Let’s be clear, the Internet is really divided into three types of stuff: (1) terribly addictive, uncomfortably funny or tremendously valuable content, (2) average, run-of-the-mill, “I already knew that” -type content and finally (3) utter crap.

As a marketer, you’ve created content in all three buckets before (nobody bats 1.000…), and as a web surfer, you know that the Internet is almost 99.999% composed of bucket #3.

No, seriously, the Internet is almost completely filled with useless, boring content that probably only appealed to the one person that made it.

Not to be a downer, but I only harp on this fact to say that I had a dream. I had a dream that I lived in a world where the Internet was only filled with interesting, valuable and funny content.

Things that would make me look 100 times smarter than I am, and content that would make my potential customers flock to my accounts and talk to me for days about whatever I had shared.

Then one day, I was asked to review Amplify.com, and I thought my dreams had come true…

Yes… that is a water cooler.

Ampli-Who Dot What?

On the surface, Amplify.com just seems like another site that wants you to share what you like (stop me if you’ve heard this one before) and connects you with friends who do the same. The front page graphic gives off a music site feel. I even thought it was a bit rock-star (like myself)… until I saw the water cooler in the middle of the crowd.

Amplify.com is as simple as the graphic on the front page suggests. They want you to share interesting things from the Internet with your peers, but only “water cooler-worthy” stuff. More on that in a second…

What Can It Do?

Like Twitter, But Longer

Amplify.com lets you microblog just like Twitter, but your limit is 500 characters. The days of showing restraint online are numbered.

Blog Via Email

You can post content (blogs, snippets, photos, etc.) to your Amplify stream via email. Amplify.com gives you a personal email address to send content to, which will automatically add that content to your stream. Unlike other sites with this feature, Amplify.com doesn’t make you memorize a 6,000-character email address. You have a short convenient address customized to your username. I consider that a victory for the little guy.

Don’t try to post to my blog. I’m keeping my eye on you guys…

Find Content Based On Subject

Want to find all of the best content for social media? Easy. Just click “social media” and browse the best stuff. There are several categories to choose from and the content is sorted chronologically.

What’s The Main Event?

Ok, I’ll be honest; none of these features by themselves are impressive. You can do all of these things on Facebook without ditching your friends and setting up another profile (which we all LOVE to do… right?). Fortunately, Amplify.com redeems itself from a life of redundancy by adding one simple feature that can save the entire Internet. Interested? Let me explain.

Remember when I said that the Internet is 99% utter crap? That’s true, but if we’re really being honest, even the really good articles that we read are at least 30% filler (not this one, though J). It reminds me of a lesson I learned when I took a speed-reading class:

“There are plenty of good books to read, but more importantly, there are plenty of good chapters to read.”

Think about that. What if you could share a fantastic article without having to share the part that isn’t amazing? Amplify.com has the answer. They allow you to clip any section of any site and share only that section on Amplify.com, or one of the several social networks that you can post to automatically.

Amplify.com’s clip tool in action.

Find a great couple of paragraphs in a New York Times article? Great, only share that section. Find a blog with three great tips? Take the tips, leave the rest.

Amplify.com has given us a chance to trim the fat off of the Internet. Yes, my heart just fluttered.

This is a TechCrunch article clipped for Amplify.com, all fluff removed (no offense, TechCrunch).

Why I’m Not Doing A Cartwheel Right Now

Unfortunately, it’s not all butterflies and candy corn with Amplify.com. While bringing us one of the greatest tools online, they’ve also allowed some of the tools that kinda make the Internet suck in the first place.

The site needs a filtering option. I click on a popular topic and about half of the options are in a language that I can’t understand, and that’s bad news. Chronological order is OK, but if the section is called “popular topics,” I expect the links to be… you know… popular. That leads me to my real point.

Amplify.com is a great site, but it would be amazing with a ranking system. The problem with the Internet is that anyone can post anything on it and you have to sift through the junk to get to the goods. Amplify.com’s clip functionality is useless if I still have to sort through everyone’s junk to get to the best clips.

