Imagine your online community is a group of hungry people who walk up to a table where you have a spread of finger foods and appetizers. That’s your online content.

By watching which items disappear quickly, you learn what your audience truly wants. That’s the content that satisfies their hunger. And that’s what you need to give them.

In this article I’ll show you 8 ways to discover what topics satisfy the hunger in your online community.

#1: Ask your community

Most businesses assume that they know what their online community wants to hear from them. There’s nothing like doing a reality check by asking your community directly. What you learn might surprise you.

Start by creating a list of 10 topics you believe your audience wants to hear. Use your list to create a survey and collect their opinions using one of these strategies:

• Ask them to say “yes” or “no” for each topic.
• Ask them to rank the topics in order of interest.
• Ask them to pick their 3 favorite topics.

Always include an option for “other” so they can fill in any topics that you didn’t include in your list. Pay careful attention to these topics. If someone goes to the trouble to write in a topic, it’s very important to him or her.

There are several popular services that allow you to create a free survey including SurveyMonkey, Free Online Surveys, Zoomerang and Bzoink.

You can easily create smart professional surveys.

You can add your survey to your website, highlight it in your email newsletter and promote it on Twitter and Facebook.

#2: Check your blog comments

Which blog posts get the most comments?

Most bloggers will tell you that their most popular blog posts often surprise them. It’s usually not the post that they like the best.

When you write a post that gets many comments, you know you have struck gold. Review the comments to see what about this post inspires your community.

• Are people interested in this topic? Write more blog posts about it. You might even create a new category for these posts to make them more visible to your visitors.
• Did people like the post format? Did you make a list? Did you review an article or a tool? If the format was a hit, then consider starting a series of similar posts. You can even make this a recurring feature on your blog.

Tip: If most of the comments on a blog post are questions, it means that your audience is looking for more information on this topic. You can become their go-to source by providing detailed answers to their questions.

#3: Check your retweets

You post things on Twitter that you believe are useful and interesting. However, value is always in the eyes of the reader. When your Twitter community loves the information in your tweet, they retweet it to their communities. Check for your most-loved tweets and turn them into important conversation topics.

The new Twitter makes it easy to find your retweeted items and how many people retweeted each one.

1. Open Twitter.com and log in (if necessary).
2. Click Home in the top menu (if necessary).
3. Click the Retweets tab (in the left pane). Twitter displays the retweets menu.
   

   The Twitter Retweets menu options.

4. Select Your Tweets, retweeted. Twitter displays a list of your tweets that other people have retweeted in chronological order.
5. Hover the pointer over the first tweet, and click the flyout button to see the retweet details.
   

   Click the flyout button to see the details about this tweet in the right pane.

   Twitter displays the retweet details in the flyout (right pane).

6. Locate the retweeter list for this tweet.
   

   Twitter tells you how many people retweeted this tweet and displays their profile pictures.

To analyze your retweets:

1. Write down the number of retweets for each individual tweet in a month.
2. Group together tweets into topics or categories.
3. Add the individual retweet numbers to get a topic or category retweet total.
4. List the 3 most popular topics based on retweets. Plan to talk more about these topics in the next month.

#4: Check your URL click-throughs

When you share a link on Twitter, you probably use a web address (URL) shortener to save space. Most of these services provide statistics about each shortened link. You can use these numbers to see which links people clicked most often. These are the topics that captured their interest.

The popular URL shortener services include Bit.ly, Goo.gl, Tiny URL, Cli.gs and Is.gd:

You can collect, organize, shorten and share links.

HootSuite, the popular Twitter client (software that lets you use Twitter with additional features), provides two URL shorteners with statistics and detailed reports.

Users can now choose between two flavors of links—one with a social bar and one without.

The statistics on these services show you the number of times someone clicked through each link. Use this information to determine the most popular links. Group your links into topics or categories and get a total number of click-throughs by topic.

An example of Bit.ly statistics for a blog post about Cherry Street Coffee House.

Tip: Twitter.com uses its own shortening service, http://t.co, which doesn’t provide any statistics. You can use another service to shorten URLs before you paste them into Twitter if you want to get click statistics.

