1. Maturity

For many social media marketers the “shiny object syndrome” of social media has worn off and the reality that social media provides just another tool kit for marketers has set in.

As it has become clear that social is not free, people are starting to flock towards marketing automation and CRM systems to help them measure the impact of their social media activity. This can be difficult, especially for large companies with multiple systems and small companies with limited budgets. As many are trying to catch up with this sophisticated new marketing reality, continuous innovation and new mandates like mobile keep marketers on their toes.

2. Consolidation and Isolation

The big social media platforms: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and G+, have been consolidating features on their platforms. Each of these “communities” wants to offer every possible social feature themselves: content sharing, video, live streaming, discussions – to just name a few.

Points in case are: a) Twitter dropping support for Instagram and getting their own photo (and video) tool; b) LinkedIn adding endorsements, company pages, and the option to add all kinds of content to profiles; c) Facebook offering live streaming and now even free phone calls.

Realistically, for marketers, it’s a strain on resources to have to upload the same content to multiple platforms, e.g. pictures to Instagram, pictures to Twitter, and pictures to G+. Personally, I like it that I can put my videos only on YouTube and then share them almost anywhere – easy!

So here is my prediction: As most individuals, and even companies, don’t have the bandwidth to be equally active on all major channels and duplicate their content uploads, there is going to be a movement of isolation as a result to all this consolidation activity. People will narrow down the number of social networks they engage with. This is likely to give each network an even stronger niche focus, e.g. Facebook for B2C, LinkedIn for B2B. All in all, maybe not a bad thing.

3. Drop off and Specialization

Let me ask you this provocative question: “Can you imagine a world without Facebook?”

I had been lukewarm on G+ ever since it started – but since they announced their Communities functionality, I see the sky as Google’s limit. Think about it: Community, email, analytics, document hosting, pictures, video sharing with YouTube and more – and all of it accessible with a single password and login, connected to the most powerful search engine in the world.

And while Facebook charges brands to reach 100% of their audience (PageRank), Google makes this free (at least for now). Furthermore, reports indicate that people are cutting back on time spent on Facebook. The promoted stories are annoying, to say the least, and graph search makes me very worried about my privacy. I see Facebook going the way of Monster.com and Yahoo.com, who were once great and then ended up being full of spam.

As Jeff Korhan writes in his blog Winning the Social Media Overwhelm Race: “Many businesses are discovering that Facebook isn’t working for them, so they are focusing their efforts on LinkedIn, Pinterest, or Google+…It’s better to have a robust presence on Pinterest than a mediocre one across the board on the more “popular” networks.”

Google+ is already in second place when it comes to the number of most active users on a social network (and has over 500 million users total). Some question this number as Google has been forcing users to use G+ to write reviews and more – but I still believe that Google’s attempt to make G+ the gold standard of social networks will be a success. Just give it time.

1. Maturity

For many social media marketers the “shiny object syndrome” of social media has worn off and the reality that social media provides just another tool kit for marketers has set in.

As it has become clear that social is not free, people are starting to flock towards marketing automation and CRM systems to help them measure the impact of their social media activity. This can be difficult, especially for large companies with multiple systems and small companies with limited budgets. As many are trying to catch up with this sophisticated new marketing reality, continuous innovation and new mandates like mobile keep marketers on their toes.

2. Consolidation and Isolation

The big social media platforms: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and G+, have been consolidating features on their platforms. Each of these “communities” wants to offer every possible social feature themselves: content sharing, video, live streaming, discussions – to just name a few.

Points in case are: a) Twitter dropping support for Instagram and getting their own photo (and video) tool; b) LinkedIn adding endorsements, company pages, and the option to add all kinds of content to profiles; c) Facebook offering live streaming and now even free phone calls.

Realistically, for marketers, it’s a strain on resources to have to upload the same content to multiple platforms, e.g. pictures to Instagram, pictures to Twitter, and pictures to G+. Personally, I like it that I can put my videos only on YouTube and then share them almost anywhere – easy!

So here is my prediction: As most individuals, and even companies, don’t have the bandwidth to be equally active on all major channels and duplicate their content uploads, there is going to be a movement of isolation as a result to all this consolidation activity. People will narrow down the number of social networks they engage with. This is likely to give each network an even stronger niche focus, e.g. Facebook for B2C, LinkedIn for B2B. All in all, maybe not a bad thing.

3. Drop off and Specialization

Let me ask you this provocative question: “Can you imagine a world without Facebook?”

I had been lukewarm on G+ ever since it started – but since they announced their Communities functionality, I see the sky as Google’s limit. Think about it: Community, email, analytics, document hosting, pictures, video sharing with YouTube and more – and all of it accessible with a single password and login, connected to the most powerful search engine in the world.

And while Facebook charges brands to reach 100% of their audience (PageRank), Google makes this free (at least for now). Furthermore, reports indicate that people are cutting back on time spent on Facebook. The promoted stories are annoying, to say the least, and graph search makes me very worried about my privacy. I see Facebook going the way of Monster.com and Yahoo.com, who were once great and then ended up being full of spam.

As Jeff Korhan writes in his blog Winning the Social Media Overwhelm Race: “Many businesses are discovering that Facebook isn’t working for them, so they are focusing their efforts on LinkedIn, Pinterest, or Google+…It’s better to have a robust presence on Pinterest than a mediocre one across the board on the more “popular” networks.”

Google+ is already in second place when it comes to the number of most active users on a social network (and has over 500 million users total). Some question this number as Google has been forcing users to use G+ to write reviews and more – but I still believe that Google’s attempt to make G+ the gold standard of social networks will be a success. Just give it time.

1. What is #FF?
2. How do I monitor an event on Twitter?
3. How do I Tweet through LinkedIn?

1. #FF or Follow Friday

It’s an opportunity to say thank you and recommend other people on Twitter to follow. You simply use the hashtag #FF and then list the @handles of the people you suggest to follow. Personally, I think it is nice to add some verbiage in regards to why this particular Twitter handle is follow-worthy.

2. Monitoring an Event

To monitor an event, you first of all need to know the hashtag. Example: #SAPPHIRENOW, an event SAP puts on every year.

Simply go to Twitter.com and enter the hashtag into the search box: #SAPPHIRENOW. You will see any Tweet that has used the hashtag. To join the conversation, use the hashtag yourself. Of course, you cannot just follow and engage with people at events this way, but you can monitor any hashtag e.g. #innovation or #yoga. Try it by searching on the hashtag #FF.

3. How do I Tweet through LinkedIn?

The advantage of tweeting through LinkedIn is that you can post a status update to LinkedIn and Twitter at the same time. Simply connect your Twitter profile with your LinkedIn profile. Here is how:

• Log into your LinkedIn account
• Go to your account settings (by clicking on your name in the right hand upper corner of the page and choosing “Settings”)
• Find “Manage your Twitter Settings” and add (or remove) your account
• If you like, choose “Display your Twitter account on your LinkedIn profile”.

Now when you post a status update on LinkedIn, you can choose to Tweet it at the same time. This also works if you are reading an article that you’d like to Tweet. Instead of Tweeting it, you choose LinkedIn from the “Share This” list and take care of it in one instance.

—-

Do you have any questions you would like me to answer? Post them below.

Through a friend, I got introduced to a board member of Room to Read, who “recruited” me to help promote the movie Girl Rising.

You can watch the trailer of the movie Girl Rising here:

Education for girls means that half the world’s population can contribute equally to our collective growth

The organization behind the movie, 10×10, has created a huge campaign around the movie. Some facts:

• Educating girls in the developing world can transform families, communities, and entire countries – and break the cycle of poverty in just one generation.
• Girl Rising is a film by Academy Award-nominated director Richard E. Robbins.
• Produced by the award-winning former ABC News journalists of The Documentary Group in association with Paul Allen’s Vulcan Productions.
• Meryl Streep, Anne Hathaway, Selena Gomez and other acclaimed actors contribute voice performances to the film, which features original music from Academy Award winner Rachel Portman, in collaboration with Hans Zimmer.

Gathr

To generate engagement around the topic and get the film screened in as many theaters as possible, 10×10 is using Gathr.us.

How does it work?

• Anybody has the option to champion a movie screening in their town and then gather their tribe.
• Alternatively, you can find a proposed screening on Gathr.us and support it.
• 100 tickets have to be “pre-ordered” to “tip” the movie to be screened by a certain date. If not enough tickets are “sold”, nobody will be charged.

I championed a screening in my neighborhood on March 10th, 2013, and thanks to the support of many individuals and the local company Localgruev, we were able to tip the movie!

Thunderclap

To promote the movie by word of mouth, 10×10 is using Thunderclap.

How does it work?

• Imagine instead of sending individual tweets, you could pool hundreds of tweets and then send them all out at the same time on the same hashtag from hundreds of individual Twitter accounts. That is how it works.
• You simply go to Thunderclap, agree to join the cause and give permission to be part of the “Group Tweet” (or set up your own).
• A certain number of required tweets is set at the get go; if not enough people sign up, the Tweet won’t be sent (or might be sent when the critical mass has been achieved). With enough “thunder”, it might be possible to get a topic to even trend on Twitter. Facebook is also part of it.

I hope you find these tools useful and will consider joining the movement around Girl Rising!

——————-

Here the Girl Rising/10×10 Social Media Channels You can Participate in:

• Facebook
• Twitter: @GirlRising
• Website: GirlRising.com
• Google+

In reality though, many companies still have to master how to engage versus just amplify their messages. One area that is gaining recognition for effectiveness but many are still struggle with is influencer engagement.