Allowing the site’s users not only to comment (they allow this already) but also to rank content would really “Amplify” the best clips and move the site to the “water cooler-talk” level that the front page suggests.

Final Thoughts

As with most dreams, my love affair with Amplify.com was slightly soured by having to sift through so many posts. As with any new site, there will be kinks along the way. And while there is a “Recommend” feature, it works more like a retweet than a content judgment system, which is what it would take for me to really like it.

Amplify.com has a bright future ahead of it, and the issues I see now seem more of the “growing pain” variety than the “death knell” variety. As of today, Amplify.com scores a 7 out of 10.

Have you used Amplify.com yet? What did you think about it? Do you know of another site with the “clip” functionality? Have a site that you’d like to see reviewed? Let us know in the box below!

Instead of competing in a “global marketplace,” local business owners now have access to geotagging, local search, and location-based services. All of which make the Internet more useful to small business than it has ever been before.

Imagine being a hotel owner with several rooms available at 8 o’clock one evening. You know there are a couple of big events happening in town and people are going to be looking for rooms to “sleep it off.” Because of location-based services like Foursquare and Gowalla, you can now advertise a special for those rooms to people who are close enough to take advantage of it.

Would you like to offer a loyalty program to customers without having to print those annoying punch-cards? How about Foursquare for Business… Their free business program keeps track of all the stats for you and even sends you messages to tell you who your most loyal customers are!

New possibilities are being explored every day. But before you jump in and start geotagging, here’s what you need to know.

What Is Geotagging?

It’s a good question because there are really two answers.

First Answer: Geotagging is an added feature for Twitter (and other social media sites) that lets you identify your tweet location by town, neighborhood or precise location.

Second Answer: Geotagging is also an element of mobile applications (Foursquare, Gowalla) that enables real-time sharing of your activities, and promotion of real-time location-based rewards and specials offered by merchants.

Basically, geotagging takes advantage of the GPS technology that’s built into smartphones to build community at the street level instead of just at a global level.

Getting Started

The great thing about a service like Foursquare is that you can’t cheat. It operates based on the physical location of your phone, so you—or at least your phone—has to be where you say it is.

To use any of the location-based services, the first step is to download an application to your smartphone. For example, Facebook is introducing a location-based feature for the approximately 25% of users who post updates using smartphones.

Those people using older cell phones will need to update to an iPhone, Android, Palm or Blackberry before they can join this newest game. But a business owner can join the fun at any time.

For The Business Owner

Yes, even as a business owner, location-based services are going to be easier to use with a smartphone, but you can get started without one. For example, Foursquare is walking business owners through the free signup process and giving them advice for setting up a reward program.

Business owners already using Foursquare can go straight to the venue signup page to get started. All Foursquare is asking right now is that business owners limit themselves to places where people tend to gather; i.e., coffee shops, restaurants, cafés and bars. Other storefronts (hardware stores, salons, etc.) will be able to join and participate as they develop their capacity to handle more traffic.

How it Works for Consumers

Naturally you start by getting a location-based app account. There are lots of apps to choose from:

• Yelp has added a check-in feature.
• Google has added a location widget to Latitude.
• Apple is developing an app for the iPhone.
• Facebook is ready to make geotagging available to mobile users.
• Twitter has geotagging in place.
• Gowalla is running on the iPhone and Android.
• Foursquare is on all the smartphones and connects to Facebook and Twitter.

Once a geo-based application is downloaded to your smartphone, most of the work is already done. For example, all you do is login to Foursquare and the application tells you what businesses close to you are registered.

Foursquare also tells you what rewards or specials each business offers to Foursquare users who check in. For example, 15th Ave. Coffee & Tea in Seattle offers $1 macchiatos before 4pm and $2 off beer and wine after 4pm. The Mayor gets a free pastry! (“The Mayor” is an automatic designation Foursquare gives to the person who checks in to a specific location the most often each day.)

MSNBC’s Today says Foursquare just might be the new Facebook.

To make it more fun, Foursquare also offers badges based on how often and in how many places you login. For example, you can be a Super Mayor by achieving Mayor status in 10 or more venues at once. You get your first badge—the Noob—for making your first check-in, and there are badges to show your progress all the way up to 50 check-ins.

