So, I’m reading the blogs that I subscribe to when I run across this very good one from Amber Naslund.  She’s the Director of Community for Radian6.  In the post titled, The Quest for Firm Answers, she says, “I’m finally going to answer some of the questions that have been burning in your mind. The ones that your boss is demanding. The ones you say you aren’t getting from books or blogs or conference sessions. Ready?”

Are you ready?  Go to her blog post by clicking on the title above to see what her answers are.  I think you’ll be surprised!

Burson-Marsteller recently released the results of a survey they conducted to determine where companies engage the most using social media tools.  The study indicates that 79 percent of the largest 100 companies in the Fortune Global 500 index are using at least one of the most popular social media platforms: Twitter, Facebook, YouTube or corporate blogs.

It’s interesting to find that companies are not just posting and tweeting randomly.   Real conversations are going on.  

For an evidence-based approach to social media, the reports suggest the following 9 tips:

1.  Monitor your own, and your competitors, social media presence.

2.  Get top management “buy-in”. 

3.  Develop a social media strategy.

4.  Define and publish a social media policy.

5.  Develop internal structure.

6.  Contribute to the community.

7.  Participate in good times and in bad.

8.  Be perpared to respond in real time.

9.  Beyond monitoring, measure the impact of social media engagement.

You don’t have to be a big company to harness the power of social media engagement.  The rules are the same for any size business.  In fact, social media has leveled the playing field in such a way that a small company or individual can have the same kind of reach as a bigger company by using social media tools.   But you do have to follow the rules.  If you are the top management then you must agree with yourself that you will be committed to using the social media tools you select.  Do publish your social media policy even if you are the only one who will see it at first.  This will give you a guide to help you remember what you said you would do.  Don’t think that just because your business is local that you don’t have competitors.  You do.  Social media tools provide a great way of finding out what they are doing.

So, what is your social media tool of choice?  How is your engagement through that channel improving your business outcomes?  Have you performed a social media checkup lately?

I don’t know about you but the fact that Twitter is now profitable is a weight off my shoulders. Over the years we’ve seen these companies become a major force for changing the way people communicate. So, what if Twitter were to go under, wouldn’t that alter the lives of many. You bet it would! It would alter the lives of around 58 million people. That’s the number of people who have a presence on Twitter. Let’s say only half of those people are active, that’s still over 25 million. You just can’t buy that many impressions within a reasonable marketing and advertising budget.

You can go the Business Week article to read the announcement for yourself but briefly, it says:

1. Twitter inked a multi-year deal with Google and Microsoft that is worth around $25 million
2. The deal makes tweets available to show up in searches on Google and Bing
3. This deal confirms that Twitter is a valuable entity and will be around for a while
4. Tweets will make searches even more content rich with up to the minute information from real people

The good news is that if you are using Twitter as a marketing tool your tweets might show up in Google more frequently than your website. I’m not a web analyst or anything but it seems to me that if a few thousand people are tweeting about you then that might show up in searches faster than if you are blogging or have a website. Are there any Google experts out there who can give us some insight on how tweets might be indexed?

My biggest question right now is what will happen to sites like search.twitter.com. I always advise my clients to use this type of site to search tweets. If you can search in Google and get a multi-layered result, why go through the extra trouble of having searches on other sites. It seems redundant.

The other problem that I see for business is this whole big brother (meaning customers) is really watching now. Who doesn’t use Google? Now, current customers and potential new customers might find out in real time what people think about your business. Moreover, what about people looking for jobs? Already, HR recruiters might look at Facebook or MySpace to determine if they want to hire a person. Will your tweets now be easy to obtain by recruiters just by doing a Google search?

What do you think? Could this be the best deal of the century? Or, will it be a huge headache for marketers and advertisers?

In this video interview search marketing expert explains the value of both free and fee-based keyword tools. These tools help you find the search terms that are actually being used by people to find things on the web so you can optimize your online marketing. She discusses the Google Keyword Tool, that shows search numbers and search trends month by month over the year.

Link for Original Post

Social media monitoring. That’s the little stepchild of social media. Yet, it is also the most needed member of the social media family. Without monitoring, how will you know if what you are doing is working or producing the outcomes that you are expecting. Simple answer, you won’t know. As William Hung, so famously put it, I too have no formal education with most of the tools that I am using. I’m just doing my best. But that’s what’s so great about what we are experiencing these days due to the rise of the internet and especially web 2.0 and social media tools. We can learn it if we choose to put in the time and energy required to research.

A question that comes up when I’m talking to people about social media is how do you monitor and measure your efforts in social media. This is a great question and it is one that I am working on answering for my own business. I’m just a little person trying to define what I do now in this new economy. Can anybody relate? What I know for sure is that web 2.0 and social media give me a leg up that I didn’t have previously. Now I can use the skills that I acquired while working for various corporate entities to establish myself as an authority of my trade a lot easier than say 3 years ago. Social media has given me reach at a cost I can afford.

So, I’d like to invite you to go on a journey of learning with me as I work on understanding how the heck I’m supposed to monitor and measure social media.  Today, we’ll start with a little video from Frank Eliason, Comcast’s twitter boy wonder. In the video he shares his insight about ROI for social media and how engagement changes your online reputation. Who doesn’t know by now that Comcast has used Twitter to completely change its reputation going from having the worst customer service to now being a case study for great customer service. And it started with learing how to listen and respond. 

People are talking whether you care or not and sometimes words really can really hurt you.  Next post, we’ll discuss a tool that you can use for listening to social media talk.