Rarely (if at all) have you heard the confident and unwavering response, “Yes, you can!”

In their book, How to Make Money with Social Media—An Insider’s Guide on Using New and Emerging Media to Grow Your Business, Jamie Turner and Reshma Shah explain that there’s a big difference between people who make money with social media and people who don’t.

People who fail to make money with social media are those who never get their plan off the ground. They’re the ones who (among other things):

• Don’t know how to set up a landing page
• Don’t remarket to “customer prospects”
• Don’t know how to turn a social media campaign into a sales campaign
• Think they can do social media in ten minutes a day
• Sit on the sidelines
• And other faux pas

But people who make money are different. They set objectives, create a plan and execute the plan relentlessly.

And that’s what this book is all about—The Plan. You’ve heard the old adage, “People don’t plan to fail, they fail to plan.” Well it’s true. And to make sure that it doesn’t happen to you, the authors provide a thorough, “no-wiggle-room” roadmap that will put you on the path to social media success.

Here’s what you should know about the book.

Authors’ Purpose

The goal of the authors is to teach you some innovative ways of using social media, in order to generate real revenue and profits for you and your company.

Jamie Turner

Reshma Shah

In this book, Jamie Turner and Reshma Shah explain that by following “the roadmap,” you can use social media effectively to grow your business and make money as well.

So whether you’re a small business owner, a regular business-to-business company or you run a huge division at a large global organization, the authors provide a practical plan to help you set up, launch and run a money-making social media campaign that will work specifically for you.

What to Expect

At 275 pages, this book is not meant to be read cover-to-cover in one sitting. It’s much too extensive for that. Fortunately it’s an easy read, has many interesting examples and lots of bullet points, and is therefore very skimmable.

The book starts with a brief history lesson on what advertising and marketing looked like before the Internet. It goes on to talk about how things have changed and where social media is going to take us in the future.

But the core of the book is literally a roadmap that starts by laying the groundwork for success, and on to measuring the only really important thing – money!

Also notable, toward the end of the book is a checklist of 59 things you need to do on your way to a successful social media campaign.

Some of the more interesting ideas that the authors introduce are:

1. How to tell if your brand is a social media magnet
2. How to use circular momentum to build your brand
3. How to conduct a social media competitive assessment
4. How to build new relationships with customers using augmented reality
5. How to use different social media platforms to network, promote and share (they’re not the same!): Facebook is like a pub, LinkedIn is like a trade show, Twitter is like a cocktail party, YouTube is like Times Square on New Year’s Eve, MySpace is like Woodstock, and perhaps in their next edition, the authors will give us an analogy for Google+.

Key Highlights

For the most part, this book is rather elementary. But don’t write it off altogether, even if you’re a social media pro. There’s still a good chance that you might learn one or two cool things such as:

#1: How to Tell if Your Brand is a Social Media Magnet

A social media magnet is a brand that people want to be associated with. Big brands such as Nike, Apple and Harley-Davidson have no problem there.

The first step to acquiring social media magnetism is to use traditional media to drive people to your Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and LinkedIn pages.

This Smirnoff ad prompts viewers to check out their Facebook page.

If you’re a small and underfunded brand, you’ll probably lean heavily on word-of-mouth marketing to promote your social media profiles.

The authors suggest that you ask yourself the following questions to figure out if your brand is a social media magnet:

• Do people wear your logo on their sweatshirts?
• Do people put bumper stickers with your logo on their cars?
• Do people wear hats with your logo on them?

Obviously the vast majority of small business brands will answer “no” to most, if not all three, questions and the authors know this.

Their intention in asking these “trick questions” is not to shame you or make you feel like a loser, but to make the case that social media is about running a successful business, not about being social. They want you to know that by applying the lessons you learn from their book, you too will be on your way to running a successful business.

#2: How to Think About Social Media

Some people use social media platforms as if they were all exactly the same. What they need to know is that each platform is different and should be approached in a completely unique way.

Facebook is a casual space (like a pub), LinkedIn is a space where you talk strictly business (tradeshow), Twitter is a noisy place where you share helpful links to position you as an expert (cocktail party), YouTube is packed with people clamoring for attention (Times Square on New Year’s Eve) and MySpace… well, that’s history unless you’re a musician.

On LinkedIn, it's important to focus on networking and to carry out professional conversations.

