A little departure from the usual today! I was recently interviewed for the upcoming PubCon conference in Honolulu mid-February (see the session grid & register here) and at which I am on a panel discussing Hawaii Social Media. Vanessa threw me what she thought was a soft-ball during the interview – “what places should people try when they are on Oahu?” and I stumbled a bit because we have sooo many fantastic places to eat here, we could have done a more than a hundred episodes on that topic alone. I decided to do a blog post on it to welcome PubCon attendees and give them something else to look forward to!  For those of you not joining us for PubCon, well, let this post serve as an opportunity to whet your appetite.

I crowd-sourced this list with a little help from my friends: @melissa808, @phillmoran @parkrat – thanks guys for your help!

In honor of our social media world, this lists features favorite restaurants who are active in social media; a foodie/social media mashup if you will. We do have great restaurants here who aren’t active in social media, but what fun is that?! Feel free to tweet me (@taracoomans) during PubCon if you want more recommendations!

Before I get into restaurants, let’s talk about what really matters: Pau Hana (after work) if your looking for a happy hour – check out the free app at Happy Hour Hawaii @HappyHourHawaii

Waikiki..or Close To It. 

Tiki’s Waikiki @tikisgrill
In addition to being on the best places to watch our famous sunsets, Tiki’s really rocks the poke (a local favorite, and yours too once you try it). Plus, they warm my heart because they bend over backwards to support our social media community here. Who knows, we might even have to do a Tweetup there! Our last Tweetup there was with Brian Solis and I didn’t hear him complain about the venue, so if its good enough for Brian, maybe its good enough for the rest of us.

Hanks Haute Dogs @hankshautedogs
With two locations, you can choose just off the beaten path or the International Marketplace location. You just HAVE to try the Hawaiian with pineapple relish, passion fruit mustard and grilled sweet Maui onions at the International Marketplace where its an exclusive. Check out the daily specials too which range from Rabbit and Veal to Lobster. Of course, you can get a more traditional hot dog at Hanks, but its these great combinations that have made THEM famous.

Pietro Hawaii @pietrohawaii : I haven’t actually been here yet, but it was recommended to me by @parkrat who is a known foodophile. They are near the Ala Moana area (just minutes from Waikiki). The food is descrived at a fusion of Italian and Japanese. Where else but here would you find that kind of experience?

Good to Grill @goodtogrill: Again, another I haven’t been to. But their breakfast looks amazing and their claim to fame is grilling on Kiawe Wood. Its on Kapahulu which is an easy jaunt from Waikiki.

Outside Waikiki – But worth the trip

Food Trucks..we like’em so much! 
Like much of the country – we have a food truck revolution happening here. And there is no better way to find out which food trucks are nearby that using the StreetGrindz app. It takes all the guess work out of the finding and all you have to do is dig in and enjoy. Follow @streetgrindz on Twitter for food truck updates too!

Soul  @pacificsoul
Soul food in Hawaii? Oh, yes. You’ll be glad you did. This ain’t your Mama’s cook’n..its waaaaay better. I can’t get enough of Shrimp and Cheesy grits..but you can take your pick of whatever warms your soul.

Freshest Fish Around: Nico’s  @nicosatpier38
Sitting LITERALLY right next to Honolulu’s fish market , you just can’t go wrong here. They’ve just opened a new location so everything old is new again…the fish has always been fresh here, so no worries. Just go. And enjoy.

Mavro’s @chefmavro
I hesitate to add this to the list since PubCon is the week of Valentine’s Day and this is a fantastic place to take a date. But maybe if you act fast, you can get that 9PM reservation.  Its a farm-to-table experience that you won’t forget at Mavro’s.

A few of the street trucks are rock’n Twitter too, coincidently, they are all beloved by our local foodies: 

Camille’s on Wheels: “Global Tacos” including Thai Pork, Quinoa, Chimichurri. And they don’t use plastic or styro which we love to see here in Hawaii. https://twitter.com/Camillesonwheel 
Shogunai Tacos: More world-wide tacos including Japanese, Greek and Korean.
Eat Gogi: “Asian-Mexican” comfort food (read: more yummy tacos), they have some excellent salsas too! 
OnoToGo: They serve Misoyaki Butterfish, a white flaky fish broiled with a miso-sake marinade. Totally hawaii!  
Yajima-ya : Japanese Udon, Soba and Donburi. Perfect hangover cures. Anyone?

