Its true we’re on information overload. We use multiple social networking platforms, which have different audiences and expectations. If you’re considering your audience, you’re wondering how you can add value. And if your considerting your schedule, your wondering how you can possibly catch everything?

Enter: Twitter curation.

There are several services that curate or organize tweets based on Twitter lists or keywords. Why bother with these services? Its ultimately a chicken-or-an-egg situation, because the service you choose will depend on what your trying to accomplish. Generally speaking though, they lend themselves to community building and time saving features. In some cases they may even help with audience building. For those who track this sort of thing, I’ve noticed that in some cases using a curation service can increase the Klout Score.  Unlike a Twitter stream, these curation tools offer a way to collect a lot of information in a single place.  Having content in a single space that isn’t changing every 10 seconds has its benefits. For businesses, it gives them another opportunity to showcase the most important or relevant information for their audiences.

I use Paper.li to share content from other Social Media Club members. Paper.li sends a daily tweet automatically and mentions the contributors by handle. Its a great way to support other Social Media Club professionals and its been a fantastic conversation starter. I don’t have to produce the product, its done automatically.  The “pro”  is that its a great community builder, the con is that I don’t have control over the content. I do however have control over the who is on the list, so the key to Paper.li is to curate your Twitter list carefully. Y0u can also add keywords from Facebook or specific hashtags to your Paper.li. They’ve done a great job of expanding ways to have control over the content as well as the look and feel of the product. The background on the webpage can be customized, but I have heard some feedback from others that the look is cluttered. I don’t personally feel that way, but I can understand the criticism. One thing I do like about the format is that “paper” has images, video and its in color. I find it to be fairly engaging.  Paper.li is free and I often recommend it for businesses looking to add value to their community and to support their community. Because it sends a Tweet out with @mentions, it gets the attention of those mentioned and if they aren’t currently following you back, its a nice way to say “hey, I follow you.”I do wish that I could add my Paper.li to my own website, but that isn’t a feature offered at this time.

Storify is another Twitter curation tool and a story-teller’s dream.  I find Storify works best with specific hashtags and is a fantastic way to curate conversation surrounding an event. You can essentially choose the Tweets you’d like to include and even arrange them in a timeline or order that you see fit. Storify includes photos that people have used right within the stream so there isn’t any need to click on a link. Like Paper.li, you can notify the people who have been included in the stream/story. Creating a cool Storify can be time consuming, but for event managers its well worth the effort of putting together the story of the event and promoting those who promoted your event. Particularly for multi-day events I could see Storify adding to the sense of community. You can add Storify to your website, which I appreciate. Its a nice way to keep track of the conversation surrounding your event and gives people a place and a chance to revisit it. Storify would also work really well for TweetChats, so long as your TweetChat doesn’t have 5,000 participants. Doing a Storify with thousands of people and sifting through all the ReTweets would be mind-numbing.  I did a Storify a couple of months ago for my friend Derek Gabriel as he and a friend spent 12 hours on Kauai. As their pictures were posted and others commented, the Storify got to be fun and interesting.

Twylah is another curation tool that has a great lay out, that’s easy to read. It pulls content from your Twitter page so it doesn’t do much for community building. However, if your looking to see your recent tweets on particular subjects, it categorizes them in a nice, easy to read format. Twylah would ROCK if you could embed it in a web page, but it doesn’t seem like that’s possible at this point. So without community building (ala other people’s content) there really isn’t any driver for anyone to visit my Twylah unless they are specifically looking to see what I’ve been saying on any particular topic. However, for heavy duty content producers (newspapers, magazines)  it might be a great thing to send to followers 1X/week or so just as a recap of the week’s Tweets and content.

I recently came across KeepStream too. Here you can keep lists of Twitter in track. I really wanted to publish a KeepStream for a particular hashtag, but it won’t let me do that. I wanted to really use it to track some Tweetchats, but while I can search Twitter for a particular hashtag, I can’t publish it with only that information, so I was disappointed. I can do a Twitter search on a hashtag just about anywhere, what I wanted was to archive it. It doesn’t appear to be a feature KeepStream offers. I do feel like I’m “missing” something on KeepStream, so if any of you have used it and found it helpful in a  particularly application, by all means, please let me know.

You might recall I also wrote an article on Trunk.ly a couple of months ago. I still use Trunk.ly, but not to its fullest potential. There is opportunity for community building there, but I sincerely haven’t had a chance to build out an audience there, or even follow others. I do find it extremely useful when I am searching for Tweets with links that I’ve sent or I’m searching a particular topic, its more of an archiving tool than a curation tool, but I thought I’d circle back around to that in case anyone was looking for something like it.

I’m really interested in hearing from others regarding other Twitter curation tools that they might be aware of or use!

I’m kind’a freaked out. I’m not gonna lie. There’s something stinky go’n on up in here.

If you read this blog with any sort of regularity, you know that I like to measure my efforts, especially those of my clients. Something I strongly recommend measuring is “Engagement.” Typically, I define engagement as sharing, clicking or commenting. When something’s interesting, people say so. When its not, well – they ignore it. Its that simple (or that complicated). I think used to think engagement was a great measurement tool.

