Acquiring Fans on Facebook

Research from Efficient Frontier (Jan 2012) found that on average, brands are acquiring fans at a rate of 9% per month.

Are your fans/likes growing at this pace?

If you regularly post updates but get little feedback from fans, it may be because you are talking rather than conversing. Because, people don't go out and "like" random pages for businesses that they haven't already used, or plan to use.

Customer Engagement is key

Facebook isn't just about broadcasting your news; it's about customer engagement and via the sharing of interesting content, enhancing your brand awareness to the friends of your Facebook page fans.  The above image is from the Mothercare UK Facebook page, who regularly post 'Facebook Exclusive' offers, giving their customers a reason to 'like' them and stick around.

To increase engagement on your own business Fan page, consider who your customers are and how your customers want to engage on Facebook (i.e. helping shape the brand, contests, visual experience, events and incentives for sharing).  Secondly, consider what they search for on Facebook, where else are they active, take a look at the other related pages where your target market are regularly commenting, what is a hot topic?

Who are your customers?

Along with viewing popular conversations/engagement, questioning what your fans want from your page and considering who your fans are/will be, will help you develop engaging content.

For example, for hotels, guests' needs will differ from those interested in family breaks to business trips; fun breaks to activity bases; somewhere quiet to a lively restaurant; local attractions to events at the hotel.

Use Facebook to seek out and engage with local news stories and regular events where there may be a potential for a tie-in with your page. For example, hotels could offer group rates to an event or conference organiser and invite the organiser to tag the hotel page when mentioning the discount for the event to attendees/delegates.

Goals and expectations

When tasked with the objective to 'enhance your Facebook page acquisition rate', two good places to start are establishing goals for your Facebook page and considering why your target audience would like your page / what are they expecting?

As a means of example, we have listed below ten goals for a Hotel Facebook page and ten reasons why a fan may want to join a Hotel Facebook page.

Ten goals for a Hotel Facebook page

1. Extend marketing campaigns
2. Community engagement (attract fans of your friends) / be a story teller.
3. Generate extra web traffic
4. Boost brand awareness and increase brand loyalty
5. Support customers and receive instant feedback
6. Increase bookings to accommodation
7. Increase bookings to events
8. Increase bookings to conference and meeting rooms
9. Keep up with the competition
10. Obtain further insight into customer base (using Facebook insights)

Ten expectations / reasons why a customer may 'like' a Hotel Facebook page

1. They are passionate about their location (images)
2. They let me know about events happening in the area
3. They like to share with me the special Facebook promotions
4. They inspire me to get creative in the kitchen
5. They are eager to know how the hotel can make our stay even more comfortable
6. Should I post a recommendation on the page, my Facebook friends will see this
7. They keep me up to date on those who supply the hotel
8. They are helpful and generally care that I have had a pleasant stay
9. They share their latest reviews from customers and citation websites (i.e. Trip Advisor)
10. They make me feel part of their story

We hope you can relate these goals and reasons to your own business and that it will enable you to think more strategically about growing your Facebook page popularity.

Should you require assistance for social media strategy and growth, please visit our Social Media Strategy page or contact our Sales team today to discuss your requirements.

Author: Sarah Griffiths

Social Media Monitoring Tools and ROI

Percentage Change Calculator

ROI is the heart of business.
One of the areas we always try and encourage all our clients to adopt is to test, track, monitor, measure, evaluate and determine what is successful and work out what makes them some money.
That all important expression; ROI; Return On Investment. It is not a clichéd expression, it is the very reason to decide on one campaign over another, the reason to undertake new creative directions, the planning behind a new product development, the logic for expansion, the inspiration for optimising all the new channels. ROI is the heart of business.

Social media encourages businesses to do their business better
When it comes to social media it is a slightly different approach. Social media is really all about the users, the visitor, the customers. Social media is a wonderful medium that encourages businesses to do their business better, by offering real time customer services, creative ways of expressing their brand personality, making all their web pages and content relevant and user friendly and allowing pride in their brand to come through whilst tailoring everything they do be of value to their customers, their customer's enjoyment and their customer's user journey.

What to monitor on the social networks
Social media as a marketing tool is necessary and of benefit. The challenge comes when financial 'purse holders' in an organisation are less comfortable allowing insight in to the business structure.
So, when the question arises whether to engage in social media as a marketing tool, many businesses try to calculate what the return on investment will be. A very sensible approach!
The question is which metrics to use, what methods to use to capture the data, what tracking codes to add to the website, which free tools to employ, how much time and resources to expend on the process, how frequently to engage in the networks, which parts of the business to be involved in the communications, what data to calculate against another, what is an ideal conversion rate, how much testing needs to be undertaken, etc.
Quite a challenge for any business to determine straight off!

Search results have influenced what to monitor
Then there has also been some great Google updates that have recently taken place, to factor in and consider. These algorithm updates offer some real benefits to businesses, in terms of working out how their social media and search marketing come together but these updates also add to the confusion of what to measure, monitor and ultimately, how to calculate success and ROI. 
When Google announced the launch of Google social search update ‘Search plus Your World’ in January 2012 it brought social media and search marketing a giant step closer to each other, in terms of what is displayed in the search results.
Then the lines between social, mobile and local all converged in recent updates and businesses were again asking how they could best maximise their social media expenditures and prove a return on investment.

The integrated social media strategy
The tools to monitor social media are as varied as the social media strategies. A business signing off on a new social media campaign can be pleased with their efforts to determine what their social landscape is, their audience, their competitor analysis, their tone of voice, which social networks and channels are suitable to their business strategy, added social share and social badges and planned what type of content they want to share and have shared. They optimise their images, develop an inbound marketing strategy, sign off on engaging relevant content and set up a team to engage on a regular basis.
As visitors begin to leave comments and ask questions, occasionally post a review; both positive or negative, as in bound marketing links start to expand and content gets shared, often virally, the businesses start to realise the benefits immediately of having a social media strategy in place.
At some point shortly after this initial entry level stage, most businesses wonder how they managed before social media; the doors of communication are opened and both customers and suppliers get to be part of the business and no longer an entity to be broadcast to, or at.