10 Points to Create a Successful Influencer Program:

1. Influencers can be a great asset when it comes to reaching your social media objectives.
2. You need to understand what they are most interested in and provide them this information via social media. They can then share this – YOUR – information directly with their own followers.
3. Advocates are people who love your offering – often customers or partners.
4. Influencer are third parties who have influence in your market – often professionally.
5. A good approach is to try and turn your influencers into your advocates and your advocates into influencers – so that they are ideally both. How do you do that? By providing an influencer program.
6. Step one is to keep this advocate/influencer group informed. Make sure to provide exclusive benefits, like meetings with executives and other thought leaders, previews of upcoming technologies, or special access to events.
7. Don’t try to sell to them but build trusted relationships. Generally a combination of online and offline works best.
8. At least once a year, have an in-person get-together. This could be as part of a user conference or another large event, or a special event.
9. In my Silicon Valley social media network, there is full agreement that a good influencer program requires a hands-on approach. Most large companies have a dedicated in-house resource to service this important group. But, if that is not possible, the program could be part of blogger relations or even PR.
10. What really matters is that you engage with the influencers/advocates, and engage on what matters to them!

If you up your influencer engagement, I have no doubt you will see a greater reach AND IMPACT of your marketing message in the future. It’s crowdsourcing to mutual benefit!

The above provides highlights of Rule 31 from the book “42 Rules for B2B Social Media Marketing” where you can find more hands-on social media marketing tips and strategies.

Save yourself from (potentially a whole lot of) trouble and streamline your online activity by following the three essential step below . You really can’t afford not to.

1. Change your passwords

Hate changing your passwords for your social media, online banking, Amazon.com. and many more online accounts? So do I – but having someone invade your privacy, social channels, or even financials could be even more annoying and time consuming – possibly even devastating.

Change your passwords today and then about every month to lower the chance of getting hacked:

• Don’t use the same password or similar password that you slightly modify for each account.
• Make each password unique, with a mix of upper and lower case letters, numbers, special characters – at least 6 characters, ideally 9.
• Don’t use any real words, your pet’s name or anything people could Google about you.

One solution to make changing passwords less of a pain is a password storage tool. My husband just got me a license for 1Password.

All I have to remember now is a single password. You can feed 1Password every time you go to a site that requires you to log in and store the details directly through the 1Password browser extension. Say you are going right now to change your Facebook password, when you are done doing that, 1Password can automatically record and encrypt the details for you.

From now on, changing your password once a month is a piece of cake. And the password generator enables you to create super-secure passwords that are extra hard to crack. Of course, your one password has to be very complex.

You’ll have to invest $99.99 for a family license or $69.99 for an individual one, but I think it’s worth it as cyber security is one of the main challenges of our time. Of course, there are other products than 1Password to do the same job.

2. Check and update your social channel settings

Facebook, LinkedIn and other social media channels periodically change their privacy options or add options without making users explicitly aware of it. For a good and safe start into 2013, visit at least your key channels – in my case Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn – and check your privacy and notification settings.

While you are there, it might make sense to tweak your profile information, in case you can add a new accomplishment, job, or other new detail.

Things that stood out to me when I did my 2013 maintenance:

2.1 Facebook (for personal use, not business pages)

• Under: “Who can see my stuff ?” Make sure you have “Who can see your future posts” set to “friends” (or friends minus acquaintances) instead of “public”.
• I also have “Who sees tag suggestions when photos that look like you are uploaded?” set to “No One”. (It’s the face recognition software part that is illegal in Europe).
• Look at all the apps you have enabled and disable any that you don’t use. Apps on Facebook often share information not just about you but also your unsuspecting friends, e.g. the networking tool BranchOut. Also, avoid the birthday app – you don’t want your birthday available on social media anywhere; protect your identity.
• Make sure in “Facebook Ads”, you have all sharing options set to “No One”. Or FB reserves the right to possibly share your stuff in the future.

2.2 Twitter

• Like for Facebook, check and revoke access for apps (that have access to your Twitter account) that you are not using (under “Settings”).
• If you haven’t added a “Header” picture under your “Profile” yet, it’s time. If you don’t have access to fancy Photoshop tools, just make sure that your “photo” displays nicely on top of the background “header” picture you choose.

2.3. LinkedIn

• LinkedIn now lets you add links to videos, presentations and other assets to many sections in your profile. I am experimenting and added a Slideshare deck.
• I turned off “Partner InMails” under “Account”/”Email Preferences”. And under “Advertising Preferences”, I unchecked “LinkedIn may show me ads on third-party websites”.
• If you don’t have your Twitter account connected yet, I recommend it, as it allows you to simultaneously tweet LinkedIn status updates with one click.

3. Download your Twitter archive

Twitter writes on their blog: “Go to Settings and scroll down to the bottom to check for the option to request your Twitter archive. If you do see it, go ahead and click the button. You’ll receive an email with instructions on how to access your archive when it’s ready for you to download.

If you don’t see that option in Settings today, know that it’s on the way! We’re rolling out this feature slowly, starting today with a small percentage of users whose language is set to English. Over the coming weeks and months, we’ll make it available to all users around the world, for all the languages we offer.”

Having all your Tweets in an archive will be useful if you have to look up old Tweets or get involved into any kind of legal action (my prediction for 2013, it’s going to get uglier).

—————————–

And in case you missed the news: G+ Biz Pages can now share with all G+ users. New analytics for G+ are coming up too and Google Communities could turn out to be a serious threat to Facebook! Watch Google+/Communities as the B2B social media space in 2013!

Liked this post? Read more here.

In this live webinar, the authors of “42 Rules for B2B Social Media Marketing” will discuss the latest trends in social media and how to use it to advance your company’s goals — and your career.

With over 20 years of combined experience in social media, the authors will share success stories and best practices for mixing social media into your marketing plan, leveraging the top social media channels, and generating leads.

Register Now!

Key Take-Aways

• The key differences between B2B and B2C social media and how to use this information to your advantage
• How to engage more effectively with your customers, partners, and prospects
• How to build a “social-first” approach to marketing that increases effectiveness and reduces costs

Speakers

Michael Procopio is a Social Media Strategist who blogs at MProcopio.com. Michael is an author, speaks internationally about social media and is a member of the Society for New Communications Research. He has more than 25 years experience in high-tech organizations as a business leader, and technology and marketing manager. As a social media strategist he consults with companies from startups to Fortune 1000 on social media and social intelligence. Previously he managed HP Software’s overall social media presence and direction where a social media lead gen activity yielded a 2500+% ROI.

Peter Spielvogel is the Senior Director of Marketing at SAP. Peter has been a high-tech marketing executive since the early 1990s and a business-to-business social media practitioner since 2005. He uses social media extensively to understand market requirements, build awareness among current and future customers, engage in online discussions, promote events, and generate targeted leads. Peter leverages wikis to share fresh content among marketing, sales, product management, and various technical teams. In his current role at SAP, he provides product marketing and product management expertise to SAP’s early stage teams. Previously, at HP, he led a global product marketing team. Prior to HP, he held executive-level marketing roles at several startup companies. Peter’s education includes an MBA from the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth and a BS in Engineering from Princeton University. He is based in Silicon Valley, California.

Natascha Thomson is the Owner & Founder of MarketingXLerator – a B2B Social Media Marketing Consultancy – with a focus on using social media to connect people for business impact. She is also a co-author of the book 42 Rules for B2B Social Media Marketing.

Register Now!

Monday December 17, 2012
11:00 am-12:00 pm PT

You might also be interested in: Webcast Replay & SlideShare: Separating Social Media Fact from Fiction.

Michael Procopio and I spent hours setting up events in Facebook and trying to check-into them, using the little location icon next to the the photograph icon (when you upload a picture). Our events never showed up in the list of locations to pick from. Michael heard that we needed to set up a place on Facebook, which turned out to be something that is not really supported anymore. Well, and it still did not work. So we went over to plan B, using FB as outlined below.

BTW – Checking into the place/event I set up on Foursquare worked really well, but you might remember that we decided to focus on #FB to engage our existing FB community vs. building a new one on Foursquare for a single event .

The following is a blueprint you can copy for your own event(s) to add Facebook’s location-based functionality. (Note: Read this blog to see if Foursquare is better suited for YOUR purposes).

Follow these steps to participate in the “Be a Marketing Hero Contest” at MarketingCamp on Saturday, November 3, 2012:

You have two options: Enter via Facebook or via Twitter

• Either way, when you arrive at the event site, ask at check-in about where you can take a picture with @MarketingHeroSV.
• Take it. Why is your picture more fun, crazy, marketingy, outstanding, awesome than the others? What is your USP?

Entries via Twitter: #MCSV @MarketingCampSV

1. Go to Twitter
2. Upload your photograph with @MarketingHeroSV
3. Post a message to @MarketingCampSV using the #MCSV hashtag, stating that you are entering the @MarketingHeroSV contest.

Entries via Facebook: #MCSV

1. RSVP that you are “going” to the event on the MarketingCamp SV Event Page on Facebook
2. Open the Facebook App on your mobile device. Then slide your screen to the right or navigate to the page that links to your events. This is a screenshot from my iPhone:

3. Click on “Events” where you should be able to see the MarketingCamp Silicon Valley event you RSVPed you were “going” to:

4. Click on the “MarketingCamp Silicon Valley” event (above) and upload your picture with the #MCSV hashtag. Example:

Winners will be announced on the day of the event during the lunch break (you have until 12:30 PM to get your shot) and after the last session. You have to be present to win – ask for details at check-in.

