Keep reading to learn how free apps can provide enormous opportunities for your business.

Why Facebook Timeline Apps?

Now that the new Timeline layout is mandatory for all page owners, we’re all beginning to find our way around the new layout.

For many, especially those who just started seeing traction with the old layout, Timeline presents brand-new challenges (and opportunities!) for staying top-of-mind.

Sure, the layout is beautiful, with lots of room for high-res video and photo. But with all the rules and changes (e.g., that your cover photo can’t be promotional, or that there’s no more driving non-fans to a default “welcome” tab prompting them to Like your page), page admins have their work cut out for them in terms of fostering high engagement and moving their fans to take action. Without engagement and momentum, your page is as good as invisible.

Since page admins can no longer designate a default landing tab (also referred to as the “default welcome tab”), businesses need to get more creative and use custom apps to direct Facebook page visitors to take action. Instead of having apps on the left-hand side of your page, they’re now featured directly below the cover photo.

One way to make up for the loss of engagement with a default landing tab is to drive visitors to your custom apps instead. Custom apps are prime real estate when optimized.

To get the most out of this real estate, you need to create a custom app strategy for your page.

Here’s a simple 3-step action plan to help you get momentum quickly with your new Timeline layout:

• Define your custom app strategy.
• Use a third-party tool.
• Promote and drive traffic to your custom app.

#1: Define Your Custom App Strategy

Before you start creating custom apps for your page, you want to be clear on your overall app strategy. Define what outcome you want to get from the app.

Do you want to create lead generation opportunities? Or create a welcome page? Or perhaps you want to turn your app into a mini-storefront? There are endless strategies for your custom apps.

Here are a few examples:

Social Media Examiner has created multiple custom apps to move their fans to action. As you can see from the image below, they use their custom apps to provide valuable content, collect leads and introduce their new Networking Clubs.

Social Media Examiner uses custom apps to provide valuable content, collect leads and introduce their new Networking Clubs.

When you click on “Networking Clubs” you’ll be taken to a custom app that incorporates video to explain the Clubs. Video within custom apps is a smart strategy to connect with your fans on a more personal level.

When you add video to your custom apps, you're able to connect with your Facebook fans at a deeper level.

Another custom app strategy is to use them to display your best content. I’ve done that here by pulling in one of my most popular blog posts. If you click on the custom app “Click 4 Tips,” you’ll see my latest blog post inside my Facebook page.

The more value you can create on your Facebook page, the greater your overall fan engagement. Use custom apps to highlight your best content.

With the help of the tool Lujure, I added one of my most popular blog posts to a custom app inside of Facebook.

The cool thing about pulling in my blog post is that all of the share buttons work—meaning I can get even more exposure via clicks inside Facebook. Also, at the end of my blog post, I’ve included an opt-in opportunity. Therefore, not only am I providing great content, I am also growing my email list.

Another useful strategy for custom apps is to create an e-commerce opportunity. As you can see from the example below, Christie LaPiana has pulled her website directly into her Facebook page. Now anyone can click on a product and purchase it without ever leaving Facebook.

Christie LaPiana uses her Facebook page as an e-commerce portal, selling her products directly from her custom app.

This e-commerce site is inside Christie's Facebook page, creating a new opportunity for her to sell her products.

#2: Use a Third-Party Tool to Create Your Custom App

By now you might be thinking, “So how do I create these custom apps?”

The good news is that you have many third-party tool options. Some options are free, others charge a fee.

For some of my custom apps, I’ve used Lujure. It’s a drag-and-drop operation, making it very easy to use, even when you are a bit technically challenged! Check out my short video to see how easy it is to set up a custom app in just minutes.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kh3PfiLiZ2k

#3: Promote and Drive Traffic to Your Custom App

One of the biggest challenges you will face once you create your custom app is driving traffic to it.

To grab your fans’ attention, make sure to use strong calls to action in both the custom app name and the app thumbnail image. The thumbnail image specs are 111 x 74 pixels.

Quick Tip! Here’s a free tool that will help you create your custom app thumbnails without ever having to hire a designer.

By adding thumbnails and action phrases to your custom apps, you can dramatically increase fan engagement.

In the example above, I called one app “Sign Up,” one “Watch,” one “Enroll Now” and then included more actionable text (“Social Media Updates,” “Free Video Series,” etc.) in the app thumbnail itself.

Calls to action that provide a clear incentive—valuable knowledge, industry tips and entertainment value—are likely to get more clicks.

To upload a thumbnail or change the name of the app, follow these steps:

• First, collapse all of your apps by using the drop-down arrow to the right of the apps.
• Next, put your cursor in the right corner of any app and you will see an edit pencil icon.
• Click the edit pencil and you will see a drop-down.
• Click “Edit Settings” in the drop-down and you will see an option to change “Custom Tab Image” (a.k.a. the thumbnail image) and the app name.
  

  Choose "Edit Settings" in the drop-down menu.

  

  Rename your app with a call to action.

As you can see, there are a lot of different custom app strategies you can try out for your own Facebook page. The key to success is to create apps that will get your fans engaged and move them to take action.

Now it’s your turn!

What do you think? Have you used custom apps to create engagement and drive your fans to action? Share your custom app strategy in the comments box below.

Are you wondering how others do it?

If you want the massive views, exposure and targeted traffic that YouTube offers, you need to focus on first building an audience—or as YouTube calls them, subscribers.

Why YouTube Subscribers?

A YouTube subscriber is someone who has chosen to “follow” your channel and your content so they can stay updated with your latest videos. In essence, a subscriber can become a raving fan who watches, comments and shares your videos with others. Building up a strong subscriber base is essential for creating a powerful community online.

The following article will reveal six simple—yet highly effective—methods for getting more subscribers to your channel and your existing videos.

However, before you follow these simple action steps, you’ll need to make sure you’re already following these three principles for YouTube marketing success in your business:

• Be consistent: The “one-and-done” approach does not work on YouTube. If you want the views and the traffic, you need to be posting and updating your content consistently for best results. Upload new videos and share with your list and sphere of influence as frequently as possible.
• Provide value: If your video fails to provide any real value to the end user, don’t be surprised when it doesn’t get any real views. Each video needs to deliver your best content, your best-kept secrets and your most effective strategies. How can you raise the bar and provide more value in your videos?
• Be remarkable: Today, it’s not enough to be posting weekly videos with your tips and content. Using your creative “right-brain marketing approach,” you need to convey your content in an engaging and entertaining format that separates you from the rest. In short, your videos need to be remarkable. The biggest sin in marketing is to be boring. How can your videos be the opposite of boring?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TxnbXJMZ3Dg

If you put the above principles into practice in all of your marketing efforts (not just YouTube), seeing results with these six subscriber-getting strategies will be easy!

#1: Ask for Subscribers

The simplest way to begin increasing your subscriber count is to start asking for it in your videos. Never assume that your viewer can read your mind. In your videos, give your audience a compelling call to action and ask them to click the “Subscribe” button right above your video.

Here’s a simple three-part formula for creating a compelling call to action in your video that makes subscribing to your channel a complete “no-brainer!”

• Tell them what to do.
• Tell them how to do it.
• Tell them why to do it.

For example: “To stay up to date with my latest videos and cool marketing tips, make sure to subscribe to this YouTube channel by clicking the button above this video.”

Ask your viewers to subscribe to your YouTube channel.

#2: Use Annotations

Annotations are the little colorful sticky notes that people paste all over their videos once they’ve been uploaded to YouTube. Although this tool is often overused, a few strategically placed annotations can make a world of difference for your YouTube marketing efforts.

In the case of increasing your subscribers, there are two effective uses for annotations that I recommend:

• Call-to-action annotation: Add a “speech bubble“ annotation directly under the Subscribe button to all of your old and existing videos.
  

  Notice how this speech bubble is aligned just below the Subscribe button.

• Click-to-action annotation: When you mention your call to action, add an image, graphic or “button“ to the video and overlay it with a “Spotlight“ annotation that links directly to your channel subscribe page. In short, your viewers can now subscribe by clicking an annotation inside your video.
  

  Add this Subscribe button in your videos.