#5: Check your Facebook engagement

Facebook Insights provides details for page administrators about how users interact with their business page. It’s easy to see which status updates received the most feedback and interaction.

To display the interaction details for the previous month:

1. Display your Facebook business page.
2. Click View Insights (right column).
   

   Click View Insights to display the page administrator's statistics.

3. Locate the Interactions graph in the bottom half of the page.
4. Click See Details.
   

   Click See Details to get information about individual status updates.

Facebook displays the interaction details for the previous month.

The chart provides detailed information about your status updates and how your community interacted with each one.

Use the detailed information to find the popularity of each status update.

• The top graph provides the total count of likes and comments for each day of the month.
• The middle chart provides details about individual posts. Click on the column headings to sort the data by column.

Group your status updates into topics or categories. Talk more about the topics that get the most likes and comments.

#6: Ask Facebook questions

The Facebook Questions feature makes it easy for you to ask questions to anyone in your online community.

Before you start, write out your question with multiple-choice answers. Each community member must choose one answer to your question.

1. Display your Facebook business page.
2. Click Question.
   

   Click Question to start creating your Facebook Question post.

3. Facebook displays a blank question form.
   

   The Facebook Question form before you type any information.

4. Type your question.
5. Click Add Poll Options.
   

   The Facebook Question form before you add the poll options.

   Facebook adds blank poll options to the question form.

6. Type each multiple-choice option to answer your question. Facebook automatically adds blank options as you type.
   

   Complete the question options and click Ask Question.

   Tip: Leave the check for “Allow anyone to add options” so your community can add options you did not consider.

7. Click Ask Question. Facebook posts your question on your wall and distributes it to the news feed of people who like your page.
   

   An example Facebook question on a business page wall.

#7: Check Twitter favorites

Twitter’s Favorites feature lets you mark a tweet in your timeline that you like or want to be able to find again.

You can use Favstar to find which of your tweets people have marked as favorites. This gives you insight into which topics resonate with the people who follow you.

To review your tweets marked as favorites by other people:

1. Display Favstar.fm.
2. Click Sign In With Twitter.
   

   The Favstar front page before you sign in.

   Favstar displays the Twitter sign-in page.

3. Click Sign in Now.
   

   Twitter requires you to sign in and authorize Favstar before Favstar can find your tweets marked as favorites.

   Favstar takes you to Twitter.com.

4. Click Authorize app.
   

   Twitter explains what Favstar can and cannot do after you authorize it for your account.

   Twitter authorizes Favstar to look for people who marked your tweets as favorites and displays your customized Favstar page.

5. Click My Tweets.
   

   Click on the My Tweets button here.

   

   Favstar displays your tweets marked as favorites with the most recent on top.

Scroll through your most recent tweets. Group them into topics or categories. Calculate a total favorite count for each category. Talk more about the topics that get the most favorites.

#8: Check your email newsletter click-throughs

If your business has an email newsletter, it’s another great resource for tapping into what people really want to hear from you.

There are many useful email services such as AWeber, Constant Contact and Mail Chimp. While they offer slightly different services, they all let you track the clicks from your newsletter to your website or blog.

An example report from AWeber showing the links clicked in an email newsletter.

Reviewing the most clicked-through links gives you insight into what people found the most interesting in your newsletter. Talk more about the topics represented by your most popular links.

It’s Your Turn

What do you think? What strategies does your business use to get inside the head of your community members? Has your research provided you with surprising results? Share your experience in the comments box below.

What follows is an amazing list of social media tools you’ve likely never heard of—covering a wide range of categories:

• Tools for pictures, video, audio and screen capture
• Tools to measure and track results
• Tools to manage content
• Blogging tools
• Twitter tools
• Other social media tools

Try them out. And be sure to report back here with your thoughts.

Tools for Pictures, Video, Audio and Screen Capture

#1: Cinches

Recommended by Denise Wakeman, online marketing advisor and founder of The Blog Squad.