Your job is to review the parallels among these platforms and their analogies (i.e., pub, cocktail party, tradeshow and so forth), and share those parallels with people in your office so that they can get comfortable and figure out how to use each individual platform. Visit other people’s social media pages to see what they’re doing on their various platforms.

Also when reviewing the different platforms, keep in mind that some of them help you to network (LinkedIn), others help you to promote your brand (Facebook) and others help you to share content (Twitter and YouTube).

#3: How to Create Circular Momentum

Turner and Shah suggest that we’re all connected through six degrees of separation.

What that means in business parlance is that your product is linked to a lot more people than those who’ve had direct contact with it. So if people have had a negative experience with your brand, then word will get out very, very fast! This is called circular momentum.

Now, if you can create positive experiences for people using your social media channels, you’ll be able to leverage circular momentum to bring about a great outcome.

Equifax, for example, is a very conservative company. They realized the benefit in allowing fans to vent their frustrations on their Facebook page. After they vent, customers feel much better and Equifax then uses this opportunity to provide support and encouragement. As a result, their customer retention rates have improved by a huge margin, thus justifying their social media efforts.

#4: How to Use Augmented Reality to Generate Business Leads

Augmented reality (AR) is a phrase used to describe a direct or indirect view of the physical, real-world environment through a computer-generated sensory experience. Companies can use AR technology to build new relationships with customers and to persuade prospects.

Side note: You might have experimented with some AR apps on your iPhone; e.g., WorkSnug to identify nearby wi-fi hotspots, DishPointer if you’re into cabling and CarFinder if you can’t remember where you parked the car!

Businesses are also using AR in very interesting and innovative ways. IKEA in Germany for example uses AR to get prospects to try out new furniture right from their homes. Prospects can simply aim their web cam at the current furniture in their living room to see a stylish new piece of IKEA furniture superimposed over their old couch! Just think of how often you could virtually redecorate your house!

This video clip shows how IKEA uses augmented reality to get more customers:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=n4nnLti-72A

#5: How to Conduct a Social Media Competitive Assessment for Your Business

You’re already familiar with how competition in business works. In the last few years, for example, we’ve seen Amazon grab the lion’s share of the book market, as Barnes & Noble and Borders battled each other for physical retail dominance. What they didn’t realize is that competitive shortsightedness can actually render a business extinct, as Borders later found out.

Today your competition is not just your direct competition, it is actually anyone who competes for your customers’ disposable income—more so now because of social media and the universal competition for consumers’ attention.

This makes social media competitive assessment very challenging.

At the very least, you want to figure out how your competitors are using social media so that you can analyze how to compete against them.

However, you might also want to deliberately place yourself on the competitive grid as far away from them as possible. So if your nearest competitor has hired a specialist to manage his social media networks on a frequent basis, you might decide that you’re only interested in a few channels, say only blogs, and that you will be relentless in that one area.

Personal Impressions

I don’t like the title, How to Make Money with Social Media. It sounds like a scam, and in any case the book doesn’t live up to it. However, the subtitle, An Insider’s Guide on Using New and Emerging Media to Grow Your Business, is a lot more accurate.

I also thought the book was rather elementary. Save for a few novel ideas, it might not be very interesting to the experienced social media marketer. Also, most case studies used are big-name companies. Small businesses will have a tough time relating with Coca Cola, Starbucks, Barnes & Noble, IKEA, Colgate Palmolive and other industry giants.

That said, if there’s one social media book that executives and senior managers should read, it is this one. I believe they will be drawn to its interpretation of social media from a commercial perspective, and how social media activities tie to the bottom line.

This book serves as an important reminder that social media is only a means to an end to generate value for your organization. Ultimately you want to set up a social media campaign that is designed to make money. Everything else is just a stop along the way.

Social Media Examiner gives the book a 3.0 star rating.

Over to You

What social media strategies are you using to generate value for your company? Leave your questions and comments in the box below.

Avinash shares how the free enterprise-class tools available through Google Analytics impact businesses today.

He explains how your social media activity influences the behavior of your business audience to help you improve your results.

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

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

• What you should monitor on Google Analytics and why
• How to quickly identify bad landing pages
• What “bounce rates” are and the problems they highlight
• How to define outcomes and conversions
• How to monitor people for different purposes
• What the connection is between Google and social media
• How Google Analytics can help you understand your social media results
• What metrics businesses need to follow on social media
• How to quantify your social media efforts to improve your results
• Why you should monitor the wave of retweets instead of individual retweets

Connect with Avinash on Twitter @avinash and check out his blog.