#3: Add a YouTube Widget and More to Your Blog

If you already have a web property that is getting traffic, this is a great opportunity to leverage those visitors and get them to become subscribers to your channel. And they can do it with the click of a button.

Once you start embedding your YouTube videos on your blog, there are two really easy ways to get more subscribers:

• YouTube Subscription Widget: By installing the YouTube Subscription Widget to the sidebar of your blog or website, you can make it even easier for others to find your videos and subscribe to future content.
  

  Ask your blog readers to subscribe to your YouTube channel.

  Installing the widget is as simple as copying and pasting the iframe code below into your website’s HTML code:

  <iframe id=”fr” src=”http://www.YouTube.com/subscribe_widget?p=addYouTube Username here” style=”overflow: hidden; height: 105px; width: 300px; border: 0;” scrolling=”no” frameBorder=”0″></iframe>

  Note: Make sure to adjust the link above to include your YouTube channel name (username).

  For specific instructions on using and installing the YouTube Subscriber Widget, visit YouTube’s Official Blog.

• Call-to-action graphic: Recently, YouTube added a few features that allow users to interact more with videos, even when the videos are embedded on other web properties such as your blog. To take advantage of this update, add a small graphic above your embedded videos that tells people exactly what to do when watching!
  

  Be sure to add this new feature when you embed YouTube videos on your website.

  Not only can viewers like and share your videos even when they’re embedded on your blog, they can also subscribe to your channel by pushing the “more info” button.

  

  Note the More Info button where viewers can subscribe to your YouTube channel.

#4: Leverage Featured Channels

Another simple method for increasing your reach and scooping up more subscribers is to strategically partner with other YouTube content-creators.

Directly on your YouTube channel page is an option to add other “Featured Channels” of those “YouTubers” you like and recommend. When you get other channels that have a similar audience to feature you, you can expect to see new viewers coming your way very quickly!

Add Featured Channels.

How exactly do you get others to feature you on their channels? Simple. Ask! (But it also helps to reciprocate.)

#5: Consistently Interact

When you start to understand that YouTube is a community, not just a place to host your videos, you will begin to see far more results when you interact with the other members of this community.

One of the best ways to build a following of subscribers is to support others in their YouTube marketing efforts. Comment, like and subscribe as frequently as possible to other content-creators on YouTube, and wait for the reciprocation.

Take a few minutes a day to find some new and relevant YouTube channels, pay attention to their content and leave real, genuine comments. It’s a simple concept, really: the more you give, the more you get!

Take a few minutes to support others by leaving comments on the channels & videos that you enjoy.

#6: Create a Payoff

Lastly, my favorite strategy for attracting new subscribers starts by creating a “payoff.” There is something magical about posting your goals to the public.

You want to lose a few stubborn pounds? Post it on Facebook! Do you fancy that special someone? Shout it from a rooftop! But what if you want more YouTube subscribers?

Here’s a simple step-by-step process of the “subscriber payoff method” in action:

• Identify your current subscriber count (e.g., 450 subscribers)
• Identify your subscriber goal (e.g., 500 subscribers)
• Pick something fun, unique or different that you will do once you reach 500 subscribers (e.g., a free giveaway, shave your head, do a crazy dance on video, etc.)
• Share your goal (and your payoff) with the world!

When you share your goals with the world, people will jump on board to support you and help you accomplish your goals. This is a great way to spread your reach with little effort and have a fun time doing it.

Back to You

What do you think? How are you getting subscribers to your YouTube channel? Please share your questions and comments in the box below.

Pinterest is one of the hottest social media sites at the moment. Pinterest was the fastest stand alone site ever to reach 10 million monthly unique visitors.

One study shows how Pinterest has been bringing in more traffic to websites than LinkedIn, Google+ and YouTube put together.

Brands are benefiting with Pinterest in generating traffic and sales.

So if you’d like to attract a lot of traffic to your website using Pinterest, check out these 6 tips.

#1: Use Original Pictures to Drive Traffic

If you visit the Popular Section of Pinterest, you’ll see that most of the popular pictures and images in this section are original and unique. The popular images are “repinned,” “liked” and commented on the most number of times.

Screenshot of a popular page on Pinterest. The popular page consists of images that have been "repinned," "liked" and "commented" on the most.

Study the pictures here before you start creating your own pictures.

An example is Ana White’s Carpentry Blog. A recent post on Social Media Examiner shows how her blog receives more than 6,000 visitors a day from Pinterest. This is because she focuses on publishing original pictures of her carpentry work on Pinterest.

These include pictures she took of the cupboards, desks and other furniture she created and posted on her blog. Her blog readers then pin Ana’s pictures onto their own Pinterest boards where other Pinterest users see them, repin them and like them. The end result is a lot of traffic to her blog.

Ana White's Pinterest profile.

You can check the images that are being repinned from any website by using the link http://pinterest.com/source/domainname.com/.  All you will need to do is replace “domainname” with the website’s name.

If you want to be successful in driving traffic from Pinterest to your blog, focus on creating unique pictures and/or images.

#2: Pin Other People’s Content to Build a Wider Following

Pinterest isn’t all about pinning your own pictures onto your boards. Just like on any other social medium, you need to share other people’s content too. So look for others’ pictures and content relating to your product or service and pin them onto your boards.

Make sure you stick to a specific topic on each pinboard. A pinboard is a set of pins. You can create different pinboards on different topics. You can add an unlimited number of pins to a pinboard. More definitions about the different components of a Pinterest profile can be found on the Pinterest Help page.

Chobani's Pinterest profile consists of pictures and images pinned from different websites.

Sticking to a specific topic on each pinboard allows people to follow the ones that interest them. Pinterest gives you the freedom to pin anything you want, but make sure you name a pinboard appropriately and pin pictures related to that topic.

An example of a company doing this well is Chobani, a yogurt company. If you visit their Pinterest profile, you’ll see that they not only pin pictures of their products, but also pictures from recipes in which yogurt is an ingredient.

They also have a pinboard where recipes of products that don’t have any yogurt in them are pinned. There’s also a pinboard on fitness. All of these help promote Chobani’s product and brand, as they show the various ways in which their yogurts can be used in recipes and reinforce that yogurt is a healthy food.

Pin other people’s content and carefully choose the topics of the pinboards you create to build the following you want for your brand.

#3: Create Catalogs to Bring in Sales

Another fantastic way to display your products on Pinterest is to create catalogs. You can create a pinboard and pin pictures based on one of your collections.

You can also add a price to these pictures. When you want the price to be displayed on the pinboard, all you have to do is add the $ sign followed by the price to the description and the price will be displayed.

Adding the price will make sure you only attract people to your website who are really interested in buying the pinned product.

For example, let’s say an image of a product like a gold chain that costs hundreds of dollars has been pinned without the price. If it’s an attractive image, lots of people are going to visit the site, but many of them will not buy it after they realize it’s price.

But if you add the price, there’s a greater possibility that people who visit your site from that image will buy it, as they will know the price before they visit your site.

A company using catalogs effectively is Nordstrom. If you visit their Pinterest profile, you’ll find pictures from several collections pinned onto many pinboards as catalogs.

Nordstrom's Pinterest profile has several pinboards. Many of these pinboards are catalogs of different products.

Another company that is making good use of pinboards to display their products on Pinterest is Feather Earrings. If you check out one of their pinboards called “Must Have Products,” you will find pins of their products displayed along with their prices.

Feather Earrings has a pinboard on their Pinterest profile where they pin their products and add the price of each product to its description.

Creating catalogs on Pinterest can be a very effective way to drive traffic to your website and increase sales.

#4: Host Competitions

You can create picture competitions on Pinterest. Let your fans know what the prize is and ask them to take a picture and share it to win the competition.

Ask your fans to pin that picture onto their pinboards. They can then either send you the link to their picture, or you could ask them to use a unique hashtag to enter the competition. Then you’ll have to search the hashtag on Pinterest and come up with a means of deciding the best picture.

A company that recently ran a competition was Lands’ End Canvas. They ran the “Pin It to Win It” contest. Here the participants needed to create pinboards with their favorite Lands’ End products and the person who created the pinboard with the best collection of products won. Details about this expired competition are available on the Lands’ End Facebook page.

Details about the Lands' End Canvas "Pin It to Win It Contest" were published on their Facebook page.

