What if you could understand why your audience shares some information and not other? That would make your content stand out from the competition.

The Science of Sharing

30 billion pieces of content are shared on Facebook each month, including blog posts, links, news stories and photo albums.

HubSpot’s Dan Zarrella has found that three things must happen to get your content shared.

First, people must be exposed to your content (be a fan on Facebook or follow you on Twitter). Second, they must be aware of your content (meaning they actually see it). Finally, they must be motivated by something in your content to share it.

Many articles have been written on how to increase your audience size and make people aware of your content, including these by Mari Smith and Denise Wakeman. This article will focus on the motivations for sharing.

The New York Times recently partnered with Latitude Research to unpack the psychology of sharing. Based on their study of 2500 participants (and some other recent research), here are 9 reasons why your customers aren’t sharing your content.

#1: Your customers don’t trust you

Stated plainly, people won’t share your content if they don’t find you or your content to be trustworthy.

The 2011 Edelman Trust Barometer found that globally only 56% of people trust businesses to do what is right. However, in the US, the UK and Japan, that number fell significantly between 2010 and 2011.

Notice the evolution in trust.

#2: Your customers don’t care about your brand

That hurts to hear, but customers have short memories. They wonder “what have you done for me lately?”

Your customers are looking for valuable information, great deals and a chance to meet other people who share their interests. As soon as you stop offering these things, your fans will go looking elsewhere.

They may not feel a commitment to your brand, but you can keep them interested in your content. The next couple of points offer some remedies you can implement immediately.

#3: Your posts are boring

“Don’t be boring,” says Grandma Mary, the alter-ego of Social Media Examiner’s Facebook community manager, Andrea Vahl. People are far more likely to share something they find intriguing or funny.

Look at the case of Volkswagen’s videos. Their Cannes-winning episode, The Force, a spoof on Star Wars, earned over 40 million views. None of their other videos, more traditional marketing content, came close to 1 million views. Of course, most of us would love a million views. But look at the relative difference in sharing power.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=R55e-uHQna0

#4: People care about causes more than brands

The New York Times found that people are more likely to share about something they are passionate about.

Let’s face it. People rarely wake up wondering what they can do for XYZ brand today. But they do dream of ways to help their favorite cause. Whether it’s ending poverty, supporting Greenpeace or advancing a local charity, many people give sacrificially to help things they care about.

Notice how CREE has taken a boring subject like lighting and made it a mission and revolution to change lighting in public places across America.

While not a cause in the humanitarian sense, this does get people excited about being part of something bigger than your brand or product.

#5: People share to build relationships with others

Research shows that people value relationships with other people, not necessarily with brands. They are definitely looking for community. Your brand might be able to create a platform for that community.

Here are two interesting factoids from The New York Times study:

• 78% of respondents use links to stay connected to people they might not otherwise stay in touch with.
• 73% of respondents said sharing content helps them find people with common interests.

Red Bull does a nice job of sharing content their fans might be willing to share with their friends.

Notice how Red Bull asks a question and then encourage sharing.

#6: Customers are looking for validation

Some things haven’t changed since junior high. We are all trying to build credibility in the eyes of our friends. We want to be seen as experts in some area(s).

The way we do that online is through the content we share.

68% of The New York Times study participants said they share content as an advertisement for themselves. They want to give others a better sense of who they are.

#7: People share to manage information

You’ve heard it said, “I’m just thinking out loud.” Today many people think out loud through social media.

In fact, 73% of the study participants said they process information more deeply, thoroughly and thoughtfully when they share it.

Additionally, 85% of respondents said that reading other people’s responses helps them understand and process information and events.

Social media scientist Dan Zarrella found the following words generate the most comments in his research.

Notice how popular words like "giveaway" and "jobs" are.

#8: You’ve misunderstood your audience

If you’ve been around marketing for very long, you understand the concept of a marketing persona. This idea has been around for at least 20 years and advocates understanding your customer profile by creating detailed pictures of your ideal customer(s).

The New York Times study found there are six sharing personas for online fans and I’ve listed a seventh based on my experience and our audience. Understanding who your customers are can help you identify common motivators:

1. Altruists—Altruists share content out of a desire to be helpful and aspire to be seen as a reliable source of information. Preferred tools: Facebook and email.
2. Careerists—Careerists are well-educated and seek to gain a reputation for bringing value to their networks. They prefer content that is more serious and professional in tone. Preferred tools: LinkedIn and email.
3. Hipsters—Hipsters are younger sharers who have always lived in the “information age.” They use Twitter and Facebook to share cutting-edge and creative content. They share content to build their online identity. Preferred tools: Facebook and Twitter.
4. Boomerangs—Boomerangs seek validation and thrive on the reaction of others to their content, even when it’s negative responses. Preferred tools: Facebook, email, Twitter and blogs, wherever people will engage them.
5. Connectors—Connectors see content sharing as a means of staying connected to others and making plans. They are more relaxed in their sharing patterns. Preferred tools: Facebook and email.
6. Selectives—Selectives are more thoughtful in what they share and with whom they share it. They personalize their sharing and expect responses to their content. Preferred tool: email.