Do you use Google Analytics? What tips do you have to share on monitoring Analytics? Please leave them below.

This article will share six easy ways to turn lurkers into leads.

Some background

A little background starts by evaluating your current lead generation process and whether it’s helping or hurting your efforts.

It’s important to understand the relationship among your lead generation strategies, your social media channels, your blog and your landing pages. Many times when we think of generating leads in social media, we look at the content we’re posting and neglect to look at the surrounding elements that also touch the user.

Every status update about a new blog post has three steps to drive lead generation: the status update, the blog post and the landing page. Each one of these has a different role in the process and offers a unique opportunity to optimize lead conversion. A typical lead conversion process in social media looks like the image below.

Understand your opportunities to convert leads.

You’ll notice there’s a critical component in the middle—the blog post. We spend a lot of time creating relevant content for our readers and promoting it through our social media channels. But many times, we forget to look around the content of the post to see if there is an EASY way for our visitors to become leads.

Karen Rubin, marketing product manager and marketeer for HubSpot, offered these great tips to help you optimize your blog to convert your social media traffic into leads.

#1: Offer an email blog subscription

RSS has become one of the most popular ways to allow readers to subscribe to your blog. However, it has significant limitations for lead generation. There’s no way to message an RSS subscriber directly because you don’t actually have any contact information. Your only point of contact with an RSS subscriber is when you post a new blog article.

Offering an email subscription as your primary blog subscription vehicle allows you to keep your subscribers up to date on the latest content while also sending emails that facilitate your lead generation process. Once the user has opted-in to receive updates from your company, you have the ability to continue to market to them and nurture them throughout the buying process.

Offer an email subscription on your blog.

#2: Add a Welcome pop-up for new visitors to drive email subscribers

I know many of us probably cringe at the idea of having a pop-up when someone comes to our site; however, this has been shown to tremendously increase the number of subscribers to your blog.

Chris Penn from Blue Sky Factory tested this methodology and was able to increase his blog subscribers by 733% in only two months! If you implement this well and establish rules for when the pop-up will show, it can greatly increase your email list.

Drive email subscribers with a Welcome pop-up.

#3: Include RELEVANT calls to action on your blog posts

Every blog post should include a call to action that is relevant to what the post is about. Karen pointed out that “The key is that your call to action be relevant. On the HubSpot blog, if we have a blog post about social media and marketing, we don’t include a call to action to our landing page optimization webinar. We include one to a social media–based webinar.”

Put a call to action on EVERY blog post.

#4: Keep it light and easy

Most of the calls to action we see on websites are all about buying a product or requesting to speak to a sales rep.

Karen describes this as a process of building trust, “just like you don’t ask a girl to your place to spend the night on a first date, you also don’t ask a visitor from social media to sign up for a demo with a sales rep. Someone who has read 140 characters about a blog post on Twitter and clicked through to see what the article was about likely doesn’t know enough about your company to want to dive in head-first and sign up for a trial or a demo.”

Many times our blog has first-time and repeat visitors; therefore, include calls to action that make it super-easy to buy if they’re at that point, but also include the “softer” call to action for those on a first date with your site. You definitely don’t want to force someone to search for how to get more information about your products or turn off a first-time visitor with a sales offer. Balance is the key.

#5: Be your own advertiser

Traditional content creators’ goals are to bring in visitors and then sell ad space to make money. As the world of marketing has changed, marketers are creating content and using social media to drive visitors.

Why not also use your ad space to promote your own offers? Modify traditional banner ad locations into new calls to action for your offers and drive more of your visitors to landing pages where they have the opportunity to convert into leads.

Use traditional advertising spaces to promote your own calls to action.

#6: Optimize your offers with landing pages

Once someone has clicked on one of your calls to action, make sure your landing page is optimized to convert the visitor into a lead. HubSpot recommends you follow the 7 steps outlined here to start converting more leads! For example:

• Keep it simple: keep everything about this page simple, including the number and nature of the questions you ask.
• Keep it short: seeing a massive list of 15-20 questions will make your prospect think hard about the value of his or her time.

At every stage in this process there will be people who fall off and don’t convert. You can maximize your efforts and minimize fall-off by optimizing each step in the process to drive efficient throughput.

