Social media enables event attendees to connect in powerful ways. Social media can help promote events and empower attendees to share.

This article will reveal 15 ways you can infuse social media into your events.

Creating Pre-Event Buzz

#1: Registration Buzz

You don’t have to wait until the day of your event to create a buzz—it can start at the registration stage. Services such as Eventbrite let your attendees share the event with their networks as they register.

#2: Sharing Buzz

Encourage your attendees to share details of your event early by offering incentives for spreading the word. Meteor Solutions helps you to incentivize your event by offering rewards for sharing your content.

The Online Marketing Summit 2012 is offering the chance to win a free trip to San Diego by sharing their event.

OMS is giving away a free trip to San Diego for spreading the word about the event.

South by Southwest (SXSW) goes one step further with SXSocial, their own registrant tool which allows attendees to get to know like-minded users and exchange messages before the event.

The entire front page of the TEDx SoMa Event is dedicated to pre-registering and sharing information about the next event: all their blogs, Twitter feed, Facebook fans, Flickr and YouTube channels are up there to excite next year’s attendees, with your attention directed towards the large ‘pre-register’ button.

TEDxSoMa does a good job at highlighting their content socially, as well as the opportunities to share their content.

Make sure all your event promotions include pre-agreed hashtags in prominent positions to encourage people to start using them early when they talk about your event. You don’t want two or three variations getting coined as it will be much harder to follow conversation threads.

OMS features their event's hashtag up front and center.

Once you’ve got your speakers lined up you can include their profiles—and Twitter handles—on your website and other promotions, which will help your audience get to know them if they don’t already and even start suggesting questions and topics that might help your speakers gauge the audience better.

#3: Event-Shaping Buzz

SXSW has always been active in asking attendees for their views to help shape events, with 30% of their programming chosen by attendees. Without going to these lengths, you can use PollDaddy and TwtPoll to conduct simple polls before your event.

SXSW crowd is buzzing with excitement.

#4: Rumor Buzz

In 2009 a rumor flew around Twitter that comedian Dave Chappell would be playing a secret midnight show at Portland’s Pioneer Square. No-one was able to confirm or deny the rumor, so it just kept running until 5,000 people had showed up.

Midnight came and went, and no Dave Chappell. Still, people kept arriving. Had the Twitter rumor just been a massive hoax? At 1 am, just as everyone was starting to think they’d been victims of a Twitter con, Dave Chappell walked on stage and rewarded the crowd with an impromptu gig.

Rumors of surprise special guests or exciting prizes can help to invigorate your event and get people talking.

Crowd going crazy when the Dave Chappelle rumor is confirmed by his appearance.

Keeping Attendees Informed

#5: Use QR Codes for Ad-Hoc Presentations

Nowadays it doesn’t matter how ad-hoc your event is. Even if it’s being held outside with no traditional conference facilities, you can use QR codes to share your presentation without a projector by uploading your presentation to Slideshare, then creating a QR code that points to the presentation. Print an image of the code and anyone with a smartphone can scan it and go straight to the presentation.

Example of QR codes used to download a presentation.

#6: Collect All of Your Speakers’ Blogs in One Place

How do you keep your attendees up to date with all your speakers’ news, whether before, during or after the event? With Netvibes, you can use the RSS feeds from their blogs to create a dashboard of all their latest posts.

Netvibes can also be used to round up Twitter conversations, which is particularly useful at large events if there are several different hashtags being used.

Netvibes' conversation feed.

Helping Attendees Share Information

#7: Twitter Backchannels

There’s no need to stick to the rigid format of talking, then opening up to questions from the audience. With a Twitter backchannel run on something like Tweetwally, not only can the audience provide commentary on the talks, but also non-attendees can follow along on Twitter.

There can be issues around this, though: running commentary behind the speaker can be distracting and as the format isn’t censored, comments could go off-topic or even turn negative. A good solution is to have a screen up in a communal area away from the live events, with marshals collecting comments and feedback to put to the speaker at an appropriate time.

#8: Sharing Images

By setting up an official Flickr page and using small prizes and incentives to encourage participants to upload their own photos, you can quickly build a great unofficial photo record of the event, which you can use again in future promotions.

#9: Sharing Locations

Encourage attendees to check in using Foursquare at different locations around the venue by rewarding them with discounts, special offers and other incentives. Not only can everyone see which booths are popular, but also you can encourage them to explore locations that they might otherwise have missed.

Absent Attendees

#10: Open Up Your Event to Virtual Attendees

If you don’t want space to limit your attendance, consider opening your event up to virtual attendees.

The 2011 Blog World and New Media Expo is selling virtual tickets for anyone not able to physically get to LA.

BlogWorld is offering recordings of presentations for a smaller fee to those who can't attend.

Some events, such as the 2011 International Freelancers Day Conference go one step further and are entirely virtual, with speakers recording sessions miles apart, cutting the need for a conference venue, travel or accommodation. Virtual attendees can ask questions via Twitter or Facebook, or comment on events using hashtags to create what is potentially a global conversation.

#11: Video Streaming

Live recording is the keystone to a virtual event. UStream, Facebook or a dedicated YouTube channel can enable you to stream events live, either in whole or in part. This is particularly valuable at large events where attendees are never going to get around to all the talks. If you’re going to do this on a large scale, it’s worth investing in dedicated recording equipment and a separate Internet connection, as you’ll be using a lot of bandwidth.

Energize Your Event

#12: QR Code Scavenger Hunts

How can you make visiting your booth more fun and stand out in a busy venue? This year’s Comic-Con in San Diego used QR codes to create a Voltron-themed scavenger hunt for fans to win prizes. At the same event, BBC America ran their own Doctor Who QR game to encourage attendees to visit all of their Doctor Who exhibits, with the chance to win related prize-packs.

Comic-Con is always buzzing with activity.

Doctor Who QR game.

Reward your attendees for sharing blog posts, weblogs and photo galleries at your event with prizes and discounts. The MarketingProf’s B2B Forum offered free tickets to next year’s event for the best content posted to their blog.

After the Event

#13: Publish Your Twitter Wall

If you have a whole lot of media you don’t know what to do with, try using Storify to collect Tweets, videos and photos and embed them in your website or share them through social media.

#14: Give Access to All of Your Talks With Links to Videos

You can make your website the main place for post-event catch-up by using Ustream and YouTube to embed video of your biggest events. This can also serve as a great marketing tool for next year’s event.

Make sure you have an email sign-up (you can use AWeber or MailChimp) on the same page to capture interest, and you can even get ahead of the game by offering incentives for early interest.

X.commerce is a new and innovative distribution channel.

#15: Publish Your Presentations

You can use Slideshare to reach a whole new audience beyond your own website and help convince new audiences to sign up for next year’s event.

What do you think? How have you promoted your event? Leave your questions and comments in the box below.

Here are five ways to get started building an effective community management strategy.

Social media allows great opportunity for building relationships and communicating directly with customers. To facilitate these relationships, the role of community manager is becoming increasingly important for all types of businesses.

Usually, community managers are the social media voices of their brands, fulfilling multiple roles including social media strategists, customer service managers, content creators, product managers and evangelists.

#1: Metrics—What are your objectives as a new community manager?

Identify the metrics and goals for your new role or community-building program. Clear expectations on KPIs will help you succeed.