When I engage (click, share or comment) its because I think the information has been worth my time and I want my audience to see it. I consider it an endorsement – for whatever that’s worth.

But lately I’ve picked up on a trend that makes me question my engagement with the word “engagement”. Maybe I toss around that word too casually, as I do the words “love” and “safe to drink.” I’ve noticed lots of sharing going on that doesn’t correspond to web traffic. Now, I’m not a live and die by web traffic girl, but when I see great big gaps, I have to dig deeper. Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate the sharing. I always try to thank everyone who gives the shout-out love (there’s that casual use of the “L” word again.) And sometimes, particularly of late, the conversation (engagement) happens on Twitter or Facebook, so its not going to correspond exactly to web traffic.  But its disturbing the increase I see of  people are sharing things when they don’t know what it says. What if the headline is “8 ways to make 1 million dollars using Twitter” bet that would get shared. But what if the content were blank, or worse, filled with crackpot advice, or more likely a porno video with a nasty virus? What happens when your audience clicks on it and finds worthless or dangerous information. Its short of like handing someone a carton of milk from your refrigerator without giving it the sniff test first..right?  Isn’t that a reflection on the sharer too? Or do I have it backwards, if your taking milk from someone who has to sniff it..what does that say about you?

Either way: stinky milk should never be shared or consumed.

Engagement definitions really need to go deeper, to ongoing relationships that can be better tracked with something like #Hashable, where conversations, not just RT’s, can be tracked over time. We already stopped kidding ourselves that a “follower” doesn’t necessarily = friend and that a RT doesn’t imply some sort of life-long commitment (for either party, for you legal nitpickers). But now we should start thinking about the people who are sharing the information and how engaged they are to that information. Because an engagement ring holds no promise until its worn. Content shared but not consumed is similarly empty. We gotta put that ring on a finger and care enough to sniff the milk before you give it out. Don’t just rely on numbers because they are easy….dig deeper..smell the milk before you smell the roses. Find out whose really engaging with your information, cultivate that relationship and turn it into a real engagement. After all, isn’t that the promise of social media?

Yes, that makes life slightly more complicated, but in the meantime, I think I’m going to have to rethink my engagement to engagement..and stinky milk.

What do you guys think? Am I off base? Should I quite my whining? What does satisfactory engagement look like to you?

Photo: Creative Commons Wallyg

Today we’re keeping it simple with some tactical suggestions on using Twitter for business. It isn’t that this list is complete or even that it ever will be. I’ve just noticed that lots of businesses (large and small) aren’t implementing these easy tactics into the  Twitter social media presence. Without further adieu…

6 Easy Twitter DO’s for Business:

• Try as hard as you can to thank people who support you and RT your messages, especially when you are a business. Alot of businesses think that its not appropriate to “thank” people. That it appears too “folksy”. “Folksy. Riiiiight. Remember that guy or gal in high school who you though was cool/pretty/smart and when you told them so, they just brushed right past you without response? How did it make you feel? Like you’d never hand anyone a compliment again? Yah. Go ahead – make your advocates feel that way. At your own peril.   And, if you are too busy to respond to all your positive social media comments, then I’d say you need to expand your social media budget and add staff. Your customers are clearly on social media and want to engage with you there – you have a problem many companies would love to have.
• When you are discussing a link or a topic, go ahead and add the link again to the conversation – or at the very least, a #hashtag so people can keep up with the conversation. Besides being thoughtful, its also savvy.
• Resist the urge to hijack a trending topic or #hashtag. If you have something to say that’s relevant to the #hashtag or trending topic, by all means – say it and ride the wave. Be creative. Be savvy. Be human. Just don’t be spammy.
• Add to the conversation, don’t be the conversation-interrupting-blood-draining-dufus who interrupts the conversation with a commercial! Add to the conversation and you’re likely to get (the right) kind of attention. Soundbites are a major turn-off on social media – save it for your radio campaign.
• Assume that the person complaining is complaining so that they get resolution. If they didn’t care – they would just tell their friends, and their parents..and their auntie…they wouldn’t bother giving you a chance to respond. For more on turning complainers into BFF’s, read here.
• Be consistent. No fair jumping in and out of the conversation. Your advocates like it much better when they know you’re listening. If you are going to have a presence, make time for it everyday. Yes. Everyday. Recent studies show that Facebook postings made outside of business hours are more effective. Its easier than ever to have a presence without being tied to your computer 24/7 – take advantage of the little spaces in your day and schedule your outgoing information accordingly.

What recommendations do you have for businesses using Twitter?

So I’m taking a little liberty with Tool Tuesday today – I’m going to talk about a tool. But the tool itself is so simple, that instead of talking about the “likes” and “dislikes” I’m going to talk about ways to use it.

TweetChat is a deceptively simple tool. Not a lot of bells and whistles, but what it does, it does well.When I am monitoring hashtags (say for example, #h50 during the Hawaii 5-0 episode each week), I like to use TweetChat because it eliminates distractions. That’s all. That’s the reason I use it. I can also eliminate RT or block certain participants.

BUT – what does this mean to you?