Kailua

Prima @prima_kailua
I’ve only had the chance to eat here once, but I truly enjoyed it. Its a home-style place to eat, bustling and full of energy. And guess what? We made our reservation via Twitter. LOVE THAT.  The food was great and the service fantastic. Don’t let the distance from Waikiki scare you – its a short trip over the Pali (which is a beautiful drive) and Kailua-town is a great place to spend the day with its beautiful beaches and boutique shopping, Kailua is truly a beach community.

Cinnamon’s @cinnamonskailua
When my Uncle came to visit Hawaii after more than 10 years away, the only place he really want to go back to was Cinnamon’s for breakfast. Not sure what that says about him, but I know what it says about Cinnamon’s: they make breakfast memorable.

North Shore

Cholos Haleiwa @choloshaleiwa
The tweet stream of Cholos alone is enough to make you want to go there. Its wry and witty and slightly dangerous, just like their margaritas. After you hit the North Shore to watch some of those famous winter waves roll in, grab a margarita at Cholos and while fish tacos are a North Shore favorite, I highly recommend the Chile Verde. After 20 years in Arizona, I was prepared to be less than impressed, but they absolutely killed it. Its a great treat..and its actually spicy which I truly crave.

More local Honolulu foodie social media resources:

Ono Kine Grindz Food Blog  @okgrindz
NonStop Honolulu : Follow @melissa808, @nonstopmari

@808melissa recommends this post of her’s for out of town guests 

This is the 2nd year that I’ve published my social media resolutions. Reading over last year’s resolutions I’m proud to say that I stay committed to each of them fairly well, though I some I outright failed at doing one of them. That said, I am glad I wrote my resolutions for 2011 as it gave me focus. Here’s my 2011 scorecard:

√ Fine Tune Karma for Business: I kept at this social media mantra this year and it worked for me and it worked for my clients. I’ll keep doing it.

∞ Beyond The Numbers: I definitely worked with people to think beyond follower counts, but I’m not completely satisfied with my own goal to build more scaleable social media programs. I think there is definitely more room for growth here.

√ Tell the Story Better: Yes! I’m pleased with the social media story telling this year. However, I’d like to do more, better.

∞ Write more: I said I would write 2X/week in my blog. I failed. But I’m getting back on the horse…watch me ride! Yahooo!!

√ Social media is the Farm, not the Silo: This message is being heard and I’m thrilled to have been a part of it. My personal clients and others are starting to see the light and I couldn’t be happier. Check.

√ Show more personality in Social Media: I did this, and I’m glad I did, but it could have been even better. I’ll call this one “ongoing”

Since several of those resolutions are ongoing and I’ll continue to keep these on my radar, I’ve developed a (shorter) list of resolutions for 2012 that I intend to focus on as well.

Think outside the blog:

Don’t get me wrong, this blog remains my number one love in terms of content creation, however, there are so many opportunities to create content, its a shame to limit it to the blog only. I’ve dipped my feet into Vimeo and Slideshare this year and I’d like to continue to utilize those two platforms more regularly. From a business perspective, both of those two platforms work for me. But more importantly, they make me push up against my normal communication style (of writing). Because I am not a fantastic movie editor or graphic designer, using these mediums will require me to be creative. Creative is good. It also means that I’ll be living by the mantra that it doesn’t always have to be perfect. That’s OK too..although a little harder to swallow.

What platforms will you use in 2012 that are you aren’t making the most of right now?

Distinguish my social media profiles:

I’ve been using Facebook and Twitter for years and with the introduction of Google+ (which I am enjoying) I’ll be defining what information you’ll see where. What I share on the three social networks will be different and I’ll be spending sometime experimenting and defining that better for myself and my audiences.  Along those lines, I’ll be making better use of my businesses Facebook page and Google+Page. I’m seriously considering limiting the posting of my blog on my personal profiles (with the exception of Twitter) and leaving the blog promotion strictly to the pages, allowing my personal presence to be more..well, personal, on my profiles.

