While it may seem we’re going to back to basics, this list of to-dos can also be applied when you feel that your current social media strategy is getting stale.  I also believe that it should be integrated into your social media plan to reevaluate every six months to ensure that you’re best utilizing your social media budget.

1)  Right off the bat, when beginning a new campaign or revamping, you’re going to want to spend some time listening – where are people talking about your brand?  What platforms are they using?  What types of feedback are you getting – good or bad?  What confuses people and where can you implement customer service to streamline the process?

There are numerous tools to use to measure and evaluate your brand mentions.  Social Mention, Google Buzz and Vocus have all incorporated a tool where you can either log in or have an email sent listing all the platforms that are mentioning your brand (by keyword).  You may find right off the bat that the all-encompassing Facebook strategy you’ve been working on isn’t actually where all the chatter is about your brand.  Perhaps your customers are still using forums to talk about you.

2)  Now that you know where people are discussing your brand, what’s the chatter surrounding your competitors.  What’s interesting is organizations that you may consider your greatest competitors may have no social presence whatsoever – this makes for an even greater opportunity for your brand to capitalize on.    You also may find there are organizations that you had no idea were competitors.  If their campaign is successful, there’s no harm in incorporating some of their successes into your own campaign – just make sure to make it your own.

3)  Once you’ve done your research, it should be clear what platforms you should be using to speak to your current customer base and if it makes sense to join additional networks.  While numerous companies will only focus on Twitter and Facebook, think of what your brand offers.  If it’s a consumer product or service that you find customers don’t know how to use, perhaps YouTube is a platform you use for tutorials.  Are most of your mentions coming from FriendFeed or a particular blog or forum?  Perhaps start there and once you’ve established a presence there, let your customers know that you’re also on Facebook and Twitter and have your own blog.  If you’re looking for foot traffic, create a social loyalty program with FourSquare.

4)  While you may want to dive right in and begin making updates and tweeting to your loyal customers, you should first create a six-month plan and outline goals you have for social media: Do you wish to increase sales on-site?  Do you wish to increase website traffic?  Or are you hoping that you can give your customer service phone line a break?

Once these goals are outlined, the rest of your plan should be fairly simple to fill in.  I can’t stress enough how important it is to have quality content on your pages.  If you insist on having a presence, make it a strong one.  Before you begin interacting or creating your own Facebook tab with FBML, bullet out what initiatives you have monthly, and always check back to remind yourself of your overall goals.

5)  Measure, analyze and report your findings, both successes and failures, to learn what works and what doesn’t within the realm of your brand’s offerings.  Gather screen grabs from fans and followers raving about your social media campaign, or a conversation you had online convincing an individual to visit your venue.  When your client asks for the value of social media (which they will), these will be key in demonstrating the power and value in a successful social media campaign.

Do you think there are any other basics companies should remember when creating or revamping their social media plans?

New functionality for users:

1. Find out what is “Trending Now.” By simply looking at the “Places” around you, you can see where the people are. These don’t have to be your linked “friends.” For example, I just saw that Hash House is trending. There must be something great going on there today, maybe I should check it out…
2. You can now see who is “Staff” at any given venue. If you are a marketer, and you manage a venue, you can mark yourself as staff and therefore users know the venue is being managed by someone and that the company is engaged in social media strategy.
3. The “History” section got an update. You can now easily add a category to a venue and see which of your friends checked in at the same venue.
4. The sign-up page was re-designed, making it even easier to sign-up and to see who of your Twitter followers and Facebook friends are using the platform. The ease of this new sign-up form is likely part of the reason Foursquare has seen such a huge growth in users, recently hitting the 2 million user mark.
5. Users now have the ability to opt-out of being a part of the business dashboard. For those who want to keep their check-ins private to business owners, they have that option. However selecting this would be a detriment to many users as they  may be unable to capitalize on special offers/promotions.
6. When you check a venue on the site, you can no longer see the profiles of those who have recently checked in. Now Foursqaure only reports a number, a move that is in no doubt meant to have users feel like their privacy is being protected.

So what do all these changes mean for marketers?

Trending now, accessibly to staff members, improved history, easy signups and upgraded privacy, all make for a better user experience, and are all part of the reason the platform ms growing so exponentially. It’s important for us as marketers to be aware of these changes and adjust our strategy. (Hint, you can no longer tweet at just anyone who checks into your location.)