There are even corporate badges and badges based on conferences (SxSW and CES).  You can see a (mostly) complete list of Foursquare badges at IWasAround. It’s a little hard to keep any list like this complete because it’s always being added to. Foursquare is even looking at allowing business owners to develop their own badges.

Why Be Involved?

Let’s start this by pointing at a great article Clement Yeung wrote that’s all about Foursquare. Clement gives a 5-point action plan for using Foursquare and makes some sensible suggestions for ways businesses can partner to be more attractive to customers.

The main reason to get involved is this: The cell phone is the point of convergence for technology.

Things that are happening right now are:

• Websites being optimized for mobile display
• Foursquare and other location-based services becoming popular
• Location and activity-based advertising
• Real-time, local search capacity for consumers

And all these things revolve around smartphones.

AdMob Mobile Metrics is a business dedicated to tracking how people are using their smartphones. Interestingly, their January 2010 metrics report says:

• Almost twice as many iPhone and iPod Touch users regularly download paid apps as Android and webOS users.
• Men are the biggest users of smartphones (but only by 10-15%).
• Smartphone users are evenly split across age groups.
• The vast majority of smartphone users are happy with their toy and iPhone leads the satisfaction pack.

Foursquare and Gowalla connect to Twitter and Facebook. Facebook is also launching a location-based widget! So everything you’re doing with social media is easily applicable to location-based marketing.

In fact, my assertion is that the “big players” have finally woken up to the untapped market of small business owners. This is why location-based services are being developed.  Location-based services make it possible for you and me to make meaningful online connections with the audience that lives within 10, 20 or 50 miles of us.

And I have a special assignment for your local business: Watch your customers today, and tell me how many walk in with a smartphone. Even better, tell me how many are using that smartphone while they stand in line! They are your captive audience.

What do you think about Foursquare? Have you put a reward program in place for your loyal, local, online customers? Are you just finding out about this stuff and have questions? Go ahead and share what you know in the comment box below.

Here are our top five articles (in order of popularity) from this year…

#1: Five Must Read Social Media Marketing Studies

Here’s a quick overview of the this article:

Study 1: By 2010, 26 Million (1 in 7) U.S. Adults Will Use Twitter Monthly

The study by eMarketer found the following: “In 2009, there will be 18 million U.S. adults who access Twitter on any platform at least monthly. That represents a 200% increase over 2008 levels. Usage will reach 26 million U.S. adults in 2010, a further 44.4% climb.“

Study 2: Americans Spend 17% of Online Time on Social Media Sites

As popular social media platforms continue to grow their numbers of users, it is logical to conclude that Americans are spending more time on social networking sites.  According to a study by The Nielsen Company, among those paying the most attention to this recent trend are advertisers. Online ad spending increased by 119% to $108 million in August 2009.

Study 3: In 2010, Over 50% of Marketers Will Be Using Social Media

The “2010 Media Planning Intelligence Study” by the Center for Media Research, examined the likelihood of marketers including social media in their 2010 marketing plan.

Study 4: Blogs Most Useful Social Media Tool, Say 51% of Businesses

McKinsey Quarterly’s “Global Survey” examined companies’ overall assessment of the value of different social media technologies.

Study 5: 75% of Marketers Plan to Increase Social Media Use in 2010

The study by the virtual events provider Unisfair showed that marketers are most focused on attracting and keeping customers in 2010 and they plan to use social media to make this happen.

Click here to see the full article.

#2: Five Ways to Promote Your Facebook Fan Pages

Have you ever wondered, “How do I promote my Facebook fan page?” or “Why do I even need a Facebook fan page?” This article reveals five ways to use the power of Facebook to grow your fan base.

Here’s a snapshot of the five fan page strategies:

Strategy 1: Invite People From Your Facebook Friend Lists

Segment personal friends and professional colleagues into lists and invite these lists as groups to your Facebook fan page instead of sending individual invites. This is the easiest and fastest way to jump-start your fan base.

