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How Home Depot Became a Pinterest Powerhouse [Case Study]

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One might not at first think that power tools and lumber have a place on the Internet’s current social media darling, Pinterest, but this visual platform is being dominated by none other than Home Depot. Currently, Home Depot has over 12,000 profile followers on Pinterest, and their individual boards all have over 8,500 followers. If Pinterest’s high revenue-per-click rates and the assertion that Pinterest users are heavily motivated to buy are to be believed, Home Depot has build quite the lucrative following on this social networking – and it’s a following that is growing daily.

Understanding What Users Want

While DIY home renovators might go to Home Depot for pipes and wood, the company understands that this kind of item isn’t likely to resonate with Pinterest users.  Based on their Q2 2012 reports, about 2% of their total sales come from their online channels, which doesn’t sound like much until you remember that total sales for the company were $20.57 billion that quarter. People aren’t likely to buy certain items online because they want to see them in person, but Home Depot sells lots of items that people are willing to purchase sight unseen, and these are the items the company highlights on Pinterest.

For example, here’s an item Home Depot pinned on its Outdoor Living board:

Pinterest users are a lot more likely to buy this item online than to purchase potting soil or plants online, despite these being popular outdoor items at physical Home Depot stores.

Home Depot also understands that people are looking for different things at different times of the year. For example, during the fall, the boards at the top of the Home Depot profile include Tailgating Ideas & DIY Football Party Ideas and Halloween Crafts & Ideas.

The company also has boards for other holidays and seasons, like Valentine’s Day Inspiration and Summer Celebrations, but these are found closer to the bottom of the Home Depot profile. These can easily be moved to a more highlight position when the time is right.

Give and Take

The best take-away from Home Depot’s Pinterest activities is perhaps the way this company combines promotion of their own products with promotion of other items. Like with all social networks, when you use the platform as a broadcasting tool alone, users typically don’t respond well. To have a more complete Pinterest presence, you need to not only promote what you’re selling, but also promote other cool and interesting products and projects you find.

A good example is the Home Depot Wreaths for Any Occasion board, which features some Home Depot products like an ornament wreath and bat wreath alongside wreath products and projects from others sites, like The Charm of Home, Make and Takes, and Once Wed.

Home Depot has Character

What I personally like most about Home Depot’s Pinterest presence is the personality. Home Depot could take the path many brands take on social media by being extremely “corporate,” but instead, the company’s pins have a little flavor. The descriptions make it sound like a real person, not a stuffy corporation, is behind each pin.

In the above pin on the company’s DIY Wedding Inspiration & Gift Ideas board, for example, you can see Home Depot asking “How cool would it be to have a wedding cermony [sic] inside of a greenhouse?” and several people answered. This type of engagement with a brand is worth more than passive repins, especially for a product not originally from the Home Depot site.

Where Home Depot Could Improve

Although Home Depot does Pinterest better than most brands, I still see room for improvement. Here are a few ways Home Depot could have an even strong Pinterest presence:

  • More Boards: Currently, Home Depot only has 32 boards, which means there’s a lot of room for improvement. With a topic like home improvement, there’s no limit to the individual boards that could be created.
  • More Interaction with Followers: Home Depot’s conversational style with pin descriptions is just a start. The company could take things a step farther and interact with their followers through comments.
  • Following More People: Home Depot currently only followers about 280 people, which is a very small percentage compared to followers. By following more boards relating to home improvement, the company would have more ideas to repin.

It will be interesting to watch how Home Depot continues to grow on Pinterest, as well as see other brands follow suit and start to build a presence on Pinterest.

10 Tips for Your Brand or Business to Get Started on Instagram

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instagram homepage

instagram homepage Photo-sharing app Instagram isn’t the first service to help brands and businesses share pictures from a mobile device to your community and it definitely won’t be the last.

Instagram, fresh from finalizing its acquisition by Facebook and crossing the 100 million users mark, has become the prominent dashboard for capturing, editing, and sharing images across the social web. With the growing importance and emphasis placed on images within social media, Instagram has become an optimal visual sharing mobile platform.

If your brand or business is ready to integrate Instagram into your content strategy and social media mix, here are 10 things you can do now to get started on the path.

GET STARTED

Reserve Your Instagram Name

Instagram is currently not set up to have brand/business accounts, but you can set up more than one personal account. If you already have a personal Instagram account, just make sure that you sign-up for another account using a different email address.

KEY TIP: If you are having difficulty securing a username, Instagram does have a trademark policy in place and by contacting Instagram you may have a chance at claiming your business Instagram name.