Foursquare Check-In Here Window Cling, courtesy Foursquare

It is also more important than ever to claim your location with the Foursquare team, so that you’ll have access to the additional analytics provided by the business dashboard.

Finally, from a fulfillment stand-point, it is good for marketers using Foursquare specials to keep an eye on the growth of the platform to ensure they are still able to fulfill their offer. As Foursquare becomes more and more popular, special promos may have to be adjusted or simplified.

And last but not least, some Foursquare don’ts:

As the platform continues to grow and evolve, we’ll see more and more newbies jumping on board. If you are just getting started, here are a few of my Foursquare Don’ts.

• Don’t use your home address to check in. Let’s avoid crazies and stalkers.
• Don’t cheat. Only check-in somewhere if you are really there.
• Don’t auto-sync with Twitter. Don’t clog your Twitter stream with where  you checked-in. Leave this feature as a manual selection so that you can Tweet something about your check-in when it is appropriate.
• Don’t auto-sync with Facebook for the same reasons as above.

1. The higher the share rates, the lower the reading grade level, with spikes at fifth and ninth grades. Translation: Don’t try to impress your reader with 25-cent words. They don’t want to look up words in a dictionary to figure out what you’re trying to say. Write in layman’s terms.
2. In Facebook, titles with digits (1-9) outperform text only titles. Translation: Everyone likes a good list especially a short list that they can scroll through quickly.
3. Facebook users seem most likely to share on Saturdays and Sundays. Translation: Get with it. Communication on social media channels isn’t just a Monday-Friday gig. Engage on the weekends (while you’re sitting on your couch, in your pj’s, watching “Space Balls” for the millionth time on TBS) and you might see an increase in content sharing.
4. Experiential words such as “why,” “most,” “world,” and “how” trigger shares. The least shareable words include “review,” “poll,” and “social”. Translation: This one is easy. Use the first four words listed and not the last three.
5. Adjectives and adverbs appear to be among the least shared parts-of-speech in Facebook as our attention spans are trained to look beyond promotion or hyperbole. Translation: Avoid sounding promotional. We’re already familiar with this cardinal rule, but there are many brands that still don’t get it.
6. Negative updates are among the least shared while positive updates prove to be among the most shared. A special note: The word “sex” is at the top of the list for sharing. Maybe we should end all of our status updates with “sex” (i.e., I just had the best day with my husband (sex)!). Thoughts?

Do you have any Facebook sharing best practices? I’d love to hear them.

A couple of months ago, our client, gaytravel.com came to us looking to increase awareness of its newly launched website – with an idea already in mind – to integrate social media into a larger strategy to find America’s First Gay Travel Guru. Specializing in providing the LGBT community with expert recommendations on gay-friendly destinations, gaytravel.com is hoping to enlist the help of a Social media-savvy, culture-seeking Rock Star to travel the U.S. for six months sharing photos, videos, blogs and tweets.

So what does a job search through social media look like?

From April 30 – August 1, gaytravel.com will conduct a search for a travel enthusiast to city-hop, mingle, and report on the hottest gay destinations in North America.  Interested applicants will write travel reviews, post photos, videos, tweets, and use word-of-mouth to demonstrate why they are the perfect candidate for the job.  gaytravel.com will also use its own social community, Meet; public voting; and a questionnaire and job application to select its Gay Travel Guru.

What does this lucky Gay Travel Guru do once they get the job?

• Spend six months traveling across North America
• Share his/her experiences through blog posts, video, photos, tweets, and updates to Facebook and gaytravel.com

And what are the benefits aside from the job itself?

• $30,000 salary during 6-month employment period
• $200 stipend per trip
• Full compensation for hotel stay, transportation, and airfare

For full details on how to apply, check out gaytravel.com/guru.  And you can expect a full case study upon completion of the job search.

Facebook Change #1 – Community pages are here

Remember when fan pages first started and everyone was becoming a fan of silly things and your stream would fill up with  “Callan Green became a fan of Brussels sprouts” or “Callan Green became a fan of sparkly unicorns.” Well, Facebook wanted to create a way for users to express their affinity for said sparkly unicorns without utilizing the pages that were intended for companies. Enter the Facebook Community Page. These pages free the Facebook police from having to shut down un-official fan pages and they allow for a clearer distinction between a brand’s official page and a page started by a random.

So what are these new community pages like? They look like company pages but wall updates are created from users’ status updates. Anytime someone uses a key word to update their status, (in this example, “hike”) Facebook automatically pulls that update into the community page. When you visit the page, it divides the updates into updates made by your friends, and updates made by the general community.