Have you given thought to what you share and where you share it? How are your audiences different on each platform?

Participate. Support. More.

This is a totally loaded gun, but I’m going to say it: I want more conversation. I’ll be making a better effort to converse with people and do more outreach. I’ve gotten a little lazy, especially on Twitter, about STARTING the conversation. I participate in a lot of convos, but I don’t necessarily start them. That’s a crummy way to create relationships. I don’t like that I’ve gotten lazy and its going to stop. I’ll also be dropping by more blogs and writing more comments where I have something to share. Truth is, I read a lot of blogs, but sometimes I am too lazy to comment. I’m also going to be seeking out the blogs of people who aren’t “famous.” Seems we all read a lot of the same stuff, I’d like to find people who others aren’t necessarily reading and support them. I also want to find more blogs with viewpoints different from my own. As I said earlier this year “I need to spend less time with people who think like me and more time with people who don’t.” To that end, if you see something you hear you don’t like or agree with, feel free to challenge me. I’m up for it and you won’t get crucified by me.

How do you use your social media currency to support others?

What Social Media Resolutions do YOU have for 2012?  Can’t wait to hear! You can also let me know here, on G+ Look forward to hearing from you…and HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE! 

 Photo: Creative Commons

Its amazing, there are literally thousands of self proclaimed experts, but actually finding one in the wild is about as exciting as spotting a unicorn.  While unicorns are fairly easy to identify when you see one, this isn’t really the case with experts. In a world of so-called experts, how do you define an expert? How do you know if the person your thinking of working with is a hack or really able to be an expert for you?

Its not an easy question to answer, but I thought it would be worthy to discuss what makes an expert so special and how they differ from other professionals in their field. While I typically discuss social media, and these expert requirements certainly apply to finding a social media expert, they aren’t limited to social media experts. If you’re looking to talk to an expert, think about these things before moving forward.

An expert never stops learning:

To be an expert is to be an outstanding student, a natural curiosity. They actively spend time reading and thinking. That means that an expert invests time to improve his/her own skill set to benefit his/her projects, programs and clients. Its worth asking an expert how they keep up with changes, how much time they spend learning. But its even more than that, an expert shares. Why is this important? Because when a person learns information, the single best way to incorporate that knowledge is to share it. That’s why so many people who are considered experts are also speakers and bloggers, writers.  They know the secret to continued thought leadership is to share. They also know that by sharing, they engender conversations, comments and ideas which help them flesh out their ideas and opinions, which takes us back to the fact that most experts are outstanding students.

An expert has had learning experiences and even (gasp!) failures.

If you aren’t taking chances, then you’ve never had a failure. Experts take a risk now and then and they learn from the experience. Finding an expert means finding someone who will discuss what they’ve learned and what they would do differently next time. While experts may not use the language of “failure”, they certainly use the language of “learning lessons”. Show me someone who has never failed and I’ll show you either a noob or a boob.  No expert is perfect and if they can’t find learning lessons in past programs or clients, then they really aren’t asking the right questions.

Experts will ask probing questions.

Asking questions is the very basis to success. Some of those questions will require the client to dig deep to find the most honest answer. Asking questions about your business, your clients, your goals, these are all the kinds of questions that an expert should ask. But if your expert isn’t asking you deep questions, then you’re probably not dealing with an expert. Its the job of the expert to ask these questions so he/she knows how they can help you.  If you aren’t comfortable sharing the answers with your expert, ask them to sign an NDA, an expert won’t mind. An expert will want to get to the deepest part of the challenge and will want to do so quickly.

Experts value your time. And theirs.