Although this is not based on The NY Times research, I’d like to add a seventh persona to the list:

1. Trendsetters—Trendsetters are thought leaders, marketers and business leaders who purposefully seek to stay abreast of breaking news and trends in their industry, sharing it quickly and aggressively. These people are typically seen as experts (or aspire to be seen as such). Preferred tools: Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.

A couple of observations: 1) notice how many of these personas prefer email; 2) notice that the platform significantly predicts the motivation pattern.

#9: People are more personal with email

The study authors discovered that people have not abandoned email. In fact, participants share most frequently through email and consider it more private. Therefore they have higher expectations for responses through email.

Some final pointers

If you want a deeper understanding of the psychology of sharing, see this article by Dr. Rachna Jain.

One of the most overlooked rules in content creation is the rule of simplicity. Shorter posts (80 characters on Facebook) get shared 27% more frequently. Keep your writing style at a fifth grade or lower level of understanding.

Create a sense of urgency in your writing. Give people a reason to respond now. If they don’t act immediately, they probably never will.

Finally, remember that getting your content shared is just the first step. See this as part of longer-term strategy of building a loyal following.

Share your comments!

What are your thoughts? I’d love to hear your comments on how you get your audience to share your content. If you have any stories, please leave them in the comments box below.

In an earlier post I talked about the need to fully optimize your website and blog posts for search engines.

However, content optimization will only take you so far. For a website to really take off in the search engine rankings, it needs to generate incoming links from relevant and reputable websites. And you have little control of incoming links.

To increase the likelihood of obtaining high-quality incoming links, here are seven things you can do:

#1: Create Content Others Will Want to Share

All search engine optimization (SEO) starts with content. The first step to generating incoming links is to create content that others will want to share. Blog posts that solve problems, provide a valuable resource, entertain, demonstrate innovation or even create controversy can all generate incoming links. Average content won’t cut it. It needs to be outstanding.

Facebook, Twitter, Digg and other social media sites are driven by the desire to share. One of the quickest ways to build social media credibility is to share outstanding blog posts, videos or other online content. When you create content that will give Twitter users or bloggers credibility just by sharing it, you’re going to generate valuable incoming links.

Don’t forget to make your content easy to share by including TweetMeme, Digg, Facebook or other buttons that are easy to find and use.

#2: Distribute Online Press Releases

Press releases are a great way to generate incoming links. A good press release can be directly published by any of a number of highly trafficked news organizations. Again, the key is to provide content that is of value to others.

When writing a press release, think like a reporter. What “news” is important to the reporter’s readers? Write it as if you were the reporter writing a story. Make the reporter’s or editor’s job easy and your press release has a much better chance of getting published.

One of the big advantages of online press releases is that you can control the back links to your site. Linking keywords in your press release to relevant pages on your website or blog can result in valuable incoming links.

Even the link coming from the press release site can be beneficial as most PR distribution sites have a high Google page rank. The key is to link from the body text of the press release to pages deep within your site such as a related blog post (deep linking). For example, a link to an article on your website providing tips for writing press releases wrapped around appropriate keywords (as opposed to a link to your home page) is a deep link.

Although there are a number of free press release sites available, paid distribution sites such as PRNewswire.com are often monitored by reporters and feed directly to Yahoo! News and other large websites. If you have the resources, a good press release on a premium distribution site can quickly pay for itself.

Distribution sites such as PR Newswire, Business Wire, PrimeZone or Market Wire distribute press releases to Yahoo! News and others.

#3: Write Guest Posts

Writing guest posts (like I’m doing here) on highly ranked, highly trafficked websites can also generate powerful incoming links.

Writers often will offer to write free posts in exchange for a link back to their own website. If the publisher will allow it, a link or two in the body of the post anchored to related keywords (deep links) can be even more valuable than the link in an author bio. Don’t believe me? How many of you clicked on the “tips for writing press releases” link above?

If you’re a good writer and have something to say, landing a guest spot isn’t all that difficult. The key thing is to pitch the website owner (or appropriate editor) an article that will be of value to his or her readers. Pitch the idea, not the entire article. Prior relationships don’t hurt either. If there’s a blog you’d like to write for, constructive comments and active participation can go a long way.

