A few weeks ago, we wrote a post about how cluttered Twitter is. It doesn’t matter any more how many followers you have since your message barely gets seen.

On Tuesday, I read this other post where Niall Harbison from Simply Zesty, wrote about how difficult it is for brands and companies to get exposure on Facebook unless they invest money in ads. Number of fans, again is not enough folks. He ends the post saying “Basically if you want exposure on Facebook now you need to pay. Simple as that. Facebook have done a wonderful job of locking every area of the platform down so as they control most of the ad revenue that flows through it. Even the feed is getting harder to access and with ads coming there this month things will get even harder…”

Companies approaching social media as a mere distribution channel will have to think harder and re-visit their budget for 2012 if they want to see positive results.

So, what could you do?

Here are only four suggestions that will hopefully make your decision a bit easier:

1. Only measure what matters: This means that you will have to rework your objectives and KPIs for your existing social media platforms. For example, if before you where tracking “number of followers” as a key metric on Twitter, it’s time to bring that to the bottom of the list (or even not make it a KPI) and maybe focus on something more useful such as “number of interactions, number or positive mentions, number of sales queries”, you get the idea. If you can demonstrate a growth in these figures, it’ll be easier to make a business case to dedicate more time to specific platforms that impact the bottom line.
2. Scan your audience: Ensure you understand who are your LinkedIn-company-page followers (linkedin.com/company/yourcompanyname/followers) and who is in your email database. Take the time to go through the names and companies. You’re putting all this effort in social media and as a result you’re building a valuable audience. Don’t think of them as just a “bunch of people”. If you take the time to understand who they are you’ll be able to serve them better, avoid spending unnecessary time pushing more messages and also detect any positive or negative trend on the kind of professionals your content is attracting. Investing time in your existing audience pays off, investing time in pushing random messages here and there (noise), doesn’t.
3. Facebook is no longer free: Those companies fast enough to invest in strategic and creative Facebook advertising will be seen and stay ahead of the game. In parallel, you should keep posting everyday and talking to your fans of course.
4. Integrate as much as possible any offline with online actions: This can take a bit more time but if it’s done well, it could deliver very powerful results for your company.
   Complement all current gaps in customer interaction with online interaction. As a result, your customer or prospects will keep you fresh in their heads. For example: write down in detail your sales funnel. Include every single step. Some people know this as the AIDA model (Awareness, Interest, Desire, Action). Then, these type of questions should follow: What do we do currently to get a prospect talking to us? What do we do with prospects that are nor ready to buy righ now? Do we communicate / stay in touch with recent customers from the past three months? How and when do we knock on the door again?

In 2012, we will have to  get more creative. Publishing a few messages and having thousands of fans and followers won’t cut it any more. How are you going to make the most of your social media time to avoid the noise?

Anyone could give a shot at using storytelling for their company or brand, but chances are you’re going to spend some quality time finding a good angle. It’s worth it, since it is often this what makes all the difference.

In the museum case, they could have chosen a basic storytelling move, maybe by adding sound to the statues of Charles II, John Flamsteed (first astronomer) and John Harrison (clockmaker). Instead, they decided to go with live actors and you know what made it even smarter? They could have had artists impersonating the very main characters but instead the stories where told by random citizens of those years. For example, a man that lived close to the observatory would tell us about the building, how the Greenwich Meridian was created and why it was moved a couple of times. Then, on the second floor, a lady by the name Ruth, told us about her family business - selling the time - in the streets of London, including what a day in her life was like.
I found that fascinating. If we were to go back in time that’s exactly what we would probably be: “random citizens”. The story became more engaging since we were able to learn history through the same lenses.

What are the takeaways for your business?

1. Pick a good angle for your story: Ask yourself, “if my prospect will potentially look for what’s on my company’s shelves and didn’t know we exist, how can we conduct a story in which she/he can feel identified and closer to my brand?
2. Pick a good character: Give this person / animal / thing,  a name. Make it unique so the message amplifies easier and the character resonates longer in people’s minds.
3. Inject humour: What your character says, along with good body language will make your story memorable. The artists from the Royal Observatory would always do something small, simple, silly to keep us hooked and smiling. Cisco are great at this:
4. Repeat your story in strategic spots online and offline: Maybe the video you made is not exactly for all segments. Think about where can these people see your message online (e.g. specific pages of your website) and offline (e.g. specific events)

Have you used storytelling in your business? Could you name some good examples you’ve seen?