“My favorite new tool is CinchCast.com. This simple tool can record audio, either via the web or phone (there are apps for iPhone and Android), so you can share audio messages with your followers. While audio tools like this are not new, this one seems to work the best and most consistently for me both on the web and my mobile app.

Cinches can be syndicated automatically to your Facebook status (not to pages, though) and to your Twitter stream. It’s simple to find and follow people from your social networks as well. Adding an image and description to the audio message is easy too and boosts visibility and encourages comments and sharing. Cinches can be shared by embedding the player in blog posts and posting links in status updates.

I’m using CinchCasts to repurpose a lot of content into audio: presentations (I record one tip from a PowerPoint and expand on it a bit), blog posts and articles. I also reverse the process and embed Cinch tips in blog posts to expand on the written text and create an experience that encourages my audience to stay longer on my blog.”

Learn more about Denise at Build a Better Blog and follow her on Twitter @DeniseWakeman.

CinchCasts was created by the folks at BlogTalkRadio.

#2: Screenr

Recommended by Tim Ware, owner of HyperArts Web Design, helping businesses build and promote their web presence.

“My favorite social media tool in the past half year has to be Screenr, an enormously useful online service to create screen-capture videos, with audio, easily and for free. Because much of what I do these days involves teaching people how to do things online, usually on Facebook, Screenr is the perfect tool for me. I can just say, “Wait a sec. I’ll send you a video.”

Creating an instructional video on Screenr is just about as easy as it gets, allowing you to record, pause (while you rearrange what’s on your screen) and then click “Done” and that’s it! With a few clicks, you can post the video plus comments to your Twitter account, or download the file as an MP4.”

Follow Tim on Twitter @hyperarts.

Create screen-capture videos quickly and easily with Screenr.

#3: DailyBooth

Recommended by Lewis Howes, the author of two books on LinkedIn and founder of Sports Executives Association and SportsNetworker.com.

“As an online/social media marketer, it’s easier to get more sales (or transactions) from potential customers if those individuals feel like they know, like and trust you.  A great way to let them get to know you better is simply by letting them see you daily. A great way to do this is to record a video each day and post it to your networks.  But who has the time to set up a camera, shoot a video, edit it, wait for it to upload and publish to your network each day?  I know I don’t, as it’s hard enough getting a blog post out once a week!

Pictures solve this problem, and DailyBooth provides a fast-growing social networking site that allows you to easily upload and share pictures in seconds. DailyBooth.com is still under the radar for most, but the interaction for those on it is similar to the mad interaction Twitter users have, and it’s getting more and more additive as the days go by.”

Learn more about Lewis at LewisHowes.com and follow him @LewisHowes.

Be sure to check out DailyBooth. It could be the next big social media tool in the future.

#4: Skitch

Recommended by Clément Yeung, co-director of Easisell, a digital marketing and design company that helps small businesses achieve success online.

“I love Skitch because if you constantly need to communicate complex on-page issues to people, then Skitch helps you do it seamlessly from your desktop! Just a few clicks and you have a shareable link that you can send to anyone you like. It’s also free.”

Follow Clément on Twitter @ClementYeung.

Skitch is your online camera and pen. You can screengrab anything, add a note and share it quickly.

#5: Instagram

Recommended by Christine Gallagher, relationship marketing speaker, trainer and coach.

“Instagram, which is an addictive, free photo-sharing app for the iPhone.

It’s social and fun to share your pics with others and see theirs as well. You can also comment or like others’ photos, follow other users and see what they’ve posted lately. It’s super-simple to use and my favorite thing about it is that you can transform seemingly ho-hum pictures into unique little works of art with the assortment of filters available. Two thumbs way up.”

Learn more about Christine at Communicate Value and follow her on Twitter @christineg.

"Use Instagram to take pictures, add filters to make them look artsy or retro and then share them on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter and Flickr."

Tools to Measure and Track Results

#6: Argyle Social

Recommended by Jason Falls, principal of Social Media Explorer, a social media marketing consulting firm based in Louisville, KY.

