Last week Fandotech and the Glastonbury Chamber of Commerce jointly presented a seminar on Understanding Social Media for Business. You know, all that “kids stuff” that seems to be creeping into mainstream corporate marketing. The seminar was hugely successful! Why? Because everyone had the same two questions to be answered. 1) Why do I, the business owner, have to be involved with Twitter and Facebook? and 2) How do I manage this in my already busy life?

Kathy Hokunson of Site-Seeker, our presenter, was deft at answering both.

First, the “why”: As we use Twitter, Facebook, Lindedin and YouTube we are reaching out to establish “authority, thought leadership and trust”. These three elements resonated with me because I know that my clients only buy my products and services only after they are sure that we can be trusted with their IT resources. By tweeting, a client can find references, about Fandotech quickly and easily, from their peers. Authority is established as we engage with our audience on multiple social platforms and publicize our knowledge through events and blogs and meaningful conversation. When Fandotech tweets about its services and comments on technology trends we gain followers that are interested in our thought leadership on relevant IT issues. These followers are often the decision makers for the next IT purchase. And when potential clients are in the vetting process, they often go to Linkedin to review the personnel and establish trust through the resume and recommendation information posted. These are classic Market 101 goals for every business.

But… when do you have the time to do social media? One participant in the seminar left saying, “this was the most useful social media seminar I have attended. I am leaving for the first time feeling empowered and not overwhelmed.” This empowerment came due to Kathy’s firm instruction to NOT do every form of social media. Some forms are appropriate for B2C (business to consumer) and some are right for B2B (business to business), and some are about individual credential building that will be updated from time to time. The secret is to focus on the forums that are right for your business goals, and work the marketing consistently over time. As I often say, the reason God invented time was so everything doesn’t happen at once! We were reminded to be patient.

I am working on social media, updating profiles and blogging. I think I will get to tweeting, but realistically, that may need to wait. In the mean time I have able partners here at Fandotech that are using Twitter effectively as we employ the entire team to tackle this brave new marketing arena!

One thought I left the seminar with – I am empowered too!

HootSuite offers a professional and consolidated collection of Twitter-related tools. It is a website that you log into from your web browser from anywhere, not a program that you have to download and install.

You can set up HootSuite to manage one or several different Twitter accounts. From its slick interface, you can easily create and customize multiple tabs of tweets, and each tab can have one or more columns inside that further organize tweets. Each column represents some grouping of tweets, such as your home feed, mentions of your company or Twitter account, direct messages to you, pending tweets (that you haven’t sent yet), sent tweets, and various keyword searches for things you’d like to monitor. You can easily control column width, as well as drag and drop columns and tabs to change their order and position.

As mentioned, each column features a list of tweets matching the criteria you selected. Each tweet is accompanied by the photo/avatar of the tweeps (Twitter users like you and me), the time, date, and source of the tweet, and a group of buttons that easily let you Favorite/Unfavorite, Direct Message, Reply, or Re-Tweet. You may also click on the tweep’s name to view their Twitter profile.

Above the conglomeration of tabs and columns is a collapsible box from which you can tweet directly (from any of the Twitter accounts you set up in HootSuite). You can type your tweet, select one or more Twitter accounts to issue the Tweet, choose what day and time you’d like the tweet to go out, and even use its URL shortener (like the formerly mentioned bit.ly – http://bit.ly) to shorten long web addresses. So, HootSuite can be used to queue up multiple tweets in advance—for several different Twitter accounts.

For the more intensively-inclined Twitter user, HootSuite offers the ability for multiple users to log into your HootSuite account and manage it with various restrictions that you control. Further, it graphically tracks statistics about your Twitter usage, lets you monitor your company brand, and embed your custom HootSuite columns in other websites.

HootSuite is an excellent Twitter tool that we’ve been using for a couple weeks now with great success. I keep it open in my browser all day, and check it from time to time to keep tabs on my Twitter life. Take a look at it and let us know what you think!

Craig Samson

Once again, this month’s topic is about Search Engine Marketing and how to make your website be your best salesperson. Treat your website like a salesperson, holding it accountable just as you would a human salesperson.

After determining your expectations for your website it’s time to implement the changes necessary to meet those goals. A typical scenario for search engine marketing:

1. Your current site is reviewed and evaluated for a number of important factors.
2. The site is redesigned using Search Engine Marketing best practices.
3. Monitoring and measuring tools are also implemented so that progress can be better tracked.