The roles of the writer, publisher and distributors are forever changing and intertwining in different ways where at least one thing is certain: If you are in this game you’d better adapt and reinvent.
Last week I listened to Seth Godin being interviewed by Leo Babauta from Zen Habits. Here are some thoughts on the writing landscape. I’d love to know your opinion.

On the times we are living

There seems to be a consensus that we are living exciting times in which the author can connect with the reader at whatever level she chooses to. The physical barriers previously imposed by gatekeepers and by the lack of the very technology to communicate don’t exist anymore. Things like blogging, webinars, podcasts, email marketing, Skype, are accessible to any writer that wants to reach out to her community of readers and engage at some level.

I think the keys to understanding what the new space means for authors and publishers reside exactly in knowing if that desire to communicate beyond the book is paramount to all writers or mainly a necessity imposed by the “social wave”.

Let us look briefly at the imminent shifts before going back to what the author desires or doesn’t. I would like to leave out of this post the monetary advantages or disadvantages of the new landscape. However, at a general level in order to look at the scenario we can say that 3 facts are changing the economics of the publisher-writer-audience relationship:

1. The role of the publisher as a risk taker who believes in a writer to provide an advance & then help market the book is becoming obsolete since writers can now “pick themselves” as Godin says.
2. The fact that anyone can become a writer and self publish from one day to another means that there will be over-abundance of content and noise.
3. Since the old model was based on the scarcity in shelf-space, spotting an opportunity to have something written and then marketing the book to people made sense, together with the advance apparatus and so on. This has become obsolete due to ebooks solving the scarcity problem (advantage?) and “you may also like” technology in sites like Amazon.

The new role of the publisher

Godin is currently an innovative breed of publisher (particularly focusing on point 3) through his Domino Project, where he is trying to change all-things-publishing as much as possible. The fundamental shift he is successfully achieving is that of proving that seeking for buyers is not the way to go but keeping an active community of readers that await your next release is the best solution in a sea of noise. I’m a Domino Project subscriber and have bought some of its bestsellers because I’m part of those like-minded readers who envisage a good read in most of what Godin (or his “cousins”) bring out. The reasoning in my simple mind seems to be “any friend of Seth can be my friend”, and that’s how the sale happens. But Domino doesn’t want to be a “social-community-builder” for selected writers. I think I’ve even heard Godin say in an older interview that he only picks authors that “get-it” and already have their community, which I guess makes sense. Domino is a publisher based on permission-marketing, relevance and promise-keeping.

The author and the future

Let’s go back to what the author wants. It is easy to think that every writer wants to connect with readers and be more social. After all, those are the times we are living, right? I suspect otherwise and I believe Seth does too (if you listen to the interview he shares how a lot of people apply to be “picked” by him even if he strictly says that he doesn’t want applications). Many people don’t want to take the initiative and would much rather do what they do best which is writing and then let the publisher do the rest. Yet, it is inevitable that in a noisy world, authors who want to sell will have to work at keeping their community of readers (buyers) ready for their next release somehow. Seth says in the inetrview that those who are not willing to engage should find someone to do it for them. Someone like Domino? Possibly, but remember that they don’t pick authors that don’t “get it”. I guess what this means is that it is only a matter of time before many publishers reinvent themselves mirroring practices from Domino Project but accepting applications. Since the abundance of content and noise is inevitable as well as the quality decrease in books, these publishers will more likely be less picky than the precursor. It really hit me in the interview when Godin clarifies that Domino is in fact a Project (that will end). I think I understood that he will inteligently move into the next innovation before the unwanted copycats come in.

What does the future look like then?

I believe there will be 2 big author groups in the years to come:

• A minority of go-do-it authors who will enjoy and assume the post-writing-engagement capacities (think Chris Brogan, Brian Solis in the Social Media world for instance). To this, we need to add the upcoming young authors who are already “wired” for social (think about a boy who is now a 16 year old but will publish his first book in let’s say 3 years time).
• A (temporary) majority of authors who would rather hand over all pre-post-writing efforts to a new “social-relevant” publisher that will promise the captive community of readers.

