setting up a Twitter account provides similar hurdles. And while it is theoretically easy to change your background, to fill out your full profile, and to tweet on a regular basis, theoretical ease isn’t quite the same as actual ease. You need to get it done, or you need someone to get it done for you. And it takes time!

Dedication. We live in the age of the Next Big Thing, in a world where it’s ridiculously easy to find something new to obsess over, something new to occupy our precious free time. If you’re not delivering constant content through your marketing channels, people will forget about you and move on. Regardless of your market, it is crucial to keep customers engaged in the product and the message year round, on a weekly (if not daily) basis.

The flip side of that, of course, is not to overdo it. But I’m a believer in going all-out, then listening to your audience, seeing if they’re feeling oversaturated, and only reigning things in as necessary.

Messaging. Just as press releases, white papers, and other more traditional marketing efforts require serious thought, so too do social media campaigns. It’s harder to create a meaningful message in 140 characters than you would think. And then there’s the issue of how well the information coming through these new channels is tying in with the rest of your marketing message. It’s easy enough to hand responsibility for your Twitter profile and your Facebook fan page off to an Intern. But if that Intern isn’t clued into the master plan, you could be sending out messages that are erroneous, poorly executed, or, in the worst-case scenario, flat-out false. Once something’s out there on the Internet, it’s out there to stay. And that means that, even if you do farm this work out to someone else, a portion of your workday is going to have to be devoted to making sure that the messages which come out from your brand, regardless of which channel they are distributed through, are on point.

Monitoring. You also need to track how effective these free messages you’re sending really are. Ask yourself: which posts, tweets, and status updates are driving the most traffic? Which are generating conversation in the comments section? And which are being shared on Facebook, or retweeted on Twitter? If you can’t answer these questions now, you need to find a way to answer them. Because, while these products might be free to access, there are always going to be costs associated with actually using them. And you need to be able to justify those costs, whether to yourself, or to your boss, or to your shareholders. Or else you may be out of a job. Or out of business.

Does this mean that you need a full-time staffer whose sole purpose is to execute your social media masterplan? Well, no. It would be nice, but it’s not 100% necessary. What you need, at minimum, is someone who is thinking constantly about how to put these free tools to good use, and how to get the most bang for your staff-time buck.

Photo Credit: free-sign by koka_sexton. CC BY.

Have you ever followed a person or a company on Twitter and received a “Thanks for the follow, here’s our website” direct message from that “person” in response?  Does that feel like an authentic voice or a pre-recorded message? Is this a business practice that you want to adopt for your first social outreach to a new contact?

Social media has enabled business to see first-hand what consumers are saying about them and to directly address, engage and captivate them. Yes, captivate. The practice of sending an automated response to a Twitter follower (or anyone who engages with your business through a social account) is contrary to what social media is about! To many consumers that are using social media, these automated responses are red flags; they signal that the business is focused on marketing to them rather than talking with them. The business has lost them at first touch.

Think about the last time you sent an email to a company and received an automated response. While it was nice to know that your message was received, did you glow with satisfaction? Putting that into a social context, is that the first impression you want to give to a current or potential customer? Social channels are about fostering open and direct communications with people. While the interesting content that you’d like to share with people is a great candidate for “scheduled” outbound communications, make sure your first interaction with someone is real, live and personal. You’ll begin to set the stage for a trusted, positive relationship.

In our last post, “What Do I Say?,” I wrote about how to become a member of the communities that you, as a business, serve. You want to engage potential customers that are talking about your markets, your products, your brands, and one of the best ways to do that is to be seen as a member who contributes to the conversations–not just one that pushes your own message and agenda to the masses.

You want to start engaging current and potential customers that are talking about your products, brands and markets, but you are overwhelmed at the sheer volume of conversations taking place on the real-time web. You search for conversations but are wading through the myriad of irrelevant chatter. So how do you find relevant conversations? You’ll find a few tips below that pertain to Twitter, blogs and some other social channel searches:

Check and adjust your criteria often. Searching for relevant conversations is more of an art than a science. Conversations change from day to day, and your search criteria will have to change with the ebbs and flows of the conversations. For instance, an outdoor gear products company that is searching for conversations about camping might suddenly be inundated with conversations that surround camping out to buy tickets for the Miley Cyrus tour. If you have created and saved a search that’s related to camping, you’re going to have to filter out this anomaly. NOT is your friend in a search.

Add keywords to focus your search. Camping might be a great keyword for your search, but it’s very general. That outdoors gear company might want to narrow in the conversations to ones that match “camping and gear not Miley” or even camping and trip and plan not Miley to focus on those people who might be planning a trip or looking for gear. Try out different mixes of keywords to see how these changes impact the quality of your results. Too few? Maybe the words are not the right ones. Too many? Try adding some additional words to pinpoint your focus.

Try following “conversation trails.” One way to find new people is to follow conversation trails. One person tweets about camping. Look at who re-tweeted the information. Look at who that person has on his/her Twitter camping list. Another person posted a blog entry about camping gear. A number of others commented and posted links to their blogs. And so on. Conversation trails = an informal community that has formed around a topic of interest–and one example of a community you can join and engage.

Try searching Twitter hashtags. Have you been curious about the little # tags that people have been placing in their tweets? Those tags are used by Twitter to make it easier for everyone to find tweets related to common interests. Brands create and use unique hashtags to not only help their customers find their content but to help others find content and people that are related to them as well. The #camping hashtag might help the outdoors gear company find people interested in camping or lead to new conversation trails.

Use your own voice to have others find you. You’re not the only one searching for relevant conversations. Post some interesting content to your blog, to Twitter, to your YouTube channel. Use keywords and hashtags to help others find you. And they will. The more you say that adds to the conversation, the more people will be interested in listening.

To those  of you who did a web search on Miley Cyrus tickets and ended up here, thanks for visiting.