Tag

how to use social media for business

Feb 09
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Social Media Assignment #6: Listening to the Social Web

By Communications

Do you know what is being said about you, your brand or your company online?

Maybe you have been using Google Alerts to monitor for news about your organization, but do you know what people are saying on the social web?

What is the social web? Twitter, blog comments, bulletin boards, Facebook and blogs are some, but not all the elements of the social web.

Today’s Social Media Assignment

Take about half an hour to play with some of the tools displayed in this post. Try out Social Mention and IceRocket in particular — free tools that allow you to search the entirety of the social web.

With these tools you can subscribe to the search you create and continue to monitor mentions on an ongoing basis (recommended). You may find you have to tweak your search terms until you refine them to exactly the right keywords to find the results you seek.

Another approach to consider — search for your customers, clients or employees — do you know what they’re doing or saying online?

I recommend you spend some time listening — not just one day, or one half hour of one day. It takes time, and ongoing attention. And while you’re listening, take time to develop a plan for how you will respond to any mentions of your brand — positive or negative mentions.

Feb 08
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The 6 Reasons Social Media Immersion is the Right Choice for Executives

By Communications

Photo credit: Liam Dunn

For years, people have offered to pay me for my time to sit and walk them through social media and help them figure out a plan for growing and using their social networks.  Until I began Jaggers Communications I couldn’t devote time to share my expertise on that level, but the demand continued.

In response to that demand, I developed Social Media Immersion for the Executive. Here’s why it works:

  1. Clients at the executive level do not want to attend a workshop, seminar or class to get up to speed in social media; they want one-on-one attention and a focused one-shot time to cover the basics of what they need to know over a few hours’ time.
  2. In the Immersion session, any question, no matter how basic or advanced, can be asked and answered.
  3. Executives come away with a concrete plan of action to continue to work from, continuing on a path to greater understanding and benefits of social media engagement.
  4. Time is a huge factor; a full or half-day session will help make sure all social media engagement is efficient and meaningful.
  5. The Immersion session is confidential; a crash course in social media is not something all executives want shared.
  6. The results are immediate; before the session has ended, the client’s social profile and network will be upgraded, goals will be in place and direction will have clarity and purpose.

Is there a CEO, CFO or other executive you know who could benefit from an Immersion session? Are you interested in learning more?

Feb 02
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Social Media Assignment #5: Find Your Tweeps

By Communications

I let you have a few days off; call them virtual snow days. Now, back to work!

If you’re not on Twitter, go set up an account at www.twitter.com We’ll wait.

If you’ve ignored that last line, still don’t have a Twitter account and yet are still reading this post (tough room), here’s the deal — you want a Twitter account in the name of your choosing yesterday. If you don’t grab your name, or the name you want it will be gone (if it is not already). So even if you’re not quite ready to tweet, grab your name (and make sure you tweet a little or you will lose it.)

/digression.

You have a Twitter account and you’re following a few people; some are friends or bloggers you follow, others found you and you’re simply following them back.

Today’s Social Media Assignment: Find People to Follow on Twitter

Go to http://www.tweepz.com

Conduct a search using query tools, for example:

name: “Marijean Jaggers”

or

loc: Charlottesville, Va.

Use keywords to help you find the people you seek. Realize that, as usual, search is only as good as the information to find, so if people haven’t completed their biographical information, they may be more difficult to find. THIS IS A NUDGE TO GO COMPLETE YOUR BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION.

Ahem. Subtlety is not my strong suit.

Let’s see who we can follow, shall we?

For fun, I did a search for people with “business” in their bio, entering: bio: business.

Naturally the return was a huge number of users; more than 25,000. The next step when something like this happens is to refine your search by excluding extracted entities. Because I speak English, I start by excluding other languages, then I’ll move to excluding users who don’t follow anyone and so on down the line until I’ve created a more specifically generated list of people I want to follow.

You may be doing this exercise for yourself or for a client — if you’re generating this information for monitoring purposes, you can create an RSS feed to follow the search.

I hope this helps you develop new relationships via Twitter and you find it as beneficial as I have.

Jan 28
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Social Media Assignment #4: Edit Company Website

By Communications

A surprising number of my contacts have the following default setting in their LinkedIn profile:

It’s an easy fix, and one that’s often overlooked.

Today’s Social Media Assignment

Customize that “Company Website” default thusly: Edit the default Website settings on your LinkedIn profile. Login to your account and select Edit Profile.

When you’re in Edit Profile mode you will see lots of click-able blue links that say “Edit.”

Move to the section of your profile that lists Websites.

Click on the blue Edit next to one of your listed Websites (or if you’ve only listed one, that one — it doesn’t matter, they’ll all show up on the edit page.)

You have lots of options when you get to this stage, so you may have to think it through a bit.

You probably chose “Company Website” or “Blog” in the past. What you want to do, to open up an additional field to the right of this drop-down menu, is choose “Other.”

Choose Other! Really — it’s OK. When you choose “Other” a field opens, as depicted in the image at the left, that asks for your Website title. It is a really great opportunity to take advantage of smart search engine optimization to add the name of your company or a description of what you do to this field, then the URL in the field to the right of that.

As you can see in the capture of my profile below, my website listings are much more descriptive than “Company Website.”

I’m thrilled to hear from all of you who are following the social media assignments — keep up the good work!

Jan 27
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Social Media Assignment #3: I’m Just Not that Into Your Title

By Communications

See this?

It’s what LinkedIn calls my “Professional Headline.”

A professional headline is not your title.

Let me repeat: A professional headline should not be your title.

If, in this space, you’ve proudly put President, Vice President, Manager, Associate or what-have-you, then you’re missing an opportunity. In this space, rather than inserting the general, commonplace label your company has given you, put in key words that describe what it is you do. This helps others in your field, or those looking for someone just like you to find you.

Let’s face it, there are an awful lot of Vice Presidents out there, aren’t there, but there’s only one of you, right?

Today’s Social Media Assignment

My professional headline includes: “Social media strategy consultant, public relations professional, media trainer, public speaker, social media educator,” — list some phrases that describe what you do. If you need to, seek input from others at work. If you’re looking for a job or a new opportunity, think about including words that would help you be found in a search for someone fitting that description. Above all, take the time today to edit this part of your social profile and stop being lumped in with all the other people in the world who share your title, but nothing else.

Thank you to John Heaney who included me in the astute post, Avoiding the Top 5 LinkedIn Mistakes.

Connect with me on LinkedIn.