“Because my primary use of social media is to share great content, I think the tool I’ve become most dependent upon in the last six months is Argyle Social. It’s a URL shortener that has an elegant suite of measures around it, a bookmarklet for easy use and the customization you would need to separate your shares on Twitter from those on Facebook to deliver different messages around the same content. Once they add LinkedIn and perhaps even Posterous or Tumblr to their publishing options, Argyle could become THE tool for folks who not only want to share, but also measure the impact of that sharing.

I know I’ve driven over 150,000 clicks to various content in the last six months. I can break those down and tell you exactly how many I drove to certain pieces of content, too. My own and other sites I found and shared with my networks. That’s pretty powerful information if one of your goals is to share or build trust. I can put numbers around that now.”

Learn more about Jason at SocialMediaExplorer.com and follow him on Twitter @JasonFalls.

Argyle Social helps you use social media strategically.

#7: TwentyFeet

Recommended by Mari Smith, social media speaker, trainer, thought leader and co-author of Facebook Marketing: An Hour a Day.

“Here’s my fave new tool: TwentyFeet.com—aggregate all your stats in one place!

I love this simple social profile analytics platform with its easy setup, intuitive interface, daily stats emails and very low micro payments model. Credits are just $2.49 per account for an entire year, but users get one Facebook and one Twitter account free forever. You can monitor one or more accounts from Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, bit.ly, Google Analytics, MySpace and more and see how your key performance indicators develop over time. Oh, and another reason I love TwentyFeet? Their logo is a giraffe (the tall blonde!), my favorite animal!”

Learn more about Mari at marismith.com and follow her on Twitter @MariSmith.

Check out TwentyFeet for a low-cost social media analytics tool.

#8: PostRank and PostRank Analytics

Recommended by Kristi Hines, an Internet marketing specialist with Vertical Measures.

“One of my favorite social media tools/resources is PostRank. You can gain an amazing amount of insight into what topics get the most engagement on a particular blog (such as Social Media Examiner) by finding it in their directory and using the Good, Great and Best filters to see what posts have the most comments and social shares. The best part is that researching another blog‘s social sharing statistics is free, and it’s something you can look at for your own blog as well by making sure it’s listed on their site. If it’s not, just enter the URL in the search box, and they’ll email you as soon as it’s on their site. Then wait a week or two and start discovering what’s most loved by your readers.

If you’re interested in learning more about your own social engagement scoring, you can also sign up for their in-depth social analytics. It’s only $15 per month to analyze up to 5 sites with custom tracking on 10 additional pages within those sites. You can even connect your Google Analytics with PostRank and see how social engagement matches up with your conversion rates and goals.”

Learn more about Kristi at Kikolani and follow her on Twitter @Kikolani.

PostRank Analytics is also recommended by Jay Baer, a hype-free, tequila-loving social media strategist, speaker and coach.

“PostRank Analytics is my favorite tool because it solves a very real problem for bloggers, which is how to understand the full impact of a blog post. What’s more important, page views, comments, tweets, Facebook shares? PostRank Analytics tracks all of the actions related to each of your posts, and compiles a consolidated score that helps you understand what your audience wants from you and your blog. It’s like a psychic, if psychics also had fancy charts and graphs!”

Learn more about Jay at Convince & Convert and follow him on Twitter @JayBaer.

PostRank Analytics is an inexpensive tool with tons of value if you're looking to learn more about how to increase your blog's or website's social media engagement.

#9: Postling

Recommended by Jeff Korhan, professional speaker, consultant and columnist on new media and small business marketing.

“Postling is a tool that brings together multiple social media channels into one interface. What makes it invaluable for me are the email notifications I receive when comments are made on my professional Facebook page. To my knowledge, it’s the only social media tool with this capability. All of the comments are nicely presented in clean threads that maintain the continuity of the conversation, thereby allowing me to easily make timely comments, or schedule them for later.”

Learn more about Jeff at jeffkorhan.com and follow him on Twitter @JeffKorhan.