There are a couple of important distinctions between community and company pages. 1. the update on a community page won’t run through your news stream and 2. it is impossible to write directly on the community wall, or to upload pictures/videos to the page.

So why do these community pages matter to marketers? Well there’s been a lot of chatter that the real reason these pages were created is so that Facebook can get a better idea of its user demographic. Others are saying it’s Facebook’s attack against Twitter, which recently claimed to be the best indicator of real-time public interest.  Either way, the data compiled from “likers” of community pages allows Facebook to present a strong case to potential advertisers. For instance, lets say there are 100,000 million “likers” of Pizza on Facebook. Wouldn’t that be a nice stat to have when Facebook tries to approach Roundtable about advertising with them? And on the marketing side, wouldn’t it be nice to buy an ad and have it served to all the “likers” of our clients’ categories? It is no secret that us marketing people love data.  The truth is, the more data we have, the more tailored our marketing approaches can be, and the more sales we can then get.

Facebook Change #2- Profile “interests” are being updated

Within the next few days, Facebook will begin prompting you to link the interests you’ve listed in your profile to various company or community pages. Lets say, for example, that under interests I currently have “running, surfing, reading and Absolut Vodka.” Facebook will now ask me if I’d like to link those interests to the running, surfing and reading community pages AND to the Absolut company page.

This is great for marketers. To the average person not reading Tech Crunch, Mashable or All Facebook, they may not understand that by clicking yes, they are also now subscribing to all these company pages in their news feed. So for brands on Facebook this is a big, “yaay!” You have just been given an easy way to capture new fans (despite the fact that they may be unaware of their new-found relationship with you).

*Word to the wise, I’d make sure your content on Facebook was dead-on for the next few days, knowing that you are going to have an in-flux of brand spanking new fans. This is your one chance to capture them, and if your content sucks, they are probably going to “hide” you in their streams.

Facebook Change # 3 – Facebook changes its privacy settings (yet again)

Starting yesterday, Facebook made changes so that users can now select which of their “interests/likes” are visible to their friends. However, if you “like” or include a page as one of your interests, your like-age will always be visible from the community page and is considered public knowledge. So the moral here is, be careful what you “like.”

This is good for brands, as it continues to loosen privacy settings and makes more content public. Plus, these privacy changes had to take place in order for Facebook to gather quality “interest gauging” for the above Community Pages.

Facebook Change #4 – You are no longer a “fan” of a brand’s page

Now to connect with a brand on Facebook you “like” them. Originally people speculated that this would be helpful to brands because there is a lower barrier of entry to saying that you “like” a page vs being”fan” of the page. I think that’s poppycock. Semantics won’t have THAT much of an affect on Facebook users. Whether you are a “fan” or you “like” the page, the end result is that you are now following the pages updates in your news stream, and I’d like to think that users will catch onto that.

What does matter are the changes that came with this. For instance, the company page now shows you which friends of yours also like the page. A nice new function that might encourage someone who was on the fence to “like” a page. This along with the ability to link to said pages from your profile and the new privacy changes, means a lot of new visibility and growth opportunities for these company pages.

AND all this was just Monday

Facebook must be tired, but the annual F8 conference is tomorrow, and it is likely that these changes were just the beginning. Stay tuned as we learn more about the changes that Facebook plans to make in the near future and how these might affect your marketing plans.

In fact, Facebook ads are so precise that, with a little creativity, they can essentially be served to specific people. This allows for marketers to target niche audiences in a way that far exceeds web banners control, making Facebook ads a powerful advertising tool.

Here are some lesser-known ways to maximize your Facebook ads to help you reach your audience:

1. Target your audience by location

Advertise your local festival or location-specific product/service to people in a certain town by selecting specific zip codes that target users via their IP addres. You can even target audiences that live around a city by inputting distances from the metropolis center.

2. Target your audience by name and connections

You are applying for a new job and you REALLY want to impress your potential employer with your tech savviness. Set up a targeted ad and serve only to the hiring managers. Or, serve your ad by “connection” to reach people who work for a certain company, went to a certain school, belong to a certain club, etc.

3. Target your audience by what they’re talking about on Facebook

Say you are trying to get people to attend Comicon. You can enter specific keywords like “Neal Adams” “Spiderman Comic”, “San Diego” or whatever buzzwords will target your audience better to target them specifically.