Strategy 2: Find People With Facebook Search

The updated Facebook Search feature (see the Search bar at the top of Facebook) gives you a view into conversations of your friends and status updates that may even show you who may be looking for the services you provide.

Strategy 3: Attract People With Facebook Social Ads

Social Ads provide advertisements alongside your Facebook sidebar, which show related actions your friends have taken on the site. It is possible to tailor ads to your friends and their interests, which makes it more appealing for them to take action because you are interested as well.

Strategy 4: Facebook Fan Page Twitter App

The Facebook Fan Page Twitter application is a great tool that brings your Twitter following back to your fan page. When you post a status update, a link or a photo (you can choose) on your Facebook fan page, there will be an update to Twitter with a shortened bit.ly link back to your fan page.

Strategy 5: Facebook Fan Box Widget

The Facebook Fan Box Widget is a great feature to add to your blog or website. This widget allows you to show your fan base and allows others to become fans instantly.

Click here to see the full article.

#3: How to Add a Retweet Button In Your PDF Documents

One growing trend on Twitter is the retweet button showing up on websites everywhere.

The retweet button allows any reader to easily post a tweet into his or her Twitter account.  And it’s not just any tweet, but one that’s prefabricated by you and links back to the original landing page where your document resides.

A retweet button in your PDF file empowers readers to easily share your PDF with their fans as well as allows readers to show their appreciation of your work by simply clicking a button. It also provides steady streams of traffic to your PDF file (because as people discover the file, they will retweet it if they like the content), plus allows you to know precisely who is sharing your document (for marketing engagement)

Check out the entire article to learn the 6 steps to add retweet buttons to your PDF files.

#4: Three New Social Media Studies Worth Reading

Here’s a quick overview of the this article:

Study 1: Social Media Engagement Big Challenge for Many Businesses (Deloitte)

Survey results from a Deloitte study (2009 Tribalization of Business Study) pointed to some key challenges that organizations are facing as they move toward integrating online communities into their social media strategy.

Study 2: Social Media Used as a Discovery Tool by 18% of Online Population (Nielson Company

This study by Nielson Company examined the relationship between social media and user search options.  The report compared social sites to search engines and portals like Yahoo! Of those surveyed, 18% reported social media sites as core to finding new information.

Study 3: Businesses Slow to Incorporate Social Media Into Practice (BIA/Kelsey)

Although numerous recent reports show how businesses plan to incorporate social media into their 2010 marketing mix, a recent study by BIA/Kelsey reported that many small- to medium-sized businesses are slow to incorporate the strategies into their plans today.

Click here to see the full article.

#5: How to Create Headlines That Go Viral With Social Media

If you are struggling to get more clicks and bookmarks on your articles, there is one area in which your content might be letting you down: your headlines.

Without a compelling headline, you will not attract attention, and your article will not spread as easily. If you do write a killer headline then you will get more clicks, more bookmarks, and your readers will be compelled to share it with their friends and contacts.

Compelling headlines grab attention, identify a targeted group, are specific, generates curiosity, and promises powerful benefits.

To grab your audience where it counts, you want your headlines to show empathy and make your readers feel. Here are three popular headline emotional hot buttons:

Boost and Slam—What is the best/worst/most/least? Compare and contrast.
Laugh, Cheer, Snigger or Cry—Human interest that tugs the heartstrings work.
Outrage, Anger, and Righteous Indignation—Listen to talk radio or the talking heads and their jabbing fingers on any cable news network.

Check out the entire article for more emotional hot buttons and a free PDF of 102 Proven Headline Formulas.

As we move into the new year, we are looking forward to sharing with you the latest trends and insights in the social media world.  On behalf of all of us at Social Media Examiner, we wish you a happy, healthy and prosperous new year in 2010!

So, now it’s your turn.  What do you think of our top 5 social media articles for 2009? Which article resonated most for you?  What social media topics do you think will hit the “Top 5” list for 2010?  Let us know your thoughts!

Here’s the cool part.  They cost next to nothing and allow you to instantly communicate with hundreds of people.  The marketing upside is huge here: quick video chats with groups of prospects, organized events and much more.