Remember, many blogs are run by individuals or small operations and creating daily content can be a lot of work. A good blog post by a guest writer can be beneficial to both the blog and the writer.

#4: Link to Others

Don’t be afraid to link to other blogs or publications. Linking to content of value not only provides a service for your readers but the incoming link will show up in the other blog’s analytics. Many blogs even display incoming links along with the comments. These links are one way to direct other bloggers back to your site. If they see something they like, they might return the favor.

Google also likes to see outgoing links to relevant and reputable websites.

#5: Share Content With Relevant Websites

Look for websites and blogs that offer content that’s complimentary to yours and let them know you’re there. For example, a lawyer who specializes in waterfront issues and riparian rights might share an article with a realtor who specializes in waterfront homes.

This can be as simple as an email letting the blogger know you enjoy his blog and a link to an article of interest to his readers. If you can directly tie it into something the blogger is currently writing about, even better.

In the old days, it used to be common to ask for a link exchange. Now, these link exchanges can come across as spammy—especially to the owner of a website with a high Google ranking. You’ll get much further with content that is highly relevant to the blogger.

#6: Create a Link Network

This is a tip that can do wonders for a group of topically related bloggers. About five years ago, I started blogging about my favorite college football team (and my alma mater). At some point, a number of bloggers in the Big Ten began to organize behind the scenes.

The most recent headlines from associated blogs can drive traffic for everyone in the group.

We all agreed to include links to each other’s blogs on our websites and someone created a feed reader that published the most recent headlines from the group in our sidebar. At the time it seemed like a good way to pick up a couple of readers from other college sports blogs. I had no idea the impact from the incoming links would be so huge.

Over the years, many of these blogs have grown into highly ranked websites while others have merged with larger content providers. Thanks to the network, we all have a number of incoming links from highly ranked websites loaded with relevant content.

The feed reader in the sidebar also notifies fellow bloggers and their readers of my most recent posts. I’ll often write headlines aimed at other blogs in the feed knowing that it may generate a response or at least drive traffic from other sites. This technique can often trigger a response from other blogs generating even more traffic for both of us.

Transfer this technique to a business blog and you could create a very powerful network. If you’re worried about competition, look for bloggers outside of your geographic region or closely related but not in direct competition with your business. Realize though that the benefits of the incoming link juice far outweigh the concerns of a few readers visiting another blog. Besides, if your content is good enough, they’ll find their way back to your site.

#7: Don’t Forget Internal Links

If you have a blog post that has achieved a good Google page rank on its own, use it to build in a couple of links to other pages within your site. The link will still hold search engine value even though it’s coming from within the same site.

Link-building takes time and should be an ongoing process. It’s also a world in which the rich get richer. As a website moves to the top of the search returns, lazy researcher syndrome kicks in. Reporters and bloggers will often click on the top returns just because they’re the first to pop up on the page. The upper positions on the search returns also bring perceived credibility just because of their position. As you work your way to the top positions, incoming links will start to develop on their own.

“Link-building is an ongoing process.”

Have you found success generating incoming links to your website or blog? What methods have you tried and what worked for you? Leave your comments and suggestions in the box below.

You’ve likely heard of StumbleUpon. But do you really understand how to use its full power?

StumbleUpon is a social bookmarking and rating site where people can “Stumble” their favorite web pages, write reviews and share their discoveries with their followers.

This network is like Delicious, but with a more enhanced social platform and sharing system.

Why Use StumbleUpon?

StumbleUpon can be a great site to organize your favorite bookmarks, although it isn’t quite as advanced as Delicious in organization. You can easily save items by giving them the thumbs-up using the “I like it” buttons on the StumbleUpon toolbars for Firefox or Chrome.

Use the StumbleUpon toolbars (Chrome on top, Firefox on bottom) to see Stumblers who like a specific page.

Aside from organizing your own favorites, StumbleUpon is also used to drive traffic to a specific webpage, photo, video or other website. When you favorite a particular item in StumbleUpon, it’s recommended to the StumbleUpon network. People who express interest in a topic will be shown your page if it falls under that topic and has received good ratings from other Stumblers when they use the Stumble button in their toolbar or when they search StumbleUpon.

Saving Your Favorites

There’s more to saving your favorite pages than just hitting the “I like it” button. You can use the Comment bubble on the Chrome toolbar or the Info button on the Firefox toolbar to go to the StumbleUpon page for the URL and enter a detailed review, which is appreciated much more than just a thumbs-up.

Whenever you’re favoriting an item, be sure to use the tag icon to add tags to your favorites. StumbleUpon’s search is less than exact when it comes to relocating something that you’ve favorited and hope to return to, so tag that item appropriately so you can find it when you need it.