Ultimately, the lead conversion process on your blog is just as important as the actual blog post itself. The goal is to create an efficient lead generation process between your social media channels, your status updates, your blog and your landing pages. Don’t let your social media strategies fall flat because you haven’t created an efficient way for them to become a lead.

What do you think? What has worked for driving leads on your blog? Do you have an example of a great blog that is set up to convert leads? Leave a comment below to share your thoughts or questions.

The pains of managing social media are obvious – now let’s look at 10 different cures to make those pains disappear.

#1: I can’t keep track of what’s going on!

Between answering questions on LinkedIn Answers and updating your Ning profile, you missed the fact that one of your customers just wrote a scathing comment on your Facebook page.

Cure: Start a social dashboard.

Social media management platforms allow you to consolidate multiple social media accounts into one place, so you can manage them all more efficiently. You get an overview of what is happening in different channels, all on one screen. The benefits extend far beyond that, but that’s enough of a reason to look into these solutions. Some solid choices include Hootsuite and Awareness. But different platforms work better for different needs.

#2: I’m talking to a bunch of nobodies!

You exchange 40 tweets with someone who is knowledgeable about your industry. Great! A real prospect! Then you find out that she is a 20-year-old college student (with 15 Twitter followers) writing a paper – and she has absolutely no ability to make a purchasing decision.

Cure: Understand social influence.

You should spend time engaging with people who can move your business forward. That means you need to identify the most influential social media people in your niche. Klout is a tool that tracks influence on Twitter and Facebook. Use it to see if that person is a thought leader, a connector, or a decision-maker.

#3: My customers are out there – but where?

Tools like Gist put your customers’ email addresses together with their social media identities.

You just know that your current customers are on social media. But your Facebook page only has 40 fans. Where are your customers, and how do you connect with them?

Cure: Check out your customers’ social profiles.

Flowtown and Gist both unify multiple social media presences based on your existing customer email database. This gives you a quick way to find out which of your customers are using different social media platforms, and which customers are influential.

#4: I share a lot of content – but it doesn’t drive visits to my site.

You’ve seen the recommendations from experts to keep your self-promotion to a minimum. Social media is about sharing. But you’re also accountable for your own metrics. How can you share, and still get people to check you out?

Cure: Create social media landing pages.

By giving you control of the frame of your link, ObjectiveMarketer gives you the chance to message and brand all of your social media links with customized content. You get all of the benefits of sharing great content with your followers, plus you can show them the interesting things that you’re up to at the same time.

#5: I can’t justify all the time it takes to do social right!

Your team spends hours each week retweeting, sharing links and joining the conversation. But now it’s the end of the year, and you need to make a budget for next year. You know you can’t go on with such a long to-do list, but you don’t have the metrics to show the impact.

Cure: Use your existing metrics – just show the social benefit.

Argyle Social tracks the response from your social media updates and maps them back to the conversion metrics you set up on your website. And it looks back up to 90 days in order to account for a longer consideration cycle – showing how a bunch of tweets adds up to an eventual sale.

Argyle Social tracks the social media links you share and maps that activity back to your website conversions.

#6: I don’t know what my followers are doing online!

You see what happens to your own status updates and blog posts – visitors come to your site, readers leave comments, etc. But you have no idea what they’re doing on the rest of the web.

Cure: Tell people what you like to find out what they like.

This is one place where the biggest names in social media can help you. Twitter and Facebook offer login credentials that any website can adopt (there are open source alternatives as well). Whenever possible, you should connect to other sites using one of these login protocols and “Like” content across the web liberally. Often, you can see who else in your network is also interested in that website. In this way, you’ve created a new opportunity for engagement.

Facebook “Likes” are a great way to find out what your fans are interested in from across the web. “Like” the content you find as you browse, and you’ll see what your fans like in return.

#7: I can’t filter out the noise from the important stuff.

Every time you login to Twitter, you see that there are thousands of unread tweets. Your Facebook page is overrun with comments from people you’ve never heard from before. And there are 1,575 blog posts that are ready for a comment from you.

Cure: Get information fast – when you need it.

Cadmus can definitely help in this arena. It’s designed to show you the most important tweets from your network. If you’re looking for information from your network on a specific topic, Nsyght searches across your social network. It’s like Google but only for the people in your social network.

#8: All this engagement isn’t leading to anything!

You get retweeted by the same people over and over. You have the same conversation with multiple followers. You’re running in a hamster wheel, not moving your marketing forward.