We conducted four live multi-guest video broadcasts for the launch of Social Media Examiner. In this article I’ll explain how we did it and share the tools we used so you can do this on your own.

How it Works

Are you launching a product or service?  Looking to create a big social media splash?   A new and powerful marketing idea is live video broadcasts with multiple guests. Think videophones with multiple people who the entire world can see. Then add public chat and integration with social media sites like Twitter and Facebook.

As you can see in the above image, I broadcasted live with Facebook expert Mari Smith.  In the area below our video boxes is a chat box where people asked us questions and interacted with each other.

The magic combination of seeing talking faces and being able to chat live is a powerful marketing experience. Nothing beats seeing experts in their natural habitats. Click here to watch the playback of the above example.

What makes this really interesting is the simplicity.  People simply visit a page and immediately partake in the experience.  No special software is required.  Anyone can login as a guest.  In addition, people can login with their Twitter or Facebook ID, making it easy to participate and share the experience over social media networks.

So, multi-guest live video broadcasts combine multiple live video streams (you can do more than two if you want) with public instant messaging.  Anyone can type in questions and their video can even be brought into the live video stream.

Why Do Multi-Guest Live Video Broadcasts?

Many people are already familiar with services like Skype that allow one-to-one video communication.  The mass adoption of Skype is market proof that people like seeing live talking faces.

However, the idea of multiple people streaming video publicly is something really new.  In the past, this kind of experience was restricted to executive boardrooms or major television studios.  Now it can occur without special equipment or software.

So here are the variables:

• Talking faces: Multiple people talking to each other over video
• Interacting watchers: Many people (even hundreds) interacting with the talking faces by typing in questions
• Social media: The ability for guests to effortlessly share their live experience with others in their networks (powerful viral marketing here!)

The result: serious wow factor, powerful engagement and social proof.

Here are a few benefits of doing multi-guest live video events:

• Allows special guests to connect with people on a very personal level
• Enables your business to quickly test out ideas
• Provides a platform for educating prospects and customers
• Enables live expert interviews among multiple parties
• Attracts new people to your offerings as guests share their experience via their social media channels (with the push of a button)

And I’m sure I’m just scratching the surface of the possibilities here.

How to Conduct Multi-Guest Live Video Broadcasts

The Service

TinyChat is the service we used for our live video broadcasts. From a user’s perspective, TinyChat is really simple.  You just provide people a unique URL (like tinychat.com/ourcoolbroadcast).  You create this at TinyChat.com (see image below).  When people visit your “room,” they simply enter their name and they’re brought into your live broadcast.

Starting a video broadcast with TinyChat is super-easy.  Just visit the site, enter a name for your new room and hit the green “Create your room” button.

Quick story: We were searching high and low for services that could easily include multiple people at multiple locations talking on a single stream.  We found no easy solution.  Then we saw an article on Mashable.com introducing TinyChat.  Despite some bugs, I was immediately impressed and decided we’d give it a try for our launch.  I’m glad I did!

Here are some of the service’s capabilities: videoconference rooms can accommodate up to 400 people and you can have up to 12 live video streams.

The service is free, but shows advertisements.  If you pay $14.95 per month (and you can cancel at any time), you can eliminate the ads for your room and guests.  The paid upgrade also provides a few more useful features. You can:

• Reserve up to five room names for your business (like tinychat.com/yourname)
• Set a password for video broadcasters (ensures guests cannot begin uninvited video broadcasts)
• Set a password for rooms (for more private functions)
• Create simplified recordings (I have not tested this one)

Tiny Chat Tips and Hiccups

There are a few bugs you should be aware of.  First, if you set up a room on one computer and then expect to manage it on another, you could run into problems.

When you first set up your room, you are presented with a Room Settings option (also referred to as Room Starter Controls under one of the menus—see image below).

Making things private: A few things you want to do right away include NOT allowing anyone to broadcast and NOT listing the room publicly.  I have found that entering a topic for a room is of no use if you don’t list the room publicly.  This will prevent random unwanted guests from coming into your room.