Set Up Your Profile

Instagram allows you to add a profile image, bio, and link to your website. Take advantage of filling these out and keep your information descriptive and simple.

KEY TIP: Since Instagram is rooted in mobile usage, make sure that the website that you decide to link your profile to is mobile friendly.

Sync Your Social Profiles

Instagram can be an excellent visual starting point for any photographic content that you wish to syndicate on other platforms. Take Facebook, for example, you can share your Instagram photos to brand pages, ensuring that your content displays larger and more prominent in Facebook streams than conventional shares and updates.

KEY TIP: Be sure to connect your account to Facebook, Twitter and any other third-party social sharing sites where you have an account (Profile > Edit sharing settings).

DEVELOP A STRATEGY

What’s Your Story

Instagram is a great platform to tell your brand story and can allow you to connect with your audience on a very emotional level. Spend time researching what Instagram consumers are most excited about, what type of content they engage with the most, and why consumers should even follow you on Instagram in the first place.

KEY TIP: Planning out your brand story and content strategy ahead of time will give you the insight into how and where your Instagram content will be distributed within your social media ecosystem.

Develop Your Editorial Calendar

Much like an editorial calendar for your blog, Twitter, or Facebook page, Instagram should be viewed with the same comprehensive tactics.

Brands can earn greater reach and results by investing in a journalistic approach to their content. Move your editorial calendar away from promotional messaging to the delivery of very useful, inspiring, and meaningful images that will drive engagement and positive viewing experiences.

You can define a schedule on how often you would like to update Instagram. At the beginning of the week you may decide to post behind-the-scenes images of your business, followed by new product updates mid-week, and finally ending with inspirational quotes or photos leading into the weekend.

KEY TIP: Entering a social platform takes commitment and consistency. Over time, your brand or business should be able to understand what type of images are most engaging within your community. You will also learn when is the optimal time your Instagram audience is most active.

Cross Platform Integration

Since Instagram is a tool that works best in conjunction with other social platforms, developing a strategy within a holistic social media strategy is a strong approach. Visually-emphasized sites such as Pinterest, Tumblr and Facebook can benefit from the additional photographic content that will help further the reach and engagement of your messaging.

KEY TIP: When re-publishing content across multiple platforms consider adjusting the copy on each platform’s post. Copy that is suited for Pinterest with a specific call to action may not work for Facebook.  Facebook and other social platforms may require a different call to action.

ENGAGEMENT TACTICS

Involve Your Staff and Employees

Sticking to a set Instagram editorial calendar can get overwhelming at times, especially when you find yourself with a shortage of visual content to update. This can be a perfect opportunity for your brand or business to begin involving your staff and employees.

Not only will empowering your staff in contributing to Instagram give them a stronger sense of ownership, it will also show your employees a more creative side of your business and how social media can play a valuable part.

KEY TIP: Like any other social platform it’s about defining a brand voice. Instagram is just a more visual medium. Behind-the-scenes photos from staff and employees can put additional faces to your brand or business, as well as show a holistic view of your brand.

Engage Your Community

Be sure that you stay engaged with your community even when at times you may feel like you have nothing to share. Just like any other social platform, remember that Instagram is a community too and that reciprocity is key! Reach out to your followers and other Instagram users by liking and commenting on photos, especially if they mention your brand or business. This can increase visibility and provide additional insights to defining your community. Responding back to comments can be viewed as active participation in the community and will continue to keep your consumers engaged and happy.

KEY TIP: Other engagement opportunities can include creating contests and promotions that encourage your community to talk about your brand or business. Feel free to share any promotions/contests you may have running on your other social profiles. This will help raise the awareness with your consumers that you are on Instagram and will be providing content that may be valuable to them as well.

Tag and Geo-Tag Your Photos

Incorporating hashtags (just like on Twitter) will help increase visibility. A great start can be as simple as using a hashtag for the photo’s subject matter, location, filters used, and maybe even additional inspirational descriptions. While hashtags can increase visibility and build context around your images, don’t go overboard.

Instagram now places additional emphasis on geo-located images with their integration of a map function in app, geo-tagging your photos can provide additional visibility.

KEY TIP: If you don’t like the look of all those hashtags in your photo caption, feel free to add hashtags in a comment below the caption. This will keep updates cleaner yet still prove functional within Instagram search queries. As for geo-tags, adding a location to your photos, whether it is a city or even your actual place of business, will provide greater context around your Instagram images that consumers can engage with.