An expert isn’t likely to ask you to go to coffee just to chat, and you shouldn’t ask an expert to do that either. Experts are busy people because the business of learning and sharing never stops. While that doesn’t mean an expert doesn’t have a life outside of work, its unlikely that an expert will spend his working hours lounging around at a Starbucks. An expert has typically spent hours honing their craft and you can’t learn everything they know simply by having a cup of coffee with them anyway. An expert won’t waste your time talking about him/herself on an intro meeting instead an expert will spend the time getting to know you, your business challenges and goals.  But more than that, an expert will be able to ask you the right questions and propose a solution efficiently. They also won’t be the cheapest person you speak with and that’s because they invest in you, your project and outcomes. You can hire less expensive people, but you can also go to a horse ranch if you want to see a horse. The unicorn is a rare breed and so is the expert. Working with them will save you frustration and time.

Photo: Creative Commons

Psst: while we’re at it, here’s an article I wrote earlier this year about outsourcing that still holds true: What you should and shouldn’t outsource.

What’s it all about? All this social media marketing? All this chatter about humanizing and engagement? Why bother using social media for customer service?

I wanted to share an experience I had last week with you.  I’ll let you draw your own conclusions, but as a premise for discussion: How would you feel about this company if you were me? And taking it to the next level, how hard would it be to do this for your own company?

11/9/2011 – Sprout Social excitedly announces it newest platform upgrades, a major overhaul, to its users with this email outlining the latest changes. They are clearly excited and hope I will be too! And they thank me for being a customer, right away before launching into details about the upgrades.

11/9/2011 (12 hours later): Oops. Sprout Social’s new release isn’t going so well, there are some unanticipated glitches. A not so glossy email comes out from the CEO, with his personal email address. Its short, its sweet, its apologetic and earnest and its not the slick promotional email I got the other day. It even includes his actual email (which I’ve removed) and it appears to have been actually written by a human if not actually the CEO. But the email is so likable, I’m inclined to want to believe the CEO wrote it.

Another similarly unformatted email follows 4 days later. It includes updates on the specific challenges they’ve been having and reassurance that they are working diligently to make the fixes.  The second email is significantly longer, but Justyn makes a joke about it and says he would apologize a bunch more if the email weren’t already so long.

So for most companies, the crisis is mostly over, situation averted. They had some road bumps, they apologized. It isn’t a federal case, everyone can move on.

But they aren’t done. They’re monitoring. On G+ none the less, the least populated social network out there (but with the highest geeks/post ratio). A couple of days earlier, I noticed this person from Sprout Social started following me. I don’tknow if she found me through keyword search or was simply finding the names of their customers. Either way – I thought it was very cool that one of the companies I purchase from wants to follow ME. Instead of asking me to follow THEM.

And after I comment on a post by Gwen, their rep pops in for a really human conversation…(even though the marketer in her comes out when she can’t tell me the answer to my question):

So, if this was your company:  How would you have reacted? Who would be doing this outreach, if at all? What about using a real email address from the CEO? Would you do it? Interesting question, right? Is your social media person this human? Do you think customer service via social media is a waste of time?

As a customer, how does it make  you feel when you think the business is listening?

Can’t wait to hear from you!

PS: Don’t you think its appropriate we’re talking about customer service on Black Friday?! Since I stay out of that particular fray, let me know if you see any cool examples of customer service on Black Friday…I have some ideas, but I’d love to hear what you guys experience!!

We’ve been talk A LOT about social media analytics, metrics and measurement here on this blog. In part that’s because I really believe that social media is an important tool and for the tool to be appreciated by “higher ups” aka your boss, there has to be measurement associated with it, particularly since we’re still fighting the battle of whether social media is a viable business tool at all. As evidenced by this video created by the Unmarketing Team of Scott Stratton, which tickled the funny bone of lots of social media peeps last week:

Social Media ROI by UnMarketing

Social Media Metrics and ROI for You

As funny as it is, this video doesn’t really address the measurement issue, it sort of goes round and round in a comical way. While that’s the way so many conversations are taking place, its mostly because there is no single way to measure social media. Its still a moving target – in fact, I believe it will STAY a moving target. Right now and in the future, measuring social media will come down to determining your definition of success and measuring against that definition. In otherwords, who gives a hoot what works for someone else – you want to create a program that works for YOU and your needs!