#5: Get Fans Involved to Help Spread the Word

Pinterest gives you the option to allow other contributors to your pinboards. The pinboards you create don’t have to contain only your pins—you can select other people and let them pin pictures onto your pinboards too.

Take advantage of this feature. Select some of your favorite or most active fans and ask them to pin pictures onto your pinboards. You could even run a competition where the prize is to be a regular contributor to the pinboard.

Get fans involved to help spread the word about your products.

You can add contributors to your Pinterest pinboards by choosing the "+Contributors" option.

#6: Pin Offers

Create a unique image about your latest offer and pin it onto one of your pinboards on Pinterest. Create an exclusive pinboard to pin the latest offers for Pinterest users only.

These offers could be exclusively uploaded to your Pinterest pinboards, or they could be pinned from a website page.

When you pin free offers, your fans will definitely repin them and share them with their friends. Everybody loves offers. Make sure you don’t put a limit if you want many repins.

The Wall Street Journal is making good use of Pinterest to promote their latest offers. On their Pinterest profile, they have a pinboard where they pin images of daily deals from their promotional service WSJ select. Their pins contain a picture of the product and have a description of how much the deal is worth.

The Wall Street Journal has a Pinterest pinboard called WSJ Select where they pin images of the latest details from their website WSJ Select.

More Possibilities on Pinterest

The above methods are just a few ways you can use Pinterest. If you spend some time and think about it, you can find scores of ways to use Pinterest to promote your business.

What do you think of Pinterest? Are there any other creative ways you have used Pinterest? How has it helped your business? Please leave your comments in the box below.

What’s New This Week?

Google+ Hangouts On Air Now Available Worldwide: Google+ Hangouts On Air was launched last September to a limited number of broadcasters and is now rolling out to the rest of the world.  This means “you can now go live in front of a global audience.” Here’s a reminder of what you can do:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3pmSWh2BQco

Facebook Announces The App Center: The App Center is a new place for people to find social apps. “For the over 900 million people that use Facebook, the App Center will become the new, central place to find great apps”

"Everything has an app detail page, which helps people see what makes an app unique and lets them install it before going to an app."

What You Need To Know About Facebook’s IPO: Facebook’s initial public offering is expected to take place on May 18.

Discussion from our Networking Clubs: Thousands of social media marketers and small business owners are asking questions and helping others in our free Networking Clubs. Here are a few interesting discussions worth highlighting:

• Do you think of your blog as a social network?
• What are your favorite productivity apps?
• What’s your experience with Facebook Offers?

Google+ Notifications in Gmail Get More Interactive: You can now view, comment on and +1 Google+ notifications from your Gmail inbox. These updates will appear in your Google+ stream in real time and responses from others will appear in Gmail.

You can adjust which Google+ notifications you want emailed to your Gmail account via Google+ settings.

Google Offers Get Closer to Your Business: Android users in the U.S. can now find Google Offers from nearby businesses using the latest release of Google Maps. You will be able to “see all the Google Offers near you in list or map form, making it easy to get great deals from local businesses on the go.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yBrbIQ-1g80

Twitter Tweaks the Tweet Design: “Now, when you hover over the newly redesigned tweet, you’ll always see options to reply, favorite or retweet in the lower-left corner against a grey background.”

This design modification makes it easier to interact with others on Twitter.com.

Tumblr Introduces Storyboard: Storyboard is Tumblr’s “new hub for in-depth conversations with Tumblr’s creative community.”

Foursquare Adds a History Page: With the “new, fully searchable history page, you can easily jump to all your past check-ins from any month or year, and even filter them by who you were with, what type of place you were at, or which neighborhood, city, or country you were in.”

Foursquare will be "adding more features like filtering by venue and adding tips or creating lists right from this history page."

Groupon Rewards Launches Nationwide in the U.S.: “When you visit a participating Groupon Rewards merchant and use the credit card saved in your Groupon account, Rewards are unlocked after you’ve spent a certain amount predetermined by the business.”

"Eliminating the hassles of check-ins, extra apps or punch cards, with Groupon Rewards you can automatically get benefits for things you already do."

Here are a few useful social media tools worth noting:

WP Pinner: A WordPress plugin that lets you manage your Pinterest account. “With this plugin you can easily auto-pin WordPress posts, schedule your pins throughout the day, auto-follow users to get noted and keep track of your account (CTR, clicks, likes, repins, reach, etc.).”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vx10ctSCLoM

Lujure: An easy tool for businesses to customize Facebook fan pages.

Lujure is a simple, quick tool you can use, with no technology expertise at all, to customize your own Facebook page.

Curate Me: A tool to help you stay current, find good things to share and get content ideas.

Curate Me finds the best stories from your friends and the brilliant people you follow and delivers them straight to your inbox.

And don’t miss this:

Social Media Examiner’s Social Media Success Summit 2012  (online conference) just started. It’s not too late to join!

Join 27 social media experts at Social Media Examiner’s big online conference! Go here to learn more.

What social media news caught your interest this week? Please share your comments below.

Steve shares insights into how video can give your company a competitive advantage. He also shares tips on how to get started and what to look out for in the future.

Be sure to check out the takeaways below after you watch the video.

Here are some of the things you’ll learn in this video:

• Why you should consider using video for your business
• How you can use video to create a competitive advantage
• Advice on how you can create quality video on a small budget
• How to use videos at an event
• Tips on how to take your video to the next level
• How to upgrade your equipment
• A key way to get more video views
• How to integrate video into your social media strategy

Connect with Steve on Twitter @stevegarfield.  You can also check out Steve’s blog.

What do you think? Do you use video for your business? What tips do you have to share about creating video? Please leave them below.

Do you want to figure out how to drive revenue from existing customers through the social channel?

This post will give you 5 tips to gain more revenue from your existing customers using social media.

Why Focus on Existing Customers?

For many companies, connecting with their existing customers is a natural fit for social media. These companies are seeing conversations about their brands, their competitors and their industry that provide them with an opportunity to engage others in dialogue.

There are two types of strategies that revolve around existing customers on the social media channel. The first is to offer customer service help through the social channel. We’ve seen excellent examples of this with Comcast and Boingo, which have successfully addressed customer concerns through social media.

Comcast provides customer service on Twitter.

The second strategy is to attempt to increase value to the customer experience through the social channel. We’ve seen excellent examples of this with InfusionSoft and Radian6.

The value of the customer base for companies is substantial. We’ve all heard that it costs more to get a new customer than to keep your existing ones. So it makes sense that we would see more companies developing strategies to engage customers with the social channel.

Social media represents a low-cost way for companies to engage customers in two-way dialogue and develop deeper relationships. Relationships are a benefit that is difficult to achieve with other marketing channels. One often-overlooked opportunity is to use social media to strategically drive incremental revenue from existing customers.

Radian6 engages customers by sharing resources.

These 5 tips provide a framework for how you can adjust your strategies to ensure they capitalize on the most frequently overlooked opportunity for increased revenue: customers.

Tip #1: Give Customers Incentives for Making More Frequent Purchases

Whether you are in a service- or product-based industry, you have the ability to increase revenue by encouraging customers to make purchases more frequently.

For service industries, this may mean promoting add-on services, upgrades or premium offerings. For product industries, this includes encouraging customers to come back more often. How can you do this with social media?

You can offer deals and specials that are exclusive to your social media followers based on the level of customer or the frequency of purchase.

For example, if you are a software company, you could offer exclusive discounts to your user conference for social media followers based upon the number of software licenses they are using. Or if you are a product company, you could do a coupon for social media followers that provides a 50% discount off their fifth purchase.

Wine of the Month Club offers fan-only specials.

Tip #2: Give Customers a Reason to Spend More at Each Purchase

The second way you can drive revenue from existing customers is to get them to spend more at each purchase. So if your average transaction is $35, the goal would be to get the customer to spend $50. This can also be accomplished by exclusive deals for social media fans and followers.

You’ve probably seen coupon campaigns many times that are designed to achieve this. Coupons such as $25 off a $100 purchase are aimed at increasing the amount spent at each purchase. Why do they work? In consumers’ effort to get to a $100 purchase, they tend to spend more. This works well for product-based companies, but what about service industries?