Postling is also recommended by Stephanie Sammons, the voice behind Smart Social Pro, a resource for professional practitioners to help them understand how to leverage the power of social media and blogging in their practices.

“A tool that can help you stay focused on relevant tracking and engagement is Postling. Postling is designed with the small business owner and professional in mind and can simplify your social media activities. It’s a clean and intuitive dashboard that offers management features to track, engage and publish to your relevant social media profiles, and even to your blog. (It plays nice with WordPress.)

Most importantly, Postling will send you a daily email update of all of your comments so that you know who’s engaging with you and what’s being shared or said about you. (It’s great to know you won’t miss anything.) The basic features are available with a free account. The paid account at $9.00/month allows for multiple accounts per social network, brands and users, providing instant email alerts and an analytics dashboard. And there’s also a premium version for power users at $49.00/month. Overall, Postling is well on its way to becoming a great tool for business owners and professionals!”

Follow Stephanie on Twitter @StephSammons.

Give Postling a try to manage your social media activities.

#10: Sysomos

Recommended by Nick Shin, online marketing strategist specializing in SEM, social media, and PPC.

“Sysomos, by far, has been my favorite social media tool. (Disclosure: I am the SEM and social media specialist at Marketwire and we acquired Sysomos in July.)  Since then, I’ve been able to take advantage of what Sysomos has to offer. I use Sysomos to monitor our social media conversations on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, forums and blogs. The ease of use, robust features and convenience have cut my monitoring time in half. In addition, as the founder of #smmeasure social media measurement chat, I can tell you there’s a lot of concern about how to measure social media. The more I use Sysomos, the more it eliminates the need to keep ‘proving’ the value of social media because of the actionable insight you can get from its analytics. With all of my other responsibilities, any tool that will help me do the same job in less time is a win. I highly recommend getting a free demo.”

Learn more about Nick at Marketing Shindig and follow him on Twitter @shinng.

Check out Sysomos to monitor your social media activities.

#11: Inside View

Recommended by Jacob Morgan, principal of Chess Media Group, a social business consultancy focused on customer and employee engagement strategies.

“My favorite new tool that I started using within the past 6 months is Inside View (through a customized enterprise version of Salesforce).

Inside View (their Salesview product) allows you to make the “social sale” by extracting valuable company information about a person or prospect prior to making a sale. You can get market cap, the org structure, list of key employees and the social sites they belong to, relevant company news, addresses and phone numbers and more; all from your Salesforce “lead” view. You can then sync all of this information with your Salesforce account so that it actually fills in the information for you.”

Follow Jacob on Twitter @jacobm.

Inside View is truly a valuable tool that integrates social data with CRM data and is a must-have for anyone even remotely involved driving business for an organization.

Tools to Manage Content

#12: Trunk.ly

Recommended by Nathan Hangen, Internet marketing strategist and founder of Webrepreneur Media.

“Recently I was looking for a better bookmark solution, and I was getting so desperate that I was thinking of developing it myself. Tumblr was too big, and sites like Delicious and other social bookmarking services felt walled off. Then someone pointed me to Trunk.ly, which you feed with your Twitter and/or Facebook account, and I was hooked. Trunk.ly keeps a history of the links that you like or Tweet and makes them searchable and easy to share. If I was going to build a solution, this would be exactly what I built. It’s beautiful.”

Learn more about Nathan at nathanhangen.com and follow him on Twitter @nhangen.

Trunk.ly keeps track of all of the links you share on Twitter and Facebook.

#13: Storify

Recommended by Michael Brito, VP for Edelman Digital and has worked for HP, Yahoo! and Intel.

“My favorite tool is Storify which is fantastic to aggregate and curate content from around the web. It’s great for events, product launches, etc.”

Learn more about Michael at social media blog and follow him on Twitter @britopian.

Storify is a great social tool to tap into the power of stories.

#14: Posterous

Recommended by Jim Lodico, copywriter and marketing consultant specializing in creating powerful content and teaching businesses how to use blogs.