I thought it would be helpful to discuss some of the elements that can and should be measured in social media. Because social media ROI is really a combination of many different types of valuations. I use these elements in my ROI tool and find its extremely valuable in helping people see the big picture of social media value.

What we can measure for social media ROI

CPC: Cost per Click advertising is still a highly effective way to drive traffic to a website, but how does social media compare? While its still a relative bargin, social media can also drive traffic to a website without the same costs associated. When I consider the value of social media, I consider how much it would cost for my client to have purchased that equivalent traffic. If we are running a CPC campaign at the same time, then its even better because we can compare the differences in visitors in terms of conversion, length of time on the website, etc. But even without running a CPC campaign, we know that there is a value to website traffic, and we compare the measurement to the going-rate cost.

AVE: Advertising Value Equivalent is something that PR professionals have been using for years. While there is some dispute in the PR community about AVE, it is still the most widely used. Essentially, AVE looks at earned media and assigns a value to it based on equivalent advertising rates. I personally consider this a conservative valuation since independent coverage of your product, company or services holds more weight than an advertisement. But the AVE model does allow you to take that into account by assigning a weight to the coverage. Social media often generates attention in traditional media, so when that is the case, I include AVE in the ROI model.

Word of Mouth: Word of Mouth is essentially the value of conversation others are having around your company, product or brand. This is perhaps one of the hardest things to measure in social media. I measure it most frequently when there is an influencer program, but that isn’t the only time its valuable.  In my model I based the use of Word of Mouth off of McKinsey Research valuation of Word of Mouth (WOM) value which looks at Relevance, Trust and Quantity.  I also assign a weight to those factors, depending on importance to client and value.  Within WOM valuation, we include  things like Facebook comments and shares on Twitter from an  influencer or from the company itself. The new Google Ripples, which is used for Google+ postings,  is going to be able to give some exciting graphical evidence to WOM valuation. I anticipate that Google will also begin to add a value to those shares much the way they do in Google Analytics for clicks or other pre-set goals.

Sales and Brand Value: Taking a baseline before, after and during a campaign will often provide some enlightening information. We definitely want to review not only number of sales, but average sale and return customers before, during and after a campaign. For this to be efficiently measured, we’ll need to make sure that we’re collecting the information consistently. Its easiest to do this with digital sales, but its possible to do it with person-to-person sales as well.

Customer Service (savings): If we measure how social media customer service compares to phone or email customer service, we can find out if there are efficiencies of using social media as a customer service tool. When there is a cost savings, then that should be included in the ROI model as well.  For example, if a staff person spends an average of 4 minutes per inquiry responding via email, but only 2 minutes responding via Facebook or Twitter, that’s a 50% decrease in time which adds up to a cost savings.

You may decide that you want to include other elements into your own ROI model and to be fair, mine is modified a little bit for each campaign. Not everything element will be included, however, make sure you aren’t missing anything that SHOULD be included.  For more info, you can see my presentation on SlideShare.net.

What other things do you think you should measure that aren’t include here?

Even though I am a creative at heart, so it strikes a lot of people as strange that I’m caught so often discussing measurement and analytics. Here’s the thing: I’m also strategic and an activator. And because of my strategic side, I’ve been doing a lot of work over the last year on social media analytics and ROI models. Social media is unlike any other medium we’ve seen before, and so we’ve got to measure it differently.

But I DO believe we can borrow established methodology (why reinvent ALL the wheels?)  from Word of Mouth, PR and advertising models and most importantly, we can approach measuring social media in the same exact way we measure other marketing programs – by tying them to business goals and using Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s). Identifiying business objectives, how we establish KPI’s and what information we pull, that’s where the details are. There is no generally accepted “right or wrong” way to measure social media, but I do believe that measuring and tracking is important. No matter what type of measurement you establish, the key is to stick with it and let the metric tell the story.