Service industries can look to promote package deals for their services that bundle offerings together. In this case, the social channel is used to drive awareness of the offerings with a clear call to action, versus promoting deals or coupons like we typically see for product-based industries.

31 Bags gives Facebook discounts for spending more money.

Tip #3: Combine Email Marketing Offers

Keep in mind it’s important to maintain a balance of content on your social channels. The general rule is less than 20% of your content should be about your company. Therefore, a mix of your own content with information from relevant third parties is important.

The last thing you want is to have a social channel that is flooded with deals and promotions with very little customer engagement.

It will be important to think through why a customer would be interested in buying what you are offering and what the process is for them to actually make a purchase so that you can optimize the path to conversion from the social channel to the sales funnel.

HubSpot integrates email campaigns.

Tip #4: Educate Your Customers about Your Other Products and Services

Another important element of increasing sales is to make sure customers are aware of the other types of services or products your company offers. You can do this by featuring a product or service profile of the week, which provides you with the opportunity to highlight premium services and explain what they are and why customers should care.

Don’t be boring; combine the types of content you use to educate the customer with blog posts, photos, webinars and videos.

Under Armour cross-promotes product lines on Facebook.

Tip #5: Provide Consistent Value

At the end of the day, it’s difficult to keep an audience engaged if you’re constantly running another promotion on your social channels. Therefore, it’s important to find a way to balance your content and provide value to customers.

If your customers find value in the content you produce for your social channels, they are far more likely to keep coming back for more.

InfusionSoft, a small business customer relationship management system, has done an excellent job of providing value to their customer base. They recognize that they have sales and marketing expertise inside their company that the small businesses they serve may not have.

InfusionSoft's resource center.

Therefore, instead of promoting a bunch of features their software offers, they position themselves as business advisors to their clients. They provide tips, resources and tons of information that their clients can use to grow. Ultimately, the more their clients grow, the more InfusionSoft grows.

As you consider how to grow your customer base through the social channel, it’s important that you create a win-win situation like InfusionSoft has. If you are only there to serve your own needs, customers will recognize your attitude early. Instead, find a way to combine your desire to increase revenues with the thing that motivates your customers the most.

Bonus Tip: Measuring the Results

So… you’ve done all of these things and now you need to understand the impact on your organization. These customer retention metrics will help you show why your strategy is important to the organization.

The key here is to measure a control group so you can compare these metrics for social media and non-social media customers. This will allow you to show how social media is helping other channels be more successful.

All metrics are calculated as averages and shown as per-customer results. For example, average revenue per customer.

This chart shows how to measure results.

Here are some related articles about customer service, why social media is inseparable from customer service and ROI.

What do you think? Do you have an example of a brand that is doing a great job of driving revenue and superior service through the social channel? Are you servicing your customers with social media? What tips would you offer others? Please share in the comments section and join the conversation.

And sometimes we may even hear them uttered together in one breath as SoLoMo.

With an increase of users relying on mobile phones, tablets and their accompanying geo-location technology, businesses today are increasingly finding the need to think locally. So, how does SoLoMo work for businesses?

In this post, we’ll introduce 26 tips, an A-Z guide for location-based marketing.

#1: Analytics

If you’ve been wondering about location-based marketing, chances are that you’ve thought about how you’ll go about measuring performance.

Mohamed Kahlain suggests five tools to help get a handle on how well your efforts are doing: Geotoko, Titanium + Geo, Momentfeed, WebTrends Mobile and Fourscore.

An example of Webtrends Mobile Analytics Insights.

#2: Blog

Trying to appeal to a local market? Blog posts are good places to write about something specific to your local area—people, places, events and restaurants—you name it.

Be sure to optimize the post with tags that demonstrate the locality of your business so that they will benefit your local search strategy and get indexed properly by search engines.

Optimize your post with tags related to your location.

#3: Coupons and Location-Based Mobile Apps

Coupon apps allow users to find a plethora of deals in their local areas.

Consumer Reports reviewed coupon apps back in December 2011. On the list were The Coupons App, Cellfire App, Foursquare, Grocery iQ, Pushpins and Where.

A quick search of iOS and android apps will offer many opportunities for businesses and shoppers alike.

Will a coupon location mobile app fit into your marketing strategy?

The Coupons App is an example of one app that helps users find deals in their local areas.

#4: Directories

To do business locally, companies can submit profile data to a number of local directories (e.g., YellowPages, SuperPages, etc.)

One easy way to get started is through Get Listed, where you can quickly see which sites you may have already claimed your page on and by clicking on the link, you can add your business info to better optimize your social search.

Get Listed helps you see where you've already claimed your page and what's left on your to-do list.

#5: Engagement

Momentfeed suggests that location-based engagements offer a new way for consumers to engage with brands and products and for brands to connect with consumers—in the moment. They define location-based engagement as: Any action a consumer takes to connect or interact with a specific geographic place via their mobile device… each shares three qualities: time, place, and action.

Furthermore, with location-based engagement, one must voluntarily engage with the place; e.g., a place of business, building, venue, etc.

This action grants a measure of permission on the part of the consumer, not unlike making a search query or clicking on an ad but more specific and timely, which opens the door to a branded response.

#6: Fun, Friends and Check-Ins

Claudio Schapsis asks two questions you too may have wondered about: “Why are people sharing their location?” and “What motivates customers to ‘check in’ and share their whereabouts with the world?”

He answers with the “7 F’s of check-ins”:

• Fun—people participate for the fun.
• Fame—people compete to achieve virtual status, badges, stickers, pins and other items so they can show them to their friends.
• Friends—making and meeting friends.
• Flirt—to interact with people they don’t necessarily know.
• Fancying—to recommend places they like.
• Following—to keep track of places they visited.
• Freebies—to receive new offers, discounts, coupons and free stuff.

How can you help motivate your customers to check in?

The Seven Fs of Check-ins.

#7: Geofences

Geofences are defined as the virtual perimeters for a real-world geographic area. (Wikipedia)

David Sim references geofence tips from Placecast CEO Alistair Goodman’s recent presentation at O’Reilly’s Where Conference.

Goodman suggests that by linking data about the customer’s preferences with the location, it makes the data richer and the message more relevant.

For example, at what type of place is the user (mall, stadium, park) and what’s the weather like? What do the users want to be notified about, when and how often?

Another key point is the need to find relevant locations—not just the retailer’s store, but also other places where the customer is likely to be receptive to the offers.

For example, you might promote dog food or pet stores at a dog park, or a promo for a sports drink around a gym, or the sponsor of a concert around an arena.

What relevant locations can you use to tie in with marketing for your business? What other data will help make your offer more relevant for the user?

#8: Hyperlocal Content

Art Williams defines hyperlocal content as content that has a myopic focus on a specific locale, typically smaller than a metropolitan area. He suggests two important questions for any business online:

• Should my business be using hyperlocal content to drive traffic?
• How can hyperlocal content be used to maximum effectiveness?

He says too that with hyperlocal content it’s even more important that your content is not marketing-speak; instead your primary goal should be brand awareness.

How can you use hyperlocal content in your marketing?

#9: Incentives

Incentives are among the 7 steps for a location-based marketing campaign, as offered by Boundless Marketing. They recommend you come up with “great offers to give to your users that are relevant to your brand. Incentives are what location-based marketing is all about, so you must create unique rewards for your specific target audiences.”

What relevant incentives can your business use?

#10: Jump-Start Your Mobile Marketing Campaign

In their new book, Go Mobile: Location-Based Marketing, Apps, Mobile Optimized Ad Campaigns, 2D Codes, and Other Mobile Strategies to Grow Your Business, authors Jeanne Hopkins and Jamie Turner suggest you jump-start your mobile marketing campaign by doing six things:

• Become a mobile marketing power user.
• Set up and launch your mobile website.
• Analyze how the Fortune 500 use mobile marketing.
• Register your business on location-based services.
• Run a mobile paid search campaign.
• Run a mobile display campaign.

Go Mobile offers practical, step-by-step guidance for implementing a mobile marketing campaign.

#11: Key Performance Indicators

In their book, Location-Based Marketing for Dummies, authors Aaron Strout, Mike Schneider and B.J. Emerson suggest that thinking about which key performance indicators to track can be critical.