Community-building progress to measure:

• Customer service metrics: Reduce the number of customer service support calls by monitoring common questions on Twitter and writing posts for an internal customer wiki.
• Sales metrics: Generate leads through inbound marketing tactics: blog posts, eBooks and webinars.
• Engagement metrics: This includes Facebook fans, Twitter reach, Facebook post impressions, blog comments or number of organic community member discussions started in a forum.

As it turns out, your role might be a combination of these. Defining your role (and being open to adapting it) by the data you drive ensures your efforts move forward.

#2: Listening—Where does your target audience hang out already?

With over 700 million people on Facebook and 450,000 new Twitter accounts added each day, it’s likely your potential community members are already on social media talking about things relevant to your brand.

When you’re starting a community from scratch, you need to fish where the fish are. Social media monitoring is how you find them.

Listening tactics include:

• Google Alerts and Twilerts: Subscribe to search terms for industry keywords and competitors.
• Create a (private) Twitter list of competitors, note what they are/aren’t sharing. Monitor what content they share on Facebook and LinkedIn (if applicable).
• Identify the hashtags your community uses. Set up columns in a Twitter client (like Seesmic) for them.
• Subscribe to blogs your community reads and share that content from your own accounts.

How it’s done:

The #measure Twitter community is a vibrant, enthusiastic group of data geeks discussing marketing and web analytics. Omniture, KissMetrics and Google Analytics are frequently mentioned. Marketing analytics company Performable, recently acquired by HubSpot, tapped into this existing and engaged audience to grow their community. They did this in a way that was genuine, by participating in the #measure community and sharing their relevant content.

Performable engaged where their target audience was using the #measure hashtag.

This successfully positioned them within their target community, and kept them in tune to what potential customers were talking about.

Learn where your community is and what they care about. Engage where they engage, and read and share the content that matters to them.

#3: Offer value to draw people in—Create a content plan.

Diligent monitoring unveils what your community talks about, what questions they have and what topics you should blog about. You’ll have plenty of ideas, but how will you carry them out?

Organize the pieces of your content plan:

• Create an editorial calendar—Your editorial calendar will include how many times a week you’ll blog, and when you publish what content. Use WordPress‘ Editorial Calendar Plugin to keep your post scheduling organized.
• Choose your blogging team—Decide who will help you create this content. Will you use freelancers or guest posts from community members or influencers?
• Identify your target keywords—Make your content great for your community and search engines. Use Google Suggest and Google Adwords to identify the right keywords for blog posts, and be sure to optimize your blog for SEO.

How it’s done:

The Laughing Cow and Babybel cheese community team knows the importance of adjacency in content: It’s not directly about your product or service, it’s about delivering related information your community cares about.

Their content plan means leveraging the knowledge and influence of Internet personality Sarah Dussault, a fitness expert with her own YouTube Channel.

Laughing Cow and Babybel leverages the influence of fitness expert and Internet personality Sarah Dussault to share fitness and nutrition tips with their community.

Sarah and the blogging team deliver fitness and nutrition tips for their health-conscious community, the target buyer for the 35-calorie cheese snacks.

This content plan shows how one company scales the content creation it needs in order to build and engage its community.

#4: Don’t forget about email—It’s the glue that makes social media stick.

If you’re ignoring email, you’re missing a major community engagement opportunity.

Although social media is growing fast, actually only 52% of Americans have a profile on a social network. Email is a great way to share content or tips with your community, exclusive for your newsletter subscribers.

Add email to your community management strategy:

• Build your email list—Make use of your existing social media channels for acquiring email addresses. Include a place in your blog’s sidebar for people to subscribe to a newsletter or a custom tab on your Facebook page.
• Select your schedule—Choose a schedule that you’re able to stick to: You don’t want to set expectations for a weekly newsletter if that’s not realistic for your bandwidth.
• Plan your content—Will you curate industry news or share original tips with your newsletter subscribers? Choose your approach.

How it’s done:

Through weekly and monthly email newsletters, email marketing company Blue Sky Factory, recently acquired by WhatCounts, is a textbook example of how incorporating social media and email marketing is done right. They share helpful email marketing tips with community members. Responsibly, they allow community members to sign up for just the content they want on their newsletter signup page.

Blue Sky Factory lets users sign up for just the emails they want.

This means community members don’t have to receive press releases if they don’t want to. They can opt-in just to receive a once-a-month newsletter as opposed to a weekly update.

They also make use of the real estate on the Blue Sky Factory Facebook page, offering a user-friendly, granular email newsletter signup form on a custom tab.

Blue Sky Factory engages their community with email newsletters and invites people to learn from their content on their Facebook page.

Remember: Every Twitter follower and Facebook fan has an email address. Blue Sky Factory’s strategy shows how to make community engagement multichannel, and make the most of your social media platforms.

#5: Connect in real life—Incorporate Meetups into your community strategy.

Even if you have a global, online or digital community, engaging your local community fires up evangelists early on in the community-building process.

Let local people know you—the person behind the software, app or service. They’ll be quicker to vouch for your brand because they are willing to vouch for you.

Ways to merge digital and physical community:

• What events already matter?—Identify the conferences, Meetups or parties your community already goes to and find a way to attend or even sponsor.
• Partner up—Is there a local noncompetitive company or organization with the same audience who would want to co-host an event? Leveraging the brand equity of a co-host is one way to break into the space when you’re just beginning your community-building efforts.

How it’s done:

Boston-based fitness app developer RunKeeper uses Meetups to connect its global community to local runners with group runs.

RunKeeper hosted its first group run from their headquarters in Boston’s South End in May, attracting more than 100 people. On June 9, the RunKeeper team set its sights on a larger scale: hosting a global group run. 2,200 runners in 1,000 cities signed up.

A map of all of the international Meetups planned by the RunKeeper community. Photo credit: http://radar.oreilly.com/2011/06/runkeeper-meetups-app-real-world.html

Meetups generate a huge audience to use RunKeeper’s app to track their miles, and they successfully achieve a core element of community-building. Runners feel like they are a part of something bigger than just their typical Saturday morning run.

ROI, tools and technology aside, community-building is about connecting a group of people by making them feel like they’re a part of something special. No matter what tactic you use or tool you choose to carry out that tactic, keep your focus on what motivates the people at the core of the community you’re trying to build.

What do you think? What other examples would you add, and what are the other core pieces to your community management strategy? Let us know in the comments box below.

In order for us to filter and manage the ever-dynamic Twitter, a number of new apps have emerged.

This article will cover five new tools to help make it easier for you to reach your social media goals and help you keep up with the “latest” on Twitter.

#1: Get rid of the noise

Facebook lets you hide annoying posts, so why not Twitter?

It turns out there’s an app called Proxlet that does this and more. And it works with your favorite clients like Twitter (via Chrome extension), TweetDeck desktop, Twitter for iPhone and others.

You can block spammy apps, temporarily mute loud users, filter out annoying hashtags, and breathe a little easier.

Erase annoying tweets from your timeline.

#2: Deepen your relationships

Nurph gives you Twitter chat rooms, so you can stop fighting the 140-character limit and get a room!

Simply tweet a link to bring your friends and followers together for a real-time chat without taking over your followers’ timelines with long conversations.

Nurph chat rooms come complete with Twitter profile integration, tweet streaming and hovercards—so you’re looking at a highly optimized, Twitter-specific chat service. Nurph is one of those things you just have to try!

Take your Twitter conversations to the next level.