A view of your tags in your StumbleUpon favorites.

You can see your own favorites’ tags by going to your favorites and selecting Tags. The ones you use the most will show up larger than the rest so you can easily spot your favorite topics, or you can hover over the Tags link to see them in order of the number of favorites you’ve added in that tag.

You can also share your StumbleUpon favorites through Twitter and Facebook icons on the toolbars.

Creating Your StumbleUpon Profile

After you’ve registered for StumbleUpon, and before you begin building your StumbleUpon network, you’ll want to create a great StumbleUpon profile. There are two aspects to your profile you’ll want to be sure to complete before you start contacting others to follow you.

Your Bio

You can create a detailed bio by going to your Settings menu to Customize Profile. In the “introduce yourself to everyone” box, you can enter a detailed description of yourself as well as links to your website, blogs and other social networks.

Your StumbleUpon profile settings page.

Although they’re nofollow links, they’ll garner you traffic as people visit your profile based on the fact that they like what you Stumble.

Here’s how your StumbleUpon profile introduction might look.

Once you have your avatar and bio information completed, the next thing you’ll want to do (if you haven’t already) is fill your profile with favorites in topics you’re interested in. This will show people who visit your profile what you’re into and that you’re active, and will make them more likely to follow you.

Finding Friends on StumbleUpon

There are plenty of guides on generating traffic from StumbleUpon. If you don’t want to wait for the luck of the draw of a power Stumbler coming across and liking your content, then your next-best bet is to build a strong following to share your content with.

Find or Invite Your Friends

The first place to search for StumbleUpon followers is within your own networks. After you’re logged in, go to the Stumblers tab and use the Find Friends option. StumbleUpon can connect to your Gmail, Yahoo or Windows Live (Hotmail) email contacts as well as your Facebook friends and Twitter followers to see if any of your connections are also Stumblers.

Find and invite your friends via email, Facebook and Twitter.

When it pulls up your contacts, it will show you their icon, user name, real name (if available), number of favorites (which shows if your connections are active), and their main interests.

StumbleUpon lists your contacts with their number of favorites and interests.

From here, you can select people you want to follow based on interest, or let it “Select All” to follow all of your contacts from a particular network.

Find Stumblers Based on Interest

There are several ways you can find Stumblers to connect with based on interest.

Topics

First off, you can see Stumblers who follow particular topics by looking under the Discover tab at your own favorite topics, listed to the right and based on the number of times you thumbs-up items tagged with that particular topic.

StumbleUpon keeps track of your favorite topics in the Discover tab.

When you look at a particular topic, you’ll see a random selection of people who like that topic.

Here’s a look at Stumblers who like a particular topic.

Next, under the Discover tab, you can look at general topics.

StumbleUpon’s general topics listing in the Discover tab.

Tags

You can also look at StumbleUpon tags for recently hot and most popular topics.

Here are Recently Hot and Most Popular All Time tags on StumbleUpon.

If you can’t find the topic or tag you’re looking for, you can add the keyword in the URL to see if it comes up, such as http://www.stumbleupon.com/discover/twitter/ or http://www.stumbleupon.com/discover/twitter-tools/.

Groups

There are also groups on StumbleUpon. They’re not easy to search – you have to go by category to find the group where people interested in a particular topic would hang out.

Here are general categories for StumbleUpon groups.

Most groups seem to be inactive—only moderators can add related sites for group members to peruse, and most of the last-added sites are over a year old. Yet many groups have 10,000+ members, so they’re a great way to find Stumblers based on interest.

By Favorite Item

If you want to be specific and only follow people who like a certain post or website, you can find out who have favorited a page that you’re on by using the StumbleUpon toolbars. If you have the Firefox StumbleUpon toolbar, for example, you would use the Info button. If you have the Chrome StumbleUpon toolbar, you would use the Comment icon.

This will take you to the StumbleUpon page for a particular URL.

Here’s a StumbleUpon URL page for Social Media Examiner.

Here you’ll see the people who’ve favorited the page as well as those who’ve written reviews. Needless to say, if you’re specifically looking for people who like writing reviews on a particular topic, you might want to start with those who are writing reviews on websites in your industry.

Connecting With Stumblers

StumbleUpon shows common interests between you and another Stumbler.

Whenever you go to a Stumbler’s profile page, you’ll see their avatar and basic biography, plus some statistics about their Stumbling habits, which will let you know whether they’re an active Stumbler.

You’ll also see whether you have a lot in common with this Stumbler based on both of your interests and items that you’ve given the thumbs-up.

Here’s how to follow a Stumbler.