Where to start with social media monitoring
This brings us back to the question of what to track, measure and evaluate. Well, there are loads of free tools to choose from and some with quite modest fees, that do a very reasonable job. 
Certainly opening a Google Account is a must. Google has not only set itself up to be a vast search engine but also has developed some splendid free tools to assist businesses with tracking their website performance. It is great to have a good presence on the social networks but if a visitor follows a link to a broken or slow website for more information, the positive user journey and brand impression is easily quashed.

Google Webmaster Tools enabled in Google analytics is ideal for tracking site traffic and conducting an SEO audit on the website; together these tools monitor and track social interaction analytics, user engagement, referring sites, conversions for e-commerce and landing pages, trends, adding goal tracking, event tracking and sales or multi-channel filters, cross domain tracking, and even a tool to help businesses experiment with content to improve goal conversions. There are also tools to give an overview on site load time, crawl errors, submitting XML sitemaps to Google, demoting sitelinks, discovering 404 page errors, working out which landing pages indexed by Google are bringing traffic etc, etc, etc. 
There are not only tools to track, measure and evaluate but there are also a plethora of reports that can be pulled from these 2 tools, plus plenty of forums and blogs for additional assistance.
So whilst the website is getting into optimum performance, the keyword research is being completed and the social media landscape review is being finalised, then this is a perfect time to start implementing the social media monitoring tools and determining which channells will be monitored by which tools.

Which social media monitoring tools to use
Having reread this summary list above, it sounds like we love Google Products. It is true! 
We haven't even started to mention all the other free tools in Google that help business grow and sell their products online; like Google AdWords, Google Shopping, Google+ Local, Google Maps, Blogger, Picasa with its great geo tagging facilities, Google Alerts, iGoogle Dashboard set up with RSS feeds of social media monitoring tools and plugins, Google Mobile and...back to social media; Google+ for brands and businesses. All activity within these products can be monitored for ROI.
There are, however, many other products we use, trial and consider for client use also. Each client is unique and has a unique set of requirements when it comes to reporting and demonstrating success and therefore, some monitoring products fit better with certain clients than others. 

Some of the following social media monitoring products will be very familiar to many businesses; like HooteSuite, Netvibes, Facebook Insights, Social Mention, YouTube Insight, Klout, SocialBro, Google Blogsearch, twilert and Tweetdeck. 
We also have insights into some of the fee-based options like Brandwatch, Meltwater, Wildfire etc and currently looking into some campaign specific tools that focus on leads and conversions, like Optify. Viralblog kindly wrote a useful guide to some of the other social media and monitoring tools. 
We are always looking for the least time consuming, the most accurate, easy to use and most integrated tools for monitoring. What we monitor is dictated by the brand or business sector, the social networks a business is active on, the amount of resources both budget and human to listen to the networks and process the data the monitoring tools provide. Also, importantly, we refine these processes as a business gains in confidence from the reports and starts to build broader strategies based on the insights and opportunities the reports provide. It really is a team effort!

Objectives of social media monitoring
So we can narrow this down a bit, to 'what we want to monitor'

• social media monitoring
• social media analytics
• social media reporting

and also 'why we want to monitor'

• review industry trends and business intelligence
• real-time monitoring with a view to good customer services and PR
• engagement

then we can 'choose a strategy for monitoring'

• goals
• choose suitable tools
• types of reports

Future direction of social media monitoring
Brands that actively embraced social media a few years ago will have seen many changes and also chosen to change how they conduct themselves.

Listen Learn Engage (2009)
Inform Inspire Interact (2011)
Reach Impact Influence (2012)

The future of communicating in a face-to-face environment is still vital; the social networks make it easier for people to decide who they want to do business with, work with and socialise with. 
The vast data crunching side of monitoring and metrics is becoming ever more sophisticated, as we try and justify business expenditure and making sure we are marketing ourselves in the most prudent fashion.
Since mobile and mobile applications have become a tool that seldom leave our hand, we have been supplying more and more data about our sentiments, our preferences and our whereabouts. WE are being tracked, monitored and analysed also. Local targeted marketing campaigns pinpoint where we are and what we are looking for and we share this information freely.
Likewise, we can set up all our monitoring tools to report and alert us on our mobile devices.

Social CRM and sentiment monitoring
The image above shows one of the 5 Rocktime useful online tools that we developed to help businesses: calculate the Percentage Change in campaign performance, the ROI sales funnel to work out how many visitors a site needs to increase reach to meet monthly targets, the Campaign Objectives Worksheet to assist with planning a strategy for social media, the Social Media Toolkit to determine the specific social landscape and opportunities for a business.

Rocktime even built our own BETA social sentiment CRM monitoring tool, called Chatabot, which we will use for ‘managing connections and networks of interaction’. Chatabot is a compliment to social media monitoring platforms that track ‘mentions’. We designed Chatabot to manually track potential engagements that a business wants to engage further with; so they don’t forget them.  We originally called it a 'virtual Social Networking PA'. There are dozens if not hundreds of platforms that can track the social landscape but they don’t seem to offer the human element of collecting leads together for future engagement
Such as

• blogger engagement
• social opportunities
• PR
• networks
• directories
• satisfied customers who could become brand advocates

Chatabot will certainly help to keep track of all the social engagements, better than a ‘spreadsheet / email / database / bookmarks / calendar’; which is what most businesses rely on. The market is gradually changing from purely monitoring likes, hits, shares etc, to the sentiment behind the engagement. That is the human side of monitoring social engagement.