Beware of the Twitter login: You can require folks to enter your room using their Facebook or Twitter ID.  In order to maximize the entry into the room, I would select ‘No, just a nickname is ok”  (see image above).

When people first enter the room, they are given the option to login via a nickname, or with Twitter or Facebook.  If the person selects Twitter, for example, it will post a tweet in his or her feed, bringing even more people into the room.  Beware of logging in using Twitter when you are first testing your room, as others will be invited to join you (via an automated tweet).

Upgrade to save your room (and headaches): If you plan on doing a live broadcast, I would advise you to pay the $14.95 and upgrade.  This will get rid of the large advertisements for all participants in the room.  It will also allow you to set a master password for broadcasters.

Here’s why this is important.  One big bug with TinyChat has to do with Room Starter Controls.  Let’s say you set up your account on one computer (or browser) and then you want to change settings later on another computer.  TinyChat won’t let you control the settings of the room because you did not “start it.” The best way to ensure things go well is to upgrade and login.  Then set a broadcasting password for the room and only give it to presenters.  This ensures random people do not begin broadcasting and addresses the bug as well.

I’m here, where are you? Okay, this has happened a few times.  I was logged in my paid room and no-one else was there.  BUT, they actually were in the room and did not see me.  I had to log out and log back in with a different browser.  The problem seemed to be isolated to the Safari web browser.  I hope they fixed this issue.  The good news is it only occurred during test runs.

Tips for Video Presenters

Here are a few tips to ensure your live broadcast goes as planned.

Do a Test Run: Having done a LOT of live events, I cannot overstate the importance of a dry run to test everything with your presenters.  Technology always means hiccups.  Conduct a test run days before your actual event with each of the presenters individually.  This ensures audio and video issues are worked out before your live event.

Make All Presenters Wear a Headset: One of the biggest challenges with live video broadcasts is audio echoes.  This nearly always occurs because a presenter is not wearing a headset.  So the voice coming from a presenter’s computer speakers is picked up by his or her microphone and creates a horrible echo.  The simple solution: Ask if the presenter has an iPod headset.  Have the presenter stick the headset in one ear and run the cord behind his or her back and into the computer’s audio output port.  Also watch the audio indicators to make sure your voice doesn’t get too loud or too soft.

Lighting: If you can, make sure everyone is well-lit.  Often this involves asking presenters to move a lamp behind their computers. Lighting, however, is a real art (and I’m no expert).  Go here for a cool video on basic lighting techniques.

Have regular breaks to introduce new attendees to the presenters: Because people will virally discover your broadcast while it’s happening, it makes sense to have some regular 30-second breaks where you introduce yourself and who you are talking with.  Here are a few tips from Damian Christianson.  Have some pre-crafted text that you can paste into the chat channel with details about the presenter and the event.  Also provide a place for folks to go (like your blog) with follow-up questions.

Recording sessions: I have not experimented with the built-in recording capabilities of TinyChat.  I prefer to capture recordings myself. I’m on a Mac and strongly recommend ScreenFlow to record your sessions.  Just remember that you’ll be recording audio from your computer and your input microphone, which can result in a slight delay between your lips moving and your voice.  I think it’s not that huge, but be aware it will happen.

What do you think? Do you find value in live multi-person video broadcasts?  If you have done live video broadcasts, please share your tips in the comment box below.

Do any of these sound familiar? “Who has time?” “You expect me to do all this on top of my normal duties?” “How do you fit everything in?” … and so on.

I am not going to lie to you. Social media does take time. In fact, time is going to be one of your major hidden costs of doing business on the Internet.  And for some of us, that time could be wasted if we are not careful.

You need to watch where your time goes to ensure you’re spending it efficiently and with the desired impact.  Here are five tips to help you.

#1: Spend Your Time Intentionally

It’s all too easy to just chit chat, browse and surf, get distracted or feel like we are making progress when really we are avoiding work and using social media “engagement and interaction” as an excuse to procrastinate. There are good conversations and wasteful conversations and you need to decide which is which.

Consider a face-to-face networking event. Do you spend all of your time speaking to one person at that event about the weather, or do you spread yourself around a bit and find new and interesting people to connect with? Are you just hanging out or do you direct your efforts toward a precise tactical aim or specific goal?