#3: Share and track your blog content

Dlvr.it is your smart online mailman that delivers your content to various platforms and also tells you how many people enjoyed reading it. So when you publish news on your blog(s), it’s delivered to all relevant places on the web.

This means your Twitter account, your Facebook profile or wherever you want it to be. And on top of that, Dlvr.it also tells you how many clicks your published content received. That might come in handy for your social media efforts as well.

Deliver your content to all of your favorite social networks.

#4: Making sense of it all with awesome stats and metrics

After putting some new tools in place to create content, now is the time to make sense of it all and get a bigger picture of your impact. This is where Twoolr comes in and provides you with all of the data you need to analyze your Twitter efforts.

Twoolr provides you with those metrics that matter most, giving you interesting visualizations such as usage trends, associated clouds and user comparisons. You access it all intuitively from the dashboard and are even able to receive growth and community reports straight to your inbox. It’s simple and presented in a slick design.

All the metrics you need to track your impact on Twitter.

#5: Already a Twitter pro? It’s time to extend your reach

Finally, if you feel you’re already a master of the Twitter game and want to build on that, here’s one more great tool I came across recently. It’s called Triberr and it allows you to create a tight network of fellow bloggers, sharing your posts and exchanging ideas.

It’s an invite-only network, where you can create “tribes” with other bloggers. Once you’re part of a tribe, you instantly share each other’s posts via Twitter, multiplying your reach and retweets instantly. The fact that it’s invite-only and no more than 7 members per tribe guarantee that it remains high-quality and spam-free. You can think of it as a human Twitter feed with tight quality control.

Extend your Twitter reach in an exclusive "bloggers only" network.

I hope you’re now prepared to stay on top. Let us know which tools you use to keep up with Twitter. Leave your comments in the box below.

However, there’s uncertainty around how to create a sustainable social media campaign, although the tools are plentiful and often free.

Here are 21 ways non-profits can leverage social media:

#1: Use a blog to tell your story

Treat your blog like the digital printing press that it is. Use text, photos and videos to tell stories of the people you’ve helped, those who are still suffering and the impact you’re having on the community or the world.

Engage your audience with storytelling on your blog.

#2: Make sure your stories are shareable

Use tools like the retweet button, Facebook like button, and Share This to allow your blog visitors to quickly share your story with their networks.

#3: Make it easy to subscribe to your stories

Make your RSS feed impossible to miss by putting it “above the fold” and highlighting it. Since RSS isn’t as widely adopted as it could be, make sure you use a third-party RSS feed provider with RSS to email options like Feedburner, Feedblitz or AWeber.

#4: Use video to tell your story

Videos of volunteers building a house or driving a school bus to collect school supply donations can be incredibly persuasive. Be sure to leverage YouTube’s Nonprofit Program that offers such benefits as call-to-action overlays, listing on the nonprofit channels and the ability to drive fundraising through a Google Checkout “Donate” button.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=cv1V5gV_nRQ

#5: Create a Facebook page for your non-profit

Organizations doing good works are infinitely more “likeable” than traditional businesses, so get involved with the half-billion–plus people currently using Facebook. Make your page more engaging by including a custom-designed, branded landing page that includes photos and video. Make sure your wall is set to show posts not just from your organization, but also from your fans so they’ll be more likely to engage you.

For more detailed information on tricking out your Facebook page, read How to Customize Your Facebook Page Using Static FBML.

#6: Get into the Facebook news feed

“The future of Facebook is the feed,” says social media consultant Jaica Kinsman. In other words, people may not visit your page every day, but they may see your news in their news feed. Getting people to like or comment on your Facebook content improves the chances that more people will see it in their feed, an algorithm referred to as “EdgeRank.” TechCrunch goes into more detail about Facebook’s EdgeRank here.

#7: Post photos or videos, and “tag” volunteers

You can take photos of fundraisers, blood drives and bean suppers (popular here in Maine!), post them to your Facebook page and tag volunteers to thank them for their help. This will draw attention to their good work and spread your message to their friends. Use this strategy judiciously. This can also work on Flickr, but it doesn’t have the same reach as Facebook.

Tagging volunteers shares their contribution with their friends.

#8: Create a Facebook Group for your cause

Facebook Groups have some advantages over Fan pages, such as the ability to send emails to members. Although there’s some chance you might be diluting your non-profit brand, you could create a group around your cause, whether that cause is to end poverty, feed the homeless or support women’s rights worldwide.

#9: Use Facebook ads to raise awareness

Goodwill Industries of Northern New England used targeted Facebook ads using gender, age and location filters to affordably promote new store openings. Calvin Gilbert, who runs much of Goodwill NNE’s social media, reported that they used Facebook exclusively to promote the opening of a store in South Portland. The ad campaign netted them 929 new fans, 2,776 clicks to the Facebook page, and created a record turnout at the grand opening.

#10: Use Facebook Events and LinkedIn Events to spread the word

Events are easy to share and get further promotion as people RSVP.

These powerful social networks allow you to promote your events for free and make it easy for people to share events with friends and colleagues.

#11: Use Foursquare, Gowalla or Facebook Places to promote your events

Alex Steed, a consultant to non-profits, recommends creating events on popular location-based apps and having volunteers check in as they arrive. This is a good idea for conferences, but also for things like clearing trails, purpose-driven marches and volunteer beach cleaning events.

For more advice on promoting your event, check out 12 Ways to Promote Your Event with Social Media.

#12: Go local with Twitter’s advanced search

Since many non-profits do their best work close to home, it’s important to listen to local conversations. Use the Advanced Search at Twitter to find, listen to, and engage with nearby “tweeple.” At a meeting with a non-profit organization last year, one of the board members told a story where someone he was following on Twitter was sharing how he was being unfairly evicted from his apartment. The board member reached out to him and got him the information he needed to avoid eviction.

#13: Start conversations around hashtags

If your audience is active on Twitter, start a conversation around a hashtag to get people talking, whether it’s #climatechange, #endhunger or #beatcancer.

#14: Ask for the retweet

Metrics show that when you end a tweet with “please RT!” you’re more likely to get people to retweet your message. Since most non-profits are cause-based, a “please retweet” request seems less self-serving. Still, use judiciously.

#15: Create a banner that stakeholders can add to their avatars

Let your followers carry your message forward with every tweet.

Whether adding a green tint to support democracy in Iraq, the yellow LIVESTRONG banners or ribbons of every color for every cause imaginable, people love to wear their causes on their sleeves or at least on their avatars. Services like Twibbon make it easy to jump into.

#16: Use Eventbrite to handle event registration and money collection

Although there are many event marketing tools out there, Eventbrite has one of the easiest-to-use interfaces out there, and has plenty of built-in social media sharing tools. They also offer a non-profit discount.

Take advantage of Eventbrite’s non-profit discount and put the savings to good use!

#17: Find potential board members on LinkedIn

LinkedIn is full of successful entrepreneurs with non-profit board experience. Be sure to join local or cause-based LinkedIn Groups and start engaging with future board members now.

#18: Improve conversations and collaboration with a wiki

Many non-profits must overcome the challenge of an all-volunteer board whose members are spread out through the region or even throughout the country. Other non-profits struggle without a physical office space. By using a free or inexpensive wiki, board members can be kept up-to-date on changes and work collaboratively from remote spots.

#19: Put your presentations online with SlideShare

Your presentations can be viewed, shared and embedded through SlideShare.

