Twitter - Remember CRASH!

I know sometimes we all struggle with how to interact with Twitter ….. what should I say? It is worthy of a tweet? Etc etc

Try this simple reminder of what you can do when you sit down to catch up with your Twitter feed.

CRASH!

Comment – look through your stream of activity (read what the people you are following are saying) and make a comment. It doesn’t need to be profound, sometime a simple “Sounds Great”, “We agree.” or “Tell us more.” type comments can start an interaction and potential help build relationships.

Reply – is anyone asking us something or commenting about us, this is your opportunity to reply to their comments.

Ask – don’t be afraid to ask questions of your followers; ask them what they think about relevant topic events or ask them if they have a particular business problem (problems that you can solve with your expertise, products and services).

Share – readers of your tweets are more likely to interact with you if you share content; simple post links to interesting webpages, articles or guides. Posting links to your own website could improve your search engine rankings.

Help – sometimes people in your feeds might be asking for help or assistance, don’t be afraid to comment and provide the help that they are looking for, it will help to give you Kudos. In Hootsuite you can create additional streams that show you who is posting about particular search terms. Use search terms based around your expertise or the products or service that you provide.

If you remember CRASH then you should never be stuck for something to say!

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Klout

Love it or hate it Klout is here to stay; whether it still exists years from now as Klout or whether some genius manages to work out how to calculate the power of your social media exploits; a way of monitoring how the hard work that you’re putting into your social media activity is definitely needed.

Klout isn’t perfect, and I’ve set up some very easy tests that show that a Klout account can be manipulated to show fairly impressive growth in the topics that you want to be known as an expert for.

Klout (and services like it) also go to help people like myself who are highly competitive and need to feel that they are constantly improving their online marketing.

I guess the big change (and benefits) will come when search engines (and I’m really talking about Google) merge your Social Media Score in with its own algorithm to help improve ranking, then I’m sure we’ll see more businesses improving the quality of their social interactions.

Klout (www.klout.com)

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Easy to Read = More Online Sales

It pretty much stands to reason that when a visitor lands on your website they will be more engaged with it if they can understand it!

By their very nature, website visitors are impatient people. If they have to work to understand your web pages (navigation or content), then they will go away to find an easier site than yours. Your competitors!


Many websites that I get to look at or look after contain some very technical language that is very difficult to understand for the seasoned professionals never-mind the average web surfer. Some webmasters also like long and complicated sentences.

Long and complicated sentences are not a sign of intelligence, it doesn't suggest to your readers that you know about the topic or more educated than them, it just shows that you really don't care about the readers.

Here are some very simple tips to help you.

• Write short sentences on your pages
• Use paragraphs
• Use headings and sub headings to structure the content logically
• Use bullet points
• Avoid using complicated words. Don't say "Dulcet" when you mean sweet or sugary!
• Use relevant  images on your pages

Follow these simple rules and your website visitors will flock to your pages and engage more with your brand/business.

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Enhancing Campaign Longevity

I’m rather pleased with one of my latest promotion projects. Irwin Mitchell’s business employment team have launch a report off the back of a survey that they had commissioned based around recession-based employment tactics; the results are actually very interesting, and as the EBusiness Manager it was passed to me to see how we can get as many people as possible to download this document online.

My simple but effective plan was actually devised in just a few moments – the plan is to have two phases of online promotions:

Phase 1 utilises our social media footprint to bring visitors into the report landing page. We have our finger in a number of social media pies, but Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook were chosen as our number 1 options for this phase. We devised an Infographic (the first within the business) to help promote the full report, and also enables it to go viral (although we don’t really expect this thing to go global, we wanted an easy way for others to promote it).

With ReTweets and refreshing in statuses, I reckoned that this probably has a core lifespan of 2-3 weeks, so I needed a Phase 2 to help promote it a little longer.

Phase 2 gives us that longevity. A video from our Head of Employment will be shot and again posted on our website, YouTube and other social media sites. This refresh of our promotional approach will also see us repurpose the video content to provide audiocast.

Results: 
I’m posting this soon after we launched the report and the campaign activity, but initial analytics are very good. Traffic to the Employment section is higher than usual and of course although this went out in a press release also, traffic from social sites has doubled (Twitter and Linked in performing the best with Facebook in clear third!)


Extras:
We have tried two approaches for the actual report PDF, it’s a free report anyway, but we are trying the use of both a sign-up form (visitors leave us their name and email address to collect the report) and one where it’s readily available without providing us any details at all. I’ll post back our resulst when we have them.

