Improve Reader Engagement with Social Media

Lets dive right in, shell we? Today, the buzzword engagement has received a great deal of attention, yet many people are not sure what they need to do to achieve this. This is where TodayPulse helps company’s achieve this beneficial investment in a time-effective manner.

1. What social networking sites are most likely to create an ongoing dialogue with customers?

I think Twitter works well for ongoing dialogue because it is the one that is the most like a real conversation. It’s real-time updating allows it to function like a chat with many additional social benefits. Facebook just doesn’t encourage this in my opinion. LinkedIn is better, but tends to function more like email, which is slow and not as good at conversation.

2. What are some hard-and-fast rules or best practices that encourage followers to interact with a company’s brand?
Be as human as possible. Companies tend to talk like companies – as if everything is coming directly from the PR department. Everything online is conversation. That is why we call them social networks. Businesses are not really social by nature, and it takes some work to understand what that means. One tip is to avoid a logo’d account whenever possible. People like to talk to humans, so be human. Small businesses do this well.

Another thing is to make sure that you are constantly reaching out. You can’t wait for the conversation to come to you. You have to put yourself into the middle of it. Twitter makes this easy and provides a low barrier to entry. Start talking to those followers rather than blasting them with sales messages. It will change everything.

3. Do the same rules applying enhancing customer engagement with Facebook fans?
The same basic principles apply, but it is a different world. Above all, you need to be providing you customers with valuable content on all platforms. This is especially important on Facebook where you can’t get away with what you can on Twitter. Facebook audiences are more fickle, but can have a great payoff when leveraged right.

4. What specific tools can be used to increase online costumers engagement?
Well, I would recommend Todaypulse  of course. Todaypulse is a social media marketing inbox that was built to help businesses and marketing teams be better at conversation and engagement. Not only does it allow you to be part of the conversation, it helps you find new ones that are related to your industry. It combines several powerful engagement tools like Twitter and Facebook search, blog alerts, news alerts and can even connects businesses directly with consumer questions on Q&A sites. It was really built to help generate conversation. Todaypulse users regularly find that they are more engaged and more active in social media when using Todaypulse.

About Garrett Moon: Garrett is the lead blogger and designer at Todaymade, a web design and social marketing company. He is also the author of the free Facebook Marketing for Business course and the co-creator of Todaypulse, a social media marketing inbox for social pros and business owners. Garrett co-host’s the Better at Marketing Podcast, an interview style show for social media leaders and online marketing game changers.

How Authors Can Use Social Media to Reach Their Niche Markets

I had the pleasure of interviewing Susan Daffron, an award-winning author and publisher, about how authors can benefit from using social media to attract readers in their niche market. From addressing challenges authors are up against when promoting their books to recommending metrics to gauge whether their social media efforts are paying off, Susan intelligently answers my questions and speaks from experience.

1. What are some unique challenges authors face when promoting their books?

Many new authors try to market their book to “everyone”. When asked who would read their book, rather than being specific and targeting a small easily identified niche group of people, many authors say, “everyone would like my book”.

Unfortunately, that’s almost never the case. You can’t sell a book to “everyone”. It’s impossible to even figure out where to begin, so many authors get frustrated and give up. No matter how popular a book is, “everyone” is never the target reader.

Successful authors are strategic in their marketing efforts. They figure out where members of their specific niche hang out and focus their marketing efforts there. The specific places are unique to every niche, but once you can determine how to find and connect with potential readers, marketing a book becomes a lot easier.

2. What are some effective ways authors can use social media to generate consumer awareness?

* Sign up for personal accounts on Facebook, Linked In and Twitter.
* Post status updates to your accounts related to content in the book.
* Write blog posts related to the book (then post links to the blog posts in social media.
* Create a Facebook fan page for your book or a group about your book’s topic.
* Join groups related to your book’s topic on Facebook and Linked in.
* Participate in Twitter Chats related to your book’s topic.
* Link your blog’s feed into your various social media accounts/pages.
* Create book trailer videos and post them on YouTube and your blog.
* If your book is on a how-to topic, create video demonstrations and post them.
* Keep your Amazon author page current and add your Twitter URL, RSS feed, and videos to your author page.

3. What tools can help authors promote their book?

* To manage social media, many authors use tools such as Tweet Deck, Hoot Suite, or Ping.fm that let you post to multiple sites at the same time. You also can use tools like Social Oomph or Hoot Suite to schedule future tweets/status updates.
* Use Amazon Author Central to pull content in from your blog into the Amazon site.
* Sign up for services like HelpaReporter.com that are looking for expert sources. As an author, you are an expert. Follow HARO and reporters on Twitter.