Some of their suggestions for metrics include daily check-ins, check-ins cross-posted to Twitter, comments and tips, photos and number of offers/deals redeemed.

Location-Based Marketing for Dummies teaches how to create a dialogue with location-based services and smartphones.

#12: Local Directories

We began our discussion of directories in #4, but if you’re looking for even more local directories, Eric Vreeland at HubSpot has compiled an extensive list of 50 business directories for local marketing, which will be well worth your time to check out!

#13: Mobile-Friendly Websites

Probably one of the most critical steps you can take is to make your website mobile-friendly—ensuring that it views well on mobile devices and has full functionality to engage users on the go.

Be sure also to include all relevant location information, business and hours, contact information and phone numbers—all in a mobile-friendly design.

Social Media Examiner viewed on an iPhone with mobile theme turned on.

#14: (I)ntent of Purchase

John Arnold reminds us that proximity isn’t necessarily an indication of purchase intent.  He says:

“The most important thing to keep in mind is that your location-based marketing will be much more effective if your tactics can also identify impulsive shoppers versus those who are just researching. That way, you can deliver a ‘buy-it-now’ message to impulsive shoppers or a ‘learn more, buy later’ message to researching shoppers.”

#15: Offers and Conversion Rates

Nathalie Lussier suggests that when you create location-specific offers, you’ll likely get a better conversion rate. As she says:

“Why stop there when you can test different ways of presenting these local offers? Track the number of calls to your number and see if changing the headline to include the city/state improves conversions.”

What can you do to improve your conversion rates?

#16: Pay-Per-Click Advertising

Yellowstone Capital writes that it’s widely accepted that the majority of businesses can effectively make pay-per-click advertising work for their objectives. The one aspect of PPC that is crucial for success is to select specific, targeted and relevant keywords that will drive leads and eventually deliver sales.

Local service providers, particularly if their services are somewhat expensive, can use PPC in a powerful way that allows them to bid on geographic-specific keywords. Providers such as dentists, lawyers, doctors, and particular types of home-repair businesses fit into this category. The kinds of keywords that are used for these businesses are usually of ‘high-intent.’

#17: Queries Produce Local Results

Recent Google updates have improved the ranking of local search results. These updates, part of the 40-algorithm changes known as Google Venice Updates, make it possible for users to find results from their city more reliably. As Google writes, “Now we’re better able to detect when both queries and documents are local to the user.”

Location-based searches allow users to find more relevant results for their query.

#18: Reviews

With more and more people conducting local searches for businesses in their areas, unsolicited reviews of businesses are cropping up on all kinds of platforms.

Businesses need to monitor and manage their communities to see what’s being said about them so they can take necessary steps to engage with someone who may have had a bad experience at their establishment, and conversely to thank someone for taking the time to mention them on Twitter or Facebook.

#19: Search Optimized for Local

Neil Patel writes that “if you have a local business or one that targets audiences in a specific geolocation, then you will want to move beyond general guides for search and social optimization.”

Neil offers eight great strategies for local search:

• Keyword research to focus on industry-specific terms and geo-specific terms.
• Optimize your website for local search by adding locally optimized title tags and meta descriptions.
• Create a geo sitemap.
• Have the best Google Places listing possible.
• Build profiles on other sites to build citations for local SEO.
• Get local reviews when you add buttons to your website and encourage reviews.
• Build links from related local businesses and local bloggers.
• Optimize your social pages (Facebook page, Twitter profile, LinkedIn page, Google+, etc.) for local.

Create the best Google Places listing possible.

#20: Twitter and Local

Expanding further on Neil Patel’s recommendations for optimizing your social pages for local, let’s take a look now at his suggestions for connecting with a local audience on Twitter.

Neil suggests you find people on Twitter through Twitter Lists and directories (e.g., TwitterCounter, Tweet Grader), check out followers for local businesses in your industry (including competitors), follow local discussions and try the Twitter maps app on Bing to see tweets that were sent in your region.

#21: User Numbers and Location-Based Applications

It’s always interesting to hear usage numbers to shed light on how popular something (like location-based applications) has become. Consider these survey findings from ISACA:

• 58% of consumers who have a smart device use location-based applications, despite concerns about safety and use of their personal information for marketing purposes
• Nearly one-third (32%) of consumers in ISACA’s survey use location-based apps more than they did a year ago; and location-based activities are most frequently done on a smartphone
• Tablet or laptops are getting directions (59%)
• Tagging photos on social media (44%)

#22: Virtual Businesses and Foursquare

Hmm, virtual businesses and Foursquare may sound a bit like an oxymoron, but New England Multimedia wondered what a virtual business like theirs could do when Foursquare and location-based social media platforms are all the rage. They came up with a creative solution—partner with a brick-and-mortar business.

They identified three steps for getting started:

• Define your market.
• Brainstorm the local brick-and-mortar businesses that cater to and serve your market, without being a direct competitor.
• Determine what services or products you can offer to the loyal customers of that business.

They give examples of some services that they might offer the mayor on a certain date; e.g., a free or deeply discounted web video, a free custom on-hold message, a free custom YouTube or Twitter background.

If you have a virtual business, what would you consider offering to loyal customers of a complementary local brick-and-mortar business in your vicinity?

#23: Word-of-Mouth Advertising

Ryan Goff says one of the reasons why marketers love location-based tools such as Foursquare and Facebook Places so much is because each check-in is broadcasted to a user’s friends and that there’s a natural word-of-mouth advertising that occurs through the site. Marketers’ theory is that if users see their friends check into a location, they may be more likely to visit.

From a word-of-mouth standpoint, it can therefore be argued that Facebook check-ins are more valuable than those spread strictly through Foursquare. It’s the difference between telling your best friend where you’re hanging out versus telling a complete stranger. Your best friends are going to be far more likely to trust your recommendations.

#24: (E)xpectations Coming of Age

Pyramid Research says that following many years of high expectations, location-based services marketing is finally coming of age. “Growing adoption of GPS devices is the key driver, helping a whole host of different applications and services to grow. For mobile operators, this is an opportunity to drive new revenue streams.”

#25: Yelp, Geeks and New Cities

Mike Schneider says it’s important to master the basics of location-based marketing. One basic he suggests is picking a service or two to patronize.

Pick Foursquare if you want to do something around check-ins. Pick Google Places if you think the fact that 40% of searches in Google having a location component is important. Pick Yelp if you want to be a part of the system every geek uses when they go to a new city.

Check the local listings and reviews on Yelp for restaurants, shopping, arts, entertainment and more when you go to a new city.

#26: Zero Cost for Using Foursquare

If price is a consideration for you, then you might be interested in knowing that there is no cost to businesses (or users) for using the Foursquare platform. Foursquare provides helpful suggestions for how brands and venue owners can stay engaged with their followers and they’ve posted some interesting case studies that demonstrate how brands and merchants have used Foursquare.

What do you think? How can you engage your customers and prospects with location-based marketing? And if you’ve already been using it, what’s been successful for you? Leave your comments in the box below.

I’ve seen the networking and promotional power of the Twitter chat, so I made up my mind to dig deeper.

It’s challenging to describe everything I learned in this one article, but I’ll do my best.

Here’s the all-in-one guide to prepare for and host your Twitter chat.

Why Twitter Chat?

A Twitter chat is a public Twitter conversation around one unique hashtag. This hashtag allows you to follow the discussion and participate in it. Twitter chats are usually recurring and on specific topics to regularly connect people with these interests.

Bloggers connect using #Blogchat hashtag.

Hosting a Twitter chat is an effective way to:

• Promote your social media presence: While Twitter chats evolve around one hashtag, it’s still public—which means millions of followers of the chat participants will see the hashtag and check what’s behind it. This means hundreds of new people learning about your brand each time!
• Get instant feedback: Twitter chat is a great opportunity to listen to your community. Ask questions and you’ll get answers immediately.
• Create the community behind your business: A Twitter chat is one of the most engaging social media activities which forms a habit. Your followers tune in weekly at the same time to interact with each other, follow each other, retweet each other, etc. That’s one of the best ways to turn your followers into your brand advocates.