If your organization puts on presentations to raise awareness and increase donations, make that work go further by posting your slides to SlideShare, the “YouTube of presentations.”

#20: Get more out of your photos with Flickr for Good

Get more out of Flickr for your non-profit with a free Pro account.

Flickr, the popular photo-sharing site, is donating 10,000 one-year Pro accounts to non-profits. You can learn more at their Flickr for Good page.

#21: Use Google Grants to drive traffic to your website, blog and other social media presences

Laura Quinn of Idealware recommends that non-profits apply for Google Grants, a program from Google that gives approved non-profits thousands of dollars of free sponsored ads in Google search results. She goes into more detail in How Non-Profits Can Promote Themselves Online.

These are just a few ideas to get you started. If you’ve been using social media to promote your non-profit or cause, please share your success with the non-profit community in the comments box below.

In this post I’ll introduce practical ways to use good content for your tweets, everything from A to Z.

#1: Answers

Think about the questions your customers and prospects asked you this past week. Or maybe there are the repeat questions you’ve already answered on the FAQ page of your website.

To get started, create a list of questions, and answer them in your tweets one by one—paying particular attention to the most relevant at this time. For example, focus on seasonal questions, current rates and discounts, promotions and sales or commonly asked how-to’s in your business and industry. Save the list and add to it as you go along. What you don’t use this week may make even more sense a few weeks from now.

#2: Behind the Scenes

Anne Handley refers to this type of content sharing as the “insider’s view of your company,” where you have the opportunity to share updates about the projects and work you’re currently involved in. You can also use behind the scenes as an opportunity to welcome a new client or feature any other newsy development. Give readers or followers an inside look at your company.

#3: Case Studies

Dust off those case studies and offer them via your tweets for immediate download. Another option is to repurpose the material by pulling out 140-character messages that will wow your Twitter followers.

#4: Daily Deals

Use tweets to announce a daily deal you’re offering or one you’ve signed on with Groupon (or another daily deal site) by pushing out a message to gain optimal attention (e.g., “Today $6 general admission ticket to Museum of Science and Nature—up to a $12 value.”)

#5: Events

When you’re hosting or attending an event, you can send out a tweet to let followers know about it. Perhaps your company has a booth, so you might send out multiple tweets during the event to let know conference attendees where they can find you.

#6: Factoid

These types of tweets are the one-liner statistics that impact your industry or are current events and newsworthy for a variety of reasons. They demonstrate your company’s commitments and interests, and add personality to your business.

#7: Guide

Customers may be new to Twitter, blogs and social networking sites. You can use your tweets as a way to educate them about the process and integrate your blog posts with your Twitter messages. Tweets themselves can be teaching tools about social media marketing.

#8: Hashtags

Hashtags consist of using the # symbol followed by subject words; e.g., #followfriday. They help organize information and make tweets more searchable. They’re commonly used at conferences and live events. You can search hashtags to see what people are talking about. It’s also useful to do an advanced search on Twitter using hashtags as one of the search operators.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=aAHitI26MmE

#9: Interviews

Twitter messages don’t need to be confined to single 140-character messages. An interesting way to use tweets is in conversations via Twitter interviews. Cindy King’s informative post offers 7 Steps to Successful Twitter Interviews.

#10: Joint Venture

Good Twitter content consists of certain netiquette—giving credit where credit is due by retweeting, or by using other mechanisms such as the word “via”— indicating that you came across the information somewhere else and are now writing about it, too. Twitter is naturally viral and as long as you “pay it forward” and think of Twitter as a joint venture, your tweets will become an important component of your social media strategy where you won’t simply be pushing out messages, you’ll be conversing with others and building your social network.

#11: Keywords

Web content (and print content for that matter) has always been about the use of keywords. Twitter is no exception. Good Twitter content makes use of relevant words and messages. Make a list of keywords that best describe your business and industry. Use these words as you compose your 140-character posts. Think quality over quantity. Make every character and tweet count!

#12: Live Events

Tweeting about live events fits Twitter like a glove. The immediacy of getting out messages about start times is particularly useful in the business world, especially when you’re at an in-person conference or hosting a live webinar. Sending out follow-up tweets about an event is also a great way for webinar hosts to answer questions that may not have been fully addressed during the event.

#13: Meme

In a recent post, 5 Ways to Get the Support of Social Media Influencers, Sam Rosen discusses the importance of memetic content. He writes, “No Fear is a meme. The Red Bull Flugtag is a meme. It’s something that people can identify with, make their own and share with others.” Think of the possibilities of short memetic-type tweets. If you have a tagline that speaks to people and gets your company and brand noticed, you can further expand its reach by including it in a series of tweets.

The point being that tweets can have a theme to them. You can extract messages from larger bodies of work and group them together in an ongoing series.

#14: News

Twitter has been instrumental in helping break important stories about local and global events. As Greg Sandoval writes on CNET news, “One-quarter of all Twitter posts include a link to another piece of content, such as a news story or video. Twitter has 190 million unique monthly visitors, so that’s a lot of content zooming across the platform.”

Want to announce important company and industry news? There’s great potential for getting the message out there on such a large platform and you can do it very simply and cost-effectively by pressing the “Tweet” button.

#15: Opinion

Using opinions in tweets is a good way to make it possible for your customers and followers to get to know more about you and your company. Opinion tweets can be seen as brief editorials. For example, if your product is environmentally friendly, you can create green-oriented posts that reflect issues beyond your product. It’s important to convey the image you want to be known for.

#16: Photos

As the saying goes, "Sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words," or in this case, sometimes a picture is worth 140 characters!

Let’s face it, there are times when a photo is more effective. One industry that uses photos a lot is real estate. How nice it would be for people looking at homes not only to hear about an open house happening in their neighborhood but also to see a photo of the property?

Josh Catone describes five ways to share images on Twitter:

1. Twitter image sharing services
2. SMS or email
3. Brightkite or FriendFeed
4. Skitch
5. Encoded Tweets.

#17: Quotes

Business tweets can also be inspirational. They can motivate and influence thinking by using some of your favorite quotes.

• There are websites that categorize famous quotes by topic, and by Googling “quotes,” you’ll find thousands of sites to choose from.
• You can also use a quote from a book or magazine article you’ve been reading.

When planning your tweet, leave extra room for characters so you can be sure to give credit to the source.

#18: Real-time

To keep up with the flurry of information on a given topic, you may find it helpful to use a variety of tools to manage the influx of tweets. For example, on TweetDeck you can have a number of columns open to follow groups of people, see direct messages sent to you via Twitter, and organize by topic. That way you can stay ahead of the game and compose the most real-time tweets possible.

#19: Share Links

Many blogs and online news services offer integration with your Twitter account so you can share the link of the article with your followers as you read it. This is one of my favorite uses of Twitter. On the occasions when you come across a link you’d like to share and there isn’t a Twitter share widget already integrated for you on the web page, you can copy and paste the URL into a number of URL shorteners such as bit.ly or tinyurl, and add a few words about why you’re tweeting out the link.

#20: Tips

Got a product-related tip? A useful tidbit of information you’d like to share with your customers and followers? People are often looking for quick and easy solutions to manage their time and be more productive. Why not share some of your useful tips with them?

#21: Updates and Announcements

Updates and announcements from your business can be categorized as good to know, better to know and need to know. The Red Cross, for example, uses Twitter to broadcast important messages about emergencies and relief efforts.