4. What should authors be measuring to know which of their social media efforts are paying off?

* If you have a Facebook page you can check your stats there. You can use Google Analytics on your blog to see if people are responding to your social media status updates and reading your posts.
* You can use URL shorteners that include click tracking to see if people are clicking your links.
* You can keep track of the number of times your posts are retweeted or shared.
* Use coupon codes in your shopping cart, so you can track which offers result in sales.

Bio: Susan Daffron, aka The Book Consultant owns a book and software publishing company. She spends most of her time writing, laying out books in InDesign, or taking her five dogs out for romps in the forest. She also teaches people how to write and publish profitable client-attracting books and puts on the annual Self-Publishers Online conference, which will be May 10-12 this year.

When is the Best Time to Tweet?

Scenario: it’s Sunday at 3pm and your in the mood to tweet. Fingers are crossed that lots of your Twitter followers are online and ready to receive your tweets with open arms, meaning a desire to retweet or send you an @ mention and whatever other goals your business / personal site requires. The point is if you’re unsure of whether your followers / key followers are online, aren’t you just shooting blindly at the Twitterverse hoping for a bite?

I used to use WhenToTweet.com to find out the best times to tweet depending on when most of my followers were using Twitter; however, I noticed that even though the number of people following me on Twitter was growing, my stats were not changing. I contacted the site owner and he told me that there is a cache on the result that is permanent, meaning that you will be always be served your old result.

I turned to the impressive forum at Third Tribe Marketing. Its member are made up of  social media professionals: the industry’s heavy hitters. Susan Giurleo pointed me in the direction of the most impressive article on the subject I’ve seen to-date called When is the best time to tweet? written by Christopher Spenn, USF social media marketing prof. If your goal is to get people to retweet yours tweets, Christopher gives you a recipe to find out when these key people are on Twitter. If your focus is on consumer engagement and conversions, he recommends using Google Analytics to answer this question. What if you don’t have people retweeting your tweets or you’re rightly concerned about excluding potential retweeters? Read on…

In comes StumbleUpon’s URL shorter su.pr. Is it worthwhile to abandon bit.ly and Hootsuite? Judge for yourself. Here are the facts: su.pr not only works to get you more traffic, it lets you know what the best times are for you to tweet, broken up by each day of the week. Not to shabby for a URL shortener. BTW, su.pr and Hootsuite let you pre-schedule your tweets, meaning you tweet when it’s convenient for you.

Editorial note: I’ve just discovered a tool called Tweriod that lets you know when your followers are using Twitter and what the best time to tweet is. The one drawback is that is takes 1 to 2 hours to get the search results. I think it’s worth the wait! What do you think?

Not ready to leave the comfort of your favourite URL shortener just yet. I searched the net high and low get you more answers. Although I found some sources that were divided on the subject, teetering on the brink of being labeled an over generalization on the subject is this: Monday’s are crap for tweeting, Tuesday to Friday’s between 10 to 2pm is golden (relevant if your tweeple are in the same time zone as you), Thursdays and Fridays are prime re-estate to get Twitter-happy, and avoid tweeting between 3 to 5 on weekends.

Time to pass the talking stick to you. What have you discovered about optimal tweet times? I love getting feedback from my readers and look forward to hearing from you!

Photo credit: ViteVu

Is Your Relationship Strong Enough To Withstand Facebook?

Courtesy of my talented guest blogger Jennn Fusion

Divorce lawyers report that social networking sites like Facebook are largely to blame for the tremendous spike in divorce rates and extra-marital affairs in recent years. Facebook was cited in 1 out of 5 divorce filings, one lawyer told the UK Telegraph. Similarly, Mark Keenan of Divorce-Online.com reports 20 percent of all divorce petitions contain references to Facebook. “The most common reason seemed to be people having inappropriate sexual chats with people they were not supposed to,” he told the Wall Street Journal.

Long gone are the days when suspicious spouses need to hire private eyes to track, spy and dig up evidence of infidelity. Nowadays, you just spend a few hours combing through wall posts, pictures, new friends and comments. If you’re really wily, you can decode your husband or wife’s password and read inbox messages too. The American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers went so far as to say 81% of their cases over the last five years involved social networking “evidence” of cheating.