Most people don’t spend A LOT of time monitoring hashtags, but they often DO participate in Tweet Chats and this tool also allows you to HOST a Tweet Chat in a simple & smart way. Here are 5 hints for establishing a Tweet Chat with your brand.

Participate before you Moderate:

If you haven’t already done so, participate in a couple of Tweet Chats, it will give you an idea of what its like to be on the other side. Hosting a Tweet Chat isn’t an easy  task, so you’re likely to see the good, the bad and the ugly. Learn from the experience..and remember, even the best moderators can have an “off” night.

You can view a pretty comprehensive list of TweetChats here. Its independently updated, so feel free to add your own chat after you’re ready to launch. You can thank Twitter user, Robert Swanwick under (@twchat) for starting that list. Its pretty amazing-talk about Twitter Karma!

If you decide that you aren’t up for hosting a TweetChat, don’t forget that many TweetChats accept sponsors. Again, you can use the list above to find chats that are relevant to your brand. Listen in for awhile and I bet the marketing wheels will start to spin!

#Hashtag Hottie:

Using a #hashtag specifically for your TweetChat is fine, but what’s even better is if your #hashtag so well reflects your brand that it can be used throughout the day with your followers. It helps give visibility to your hosted chat, your brand and gives your followers something to rally behind.

Identify Your Most Passionate Followers:

Getting buy-in from passionate and engaged followers will help create some energy and buzz behind your chat. If they have their own following, don’t be afraid to give the chat over to them for a night or two.

Devil is in the Details

Consider your audience. Have questions and answers prepared (but not pre-loaded). Give your audience some guidelines about the discussion so they can stay on topic too. Be smart about which Tweets you answer and which you allow your participants to respond to.  Don’t be afraid to do a give-away or some other promotion during your TweetChat.

Hosted Tweet Chat App

Be Ready for Success:

From the beginning, archive your TweetChats. While there is no way to “download” the tweets, you can copy and paste. Use your TweetChat as a blog post (great SEO), which also reminds your blog readers of your TweetChat. You’ll likely be glad that you kept the transcripts at some point. Along those lines, don’t hesitate to cross promote your TweetChats in other mediums such as email, Facebook and/or LinkedIn.

If your TweetChats really take off, consider a format like #socialmedia uses for its TweetChats, they keep the conversation live on their site and have a nice, clean way for participants to engage.

RESOURCES:

Tweet Chat Listings:

https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AhisaMy5TGiwcnVhejNHWnZlT3NvWFVPT3Q4NkIzQVE&hl=en#gid=0

http://gnosisarts.com/home/Tweetchat_Wiki

Like all Twitter users, I originally used Twitter.com for managing my account. Quickly realizing that there had to be a better way I started playing with Twitter aggregation and organizers. Originally, I was passionate about Tweetdeck, which I still think is a pretty great tool, it just ins’t the one I use now.

Hootsuite History

Really, when you think about it, its amazing I changed at all. At first I was reluctant to have a web-based platform (as opposed to a software platform), this is largly a matter of personal preference and has more to do with how I organize my time than anything else. But the person who introduced me to Hootsuite continued to prod and encourage me.

At this point (Summer 2009), Hootsuite was really pretty rudimentary, you could have multiple streams for search terms and you could create lists (which Twitter later allowed you to do) and manage multiple accounts from one location.  I liked the way it was organized and grew to appreciate the web-based model.

Hootsuite was still in full-swinging freemium mode at this point; it was like the ’60′s: free love, lots of features being added, without consequences. Features  like integration with GoogleAnalytics, ability to post to other social networks such as Facebook Pages and LinkedIn quickly became a requirement. It seemed that Hootsuite was really moving after the social media professional. They kept adding features like the ability to have team members on your multiple accounts.I also like that their Iphone App (also available on Droid+BB) also lets me manage my multiple accounts on the go.

Understandably, last fall, Hootsuite went to a paid model. At this point, it became like an engagement. I thought I’d stay with the pay model, after all, I could still change my mind at any time.

I haven’t regretted it all. If Hootsuite continues to invest in its offerings, I see no reason to use anyone else.

Here’s what the paid model offers that makes me love it and keep paying for it:

Facebook Page + Google Analytics Integration:

GA-Tweet Integration Page

The good: Seeing the overlay of tweets with these two analytic pieces is priceless. Yes, GA is free. Yes, Facebook Insights are free. But it’s the overlay that I find valuable. I like being able to see my results fairly quickly. I use other tools to gauge the best time to send tweets to my audience, but that’s a moving target. This gives me the best insight into how my tweets and Facebook page postings effect my website’s traffic.  Data and graphs can be printed…but…

The bad: I still wish they had of exporting this data. Without the ability to export the combined information, it remains largely qualitative and hard to track trends. Sure, its rewarding and exciting to see, but it really doesn’t allow me to play with the data the way I would like. Also, to track your clicks in Hootsuite, you must use the “owly” shortener.  This isn’t a huge deal within Hootesuite, but if you want to track clicks with say your shares from your blog page there is no way to do that right now. Perhaps that will be a feature in the future?