Benefits of social media monitoring
Without monitoring a business's landscape, how will a business identify that there may be an issue that is being publicly debated and shared, or without tracking analytics how will a business know that we helped increase their web traffic by 400% within 2 weeks of launch of the website, how will we be able to prove that relevant landing pages with social media badges work best for paid search campaigns without the AdWords tracking code, how will the Hotels record that bookings are up from new optimised keyword research and integration with custom Facebook Apps, how can we see how competitive keywords within optimised web pages is increasing online visibility in the Google rankings without doing the keyphrase positioning review every month, how can a customer services team know they are dealing correctly with all issues unless they monitor their Twitter account for example. How will a business deal with a crisis if they are unused to explaining about their operation and ways in which they are good at solving problems for their customers.
This is all part of the consideration process we work through with brands and businesses about how best to use real-time data and advanced analytics.


On a humourous note, it was pointed out that within the Rocktime corporate name we had already given consideration to roi: R O ckt I me.
If you want to devise a strategy for social media and need to demonstrate to the Board of Directors that there is ROI then please give Rocktime a call; we can show you how exciting this development is for a business and satisfy the 'purse holder' that a strategy to integrate social media with search marketing, mobile and local is of value and profitable. Rocktime can help to 'keep it simple', define what to monitor and which reports will prove useful to the Team and therefore aid further investment and growth. We look forward to hearing what your business is all about!

We post regular tweets on @RocktimeSocial with interesting social and search developments, if you prefer to watch us for a while before you make contact.

What social media monitoring tools work for you? What are the best examples of ROI from monitoring that you have seen?


Author: Fiona Anderson

Tesco launches virtual fitting room

Online clothing retail is big business, there’s no doubt about that, but there are some things where even the convenience of online shopping can’t beat being in the store and tying the products on yourself... or can it?

Back at the tail end of February this year, Tesco launched a Facebook based virtual fitting room, with the intention of helping customers find the perfect fit for the brand's F&F clothing online. Of course this is by no means the first venture of its type; it’s been over a year now since eBay did a similar foray into augmented reality themselves.

Similar to the eBay Fashion mobile app, Tesco’s virtual fitting room uses a photo of yourself and your body measurements to try on various clothing from their range, much like a figurative paper doll. Though unlike eBay, rather than a stand-alone mobile app, Tesco instead opted for a Facebook app, linked in directly with their social media strategy. Incorporated in this is the ability to easily share content via Facebook.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like there is any statistics currently available, but there are some other similar ventures we can look at. Fits.me launched their virtual fitting room in 2010 and currently reports to have a 57% increase in sales and a 28% reduction in returns and associated costs. Whether these augmented reality fitting rooms for the will prove to be useful or just another modern technology gimmick remains to be seen.

Of course, bespoke software and applications doesn’t have to be all about fitting rooms and augmented reality! Why not look at what we’ve done here at Rocktime and get in contact with our sales team.  


Author: Alice Cheetham

Why use Google Plus?

Maintaining a multi-platform social media strategy can be a demanding and time consuming task, but the benefits can more then pay off!

Using Social Media, such as Facebook, Twitter & Google+, has shaped up to be a powerful drawing-in tool, attracting potential customers. Case in point; Samsung had a fantastic mobile ad campaign, which saw three times above average click through rate by linking directly to their social media accounts. This example goes to show that linking to social media can certainly achieve very tangible results.

Of course, using social media is all well and good, but nothing beats some good statistics and real figures for seeing how much of an impact you're having with it. Wordtracker has a great summary of methods of measuring your Google+ traffic on one of their latest articles. The article is well worth a read, not only are they looking at referral traffic from Google+, and how to measure it in Google Analytics, but Google's +1 button as well. By using tools such as Topsy, Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools you can get a great idea of how your social media pages and tools are affecting your search marketing.

On the topic of Google+, whilst they may be aiming for a slightly cleaner and simpler look then Facebook’s new Timeline styled profiles, that doesn’t mean you can’t make it look nice, as shown in Mashable’s article Google Plus Profile Hacks and Econsultancy’s Top 20 Google+ Photo strips. Of course, these aren’t anywhere near as complex as ‘hacks’ but instead just a smart use of images and file naming, and relatively easy to do. On a similar premise, you can also use animations to further hook your visitors at first glance.

Finally, coordinating a social media strategy alone can seem like a daunting task, let alone across comparatively new platforms such as Google+, there are many tools available to help ease the workload. Why not take a look at our own Useful Tools section on the Rocktime site, where you can make use of our Campaign Objectives Worksheet, ROI Sales Funnel and Percentage Change Calculator. Don’t hesitate to get in contact with our sales team at Rocktime to discuss your integrated marketing strategy.


Author: Alice Cheetham

Social Media Crisis Management

The Flashlight Search Marketing Team at Rocktime Digital Agency work with a number of our clients advising them how to respond in social media. Working with the client we talk about the types of negative customers who can contact your company via social media such as: the unhappy customer, the misguided twitter follower, the all time negative poster.

We help our clients understand how to access, evaluate and respond to negative comments and on some rare occasions how to report the negative commentators. During social media crisis management the objective will be to rectify the situation and act upon a reasonable solution as soon as possible.

We will also ask our clients to consider sharing negative stories with others to show that they are eager to improve service. Being honest, open and authentic in social media is crucial for effective communications. Should you wish to find out more about social media management please call in and talk to Rocktime Sales about the search marketing team's experience and how they can assist your organisation in monitoring your customers social media communications. The Flashlight Search Marketing team would be happy to work with your organisation, creating a flowchart to advise how to “assess, evaluate and respond” to circumstances as they present themselves.


Author: Sarah Griffiths

Introduction to Social Media Sharing

The conversation on social media in our society is changing. Watch any TV show, listen to any Radio show and hear the presenters state their “Twitter and Facebook Page” names to encourage further interaction. There is also clear numerical evidence (for example: 600 million people on Facebook, June 2011) that people want to share online. Companies contact Rocktime to enquire about how they can effectively and positively connect with their site visitors via social media. Users of social media are also getting to grips with how they can effectively manage their ever growing networks and streams of notifications.