You need to know what you are doing and how you are going to measure your success.

How does this help you find time? Well, most businesses and individuals already allocate time for marketing, networking and research. If you know that your social media activities come in under one of those headings, and your efforts in social media are going to achieve equal or better results to other things you could do under those headings, then you are equipped to carve out time to try social media instead.

#2: Carve Out Time Where Social Media Is More Efficient

Because of my social media efforts, I no longer have to pitch, write proposals or go to sales meetings. I have never had to cold-call for my own business, and I do not write competitive bids.

How much time could you save if you didn’t have to do this kind of sales lead generation or closing?

In my previous job, I would have to spend more than six hours in a car just so I could go to one 30-minute sales presentation competing with several other companies with very little differentiation between us. Not only was it soul-destroying and a colossal waste of time, it was actually very ineffective.

I am not saying you will be able to 100% replace your old way of doing things with social media right away, and I would not suggest that is wise even if you could. But you should be able to take an hour or two out of a week to test social media and see how the results look. In fact, combining approaches usually works best, as each technique and medium compounds the results of the others. Reaching prospects through a multi-channel approach is normally much better than the sum of the parts.

The great thing about social media is you can pretty much get involved anywhere and any time.

#3: Use “Dead” Time

How much time do you spend just waiting? I was recently at a conference in Las Vegas and because of the long-haul nature of the travel and the fact that I would be alone much of the time, I did a lot of hanging around and waiting, which I filled with social media. Just think of your average business trip… What do you spend a lot of time doing?

• Flights
• Taxis
• Queues
• Departure lounges
• Restaurants
• Meetings
• Hotels
• …?

If, however, you have an Internet-connected laptop or smart phone, you can at least use some of this time to stay connected, engage with people, write some content or otherwise go from “hanging around” to being semi-productive. If nothing else, you will feel like you are not all alone in the world!

How long does it take to check your messages and send out a tweet, status update, check out a link, or answer a question? Seconds? Minutes at most?

How many times during the day do you get the odd 10 minutes where you are simply waiting?

Even at my desk I have to sit and wait, watching progress bars as something calculates, prints, renders or uploads. Those are prime “check what is happening in social media” times!

What if you find you have more than a few minutes to spare?

#4: Escape, Bulk-Produce, Store Up and Schedule

On those occasions when you have a good chunk of time, make the best possible use of that time and get a power hour of content produced.

• Outline and write a set of blog posts to go out later when you are too busy
• Brainstorm and create ideas, mind map your thoughts and generate headlines
• Plan for the future, write up an editorial calendar, “most like to meet” list or line up meetings with people with whom you have lost contact
• Get organized and make your week more efficient with tasks, to-dos, filing and an empty inbox
• Write out some interesting tweets to go out over the next week so you only have to check in and reply each day

One of my friends “escapes” to the coffee shop a couple of times a week and does all his content creation and planning for that week in those few concentrated hours. Being out of the office with zero interruptions (other than the constant stream of fresh latte) means he can bang out several quality items and his brain cooperates, rather than fights against his productivity with distractions and… Ooh, shiny!

#5: Just Relax

My last point is that this is not meant to be a chore. Nobody is testing you, tracking your use of time or holding you to any grading system. It should be useful and it should be fun!

Aim to build a reputation for being helpful and providing value, and most of all being a real human being. Then people will be much more forgiving and understanding. You do not need to be perfect.

If you do not post an article this week, so what? Your Twitter followers might be concerned if you do not appear for a few days, but they are not going to start saying bad things about you if you are too busy to tweet!

For me, social media is primarily social. It is my coffee break. Yes, I do find it a very effective set of tools for my business, but I also deeply appreciate the people who are at the other end of those avatars and tools. If you keep relationships foremost in your mind and do not treat social media as something you have to do or else, you will have much greater success at it!