I’m really proud of the ROI model I’ve developed for use with my clients. I feel it takes into account the different areas in which social media can impact (PR, Digital Marketing, Product Development, Customer Service) and even more importantly, it gives the client some flexibility to weight certain elements so they reflect the business goals of their company. In a presentation last week at Social Media Club of Hawaii (SMCHI) I presented the audience with my “Road Map” for developing KPI’s and an ROI model. I’ve added the slide show here for your review.

I also had the pleasure of joining Rob Bertolf and Hal Wilkerson on a panel to discuss social media measurement at the Social Media Summit of Hawaii (#SMSHI). If you watch the video, you’ll get to see me having a “Klout Conniption” which is my reaction to using Klout as a business tool.  I’ve also added my slides for measurement and ROI. This presentation gives you an overview (a roadmap) of how to develop you’re own Metrics and ROI.

If you are interested in discussing social media analytics further or would like to have an ROI analysis on your program, please feel free to contact me.

Aaaand..now for our show:

SMSHI 2011 What, Why and How of Social Media from Hal Wilkerson on Vimeo.

Social media professionals are a fascinating bunch. Sit with them and you’ll realize that there are at least 4-5 different disciplines represented. In my immediate circle, there are those with PR, Marketing, Tech and Software backgrounds, Web and SEO, wait, I’m not done..Journalism, Digital design, and I even know someone with a scientific background. Phew! That’s an awful lot of talent wrapped up into one type of marketing. Why are there so many distinct backgrounds in social media? Because social media is new (Twitter is only 5 years old!), meaning professionals have migrated from different backgrounds. But it isn’t just that – social media combination of skills (marketing, PR, web, technical) and philosophies which merge together to create the social media field.

That’s why no one “owns” social media

The awesome thing for me about having this diverse group of people around me is that they each bring a different insight to a challenge or a campaign. The tech guy is going to help me understand whether my dream of actually having

Creative Commons by PSD

someone live inside the computer can come true, while my web guy is up to date on all things SEO and programming, my science friend is going to remind me that before I do much else a process should be in place. My PR friends will strive to find ways to connect or create community and journalism friends are going to remind me about the need for great content and the digital design camp is going to say it won’t mean anything if it isn’t attractive to the eye. As for me, as a marketing professional, I bring the creative juice and the desire to track and measure the results. Several of us bring a multidisciplinary approach including agency or entrepreneurial elements, both of which are valuable insights.   If you could wrap us all up together you’d have the ideal social media professional. But “that person” doesn’t exist…even in the most brilliant of us. But there IS brilliance in each of us.

Its takes a village

Raising a successful social media campaign takes more than one person. And, it takes more than the social media professional, it takes commitment from the client as well. As soon as you start discussing social media within any organization, you realize that it will have significant touch points into other areas of your business besides marketing: it will involve Customer Service, PR, Marketing, your “Web Guy”. So it is with social media, its unlikely that any single person can do an entire campaign soup-to-nuts alone. And there’s no shame in asking for help, support and or assistance. As social media professionals we can support one another in a way that makes everything we do better. Collaboration is a sign of strength, not weakness and we can make each other and our clients even more successful. In fact, social media in itself IS collaboration.

So when you find your chief:

Despite that wide range of professional backgrounds, social media professionals tend to be very collaborative. We reach out to one another for advice and assistance. We pay one another for formal or informal brainstorming sessions. We watch, we listen, we read from one another. When you hire a social media professional, ask them: “what areas of social media do you collaborate with others on?” that will help you understand their strengths. You should be more concerned when the person you talk to says they do it all themselves. For a true social media campaign or launch, several skill sets WILL be required.  I have yet to meet a single person who can do it ALL on their own, in fact, the more I see collaboration, the more successful I see campaigns.

What do you think? If your a social media pro, do you collaborate much? If you are on the client side, how receptive are you to having your social media pro bring in others to support your campaign?

What’s needed for a successful social media campaign? That’s sort of like asking what it takes to create a success business. The truth is a successful social media endeavor requires hard work, time, commitment and a dash of good luck. But if your business is considering getting serious about social media with a social media professional, there are some things that you should know. The first of which is that no matter how fantastic your social media professional is, you’ll still be pivotal to the success of the campaign.  Here are 5 ways you can support the success of your social media campaign and your investment with a social media professional.