In setting a social share strategy, there is a clear need to consider the old Martini phrase “Anytime, Anyplace, Anywhere” and companies need to provide the ability to share their news on a variety of platforms, suited to the customer (“Tip: remember the people!!”). Also a big point to consider when setting your “social share” strategy is “will this news be of interest to my site visitors / customers?” as, if it isn’t, then over time (as your customers own personal networks of interaction grow) your news that you, for example “have a Sale on!” each day will be an unwelcomed distraction to them. Think about that some more and don’t be a bore! Furthermore in accordance with social media channels guidelines, saying the same thing again and again can also be classed as spam.

There is already a trend towards brands delivering their customers relevant and timely content, this is now moving more towards delivering more quality content. Make your content compelling so that people will want to share it.


Why Social Share is great

It takes little investment to add the social share tools to your site and from this development, your site visitors then have the opportunity to organically spread your news, your latest blog, your offer, your tip of the day etc, to their personal networks. News which can be shared again and again amongst networks of interaction, at no additional cost to you (apart from perhaps the time it takes to send a “thank for sharing tweet”, if relevant). Also social share now links with ranking positions in search engine result pages.


Make your site a social experience

As part of our quest to make our client's sites a more social experience, we would like to recommend that you consider adding social share icons to relevant sections of your website. Letting your site visitors know where else they can keep up to date with your news, updates, happenings and also giving them the ability to spread your news/content further.


Social Share Audit

We would recommend that you invite Rocktime to provide a social share audit of your website, where we will review social engagement icons and social sharing options that are used by your website visitors. For further details on our social share audit please call in and talk to sales or a member of the Flashlight Search Marketing team. Alternatively find out more about how Rocktime can help you with your Social Media Strategies here.


Author: Sarah Griffiths

Facebook Pages - Building the REAL community

Facebook say Facebook Pages allow you to: “Connect with your audience, share your story and participate in real-time conversations quickly and easily on Facebook”. Read more over at Facebook here; http://www.facebook.com/FacebookPages

The below provides quick tips from the Rocktime Flashlight team on how to build a community on Facebook using Facebook Pages.

Building the Authentic Community

Facebook for business should be about genuine, valuable interaction with fans the most effective way to build the community is by engaging with your customer base. Critical mass online often takes time, remember it was the "Tortoise (slowly but surely) that won the race, when the Hare took a little nap”. Talk to us more about this analogy if you like, basically it sums up that slow organic growth in social media is not a bad thing.

Your Facebook Page needs to be engaging and interesting to ensure your fans/customers/potential customers, keep you in their news feeds. It doesn’t need to be “wham bam wham” with production of chat on your page wall, you just need to talk to your fans at a time suitable for them (when they are most engaged).
Ads can be used to give your community a boost, perhaps expanding to a new demographic, but the key is content, content, content.

Lessons in Engagement

• Give your fans a reason to visit
• Get them to love your page so they can recommend you to others
• Provide interesting insights of value (to the fan)
• Share news
• Competitions
• Deliver informative information which indicates that you know your industry and don't constantly promote your products or service
• Give people a reason to talk about the page
• Introduce people to the reasons as to why they should be visiting or liking the page
• Be chatty & human to encourage conversation and ensure ongoing interaction
• When delivering Facebook Ads, keep the target audience in mind, deliver an ad that will resonate with your fan rather than shouting about how great you are
• Advertise on the Facebook page to encourage further interaction on your site
• Make a note of all your customer touch points (Newsletters, Lost password, Page 404 not found) and how you can advertise your networks of interaction there to encourage Facebook Page fan growth
• Finally, keep it real (think topical stories and conversations)

Considerations:

People tend to join a community when they see it has many fans already. You may develop a campaign (on or off Facebook) to encourage fans to join, but you must always return to the quality over quantity argument - will you get return?

You will if you devise a campaign closely linked to your target audience, that will deliver value.
A biggy to consider is that when launching any campaign attention needs to be given to the resource of social media & a strategy established for this to work. Along with delivering Facebook Pages strategy the Rocktime Flashlight team can assist with these Social Media resource issues, talk to us to find out more.

If you would like to share any further tips for Facebook Page Growth, feel free to comment below. I am sure we could share more, re: Facebook Mark Up Language (Facebook HTML) and Social Plugins, Apps, Multi Channel Integration, but we simply wanted to provide a simple list of 'do's', that our readers can use to help them get on the right track to Fan Page growth.

Author: Sarah Griffiths

Google Moderator on YouTube news

YouTube has recently given a new level of interactivity to the end user by integrating Google Moderator into YouTube, allowing content developers the opportunity to receive feedback and input form their users.

Google Moderator was previously used as part of Google’s interviews with President Obama and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper. Find out more about Google Moderator here.

The Moderator allows you to ask for ideas or questions on a topic of your choice and have the community vote for the best ones in real time.

The video above provides a good example of user interaction titled: “The Summer of You! Foodwishes First Contest Ever! In Honor of YouTube's New Moderator Feature”. Go to this page on YouTube see the voting in action.

How it works is explained by YouTube below:

“Here’s how it works: You set the parameters for the dialogue, including the topic, the type of submissions, and the length of the conversation. Watch as submissions get voted up or down by your audience, and then respond to the top-voted submissions by posting a video on your channel. The platform operates in real-time, and you can remove any content that you or your audience flag as inappropriate. You can also embed the platform on your own website or blog“

Find out more information and view some examples on how the feature is being used over at the YouTube Blog.

On review of the above video in 2 weeks, 503 people submitted 200 ideas and cast 4,169 votes, will be interesting to see how the Google Moderator feature in YouTube catches on.