What is the prize? A very cool “Be a Marketing Hero” T-shirt. A great memorabilia for a great day full of learning, networking, and fun!

Objectives

The criteria for a “yes” or “no” decision: the location-based solution has to be fun, low-cost, easy-to-implement, and achieve the goal of getting people more engaged onsite. If we could promote our sponsors as a “by-the-way”, that would be nice too. Can Foursquare connect people at the event? Is it a tool attendees would use to network and exchange information?

Side Note on Foursquare & B2B

Ever since I wrote my blog Foursquare Part I – The Basics on Points, Badges & Mayorships, I’ve been keeping my ears and eyes open to learn how to use Foursquare for B2B and events. At one point, I heard a radio report saying that Foursquare is losing traction. I could not find proof and definitely see a lot of people in my network posting regularly. But then again, I know lots of people who do social media and, hence, try many popular apps.

I do wonder why I keep using it, personally, as there is no reward for being the mayor of Downtown Yoga but somehow it is strangely satisfying every time I see that I am still the mayor. My excuse is that I do it as part of my job, for research. (My husband has asked me NOT to check-in at restaurants anymore.)

Personally, the most useful experience I have had with Foursquare so far has been when I checked in at SAP in Palo Alto and got a tip displayed: “SAP has a cycling club – click here to learn more”. As I have learned since, once you set up a venue, you or others can leave tips. Of course, this would only reach people physically checking into your location.

Foursquare and Events

While my network that I quizzed on Twitter, FB and Linkedin, told me they have all heard about using Foursquare at events, nobody had any actual real-world user experience of checking into an event, only stores.

Here the summary of my findings on using Foursquare for events:

• My friend Jim Van Dyke, said about Foursquare: “I’ve used it a lot…but since Facebook and LinkedIn added location-aware capabilities (and Groupon and others added merchant connections) I couldn’t see the value anymore.” When I asked him how to use it with Facebook for events he said: ” I think the one way would be to download a created app, specific to the event or hosting company. There could be some long term benefits if you want to do follow-on marketing too.” He also pointed out that having a signal/WIFI access is obviously key and not always a given. An app sounds great, we just don’t have the money.
• A University is using Foursquare to unlock hard to get badges (think of encouraging 250 people + to check in at the same time). They hoped local businesses would give students showing the badge on their phone a discount. A second University is using it to get their students to attend the inauguration of their new president. People who check in can win one of 11 prizes.
• My friends from @Sprinklr responded to one of my tweets asking for input: “ Sprinklr @nathomson This post doesn’t compare tools but gives some nice tips and ideas about incorporating foursquare at a trade show: spr.ly/6013pDjP“. It’s a good blog, focusing on how to use Foursquare instead of a scanner, to give out perks, like VIP tickets to a party, and for sweepstakes. There is an option to ask attendees to give you permission to email them when they check-in, which sounds useful for lead generation.
• This is a very good article on how to get yourself set up on Foursquare for events and with ideas for basic activities. To add a venue to your event, you have to search for the location and if it does not exist, scroll to the end of the search result page and add a new venue. Took me a while to figure it out. Not exactly user friendly. For a location-based service, should “add a venue” not be a button or in a drop down?
• Also got a Tweet and email from @sniths who shared his knowledge around the future of location-based check-ins and the cloud. Tweet him if you want to learn more. #future

Here some general information on Foursquare for an event:

• “You won’t have the ability to create a custom badge unless you are able to partner with the foursquare folk.”
• “You can offer benefits to your attendees for checking in to various locations or functions at your event. Give your mayor a treat. Offer a private gathering for your users. All of these bonuses can be managed as ‘Tips” and can be easily setup.”
• “Allow exhibitors to offer their own incentives for a visit to their booth. Give speakers a chance to encourage new audiences.”
• “Set up a private landing page weeks in advance of your event and offer a tease towards some of the tips and incentives for their participation.”
• Clean up and flag your venue as “closed” after.

Use Cases from My Network

Syed Kashif Ali, who is on the MarketingCamp Social Media team shared this sensible idea: why not tag people on Facebook instead of using Foursquare? Next, my co-author Michael Procopio found a great example of Facebook being used for a live event. Here his email to me:

“I just remembered that Adobe Echosign did donations for pictures uploaded to FB. Here is the page – look for pictures of a person standing next to a robot.
If the person has location ON, in their device, that will come thru when posting a pic as seen below:

You can also use a location-based posting as below with an event:

In the blank post dialog notice PLACE. You will see in the post further down that I “checked in” to the 3rd Annual Aloha Coffee & Culture Fest. I did this on my laptop. If I were at the coffee fest I could have used my phone and GPS.”

How to check into an event is explained in this Facebook article. As Michael says above, when you are at the actual location, you can upload a picture to your own Facebook page from your phone and click on the little location symbol, on the left to the camera symbol. When you hover over it it says “Where was this picture taken?”. At the event site, you can simply upload the shot, type the event name and the event should pop up in your location listing. Select it and upload.

The Solution for MarketingCamp Silicon Valley

From here, we pretty quickly decided to use Facebook instead of Foursquare for MarketingCamp Silicon Valley, as we don’t need to drive any traffic to booths at the event and don’t have the time to create an interesting app or badges – but rather want to create some fun engagement amongst the attendees.

Facebook is a lot more popular than Foursquare, so most people will be able to participate: FB with 900+ million vs. Foursquare with 25+ million users.

We are going to have a contest where attendees will be asked to take a picture with MarketingHero Silicon Valley and upload it to Facebook with the hashtag #MCSV. They need to have location services turned ON and choose MarketingCamp Silicon Valley as the event. The best 5 pictures will win prizes. According to this Facebook article this should post all the pictures on the event page.

I am wondering, if you check-in from Pinterest, Instagram etc. can you still get your picture posted on the FB event page or only on your own page?

Well, whatever the answers (and I will find out in my experiment below), people will also be able to Tweet their MarketingHero pictures to @MarketingCampSV using the #MCSV hashtag to enter the contest; location services turned On. (Can you check into the event on FB that way? I will find out. If it works, you’ll definitely have to install Selective Tweets; by adding #FB to your Tweets you post them to your FB page.)

The Experiment

As I am on my way to the Sales & Marketing 2.0 Conference today, I created a venue/event on Foursquare at the location. I will test checking in from FB, Instagram, Foursquare, Twitter etc. to test if I can location-tag the event from Twitter and all other places to post the pictures to the Facebook event page that I also set up for testing. Should be fun. The world is my laboratory.

I’d love to hear your experience and tips from using Foursquare for events and B2B!

——————-

PS: Here a bonus event tip from Syed Kashif Ali:

“Check out “Tout.” It’s a brand new iPhone app that allows you to capture 15-second videos, and a lot of brands and celebrities have been using it for UGC (you can easily upload to both Twitter and Facebook). It’s free to download and maybe we could use it to quickly capture testimonials at MarketingCamp SV, how people feel about the event, their favorite sessions, etc. It’s something the volunteers can help with by quickly asking a speaker or attendee a question and much more affordable and seamless than lugging around video/audio equipment. Thought it was worth passing along.”

Jeff4Justice and Social Media

The story began with a blog that Jeff 4 Justice wrote to raise funds for his podcast show. I saw it in one of my social media newsletters and was intrigued. Jeff describes himself as a “social justice activist”.

As an online talk personality, Jeff has interviewed people including: Nobel Peace Prize, Academy Award, Emmy Award, and Grammy Award nominees and winners. He also speaks out for and creates interviews about homelessness, gay marriage, LGBT rights, and the US two-party system.

What You did NOT Expect

Turns out, Jeff lives in a car, like many other people. Something I don’t (like to) think about too often. What is different about Jeff’s story is that he has taken to social media – blogs, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter - to help him get his message out. While crowd-funding is nothing new for businesses, I had not heard of a crowd-funding approach by a homeless man using social media. Right now, Jeff is on food stamps and hopes his podcast business plan will get him out of poverty in the coming year.

Here is Jeff4Justice speaking for himself

Questions I Had

• How does a homeless person living in a car have access to the Internet and social media? Answer: Visit places that have free Internet and a mobile device.
• I don’t know this Jeff guy, how do I know he is going to do with my money what he says he will = create a podcast business? Answer: I don’t, just like I can’t be sure my Kiva loan will be repaid, or that the family getting an animal from Heifer is going to take care of it. Plus, even if Jeff abused my trust, I could absorb the loss. I can afford to have some faith.
• Do I want to support what he is promoting? Answer: I’ve been a member of Amnesty International for many years and feel strongly about human rights. I believe in philanthropy and open dialogue.

Twitter Rules & Account Blocking

Turns out, Twitter has shut down Jeff’s @Jeff4Justice account as he has contacted users that met his search criteria to help with his crowd-funding. This inspired me to read Twitter’s terms of service (T0S) which have a sub-link to the “Twitter Rules“. I don’t know what Twitter is accusing Jeff off, maybe he had complaints, but I was quite amused to find that the Twitter Rules are constantly broken, without consequence. A selection on what is defined as spam:

• “If you repeatedly follow and unfollow people, whether to build followers or to garner more attention for your profile.
• If you have a small number of followers compared to the amount of people you are following.
• If your updates consist mainly of links, and not personal updates.”