This is probably only the short term. Would you agree? What does the longer term look like? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Besides the traditional activities that you have been executing all these years, here are a fresh bunch of social media ideas by platform to boost event results (please share more tips in the comments below):

Main content hub (or Blog)

• Create a microsite or dedicated landing page for the event with all the relevant information. This should be built several months before the event if possible.
• Publish blog posts about the event but more importantly around the main topics to make it more engaging. Remember that there will be a lot of people that are not aware of the event, so if you focus on providing valuable what’s-in-it-for-the-audience content, many will feel identified with certain problems and feel  that the event is a must.
• Consider using Tumblr.com. If you’re short of time, Tumblr could help you launch a blog as landing plage for the event. You can easily publish videos and photos during the event straight from your mobile, on the go.
• Implement a chat widget for live chat. We use Zopim.com. It will give you powerful, real-time insights and the ability to chat with people that have questions before and during the event for instance.

LinkedIn

Facebook

Twitter

Foursquare

Email Marketing

YouTube, FlickR, Slideshare

I started off by reading online reviews but didn’t help much since all the consoles seemed to have clear advantages. The next step was to ask a couple of friends personally. I ended up hearing great things about PlayStation and Xbox (Good bye Wii).
On October 24th,  I decided to ask my Facebook and Twitter friends (with an obvious “I’m-ready-to-buy message) but, since I tagged the manufacturers, I really expected them to reach out to me first and help me decide or offer a special deal. I also used hashtags (#gameconsole #videogames) so my message could be discovered by other people or companies that might have wanted to help me.

The Results: Are you surprised at all?

Xbox, PlayStation and Wii never appeared. Maybe they’re too busy counting money and didn’t find time to help a prospect ready to buy…
Their Facebook pages have millions of fans. The walls are restricted to their posts only so, we could say that based on that setting, they didn’t see my message.
But Twitter? It’s very easy to see who’s talking to you on Twitter. It should be used by these brands as a customer service tool but hey, if you have a PR company, busy pushing messages there, they might have better things to do than talking to a prospect or customer, right?

Our post from last week was about Twitter for business and how your message gets lost. That was proven again in this experiment.
Facebook was clearly the only saviour. The platform facilitated the connection between my message and my friends (thank you guys!). Despite any comment we might have about Facebook’s algorithm, my post was clearly seen and received immediate feedback the very same day.

On November 6th, I bought an Xbox 360 game console (special thanks to Benito!) with an additional wireless controller through Amazon (Better price and free shipping).

What decision/s have your social media connections helped you made recently?

Here’s the deal: The more people you “follow” the busier your stream gets and the harder it is to digest the information. Only a minority of users know how to use Twitter really well, building a true listening station so you can read specific conversations, avoiding the clutter.
There’s an increasing amount of people using Twitter. The number of people they’re following happens to be increasing as well. The problem: There’s too much noise and people don’t see your message as often as they used to.
Those of you that have been using Twitter for a few years: Do you remember when you published a shortened URL in 2008 or 2009 and tracked the clicks along with response time? Your content would have traveled very far in a matter of seconds and get at least 5 to 10 immediate clicks. Now, you’ll be lucky if you get 1 or 2 clicks in an hour. Don’t take my word for it. Gary Vaynerchuk is going through the same problem…

So, is Twitter a bad tool now?

Twitter is still a powerful, real-time communication tool that can help you connect with customers and prospects. You will perceive the most value when people talk to you (publicly or privately) and you’re able to conduct short conversations.  Publishing doesn’t have the same impact and your content won’t resonate much. Last year, Brian Solis said that the life span of a tweet was one hour. I believe, nowadays, that has probably dropped to one minute possibly.

Conclusion

When you define your customer/community and start working on your social media strategy, do consider Twitter but be very careful on the expectation.
If you’re a big brand or company that has a big portion of the audience on Twitter and/or many mentions already, you may expect to receive immediate interaction and faster results. On the other hand, if you are a small or medium sized business, you may find Twitter a good place to listen to strategic conversations and also have a dedicated real-time channel, available to connect with customers and prospects. However, do not count with a quick, tangible ROI.