4. Target your audience by language

Want to reach out to Hispanics, or maybe native Mandarin-speakers. Use this feature to speak to potential customers… literally.

5. Target your audience by birthday

Someone with an impending birthday is probably thinking about what they want to receive as a gift. This is a great way for retailers in particular to reach an audience who will soon be giving gift ideas to friends and loved ones. This type of reach also allows you to target by astrological sign.

What’s next? Some very popular Facebook games like Farmville and Mafia Wars are exploring new ways to host brand placements that benefits advertisers and users alike.

1)  Murphy Goode’s “Really Goode Job”: The company posted job listings on all kinds of sites (everything from Craigslist to the San Francisco Chronicle’s Wine Blog,  The Cellarist) looking for a social media wine enthusiast capable of convincing the masses to sip, savor and tweet about the product.  To enter, contestants were tasked with creating and submitting a video explaining why they should be given the job.  Once submitted, the videos were uploaded to Murphy Goode’s YouTube and voted on by the public.

Positive: Excitement about the six-month job opportunity, and good PR,  led to over 2,000 entries and a ton of media buzz regarding the winery.

Negative: While the contest was described as social and social networks were used in judging, there was a grey area as to whether or not public/social voting really had anything to do with final selection.  Like many other contests, there was backlash because other contestants and voters felt the social voting aspect wasn’t weighted as high as it should have been.  Moral of the story: Brands should be extremely clear about how they’ll select their winners.

2) Coca Cola’s Happiness Ambassadors: Expedition 206 is currently underway as the top three “happiness ambassadors” chosen via social media travel the world (well, at least the 206 countries where Coca Cola is available).  As noted in Ad Age’s interview with Clyde Tuggle, senior VP-global public affairs and communications at Coca Cola, final candidates were not left up to chance.  After reaching out to multiple experienced marketing firms, Coca Cola acquired their top 60 candidates from around the world (based on social media experience and knowledge).  Of those 60, 18 were interviewed in the U.S. and the final nine individuals were then FINALLY presented to the public as three teams of three for social media voting.

Positive: Coca Cola knew the caliber of contestants they were seeking, and instead of hoping the public would find them on their own, they narrowed the playing field to keep the brand happy and allow the public to make their final selections.  Having done their research, it is expected that the content, along with public interest will both be a high success.

Negative: Now that the three ambassadors have been chosen, the public is also in charge of recommending sites and activities for the ambassadors to carry out.  However, I have to wonder if people will lose interest if the ambassadors don’t choose a recommended activity.  And, with most marketing plans, we like to have a decent idea of the outcome.  As for this campaign, Ad Age’s Natalie Zmuda said it best: “In the case of Expedition 206, there’s not yet any clear sense of how the program will deliver or what brand awareness it will generate.”

3) Groupon’s “Live Off Groupon for a Year” Contest: If you aren’t yet familiar with Groupon, they are an amazing organization offering city-specific hospitality coupons.  The increasingly popular company is going to pay $100,000 to an individual that can live off of Groupon deals for one full year.  (Think 50 percent off sushi, or $25 dollars off teeth cleaning).

Positive: While only brave apply, Groupon has done an excellent job at describing who should not apply.  Their rules and description of the contest are written so there really isn’t any confusion about how this may inconvenience the “winner.” With constant curiosity as to whether or not this Groupon lifestyle is really livable, I predict this social media campaign will continue to bring new and returning readers to check on our “chosen one.”

Negative: The selected individual will only win the $100,000 if she successfully survives with nothing but a laptop, cellphone, and an unlimited supply of Groupons.  What if the individual fails?  Does the campaign just end if and when he slips up and uses his own cash to buy McDonald’s without a Groupon?  I guess that’s the excitement of this whole campaign.  We’ll have to wait and watch…

What do you think are some other brand ambassador programs that have demonstrated the power of social media?  Are there any brands that you’d like to be the brand ambassador for?  Please share your opinions in the comments.

I just read this great article about Nestle’s recent Facebook debacle and absolutely loved it. The short version of the Facebook disaster is this: Greenpeace is mad at Nestle over palm oil and a bunch of their members began taking to Facebook to express their outrage. They covered the Nestle Facebook Fan Page with wall posts and changed their profile pictures to altered versions of the Nestle logo to further make their point. The moderator of  Nestle’s Facebook page became flustered by the outpouring of hatred, and responded in a manner that was just a little too human. Comments such as: “Thanks for the lesson in manners. Consider yourself embraced. But it’s our page, we set the rules” certainly didn’t win him/her any fans. This whole mess draws attention to what I think is one of the least talked about, but maybe most important, aspects of social media – the social media crisis plan. Clearly, Nestle had no such plan ready.