If you decide to follow the user, you’ll have the added option to accept shares to your toolbar, meaning that when they want to share an item with you, it will show up in your toolbar’s inbox.

After you follow someone, if you want them to reciprocate and follow you in return, you have two options. You can send the Stumbler a message, letting them know you followed them and would like them to follow you in return so you can exchange favorites. Or you can also go the extra mile and review the Stumbler and then send them a message, letting them know you followed and reviewed them, and hope they will follow you in return to exchange favorites.

Receiving Shares

To receive shares from the people you follow, simply keep an eye on the red number in your StumbleUpon toolbar. Click on this number to get the latest shares from your following.

Your friends can share their favorites with you with comments.

Be sure to thumbs-up only the items you like, and review them for bonus points (especially if you’re hoping for reviews for your shares in return). You can also reply to the Stumbler to let them know you liked it, give them additional feedback, or answer any questions they may have asked in their request.

It’s amazing how that little response can make the difference and strengthen your connection with other Stumblers. I’ve shared items with over 500 followers and received very few replies, as many people will just thumbs-up an item and move on. Usually the people who reply to me will be the ones I notice more when they send over their next share.

Sharing Etiquette

Once you have followers, you can start sharing your favorites with them via the StumbleUpon toolbar or from the StumbleUpon page for that URL. You should include a personal message, up to 140 characters.

Sharing favorites with your followers.

Please note that there are certain rules of StumbleUpon etiquette that you must follow, especially when it comes to shares. People who are following you and accepting shares from you via their toolbar will receive these shares in their toolbar. Since StumbleUpon banned sharing to all followers, the number of shares has decreased significantly, BUT it’s still possible to overdo it and drive your followers bananas to the point that they will unfollow you.

I would suggest no more than one share a day or maybe two shares in one day if you don’t share things regularly. Any more than that will probably get you unfollowed, as no-one wants that flashing red number to be in the hundreds.

StumbleUpon Advertising

If you’re looking to share your content beyond the base of your followers, you can always look into StumbleUpon advertising, which is fairly inexpensive. I used it once and it did bring traffic to the page I had targeted.

The traffic from StumbleUpon on the days that I receive paid Stumbles spent an average of 3 minutes on the page, but the bounce rate was 96% with an exit rate of 90%. Comparatively, the traffic I received from LinkedIn Ads spent less time on the page, but had a lower bounce rate of 85% and a much lower exit rate of 60%. Of course, when it comes to cost, I received over 350 visitors from StumbleUpon Ads for a tenth of the cost of receiving fewer than 100 visitors from the LinkedIn Ads.

Needless to say, it’s important to use Google Analytics when advertising with StumbleUpon (or any other social advertising campaign) to be sure that the incoming traffic is actually valuable for your goals.

Your Stumbling Experience

If you like this article, please Stumble it (see below for Stumble link).

Do you use StumbleUpon? Please share your experience from social networking to traffic generation in the comment box below. Also, if you want to connect on StumbleUpon and share favorites, please send me a message at kikolani.

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.

In this article, I’ll share some tips to help you leverage social media to gain more exposure.

#1: Reap What You Sow

What are you aiming for? What is your goal?

If you want to get yourself known, social media is a great way to build visibility and a platform. Getting known might be your goal or it might be a means to an end. Again, social media can help you build connections that pay off in terms of opportunities and offers.

At the very least, when you do the right things in social media, you’re building a profile that represents you in the best possible light when anyone wants to look you up. It is a rare potential employer who will not do a quick Google search, and apparently even potential dates now do this routinely!

#2: Model Real Life

Social media grew out of real-world social rules and therefore what works in real life works well in social media, but with wider distribution and accelerated cause and effect.

Often people say to me that social media does not work, but what they really mean is they tried to extract value before they put any in. In fact, at the time of this writing I almost got into a protracted debate on Twitter about this very thing. Because this one person didn’t see any results, he believed social media “didn’t work.” The problem is, social media does not work for people who just want to take and be selfish, so he is setting himself up for a self-fulfilling prophecy.

You can’t withdraw very long from an empty social capital account. Essentially, if you want to get out value, then you need to start putting value in.

#3: Be Likeable

Another aspect of social media engagement is that your basic interactions are communicating more than the 140-character status updates. People also read between the lines. Again, this can work for or against you.

Brands are built through experience just as much as what you say and any image you create. The brands you love and hate are much more about how they have treated you than their logos and corporate mission statements!

The same is true on a personal brand level. It’s about treating people well and giving them a positive experience with you. It really helps if you like people because you are going to need to be consistently a good person to know.

Using light humor, being kind, sharing about more than just your work—including your interests—allow people to connect with you on a human level as well as a business and technical level.