How is Twitter working for you currently? Share your story below.

LinkedIn recently made an imminent move: Enabling status updates in company pages.

But, I was already receiving company updates

Those posts where not customised but automatic. LinkedIn generated company updates every time a job was published, a new professional was hired or left the organisation.

Who can see my company-updates?

On the upper right of your company page you’ll see the number of people following your company. Every time you publish a post, it will appear on their stream of updates.

What do I post in my company page?

If you start using this new channel to publish press releases and corporate communications only, you will annoy a lot of people. Try sharing something of value such as your own blog posts, industry news and trends.
Start by publishing two to four updates a week and see how followers engage with your posts. Professionals won’t expect you to post as often as in a Facebook page so it will take you very little time.

If you have any comments on this new feature or questions, share them below

First of all, let’s have a look at the current situation. The year already started, objectives have been set and budgets allocated to each department. Before you find time, think about funding and/or resources for this new initiative. Getting funding means that budget X will be taken away from other projects within your organisation in order for you to execute yours.
Once you have this clear, here are 3 basic points that will help you build your business case and hopefully find that precious time:

1. What’s the plan and how will it impact your goals?

People tend to think about social media as this “separate thing” on top of what they’re already doing. That’s not sustainable. A social media programme should blend gradually with what you’re already doing to help you achieve the same goals. Period. Otherwise you’d be just giving yourself and your team useless “homework”.
If you devise a medium or long term plan that makes sense by showing the necessary steps to improve X outcome (financial or non-financial, according to the department’s needs), you’ll be in a much better position to sell the project to the C suite. If you succeed, priorities will hopefully change. For example, you might get help from other resources within the company or maybe a new hire. You might also be relieved from certain tasks in order to execute this new initiative. The most important point is that you’re making sure that management won’t pull the plug of your programme at least in the short term, giving you the time to get started.

2. What current activities are not working?

Get together with your team and make a list (as big as you can) of all the tasks you perform throughout the day, even the very little ones. Then assign a time in minutes to each one of them. Once everyone shared the results, your objective will be to focus on those activities that have been going on for a while (or not) and that have demonstrated unsuccessful. The next step would be to assess if they can be replaced with activities of your social media programme. Through this exercise you might find hours of new “available” time.

3. Leverage your community to create fresh content

Many companies understand the potential value of a blog as a main hub in their digital strategy but they also see it as the biggest obstacle: “How do we commit to regular fresh content, how do we write good posts, what do we talk about?“.
You can learn how to produce good content very easily. One of the  ways to find time to publish more posts is by not thinking of you as the only content producer. A core step when devising your social media strategy lies on defining the persona of your ideal customer and also your community (people, brands and companies that don’t necessarily compete with you but share the main general topic). If you are a technology company , then people within the community could be: engineers, distributors, partners, installers, official body representatives, etc. Make a selection and invite them to contribute to your blog (your stage), explaining that they’ll be exposed to a relevant audience. Example: The distributor (even if they distribute other competitor’s products) could write posts for buyers that are looking at ways to go through renewals/ assessment processes more efficiently. The engineers could share insights on how to select a given product line/ family. The installers could cover DIY processes or how to put an adequate team together for X or Y initiative around a given technology. You get the idea
This tactic could help you find that time, keeping your blog content interesting while generating win-win relationships with your partners.

It could feel overwhelming at the beginning, but if you work on a good plan (on your own or with help) and are confident that your social media programme can yield results, you’ll find the time one way or another.

In which other ways would you find time?

If your company has already faced the “time problem” and moved on, how did you manage to overcome it?

Last week I delivered a social media training day for property managers.

Even though it was just an overview, there were certain platforms that generated a very positive impact.

I’ll share four with you today:

Sales and Marketing

By now, many of us would fall into the assumption that QR codes are being used massively. That’s far from right. I realised, after my research, that the property industry could hugely benefit from them. Think about people walking by a house that has your estate agency sign with the “Sale” or “Let” printed on it, or maybe walking by your very office with loads of properties showcased through the window.

What would you like people to do? (Big question). You want them to “take action”. We know prospects will not buy straight away but we want them to “learn more”, make it easy to access relevant information about a specific property.