It’s unfair to blame social networking sites for divorces because, as a Facebook spokesperson put it, “Facebook doesn’t cause divorces, people do.” Yet, it’s easy to see how the transparency inherent in social media can get people in rocky relationships in big trouble. In one case, “My marriage is over,” wailed a spouse in her Facebook status,” prompting other friends and family members to reach out to her (completely unaware) husband with concern. In another case, a woman going through a custody battle claimed to be sober, when dated pictures of her drinking at parties clearly showed otherwise. A divorced man claimed he had no money to make his alimony payments – yet his ex-wife discovered pictures of a new BMW posted on his Facebook page. A married man left the fact that he was married with children off his Facebook profile, while he emailed old flames from college – a big faux pas in his wife’s eyes, who later hacked his account and messaged these potential threats to her marriage.

As TIME Magazine put it, the number of divorce lawyer clients turned social networkers has resulted in “the kind of semipublic laundry-airing that can turn aggrieved spouses into enraged ones and friends into embarrassed spectators.”

Do you have any stories where Facebook has effected someone relationship?

Little Things Important to Social Media

Courtesy of my accomplished guest blogger Scott Spjut

Turns out, it’s all little things. Social media isn’t really about blitzes or viral marketing or big online campaigns, at least not for your average small business owner or blog. As much as we would love to have a huge marketing department to invest money and time into some elaborate, interactive social media campaign, it is not beneficial for all companies.

Instead, social media is about a consistent, dedicated approach. It’s about doing the little things, day in and day out, to provide value to your past, present, and potential customers and readers. While this approach may take a while and won’t usually bring with it huge spikes in traffic, it’s how you build a strong foundation and social loyalty.

People who see value in what you’re adding to the conversation will Like, follow, retweet, and otherwise share what you’re doing – and they are likely to do it consistently. Once they realize the contribution you’re making to their lives, they will not unlike, unfollow, or abandon you.

So with Twitter, Facebook, and other social networks, it’s important to do a little bit each and every day – and at different times each day (since you’ll hopefully have followers from around the world). It may be something related to your industry, and it may not be. It may be self-promotional and it may be about someone else. (Remember that anything too self-promotional or spammy is going to lose more people than it gains.) Regardless of what you’re presenting to your network, it should be something they can take value from.

The most popular websites on the Internet have built up a huge following by consistently providing what their readers want. The most successful online businesses have built up their brand by doing the little things each and every day. The most effective companies interact with the individual – by providing one-on-one customer service or answering each question in a timely manner – and don’t just focus on the masses.

Social media is about the little things. It may just take a few minutes each day to respond to a few posts or a few tweets, but it can make a huge difference to your followers, friends, and network.

Your goals don’t have to be small, but you need to do the little things in order to reach them.

Scott Spjut is a writer and editor who has been featured in various magazines, newspapers and websites – including Newsweek, the Washington Post, CBS News and the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Scott currently works with Professional Marketing International helping people change their lives.

Photo credit: Maria Reyes-McDavis

10 Awesome Tweets From My Followers in March

Wish you could have someone sift through brilliant tweets related to social media on Twitter without having to lift your finger? Look no further my friend. My fingers just got a good work out.

Congrats to my followers and thank you for your great tweets. Keep them coming!

1. When a Groupon Promotion Went Wrong http://t.co/jHQYpIM Learn how to broker your Groupon deal as a merchant! @juanxi

2. Don’t be a conversation killer, keep chatting! http://ow.ly/4igEt #SocialMedia @trevorellestad

3. With no TV, hundreds of people in Japan gathered in Apple stores to watch news on USTREAM & use Twitter, Facebook, email. http://j.mp/icRHio @shawngriffiths

4. Official Webtrends Company Blog – Why Most Brands Are Inadvertently Wasting Money on #Facebook http://t.co/mrgA5wi @Herve_Marketing

5. 10 Tips to Grow Your Twitter Following http://bit.ly/dPGTMR @oneDivineSPIRIT

6. Facebook Launches Updated Comment Platform to Socialize Blogs http://t.co/8Tk045L @AllegrasTweets

7. Good article on the new TV & social media trend known as Social TV that’s popular w/youth. Execs take notice! http://reut.rs/fbpE6e @RodHarlan

8. New blog post: 10 Blogging Apps for the iPad http://bit.ly/dZZJbV #Apple #iPad @BlazingMinds

9. For me it’s an interactive news network=> Twitter isn’t very social: study | Econsultancy http://ht.ly/4o1yi #sobcon #engage365 @heidithorne

10. #Facebook movie credits? Meet your new media company – http://ow.ly/4a7O1 @sderksen

Thank you for introducing me to hundreds of different valuable links / articles.

Visit 10 Awesome Tweets from My Followers in January and 10 Awesome Tweets from My Followers in February to read more Twitter jems.

What are some brilliant tweets have your followers tweeted this month? I absolutely love hearing from my readers. Please leave a message and I promise I will get back to you.

Photo credit: Porter Novelli Global