“I just started using Posterous and I really like the potential. It allows you to post to 20 or so social media channels all through email. Photos, video, blog posts, even podcasts can all be distributed throughout your network just by sending an email. I really like the simplicity and the ability to manage all your social media accounts at once.”

Learn more about Jim at jalcommunication.com and follow him on Twitter @jlcommunication.

Posterous offers an alternative to a traditional blog for publishing content online.

Blogging Tools

#15: Apture

Recommended by Ching Ya, author of Social @ Blogging Tracker.

“One of the new social media tools I found in the last 6 months is Apture. I was between installing it or Wibiya, but because I’ve decided to emphasize visitors’ sharing on Facebook and Twitter, I went for Apture instead. It turned out to be one of the best decisions I’ve made. The catchy, customizable drop-down bar on top of the site makes sharing easy and friendly. You can search for related content—not just posts, but videos and images to be linked to as well. Your visitors can even use it to search similar posts within your site. Highly recommended!”

Follow Ching Ya on Twitter @wchingya.

Apture adds a social dimension to your blog.

#16: OnlyWire

Recommended by Dino Dogan, blogger, writer, motorcyclist, dog trainer, singer/songwriter, martial artist and founder of DIY Blogger.

“OnlyWire can auto-submit your blog post to 42 top social network sites like Digg, Reddit and StumbleUpon. By doing this, you build backlinks to your blog the quick and easy way. This doesn’t improve your page rank but it does improve your social rank so much that in one of my tests, this one technique alone took me from the page 14 on Google to page 4.”

Learn more about Dino at DIY Blogger and follow him @dino_dogan.

Use OnlyWire to build backlinks to your website or blog.

Twitter Tools

#17: FormuLists

Recommended by Elijah R. Young, lead strategist and owner of Social Talk Live.

“My favorite social media tool over the past 6 months has been FormuLists. FormuLists allows me to effortlessly keep up with my newest followers, my recent conversationalists and tons of other specifications that I can adjust in my settings to keep me on top of all of the new folks I meet in my Twitter timeline. Before FormuLists, I had to hope I remembered who I added to my lists, and work around crossover… It was just a mess. Now I can just focus on keeping up with conversations that matter to my followers, and pitching in when appropriate.”

Follow Elijah on Twitter @elijahryoung.

FormuLists is also recommended by Ann Smarty, an experienced blogger and SEO consultant at BlueGlass.com.

“The tool that I’ve just recently discovered and fallen in love with is FormuLists. I have a lot of followers and it’s been almost impossible for me to organize the following manually. The tool has quite a few very handy options.”

Learn more about Ann at MyBlogGuest.com and follow her on Twitter @myblogguest.

FormuLists manages your followers for you so you can focus on building your relationships.

#18: HashTracking

Recommended by Lori Taylor, a self-proclaimed “URL-junkie,” and an award-winning marketing veteran with 20 years experience turned social technologist by day and angel investor (Klout, Live Matrix, Pixsy) by night.

“My favorite new Twitter tool is HashTracking, which we use to track campaigns on Twitter. It takes group conversations and measures the influence and type of engagement level for each participant. The reason I’m in love with it is because the depth of data is incredible. Starting with the total number of people who participated in the group conversation, HashTracking chunks the participants into 4 buckets they call leaders, people who were engaged, just curious, and even identifies the wallflowers. We can get content to the most powerful hands who can truly give us the most reach on a specific topic, not just a broad category.”

Learn more about Lori at lorirtaylor.com and follow her on Twitter @lorirtaylor.

HashTracking is a great testing tool for all kinds of direct response metrics such as a top-ten list for impressions, number of tweets and follower count for each person using your hashtag (for free).

#19: Oneforty

Recommended by Ekaterina Walter, social media strategist at Intel.

“My favorite tool of the past 6 months is oneforty. Oneforty helps you discover thousands of tools that help you do more with your business, career or life using Twitter! This is essentially a directory of various Twitter apps that can help you do whatever you can possibly imagine on Twitter from helping manage your brand Twitter account to managing your followers to finding fun apps for your everyday life. I love their Toolkit feature which allows you to see what other industry leaders or even brands are using to manage their presence.”