1) From the outset, determine if you have the man power for social media: social media is dynamic and fast paced. Communicating with your clients in this forum will require a willingness to be there when your clients are there too. If you decide to outsource your social media communication, you’ll still need manpower and here’s why: there will be times when a potential sale or compliment or complaint comes in through a social media outlet and having a process flow that is fast and internal is absolutely necessary. You’ll probably quickly get to the point where content creation becomes a topic. Who will create the content? Even if you outsource your content to a PR or video firm, you’ll still need to be involved with the topics and subjects.  The people in YOUR company understand the needs and views of your customers better than anyone else, why wouldn’t you want them to be involved.

Creative Commons Photo by http://www.flickr.com/photos/epsos/

2) Open up: The more you empower your social media campaign, the more successful it will be. Open up to new ideas. If each new idea or suggestion is met with a “we can’t do that”, then not only are you tying the hands of your social media professional, you’re limiting your own success.  Make sure your executive team is on board and enthusiastic. Find an internal champion who wants to see a social campaign succeed.  Be ready to share some of the nitty gritty of your company’s inner workings with a social media professional and allow them to help you through the process. Whenever I hear “we tried hiring a social media consultant, but it just didn’t work” I often ask “why?” Because while social media consultants are not all equally successful, some clients aren’t either. Some come to the table ready and willing to create magic, some come with a skepticism that limits the possibility of success from the outset.

3) Tracking Sales: If you are looking to track your sales directly from social media, be ready to invest in some additional tools. Google Analytics is a good start, but it won’t be enough. If you utilize non-digital forms of marketing, then let your social media pro in on the details. Let them understand your marketing cycle so they can support your over all goal, not just the goal of social media.  There are tracking tools which will help you identify multiple digital touch points such as email and web and social. But if you really want to dig deep, you’ll want to integrate your CRM with social media. If you don’t have a CRM, then tracking that insight will be considerably harder and more time consuming, you’ll have to rely on causation rather than direct attribution. No social media professional can make you invest in these tools, but if you wish to skip them, then it isn’t the fault of your social media professional.

4) Be ready to integrate: You’ll quickly find that elements of social media include touch points including marketing, sales, PR, customer relations and more. Social media shouldn’t be treated as a silo, I always say, social media is the farm, not the silo. I say that because its the fertile ground where the sun, the rain, the tender care all take place to create magnificent fruit. But without all the elements together, the fruit isn’t as magnificent.  Make sure you’re willing and able to have those touch points involved in the discussion. An audit will quickly reveal the areas in which you can have an impact, but at the very least, its likely to include some changes to your website, integration with your email list,  some communication with your executive team and support from everyone involved.

5) “What Have You Done for Me Lately”: Social media isn’t really a sales tool, its a marketing tool. Social media helps you create a stronger emotional connection with your customers, but few customers place orders through social media (subject to change?) The effects of social media are likely to be exponential, but perhaps not immediate and potentially difficult to track (depending on your choices of tracking). Give your customers some time to start communicating with you on social media..and give them a reason to communicate with you. You’ll find that things come into play together, over time.

6) Be Flexible, Be Human: What worked for your competitor may or may not work for you. You might find that something that has worked in the past isn’t working now. Be prepared to try something new, in fact, always be thinking of what’s next. Social media is dynamic and so are social media users. They expect you to be interesting, inventive and informative. If you aren’t one of the three “I’s” on social media, then its time to think about how you can be. And don’t forget, at its heart, social media is about communication. Be human, let your customers be human. They’ll think more highly of you and that will pay dividends for years to come!

Creative Commons Photo by Daehyun Park

In the marketing world, we toss around some language that can be confusing. Two of those words are “audience” and “community.” Guess what? They aren’t one in the same. In fact, they couldn’t be more different. Think of the differences between an orchestra who performs and the audience who listens. The orchestra works together, they listen to one another to create a beautiful result. Without that team work and willingness to support one another, the result would be lackluster. The maestro directs, he coaxes, he makes the orchestra the best it can be, that’s what a good community manager’s job as well. The audience on the other hand, is a gathering of people with at least one similar interest: music. The quality of the music has to do with the team on stage, not the size of the audience.