What do you think? Have you struggled to find time? How do you find time for social media? Please share your comments below…

Photo by Leo Reynolds

But many brand and marketing managers responsible for social media don’t quite understand what social media monitoring is and why it’s important. Here’s a quick primer:

Social Media Monitoring Is Listening

Listening to online conversations is technically done without ears. Using search engine technology, social media monitoring tools scan the Internet looking for documents that contain keywords you select. They return those results in some sort of order that allows you to see where people have mentioned your brand, company, product or whatever you specified.

Seeing these results reveal which websites or blogs you should visit to either see what people are saying about you or actually participate in those conversations. Without monitoring, the conversations are happening without your knowledge.

Social Media Monitoring Can Be Free

The easiest way to start monitoring social media is to sign up for some free tools and services. Google Alerts allows you to search for a word or phrase just as you would in a regular search, and then notifies you when something new pops up on the web with that search term. You can subscribe to email updates of the new search results or add them to your RSS subscriptions. (If you don’t know what RSS is, watch “RSS in Plain English,” a video from CommonCraft.)

You can also search for your company or product name on Twitter to see real-time conversations that include mentions or discussions of your brand. Add Technorati to the list and your monitoring will cover the majority of blogs as well.

Paid Social Media Monitoring Solutions Are Often Worth the Investment

The one drawback to the free monitoring solutions is that manual work will be required to quantify the results for your executives or report your findings. Paid social media monitoring services like Radian6, Scout Labs and Techrigy pull all those conversations together into an organized, web-based dashboard and allow you to pull charts and graphs that explain the information with very little work on your part.

One big benefit to many (but not all) of the paid solutions is their ability to analyze sentiment and tone of the conversations through fancy computer algorithms using natural language processing. What this means is that you can log in to your service, see that there were 250 conversations mentioning your brand this week, and of those, 83 percent were positive, 10 percent were negative and the other 7 percent were neutral.

Paid monitoring solutions offer dashboard experiences like this one from Radian6 which makes monitoring your brand easier

Monitoring Is Only the First Step

Finding and cataloging the online conversations about your company is just the tip of the iceberg in social media monitoring. Once you know where conversations are taking place and what is being said about your company, you can then participate in the conversation. This is critically important for companies because today’s web-savvy consumer requires direct access to the people behind the products and services they buy or shop for.

Let’s say you find a customer upset about the service she received at your place of business earlier today. Letting the individual mouth off to her friends who have a natural predisposition to either agree or jump on the bandwagon of hate only guarantees your company will be thought of negatively by those involved in the conversation. However, social media case studies show time and time again that entering into similar conversations with a simple, “I’m sorry you had a bad experience. What can I do to help?” shows the disgruntled fan—and her bandwagon-jumping friends—that you’re truly interested in improving the situation. The customer response is almost always something like, “Wow. I didn’t know you were listening. Thanks for offering.”

Smart Monitoring Can Build Your Business

Please don’t think that social media monitoring is limited to mitigating online detractors. By analyzing the conversations around not just your company, but also your industry or even competitors, you can gain a significant market advantage and actually drive business.

Let’s say you’re monitoring mentions of your nearest competitor and uncover a trend that people are complaining that their product (say, a coffeepot) is great but not durable. You then change your advertising campaign to trumpet the fact your coffeepot lasts three times longer than the competitor’s.

For another example, suppose you have a national product that has inconsistent sales patterns from region to region. Your social media monitoring shows you what people in the Pacific Northwest say are the best and worst qualities of your product, but the answers are different in the South. This consumer intelligence helps you better market your product based on geographic and cultural specifics which can be the difference in customers choosing you or your competition.

Last but not least, sophisticated monitoring can even reveal individual customers who are at the point of making a purchase decision, enabling you to reach out and help them make a connection to your product at the absolute perfect time.

What Are You Waiting For?

Now that you have an idea of what social media monitoring is and what it can do for you, dive in. Start a Google Alert for your company or product. Add one for some general industry terms your customers might use when discussing your category. Add one for each of your competitors. As you feel comfortable, add Twitter and Technorati searches, then branch out and start exploring other social media monitoring tools. At the very least, you’ll have a better idea of what people are saying about you.

What social media monitoring tools are you using? What are your thoughts?  Please leave a comment below.