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Recession-based Employment Tactics

UK Law Firm Irwin Mitchell today revealed a telling report showing that there is a huge lack of confidence in the economy and that businesses are three times more likely to encourage voluntary redundancies during the next 12 months compared to two years ago.

Other key findings from this survey of 320 senior business decision-makers are:

• One-third of businesses had made compulsory redundancies in the last year, with 75% of those also using a range of alternative cost-saving techniques.
• Seven out of 10 firms said they are "less confident" or expect "no improvement" in the U.K. economy in 2012 and 18% said they are "quite likely" or "very likely" to make compulsory redundancies during the same period.
• Out of those businesses stating they needed to reduce their employee cost base over the next 12 months, just over half (55%) said that they would introduce a voluntary redundancy program. This compares to just 16% of companies that did the same during the last two years.

In addition, firms are more likely to cut down the use of agency workers, freeze pay, grant unpaid absences, remove other benefits such as bonuses and reduce staff hours in the next 12 months compared to two years ago.

Outside of compulsory redundancies, the most popular method used to reduce the employee cost base during the last two years was freezing pay rises, so UK employees can expect their pay to be frozen during the next 12 months!

The full report can be found here.

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Infographic: Guide to advertising on Twitter by Alchemy Social

Earlier this year Alchemy Social unveiled an infographic guide to advertising on Twitter.

The brilliant guide looks at how to target the public, what motivates people to become followers, and what enhanced pages should look like.

The key findings were that a massive 94% of people follow businesses for discounts and promotions, 87% simply for fun and entertainment, 79% for access to exclusive content and 69% to follow company news and updates.

The full story can be found here.
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FIVE Winning Tweet Formulas That Work

If you're looking for tweets that work within the B2B environment then you have come to the right place; although these work just as well for B2C!

Writing a really great tweet is like writing a great headline for an email or mailshot; you need to get someone to read and take action in just 140 characters. What a lot of people seem to forget when they come to Twitter is that as humans we haven’t really changed over the years, and what worked in the past, continues to work on Twitter.

So where are some formulas that will work to get readers interest and get them to take action.

1. The Big Promise Approach

[Goal] will be achieved when you follow these [amazing steps]

This ‘Big promise’ way of writing headlines has been around for years, and the early copywriters knew that it worked.

Example: Customers will flock if you use these great Power Words http://tinyurl.com/7p38zlc


2. The Endorsement Approach

How [@Username] and [@Username] are [Doing Great Things]

There is nothing better than endorsing your product or service by using previous clients. Using this approach it isn’t you that is promoting your product or service, but by proxy it’s your previous clients.

Example: How @npowerhq got their biggest response ever to an online campaign.



3. The Hi-5 Approach

We really enjoyed this article from [@username] on [topic]

Virtual high-fives like this not only gets you the attention of the account that you are mentioning but it also enables ReTweets because we all like personal recommendations and we all like to pass them on.

Example: We liked this #Marketing Intuition Contest: Which homepage generated a 331% lift in conversion. bit.ly/Le8VFm @MktgExperiments


4. The Question Approach

Did you know that nn% of [target audience] [something interesting/controversial]?

A lot of business Twitter users don’t use the questioning approach, but it is a great way to get readers interest and click on your link.

Example: Did you know that 62% of businesses in the UK think that they are funny! http://tinyurl.com/cq39wzq


5. The Except Approach

Another Twitter formula that works well is to take an excerpt directly from an article or website; after all, this has already been written to be punchy and get a positive response!

Example: HOW TO WRITE GREAT HEADLINES THAT GET ATTENTION! http://tinyurl.com/bl73srt

One of the great cost effective opportunities that social media provides is that content can be fairly easily repurposed for different media, and this approach is a perfect example, and in the example above then a great headline is a great headline, no matter where you use it.


If you need any help with your social media work; strategy or delivery then get in touch to see how I can help your business win.

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Getting Your Business Online

All businesses can benefit from having a web site, they can enhance your business image, allow you to communicate with customers and prospects and even bring in new customers.

If you do not have a web site, then chances are you have considered it and for some reason dismissed the idea. Many of my clients believe that getting a small web site created that brings in new business will be expensive.

The truth is that it needn't be. A web site can be created and set up, with email accounts for upfront costs as little as £500. 

Now, if over the life of the web site, it only brings in say 10, 20 or 30 new customers, don't you think that it will pay for itself!

I can define your personalised plan for moving online, create and set up a simple web site that will be your virtual shop front, then help you to promote it.

Maybe you already have a web site, but it's not generating the sales leads that you expect it to, then I can help you to determine how the site and it's promotion can be managed.

I have worked with some of the biggest businesses in the UK in helping them to define their online presence and help them to make money, I can do the same for you.

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