Author: Sarah Griffiths

YouTube bring back the Bulletins

I have just logged into YouTube and noticed (appearing top of YouTube channel on login) that they have started to advertise the Channel Bulletins feature, it makes alot more sense than what I read back in Jan 2010 here over at the YouTube Blog.

This is excellent news for brands out there who which to increase their communication with the YouTube audience. The new tabbing structure makes the process very clear and easy to use.

Using the "Post a Bullettin" feature means you can write a message to all your subscribers and even link them to a video. You can then view the message you have written in your Recent Activity Module, so any passers by will see that activity too and possibly want to subscribe to you if the messages/bullettins are enticing enough. It also mentions that it will appear on the subscribers recent activity module too, there is however a time delay as I just ran the test from my personal channel here - note top line (Testing the new feature) and over 10hrs later the recent activity on Rocktimesocial hasn't updated yet (so sceptical - as YouTube comments are a gamble at the best of times).


Find out more about this feature by visiting this link over at Google on Channel Bulletins.

It is all very exciting indeed...

Author: Sarah Griffiths

We need a Twitter directory for a Twitter directory?!

As Twitter usage continues to increase in the UK, I thought to shed some light on how you can increase your exposure and build on your growing Twitter community.

There are numerous ways to find Twitter users who share the same interests as you by using Twitter search engines, Twitter directories and refining results by category or location. Meanwhile Location targeted Twitter directories are pretty handy if you want advice on “real time local information” i.e. jobs, weather or perhaps sending or receiving a restaurant recommendation.

Which directories should I choose ?

In truth there is no definitive answer to this - we are not the holders of the definitive list of all the Twitter directories, but very few people probably are as new ways of managing contacts are popping up daily – and, at this rate, possibly one every minute.

Should you be in every directory? While it’s desirable, the reality is that this isn’t really possible: given the time it takes to list, it’s unlikely that the admin time would be worth it.
At Rocktime, we find time is more effectively spent listing our company and ourselves on a select few directories, which enables us to spend a much higher percentage of our time communicating with those we chose to follow or find out more about those following us.

Let me share with you a list of a few Twitter directories we use at Rocktime – but first, while we’re talking Twitter Directories, late last year Twitter introduced Twitter lists into public beta.

Twitter promoted these lists as being “A great way to organise the people you follow and discover new interesting accounts”. What this means to Twitter user is that they can create their own lists, or people may list them and display details to their followers. It is quite interesting to see in what lists you reside, as it gives an indication how people perceive you and what you have to say: perhaps you are a blogger listed by a few as a “comedy genius”, but you never knew !

But let’s get back to directories. There are two ways to feature in list directories: either by adding your own lists or by being on lists that have been added. selection of directories looking after these lists are also presented below.

Twitter User Directories

WeFollow – A really easy sign-up and connects to your Twitter account. Login to Twitter, enter your location and choose 5 interests which describe your business or personal brand.
NB: Check the fine print as you don’t need to accept the offer to have your Twitter profile page link to your WeFollow profile page (final box).

Twellow - Register by providing your Twitter email and password. Twellow will then pull relevant information of your twitter profile page to create your profile, making some suggestions on where you should be placed. After validating your email, you then need to decide whether you agree to their suggestions or add other categories (10). You can add more links within Twellow to other social media profiles within the extended bio section, which is pretty handy to spread your reach further.

Just Tweet It – This directory takes a little more time to sign up to than Wefollow or Twellow, as you are required to register before you are sent a password and a link to the profile editor page. Once your profile is complete return to the Just Tweet IT home page, pick 5 categories and enter a short bio on each.

List Directories

Listorious - Go to the Listorious directory and click add list. If you are signed into Twitter, Listorious will automatically connect to your Twitter account and show a form asking for a list URL, a one line description and some descriptive tags. Once your list is added you will be entered into the Listorious ranking table (calculated by number of followers)

TweetDeck - If you work your twitter Account from TweetDeck, then just create a list from there. Once it starts getting followers then it will be automatically included in the directory. Simple.

Location based directories

An easy way to find people geographically close to you is to use the advanced page on Twitter’s search engine which has the option “Near this place”. Results for this are are based on the location field in the twitter BIO, which can be pretty accurate with geo-location from people tweeting from their phones. Some people prefer to use Nearby Tweet for local tweeters www.nearbytweets.com, but be warned - it is pretty distracting when new posts arrive.

Geofollow – The main concept behind this directory is that instead of people being organised by category you are organised by location, but you can still use 3 tags to differentiate yourself from the masses.

Even more directories !

Mashable have compared 15 twitter directories here and have assigned them into four categories: applications, people, politics and strictly business. Soon I think we will need a Twitter directory for the Twitter directories. Hmm...now that’s an idea....

Twitter advice

If you would like any advice on using Twitter to build your community feel free to contact me or talk to a member of the Rocktime Sales team.

Author: Sarah Griffiths

Rocktime’s Book of the month: Gary Vaynerchuk’s CRUSH IT!

If you want to find out what you are really passionate about, then you must read this book, or if you already have a passion and want to release all you know to the world then this book must go to the top of your Amazon wish list.

This is not just a business book (Social Media Strategy) it also seeks to explain how you can use your own DNA to change your life, personally and professionally.

Following on from the strap line “Why now is the time to cash in on your passion” Gary Vaynerchuk (@garyvee), explains to his readers how you can communicate your passion / your personal brand using the correct content and whatever media format of channel that are the best fit for your audience.

Based on his experience he provides a step by step manual on how you can execute your own social media strategy and how he used social media and social networking to build a huge business, see Wine Library TV.

Something we especially liked was the line “Anything is better than zero”, where he explains to his readers not to get hung up on the Analytics and to go with their gut. Great advice on building your business and your personal brand is packed throughout and refreshingly Gary often admits to his contradictions and invites the reader to explore certain areas further, or to contact him. This is a great reflection of the personal brand he has built.