#22: Value

When in doubt about what to microblog, think about what will add value to your audience today. What makes you the go-to company or service provider for your customers? Value tweets will remind them of why you’re an invaluable resource.

#23: White Papers

Ah, white papers. A list of content ideas for Twitter would not be complete without mention of white papers. Michael Stelzner, Social Media Examiner’s founder, is the author of Writing White Papers. White papers provide value to your readers and linking to them is an excellent cost-effective promotion tool. Why not get the word out on a frequent basis about your white paper offerings? Twitter makes it possible.

#24: Christmas Gift Ideas

If you’re a B2C business, you can use Twitter to give customers ideas about Christmas gifts and keep your products before their eyes through the holiday shopping season. With Twitter, you can continue to promote your products up to the last minute that they can be shipped in time to guarantee Christmas delivery.

#25: YouTube

Twitter can be used to link to a YouTube video. Videos are especially viral and people love them. For example, here’s a great YouTube video by Mari Smith on Twitter Hashtags.

You could tweet, “Checkout video on Twitter hashtags, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aAHitI26MmE”. (As discussed above, you can save on character real estate by using a URL shortener.)

#26: Zippy Writing Style

Twitter messages need to make the best possible use of 140 characters. This is where writing style comes into play. Good tweet content is not only useful in terms of all the types covered up to now. What makes a good tweet stand out is how the message is delivered. In other words, tweet lively and entertaining messages.

Final Thoughts About Twitter Content Ideas

Creating a mix of different types of tweets for your business will help keep them fresh, relevant and readable.

What Twitter content ideas can you add to this list? Which ones are you already using? Which ones do you enjoy reading most? Leave your comments in the box below.

Image sources: Flickr twitter image, Flickr alphabet image

The answer is BOTH! Having hundreds of thousands of followers must be nice. But we all know that the depth of the relationships you maintain with your tweeple is paramount.

This article will reveal five great Twitter tools that will help you find and engage with quality Twitter followers.

Notice I mentioned “depth.” However, there must be another side to this coin. The reach. And if you want to have “reach” on Twitter (getting 10+ retweets, for example) on regular basis, chances are you will need a large number of followers.

This article will focus on getting you those numbers.

Specifically, I want to explore how to generate new followers, how to manage your newly found follower surplus and how to turn those shallow relationships into deeper ones using the top 5 most indispensable Twitter tools.

#1: Blast Follow

Editors note: BlastFollow is no longer operational due to changes in Twitter authentication requirements. To make up the difference, we suggest you see a post about another magnificent Twitter tool.

Editors note: This tool, if abused, will get you temporarily banned from Twitter.  Do not follow large groups (1000 or more) or multiple hash tags at once.  We have received reports from readers that they were banned because they “over did” this tool.

Blast Follow is indispensable for finding people in your niche (and beyond) and auto-following them with a single click.

How does this help YOU gain more followers? Because of the Law of Reciprocity.

Take advantage of Twitter's "Law of Reciprocity" nature and blast follow hundreds of tweeple with a single click and get followed in kind.

The law of reciprocity is a basic mammalian urge. When apes groom each other, they are engaging in the Law of Reciprocity. In fact, if you take a trip to your local zoo, you will notice that the most social apes are the best-groomed as well.

I will go as far as to say that the reason Twitter is so popular is because the human urge to reciprocate is such a strong driving force behind our actions.

Twitter is a Law of Reciprocity platform. You follow me; it’s only fair that I follow you back.

Most social media experts (Chris Brogan , Guy Kawasaki) recommend a mutual-follow policy.

Note: Chris has changed his own policy due to spam, but the basic idea for the rest of us still stands.

Here is a nifty list of Twitter superstars who WILL follow you back.

#2: Tweepi

Tweepi allows you to unfollow those who do not reciprocate.

Easily shake off the deadbeats. Tweepi enables you to unfollow those who do not follow you back, 40 deadbeats at a time.

The only thing I would add is to be careful not to unfollow someone you would prefer to continue to follow.

Why would you want to follow someone who doesn’t follow you back? One reason could be that their tweets are super-interesting.

The overall strategy for using Blast Follow and Tweepi is to blast follow 100-200 people today and give them a week or so to follow back. If they don’t reciprocate, clean them out with Tweepi. Then repeat.

OK. What’s next?

#3: twAitter

I hope that I don’t have to sell you on the notion of maintaining a presence on Twitter. One tool that is indispensable in maintaining a presence is twAitter, which allows you to schedule your tweets in advance.

Now, that’s not all that amazing on its own. Many tools allow you to schedule your tweets. Social Oomph comes to mind.

twAitter will soon be renamed to Gremln; the ability to schedule, rotate and repeat your tweets will remain unchanged.

twAitter is unique in that it allows us to rotate and repeat our tweets. Social Oomph allows for a similar functionality (and a lot more), but it’s a premium service for which you’d have to pay. twAitter, on the other hand, is free.

Why would you want to repeat your tweets?

Twitter is a drive-by platform. Most people login for 10-20 minutes at a time and unless they see your tweet in that time, chances are they will never see it. Unless you repeat yourself.

Don’t abuse this awesome power.

Guy Kawasaki repeats his tweets four times with at least several hours in between. I repeat my tweets every few days but do not limit myself to four.

#4: TweetDeck

Now that you have thousands of followers, you will need to organize them and keep an eye on the really interesting ones. In comes TweetDeck.

TweetDeck gives you the ability to create panels based on your lists, retweet now or later, keep an eye on your fav tweeps and much more.

TweetDeck allows you to create “panels” based on your Twitter lists or others. I have lists/panels for my dog people, social media people, friends, interesting and RT-worthy tweeps, etc. They all get their own list/panel, which makes it really easy to follow their timeline.

Without TweetDeck, this would be an overwhelming and time-consuming prospect.

#5: TweetChat

TweetChat allows you to isolate the conversation based on the hashtag.

This is a two-in-one kind of tool.

In the sea of tweets, it's easy to lose track of your favorite hashtag. TweetChat to the rescue.

It not only helps you generate followers, but it does this by first creating a familiarity and depth before the follow itself occurs. How?

Hashtags (#) and the way they can be used on Twitter are a great big untapped resource for many Twitter residents.

Here’s an example:

If you tune into Twitter every Monday night around 9 pm EST, you might see an excessive appearance of the #dogtalk hashtag.

The #dogtalk crew brings in interesting dog people every week and interviews them about their goings-on. Many folks tune in using TweetChat to follow and participate in the conversation.

If you’ve participated in the conversation and actually contributed in some small way, a funny thing happens.

Other participants see you as interesting and decide to follow you. The right thing to do now is to reciprocate, of course.

Bonus #6: Super-Secret Bonus Twitter Tool

This tool is the best, most important tool of them all. It works in an entirely different way than any other tools we’ve mentioned.

Here’s the big secret. It’s you.

Be useful. Be interesting. Be compelling.

Take this post as an example. Do you think that this post will generate followers for me? Of course it will. A bonus here is that the relationship has started “on the right foot.” I’m a real person (a somewhat rare commodity on Twitter), I have something useful to share (at least I hope it will be useful to you) and hopefully it will compel you to check me out and be my friend on Twitter.

Do you use any of these Twitter tools? Got some to add? Leave us your comments in the box below.

The trick is to know which social media tools to use and when to use them.  This article contains 12 useful social media tips designed to help your events shine.