Cure: Get yourself some game mechanics.

Game mechanics means linking your marketing efforts together, so that one interaction naturally leads to the next. You have to create a series of social media events that encourage your followers to engage more deeply – and game mechanics provide a solid framework for planning.

#9: There are not enough hours in the day!

As soon as you feel like your Facebook presence is strong, you know you need to create a SlideShare presence. There’s always one more tweet to write, one more blog post to comment on and new marketing campaign to support.

Cure: Make the case for dedicated resources.

Your marketing program needs to evolve, or it will die. That means your team needs new skills, and a more sophisticated understanding of social media. Work internally to make the case, based on your current success, to shift marketing dollars into social media. And make sure you find the people, whether internal or external, who can hit the ground running.

#10: I have all this content, but I don’t know what to do with it.

You’re doing a great job of engaging with your audience. They’re responding and you have some great quotes. But you’re not getting the full marketing benefit from this engagement.

Cure: Create a space on your site to feature the best social content.

Assuming that marketing involves bringing people to your site so they can take some action, you should feature some social content from your community on your site. This gives your best followers a pat on the back, and allows others to brag about you so you don’t have to. Testimonial pages are a great way to do just that.

What are your biggest social media pains? The community just might be able to cure them for you. If you’ve figured out how to cure them already, be sure to share your solutions in the comments box below.

As interest in Facebook marketing increases, marketers are looking for new ways to improve their technique.

If you’re a regular reader of Social Media Examiner and also visit our Facebook Page then you’ve already heard about creating custom tabs using Facebook’s Static FBML for engaging first-time Facebook visitors.

Here are eight different ways businesses are using landing tabs on Facebook.

#1: Ask Your Visitors to Like Your Page

Your landing tab is a great place to ask first-time visitors to “Like” your page and grow your Facebook community, just as Apryl Parcher does here.

Notice how Apryl Parcher asks new visitors to like her business page to grow her Facebook community.

#2: Give Multiple Invitations for Engagement

Have a look at all of the different ways Starwood Preferred Guest incites visitors to interact with them on their Facebook page.  This is an example of some great landing page marketing techniques. Three things stand out:

• Long tab. A long tab where new visitors have to scroll down several screens to see everything is not always a good choice, but it can work for some businesses.

• Multiple opportunities to engage visitors. There’s a poll, a game, an invitation to share photos and three other ways to engage with Starwood.

• Geo-targeting.  It’s interesting to note that Starwood Preferred Guest uses Buddy Media’s new Platform +GLOBAL application where visitors “are served a customized page based on the language and country settings within their Facebook profile.”  The customization obviously also uses the IP address, because I’m based in France and as you can see below, the “Like” button is in French even though my Facebook preferences specify English.

Starwood Preferred Guest's Explore SPG tab gives many options for visitors to interact with them. CLICK IMAGE TO SEE IN FULL.

#3: Provide Multiple Doors to Begin Interaction

Here’s another interesting way to maximize your landing tab.  The Facebook application TabSite allows you to make a separate navigation bar within a Facebook tab you create using Static FBML.

TabSite offers a solution for business pages that need extra tabs.

See below how Digital Hill Multimedia uses their new tab setting.

It’s interesting to note the choices Digital Hill Multimedia made when selecting what to put on their main Facebook navigation bar compared to what’s in this secondary navigation bar created with TabSite.

See the eight tabs below the main landing tab in the main navigation bar.

#4: Use Current Events

The Volkswagen Facebook page used promotional videos related to the recent World Cup. Combining promotional materials with current events is a marketing tactic that can work well on your landing tab too.

Volkswagen uses slide navigation with a selection of promotional videos.

#5: Link to Custom Applications

Starbucks has a link on their landing tab that launches an application to manage your Starbucks account.

Starbucks uses their landing tab to link to their custom application.

#6: Get Straight to the Point

Best Buy sends new visitors to a “Shop & Share” tab where they make it easy to access different categories of their shopping application.

Best Buy asks new visitors to become a fan, incites engagement and provides an easy access to get straight to their shopping application.

#7: Make Interaction Easy and Fun

Cintas Corporation invites all new visitors to tell them about their tough job and send in photos to win prizes.

Cintas Corporation does a good job at inciting interaction and building community.

#8: Use the “Boxes” Tab

UPDATE SINCE PUBLICATION: Facebook is likely to phase out the boxes tab down the road, so we advise you transition over to creating a custom tab using Static FBML.