Beyond this we have to be aware of boundaries and limitations to sharing. We have all seen the damage that can be done through “overshare” or Too Much Information, and also what we find humorous might well put people off, or even cause emotional or professional damage.

Consider a popular blogger who is constantly on the attack, belittling people, making fun of people, “digging up dirt” and so on. Yes, he will gather a following—bullies often do—but how do these kinds of tactics affect long-term relationships and loyalty?

At SXSW I had a discussion about this very topic and we realized many of the highly visible people who used this approach 4 or 5 years ago are now seldom heard from and nobody will take their calls.

Social karma works in the negative as well as the positive, and the Internet has a LONG memory!

Does This Really Work?

At this point you might still be skeptical. So to reassure you that there is some real cause and effect going on here, just look at your own social media activity.

• Who do you follow? Think about your top three social media users and what they have in common.
• Which blogs do you read? Again, which are your “must-read” blogs?
• When have you had the best results? Think back to when you had your best win. What did you do?
• How do you attract new contacts? When you want a social media or list boost, what works best for you?
• What can you test today? Still skeptical? Good! Test, verify—what can you try today to move your metrics needle?

I am 100% sure that when you put out good, valuable, positive stuff—when you share only the best—that’s when you will get the best results. It also follows that the people you are most attracted to or listen to most are the people you get the most value from, be that entertainment or education, and with whom you feel the best connection.

#4: Share, Share, Share

Tactically this is about sharing good stuff. If you want to position yourself as an expert, then share what you know.

The more you share good stuff, the more people will want to listen to you. Even better, if you share your expertise with good stuff from other people mixed in, it shows you’re generous and have your followers’ best interests at heart rather than pure self-promotion.

• Answer questions in LinkedIn.
• Share links, videos and anything useful that you find in Facebook and Twitter.
• Post your slide decks to Slideshare.
• Upload advice videos and demonstrations to YouTube.
• Write valuable content in your blog and answer comments.
• Invite people to ask you questions on your Facebook fan page, Twitter and your blog.

#5: Conduct a Whuffie Audit

Cory Doctorow of BoingBoing fame invented the futuristic reputation, or social capital–based currency, of Whuffie. Some days I wish Whuffie really existed and that just by looking someone up we could see what kind of person they were and how much they added to society. Unfortunately we do not have Whuffie yet, but you can “audit” yourself to see how much social capital you are generating.

Keep an eye on your key metrics to see if they are growing and what behavior is influencing them:

• Followers, friends and subscriber counts—How many people you have following you is not the best metric, but it does tell you if you’re attracting versus annoying people!
• Retweets, clicks and shares—If people want to share your stuff, it’s a hint that what you are putting out is valuable.
• Comments, favorites, discussions—Can you spark discussion and debate? That’s value right there.
• Key contacts, referrals, recommendations and testimonials—Are you reaching people and are they telling others about you? What do people say about you behind your back? Will people publicly connect their name, and reputation, to yours?

Closing Thoughts…

I know how frustrating it is when we say things in interviews like “provide value, join the conversation.” Hopefully I’ve explained a bit more about what this means and some of the steps you can use. It comes down to having the intention to really help, inform and be an excellent person to know.

A reputation is difficult and time-consuming to build, but with social media we can damage it in an instant. When you have what’s best for your community in mind, you will not go far wrong.

How does this work for you? Got any tips to share? What has worked best in your experience? Please SHARE your thoughts in the comments!

A well-designed business blog:

1. Uses visual interest to make posts easy to read
2. Brands your business in a consistent way
3. Places useful information in places where it is easy to find
4. Isn’t cluttered with things that aren’t helping you promote your business
5. Makes it easy for readers to do what you want them to do

Good blog design is practical

While there are many elements that go into designing a blog that grabs attention and engages readers, here are seven elements that must be integrated at the outset. You can develop the visual look and feel over time, but start here to begin building relationships, trust and credibility:

1. Graphic header with name of blog, tag line and author name
2. Email subscribe form
3. About page with photo
4. Use a variety of media: text, video, audio
5. Plenty of white space to make it easy to read
6. Links to share your content
7. Links for readers to connect on your social networking sites

To illustrate each of these points, I’ve made a short video showing blogs that incorporate these elements.

If you would like to study these blogs in more depth, here are the links:

• ChrisG.com
• Mari Smith’s blog
• Nuts About Southwest
• Build a Better Blog
• Altitude Branding
• Comcast Voices
• The Social Media Marketing Blog
• Wine Library TV
• Social Media Marketing Strategies
• The Social Media Handyman
• Copyblogger
• JimKukral.com
• Street Smarts Marketing

What are the essential design elements you think belong in a business blog? Please share your ideas in the comments and link to blogs that illustrate best practices.