If you check out some of Jeff’s channels, it’s obvious that he is frustrated, and I can understand that. I don’t agree with all of his comments and ideas but I applaud him for making an effort to get his voice out, and not just for himself, for others. Here a survey you can take to help him focus.

Jeff’s Current Goal

Jeff is looking to create a podcast series that will “help towards the advancement of alternative political parties to overcome unfair election laws, media bias/blackout, and a lack of voter familiarity.” He would appreciate contributions to cover website expenses, and better audio and video equipment.

But most of all, he is looking for you to help him get more publicity. And that is where social media comes in – again. If you are on social media and want to support Jeff in supporting others, you can use the following channels to send him a message, promote his appeal for contributions, and his blogs and videos. If you have more questions, you can ask him!

From my email exchanges with Jeff, I know that he cares most about getting the message out. Here are his social media channels:

• Web Site
• Twitter
• Facebook
• YouTube

It would be amazing for Jeff 4 Justice to be picked up by news sites or talk shows like the stories of the homeless guy with a golden voice or the homeless man who made headlines handing out resume in downtown L.A..

Hear more stories like this at Marketing Camp Silicon Valley!

Here 7 key facts and highlights from the report. Thanks to Jeremiah Owyang for allowing the re-posting of the report:

1. Global corporations own an average of 178 social media accounts. (From my experience, there are likely many more unaccounted for as social media governance is hard).
2. While 70% of companies said that their social media efforts met their business goals, only a sub-set actually had a strategy that defined these goals and how to reach them.
3. Only 26% of enterprise companies offered social media education to their workers.
4. Main tools challenges included: integrating social media tools with existing systems, finding tools that cover all needs from publishing content, and providing good analytics.
5. The reports states that none of the Social Media Management System (SMMS) vendors has a complete offering that provides all that is needed for effective management.
6. To avoid proliferation: a) conduct an audit and get ready (e.g. through governance get rid of accounts), b) understand your business needs (Altimeter let’s you pick from 5 use cases), c) choose a suitable SMMS (the report reviews key SMMS vendors), d) add services, e) start roll out with education and testing.
7. On page 23, the report provides a checklist that can be useful before starting any social media channel.

Obviously, the Altimeter report is a model that describes an ideal scenario. Not all companies will be able to implement this in the ideal form. The reality is that social media work is often under-resourced. Even with the best intentions at the start, priorities shift, politics get into the way, and things take more time than expected.

Further more, even if there is training, people often ignore it or don’t have time to take it. But, the Altimeter report provides a wonderful framework to start you onto the path of becoming a social business. As long as you are realistic and honest about your organizational abilities and constraints, the report is a great tool.

In regards to an SMMS solution, from my own experience, it can be a tough call whether to purchase an in-house SMMS, hire resources and build expertise, or outsource the process to an external vendor. With the market consolidation in the SMMS space (example: Wildfire being acquired by Google) there is the risk that the SMMS tool you are using could be acquired by a competitor, or vendor you don’t want to do business with, and you’d have to start from scratch.

On the other hand, there seems to be high turn over at the external agencies that offer these type of services. I’ve seen it where the dedicated agency resource left and the enterprise had to start from zero, training a new person to get up-to-speed on their situation, sometimes even the SMMS tool. A solution can be a dual strategy of keeping it partially in-house and partially outsourced. In that case, outsourcing monthly reporting often makes sense (but make sure to at least spot check the reports).

Here the original Altimeter report:

A Strategy for Managing Social Media Proliferation from Jeremiah Owyang

Want to learn more? Don’t miss MarketingCamp Silicon Valley! Topic submissions and voting are now open.

Have you heard about Pinterest but are wondering how to use it for your business? Wonder no more.

The deck below provides a crisp overview of what Pinterest is, key facts on the growth & usage of the channel, how to set it up, use it, and leverage it for business.

At my presentation for SV Forum in Santa Clara, CA on August 13, 2012, 66 marketers from different business types and sizes were full of questions and contributions, which made for a very lively and interactive session. There was a mix of B2C and B2B marketers of whom many had never been active on Pinterest so far. But, all of them were active on social media in some shape of form, which will provide them with a lot of transferable knowledge for becoming a Pinterest community member.

I was grilled on the statistics slides I provide in the deck and it made me think deeper about how some of these numbers can possibly be accurately reported? The goal of me using them here is to show trends. It’s clear that Pinterest has been the fastest growing social network in the last year and it’s a no-brainer that the site creates tons of referral traffic. More detailed claims might be harder to verify.

If you have good, verifiable stats, please share them with me and my readers.

My goal was not to tell people to use Pinterest for their marketing but to start investigating IF Pinterest is a good place for them to reach their target audience.

One things became clear during my research and at the event. While there are many good stories of using Pinterest for B2C – Harrods’ Diamond Jubilee Contest is a prime example – there are no outstanding B2B success stories. But with all the creative thinking going on in the room at the event, it will now only be a matter of time…

Pinterest – Is your business ready? from MarketingXLerator

If you have a good B2B Pinterest use case, I’d love to hear it!

Don’t miss MarketingCamp Silicon Valley on November 3rd, 2012. You will find topics like the above and more. Topic submission is now open! Follow us at @MarketingCampSV on Twitter.

Recently, a client asked me the following question: “How do we best handle questions via Twitter at our next event?” The event was a panel discussion with a large live audience.

The answer depends greatly on the social media proficiency of the people up on stage and the resources you have available.

Set Up

For any of this to work, there has to be a dedicated event hashtag. This hashtag has to be well-communicated before, at the beginning, and during the event. Ideally, write it on a board on stage or display it on the slides. Keep reminding people of this medium to submit questions.

Three Ways to Use Twitter for Q&A at a Live Event

1. The ideal scenario = SMSS (Socia Media Savvy Speakers):

Your panel speakers are social media savvy and know how to monitor a hashtag during an event without getting too distracted. They can answer Twitter questions on the fly and integrate them into their answers. I have seen this done well.

Most people though, seem to be intimidated by the idea of having to monitor a phone or iPad while speaking. They might not have it all wrong: there is more and more proof that multi-tasking diminishes performance. So if you check your phone 10% of the time, you can only give 90% of your attention (at best) to the live event. (Here one way to monitor a hashtag: enter the hashtag into the #Discover area, e.g. #MCSV)

2. A scenario that works just as well leverages a dedicated moderator:

Especially if you are planning to have Q&A at the end of the session, having a dedicated person monitor the Twitter stream on the hashtag is a great solution.

The moderator adds additional value by picking out the best questions (if there are many) and to sum up questions around the same topic. Sometimes questions might be too complex to be answered right away; the moderator can make a note and have a subject matter expert respond later.

Three options:

1. The moderator reads the questions out loud using a microphone – during Q&A, or if agreed, throughout the session.
2. The moderator types the questions into a teleprompter or on a screen that the presenters (or even the audience) can see.
3. The moderator sends direct Tweets with the questions to the panelists so they can appear to check the Tweet stream but only have to focus on their DM.

• The moderator should also respond to the questions on Twitter, using the answers from the speakers. Likely, not all people asking questions via Twitter are actually at the live event or following a live stream. This demonstrates responsiveness and bridges the gap between the physical and virtual world.

3. Twitter Screen

Set up a screen where the panelists (or even audience) can follow the live Twitter stream on the hashtag. Tools like Twitterfall can help. Twitterfall also lets you exclude words (e.g. competition, bad words). Many companies have home-made solutions for their events, so that they can delay Tweets and manually filter out inappropriate content (e.g. on race, religion…).

The font has to be be VERY BIG. And if the Tweet stream moves fast, it won’t work as there won’t be enough time to focus on a question.

There is also a Twitter tool by Timo Elliot that can be embedded into a PowerPoint deck. Simply embed the tool into a PowerPoint slide and it will display a desired Tweet stream. You could show such a slide during Q&A; but Tweets could move too fast (if the conference is big and the audience active on Twitter).

Things To Keep in Mind

• Not all questions have to be answered immediately. If there are too many questions, they are complex, or off-topic, answer them later.
• Sometimes there are no questions via Twitter. If this is important to you, you could reach out to some of your influencers prior to the event and encourage them to Tweet a question. Some people “plant” questions on Twitter but this is fake. If you want to address a specific topic, ask the speaker(s) to address it during their allotted time, not in Q&A. Be authentic!

Good news: You just collected a ton of good content for a great blog!

Collect all the questions from the event and create a blog answering them in depth. Or write a blog that features the most interesting Tweets from the whole event, using a tool like Storify.

How do you use Twitter for Q&A? Any tips welcome.

Follow @MarketingCampSV to see how we’ll use Twitter for Q&A at that event.

“Finally, a concise, practical guide for B2B social marketing! Most of the social media content and advice available on the web focuses on B2C models; it’s often hard to find good B2B content. It’s great to have a resource written by actual social media practitioners/leaders who have learned how to successfully navigate the complex channels of B2B social marketing.”

Maria Poveromo, Sr. Director Social Media, Adobe Systems

COMING SOON: 42 Rules for B2B Social Media Marketing

With a foreword by Ray Wang.

All author book royalties are going to be donated to the Khan Academy, an organization committed to providing a free world-class education to anyone anywhere.

The publisher, Happy About, is matching their contribution dollar for dollar.

The Journey

I’ve always wanted to write a book, I just always thought it would be a novel. But here it is, only weeks away from release: a social media marketing book. It’s targeted at B2B marketing professionals but useful for anybody who wants to integrate social media into their tool kit.