Prior to creating their landing tab above, Cintas Corporation directed all of their new visitors to their “Boxes” tab.  If you find it challenging to set up a specific Facebook tab using the Static FBML application, this may be the solution for you.  Facebook pages come with a “Boxes” tab and they are easy to use.

It’s interesting to compare this long Cintas Corporation tab created in a “Boxes” tab with the long Starwood Preferred Guest “Explore SPG” tab created in FBML above.

Cintas Corporation created a very long landing page by simply using the "Boxes" tab. CLICK IMAGE TO SEE IN FULL.

Want To See More?

Here are a few more Facebook pages with interesting landing tabs.

• Threadless is a great example of how to use the “Like” button on a tab.
• Revision Eyewear has a presentation of their products made in Flash.
• Harley Davidson has a variety of links on their landing tab pointing back to their own website.
• Social Media Examiner uses a “landing” video.
• 1-800-Flowers has a clear call to action.

What do you think about custom landing tabs? Please share the links above and tell us what you like most about them.  Leave your comments in the box below.

Jay shares an innovative way to beat your competition using special social channels and critical tips on how to improve your social media marketing.

Be sure to check below for the other takeaways.

In this video you’ll also learn:

• Why you should listen first to monitor what’s happening then go out and make friends
• How the 3 “E”s help improve your social participation
• Why the first Golden Rule is there are no rules
• How his podcast only has 30 direct competitors (compared to his blog with millions)
• How to get experts on podcasts using Technorati and WeFollow
• Where social media is going

Jay’s busy with his Internet Marketing Club which is free to join. Be sure to check out Jay’s website Ten Golden Rules and the Ten Golden Rules Internet Marketing podcast.

Want to find out more about video?  Read these Social Media Examiner articles with tips on video marketing and YouTube marketing secrets.

What do you think?  Do you like Jay’s ideas?  Please comment below…

Did you know you can add retweet buttons inside your PDF files?  The benefit: readers can effortlessly share your great work with their Twitter followers—just by clicking a button in your PDF file.

Below I lay out how to do this in six simple steps.  By the way, if you like this article, please click the retweet button you see above.

How it Works

If you have white papers, ebooks or reports, then you’ll want to add embedded retweet buttons inside your PDF files.  As readers discover your valuable PDF document, they simply click a retweet button within the PDF file.  The result: a message is sent to their Twitter followers pointing them to your document (can you say viral marketing?).

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.

Here’s an example:

Note that I precrafted the above tweet.  The only steps readers need to take are clicking the retweet button in the PDF file and then clicking the update button in Twitter (see above image).  If a reader is not logged into Twitter, it still works.  The reader simply is prompted to login and then your tweet is populated into the “What are you doing” field as shown above.

Why You Should Create Retweet Buttons in PDF Files

Because of their portable nature, PDFs are often downloaded to readers’ desktops. In addition, PDF files can be easily emailed to people, or posted in forums or on other websites.

Because a PDF file can float around, the promotional options typically found on your landing page (like a retweet button) are not available to someone who only has the file.  So it’s important to provide your readers a simple way to share your great document with their fans. And that’s precisely where the PDF retweet button comes in handy.

A few benefits of having a retweet button in your PDF file include:

• Empowers readers to easily share your PDF with their fans
• Allows readers to show their appreciation of your work by simply clicking a button
• Provides steady streams of traffic to your PDF file (because as people discover the file, they will retweet it if they like the content)
• Allows you to know precisely who is sharing your document (for marketing engagement)

And I’m sure there are tons of other benefits.

6 Steps to Creating a Retweet Button in Your PDF File

Step 1: Create a Retweet Graphic and Put it in Your Document

You will need to create a little graphic you can place in your original document.  If you have access to a designer, you’ll want to create something really simple that says “Retweet this.”  I might suggest you place a blue bird on the graphic to give a visual signal to Twitter users.

Or, you can just swipe the one my designer created (see below):

You’ll need to place this image in your original source file.  So if you’ve created your document in Microsoft Word, you’ll want to pick some strategic locations to place the image.  I suggest placing the retweet image in more than one location.

In my Social Media Marketing Industry Report, I placed the retweet image in three locations: pages 2, 5 and 25.