“Let me get this straight,” you may say. “You want me to use Facebook to market my business? Are you crazy?”

Not if you provide products or services to postmenopausal women. Women over the age of 55 make up the fastest-growing Facebook segment, according to Paul Dunay and Richard Krueger, authors of Facebook Marketing for Dummies.

Would your product or service appeal to anyone over 35? “The fastest-growing demographic is the 35- to 54-year-olds… the next fastest-growing demographic is the over-55 crowd.”

According to the authors, Facebook has over 200 million active users, and a quarter of a million people register every day. About 3.5 million people become a fan of a Facebook Page every day.

Yes, you read that right. A fan of a Page. You don’t have to be a rock star to have fans on Facebook!

All you have to do is:

1. Buy Facebook Marketing for Dummies by Paul Dunay and Richard Krueger.
2. Register with Facebook.
3. Create a Page for your business. A Page is the business equivalent of an individual Facebook Profile.
4. Finish reading the book.
5. Start spreading the news.

Everything Starts With a Page

Your Page has multiple tabs and can include your contact information, hours of operation, recent news, upcoming events, photos, videos, podcasts, and other types of content. You can pull in blog posts and other syndicated content.

And when someone becomes a fan of your Page, they can post information to it that all of their friends will see. Their friends will even know they became a fan of your Page!

And you can respond to their posts on your Page that all of your fans will see. You can begin a conversation with potential customers about your products and services right on your own Page that will be seen by all of their friends and all of your fans!

That’s because Facebook takes every interaction and creates a “story” about it that is distributed by News Feeds. Every Facebook member constantly receives updates about their friends’ activities.

Members can even recommend a Page to their friends by clicking the Share button on every Page. If a friend raves about a product or service, aren’t you more likely to try it?

And did I mention that Pages are indexed by Google and other search engines? Are you beginning to see the business advantages of being on Facebook?

Like the business use of all social media, Facebook is all about identifying “evangelists” for your product or service. Then you let those evangelists help you build your business.

And it doesn’t matter if you’re a B2B business. If increasing numbers of businesses are getting on Facebook, that’s where your customers are hanging out! Shouldn’t you be there, too?

Engaging Customers on Their Terms

Here are some of the things a business can do on Facebook:

• Share an interesting article on your Page to engage your fans
• Comment on posts on your Page to communicate with your fans
• Update your Page to generate a story about it in your fans’ News Feeds
• Create a Discussion section on your Page to interact directly with fans
• Create or join a Group related to your industry to find more fans
• Create an Event related to your business to meet fans
• Create a Marketplace to sell your products on Facebook

Last but certainly not least, you can advertise on Facebook. There is one caveat, say the authors: “Facebook members are typically not in the habit of clicking ads. They are on Facebook for social purposes.”

On the other hand, “the Facebook advertising platform’s ability to target ad demographics is already legendary. The ad targeting capabilities make it relatively easy to get your message to the right demographic within Facebook.”

Suppose you want to target “MBA graduates who are 3 to 5 years out of school and working in Southern California who like rock music and whose favorite food is sushi.” You can!

How? Facebook indexes every member’s profile in detail, including all of those psychographic variables that make marketers drool. So when you create your ad, you can include keywords to describe your target audience.

“By adding keywords to your targeting, you can reach consumers based on the interests listed on their profile page. Never before has there been a mass medium that allows for this kind of precise targeting. Identifying and then reaching a specific audience has never been this exact and cost-effective until now.”

And because your Page has tabs – one for the Wall, one for Info, one for Photos, etc. – you can add more tabs and turn them into landing pages. “Conceivably, you can create a customized landing page within Facebook for each ad and audience segment.”

And if all of this seems too daunting, Facebook has a team of sales professionals that can help you create a marketing campaign.

Third Party Apps Enhance Customer Experience

Facebook Marketing for Dummies covers all of this and more. You can choose from over 52,000 Facebook applications created by third parties; more than 800 apps were written specifically for businesses. Here are the authors’ “must-have Facebook applications for your business”:

• My Network Value
• MyOffice
• Tag Biz Pro Business Cards
• LinkedIn Answers
• SlideShare
• Static FBML
• Phonebook

The book concludes with tips on Facebook etiquette, Facebook resources and Facebook blogs. And if you don’t want your boss to see that picture of you taken at Kelly’s Tavern, Appendix B includes extensive information about protecting your privacy on Facebook.

Social Media Examiner gives this book a 5-star rating.

Related article: 5 Ways to Promote Your Facebook Fan Page

Are any of you using Facebook as part of your marketing plan? If so, please comment!