Why should you care if you have community vs. audiences? Mostly because an impassioned audience will allow you to do many things: recover from PR mistakes more quickly. Audiences complain about your company publicly, maybe on your Facebook page, maybe in a blog (Think: Dell Hell).  Communities are the people who stand up for you when there is flamer on your Facebook page (Compare Dell Hell with the Community’s response to Dell’s Flaming Notebook). Communities don’t care don’t care if you made a mistake, so long as you admit it. Audiences make sure you never forget your mistakes. Communities add value to brands and companies both in terms of valuation and in terms of increased sales. An impassioned audience cares less about price and more about how they feel about the product (think: Apple).

Interested in a community vs. an audience? Read on.

Audiences can be purchased: Think about buying an email list or a direct mail list. This is an audience. Its a total group of people who have a likelihood of appreciating your product and service. Having a large audience is important in the advertising world. That’s what you buy: access to an audience. You can purchase an audience fairly quickly and start marketing to the audience immediately. You can develop a portion of an audience into a community.

Communities must be developed: You can not buy a community. Creating a community of people who support your brand and its products takes time. Creating a community occurs when you tap into the passions of an audience and allow them to see your product or brand as part of their daily lives.  It takes interaction, committment and it takes the right platforms to do it. Social media is popular because there is potential for building a community, but simply participating in social media does not inherently give you a community. Events have the potential to create community, but simply attending or hosting an event does not create community either. With both tools its important to have 1:1 engagement. You might do so through creating unique experiences, you might do so giving your community to be part of the product development process. Developing a community can take years, its a long-tail process.

Audiences are automated: Emails can be sent, resent and followed-up on automatically. Auto posting RSS feeds on a Twitter account reaches audiences, but doesn’t create community.

Communities are personal. Creating community requires 1:1 engagement and outreach. It takes courtesy, respect, appreciation. Responding to a comment, tweet or post using the person’s ACTUAL name (even if you have to look it up) builds community.

Audiences are disengaged: Generally speaking, one reason a large audience is necessary in advertising is that the response rate is low. It takes a concentrated effort to get in front of the audiences you wish to reach and you must do so repeatedly and consistently. Once you’re off the radar, your collective success begins to diminish; they don’t miss you. That’s why consistency in running ads is paramount in success. You advertise TO an audience.

Communities are engaged: You communicate WITH Communities.  Communities respond because they feel like your listening. Communities are interested in what you have to say because you talk less about you and more about them.

Brands with Communities have Personalities: The reason you hear so much discussion about transparency is that people respond to people. They want to see a sense of humor and even imperfection. Brands who have thought through their voice and their willingness to be open have a higher likelihood of success in community building. Companies who think about what their audiences talk about have a higher chance of developing community.

Brands with Audiences have Reach: Reach is fairly easy to build and each communication is viewed as a “message” rather than an opportunity for discussion. Its the difference between a blog post and a newspaper article. Community builders don’t really give a flying flit about reach – they focus on engagement.

Audiences are Set it and Forget it: You create an ad, you run it, you measure,  rinse and repeat. It scales. Its easily repeatable. Running an ad doesn’t take any man power or additional resources outside of creating the ad and buying the time or space.

Communities Are Like Marriages: Communities require consistent feeding and caring. Every situation is different and therefore, each response and action is personalized. Relationships don’t scale.  Communities expect and accept apologies. Communities feel listened to, appreciated and validated. Members of communities might even feel singularly special.

Audiences operate independently: Audiences don’t know how they got on that mailing list and they don’t care who else is reading your ad. They don’t talk to one another and they don’t talk to you and your brand.

Communities work together: The essence of a community is dialouge. Community members talk to each other, even without brand intervention. Communities support one another. Support doesn’t mean messaging, it means finding out what’s important to your community and help them have that conversation.

This list isn’t anywhere near exhaustive – what other differences between audience and community would you add?

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!