#1: Understand How it Works

Before creating your own Twitter chat, it’s smart to follow or even participate in a few Twitter chats in your industry. Here are two sources where you can find relevant Twitter chats on a topic of interest:

• This Google Spreadsheet is the user-generated database of Twitter chats started by Robert Swanwick. To find relevant events, simply use CTRL+F shortcut. I am not sure how actively it is moderated, but it seems pretty clean right now.
• Twebevent is another great tool to track upcoming Twitter chats. The search option seems to be broken, but you can easily go from room to room (or go to the upcoming events) to find an interesting one.
  

  Twebevent home page shows which Twitter chats are coming soon.

#2: Form Your Plan

After a couple of days of following a few relevant chats, you’re likely to have ideas.  Now you can get things set up.

Brainstorm the Hashtag

This step is crucial. The hashtag is what pulls the whole thing together. Once selected, it will be extremely difficult to change. So you want your hashtag to be:

• Absolutely unique. Search Twitter before picking one (you may also want to search Google and Urban Dictionaryto make sure there’s no fixed or nasty associations with the word you have invented for your hashtag).
  

  Check Urban Dictionary to see if your hashtag might have some nasty associations.

• As short as possible. Remember the hashtag will be in each tweet of your chat. The longer the hashtag, the less your chat participants will be able to say!
• Easy to remember. The hashtag should reflect your topic or brand name to create instant associations.
• Easy to type. No matter which tool you invite your followers to use, there will always be some who will manually type the hashtag to include the tweet into the discussion. It helps a lot when your hashtag is easy to type. So avoid double letters, symbols, etc. For example, one of the hardest hashtags I’ve come across is #call_team that includes an underscore.

Arrange the Day and Time

It will be hard (although not impossible) to change the time once you start, as this may result in people missing the chats. Use a time that works best.

• Make sure there’s no major Twitter chat on a similar topic on the day your event is scheduled.
• Help people around the world to understand when your chat is going to take place (this tool will help you with time zones).

Quick tip: Within your niche, create a timetable of all of the well-known Twitter chats to identify the best day and time to run your own. For example, here’s the schedule of all social media and blogging events I created to figure out the best time for our guest blogging #myblogguest Twitter chat:

Twitter chat schedule: Major social and blogging Twitter chats.

Be sure to read Mack Collier’s 10 Steps to Creating a Successful Twitter Chat. Mack, the host of the successful #Blogchat, offers some first-hand experience:

…no matter what day and time you pick, someone will say it isn’t the best for them.  I am constantly having people tell me they want to join #blogchat, but can’t because it’s on Sunday nights.

But sometimes when a holiday or special event falls on Sunday night, I will move #blogchat to Monday for that week.  And as soon as I do, some people will tell me that they can’t join because Monday nights are no good for them.  So pick the day that works best for YOU, and stick with it.

Find the Moderators

You can’t do it all by yourself. You need people who will help you get your message across. Inviting moderators is a great way to enroll powerful people to work on promoting your event.

Moderators can be your team members, the most active members of your community or your close social media contacts.

It’s a good idea to create written guidelines for your chat moderators for them to get an idea of their responsibilities:

• Welcome (new) members.
• Keep the discussion focused (with many Twitter users contributing, it’s not usually easy to keep the discussion on topic).
• Promote the chat regularly and invite new members.
• Summarize different parts of the discussion (mark the end of the introduction part, list tools and resources mentioned, and summarize).
  

  Summarize the discussion to keep it focused.

#3: Announce and Promote Your Twitter Chat

Obviously, you’ll use all available media (your own blog, your social media accounts, press releases, etc.) to announce your upcoming Twitter chat. Here are just a couple of things to remember:

• Create a short but helpful “static” reference page listing when and how often your Twitter chat is going to take place. Your announcement article should also contain a good explanation of how Twitter chats work (here’s a good one), as well as which tools the participants may use to follow and take part. Make sure that this page ranks #1 in Google search for [official hashtag] so that people can find your event to start following it.
  

  A separate page explaining how and when to join a Twitter chat.

• Allow your followers and brand advocates to promote your Twitter chat by creating all sorts of promotional media such as badges (which are easy to embed and share) and introductory videos. People love promoting contests and events if you give them rich media.
  

  Create embedded media to let your followers promote your Twitter chat.

#4: Run Your Twitter Chat

When you’re more comfortable hosting Twitter chats, you’ll find your own “unique” style and approach.  For now, here’s a checklist for you to build on:

1. Start with a welcome introduction (a couple of minutes to let your chat participants introduce themselves and begin tweeting about your event).
2. Announce your chat topic (pick one specific idea for each of your chats to keep the discussion focused).
3. Tweet your own thoughts and ideas on that topic.
4. Give at least 5 minutes for your chat participants to share their ideas (retweet the best ones).
5. Summarize the most important points as you go along.
6. Ask questions (label your questions as Q1, Q2, etc., to make it easy for your chat participants to answer and encourage discussion).
7. Retweet and summarize the best answers.
8. Share some related tools and links and invite your chat participants to share their own as well (retweet the best ones).
9. Announce the upcoming end of the chat and thank everyone for participating.
10. Tweet the chat conclusions.
11. Announce the next chat day/time and topic.

Close the Twitter chat by announcing what's planned for the next one.

Rinse and repeat next time you have your Twitter chat.

Tools to Run Your Chat

Most popular Twitter clients can be used to follow and participate in a Twitter chat using the official hashtag.

For example, with HootSuite you can create a new tab to track Twitter search results. Note: This will also *archive* the search results for further reference.

TweetDeck is another great option where users can add a new column for the hashtag results and get desktop notifications of the new tweets.

Your chat participants can pick their preferred method if they know the hashtag; however, it’s useful to link to only one option when you invite people to join the chat.

Currently, the only such option is TweetChat (and Twebevent, which runs on TweetChat). TweetChat allows you to create a “room” for your Twitter chat which you can then promote via tweets, blog posts, etc. The URL is in the following format: http://tweetchat.com/room/hashtag

TweetChat "room" for #BlogChat.

Your chat participants will need to authenticate Twitter to be able to tweet right from TweetChat. They won’t need to type your hashtag—TweetChat will add it automatically, which makes the process much easier.

TweetChat is a bit slow in terms of updating the tweets. You can set it to a 5-second update interval but, in my experience, people who are using TweetChat are generally slower than those on TweetDeck. This is not that crucial if you structure your chat well and give everyone a couple of minutes to follow up.

In a word, TweetChat’s major benefits include the ability to:

• Tweet to the chat without typing the hashtag (as well as retweet and favorite others’ tweets within the chat).
• Adjust the refresh speed (5 seconds is the minimum available).
• Filter out retweets (to remove any clutter).
  

  TweetChat option: adjust the refresh speed, filter out retweets, and follow the chat.

#5: Summarize, Archive and Analyze

Use Tools to Summarize and Archive Your Chats

There are various tools that let you create transcripts of your tweets, but you are likely to find the resulting transcripts quite overwhelming (with many people tweeting and retweeting updates using your hashtag throughout the chat).

Storify is the best option to create transcripts of your tweets because it lets you pick the tweets you want to be in the transcript and add some essential context for the tweets you choose. On top of this, Storify lets your Twitter chat users subscribe to any new “chapters” you publish (which results in even more content exposure).

• To pick a tweet, double-click on it in search results.
• Hover over the added tweet and click “Add text” to add some additional context to the tweet.
• Enhance your story with YouTube video, Flickr images, embedded links, etc.

Use Storify to create rich transcripts of your Twitter chat.

Other possible options to transcribe and/or archive your Twitter chats:

• Twilert will email you the list of tweets containing your hashtag. The resulting email update looks nice and is very easily blogged when you are on the go (you can update your blog as well as your Facebook page right from email). It will also create a searchable archive of your Twitter chat in Gmail (use Gmail labels to send them all in one specific folder for better organization).
• SearchHash lets you download all of the tweets around any hashtag into Excel if you prefer a desktop version. Naturally, you’ll have to create new archives manually each week. Here are a few more ways to export Twitter search results into Excel or Google Spreadsheet.

Quick tip: for all of the tools above, consider filtering out retweets to remove the clutter.

Filter out retweets.