MEASURE AND OPTIMIZE

Utilize Tools To Optimize Your Content

After all is said and done, gaining more insight into your community and content will keep you on the continued path of optimizing your photos. There are a number of different tools such as Statigram or SimplyMeasured that are available for brands and businesses that can shed light into your most engaged times to post during the day, best filter used, and even identifying your brand advocates who engage with your content the most.

KEY TIP: Define what your success metrics are when it comes to Instagram and developing your strategy. This will help you to know what goals you want to achieve and what you’ll need to optimize to get there.

Remember that Instagram should reflect your brand or business as a whole and not attempt to create it’s own identity. Instagram can be a positive investment within your social eco-system that you may be pleasantly surprised with later down the line.

Photo Credit: Bigstock

Social Media Checklist: 12 Things To Ask Yourself Before You Tweet

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Social media managers have definitely been known to get themselves into hot water. For example, during a presidential debate, KitchenAid made a very insulting joke at President Obama’s expense, due to an employee who tweeted from the company account rather than a personal account. This certainly isn’t the first time a rogue tweet has made the news, and I’m sure it won’t be the last either.

Whether you’re tweeting on behalf of your employer or just tweeting from your personal account, what you say matters. Your tweets reflect on you and everyone who chooses to interact with you, including family members, co-workers and employers, and friends. So it doesn’t really matter if the tweet in my example came from KitchenAid’s account or the user’s personal account. It was still something the person should have thought twice about tweeting.

You can’t really erase something you’ve said online. People are quick to take screenshots, so just because you delete something in one place doesn’t mean it isn’t out there. And yes, digital blacklists do exist, so a single tweet can cause you to lose sponsorship deals, employment opportunities, and even friends.

So before you tweet, here are ten things to ask yourself:

  1. Am I tweeting from the right account?
  2. Does my tweet fit within my (or my company’s) brand online?
  3. Am I too emotional right now? (If you don’t know, wait three hours and see if you still feel like sending the tweet!)
  4. Would I be okay with my mother/grandmother/role model reading this tweet?
  5. Will I be okay with my children (or future children or nieces/nephews/whatever) seeing this tweet when they Google me someday?
  6. If a potential employer reads this tweet, will I miss out on job opportunities?
  7. Is the tweet clear or could it be confusing for some people? (This is especially important when using sarcasm or making a joke.)
  8. Are the links in the tweet working?
  9. Does my language (cursing or otherwise) reflect my personality and represent me well?
  10. Is tweeting a reply publicly the right choice or would a DM be better?
  11. Have I made my tweet short enough for others to retweet?
  12. Have I used hashtags when relevant so others can find my tweet?

Mistakes happen. I can’t count how many times I’ve accidentally tweeted from the wrong account or with a broken link. But even when I make a mistake, it’s not a big deal because I’m careful about what I say on Twitter regardless of the account I’m using.

The moral of today’s story? Be careful what you say online. Statements have a way of coming back to haunt you in ways you can’t imagine. Err on the side of caution, especially if you’re managing multiple accounts, and remember: just because you can say something online, doesn’t mean you should.

Does KitchenAid’s Rogue Tweet Really Matter?

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If you check out KitchenAid’s tweets around the time of last night’s United States presidential debate, this is what you’ll find:

kitchenaid tweet

The “irresponsible tweet” to which they are referring was deleted pretty quickly – but not so quickly that no one noticed. After President Obama talked about his grandmother dying just three days before he got elected, KitchenAid tweeted:

Obamas gma even knew it was going 2 b bad! ‘She died 3 days b4 he became president’. #nbcpolitics

As David Griner noted on Adweek, it’s going to be a bad Thursday for whoever accidentally tweeted from the KitchenAid account instead of their personal account, and it’s also going to be a bad Thursday for the people who trusted that person.

But I have to wonder: Does a social media flub like this one really hurt the brand?

That tweet was disgusting. I don’t care who you’re voting for – making a joke about someone’s deceased family member is tasteless. There’s no argument about that.

What I’m arguing is that people who want a KitchenAid mixer probably aren’t going to not buy one because of a rogue tweet by someone on their social media staff. I obviously don’t catch every tweet by the company, but I’ve never seen or heard of them tweeting something irresponsible before. They also corrected and apologized for the tweet extremely quickly. If this was a repeat problem or ignored by the company, that might make me stop and think twice about buying a KitchenAid product.

Simply put, however, this single tweet doesn’t. Someday when I have a bigger kitchen, I fully intend to own a bright red KitchenAid mixer, and I will continue to tell people exactly how much I love using the one my mom owns every time I visit her.

Within the hour of the rogue tweet, dozens of blogs and media outlets had already reported it, and several people on Twitter were angrily responding to the tweet. But are we, as an industry, overreacting?