Teams:

Raising a social media account usually takes a village. Well, OK, maybe “village” is a bit strong, but having more than one person on an account is practical and advisable, especially when you are integrating multiple departments and stakeholders.

The good: Like Co-Tweet, you can create assignments for team members, this might include assigning a particular person to respond to a tweet, or just creating an assignment to tweet about a topic. Very helpful in staying organized. As a manager of several accounts, having the ability to communicate with my clients in this way is important. I find this feature to be very intuitive as well; easier than Co-Tweet in my opinion.  Along these lines, there is also the ability to email a tweet to someone; this is handy for private link sharing or calling attention to a tweet that you may or may not need to respond to.  Its a much better option than DM (Direct Message) which has basically become a spam-for-all.

The bad: While Hootsuite itself is very affordable, the cost of adding users is really comparatively expensive ($15/user/month) and this scales up. In otherwords, if you are an agency with multiple team members, you’re 6-10 team members cost you $30/month/user. This is hardly a huge expense for a business, but is the most costly element of using Hootsuite.

Influencial Identification

The good: Hootsuite not only makes Klout score easy to see in a user’s profile, but it also lists your most recent influencial community members and helps you target who is engaging with you and how frequently. This information can also be exported, which is great when you are trying to build engagement.

The bad: The list of influencers mentioning you is ongoing and can’t be drilled down by date. This makes it a little harder to see the effects of a particular campaign. Although if you are tracking this data regularly and you have a baseline, then you will be able to glean the information with just a little spreadsheet love.

Hootsuite Streams+Tabs

Streams:

The good: Hootsuite allows up to 10 streams a tab, while I find this limitation irritating, the truth is that the human brain probably can’t process even that many streams and I know most screens can’t. There are many things you can do with the streams including keyword tracking and sentiment. You can create streams for Twitter lists too. The stream options are endless, making the 10 stream/tab limitation maddening.

The bad: Twitter lists through Hootsuite are not the easiest to manage. If you don’t have a stream for your list, you can’t add them to the list from Hootsuite. Also, did I mention that 10 stream/tab limitation? Did I? Huh?

Overall, Hootsuite remains my tool of choice. I find it intuitive, manageable and practical.  If you think you’d like to try out the Pro Version of Hootsuite, please consider using my affiliate link: http://hootsuite.com/p_1045 it doesn’t cost you more and I appreciate your support. I chose to become an affiliate because its a tool that I genuinely stand behind. I think you’ll appreciate it as well. If you don’t, its a month-month, you can cancel.

I’d love to hear from Hootsuite users and nonusers about what dashboard tool you use and why?

I’ve been trying out numerous tools to assist me in analyzing and recording successful social media campaigns. I get lots of questions on tracking tools, so a couple of weeks ago, I wrote about some of my favorite free tools.  The problem with free tools is that they rarely really give you the insight you need or they don’t put it in a format where the data can be reviewed and analyzed.There are some very expensive analytics options out there, some of them are even worth the money, but for small businesses or those just starting their social media engagement, a tool like Twitalyzer is a great place to start. When you find yourself asking questions that you can’t answer with a program like Twitalyzer, that’s the time to look into the larger software analytics programs that integrate numerous social media profiles and track activity and influencers in one place.

I started using Twitalyzer last year and I liked it enough that I was a fairly early adopter of Twitalyzer when they moved beyond their freemium model. Its a decent tool and one that I find myself using regularly, plus for $29.99/month its hardly a back breaker. Although it isn’t a one-stop shop for my social media programs (it doesn’t incorporate any Facebook data), I still find it valuable enough to keep my subscription active. Twitalyzer is feature heavy and I recommend you check it out for yourself, but I thought you’d like to see some highlights.

The Dashboard:

Twitazlyzer Dashboard

The dashboard is a 30-day rolling average of key metrics that can be tracked through Twitter’s API as well some other partners like PeerIndex and Klout. Some of the metrics they track are defined by Twitalyzer, some of it like Klout and PeerIndex are other commonly accepted Twitter monitoring tools.

What I like: Its a great, at-a-glance review of Twitter activity effectiveness. I like that Potential and Real Reaches are included as are Klout and Influence. For those who are tracking number of followers, that information is included as well. I love the fact that they out the scores into perspective with percentiles, but keep in mind, that percentile only puts you in perspective for your score vs. other Twitalyzer users.  I like that it incorporates the Peer Index, which is another measure of influence (the ability you have to get your followers to act).

What I don’t like: So much of this is essentially irrelevant to the C-suite professional. They don’t really care how many Twitter lists include the user, further, that information is part of Klout’s metrics. On the other hand, you can see the info at a glance if its something you are tracking. Further, while this information might not be relevant to the C-suite, the social media manager is likely to be very interested in much of this data as sheds light on overall Twitter activity.

Site Referrals Report:

Something the C-suite DOES care about is how effectively Twitter drives traffic to a website and a social media professional cares about who those people are. This report integrates with your Google Analytics report to put your Twitter Activity against your GA information. It helps put it into perspective.