Use Your Blog for Chat Summary

Each Twitter chat will be a great resource for useful information and tips on a topic relevant to your business. It makes perfect sense to make the most of this content by repurposing it into blog content. This allows you to both update your blog regularly with useful relevant content and spread the word about your Twitter chat.

So once your weekly Twitter chat is over, be sure to create a well-organized summary of the chat and post it to your blog with your official hashtag in the title (to make sure all of the retweets of your chat summary end up in the Twitter chat room).

Include your official hashtag in the post title for it to end up in the Twitter chat.

Analyze Your Twitter Chat Progress

Your Twitter chat will grow from week to week. It will take time for your tweet chat to become “popular”.  Give it some time and track your progress.

The two major things I track are:

• Number of tweets (as well as number of retweets) to evaluate interaction
• Established Twitter influencers and most active participants

For both of the above tasks, Martin Hawksey’s Twitter Archiving Google Spreadsheet is simply invaluable. It may take some time to set up (I described the whole process here) and you will also have to remember to run it weekly to update the archive.

The outcome is well worth the effort!

The spreadsheet will archive all of the tweets and track your chat tweet volume:

Monitor the tweet volume.

The spreadsheet will also collect all possible details about the chat participants (you’ll need to create a simple Twitter application for that) and identify most influential and best-networked participants.

The spreadsheet is sorted by "degree" column, which stands for how many connections this user has with other tweeps from your spreadsheet (people the user follows + people who follow the user = degree). The higher the degree, the more connected the user is!

Similarly, you can sort the spreadsheet to identify the most influential Twitter users participating in terms of the number of followers:

The spreadsheet is sorted by "followers," which lets you identify the most influential users participating in your chat.

Obviously, by tracking the influencers and active participants, you’re able to encourage them (for example, give away some prizes or invite them to moderate the chat) and thus motivate the whole community to get active as well!

Other easier to use, but more basic, options to analyze your Twitter chat progress are  The Archivist and WhatTheHashtag.

Twitter Chat Examples to Fuel Your Creativity

Involve the Influencers: RavenTools.com hosts a monthly Twitter chat (#RavenChat) and invites a well-known influencer in the search industry each time. This is a great way to encourage niche influencers to start talking about you and engage their followers.

#RavenChat guest announcement.

Let Followers Self-Promote: It’s a well-known trick that if you want to turn your followers into brand advocates, help them promote themselves. #CommentHour is a great example of that: it lets bloggers visit each others’ blogs and exchange comments. The result is more traffic and networking contacts!

#CommentHour lets bloggers promote themselves by promoting each other.

Become the Source: Sometimes you don’t need a fixed topic and a fixed schedule. The best example of this is #JournChat which fosters an ongoing information exchange among search and social marketers, bloggers and journalists. Since participating in #JournChat has become a great way to be heard, it has lots of tweets daily!

#JournChat has grown into an ongoing discussion.

Conclusion

There’s no “right” answer on how to set up your Twitter chat.  There’s no “best” time of day or frequency. There’s no “correct” format for how you run it. It all comes down to how creative you get and how seriously you want it to succeed.

Like any other long-term social media endeavor we get involved in, hosting and promoting a Twitter chat requires a lot of patience and persistence. Just put lots of time and effort into making it work and it definitely will!

What do you think?  Leave your questions and comments in the box below.

How do you feel when the author replies?

As we’re all ushered into this age of social media, each and every one of us is looking for ways to form stronger relationships with our audience, especially with current and potential customers.

There are many ways to discuss how to cultivate and build relationships. I want to focus on blog comments—an often poorly understood and very underutilized tactic by individuals and businesses.

Focus on your blog commenting strategy to build relationships.

Why Blog Comments?

Over the last 3 years since I started blogging for my two businesses (one company does swimming pools and the other is a sales/marketing company), I’ve personally replied to over 8000 comments on my two blogs.

I don’t give you this number with any intent to brag, but rather to set the stage for a topic that is near and dear to me, and one that I see businesses and bloggers falling short on everywhere, simply because they’re missing a few of these important habits.

This article isn’t about “How to get more blog comments,” but rather how to cultivate better relationships through comments. Notwithstanding, the two do overlap, as you’ll see in the following list.

Finally, you’re going to find that some of the components of this list are nothing more than common sense. But as so many know, common sense, especially in this new culture of social media, can at times be rather uncommon, and therefore needs to be mentioned.

Here’s how to cultivate relationships with blog comments.

#1: Write in a Personal Voice

You can probably tell from just the first few paragraphs of this post that I like to write in a personal tone. And if you’re looking to truly cultivate relationships with the stuff you write, a personal feel will make a HUGE difference.

When done properly, writing in a personal tone and style will immediately help readers feel more comfortable with an author/company and this comfort level naturally lends itself to readers considering leaving their thoughts in the comments section or via email in a direct reply.

So whether you’re writing about swimming pools, insurance, equipment, services, etc.—strive for a personal voice.

#2: Invite Reader Response by Asking Questions

Studies have shown that less than 1% of readers will leave comments on a blog, but I can assure you this number would be better if writers would simply guide the reader in terms of questions at the end of posts.

No matter what your business is, the final paragraph of your blog article is the perfect spot to ask specific questions regarding the topic you’ve just discussed.

Ask readers their thoughts and whether they agree or disagree. Invite them to share further examples that would help other readers. It’s truly amazing the difference this will make if it becomes a habit with everything you write.

PR 20/20 does a very nice job of asking questions at the end of each post in their blog.

By asking questions, readers know you value their opinion, and therefore will be much more inclined to share their thoughts as well.

#3: Don’t be a Know-it-All

Have you ever read a blog article where the author seemed so snooty or conceited that you were left with a feeling of disdain? Believe it or not, this happens a lot with bloggers and businesses, simply because they confuse arrogance with confidence and authority, thus turning off their readers.

So although it’s a good idea to be an authority in your industry, be careful not to be too over-the-top in your efforts to establish your voice, as this will greatly hinder anyone’s desire to continue the conversation with you going forward, especially in a blog’s comment section.

#4: Admit You May be Wrong

This is an especially powerful technique for inviting discussion, especially if what you’re writing is an opinion piece. Social media expert Chris Brogan has used this technique successfully.

By simply admitting you might be wrong in your opinion, you'll come across as much more humble and approachable to your audience.

#5: Utilize an Author Bio and Photo

Did you see the author bio box at the end of this post? Other than the fact that Social Media Examiner authors benefit from this little box from a branding and traffic perspective, it also is a tactical way by which readers can get a personal feel for the article’s author, and therefore be more inclined to leave a comment, share the post, etc.

This feature is especially valuable for multi-author blogs.

Author bio boxes are a great way to help readers "know" your blog's writers even better.

#6: Say a Simple “Hello”

If you see a friend (we’ll call her Nancy in this example) on the street or in the grocery store, what’s the first thing you always do? Chances are, you likely start off with something like, “Oh, hey, Nancy!” or “Hi, Nancy.” A simple salutation is something we do in just about every society, and it’s a good practice to use when responding to blog comments as well.

Just a little “hello” goes a long way in building relationships with readers, and believe it or not, it’s a practice not seen with many blogs and businesses.

Saying "hello" to someone is more an expression of happiness to see a person than just a simple word, and it can be expressed in different ways, as shown here.

#7: Use Readers’ Names

If you’ve ever read the classic book How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie, it’s likely that you remember his thoughts on the power of using names. In fact, in the book he states:

Remember that a person’s name is to that person the sweetest and most important sound in any language.

Such a simple yet profound statement by Carnegie is one that absolutely applies to building relationships with blog comments.

#8: Show Empathy

One of the greatest human needs we all share is wanting to be understood by others. Often, when someone is leaving a comment on your blog, they’re doing it because they want to share about their problems/solutions, failures/triumphs, etc.

This being said, if someone discusses their struggles in their blog comment, always reply with empathy. Recognize what they’ve just told you. This alone will show them you care, and be a powerful relationship-builder.

Everyone wants to feel understood, and wants to know you've listened to their needs. If you show this with your blog comments, you'll be much more successful.

#9: Ask Further Questions

As with #8, let’s say someone experiencing a problem discusses it in a comment. Other than simply responding with a potential answer, you may want to consider asking more questions to better identify what is happening with the individual so that the solution you come up with is the best one.