Learn more about Ekaterina at ekaterinawalter.com and follow her on Twitter @ekaterina.

Oneforty also just introduced the Q&A section where the community of tweeps can share tips and tricks and help each other discover new cool ways to engage.

#20: TweetDeck for Chrome

Recommended by Corbett Barr who wants to help you attract as many visitors to your site as you need to make your business thrive.

“My favorite new social media tool is definitely TweetDeck for Google’s Chrome browser. I love it because I get all the awesome functionality of TweetDeck without having to run a separate application. I also love how it integrates multiple Twitter accounts into one combined column of @ replies and another for direct messages. It’s a huge time-saver for people who tweet a lot from different accounts.”

Learn more about Corbett at Think Traffic and follow him on Twitter @CorbettBarr.

Chrome users can also use TweetDeck to manage their Twitter accounts.

Other Social Media Tools

#21: LinkedIn Company Page

Recommended by Linda Coles, a sought-after speaker who also runs various workshops and seminars on how to use social media tools effectively and productively.

“I love the LinkedIn Company Page upgrade as you can upload three banner ads, add video to each product or service page and you’ve even got analytics to monitor what’s going on. It may well get as good as a FB business page but in a different environment.”

Learn more about Linda at Blue Banana and follow her on Twitter @bluebanana20.

LinkedIn Company Pages are a welcome addition for businesses on social media.

#22: Quora

Recommended by Lori Randall, online marketing strategist specializing in social media and WordPress sites. Follow Lori on Twitter @lori_randall.

“Quora, an online knowledge hub for mostly social media and technology, is a tall glass of water. People ask insightful questions and exchange substantive answers. I was starting to feel like I was in a social media desert of genuine thought because of all the noise and this has risen to quench my thirst for knowledge admirably.”

Quora has become a popular Q&A platform in a short time.

What Are Your Favorite Social Media Tools?

Have you used any of the social media tools mentioned above? Which ones are your favorites? Which other social media tools would you add to this list? Please share your comments below.

Are you struggling to find measurements that are meaningful to your organization? Do you feel like you’re searching for a needle in a haystack of metrics?

Here are 8 useful metrics that you may not be measuring, but should be.

#1: Conversion Rates

Everyone wants to measure the volume of leads generated to get to the bottom-line ROI of social media efforts. But don’t forget about the value of the conversion rate! While the volume may not be there yet, the propensity to convert may be staring you right in the face.

You’ll need to have a mechanism in place to know when a lead comes from social media. Most people use the combination of a URL shortener and some form of a “cookie” to attach a campaign to a lead. Hootsuite has integrated Google Analytics into their URL shortener for a seamless transition to success metrics in analytics, while some companies are using proprietary shorteners and others are still trying to figure out how to do it.

One of the most important steps in understanding where your lead came from is to know when someone clicks on a social media link and then converts. The most reliable way to do this is to place a “cookie” on the user’s machine with the campaign name for the social media channel that generated the click. Then use your campaign reporting to track the number of leads and conversions you’ve generated.

The number will likely be fairly low in the beginning but by looking at conversions divided by leads, you can get your conversion rate for social media leads. Compare this against other marketing channels to see if it’s higher or lower.

# 2: The Control Group

Some of the greatest metrics I’ve brought forward in my company really didn’t look that impressive when I first got them. The volume of leads generated was pretty low when compared to our other marketing channels.

However, when I compared them against a group of people that had not interacted with social media, I found some amazing stats that not only got my executive team excited about social media, it also showed that social media has a huge impact on our ability to convert leads. This certainly makes it easier to justify budget dollars to integrate social media into the sales process.

To add a control group, run the same metrics you normally run against a group that has never interacted with social media and compare them. Look for how social media compares in areas like lead conversion rates, retention rates and costs.

CareOne has seen that social media involvement in the sales process has greatly improved the rate of those who sign up for a debt relief plan and the propensity for those new customers to make their first payment.