Monitoring your site’s statistics is key. Based on the site’s performance, keywords, hierarchy, and content will be further tweaked in an attempt to continuously improve the site. Continually measure your ROI and analyze your specific goals, just as you would a salesperson.

Driving Site Visits
Here are a few things you can do on your path to search engine nirvana, as well as a few tools to make the trip a little more comfortable:

• Use social media such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and others to drive traffic to your site and build an online network. Remember, though, from last month’s article, that these services use code that prevents a search engine from following a link to your site from these social media sites. This means that links from social media sites will not improve your search engine rankings, but may increase direct traffic to your site. Twitter is one of the fastest growing of these services, and the next couple tools will help you stay on top of Twitter traffic. Free informational webinar registration now open!
• Twuffer. Use this free web-based tool (www.twuffer.com) that lets you schedule tweets in advance so there’s no need to be at your PC when the tweets are sent out (perhaps a few times a day, if you keep up with it). This tool lets you plan out your tweets in advance, schedule them, and then frees you up for the rest of the day.
• TweetDeck. Use this free downloadable application (www.tweetdeck.com) to sort and categorize your incoming tweets. This tool lets you monitor Twitter, Facebook and MySpace. You can have it watch for mentions of your company and any other keywords so that you will know right away when somebody is looking for a service or product that you sell. This is a definite must-have tool for Twitter!
• Bit.ly. Use this tool (www.bitly.com) to shorten web addresses and track how many people click the links. Since your messages on Twitter, for instance, can only be 140 characters maximum, a hyperlink might chew up much of that space if you tweet a link. This, for instance, is a link to last month’s Solutions Development newsletter: http://archive.constantcontact.com/fs020/1101120269844/archive/1102668641227.html (82 characters, leaving you a mere 52 to finish your tweet). Bit.ly lets you shorten these links to a more manageable size. This link: http://bit.ly/Tdg4y also takes you to the newsletter, but it’s much shorter (20 characters). Bit.ly will also track the number of clicks the link gets.
• SeoQuake for Firefox. You do look at your site in Firefox, right? It’s a good idea to have at least two web browsers on your computer. Firefox (free, and downloadable from www.mozilla.com) is a good second browser, especially since it offers the SeoQuake toolbar add-on (free Firefox add-ons are available from addons.mozilla.org) . This add-on adds a toolbar to Firefox that displays at a glance a series of useful measurements to aid with search engine optimization.

I hope you find this article helpful and informative. It is said that nothing worth doing is easy, and search engine marketing is a perfect example of that.

Craig Samson

Back in January, I wrote an article about the science, art, and magic of SEO (Search Engine Optimization). In that article I discussed a number of things you could do to your site to improve its search engine ranking. Now, all these months later, I’m writing this follow-up to explain how social networking sites, such as Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter, can further help your endeavors.

We recently met with a Search Engine Marketing firm, Site-Seeker, to discuss an event we’re co-hosting next month. Our conversation flowed to social networking and how we needed to do more to support our marketing efforts. Curious about how we could utilize social networks as a marketing tool and a search engine ranking booster, we arranged for Site-Seeker to present to our management group a seminar on this subject in preparation for our October 15th event.

Let me first discuss a few of the social networking sites and how they may or may not be helpful.

MySpace. Don’t spend your precious time here, MySpace is a wasteland of disastrously hideous personal webpages. A true blight on the digital landscape of the Internet.

Facebook. Primarily a business-to-consumer opportunity, creating a fan page for your company can help generate positive word-of-mouth and increase your authority (more on authority later), as well as provide an avenue to advertise events and other business messages. Facebook is best for those businesses targeting consumers.

LinkedIn. A business-to-business opportunity, this social networking site is best for businesses targeting other businesses. This site provides a professional environment to network with other professionals and businesses in your line of work, as well as those businesses seeking services you provide, or businesses providing services you need. This site can be used to increase your authority and to make valuable business connections.

Twitter. A runaway success, Twitter has turned into the 900lb. gorilla of social networking overnight. This service lets you send out short messages (up to 140 characters, called “tweets”) to the “world.” If you’re lucky, one or more of your followers will like your tweet, and “retweet” it to their own followers, creating a ripple effect of information dispersal. This is a powerful and immediate social network.