Before Your Event

The first step is to make people aware of your event, to mark it on their calendar, and to

register. Here’s the game plan:

#1: Market Your Event Through Twitter

There are many ways in which you can use Twitter to raise awareness. Many conferences and events have their own hashtags, such as #smss10 or #metweetup. There’s no magic to creating one—just start using a hashtag in all your related tweets and encourage other people to do the same when talking about your event.

To encourage people to tweet out your hashtag and spread the word, sweeten the deal with a free pass, door prize or other giveaway for one lucky hashtag-er.

If your event is large enough, give it its own Twitter account such as @Blogworld or @socialmediaFTW, which serves as a customer service “hotline” and adds credibility to the event.

Mix up your event tweets by varying the message.

Mix up your event tweets by varying the message.

Constantly tweeting that your event is coming will annoy some of your followers, so mix it up: use tweets to announce new sponsors, speakers, an open bar, or to ask questions that might help shape the event.

Finally, ask for people to share your event with the simple phrase, “Please RT!” You’ll be amazed at the results. Just don’t overdo it; you don’t want to look desperate, do you?

Be sure to check out Cindy King’s post How to Use Twitter Events to Grow Your Network for more ideas.

#2: Market Your Event Through Facebook

Certainly you can update your status with news of your event, but don’t overlook Facebook Events, which Facebook guru Mari Smith calls “one of the most powerful tools on the platform.”

A page for your event attracts fans.

I’ve found success by first creating a page for the event, and then creating a “Facebook Event” from that. This is especially helpful if you have a recurring event, such as an annual conference or a tweetup, as it helps build a fan base over time.

A page for your event attracts fans.

Other benefits of creating a Facebook page include:

• You can add a “Like Box” to your website, blog or other web presence to promote your clambake.
• You can invite fans as well as friends to the March on Washington.
• You can take out targeted Facebook ads to reach people outside your network who would be interested in your Save the Whales Sit-In.

Mari Smith delves deeper in her post, 10 Tips for Creating Buzz with Facebook Events.

#3: Market Your Event Through LinkedIn

Promote business functions with LinkedIn Events to reach your professional network. As Lewis Howes points out in his excellent post, Top 5 Ways to Market Your Business with LinkedIn, “once someone RSVPs to your event, it shows up on the home profile of everyone that person is connected to, spreading the message for you.”

It’s simple and straightforward to create an event on LinkedIn. Once you’ve completed that task, it’s just as easy to invite up to 50 people from your LinkedIn network. It also shows up in the events search.

#4: Market Your Event Through Your Blog

Whether through an existing blog or a blog created specifically for your gathering, be sure to create posts announcing the event, calls for presenters, and sponsorship opportunities. Follow up with guest posts from presenters who should welcome the opportunity to reach a wider audience (and steal people who might have attended competing events!).

#5: Other Places to Market Online

There are plenty of online calendars, and you should list your event in any that seem appropriate.

Local papers, TV channels and radio stations’ websites often host a calendar of events that offer free postings. Tweetvite is a site for promoting and learning about tweetups, and Eventful is one of many sites where you can list all types of gatherings.

#6: Event Marketing and Registration Tools

There’s no need to reinvent the wheel when handling online registration for your event. Eventbrite is a highly popular tool for the social media crowd, and Constant Contact, the popular email marketing company, has recently entered the market with their own competing product.

With these tools you can create and market your event, and even collect payments with registration. Registration forms appear on the event marketing company’s site and can be embedded into your website or blog.

Sharing tools let attendees post to Facebook and Twitter, which builds buzz and generates more registrations.

During Your Event

Just because your event has started doesn’t mean the marketing has ended! If you’re promoting an all-day affair like a boat show or arts in the park, people will be milling in and out all day. Keep the excitement and foot traffic high by leveraging social media well into the night.

#7: Foursquare and Gowalla

Events on Foursquare will encourage attendees to share.

It costs nothing to create an event in Foursquare or Gowalla, and attendees who are hip to location-based apps will want to check in to your event for the extra points!

Since many people link their Foursquare and Gowalla activity to Twitter and Facebook, check-ins reach well beyond early adopters of location-based apps.

Events on Foursquare will encourage attendees to share.

You can greatly increase the number of check-ins by adding signs and table-top displays reminding people to check in, and even sweeten the deal with a giveaway or random drawing.

#8: Use Those Hashtags!

Hashtags make your event more findable, searchable and memorable.

People will tweet out memorable lines from your event, so make sure everyone knows the Twitter hashtag: put it in your literature, on name tags, and announce it during your keynote.

Hashtags make your event more findable, searchable and memorable.

For more on how to leverage hashtags, be sure to read Adam Vincenzini’s post Live Events Need Twitter #Hashtags ‘Built-In’ Not ‘Bolted-On’.

#9: Live Blogging

If you’re putting on a conference, it might be worthwhile to have someone “live blog” the sessions. Instead of just taking notes, have them take notes straight into a blog post and publish it as soon as the session ends.

#10: A Picture Says a Thousand Words

Although Twitpics and iPhone photos are great and shareable, hire a photographer for the day. If you can’t afford one, consider an in-kind trade of a free pass. Make sure you come to an agreement on who owns the photos and how they can be used online to promote this and future events.

#11: Thoughts on Video

There are so many ways to use video at your event: quick interviews with attendees and speakers on Flip cams, recorded sessions, or live streaming the event with UStream.tv.

#12: After Your Event

After the glow of a successful comic book convention, bean supper or Tri for a Cure fades, it’s time to get back to work.

Create a blog post of your reflections on how the event went, what you learned, and even how the next one could rock even harder.  Ask for feedback and suggestions in the comments field. Post something similar to your Facebook page and encourage fans and friends to leave comments there as well.

Upload your photos to Flickr and other photo sharing sites and be sure to give them appropriate titles, descriptions and tags. Use the Creative Commons license to let them be shared as far and wide as possible.

After you’ve finished uploading your photos to Facebook be sure to tag everyone you know and ask them to “fill in the blanks” by tagging anyone else. This can have a viral effect as people love seeing photos of themselves and their friends, driving them all back to your Facebook page.

Post video to YouTube, Facebook and other video sharing sites. Ask your presenters to share their slides on Slideshare, again with appropriate tags, titles and links.

Wrapping Up

Undoubtedly, there are more sites and techniques to promote your event through social media. What platforms do you use, what techniques have proven especially effective, and how did you generate excitement and fill the seats at your last event?

If you use Twitter, chances are you’ve tweeted from a live event.  But there’s so much more Twitter can offer.  In this article, I’ll share three secrets you’ve likely never heard of…

But first, why do you attend offline events? Is it the lunch (invariably chicken and rice)? Maybe the dorky name tag? Or perhaps you’re lured to the junk contained in a $5 laptop bag made in China?

No, no and no. You go to events and conferences for something more than a snack and some SWAG.  You go to learn something and grow your personal network.

And in that regard, Twitter has a starring role.

Beyond live tweeting, Twitter tools can give you a whole other level of live event benefits. Here are three of my favorites:

#1: Follow ‘Em All With BlastFollow

When I’m at an industry event where the attendees are almost universally interesting or relevant to my business, I want to follow them on Twitter. I’ve been advocating for a while now that event organizers create Twitter lists of attendees, but few are doing it. But now you can take matters into your own hands with BlastFollow.