But with no plan laid out, how could the moderator know how to handle such a delicate and heated situation? On one hand, I completely understand the moderator’s response (and even secretly applaud it a little, although I wouldn’t have gone there myself). Anyone who has ran a Facebook Fan Page for a client and had to deal with people’s inappropriate/rude/harsh comments, can tell you they are hard to cope with. Many times I’ve had to curb the desire to respond to an overly zealous persons complaint with a “Hey this is a FAN page. If you aren’t a fan, feel free to leave” or a “now why don’t you just simmer down a bit.” But as the Nestle moderator learned, angry people don’t appreciate sarcasm or rudeness, so I’ve refrained.

The challenge for many companies is that when crisis does break out in a social media space, it seems like there is no correct response.  Just regurgitating the public press statement probably won’t win you any engagement awards. However Nestle’s “human” approach, didn’t have a positive effect either. So what’s the right answer?

I’ve found it varies per client, but there are a couple of tactics we employ most often.

1. Ignore it. “What??!” you ask? I’ve learned that, sometimes, there is no good way to respond and any response is only going to anger your critics more. Things will die down, probably sooner than you thought, and definitely sooner than if you tried to jump in and defend yourself. Plus, sometimes, when you keep yourself out of the conversation, your fans will jump in and start defending you. What’s better than that?

2. Thank people for their comments and let them know you heard their concerns. If it is something like this Nestle situation, where clearly there were no new answers that would appease the members of Greenpeace, it is pointless to just try and re-state your position. Instead, just thank them for their thoughts and wait for next week when they’ve moved onto something else.

3. Respond with humor. This will only work for certain situations but often times humor can diffuse a situation. People don’t expect it and it can help put everything in perspective. This one is risky though because you have to ensure that your humor doesn’t border on rude or sarcastic. As we’ve seen, that probably won’t be effective.

So what do you think about Nestle’s response? How would you have handled it better?

In 2008, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences created its own YouTube Channel offering behind the scenes footage, interviews, highlights and more. So, did this help? Well according to an article in AdAge, last year’s Oscars was the among the lowest-rated broadcast in its televised history. Ouch.

One reason this might have failed is because social media is about  strategy, and not just the tools.  Anyone can throw up a Facebook Page, YoubTube Channel or Twitter handle, but without a strategy tying these to a traditional marketing campaign, you’re likely set up for failure.

Third time’s a charm, right? The Academy is back with a new social media strategy for the 2010 Oscars. A Facebook Page for the Oscars was created with shiny features like a live stream and a chat on which they streamed the nominees. Taking note of the fact that people love to guess who will take home golden statues that evening, the Academy released an iPhone app allowing fans to make their own predictions to compare against other fans.

Is this a recipe for success? We’ll find out soon enough.

Jay noted that when  a woman calls a company to reach customer service, she almost expects to basically get no where.  When she emails, she may expect a response within a few days.  But, when an individual hops on Twitter and Facebook and posts to a brand that has so openly requested her to interact, she wants a response/solution to her issues RIGHT NOW.

Below are some simple strategies to implement customer service into your Facebook and Twitter accounts.

Using Social Media for Customer Service

1)  Monitor your social media accounts daily.  Engaging posts are important, but know that you can’t always plan for what a fan/follower may post.

2)  When a fan complains about your product, don’t delete the post.  Let it be an open dialogue where you assure your fan that the problem is going to be addressed.

3)  Respond to questions, concerns, and even positive feedback immediately.  And by immediately, I mean within an hour!  If you don’t generate a response quickly enough, that may be a lost follower forever.

4)  If the issue requires tech support or help from a separate department within your company, respond within the hour to tell them that you are sorry for the frustration, the issue is being addressed and you will respond with an answer/solution within the next three hours.  (And follow up with that guarantee.)

It’s probably a good idea to have some simple responses to questions that tend to pop up regularly on your fan pages and Twitter feeds, but know that you can’t plan the day to day.  Just be confident in your brand and remember that these fans/followers trust your social media involvement as a part of your customer service initiatives.

What brands do you think utilize social media for customer service best?