Step 2: Create a Tracking URL That Links to the Document Landing Page

You need a permanent home for your PDF file—one where Twitter fans can go to locate the document.  For example, http://www.whitepapersource.com/socialmediamarketing/report/ is the resting place for my Social Media Marketing Industry Report.

I recommend it be a landing page that links to the actual PDF file, NOT a link that sends people directly to the PDF file.  A real landing page (like the link you see above) provides you the benefit of explaining what the document is all about.  In addition, you can add videos, comments and other features to that landing page which will encourage people to engage.

So once you have the actual URL for the landing page, the next step is to use a URL shortener.  These services will take your long URL and create a short one.  Look for one that also does marketing tracking.

Two I suggest are http://bit.ly and http://cli.gs.  I am a fan of bit.ly because it provides real-time click data, is able to tell what parts of the world people are clicking from and also tracks social media conversations tied to your bit.ly URL (see image below).

This image shows some of the intelligence bit.ly provides based on click-through data.

Step 3: Write Your Tweet

Now that you have a shortened tracking URL, go ahead and craft a compelling tweet for your PDF document.  Here are a few tips:

• Keep it simple. Try to keep the total length to 120 characters or fewer (ideally 100).  This allows Twitter folks to add comments or content to the tweet.
• Consider using a hashtag for tracking purposes.  You can simply go to http://search.twitter.com and search for “#yourtag” (where you replace ‘yourtag’ with a series of unique letters).  For example, we used “#smreport” for the Social Media Marketing Industry Report.  This allowed us to easily track the number of retweets by simply searching Twitter with the hashtag.
• Use your Twitter ID: If you want to grow your following, consider using your Twitter ID in your tweet.  I used @Mike_Stelzner in my example, to help grow a following.  A few conventions here include adding ‘via @YourName’ to the end of the tweet or ‘RT: @YourName’ to the front of the tweet.

Step 4: Create the PDF File

You should now have your retweet graphic in a few key locations inside your PDF file.  Go ahead and generate the PDF file.  If you use a PC and do not have the ability to make PDF files, you can go here to learn how to do that: https://createpdf.adobe.com/.

If you are on a Mac, all you need to do is select the PDF option in the print menu (see image below).

Step 5: Create the Special URL

So here’s where the magic comes in.  It’s really very straightforward.  You’ll need to create a special URL that will tell Twitter everything it needs to know to make this all work.

Part one: Copy this text: http://twitter.com/?status=

Part two: Add your tweet from Step 3 above.  For example: http://twitter.com/?status=RT: @mike_stelzner Social Media Marketing Industry Report (Free, must read) http://cli.gs/QYEpY2 #smreport.

http://twitter.com/?status=RT: @mike_stelzner Social Media Marketing Industry Report %28Free, must read%29 http://cli.gs/QYEpY2 %23smreport

A note about hashtags.  If you have a hashtag (the # symbol) in your tweet, you need to replace it with the following text: %23.  For example, #mydoc becomes %23mydoc in your special URL.  Note that I have seen some situations where # works and others where it does not, so play it safe.

Now test the link.  If you paste it into your browser, it should show up in your Twitter status window.  Make sure your hashtag is showing up.

Step 6: Hotlink the Retweet Graphic Inside Your PDF File

This next step is going to require Adobe Acrobat Pro.  If you do not have Acrobat Pro, try to find someone who does.  Acrobat Pro will allow you to create hotlinks inside your PDF file.

In Acrobat, locate the retweet buttons you added into your file and simply create a clickable link for each retweet graphic.   Use the special URL you created in Step 5 above.

Here’s what you need to do.  When in Acrobat Professional, you want to use the Link Tool.  In Acrobat Professional 8, this is found under the Tools menu and then under the Advanced Editing submenu.

Once you have selected the Link Tool, you can simply take your mouse and drag a rectangle over the retweet graphic.  Up will pop a box called ‘Create Link’ (see below).  You want to keep the link type invisible, highlight style to ‘None’ and select ‘Open a web page’ as the link action.

Then hit the ‘Next’ button.  You’ll be prompted to enter your special URL.  Just paste it in.

Now repeat the process for all the retweet buttons you have in your PDF file.  Save it and you’re done.  Your last step is to get the file up on your landing page.

Now you can sit back and watch the magic happen as people retweet your PDF document.  I like creating a saved search query in my Twitter profile so I can see with a single click how often the document is retweeted.

So what do you think? Is this something that could benefit your business?  Let me know your experience.