What is really really engaging about this book are his insights and tips based on real business examples and personal experience, he shares with his readers insights into how he built his business and because he writes with such passion and flair you really don’t mind him promoting himself every now and again.

Gary’s enthusiasm to social media strategy is totally infectious, he is an extremely motivated guy, you will never read a book so quick, and if you are as passionate as us about what you do, you will want to read it again.

Well done Gary we are looking forward to the next insightful book from you, and as they say in America “You Rock”. If you do make it over the UK for a book tour, let us know and we will gladly give you a pat on the back, the only feedback we will give is placing image of your book on your site for us then to seed out, or have a "I read this book it was awesome" badge. Oh and Gary if you are reading this (and sure you will be) you have inspired me to get a FlipCam, what have you done !!!

Find out more about what you can learn from the book here

People in the UK order your copy of Crush IT from Amazon


Author: Sarah Griffiths

Rocktime's Book of the month: Seth Godin, Tribes

Famous author Seth Godin has written nine books, all bestsellers that changed the way we think about marketing, change and work. He is responsible for many words in the marketer's vocabulary, including permission marketing, ideaviruses, purple cows, the dip and sneezers.

A few of us have recently been reading his new (Oct 09) book “TRIBES: We Need You to Lead Us,” which explains how the Internet has eliminated barriers and enabled new tribes to be born.

In less than 130 (A5) pages the book argues that lasting and substantive change can be best effected by a tribe: a group of people connected to each other, to a leader to an idea. Some of the chapter’s are quite repetitive as he drums home the principles of leadership and the importance of word of mouth marketing to create movements. However despite this repetition, we are all glad we took time out to read it as it relate to our passion of generating long lasting online relationships / communities for our clients.

Please find three of our favourite quotes, from the book below, also make sure you click on the True Fans link the article there is genius:

“a Tribe needs a shared interest and a way to communicate”

“creating a tighter tribe and/or "transforming the shared interest into a passionate goal and desire for change" usually leads to much more impact than trying to make a tribe bigger. beyond public relations and awareness related benefits, measuring the breadth of spread of an idea is not as important as looking at the depth of commitment and interaction of true fans, who end up being the people who recruit most new members”

"It's clearly more fun to make the rules than to follow them, and for the first time, it's also profitable, powerful, and productive to do just that."

For more information on why you may need a Tribe enjoy this conversation on YouTube with Seth Godin on Tribes and why we all (may) need one. And if you need help forming your Tribe please do get in touch with the Flashlight team, to discuss online community forming further.


Author: Sarah Griffiths

What’s the story with blogging

We often feel the need to explain to our clients the difference between having a news module on their site and a Blog which can be integrated within their site or located on a separate domain.

As real time content has now made its way into the Google search results, this conversation is happening more often. Read this article from the 7th of December 09 from The Official Google Blog, Relevance meets the real-time web.

Thus we thought to share you before the New Year, what we consider to be the top ten benefits of blogging. We will also share our thoughts on how to blog, what to write and how to measure ROI.

Sound good ? then read on...

Starter for ten on the benefits of blogging

1. Enables you to build your following into a community, your community.

2. Allows you to talk is a conversational manner – “One to One” rather than “One to Many” .

3. Increases your coverage in the search result pages.

4. Gives you an opportunity to be a thought leader / influencer.

5. You can submit your blog to separate blogging directories increasing reach further.

6. People may ask you to blog on their blog and vice versa – doesn’t generally happen with News content (One to many and no sharing or conversing opportunities).

7. Provides new opportunities to communicate with your target markets.

8. Allows your team to be involved with your online presence, inviting team members to join in with stories / blogs.

9. You can blog from your phone.

10. Encourage visitors to your site, increase sales, increase engagement etc etc.

The Barrier to blogging

The biggest barrier to most is “what do I write about” and “how do I blog”. So we thought to share with you some further tips, giving an example of a landscape gardener setting up a blog.

What would a landscape gardener write about on their blog?

About them – who they are (who is writing the blog), what they like (Classic Films, The Arts), what they blog about (Landscape Gardening, Design, Colour partners).

In general they would write Blog posts on information that will be useful to others examples below:

Show people with images what they have created (Landscaped gardens).

• Explain why they placed lavender in with sage during their latest project.


• Provide advice and invite questions to equip people to succeed with their own landscape garden plans.


• Promote local landscape gardening groups.


• Share their personal thoughts of recent visit to XY garden in the UK or design exhibition.


• Review events they attended, which they had attended.


• Discuss a new TV show you saw (Garden or Design related to keep focus), your opinions.


• Engage readers with an event happening at their company, or perhaps encourage conversation over at another blog.

To sum up the key conversation areas are:

Show, Explain, Advise, Promote others, Share, Review, Discuss, Engage.

How to write the blog?

This part is simple as you as you simply: “Write it as you say it” ie: in a conversational tone. No one is really going to come to your blog and critique your grammar, however if this is important to you then ask a copywriter to check each post (we partner with a copywriting service for larger contracts).

Many people forget with the web you are actually talking to ONE person not MANY people, write the blog as if you were conversing. This is more engaging for the reader and also saves time too as you don’t need to be formal. Where possible let the text flow. Also consider non professional gardeners visiting your blog if mentioning Latin terms, mention English too. Don’t expect everyone to know what MULCHING is? (See the Wiki Pedia Guide to Mulch here)

How will this impact my business?

This is the big question.

To help measure ROI it is important that before writing any post consider the post’s objective, ie: do you want to encourage sales (of new type of plant? or service?) or is it to engage with your audience (your thoughts for school garden landscape competition) or do you want to write something that will be shared with many/retweeted/bookmarked to improve the ranking of your blog and site.