Site Referrals

What I like: This report can be customized by timeline AND it shows you who your influencers are. Influencer data is also available in Hootesuite, BUT, in Hootesuite, it can’t be EXPORTED. Twitalyzer allows you to export this information so you can track over time who your most active Influencers are and how influencial they really are.  Integration of your Twitter activity with GA is a hugely helpful to social media professionals. Overlaying GA information with Twitter activity is something you CAN’T do in GA. Sure, you can see how many referrals there are, but its hard to see effectiveness of a long-term program unless you integrate the Twitter data that includes influencers.

What I don’t like: I’ve found this report to be a little glitchy, but the support at Twitalyzer is outstanding so most of my problems have been resolved. You’ll also notice that several of the “influencers” aren’t tracked by Twitalyzer, so some of the more detailed information is lacking. None the less, it gives me enough information to dig a little deeper if I need or want to.

Reach Dashboard:

Reach is more important than followers. Sure, your followers will effect your Reach, but understanding what Tweets were more effective and for whom is very helpful information for the social media marketer.

Twitalyzer - Reach Information

What I like: Easy to read with a list of Influencers and their respective reach makes it easier to see who I should be engaging and why. As with all Twitalyzer reports, it indicates whether you are growing or declining (notice the green arrows pointing up, my reach is growing). I’m a fan of illustrating the importance of Reach, particularly because I sincerely believe that with all the noise on Twitter, we should all be focusing more on QUALITY over QUANTITY.

People & Groups:

These reports allow you to see your network in different ways.

What I like: You might want to sort your followers by impact, or perhaps even by TIME your followers are most active. There are some real tidbits of information in the People & Groups report.The Network Explorer report is a nifty visualization about your followers and what they are tweeting about. Its good information at-a-glance, but its largely anecdotal.  Retweeters can also be measured by impact and influence.

What I don’t like: These reports can’t be exported. In particular, I wish the time report could be exported, it would be great to see the trends that develop over 3-6 months and would be helpful for social media marketers to better understand their followers and customers.

Tags & Tweets:

This section digs a little deeper into things like hashags, sentiment & common topics.

What I like: Some of the information is very useful, especially sentiment. There are some really pricey programs out there tracking sentiment. Its also great to listen to common topics, I especially like to hear what followers are talking about when they AREN’T talking about a brand or their competition to find out what else they enjoy doing.  This is the kind of information that gives you better insight into your customers and can help you in developing partnerships with other companies.

What I don’t like: Some of this information is very, very anecdotal and topics can swing dramatically, you can’t go chasing every single trend. Again, this information can’t be exported so its difficult to see trends emerge.

Export Exporter:

Export data within a certain time frame and also access archived Tweets.

Export Dashboard

What I like: Easily one of my favorite features of Twitalyzer. I can manage multiple accounts from my paid subscription and I can download all of the information into a .CSV file, which makes it easier to spot trends and capture information in helpful graphs for my customers. With this report I have qualitative information that can be tracked over time.  I can also access archived Tweets (assuming I’ve turned this feature on). Twitalyzer is very generous with the information is keeps available in the .CSV formats, so take full advantage. Yes, some of the data is irrelevant, but looking at the data all at once can help you frame a better picture of your overall activity and its effectiveness. While the C-suite might not care about Klout, the social media manager should be using it as a measuring stick. Analyzing how other activity effects things like Klout can be done through careful review of these reports.

In General: Twitalyzer packs a lot of information into less than $30/month making it high value for the small or medium sized business with a social media campaign. The information Twitalyzer generates some good quantitative and qualitative information that allows me to dig a little deeper in analyzing social media effectiveness.  I like that its web-based which means it can be accessed from anywhere. I also think the customer service is outstanding and can be highly personalized; they have actual EMAIL addresses on the site! They’ve also developed a nice community which gives you a chance to provide feedback and communicate with other users.

What social media tracking tools are you using or would you like to see reviewed?

If you’re concerned about the amount of time that social media takes, here’s a basic way to introduce your business to Twitter. When you first start with Twitter – your first goal should be listening, rather than tweeting. Its like my Dad said to me (over and over again): “No one ever learned anything by talking.” Isn’t that such a “Dad” thing to say? My Dad would love the fact that for successful Twittering, listening comes first.

Its important to note that these are time saving tips and not a substitute for a strategy; this is an intro to Twitter, really. These tips will help you use find tools that will save you time, giving you a chance feel your way around Twitter, before you launch a campaign or create a strategy.

Chances are. if once you get involved in the Twitter community, you’ll start to see its potential. At that point, you’ll be ready to develop a strategy for adding Twitter to your communications arsenal.

Twellow: Essentially, this is the yellow pages of Twitter. Find people you are interested in following (or who you want to follow you) and follow them. Since its good “karma” to follow those who follow you, most people will follow back – some even automate this. Spend 5-10 minutes a day finding new people to follow.

Twitter Lists: While this tool takes awhile to set up, its worth it in the long run. Twitter lists allow you to categorize the people you follow in a way that makes sense to you. It also gives YOUR followers a concise way to follow people who might be important to them. You can make your lists public or private. Making them public is good Twitter karma as those who care, track the number of lists they are on. Spend 3 minutes a day adding the people you follow to your lists.