As a consumer, would you not purchase a KitchenAid product just because of this tweet?

As a business owner, would you fire this social media worker, even if he/she had never made a mistake before?

How Social Media Changed the Culture of My Dental Practice

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Let’s see a show of hands out there.  How many of you have dentists who have content rich websites and are active on Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and Pinterest?  That’s what I thought.  Not too many of you.  Well, as a dentist, I am on a mission to change that.

Dentists and Marketing

Marketing has not been an easy journey for the healthcare industry. For a very long time, professionals in healthcare were discouraged, if not reprimanded, for advertising. About all you could do to “market” yourself was to have your name appear in the local phone book. The early adopters in attempting healthcare marketing were not well received and were, in fact, lambasted for their efforts.

“Classless” and “cheap” were words used to describe healthcare professionals’ small attempts at marketing and advertising.  Slowly, very slowly, this limiting attitude has changed. The healthcare industry has finally, if not reluctantly, taken the full plunge into the ocean of marketing and social media.

The Extremes

As with most things in life, there is a modulating process that needs to accompany change. Before that modulation occurs, typically you are going to see extremes. In healthcare, the extremes have been pretty obvious. There are the pharmaceutical, hospital, weight loss and dental implant companies that barrage us with promises of the best, the only, and the right options for our healthcare needs on radio and TV. On the other end of the spectrum, you have the general dental practice that sits quietly on Main Street USA hoping that “word of mouth” will continue to bring in new patients. While, just down the street, new dental offices are popping up every day providing more and more options for these same new patients.

The Reality

As “experts” in our respective fields, no matter what our business, the reality is that as a rule, every day when we go to work, we do basically the same thing as our competitors. So, in the field of dentistry specifically, most of my colleagues that are vying for the same patients that I am vying for do the same kinds of fillings, cleanings, x-rays, crowns and bridges. Some of us offer slightly different options but, for the most part, our days are very similar.

So then, how can we make ourselves appear “different” to potential patients?  What can we do to increase the traffic through our door instead of letting the dentist just down the street get the new patient?  That is the age old question!

The Answer

Think outside of the box. We already know what we’ve been trained to do as “experts” in our field. And we should always strive to do it better! But we can’t just rest on our laurels anymore. There are far too many other businesses like yours and mine out there and potential customers/clients/patients are getting more and more digitally-savvy all of the time. They are doing their homework and basing the decisions they make on their research. And to make ourselves show up in an enticing way, we need to think outside of the box. And one of those ways is social media.

Let’s Get Personal: My Story

Let me tell you how social media changed the culture of my dental practice. I’ve been a dentist for over 22 years and have owned my own practice for 16 of those years. I, like many of my colleagues (and other small businesses), tried many of the traditional forms of marketing including, but certainly not limited to the Yellow Pages, Dex Knows, church bulletin ads, local newspaper coupons and participation in local school events. In the early days, the only way of tracking my analytics was by keeping track of my results with a notebook and pen. And one by one, I eliminated ineffective and sometimes costly marketing efforts that had little to no ROI (return on investment).

I was conflicted because I still felt that there was value in the tried and true “word of mouth” method of growing a practice. But I knew that with new competition popping up at every corner, I was going to die as a business if I didn’t figure out how to create growth effectively and inexpensively. And then, one day, one of my awesome patients came up with the answer. The conversation began innocently enough. I was complimenting her on her oh-so-funny blog and asking her how she was able to promote her blog so successfully. She looked me straight in the eye and said “You can do it too. Just create a blog for your website and get a Twitter account and tweet about your practice”.

Say WHATTTT??

There is Value in Being Impetuous and Impressionable

That very day, I solicited the help of Heather Acton,  freelance WordPress developer extraordinaire and I started designing a new WordPress website that would allow me to blog directly from my business website. I also set up a Twitter account and created a Facebook page. I worked diligently on increasing my presence on social media. I played with many ideas and tossed out the ones that didn’t work and kept the ones that did. I began doing videos that were posted to both YouTube and my website that dealt with dental health issues. I started a regular feature called Ask the Dentist in which someone emails me a dental health related question that I post and answer on my website.

I began to post articles to local newspapers to increase awareness of my office’s presence. I attended functions, some with the clever name of “Tweet Ups,” in and around the city of Chicago so that the many people that I was communicating with in social media I could meet face to face IRL (in real life)!

The result was a measurable increase in my “new patient” numbers as a result of my presence on social media.