#3: Growth Rate

While you’re building volume, measure the growth rate over time. Being able to show that volume is growing at a healthy rate helps prove that your efforts are generating an impact. The reality is that it takes time to build a sustainable social media channel; thus, setting proper expectations is very important.

#4: Marketing Campaign History

It’s really important to look at how your company reports on “cookies” related to a sale. After doing some digging, I found that my company was attributing the credit for the sale to the campaign that was the first cookie the prospect had received. We can now report on the originating campaign, the campaigns responded to in between, and the converting campaign.

This helps us know all of the drivers to the sale and appropriately adjust costs related to the sale to get closer to a true ROI as well as look for that magic mix. Even if your sales process isn’t online, you need to make sure your CRM system allows for tracking to marketing efforts through the entire sales cycle and your teams are appropriately trained to track it.

#5 Customer Acquisition Costs

Everyone is touting how “cheap” social media is, though many of us have realized that is somewhat of a fallacy. However, it is cheaper than many other traditional channels, so measure the full campaign history (as stated in #2) and then assign the cost per conversion and compare it against your control group.

Here are two examples of how this can happen:

• A person clicks on a link in one of your tweets and goes to your site and converts into a new customer.
• A person clicks on a paid advertisement on Google and doesn’t convert. Then later clicks on a link in one of your tweets and goes to your site and converts to a new customer.

Depending on your business model and typical advertising expense, in the first example, the cost to generate that customer could be less than a standard customer who comes through paid advertising.

In the second example, the cost will be higher than the standard customer who comes only through paid advertising, BUT even if it’s slightly higher for those who responded to more than one channel for lead generation, the incremental cost of social media will likely be less than trying to replace the unconverted lead with a new one.

#6: Retention Rates

Right behind the ability to convert a customer is the ability to keep a customer. Compare the inclination of new customers to stay customers with and without social media interaction. The theory is that those participating in social media are more engaged and likely retain better.

In order to do this you’ll need to keep all the leads converted in #1 and track them over time. If you have an ongoing fee, measure how long they stay a customer. If you’re more of a onetime sell, measure if they come back and buy something else and how often they do. Then compare this against the control group of those who didn’t interact with social media and see if there are any improvements worth noting.

#7: Customer Saves

Many teams are using social media to help customers online and this often includes managing complaints. Measure how many times your team saves a customer from cancelling, switching or returning your product/service.

#8: Cross-Sells

Are social media customers more or less likely to buy additional services? How much revenue per customer was generated from social media compared to non-social media customers? How much revenue was generated from additional purchases and/or add-on products for social media customers? Compare this to your control group and you’ll be able to tell if social media has an impact on up-selling or cross-selling.

This is certainly not a complete list of metrics, but it gives an overview of some of the most commonly missed measurements that contribute to showing social media’s value to your organization and/or clients.

What would you add to the list? Please let us know what you think in the comments box below.

Related Articles:

• How to Measure Social Media’s Impact on Customer Retention
• How to Measure Social Media Return on Investment for the Complex Sale
• 4 Ways to Measure Social Media and Its Impact on your Brand
• How to Measure Social Media Marketing Performance

Photo source: Flickr

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

#1: Answers

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

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

#2: Behind the Scenes

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

#3: Case Studies

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

#4: Daily Deals

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

#5: Events

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

#6: Factoid

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

#7: Guide

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

#8: Hashtags

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

www.youtube.com/watch?v=aAHitI26MmE

#9: Interviews

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

#10: Joint Venture

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

#11: Keywords

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

#12: Live Events

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

#13: Meme

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

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

#14: News

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

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

#15: Opinion

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

#16: Photos

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

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

Josh Catone describes five ways to share images on Twitter:

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

#17: Quotes

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

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

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

#18: Real-time

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

#19: Share Links

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

#20: Tips

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

#21: Updates and Announcements

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

#22: Value

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

#23: White Papers

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

#24: Christmas Gift Ideas

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

#25: YouTube

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

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

#26: Zippy Writing Style

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

Final Thoughts About Twitter Content Ideas

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

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

Image sources: Flickr twitter image, Flickr alphabet image

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.