Google Alerts: Find your key words (I bet you know some of them), but you can use the Google Wonder Wheel to help you find others. Set up some Google Alerts on those key words so you can stay abreast of the trends, in blogs, news and social media. This is particularly helpful if you don’t currently have a blog. Its the best way to find content created by others, besides Twitter of course. Spend at least 10 minutes a day reading, finding info relevant to your business.

Hootesuite, Tweetdeck: Tools like this allow you to aggregate your Twitter feed in categories like keywords or groups of people who you particularly want to follow. For example, I always set up a key word feed for both my client and their primary competitor. That way I can watch (listen) to what others are saying about both companies. I also find key influencers relevant to the industry and follow them under a list.  Spend at least 10 minutes a day reading what others say. Spend 5 minutes a day responding, retweeting, and sending/scheduling your own tweets.

Whatthetrend.com keeping your eye on trending topics on Twitter (love the alliteration) is a great way to stay in tune with what’s hot – this very second. Jump on regularly, and see if any of the trending topics are relevant to you or your business. If they are, its a great opportunity to follow the trend (remember those keyword searches in Hootesuite or Tweetdeck) and the people talking about it, you might find new followers by engaging people who using the #hashtag or by using the #hashtag, you may get more followers. Either way, keep in mind that you want YOUR stream to be consistent to what your followers expect of you. If you typically tweet about oranges, and one day you start tweeting about zebras, your follower base is going to be confused. Don’t jump on the bandwagon just to jump. Stay relevenant. Cruise through whatthetrend.com 1 minute a day.

Caveat: don’t do this, and only this, and complain that Twitter isn’t working for you. These are tools and a schedule to get you into the community of Twitter. This isn’t an plan designed for action. If you are looking to drive sales or provide customer service or support/develop a specific campaign, this concept will not work for you.  in fact, if you are looking to change your business, this is a great article from Mashable that can help you determine if you should hire in-house, an agency or a consultant.

10 days after the original posting, I’ve updated my open letter to reflect current efforts on behalf of BP.

Dear BP Marketing and PR team-

Its been a rough couple of weeks, hasn’t it?

Your strategic marketing plan is in the hole, giving way like an oil gusher to emergency disaster response. Suddenly, issuing press releases is burdensome and not nearly as fun as press releases about record breaking quarterly profits. And although you probably HAD a plan for how to engage the media in case of an oil spill (you DID, DIDN’T YOU?) you didn’t count on it being the worst disaster in history.

You’re a little overwhelmed. Anyone in marketing can understand. You haven’t asked my opinion and presumably, you have an entire team working on this strategy. But since I am not in the thick of it, perhaps its easier for me to identify just SOME what’s missing in the marketing and PR response. Here are 10 things I think you should start today:

Communications:

10. Start a blog on your website. Right now the information on your website is static and boring, worse yet, its not really helping your cause. There is so much MORE information about BP right now, your website is getting buried, making it harder to drive the message. While you can’t create enough content fast enough to remedy that situation entirely, you CAN start creating dynamic, real-time content. May 13th-still no interactive communication. I know you fear the comments that people will leave, but here’s the thing: people are saying it anyway. At least if they say it on your blog, you’ll get to hear what people are really saying and communicate with them.

9. Apologize. Time for it guys. Start doing it.  Its starting to feel like you don’t really think you have to apologize if you continue to promote your ongoing (if unsuccessful) efforts. You should also reassure the (broke) American public that you will use some of your monumental earnings, every last penny if need be, to clean up this mess. You’ll turn your scientific community on the challenge and invent new tools and strategies if you have to. May 13th – essentially you’ve done this, then you pulled back a little. Keep pressing this point, its an important one.

8. Don’t let us forget. Presumably, the green efforts of BP are ongoing. Now would be a good time to continue to promote those efforts, PARTICULARLY given this mess, we’d like to see that oil companies are committed to a more sustainable future. We should see specifics and the face of those efforts. Don’t bore us with statistics or generalities, give us the story. May 13-remember those “green BP” commercials? Remember how you re-did your logo to reflect the next phase in energy development? Showcase it. It might not get as much traction as the bad news, but everyone should be integrating this message.

Twitter:

As of this righting, you have 2088 followers and you are following 7 people. The world at large does not think your Twitter account is very useful and you aren’t controlling any messages. May 13th-your followers are up to 3585, and your following 33 people. You still using Twitter exclusively to send links to press releases. Your following relevant people now, but you aren’t engaging them. I could see you RT’ing the @gulfvolunteers, @USCG and the White House as a matter of discourse, relevance and information.

7. ENGAGE on Twitter Start by following members of the media AND the White House. Follow Gulf State agencies and environmental non-profits. They’ll take notice, trust me. You need to build up this account both for now and in the future. Your going to need every outlet you can get. May 13th – better. Much better. But I don’t see any recent engagement.

Monitor the conversations about BP. Use this to understand what groups are most angry. Use this to tailor your message both to them and to the media. You’d be surprised what you could learn by listening. May 13th – I can’t tell if your listening because the only thing I see are links to press releases.

Stop with the constant links to your site about the numbers of people you have there. Start telling the stories OF those people. No one cares how many people are cleaning up – it isn’t enough. You’d be better off telling the human story. May 13th – still no transparency or humanization.