It’s an incredibly simple and effective concept. Go to http://blastfollow.com and enter the hashtag for the event you’re attending. Add your Twitter username and password. Click “Get Users!” and BlastFollow automatically follows anyone who has used the hashtag.

The system also shows you a list of everyone using the hashtag, and notes whether you’re already following them. The entire process takes about 10 seconds.

#2: Keep a Digest With Twapper Keeper

Having to decide between concurrent sessions is incredibly frustrating at good conferences.  Do I go to this one, or that one? Also, sometimes you want to actually PAY ATTENTION and not tweet the session, but maybe you want to see what others tweeted as the key points. Or in some cases, your cheapo boss just wouldn’t pay for you to attend.

If any of those scenarios sound familiar, please welcome Twapper Keeper into your life. It’s the free tool that instantly creates PDF archives of all tweets that feature a particular hashtag.

Just click “Create Keyword Archive,” type in the hashtag and description, add your Twitter handle, and click the button. Bam! You’ve made an archive of all the tweets. (It also sends out a tweet from your Twitter account letting your followers know about the archive.)

I created an archive for the recent Social Media Success Summit. It’s a doozy, since SMSS (produced by the folks here at SocialMediaExaminer.com) featured 30 presenters.

Also, you can easily customize your archive by date range and by how many tweets are gathered. Date range is especially useful if the hashtag is used by multiple events, or is recurring and you only want tweets from one day. For example, I could create an archive that only includes tweets from Social Media Success Summit on the day I gave my presentation.

Twapper Keeper also has a basic search function enabling you to search for existing archives. No sense reinventing the wheel if someone has beaten you to the punch!  (Thanks to my pal Todd Lynch for the heads-up on Twapper Keeper!)

Here’s an archive example I created for the Counselor’s Academy PRSA conference I spoke at about social media in Asheville, North Carolina.

#3: Bring the Event to Your Site With Tweetboard

The problem with live-tweeting an event is that it’s so amorphous and ephemeral. Like the verbal equivalent of the smoke monster on Lost, your tweets are here one second, gone the next.

Leverage your live-tweeting skills by adding a streaming Twitter widget to your website. Tweetboard is the best of these tools. It’s simple to install, has good customer service and an excellent interface.

And most importantly, Tweetboard automatically creates threadable discussions of all of your tweets—turning your 140-character event notes into an easy-to-follow discussion forum–type layout that’s perfect for deep engagement with your followers and website visitors.

Tweetboard is currently in alpha release, so you’ll have to request an invite to try it (for now). But check it out; I think you’ll instantly see how useful it can be in conveying live event coverage in an organized, sensible fashion.

Here’s a video overview of Tweetboard and how it works:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=XjmiwPOCt3Q

The next time you head out for a live event, armed with your i-whatever and a stack of business cards, think about using these three tools.

Have you used any of these tools? Got your own to share? How do you use Twitter when you attend events? Write your comments in the box below.

The good news is social media has finally made it to the grand stage of “accountability.” A place where there are lots of people who want to measure it. The bad news is there isn’t a single clear-cut answer.

However, with a few simple steps, you can build a measurement strategy that accomplishes your goals.

Defining Terms

To start, let’s agree that brand awareness is a measure of how recognizable your brand is to your target audience. For those looking to get ahead of the curve on social media measurement, the first step is to align your social media metrics with metrics your company is already comfortable with.

Also, let’s agree that the measurements for social media aren’t all that different from how you’ve been measuring traditional media. To put brand awareness measurement into the context of the sales funnel, the key areas to evaluate fall into three categories:  social media exposure, influence and engagement.

With that understanding, let’s look at how you can level the playing field between your traditional media metrics and your social media metrics.

#1:  Measuring Social Media Exposure

How many people could you have reached with your message?

In social media, this measurement is about as reliable as a print magazine’s circulation, but knowing your potential audience does have value because it represents your potential sales lead pool.

Unfortunately, as of the writing of this post, some of these metrics have to be accounted for manually, so you’ll have to balance the level of effort to track the metrics versus the value you’ll receive from them to determine their importance to your overall strategy.

A good example of where there can be unreliability in social measurement is when isolating unique users for each of your metrics. You want to avoid counting the same person twice in the list below, but realistically it’s difficult to do.

These measurements highlight the number of people you’ve attracted to your brand through social media. To mitigate the potential for duplication of users, track growth rate as a percentage of the aggregate totals. This is where you will find the real diamonds.

• Twitter: Look at your number of followers and the number of followers for those who retweeted your message to determine the monthly potential reach. You should track these separately and then compare the month-over-month growth rate of each of these metrics so you can determine where you’re seeing the most growth. A great free tool to use for Twitter measurement is TweetReach.
• Facebook: Track the total number of fans for your brand page. In addition, review the number of friends from those who became fans during a specified period of time or during a promotion and those who commented on or liked your posts to identify the potential monthly Facebook reach.  Facebook Insights provides value here.
• YouTube: Measure the number of views for videos tied to a promotion or specific period of time, such as monthly, and the total number of subscribers.
• Blog: Measure the number of visitors who viewed the posts tied to the promotion or a specific period of time.
• Email: Take a look at how many people are on the distribution list and how many actually received the email.

Exposure is the top of the brand awareness funnel and represents your potential sales lead pool.

#2:  Measuring Engagement

How many people actually did something with your message?

This is one of the most important measurements because it shows how many people actually cared enough about what you had to say to result in some kind of action.

Fortunately engagement is fairly easy to measure with simple tools such as Radian 6, Biz360 and TweetEffect. These metrics highlight who you want to target to retain on social media channels.

For a starting list of key performance indicators for engagement, this post by Chris Lake is a great start.

• Twitter: Quantify the number of times your links were clicked, your message was retweeted, and your hashtag was used and then look at how many people were responsible for the activity. You can also track @replies and direct messages if you can link them to campaign activity.
• Facebook: Determine the number of times your links were clicked and your messages were liked or commented on. Then break this down by how many people created this activity. You can also track wall posts and private messages if you can link them to activity that is directly tied to a specific social media campaign.
• YouTube: Assess the number of comments on your video, the number of times it was rated, the number of times it was shared and the number of new subscribers.
• Blog: Evaluate the number of comments, the number of subscribers generated and finally the number of times the posts were shared and “where” they were shared (i.e., Facebook, Twitter, email, etc.). Measure how many third-party blogs you commented on and the resulting referral traffic to your site.
• Email: Calculate how many people opened, clicked and shared your email. Include where the items were shared, similar to the point above. Also, keep track of the number of new subscriptions generated.

#3: Measuring Influence

This category gets into a bit of a soft space for measurement. Influence is a subjective metric that relies on your company’s perspective for definition. Basically, you want to look at whether the engagement metrics listed above are positive, neutral or negative in sentiment. In other words, did your campaign influence positive vibes toward the brand or did it create bad mojo?

You can also use automated tools like Twitalyzer, Social Mention, Radian 6 or ScoutLabs to make it a little easier, but ALWAYS do a manual check to validate any sentiment results. Influence is generally displayed as a percentage of positive, neutral and negative sentiment, which is then applied in relation to the engagement metrics and to the metrics for reach where applicable.

A great application for influence is to look at the influence by those who engaged with your brand in the above categories. Do you have a nice mix of big players with large audiences engaging with your brand, as well as the average Joe with a modest following?