• Reaching a sale on your site – write the post towards a call to action
  
• Engaging audience – ask the readers questions
  
• Bookmarking & Retweets – Write something compelling, funny, new that people will want to share.

Blog posts can simply be fun too eg: It was my birthday today, look at how many pieces of my cake are left, there are only 4 people working here! Let people know you are human.
You can throw in the odd bit of fun as long as you say to yourself, what is the goal of this? could you perhaps promote the local bakery in which the cake came from? With the goal of showing you care about / are involved in local community, maybe! What does this do? Well it builds trust with your consumer base as it shows you are open, honest and most importantly approachable.

Seeding out your content

Tip 1: Share blog post within your networks via RSS feeds, (find out more about RSS here)

• Send to Twitter
  
• Send to Your Site
  
• Send to other local business, perhaps place you information on their site and their news goes on yours.

Tip 2: Give consideration to the title of the blog post

When the RSS feed is fed out to the networks, the title needs to be engaging enough to make people want to click through. So please refrain from naming your blog titles: blog post 1, blog post 2, or January blog post etc.

Tip 3: Meet with us for help

We often help clients kick start their blogs (social media campaigns) by meeting with them, talking about their company aspirations, goals, events of the year etc, then we go away and write up some blog posts for them. We encourage that blog posts come direct from the company or even better the individual running the company, however 7/10 times the company we are talking to, will not have the resource in house or the time. It is I am afraid a similar situation at Rocktime.

It is only when the community starts to build and the Managing Director/s see the results, then the available time to take the blog over or add more content come into play.

If you have a blog, have lost focus or simply need guidance on how to build your community further then please come in and speak to the Flashlight Team to discuss your social media strategy.

Oh and the objective of this post, was to provide you with useful information and to encourage you to CONTACT US to discuss your social media plans for 2010. See you next year ;)

Author: Sarah Griffiths

Bebo attempts to reinvigorate itself

I read this morning on the Guardian website that AOL –owned social networking site for Teens Bebo are downsizing their activities and have made the decision to stop commissioning new content. Which was once considered as being their future.

Statement from Media Guardian today: “Bebo is cutting jobs at its UK operation and freezing commissions from its web TV production arm, which has been responsible for groundbreaking shows including KateModern”

The online shows on Bebo included KateModern, Sofia’s Diary, The Secret World of Sam King and The Gap Year were a great idea in attracting teenagers to regular visit the site and also provided the Bebo profit pot with large sponsorship funds from a number of blue chip advertisers.

The spokewoman at Bebo said:

"We are in the process of re-aligning the Bebo business and need to make sure that our resources are aligned with our new business mode in order to execute effectively against our future vision and stay competitive. We are therefore required to make some difficult decisions about the future of our organization and its people in order to stay competitive."

The news isn’t surprising with sites like Facebook and Twitter powering ahead and attracting the Bebo audience to move over to them with word on the street of “I’ll Facebook you” or he “Twittered me” they have struggled to remain fashionable.

Although understandable in these economic times phasing out the online TV production unit is a shame in my opinion for the engagement levels on Bebo. Plus negative news for the fans of the shows. However saying that I am in total agreement with their decision to re-focus and re-align their core social media activities at this current time.

Let’s just hope they don’t take as long as MySpace, who saw a 55% decline in market share in the last 12 months !!

All the best of luck sent to Bebo to discover their alignment and establish their future strategy.

We will be watching the responses from Sophia Diary fans as it is phased out till the end of the year. The repercussion of closing the show may even spawn a new network a TV network open to all (YouTube?) we already have a number on online networks showing repeats of shows, maybe there is room in these domains for online only shows, certainly some interesting times ahead in broadcast media.

Author: Sarah Griffiths

Managing your reputation online

Are you customers talking about you?

Main stream media is becoming less influential, less important, less of an effective channel to reach your audience. Social media marketing allows for more targeting; lets your campaign stay around for longer, as all media posted online can be “remembered” by search engines and anyone interested in what you are doing, where you have been and what comes next.

In talking to our clients about monitoring their social landscape, we have found that the most effective way to get “buy in” is to show them that people are already talking about their company online. After seeing that these discussions are taking place they begin to understand how important it is to be a part of the online conversation. Whether it is thanking people for positive feedback on a micro blogging site such as Twitter or responding to a customer query found on a Forum or Blog post.

We explain: Companies will have more control of these social spaces, if they join in and play their part: being helpful, approachable and most importantly honest. 9 out of 10 times companies find that they don’t have the resource and thus look to an agency like ourselves to help them.

Rocktime's role in Reputation Management

We help companies monitor their company reputation online, inline with their corporate objectives we create a social media plan, find their target markets and help them establish their social media tone of voice. As experts in social media we know that it is important to remember that these are “social” spaces and must be respected as such: people don’t want to be directly sold to in these spaces more advised or simply answered.

Along with monitoring social landscapes for clients and talking back to customers on behalf of the client, currently the Flashlight team are reviewing the advanced Reputation Management tools (now available) which provide more detailed reports to help monitor and manage the conversations. We will of course let you know which reputation management tool or tools we choose as a comment in this blog post.

What makes us happy

We are pleased that so many of our clients have embraced the opportunity to monitor conversations on their company in social spaces, under the corporate objectives:

Retaining customer loyalty
Enhancing company moral
Display continued commitment to improve

Monitoring reputations

Right now the Flashlight Team are monitoring their clients reputations in three ways these are explained below:

Search Engine Alerts

Creation of alerts on your company, service or product names by creating Alerts within Google and Yahoo. Results sent directly to email.

http://www.google.com/alerts

http://alerts.yahoo.com/

Blog Search

Review of the blogosphere, monitoring whether bloggers / online journalists are talking about the company, using blog only search engines such as:

http://blogpulse.com/

http://blogsearch.google.com/blogsearch

http://www.bloglines.com/

http://technorati.com/

Forum Search

Keeping tabs on Forum enteries, either by using “Show options” in Google and clicking on Forums or by using Forum and 'Answer Engine' search engines such as the below:

http://boardreader.com/

http://boardtracker.com/

Final tip on reputation management online

Reputation management practices help Companies not only get an edge on the competition, but it will also allow them to keep moving their business forward. Before moving into this practice companies need to be ready to participate in the conversation and be ready to address customer issues and recommendations head on. The Flashlight team at Rocktime can help you establish your reputation monitoring plan and be your voice within the networks, feel free to get in touch.