Nonprofits

6. Start communicating WITH, not at, nonprofits on Twitter, on your blog. Ask them how you can help, where you are needed most. Then, get on it. Wildlife, fisherman, they need help. Offer it AND do it.  Money isn’t enough, get your people down there. When you start the conversation, you’d be surprised at how positive it could be. Show the world your doing it both on Twitter and YouTube.May 13th – better. Much better. But I don’t see any recent engagement with the nonprofits. You MAY be having those conversations, but they aren’t transparent and the world at large isn’t part of them.

5. Financial Support for nonprofits involved in clean-up. Nonprofits will be cleaning up this mess for many years, you can start a foundation today to support their efforts. The process should be simple and fast, get the money down there now. Don’t wait. Now. Your company should be sending volunteers down there too. To train nonprofits and to help train more volunteers. Get moving. May 13th – again, if this is happening, its getting buried. You’d have more notice of it if you engaged.

4. While we’re at it, I think sustainable energy job training would be a good place to start investing. Training the fisherman who are losing their livelihood to this tragedy in this new industry would be a great, grassroots way to engender support. Help them learn the industry, support their efforts to start businesses. It could be selling solar panels or building wind farms. Create opportunities for people.

YouTube:

3. Get a video production crew down there. The pictures just show a mess. We need to hear the passion in the voices of those leading the charge. We need to see Hayworth out there talking to fisherman, we need to see BP clean-up crews working. This is one situation where video, not pictures, tells the story. Start posting every single day a new video. May 13 – I still see primarily photos, with the notable exception of the underwater video of gushing oil. When you launched the idea of “capping” the leak last week, that would have been an ideal time to create a video of how it will work. Also, why is it that the AP is the only releasing any YouTube video in conjunction with the oil spill?

Events:

2. Animal clean up. Beach clean up events. Coordinate with nonprofits to hold clean up events and train volunteers. Green career fairs. Some of this may not be immediate, but planning and announcing would be a good idea. May 13-haven’t seen any of this from the BP side. Am I missing it?

1. Back to communication: stop hiding. Yep, you are going to take heat, but in all the criticism, you might find jewels of wisdom.  You’ve issued a couple of press releases, sent out 64 Twitter messages and sent Hayworth on TV. Your not being proactive. Time to get creative guys. If all this seems expensive, it is, but we know you can afford it. May 13-Transparency is key. People have come to accept it. You’ve up’d your tweets (now at 200), but what are you saying?

If you think your already doing this, then revert back to the communications strategy, and start letting us know about it.

Good luck. I hope to see great things out of BP in the next couple of years, because you owe it to the Gulf States and all of America. If you do it right, you’ll be a shining example of corporate communications. Do it wrong, and maybe a career fair might be good for you too.

Readers: any other suggestions?

I had a conversation yesterday with a new client that just sums up the relationship that small business owners have with social media. I was referred to these particular clients by my SEO partner, Rob Bertholf. While he is working on the SEO segment, they asked him if social media could enhance their SEO presence. Rob answered in the affirmative and referred them to me.

This particular business is a growing web-based business with the potential to have tens of millions of dollars in revenue, but for now, its two guys with guts running the show. Both are “all in” its what they do and from what I can see, they do a darn good job. But now what? They want to grow. They want to tackle their internet competitors. Their aspirations are admirable, but as any small business owner knows, growing a business takes complete focus and dedication, and sometimes, ironically, marketing falls to the wayside.

In the case of our friends, marketing hasn’t fallen by the wayside; actually the opposite. They have some good tools already: a targeted Facebook page that funnels to their site, a web forum where they interact with customers and brand with some potential for “oomph”. For many social marketers, this would be a dream client. They have content, brand potential and a trackable web-based business. Secondarily, they have one store-front and plan on opening another in a particularly high traffic destination. They get all their retail traffic from foot traffic, but they’d like to increase it. Sounds like a geolocation marketing opportunity to me. We’ll start off simple with geolocation, getting them listed and doing offers on Yelp, Gowalla, 4square to start, as their retail location is a unique concept. Once we get a feel for the success, we’ll consider expanding.

Now we start discussing Twitter, it was another story. Right off the bat, I am told that “Twitter doesn’t work for our business. We just want to use Twitter for the SEO benefits (thank you, Google).” I am intrigued by this belief since a quick overview before our meeting showed that their product was being discussed on Twitter, but their BRAND wasn’t. I suggested that while they have a Twitter account, they engage with their customers a bit.  My potential customers said they did do that, and when it happened, they saw a 30% spike in traffic to their website, but it wasn’t new customers. WOW! 30%! If I was getting 30% every time I Twittered, I’d drop all other advertising and Twitter regularly. None the less, Twittering worked for existing customers almost exclusively. Why? They were reaching out to their customers in the medium they preferred: the internet. There are great ways to get new customers on Twitter too, but they haven’t found them with the use of bots which was the first attempt at building their followers.