Also, by asking these questions, the individual (and other readers) will see how much you care and want to assist in solving the problems of another.

Just like you would with an actual client or friend, if someone comes to you with a problem, be sure to ask questions to identify better solutions, as shown here with a comment from my swimming pool blog.

#10: Invite Other Readers to Share Their Solutions

It’s one thing for you and those in your company to answer all of the questions and needs of those who comment on your blog, but it’s another to invite others in your community to step up and give value to readers.

When you have a community of readers who help each other find the answers they’re looking for, this not only takes the pressure off of you to be the “end-all,” but it will also develop a sense of team and community.

Remember this concept of help from the community is not typically an “assumed” thing, which means you need to make it known to readers they’re always invited to leave replies to other folks when they feel they can add value to the discussion.

Here is a snapshot from my marketing blog, where the community often comments and converses with each other beyond my personal replies.

#11: Respond with Personal Emails

With most blogging platforms, a person who leaves a comment must leave their email in order to do so, which is why it’s a great idea at times to personally reply to readers not just in the comment section, but via direct email as well.

I’ve sent personal emails to hundreds of readers of my blog over the last few years, and almost always they’re shocked I took the time to do so. As you might imagine, this is a powerful relationship-building tool.

#12: Be Specific with Your Praise

If a blog reader leaves a thoughtful comment on your blog with excellent points, take the time to point out what about the comment impressed you, plus your additional thoughts. This will show the person that you truly read and appreciated the comment, and in many ways will feel like a “reward” of sorts for their efforts.

By telling your readers exactly what it is about them that impresses you, your words will go a long way in building relationships.

#13: Recognize Returning Commenters

Like the theme from the famous TV show Cheers, “Sometimes you want to go where everybody knows your name.” Now granted, that statement was referring to a bar, but the same feeling can be created within a blog’s community and in many ways starts with your ability to recognize readers “as they come through the door”.

So if you see someone returning to your blog, make sure they realize you notice their return, and the fact that you appreciate the visit.

By going above and beyond and truly welcoming your blog commenters, they'll be able to see you know and care about them individually.

#14: Use a Plugin/Platform that Ensures all Replies are Read

Because we’re all getting a little tired of our in-boxes being so full these days, there’s a good chance that just because someone leaves a comment on your blog that they’re not going to subscribe to all comments on that post, for fear of “inbox inundation.” This is why it’s critical that along with giving readers the option to subscribe to all comments in the post, you add a plugin that ensures they’ll get your reply emailed to them directly.

For all of you using WordPress and their commenting platform, easily the best plugin for this in my opinion is ReplyMe, as it automatically emails any replies to a commenter directly. This is not only a valuable asset in stimulating discussion, it also shows all commenters that you took the time to reply to their remarks.

There are other blog commenting platforms that help with your ability to communicate and converse with your readers—with Disqus (used here at Social Media Examiner) and Livefyre (used at Spin Sucks) being two of the most popular.

Platforms like Disqus and Livefyre, as shown here at Gini Dietrich's popular blog Spin Sucks, can be great for community participation and conversation.

#15: Thank Readers for Their Support

Out of the 8000+ replies I’ve made to individuals, I’d venture to say I’ve included some type of thank-you in at least 7000 of them. The reason for this is simple—you want commenters to feel appreciated. Although this does add a little bit of time to each reply, it’s well worth it.

#16: Sign Your Name

This little technique is surprisingly practiced by few bloggers and businesses, but it certainly makes a difference. Just as you would in a letter or an email, it’s a great idea to sign your name to every reply you make to a commenter on your blog. Not only will this allow them to know who is talking, it will also have more of a personal feel and touch as well.

Comments are almost like mini letters. So just as you sign your name to a letter, it's a good idea to do it with comments as well to add a personal touch.

#17: Refer to Comments in Future Posts

As most bloggers know, a healthy comment section can be a breeding ground for future blog post subjects, especially when readers are expressing their problems, issues, questions, success stories, etc.

When great thoughts and questions are left in the comments section, not only should you turn these into subjects for future posts, but also mention and give credit to the reader/commenter who inspired the article.

Done the right way, this is a powerful method to show your community you value their input and are looking out for their needs.

#18: Don’t be a Jerk if Someone Disagrees with You

I recently was commenting on another blog and after I disagreed with what the author of the post had said, the person’s response to my comment was, “You’re just wrong.” Yep, that was the response. And as you might imagine, I didn’t leave that blog post with a stronger appreciation for that particular blog and its author.

Always treat those who disagree with you or your blog with respect. Assuming they do it with class, any debate can be very healthy for the blog, the brand and the community. If the person goes over the top and says something blatantly false or offensive, keep in mind at that point it’s absolutely fine to delete the comment, as there is no rule that states all comments MUST be allowed to stay in the comment section.

#19: Respond!

Although I probably should have made this the first item on the list, I wanted to finish off with it because everything we’ve talked about in this article starts and stops with a blogger’s/company’s willingness to take the time to respond to commenters.

Now granted, sometimes this may not be possible due to time and resource constraints (especially in the rare occasion that you get dozens, even hundreds, of comments per post), but if your desire is to cultivate relationships through your blog, a reply to thoughtful commenters and readers is an extremely important element.

Now It’s Your Turn

Even though I’ve come up with 19 ways to cultivate relationships through blog comments in this post, I know there are many more out there that you are likely using as well. So please don’t hesitate to add your suggestions to the list in the comments section below.

What do you think? Are there any items in the list that you don’t agree with, or have a unique experience with? Tell us about it. We’d love to hear more from you! Leave your questions and comments in the box below.

What’s New This Week?

Google Analytics Adds a New Set of Social Reports: These new social reports “help you measure the impact of your social marketing initiatives and evaluate the effect social media has on your goals and ecommerce activities.”

"The four new reports aggregate key data points to help you see the complete picture of how social marketing and media affect your business."

Pinterest Announces Attribution and Easy Sharing With Flickr: Pinterest has “worked with Flickr and other communities to make it easier to pin and credit content creators. Images with sharing enabled on Flickr now have a Pin It button, and pins from Flickr now have a clear attribution statement on Pinterest.”

"Attribution appears below the pin’s description and provides a permanent link to the work, its author and where they host their content."

Twitter’s Discover Tab Delivers More Personalized Content: Twitter is rolling out an upgrade of its Discover tab. Twitter has “incorporated additional personalization signals to select Discover stories, including tweets that are popular among the people you follow and the folks they follow.”

Twitter is rolling out "this redesigned and more personalized Discover experience on Twitter.com, iPhone and Android."

Discussion from our Networking Clubs: Thousands of social media marketers and small business owners are asking questions and helping others in our free Networking Clubs. Here are a few interesting discussions worth highlighting:

• What questions do you ask a web designer?
• What is your biggest challenge when it comes to blogging?
• Are you having issues with HootSuite posting to Facebook pages?

LinkedIn Purchases SlideShare for $119 Million: The top business-to-business social network added the top sharing site for PowerPoint presentations to ranks.

Foursquare Gives Businesses a Faster Way to Get Started: Businesses now have the option to instantly verify their business on Foursquare for a one-time $10 fee.  ”You can still verify by mail at no cost (although it takes three to four weeks). Once you’re verified, you can start using Foursquare’s free tools right away, like offering specials, updating your listing and getting stats about your visitors.”

This new paid option allows businesses to get started faster on Foursquare.

Tumblr Sponsor Products Are Now Available: These are the first types of ads offered on Tumblr.

There are two different types of Tumblr ads available: Tumblr Radar and Tumblr Spotlight.

GoogleTV Updates Their YouTube App: There are new Recommendations and Search features, and a Google +1 button inside the new app.

Recent updates make integration easier.

Here’s a useful social media tool worth noting:

BackupPress: An easy, low-priced WordPress plugin to back up your site.

BackupPress starts at $5 per month.

And don’t miss this:

Social Media Examiner’s Social Media Success Summit 2012  (online conference) just started. It’s not too late to join!

Join 27 social media experts at Social Media Examiner’s big online conference! Go here to learn more.

What social media news caught your interest this week? Please share your comments below.