Wouldn’t it be great to scan the QR code straight from the window, save the property I’m interested in along with all pictures, price, exact location and other details?

Customer Service

In my recent training, most of the property managers in the room were involved in “community management” at a higher or lower level. It’s very important to listen to the conversations from tenants and find out how you can help them while building a better reputation for you and your company. Let’s also keep in mind that a visible record of interactions could be crucial to reflect a job well done and help a property or facility manager renew contracts and win new business. The idea is that you proactively create an online space to host and facilitate those conversations.

The first example is a “Closed” (private) Facebook Group. Many people have Facebook accounts so using this platform could be a good way to spark the conversation straight away without any learning curve or adaptation period. Good and bad feedback will be provided in the threads but if you could be there to answer questions, take some of them offline, avoid escalations, set expectations and try to make that property a better place you would be achieving a great goal.

If you don’t want to use Facebook, you may create (also for free) a private hub with a solution like Yammer. This internal communications platform is being used by all types of companies around the world. It does look 99% like Facebook so it would be easier for users to adapt and you can conduct the same level of community management discussed above.
You can measure success by tracking numbers of questions asked, number of replies provided by your property management company, number of positive versus negative comments, etc.

Finally, a tool that had big impact during the training was Zendesk.com, an online support platform where you can organise all your customer queries through “tickets” and ensure you respond in a timely manner, improving customer satisfaction. Many property and facility managers told me that situations like tenants calling numbers for help or asking many questions can turn chaotic. Zendesk will facilitate team work and allow you to channel all queries through one dedicated email (e.g. support@yourcompany.zendesk.com). It’s also easier this way to visualise that there are no problems (tickets) pending.

What makes it even better is that this platform released their “voice” service so you can log and track the same aspects but through telephone calls. It will be available in Europe very soon.

What other web tools would you suggest to professionals in the property management business?

Sales

Professionals that sell solutions to distributors know that a sale doesn’t close immediately and that “lead nurturing” is highly important. One of the ways in which you can generate an immediate impact with a prospect and stay longer in their minds is by being unique.
Online video messages make you memorable. We started using them two years ago and it has worked really well. We took our personal video messages to the next level last year by creating private video-message-pages on our site. Now prospects watch the video in a more relevant context. The idea is that the person connects with us through any of the calls-to-action and obviously can navigate our site and learn more.

Customer Service

Your reps collect feedback from customers face-to-face and via telephone. Pay attention (and tag if possible online or on a piece of paper) what type of product is being mentioned the most, especially those with challenges. Take down as much information as possible about customers’ questions and suggestions.
Ideally, by now your company has a blog. With all the data collected, work with the relevant department to make progress on those changes. Once that’s clear, produce a video where you acknowledge the issues with the product, thank your customers for all the input and finally set expectations in terms of how the company will overcome the challenge (e.g. improve product, replace it with a new one, information about recalls, etc).
Once you make a video post, including a good title and tags so more relevant folks can find you, here’s what’s going to happen:

• You’ll be producing a piece of highly relevant content that many people will read/view and interact with (comments)
• You’ll be leaving on the web a public valuable breadcrumb that will contribute 100% to you company’s reputation
• You’ll make your company more approachable since you’re clearly listening to customers and facilitating a solution (Making things easy)

Marketing

Uploading your TV commercials and promotional material to a video platform is OK, however it’s far from really embracing online video.
The whole idea is that you serve your community. Videos like the first example above would certainly do that and the best of all is that it’s also a piece of marketing Just because you work in the Marketing Department it doesn’t mean that videos that you upload must have a “corporate message”.
So, how can you be different? Live video is a phenomenal option. I’m sure you have product launches every now and then. Why not showcase your new product and the experts behind it LIVE to anyone in the world? You may use professional live streaming service such as  Livestream or Ustream as the ideal platforms (For optimum results and piece of mind, use paid versions which start from $350 and $400 dollars/month respectively).
The idea here is not to get rid of all the traditional methods by which you promote your new products every year. The goal is for you to own a global platform that will offer you a bigger and cost-effective reach, while offering your prospects and customers an opportunity to engage and ask you questions.
One great example is Cisco, a manufacturer that “shaved $100K off their product launch using social media“.

What other online video tips would you add?