Posterous is known as the most “social” networking place of social media. It’s also the ideal solution for sharing content that’s too long for a tweet and too short for a blog post.

There are many different reasons and motivations to create a free Posterous account. Let’s have a look at the 7 most common reasons for businesses to use Posterous.

#1: Can Replace Your Blog

When a regular blog is not for you, Posterous can give you similar advantages to a regular blog without the work of setting up a blog and maintaining it.  All you have to do is send in your content by email.  It’s that simple.  This is why Posterous is great for lifestreaming.

This can be a good starting point for businesses hesitating to create their own blog. Posterous can provide a place to learn more about social media and develop the right content strategies.

#2: Fills a Gap Between Blogging and Microblogging

Posterous is an easy way to publish more content to reach different audiences. Steve Rubel says, “I still see a big space in between blogs and Twitter that allows you to have a hub and spoke strategy and post in multiple formats.”

And as Ted Villa says, “Posterous is clean and nimble, simple to use and a great tool in any organization’s social media toolkit. It’s a great way to extend a client’s footprint online and increase links to their site as well as their social media sites.”

This can fill a gap in your presence on social media.

#3: Can Improve Your Visibility

Posterous can help you improve your visibility in search results in two ways.

First, you have more updates for search engines to find. If you like to share photos and videos online, Posterous makes it very easy to do this (see reason #7 below for more details). And with photo and video publishing made this easy, you end up sharing more content to increase your online search results.

Second, you can publish your Posterous content on your own website. Unlike other social media platforms, you can set up your Posterous account on your own URL.  This means you can set up your Posterous account on:

• Your own domain name separate from your company website
• Or even use a sub-domain of your current website or blog

This is something important to keep in mind as the social media landscape changes over time.

#4: Gives You Another Voice on Social Media

Many business professionals also use Posterous to post content that would be off topic on their main website or blog and engage with a different audience online.

Posterous provides an easy venue to share different “social” content. A separate platform makes it easy to create an additional point of connection with your audience, with a different style, to engage different mindsets.  As Debbie Weil says, “There are distinct differences in how you talk or write for the different platforms.  Simply put, you write in a different ‘voice’ and, generally, talk about different topics.”

This makes it easy to reach out to different audiences.

#5: Makes it Easy for Groups to Publish Content

Posterous allows you to set up group accounts too.  This means you can set up:

• Posterous pages for individual team members
• Collaborative Posterous pages for different company employees to post on the same page
• Collaborative Posterous pages to bring people outside your company to collaborate on one Posterous page

Here’s one example of how Posterous brings social networking to a higher level: ClickIdeas

#6: Helps You to Segment Content for Different Audiences

You can use your Posterous account to create different points of contact with your audience.  Pat Kitano says, “I originally intended this slideshow (How to create a blog without “writing” one) for local businesspeople who wanted a blog for marketing purposes, but didn’t have the inclination to start a blog due to writing and time commitments. After posting the slideshow, I received feedback that Posterous was a great method to create new ‘blogs’ on a variety of topics and interests that were parallel to the principal blog. One mentioned how fast Posterous blogs were indexed by Google.”

This makes it easy to test different market segments outside of your main blog or website.

#7: Is the Easiest Option to Share Photos

Posterous is simply the easiest social media platform to share photos and videos.  All you have to do is email your photo or video to Posterous and it does everything else. This means you can publish your favorite photos and videos from any location where you have access to your email, even from your mobile phone.

This is why many users choose to post all of their photos and videos to Posterous and set it up to feed their Facebook, Twitter and other social media profiles.

Bonus: Makes You Easy To Connect With

Sometimes a personal touch helps you to create a stronger connection with your audience on social media.  This is why some business professionals use Posterous as a place to provide a unique glimpse into their personal lives.

Jason Falls does a good job at providing both personal and business insights on his Posterous page: Falls, Off the Rocker. He links to these Posterous posts from his Twitter account and invites his Twitter followers to get to know him better.

A Step Toward Creating Social Connections

Creating a social presence and adapting to different social media platforms are not easy for many businesses.  Posterous provides a way for businesses to make a social connection between their own website and other social media platforms as they learn more about incorporating social media into their current marketing tactics.

Ready to Give Posterous a Try?  Here’s some good resources to check out:

• Read Mashable’s Posterous Guide.
• Have a look at Guy Kawasaki’s Twelve Tips and Tricks.
• And remember to subscribe to Social Media Examiner.  There’s more to come on Posterous and other social media platforms.

Now It’s Your Turn

• What are you interested in getting out of Posterous?
• Do you already have a Posterous page?
• How is Posterous helping your social media marketing?

Share the link to your Posterous page below and tell us what your experience has been so far in the Comments section below.