I am blessed to have been invited by my wonderful co-authors Michael Procopio and Peter Spielvogel to embark on this book writing journey. It’s been a lot more time-consuming than I expected (think part-time MBA) but it has also been one of the most rewarding things I have ever attempted. I sincerely hope you will learn as much from reading the book as I have learned from writing it.

So What’s it About?

This book helps the reader to stay relevant as a marketing professional and avoid common mistakes. Social media is changing the way people think about marketing. It’s much more than pushing out the same content through new channels.

1. Start Listening

The biggest shift: marketing communications has become a bi-directional discipline, where you can (and must) listen to your customers rather than just talk to (at) them. But, with so many social media channels and new rules of engagement, even seasoned marketing professionals sometimes get stuck on where to begin.

2. Know the Difference in B2B

This book was created for business-to-business (B2B) marketing professionals who need to move quickly towards a marketing mix that now includes social media. While B2B marketing is still the commonly used term to differentiate it from business-to-consumer (B2C) marketing, social media – and the future of marketing – is about people-to-people (P2P) communications.

3. Learn Practice vs. Theory

Learn from a combined 20 years of hands-on social media experience. We provide you guidance on how to understand market requirements, engage in conversations with customers, build awareness for solutions, and generate targeted leads. Using a combination of best practices and use cases, it will quickly become clear how to maximize your return on investment with LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube and other popular online channels. Michael and Peter are amazing resources and I have learned so much from editing their chapters.

4. Implement Quickly

The phased approach used in the book will enable you to make steady progress as you move into social media without getting overwhelmed by too many options. Providing small, well-defined chunks, the book makes it easy to integrate what you learn into your existing marketing strategy and day-to-day execution, step by step, while avoiding classic mistakes like over-committing resources., If you want to remain relevant as a marketing professional and avoid common mistakes, read this book.

What’s in the book? A Sample of the TOC

• Section I – Mixing Social Media into Your Marketing
• Section II – Creating Social Media Content
• Section III – Leveraging Key Social Media Sites
• Section IV – Engaging Effectively in Social Media
• Section V – Using Social Media in the sales cycle
• Section VI – Putting Social Media into practice

My Wonderful Co-Authors

Peter Spielvogel uses social media extensively to listen to customer sentiment, build awareness, and generate targeted leads for SAP.
@peterspielvogel

Michael Procopio consults with Fortune 1000 customers on social media and social intelligence.
@MichaelProcopio

The Foreword

Ray Wang, Principal Analyst and CEO at Constellation Research, Inc.

Ray was so kind to write a thoughtful foreword to our book. THANK YOU, Ray! Ray’s blog.

Stay tuned for more about the book on this blog and on our official book site: B2BSociaMediaMarketingBook.com.

We’ll be re-directing and adding a lot of additional social media resources to the site in the future.

MarketingCamp Silicon Valley‘s event will enable marketing professionals in Silicon Valley to share, learn, develop togetherness, and hopefully innovate around marketing. Register today, because seats are limited.

I must be really excited about it as I have agreed to help with the social media effort around the event, together with our exceptional team of industry leaders.

We’ve all been to a “conference.” So we all know what that is, right? Or do we?

I think you’ll agree that in common experience, a conference has a set, sometimes rigid, agenda—with pre-ordained speakers who are not necessarily addressing topics that are most germane to the audience. Even if a presented topic is perfectly on-target, it is one-way communicating that represents only the speaker’s perspective.

Most conferences are sadly missing “discussion” and they are decidedly lacking in the “togetherness.” Most of us have attended conferences where the real ideas are discussed in the hallway between the sessions. At our unconference, you will get together with others — in group sessions — to hold hold your own discussions on the subjects you want to explore!

While this unconference concept may be new to you, it is not a new format: Unconferences have been extremely successful for many years in bringing together people from diverse motivations and backgrounds to self-organize topics of greatest interest to the group, with an emphasis on interaction, discussion, and debate.

The unconference meeting format dates back to the 1980’s and the development of a meeting scheme called Open Space Technology by Harrison Owen.

In an unconference, topics of presentations and discussions are selected by participant voting – every attendee is able to set their own priorities and is free to attend or leave any topic session, or even depart the entire meeting, at any time.

This selection process ensures that each participant has a responsibility in deciding what they want to get from these meetings: Each individual can attend the discussions they are most interested in contributing to.

The result is an astounding increase in leadership, participation and inspired results compared to what conferences have become. Discussion and Togetherness are maximized! And so is the satisfaction of the attendees, who are no longer passive listeners, but active participants in how they engage the unconference’s discussions.

So what is MarketingCamp?

Innovative marketing is what has made the Silicon Valley what it is today, and marketing movers and shakers benefit from interacting, cross-pollinating and learning from each other.

The MarketingCamp Silicon Valley event is a single-day meeting that is designed to provide a great opportunity for anyone passionate about marketing to spend a day—at no charge and with no obligations—having fun sharing and learning from peers and mentors.

The MarketingCamp Silicon Valley team has selected the unconference format to assure that our event provides participants with the optimal opportunities to engage each other and focus on the topics that hold the most shared interest.

There is no set agenda, no requirement to sit quietly during long presentations.

We very much want active participants—not passive attendees. And everyone will have an opportunity to [BOLD: Share] what they have experienced, to Learn from their peers and mentors and to Grow from the day’s sessions and from the personal contacts gained.

• Topic submissions opens on September 8th: Put on your thinking hat and submit a topic today, either for you or another presenter.
• Topic voting begins on September 29th. But only registered individuals can vote — so sign up today!

Follow our updates and participate in the discussions via the MarketingCamp Silicon Valley’s social media channels:

Learn more about us and register today to reserve your spot! Seats are limited; many individuals are registering every day. Now is the time to act.

Find us on Twitter: #MCSV

But what are the steps?

Let’s go back to marketing 101 for a moment:

• What are your business objectives? E.g. revenue goals, margin, customer growth in certain areas.
• How does this translate into marketing objectives? E.g. thought leadership, awareness, lead generation.
• Who is my target audience? Be as detailed as possible, including roles and titles you are targeting (more sophisticated businesses even create personas). Likely, you have more than one target audience, and likely you’ll need targeted marketing messages for each audience.
• Where IS my target audience? This is where many social media strategies go bad. Instead of looking IF their audience is on social media, that assumption is simply made. Let’s not forget that email is still one of the top marketing tools, showing solid results. So, do your homework. This step will take time but your future marketing success depends on it. You want to be meet your audience where they like to get their information and engage.
• Which are my top priority channels? Determine where your biggest bang for the buck likely is (you’ll have to experiment to be sure). Dont’ forget that “the buck” includes your time and other resources. E.g., do you want to apply ”earned” or “paid” media? Don’t bite off more than you can chew. The number one killer of social media projects is the lack of continuous “action”. People start, for example, a Twitter channel, than don’t “feed” it after a few weeks. Momentum dies. You have to provide updates on a regular basis to make an impact.
• What will you communicate? Create clear messages and a content calendar for the channels you have chosen. E.g., create a pipeline of blogs and have an editorial calendar for all your bloggers; schedule daily posts on your FB page; Tweet at least once a day.
• Is what you are doing working? Define clear metrics and find tools to measure. Tip: only gather data that you’ll actually take action on. Frequently, data is collected for data’s sake. Ask yourself, do follower numbers in themselves have a meaning, or should I focus on the growth rate and quality of followers? What allows me to fine-tune? Do not omit having qualitative goals and spending the time to look closely at the people you attract. Also, your effort to gather metrics has to correspond to the gain you get out of them.

You are ready to engage. Allow yourself to experiment and figure out the best metrics. This is where discipline and creativity are wanted. Master the basics before moving on to more complex activities like TweetChats.

I figured it was time to learn what mobile marketing means and how it differs from traditional marketing; particularly as SAP is a mobile company now, with Sybase and all…

Let me start with a definition of Mobile Marketing given by Tweeter @vimi: “Any campaign designed for users to view on their mobile. search, ads, apps, videos, QR codes, coupons, texting, games,mobile site”.

THINGS I LEARNED THAT I DID NOT KNOW:

• Mobile is a huge market and people integrate mobile with traditional and social media marketing (e.g. QR codes on postcards)
• It’s mainly about ads, apps, games, search, SMS Messaging and targeting better (mobile allows location targeting)
• Messaging is not different, apart from phrasing and length of messages sent to mobile phones etc.
• Mobile platform are plenty and the market is defragmented which makes it hard for marketers. Android seems to be leading and growing.
• There is know how required (technical know how) on how to create and serve up ads on Apple devices and within apps (for example)
• I think it’s fair to say mobile is currently used a lot more in B2C than B2B

While the slides and webinar were interesting, I did not feel they provided enough basics for a newbie like me. I had a ton of questions.  Some were semantic, e.g.,  what do they mean by “messaging”? SMS text messaging or the content of the message to the audience…. , and how does mobile marketing strategy differ? The focus seemed to be on ads.

I decided to turn to my fellow audience members on Twitter, under the hashtag #eMwebinar to ask some questions and gain some additional insights:

This provided me with an excellent lesson in social media collaboration and marketing; really, best learning experience I’ve had in a while.  I recommend to anybody who is a social media professional to go out and join a Webinar/TweetChat on a topic you don’t know much about…so you know what it feels like for your own audience when you might talk about HANA, CRM etc.

On the Twitter hashtag, it was the usual situation:

• A small group of people (I’d say about 7 key participants in the chat) amplified the messages from the webinar to their followers; including me.
• Nobody engaged, talked to each other or responded to questions. There were not even many retweets at this point. We were joined by a hashtag but otherwise totally separate.