YouTube. A bunch of weird, wonderful, and wacky videos typically created by everyday “normal” people. YouTube is a good avenue to share videos advertising or demonstrating your services. Personally, I still consider YouTube as entertainment, not a marketing opportunity (unless you’re selling entertainment, I suppose).

Social Networks Don’t Directly Help with SEO
At our meeting with Site-Seeker, we focused on Twitter with a secondary emphasis on LinkedIn. For our needs, LinkedIn, as a professional social networking tool, allows us to reach a business audience. Twitter, on the other hand, lets us instantly connect with our audience and more speedily increase its size. Facebook is not as useful for us, but if you’re trying to reach consumers, this is probably a better choice for you than LinkedIn. Either way, Twitter is a good place to start.

Normally, to improve your SEO ranking, we advise having other relevant sites link to yours. This is by far the absolute most important aspect to search engine ranking. It’s also the most difficult to achieve. So, wouldn’t it be helpful then to set up pages for your company on these social networks and post links to your site? Sadly, no.

When you post a link on these social networks, the networks specially inhibit search engines from following that link. This means that a search engine won’t see the links to your site from these social networks. Therefore, the links do not directly affect your ranking. So, what’s the use of the social networks, then?

Networking, silly! These social networks provide a channel directly to your audience. As your audience grows, so does your authority. And when you are the authority, you become the go-to resource when your type of services are needed.

With Twitter, you begin by following other people in your line of work (to “follow” in Twitter means to subscribe to that person’s tweets). In turn, those people will probably follow you. Continue to build your follower network, but try to follow fewer people than there are people following you. Further, post regularly. On occasion, it’s likely that someone following you will retweet something you tweeted. The retweet then gets sent to all of that user’s followers, thus increasing your audience and possibly bringing you new followers. This process goes on and on as you continue to build your followers and authority.

I see this as less search engine optimization, but more marketing. In the case of Twitter, perhaps we should call it Twarketing.

Craig Samson

In the spirit of full disclosure, I must admit I’m not really a Batman fan, but who isn’t familiar with the Joker’s famous taunt, “Riddle me this Batman”? In a way, Twitter has been taunting in me the past few months. It seems everyone’s doing it, but I struggled to find its place in my life; professional and personal.

Why were people tweeting? I worked up the nerve and jumped into the Twitter world to see what it was all about!

Enigma #1: Message Length For those of you who are completely unfamiliar with it, Twitter is one media among the growing field of players in social networking (Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, etc.) with an interesting difference; all posts have to be less than 140 characters. At first I thought this was a perfect fit for me. I can tend to have a short attention span and I like to get to the point quickly. As I began to dapple in tweeting, I found it can be hard to express my ideas in such short micro bursts of language. (Apparently I generally get to a point quickly by just speaking more quickly?)

Enigma #2: Followers So, I tweeted a few posts and a few people followed me. These were people I had no relationship with and might even be a competitor. Is this okay? In the world of Facebook a “follower” would equal a “friend” and I only accept those that I know. What is the etiquette on Twitter? I came to find out that it is good to allow even those you don’t know; that is how you expand your network.

Enigma #3: Content Content was another question that I had about Twitter. As I read other users I saw posts that were marketing driven, informational, personal, funny, and some just mundane. But what would be an appropriate way for me to use it with the goal of integrating this tool into the Fandotech marketing plan to help promote both my company and myself as a professional?

First, be a regular contributor. You will not get much out of the Twitter experience if you do not contribute regularly. Minimally a few times a week, but it’s most effective if it is a few times a day. Second, be sure that not every tweet is promotional. You will not gain followers (a key component of spreading your message) if every post appears to be a sales pitch. Approach your messaging strategy in thirds; 1/3 promotional, 1/3 informational and 1/3 social (i.e. some personal notes to infuse some of your personality into the mix.)

Enigma #4: ReTweets “Retweeting” is the action of taking a message you found informational or interesting by another author and sharing that tweet with your followers while giving the original user credit. This is a great way to start dialog with other users on Twitter and a great compliment to the originator of the message. Retweeting is the ultimate Twitter pat on the back.

Don’t let yourself be taunted by Twitter! Follow me @bdoyle05 and my crew @fandotech!

Brian Doyle