"Reputation Mangement online is becoming a more and mroe important tool in
order to access what we do line and how it impacts on our brand positioning"

Alex McCreath (Director of Rocktime)

Author: Sarah Griffiths

UK Online Audience and Social media statistics reviewed: Sept 09

Internet penetration in the UK is up 5% year on year to 72% with “the home and work active digital universe” numbering 43 million in the UK (Nielsen Online, January 2009). In comparison to the rest of Europe the UK has the most active online population, with the highest number of daily visitors (21.8m), the highest usage days per month (21 per user) and the highest average time spent on the web per month per user (34.4 hrs), (comScore June 2007).

"Online is not the medium of a new generation, but the new
medium for all generations"

The online population in the UK now reflects the demographic make-up of the UK as a whole, with a 52% / 48% male /female split. 21% of internet users are 25 to 34 years - and at the other end of the spectrum the over-50s now represent 30% of total time spent online (Source: IAB UK, 2008).

UK visits to News and Media sites are up 28% year on year and these industries are reported as having the second highest growth rate after online video (Hitwise, February 2009). These statistics further indicate that an increasingly amount of people are looking for information online. Google continues to be the most popular site in the UK (Nielsen Online, Feb 2008) and their new search features ‘Show Options’ is allowing people to be more savvy with their searching online, reviewing forum posts, news and reviews, (suddenly social media is in the main search results).

Social networks account for an increasing proportion of UK internet visits and they are also becoming an important source of traffic for other websites. People go online to socialise, to learn, to be entertained, to stay informed and to inform others and for the traditional web users they sometimes go online to buy products or services and learn about the products before they purchase or sign up. Social media and networking also encourages the building of communities: groups of people with common interests who are keen to interact with one another on matters important to them.

The Daily Telegraph reported (April 2009) that it receives 8% of its online traffic from social media sites such as news aggregators like Digg and Reddit, as well as Twitter, which is now becoming more popular with companies using it as a communication tool.

Interest in the social media tool in the UK has risen from 3% use to 49% use in just a year, (Guava UK Search Marketing Benchmark Report, April 2009). Many users of Twitter say that they find it “additive” and research has shown that the time people spend on the site has risen from just 10 minutes a year ago to half an hour now (Hitwise, January 2009), so evidence here that the audience are searching for chat/communication or for something new.

Visiting blogs has become more popular with the UK internet audience, with 41% of people in the UK visiting a blog once a month (comScore, August 09). Blogs have also performed well at driving traffic to websites: Hitwise (June 2008) reported that blogs drive 1.19% of all UK traffic, which is equivalent to one in every 84 visits to a site.

eMarketer (Jan 2009) predicts that social network ad spending is expected to reach around 4.4% of total online ad spending in the UK in 2009. This figure isn’t surprising, seeing that back in Oct 2007 social networks already accounted for 7.7% upstream Internet traffic to all other websites, making the category the second most important source of traffic after Search Engines (Hitwise Jan 2008).

All in all it is pretty exciting Autumn for search engines and social networks a like and we loving the work, get in touch if you would like us to set a social media or search strategy for you.

Author: Sarah Griffiths

Introduction to Social Media Strategy

Blogging, Podcasting, Video, Microblogging (Twitter, Plurk, Tumblr), Forums all help facilitate communication, being out there can help you get ahead in business and keep up with the “online & active”.

It is important to note that setting social media strategy and defining a space should not be seen as a tactical solution, rather it requires ongoing nurturing and development to become a long – term fertile ground for developing new members and fans. Networking online is similar to building human relationships they do take time and sometimes can require some patience.

Networks are also about sharing, you need to give yourself time to share your content and comment back on others.

Rocktime advise clients to listen to their target market first before setting social strategy, through this listening you may identify new social avenues which perhaps without the knowledge you may not have considered.

Social networking insights can not only help you build on your networks of interaction but can also help you deliver new tools for your customers on real time recommendations. The review of your social landscape and projection of ideas form part of what Rocktime define as “Social Media Tool Kit”.

Success of social strategy can be defined both qualitatively and quantitatively, not only how many people interact with social media but what impact it had on them.

The simplest measure of success is the number of people who become members, who are following you, and where applicable who have downloaded a badge or widget. These figures can then be cross referenced with page views to give an indication of ‘stickiness’ or how long the site held the user’s attention. Comments and other contribution allow us to monitor participation rates.

Rocktime offer ongoing maintenance and management of social media to a number of clients & industries, talk to us to find out more.

There are many social media sites within the social media landscape, industry predicts more niche networks will appear as popularity of social networking increases. Rocktime help their clients follow these trends and help manage connections between these networks.

Seeding and promotion is a crucial element in generating interest around your social media approach. There are a number of seeding opportunities, but most importantly, we need to take you where the audience currently are.

Rocktime can provide your company with the below:

Review of your companies or product current social landscape

Provision of advice on how social media can help your company to achieve their goals & manage their reputation

During an initial three month period, assist you and your colleagues to understand the connections between the various social networks

Provide recommendations for social future & social marketing plans by identifying new areas in which you can join in with the conversation and how to find people to join in the conversation with you.

If you want to find out more about setting social media strategy or social networking strategy then please do call Rocktime and ask to speak to Sarah, or catch up with her on Twitter @sarahgriffiths