After I had posed a bunch of questions into the Go-To-Webinar tool that seemed to go into a black hole, I started to post questions on the Twitter hashtag. The reaction was…

NOTHING

I kept posting questions…

NOTHING

Finally, I sent out a Tweet that read exactly like this: “#eMWebinar – ppl on ths twttr stream. wld luv sum answers 2 my questions vs. just broadcast of webinar content . Please respond?”

After a few minutes I started to get individuals tweeting me answers, clarifying my questions, and finally, even eMarketer picked up on some of my questions on Twitter and addressed them on the call portion of the event (although a person from eMarketer told me on Twitter to enter my questions into the Go-To-Marketing tool; which is ironic).

Also positive, I ended up following a number of very knowledgable Mobile Marketers, and many followed me back. So I feel, I was able to build a small network of mobile experts that I can draw on for future conversations on the topic.

KEY LEARNING for using Twitter as part of a webinar (for Marketers):

• Monitor the Tweet stream (don’t wait until the Q&A to answer questions).
• Don’t just amplify (but overall amplification is good: often people give the information a spin or add some interpretations that helps the newbie; or provide good content to people ONLY on the hashtag and not in the webinar)
• Do include URLs to additional content, basic information etc. in your Tweets (eMarketer sent me a URL to a B2B Mobile Marketing report that I have no access to = #fail; not a good “sales” job but frustrating)
• Do connect with other Tweeters; especially as a company, the hashtag is a chance to showcase some thought leadership vs. being silent
• Provide examples and use cases, e.g. for mobile campaigns, especially B2B. The webinar provided no examples; I asked for a case study and none was offered; it was very theoretical, data without context.

TO CLOSE, HERE A SUMMARY OF KEY TWEETS:

• #eMWebinar @noahelkin states that smart phone market share is in favour of Android and growing.
• Big challenge for Marketers embracing Mobile Marketing: Lack of tactical and strategic expertise in-house & on the agency side #eMwebinar.
• Search + display will displace messaging as top form of mobile ads in 2012. Video will have greatest % growth. #emwebinar
• Mobile video advertising is expected to see 81.4% growth in 2012 with a compound annual growth rate of 69% over the next 4 years #eMwebinar.
• More marketers are trying to capitalize Local intent. Thanks to Geolocation technologies. Better way to measure ROI? #eMwebinar
• Local mobile ad spend (leveraging geo-targeting) is set to surpass national mobile ad spend by a 2:1 ratio @gannett #eMwebinar.
• Tablet ads eye-catching and hard to ignore – sounds like nirvana for marketers #emwebinar.
• Back from grave? Email most successful purchase trigger (56%) followed by SMS (41%) trumping FB, Twitter, phone, 4square, shops #eMwebinar.
• On iPad the ad is in the iAd platform that Apple developed to embed ads into their apps #emwebinar.
• So messaging = SMS “messaging” vs. what you have to say to your audience? #eMWebinar// Yes
• My take aways from #eMWebinar Mobile Marketing: It’s abt serving up ads on mobile (challenge: fragmented platforms), SMS, games, apps, local.
• (Mobile Marketing vs. Traditional) It’s just the strategy that differs and things like user experience etc. which primarily dictate mobile strategy.
• (Mobile) search includes paid+seo and paid search can also be contextual.Good info on paid mobile search bit.ly/5PSnPQ.

I also got a Tweet stating that Mobile Marketing sounds like bogus. Tweet: “(…) what can be really new in marketing? I’ve never heard about mobile marketing before #eMwebinar”). Plus, I was sent a blog that states that B2B marketing cannot be done via social media.

Any insights and thoughts on mobile marketing or this blog are welcome! Please share as a comment below!

In the video, Sina talks about social search, engagement and geo-targeting, as a means to leverage social media to the fullest.

In regards to search, he said that “search is engaged with social communities. Search will now show you the content related to the people you are connected with first”.  Companies need to be on social media to show up in this context.

Asked about engagement he highlights: “Don’t billboard yourself on Facebook but really engage in the true social nature of what it is. Grab a larger audience by not just talking about yourself but your industry etc. You’ll end up getting yourself rated higher in social search” by casting a wider net.

And introducing the term “geo targeting”, Sina emphasizes how important it is to have a “geo-targeted presence of content”.  This means that you can “geo target” things like your Facebook page, so that, for example, your “likers” in Germany will see a different page, content and conversations than then ones in India”. Content quality is important but content relevance is just as important.

Thanks to Sina for giving 5 minute of his time to enable me to share his know how with you!

Follow Sina Moatamed on Twitter at @SinaMoatamed.

If the answer to any of these questions is “yes”, read on.

Having a personal brand has never been more important than in this age of information overload.

How you position yourself online will impact your success in reaching your objectives. People will judge you based on your picture, your profile description, your content, the messages you retweet and more.  And don’t forget that everything you say online is “forever”.

Hence, it is important to take charge of your online persona, devise a clear strategy and manage it with discipline and continuity.

So who do you want to be online?

Well, first of all, you are who you are and you know what you know. So, that’s a good start to define yourself – as long as you are not planning to create a fake alter ego online. For most people, their brand online is an extension of who they are off-line.  The most important question to ask yourself is:

Why am I participating in social media in the first place? What are my objectives?

In my case, I am a social media and yoga professional.  My personal objectives are:

• Stay-up-to-date
• Network
• Be perceived as a thought leader
• Recruit students for my yoga classes

STEP 1: Choose a focus area

As social media and yoga don’t go together well, I had to make a decision up front: Do I want to be known as a yogi or a social media thought leader?  If I chose social media, I’d need to keep yoga-related messages to a minimum, as I’d otherwise run the risk to lose my social media audience that is not interested in yoga. The reverse was true for my yoga target audience.

Lesson:  Once you decide on your brand, you need to stay on message. If you have divergent businesses, it is usually best to create respective online identities for each business. Note that this will require extra time and resources on an ongoing basis.

STEP 2: Make a name for yourself = build your brand

Now that I know that my focus area is social media, and my goal is thought leadership, I can start building relationships, and by association my brand, online.

To get started:

• Find experts on your focus area
• Share information on your topic area
• Engage in topic-related discussions

Examples: On Twitter and Facebook, I consume information from social media experts. On Twitter and LinkedIn, I share social media know how, as well as engage in social media-related discussions.

When you first get started on social media, it’s a good strategy to follow your target audience and thought leaders; on Twitter, it’s very likely they will follow you back, and you’ll create a snowball effect that will amplify your brand/influence in your topic area. On LinkedIn, join topic-relevant groups and start to answer questions to broadcast your expertise and establish yourself.

If I wanted to build a yoga business, I would make talking about yoga, meditation and health the focus of my online existence. I’d also follow other yogis, experts and influencers, and try to figure out where else on social media they go so that I could join the discussions.  A popular option is to start your own or contribute to a blog.

STEP 3: Be consistent

Many people you will engage with online participate in a multitude of social media channels, e.g. Twitter, FB, LI, YouTube. Make sure that your brand is consistent across all of these channels, or you can create confusion.   As mentioned before, if you have different objectives that don’t converge, you might need to create different personas or operate in closed communities. For example, I keep my FB circle limited to closer friends and business conversations to a minimum.

STEP 4: Be yourself

Does having a brand mean I cannot be “myself”?  Yes and no. It’s very important to have a personality on social media as you don’t want to come across as a robot that sends out automated messages. But where you draw this line depends a lot on who you are “in the real world” and what your objectives are.

In my case, I am an extrovert and optimist in the real world and that comes across in many of my conversations on Twitter. I like making jokes or occasionally sharing a personal high-light, e.g. my yoga teacher certification.  However, I would take a more professional approach in most LinkedIn groups and share less personal information.

I do believe in taking excessive chit-chat into private messages or direct Tweets (see my blog: The Does and Don’ts for Tweeters). But some of my social media connections have made it their trade mark to be brutally honest (including hurtful) online, thereby gaining the reputation of being very credible.  Only you know what you are personally comfortable with, and what your values are.

STEP 5: Monitor

There are two main reasons why you will want to monitor your social media presence:

1. To find out what people are saying about you (to be able to respond and possibly take corrective action)
2. To optimize your online brand/engagement

Here is a short list of tools to get you started. There are hundreds of them, so don’t be shy to use Google to find more:

• Google your name or set up Google Alerts
• Search for your name on Socialmention.com (in addition to a list of search results, you get stats on sentiment, top keywords, top users and hashtags)
• Put your Twitter handle into TweetReach.com and get metrics on your reach/impressions, retweets, mentions, top followers etc.
• Klout.com provides your influencer score. Take this with a grain of salt as it’s not a perfect science. It covers Twitter, FB and LinkedIn.  Twitalyzer is a similar tool for Twitter only.
• Mr. Unfollowr tells you who has recently unfollowed you on Twitter (PS: There is also Mr. Follow, to find out who you should be following).

CONCLUSION

To create a successful brand online, you need to have clear objectives, execute in a consistent fashion, keep it real and monitor the results.   Of course, high-quality content, subject-matter expertise and a solid off-line reputation will be key contributors to your - success.

An overview of some key social media sites and their profile options:

LinkedIn:  On LI, your brand is defined by your resume (=your profile) and your participation in groups. There are many options to spruce up your resume with apps, blog links and recommendations. It’s worth looking into them.