I don’t believe in bots. I believe in genuine engagement. I believe in following people who are talking about your ideas, passions and products. Authentic=success in social media. Twitter needs to be approached with strategy. Twitter is deceptively simple looking, yet its a complex tool. Its a conversation starter – not a blow horn. I think you get the most out of Twitter with GENUINE discussions.  If you aren’t interested in having conversations with your customers try print advertising, its fast and easy..its also a sink hole for most small businesses (I can say that: I used to sell print advertising). Using bots on Twitter is like doing print advertising: you have 25,000 followers, who don’t really care about your product. Your just spewing 140 character advertisements at your followers and they are turning you out or unfollowing because THEY DON’T CARE. Plus, you aren’t engaging them because you have nothing in common. See where I am going with this?

Beginning engagements and discussions takes strategy and time. That’s why I have a job. I think about it. I analyze it. I work with my SEO partner in tandem to create an actual strategy.

THAT’S the nitty gritty isn’t it?  Time and strategy.

After further discussion it isn’t that my clients don’t believe in Twitter, they just don’t KNOW how they can use it. They’ve scratched the surface. They don’t understand how to use it-why would they? They are business owners, sales guys, not social media experts. If I were a business owner with employees and payroll, I would outsource this too. As it turns out, Twitter DOES work for their business, they just need to know how to really use it.

At the end of the discussion, we agreed to define a strategy for Twitter, using YouTube, their site’s forum and even a geolocation strategy. We’ll use it to build their brand, engage new and existing clients and drive traffic to their content-rich site. Then, we’ll track our analytics. We’ll tweek and refine. We’ll kill what doesn’t work and beef up what does. Social media marketing is dynamic, that’s the good news. The bad news is that you want to stay on top of it, otherwise you’ll lose opportunities because you aren’t responding to the dynamic elements.

Almost all small businesses think that social media is a waste of time. I contend they think so because they aren’t using it correctly. More businesses can benefit than they believe, they just need some assistance in doing so.

Over the last two months, I have been busy building a blogs for others and even one for me: dedicated to one of my passions: food and cooking (www.whatwechow.com).

I’d like to tell you a little bit about my blog, because its a good case study for web traffic,driving traffic and community.

I started my blog with zero visitors a month.  Today, I have more and more new readers, increasing at over 50% a week,  40% of my readers are new, which means I also have a very loyal audience, they also stay on  my site for more than 5 minutes on average. In otherwords: they are engaged. If I continue to grow at this pace, I will have at least 5000 visitors a month by the end of the year. I’m OK with that kind of traffic, particularly since I’ve done it 100% targeted and 100% grassroots. But what’s more important to me is the engagement level.

People are always asking me how I did it. I’ll answer this in several blog posts. But, the first answer is time. I began by identifying my target audience. Then I used a variety of source to find them: Twitter, other blogs, community sites, Facebook. I also employ a blog for several reasons, not the least of which is customizable content, with some SEO control. I’ll write about the advantages of a blog in the next installment.

But I didn’t just identify my audience, I engaged them. That in turn, made them want to engage more with me. Its sort of like holding out your hand to be a friend.

About Twitter:

Using Twitter isn’t hard, its just time consuming. It means actively following others, which means finding them. But I can typically grow my Twitter audience by 100 or so with 20 minutes after dinner. So I do that.  Simple enough. In two months my following is over 800 people; those people have an average audience of 400 people, which means my reach is multiplied by their reach. While My following isn’t the 25,000+ of some people, I never set out to have that many followers. I wanted followers who want to read and talk about food. I set out to engage. The people who have 25,000+ followers can’t even keep track of their followers and they almost never, ever, help out other people with their goals. They might be mega-brands on Twitter, but they aren’t mega-brands in terms of success.

But finding people on Twitter isn’t the key to growing traffic. Its the beginning. You must, must, must engage. You must help others with their goals, you must create relationships. I help others out on Twitter. I am on it all day long. I send out information not related to my blog, that I think will be interesting to my followers.  I re-tweet interesting info for others, I thank them when they do the same. I have even created friendships on Twitter. Think of Twitter like any other networking event. If you just strut around the room, jamming your business card in everyone’s face, telling them all about you, without ever asking about their business or why they came, how effective is that? Yet 90% of Twitter people do that exact thing.

About Community Sites:

Also, I engaged communities that are built around my topic of choice. Anytime I can add my website link, I do. I am active on these sites and supportive of their members. I comment and engage.  Which brings me to the other very time consuming part of blogging: reading and responding to other bloggers. You will get traffic this way. Some weeks I get up to 10% of my traffic from two other popular sites I visit. Blog readers are always on the look out for new sites, new information.  One other rule of engagement: when people make a comment or stop by your site: thank them. Make them feel special for visiting and make sure you stop by their site (if they have one) to comment and follow as well.

Small business owners are always shaking their heads and raising their hands when I tell them, in detail about my process. They answer is always the same: I don’t have the time.

But are you going to let this new form of marketing pass you by? Aren’t you interested in driving more traffic to your site? Don’t you want to know more about your customers? The web captures information in a way traditional advertising does not, and its cheaper, but that comes at a cost of your time or someone else’s. Whichever you choose, I wish you the best of luck. Feel free to ask any questions in the comments, I will respond!