If not, your influence pendulum may be about to tip over, because it’s important that you spend time engaging with both influential users and your average user. Note: many of the automated tools that track sentiment and influence are not free. And many times, you will need a combination of tools to measure all of the different social media channels.

#4:  The Lead Generation Funnel

After you’ve measured through the influence portion of the funnel, you’re now creeping into where too many companies are starting their measurement efforts: the lead generation funnel. This is where the brand awareness portion of the funnel ends and the traditional ROI-driven action begins.

Exposure, influence and engagement represent brand awareness in the measurement funnel.

Understanding your reach, engagement and influence through these primary social channels will allow you to define your presence and impact, which can then be applied as a model to other social networks.

Now that you’ve tracked all of this information, how do you make it meaningful? Excel is a great tool to help organize your data. Build yourself a standard dashboard in Excel that highlights the key metrics that matter to the organization. Create a tab for a high-level overview of multiple campaigns, and a tab for each campaign for the time period you’re reporting on. Ultimately, you should put the information into the same format that you’ve used to report on traditional brand awareness campaigns, with social media as just another vehicle in the overall marketing mix.

If you’re looking for tools to use for tracking, this post by Mani Karthik at Daily Bloggr gives a nice view of options.

To really understand the importance of measurement, here’s a great post on social media measurement from Social Media Examiner: Is Social Media Marketing Measurable? The Big Debate.

What about you? Are you measuring?  How are you measuring?  What metrics would you add? Leave a comment below and let’s talk.

However, many businesses are starting to use social media as a tool for listening and providing customer service.

When a crisis or emergency erupts, the power of social media can be an amazing tool for businesses.  A crisis can include anything from a simple website outage to negative publicity.  This article will reveal how to use social media during a crisis and provide many examples you can model.

Why Your Reputation in Social Media Is Important

Why should a company be concerned about social media’s influence on their image?  The answer is simple: Social media allows consumer opinions to spread far and wide quickly.  Word of mouth and social search are two powerful reasons to manage your social media reputation.

Word of mouth

Imagine you’re a restaurant owner, and you recognize a customer walking into your establishment as someone who has a wide influence in your community, such as a newspaper writer.  You would want him to have the best experience possible so if he chooses to write about your restaurant, those who read the review would be impressed and possibly come in to have a wonderful experience as well.

Social media allows anyone to be a major influence in the community.  Any customer who walks through your door could possibly have hundreds or even thousands of followers in your region, or if not, his friends might.  Word of mouth marketing can reach a worldwide audience through social media; thus, one bad experience could be retold to the masses.

Social search

Google’s recent implementation of social media in their search results brings real-time conversation to the front page.  Twitter users in particular are fond of hashtags, and just adding a hashtag in front of a search for a name brand can reveal what is currently being talked about in relation to that brand.

Take Toyota for instance.  Adding the hashtag in front of the name reveals the following in the first page of search results.

Now, let’s look at what happens if you do the same for Ford.

You can see why social search could be very influential on a searcher’s perception of a brand.

Managing a Crisis Through Social Media

Now that you can see why social media is important to a company’s reputation, let’s look at how large and small businesses have used the following social networks to respond to their customers.

Twitter

Although Twitter communications happen in 140 character updates, these tweets are easily searchable by Google, Twitter, and the many Twitter applications available.  Businesses can be followed on Twitter by anyone – customers, potential customers, and competitors.

Therefore, it is extremely important that companies monitor Twitter mentions of their brands, products, and services in order to respond swiftly to any negative circumstances.   Best-practice examples of social media response through Twitter include:

@Toyota

By now, everyone has heard about the major recalls by Toyota due to defective “sticky” gas pedals in many of their vehicle models.  Toyota has been monitoring and responding to their customers’ questions on the recall via Twitter.

@Codero

Codero, a web hosting company, experienced a power outage that affected their servers, leaving their clients’ websites down. Codero responded directly to their clients through via Twitter throughout the next several days.  Although there were many complaints about websites being down, there were positive referrals to their followers by clients who were satisfied by the customer service they received.

YouTube

YouTube is the most popular video search engine, and no doubt the best (and fastest) way to send out a public announcement when your company needs to make a statement about an ongoing situation.

LexusVehicles

Lexus Group President and General Manager Mike Templin recorded a personal message on YouTube for their customers (see below) on the LexusVehicles channel, assuring them that Lexus is dedicated to building high-quality vehicles that surpass expectations and, in response to Consumer Reports’ review of the rollover risk of the GX 460 SUV, are voluntarily recalling this model to upgrade and improve the vehicle’s stability system.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=3M1Pj0KCjAs

CoderoTV

Codero Chief Operating Officer Ryan Elledge uploaded a video on CoderoTV the morning of their power outage, giving a preliminary explanation of the situation (see below).

www.youtube.com/watch?v=b78G5T9WfzA

One important thing to note when using YouTube for crisis management announcements is that unless you set your options to moderate comments, YouTube users can add comments to videos that are available for public consumption as well.

In both of the above examples, the company has an opportunity to include positive responses (when possible) to any negative comments made on their videos.

Facebook

If your company has a Facebook fan page, it will be another social media outlet to focus on supplying excellent customer response.  Depending on your page settings, fans can post comments to your page which be seen by fans and non-fans alike, so it is important to monitor your Facebook page and update it as needed with the latest news and responses to customer comments.

Toyota

Toyota’s Facebook page, having almost 100,000 fans, is constantly updated by both Toyota and fans with both praise and complaints alike.

Because of the volume of comments, Toyota does not seem to comment on each status, but that doesn’t mean they’re not responding at all – they simply may be making more comprehensive responses behind the scenes via private emails to the fans.  It’s good to see the public responses, assuring fans that someone is actively getting into the discussions, rather than just posting news updates.

Codero

Codero’s Facebook page did not receive as many responses from clients affected by the power outage as their Twitter accounts; however, they not only made an update directly on Facebook about the outage, but also directed customers to watch real-time discussion of the situation on their Twitter accounts and linked to blog posts which contained the YouTube video update.

They also updated their fan page to update customers to assure them that they were working on a comprehensive analysis of what went wrong and ways they would prevent such an outage from affecting their customers in the future.

Best Practices

So what are some best practices you can take away from these examples?

• Social media is public.  Your fans and followers have the right to make negative comments – it’s your company’s job to turn those negative comments around and defend yourself to change it from a negative to a positive situation.
• Monitor your business on social media and respond to tweets, mentions, and comments on your company’s profiles in a timely manner.  Social media is real-time, so the faster you respond, the better your customer service will look.
• If possible, suggest that customers contact you privately to send their email address or phone number for more in-depth discussion.
• On Twitter, you must follow the customer so she can direct message you.
• On Facebook fan pages, you must share a personal profile the customer can send a message to.
• On YouTube, customers can visit your company’s channel and send a message.
• Remember that aside from private messaging, anyone can read conversations between you and your customer.  If you provide thorough, great customer service, it can go a long way in impressing your customers, increasing their likelihood of giving you positive referrals.  And for other followers who are watching the situation unfold, it could be a great first impression that leads to a potential customer.

Your Experiences With Business Use of Social Media for Crisis Management

Do you own a business and have you used social media to respond to customers in times of crisis or in the face of negative publicity?  Or are you a customer who has had a positive or negative customer service experience from a business on social media? Please share your thoughts and best practices in the comment box below.