Twitter:  It is paramount that you complete your profile. Otherwise you are an unknown quantity and very few people will follow you. Not having a picture can signal that you are not a serious user. More tips in my blog: How to get started on Twitter in 1o simple steps.

Facebook: For a professional page, the purpose has to be clear; you will be judged by the quality and frequency of conversations on your page amongst other factors.

Google+: State your purpose and complete your profile with the desired brand attributes.

Any other channels like your own blog, SAP Community Network, Spiceworks, YouTube, or Flickr: create a profile that demonstrates your intention and expertise to the other community members; a picture usually makes you seem more committed and helps people recognize you.

Recently, the following (common) questions landed in my inbox:

“Lately, I am confronted with certain challenges…the difficulty to keep private and work related issues apart (especially on Fb). In my work environment the offerings exploded and I don’t really know which one of them actually helps me doing my job. If I choose to get active in every offering that we now promote, I can spend my whole day just reading work-related Fb posts, tweets, microblogs, community discussions etc. Honestly I feel overwhelmed by this, as on some days I struggle to get through my inbox, then I don’t even think about other sources. And whats next? Work Tumblr, Work Google+….? Is there a comprehensive overview of which Social Network offerings are available for which purpose?”

Here my Thoughts on the Topic:

The question is a bit like saying, how much time should I spend being on the phone, having informal conversations in the hall way, on email and in meetings? And how many hours should I put in before I switch off the PC and work phone?

The answer is: it depends.

As high-tech workers, we are entrusted with the responsibility to figure these things out for ourselves based on our jobs. But just like with time management in general, of course, it makes sense to discuss this topic with others and see if there are people who have cracked the code better than we have. Begin by asking yourself:

• What tools support you in achieving your goals? Which ones suck up time and have little impact?

My Personal Experience:

• I would argue that I have met a lot of social media people on Twitter, do a lot of DM Tweeting to learn and tighten relationships, and am learning a lot about social media and what influencers like the @SAPMentors are up to. This is because I am in social media marketing and it adds value to what I do; and I enjoy doing it.
• For me, FB is for friends and an extended network of people who I like and trust,  i.e. I enjoy their daily updates, care what they are up to and believe I’ll want to connect with them in person (again) at some point.
• I don’t see how anybody in high-tech could not be on LinkedIn as it is your own brand builder; your resume online. You don’t have to do more than that but can learn and engage in communities.
• I also just joined Google+ and am struggling with it. If I were not doing social media professionally I’d probably ignore it for a bit until I have a few hours to burn (does not happen very often these days) and it’s more established. But I want to know what’s happening there and how it works, so I signed up and am playing with the features and functions. I am amazed by how many familiar faces are there (= I am already on FB with most of them). But there is a big difference for me, at least that is my initial impression: content shared on Google+ seems to be a lot more professional in nature than on Facebook; at least on average. But maybe that is because most of my close friends have told me they are too busy to also be on G+ (only time will tell).

The bottom line is: it’s a struggle. Just like work-life balance is a consistent struggle (at least for me).

My Recommendation: Make the Time to Assess your own Situation

1. WORK:

• Which social media channels are you currently on?
• What are the benefits you feel you get from each of them?
• How does social media help you reach your work goals? Can you quantify it? Qualitative goals are valid too.
• How much time would you say you currently spend on each channel?
• How does the time you spend correspond to the benefits you derive?
• How much time to you have to give in your day to be on social media?
• Are there trade-offs you can make? Now that you write your own blog, can you forward it on to give answers to questions that come up over and over again? Now that you follow news on Twitter, can you cut down the time you spend on news websites?
• Do you enjoy using the social media tools you are using?

Looks at all the answers you gave to the above and create an action plan. How much time do you want to spend on each channel each day/week? Don’t forget to factor in what you enjoy.

2.   PRIVATE:

• A lot of the questions above apply, but also ask yourself how much time you want to spend with people online vs. in person.
• Think thoroughly about how many hours a day you are willing to put in for work vs. spending time with your friends and family; then decide when you should shut down the PC or stop Tweeting on our PDA. Nobody else can tell you where to draw the line between work and the rest of your life. It’s a choice.
• Do you really need to be connected/available all the time or is your identity too wrapped up in your job?
• Does spending time on Facebook stress you out or is it relaxing?

In my humble opinion, you probably already have a gut feeling of what the right thing to do is; how much time you want to spend in certain channels, what you get out of it and how much free time you want/need. Trust that feeling but do a little deeper analysis to help you compartmentalize your social media usage. Once you have a plan, you don’t have to think as much and can execute. It takes time to establish new habits and the easier you make it, the more successful you will be.

We all know how easy it is to waste away time on the Internet without noticing. I believe that it requires conscious effort and planning to manage your priorities, be productive and happy!

For a panel discussion at the quarterly Silicon Valley Enterprise Social Media Council this June, I received the following request:

“Identify some of the major problems that you face as a leader of social media within your organization. I thought it’d be great for each of us to email our top 5 problems to see if there are consistent issues across our teams. It’s OK if you don’t have all of the solutions, that’s why we come together, right? Be honest!” (thanks, Alex Plant from NetApp )

After some thought, and reading what some of my peers had already listed, I sent the following response:

• Myth #1: Social media is free
• Myth #2: “2,000 Twitter followers” is a meaningful business goal
• Myth #3: Social media is global
• Myth #4: It’s easy to find content for social media
• Myth #5: Marketing people have integrated social media into their tool kit

I could write a blog on each of these myths but let me give you the short rational behind each one:

Myth #1: Social Media is Free

• It takes significant resources and time to develop social media objectives, find your target audience/build a community for your target audience, to engage, and measure your impact.
• You always read that “content is king” in social media and that is true. You need subject matter experts who can write and communicate, as well as social media-ready content.

Myth #2: “2,000 Twitter Followers” is a Meaningful Business Goal

• The number of followers or fans is not a meaningful goal in itself. I read recently read that the average Facebook fan is worth $3.06 for a vendor. I must assume this is mostly based on B2C statistics, but even if not, it’s an average, so you better make sure that you have the right fans or followers to create real value.
• But the real question is: what will you do with those followers and fans once they have arrived? And how will you measure the value of that activity? How much awareness and engagement can you generate? How much does your social media effort cost and how much ROI can you derive?

Myth #3: Social Media is Global

• Let me step back for a moment…I recently co-wrote a social media events playbook that helps people extend the reach of an onsite event beyond the physical location; potentially reaching millions of people. The key elements of the playbook strategy are: influencers, Twitter and blogs. IN THE USA, as I learned quickly.
• Well, everybody knows that China has its own social media channels but there are huge differences in social media usage amongst the European Union countries as well.
• Yesterday was the SAP World Tour Italy event. In terms of influencers, we had our partner TechEdge support the social media activity with Tweets and blogs. They did a fantastic job #WorldTourIT but there were only very few other people who joined the conversation. And this is only one example…There are other countries where Twitter usage is low or sentiment against social media strong.
• Everything would be so much easier if everybody just spoke English . The reality is that measuring social media activity for a specific country is difficult, especially if they speak a mix of languages (e.g. in Holland you can find English, Dutch, German…). How can a social media tools distinguish which country a Tweet came? (Contact me if you have the answer!)

Myth #4: It’s easy to Find Content for Social Media

• Finding content seems one of the most difficult parts of social media marketing. There is a science behind figuring out what content is the most popular with your target audience but even if you know that, getting that content consistently seems very difficult.
• One reason is that at least at SAP, social media is not yet part of every marketing person’s job.  Another is that just sending URLs to white papers is not a well-rounded strategy. A person has to go and extract the salient points out of a document and Tweet them in a meaningful manner, trying to engage. 
• Content is often not appropriate for a particular conversation that is going on in a social media channel, but subject matter experts are often not at hand (many companies outsource their Twitter handles or have Interns run them).

Myth #5: Marketing People have integrated Social Media into their Tool Kits

•  I wish I were wrong but social media is mostly not integrated into other marketing activities, even though that would be one of the easiest places to start.  Think about what you are already doing to achieve your business goals and how you can leverage social media to be more successful, e.g. create a video instead of a data sheet and post it on YouTube or Facebook.
• In my humble opinion, this is partially based on the fact that people are afraid of the perceived risks of social media but the main reason is that most companies have not made social media activity part of employees’ MBOs.  It’s time-consuming to write a blog, so why would you write it if your goals state that you need to produce five data sheets? As a result, your company might be missing out.

I’d very much like to hear your opinions and experience on these topics; particularly if you have found solutions to some of the challenges I listed, or simply don’t share my point of view.

As a social media professional at SAP, I get many questions from colleagues who are new to social media and would like to add social media to their marketing mix. The learning curve on social media is still steep for most people, and in this blog, I have aggregated the answers to some of the most frequently asked questions.

Many of my consulting engagements start with the sentence “My team wants to have a Twitter handle” or “I need to increase the number of fans for our Facebook page”.

To that, there is only one answer: “Why”? And ,”Let’s take a step back”.

Before you get engaged in any kind of social media project, please ask yourself the following questions:

1. What are my social media objectives (these should align with your marketing, and on a higher level, your business objectives)?

• Maybe you are trying to create awareness for a product offering?
• Maybe you want to extend the reach of an event beyond a physical location?
• Maybe you are tasked to generate leads?
• Maybe…(fill in here)

2. Who is my target audience?

• I struggle with the answer “anybody who might want to buy my product”. Keep in mind that the less homogenous your target audience is, the more high level your messages will have to be. The more targeted you can get, the better you can address specific business problems.
• Or in simpler terms, if you are a B2B social media marketer and somebody sent you a Tweet about “The top 10 ways to create a lead”, you’d be somewhat interested. But if they sent you a Tweet saying: “10 tips how social media can be used to create leads that close”, you’d be very interested.  On a busy day, you might click on the Bit.ly on Tweet number two but ignore Tweet number one.
• An example target audience could be: Retail, IT management, North America.

3. Where does my target audience participate in social media?

• It is a fallacy to think that “if you build a social media channel, they will come”.
• I’ve only recently learned that Global 2000 companies in Finland are not very active on Twitter; but they like to engage on LinkedIn. Hence, for every target audience you define, you need to do research where they lurk (= read) or engage (= comment, ask questions etc.). Your audience might frequent existing communities like IT Toolbox or read blogs on CIO.com. Wherever they are, that’s where you want to be.
• Of course, you can also create your own social media channels on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter etc., but remember that you’ll need to dedicate resources to manage these channels continuously. The only thing worse than no presence on social media is a social media channel where the last post is a month old.

Once you have answered these basic but often not easy to answer questions, you will need to develop an editorial calendar to feed the channels you have selected and define a cadence (e.g. blog once a week).

You’ll also need to define metrics to measure your success. For example, if your target audience likes to read blogs, you can measure views and comments on your blog. But you can also measure things like click-throughs to media (e.g. YouTube videos) embedded in your blog, referrals back to your web site, or the completion of a registration form; to only name a few.

I hope you found this blog  useful, and I’d appreciate it if you could add your own “most asked” social media challenge or question and how you have addressed them.

I frequently get asked “how do I get started on Twitter” – and in future, I want to be able to simply forward this blog as an answer. It’s my passion to get people excited about social media and to share the things that I’ve been lucky to learn.

Here’s “How to get Started on Twitter in 10 Easy Steps”: 

1. Go to http://www.twitter.com

2. Sign up: Name, Email, Password (change password periodically for security)

3. Pick your username: Short & Memorable (think of people typing with 2 fingers on a PDA). I am @nathomson vs. @natascha_thomson. @nathomson is what is called my Twitter handle.

4. Set up your profile (Twitter will give you a page to do that after signing up), or simply go to http://www.twitter.com/yourhandle (e.g. mine is http://www.twitter.com/nathomson) at any time. You have a “home page”, which shows all your friends’ Tweets, and a “Profile” page for all your Tweets. On the “profile” page, there’s an “edit your profile” URL under the box for the picture. Select it. Now, all you have to do is:

5. Upload a picture. I learned in my first week on Twitter that if you don’t have a real picture, people question your sincerity and committment (exception for corporate handles and the like, e.g. @SAP). Complete your bio. THE MOST IMPORTANT THING. The bio provides all people know about you on Twitter before they get to know you (apart from your picture and handle name).  The bio tells people WHY you are on Twitter, that is WHAT you are planning to Tweet about. It  communicates your brand on Twitter. Think well about who you want to be on Twitter and that this creates a permanent record in your history. I never follow people who don’t have a bio. You can also add a URL to your blog or LinkedIn page.

7. Create lists. Go to your “profile” section and click the lists drop down. “Create a list”. My lists range from “Social Media Experts” to “Close friends”. All that matters is that you can put any person you decide to follow in a list right away, in a list that later on makes sense for you to monitor. Otherwise you will never be able to use Twitter in a meaningful way because it gets overwhelming. For example, I can browse my “Social Media Experts” list in the morning for the latest news in that area, and my “Close friends” list when I need to relax.

8. Install (for free)  Tweetdeck (or Hootsuite, or whatever tool you like; the point is: Twitter.com is not the way to manage Twitter successfuly). Then log in with your Twitter account. When it launches the first time, you will think: “Wow, what’s this?”. Play around with the tool. You can have columns for:

• Direct Messages (D) that only you can see = private (or as private as the Internet gets); you can only DM people who are following you and who you are following.
• Mentions (@) – people used your Twitter handle in their Tweet (e.g. if they retweet you)
• All Friends – column of all the people you follow
• Click on “+” at the top in TweetDeck and add either a hashtag (e.g. #social) or a Twitter handle you’d like to follow (e.g. @SAPMentors). You’ll see all related messages in a separate column.  (Hashtags are great to follow events, e.g. #sapphirenow, or topics, e.g. #yoga; people tend to make up their own # for fun, e.g. #FOMO (=fear of missing out) or #newbietoTwitterwatchout)

9. Find people to follow. To start, ask your friends or colleagues for their Twitter handles so that you can practice; also follow news sources. While all Tweets can be found on Google, if you start a message with @, e.g. @nathomson, the messsage goes (mostly) only to that person. They know you are directly addressing them. If you have a bio, other people will find you and follow you but there are many tools out there to find people with similar interests to yours; this blog lists some.

But, think quality not quantity. You don’t need to follow everybody who follows you, but most people will tell you that initially they did follow most people who followed them to get started. Just remember, once you have hundreds of followers, administration is a lot of work, so think ahead.

10. After TweetDeck opens, click on the yellow box at the top that says “Compose Update” and type your first message (YEAH!). I’d love to be your first Tweet, for example: “@nathomson Tips have worked out. Glad to be on Twitter. Please respond if you get this” . I might even Retweet you .

Now that you are flying solo, simply check out all the button on your Twitter.com page and on TweetDeck to learn more.  It’s a lot of fun. You’ll make new friends and learn a lot, I can promise you that.

Feedback on this blog welcome! Enjoy!

In a nutshell, it’s become more and more popular for people to create “levels” or “castes” of Facebook friends who they give different “access rights” to content on their FB pages.

If you are not familiar with Facebook lists, here is a quick tutorial. This feature allows you to create lists of “friends” and to then limit their access to your Facebook content through settings in the profile area.

Quite some time back, Jeremiah Owyang wrote a block about what to do if your boss wants to be friends with you on FB. There seemed to be a moral dilemma to tell your boss if you’d like to keep your private life separate, that is, you don’t want him to be friends with you on FB.  Coming from German decent (we are very direct), I found this hard to relate to. My believe is that if I can’t tell my boss that I don’t want to share my private life with him, I should probably be looking for a new gig.

I am personally confused by the need to segment your “friends”. Obviously, Facebook is a semi-public tool. For one, very few people trust Facebook security and (should have) consequently have made peace with the possibility that the information they share might end up on Google one day. Second, if you are not limiting your FB page access to close family or your closest circle of friends (most people I know don’t), you are already customizing your postings to sanitize them. Let’s face it FB is a conversation with many people at the same time, and some reputation management is required. If you want a private conversation, pick up the phone or meet in person.

My FB strategy subscribes to the Malcom Gladwell philosophy, that it’s good to not just have “A” and “B” contacts but also stay in touch with “C” and “D” contacts. For example, once you set out to find a new job, your “C” and “D” contacts are much more likely to provide new leads, than your “A” and “B” contacts who you are constantly in close connections with already. You also find out a lot of great information from people in your wider network, stuff you’d not learn from your closest friends. It’s a big world out there and fun to get access to other people’s worlds/lives. Voyeurism is part of FB, be honest.

My rules are simple: I have to know and like you (this means we’ve at least spoken, ideally met but not mandatory); I consider you as a person with enough common sense to not write something embarrassing or stupid about me; I assume you are interested in what I share on FB and I would like to know more about you.

Obviously, my philosophy is not shared by everybody and I was almost shocked to recently learn that it is very common to segment your friends on Facebook into different lists. Well, it happened to me and I take offense. If I ask somebody to “friend” me, I have absolutely no problem in getting no response at all (“Not Now”) or to get an honest response that says “FB is very personal to me, how about we connect on LI (or not even that)”. What I find offensive is to get accepted as a friend – but not really – to end up on a FB wall that I can’t write on. It means, I accepted you as a friend but I did not really want to but did not know how to tell you that.

What is your opinion and experience with this issue?

King Arthur Flour

Only this summer did they start an online community where King Arthur Flour aficionados can communicate around their passion of baking and cooking. A sample posting looks like this:

I learned about King Arthur Flour’s competency in the social media space at SAP’s 2010 Influencer Summit, where I happened to run into attendee Steve Cochran (who works in IT for King Arthur Flour). I had seen him on stage at the summit and wanted to get his Twitter handle. After talking to him for only a few minutes, I was so taken by his passionate account of his company’s social media success that I ran to get my Flip camera to record the following video (2:43 minutes):

Here a summary of what I extracted as the key ingredients of King Arthur Flour’s (KAF) social media success:

1. Have clear objectives: Steve stated that KAF ”wants to be the baking resource for their customers”. They then determined where their customers participate and developed the right channels.
2. Provide relevant content: KAF helps their customers by providing new recipes, e.g. for Thanksgiving and Christmas, on all their channels. They also create videos that explain the manufacturing process and other topics of interest.
3. Create engagement: KAF encourages the creation of consumer generated content. In the community, consumers talk about how they have used the recipes provided by KFA, share their own recipes, as well as pictures and videos of their baking creations.
4. Set clear metrics and measure: For example, blogs have impression goals that are linked to lead conversion objectives. KAF now gets over 100,000 blog views in a single month and can link blog posts directly to an increase in sales.
5. Enable sharing: KAF makes it easy to share blogs, discussions and recipes via Twitter and Facebook share buttons that are integrated into the website.

At the end, Steve could not have summed up better what is at the core of social media marketing success: “Think about what’s important to your customers”.