To be clear, I made many mistakes along the way and even allowed myself to get slightly addicted to social media. But, the lessons that I gleaned as I muddled through the myriad of information I was reading and experimenting with, grew my desire to share a best practices sort of approach with dentists wanting to use social media. The result was my site, Social Media DDS, which allows me to consult with and coach dental professionals in the art of social media strategy.

What I Have Learned

  1. Have an interactive website. By interactive, I mean, make sure that your site is content rich and content fresh. Create a space on your website modeled after traditional “blogs” from which you can provide information to your readers and they can communicate with you. Have a fully functional and user-friendly commenting platform integrated into your website and “blog” such as Livefyre that allows conversation-like communication to occur, encouraging readers to participate in dialogue with you and the community.
  2. Be regular and predictable in your posts.  As Marcus Sheridan, the awesome author of The Sales Lion, says in this video interview, blog with regularity. Let your audience know that you will be there for them. Listen to their needs and then…engage, engage, engage. Social media is, after all, social. Once you have established a solid “home base” with your website presence, consider expanding your social media presence on Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and, yes, even Pinterest.

Don’t Have Time?

I happen to LOVE working the social media and marketing angle for my dental practice. But I understand and appreciate that not all owners of a business can find the time to put into growing their social media presence. One of my favorite go-to people in the dental, social media marketing world is Rita Zamora of Social Media & Relationship Marketing. She suggests finding a “champion” for your social media presence (regardless of the type of business you run).

Look to your staff and decide who would be a perfect fit for championing your business. Let them represent the business. Teach them how to be the “voice” of your company. Delegate wisely. And, always keep your “voice” consistent and authentic. Never succumb to the temptation of letting a third party company be your “voice.” Always understand that your “voice” is what makes digital “word of mouth” marketing work.

Wrapping It Up

I am passionate about the potential of social media as a powerful tool in a business’ marketing strategy. I am also passionate about my business. It seems pretty intuitive then that, when I combine the powerful forces of my business with social media, awesome goodness is going to be the result.

I can’t imagine a new business in any industry not wanting to make sure that their internet presence is felt and that the business consistently nurtures its online presence. There are countless examples of success using the power of social media to build a business. I love to tell people that if I, as an owner of a dental practice, can grow my business utilizing the power of social media, then anyone can grow a business using social media!

How have you used social media to grow your online presence?  Has it worked?  Do you have any tips that might help others as they take their first steps into social media?

The Top 10 Restaurants Using Social Media [Infographic]

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Who among us wouldn’t love having nearly 31.4 million likes on Facebook or 2.8 million Twitter followers? That’s the kind of social media following Starbucks has–and it’s also dominating Google+ and Pinterest (and they come in second for YouTube and Klout, following Burger King and Taco Bell respectively).

Restaurant Social Media Top 10

by NowSourcing. Learn about infographic design.

Obviously, Starbucks and most of the other restaurants on this list have so many followers not only because they run their social media accounts well, but because people like their products. That’s a great lesson for all restaurant owners interested in boosting their social presence. Just like “content is king” in the blogging world, your content (i.e. your products) is king in the restaurant industry. It doesn’t matter how engaging you are on Facebook or Twitter if your food doesn’t taste good.

Some other observations I have about the above lists:

  • Restaurants are just starting to realize the importance of Pinterest. You don’t have to be a huge chain to break into the top ten list, since there’s not a ton of competition on Pinterest yet. (Check out our five-day series on creating a Pinterest profile from scratch if you don’t yet have an account there.)
  • YouTube is another place you can dominate, even if you aren’t a massive chain. Create interesting video content (not just commercials), and ask people to subscribe to your channel.
  • People aren’t really “checking in” to restaurants, but they are using apps to read about restaurants online. So make sure your restaurant has a presence on Yelp and other mobile apps.

Want to learn more about using social media for your restaurant? Consider grabbing a ticket to NMX’s Social Media Business Summit, which features speakers and sessions for every education level, from those of you new to social media to social media managers who have been using it for years.

Social Media Automation for Small Businesses: Is It Really For The Birds?

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is social media automation for the birds Is social media automation a good thing for small business owners? How can small business owners use social media quickly without it? This post covers what you need to know about automating your social media presence. It’s not all bad!

Putting social media on auto-pilot is like sending your customer complaint phone calls to voice mail. Sure, it might help some people who just want to vent or have specific questions answered by your recording, but it’s only going to tick off most people.

Yet, mastering social media takes time, and for a small business run by a handful of people, it can seem impossible to keep up with social media. Few small business owners have time to sit on Twitter all day.

I have good news: automation has a negative connotation, but all of your business practices should be automated sometime. You can’t scale if you do everything by hand. It’s just important to automate the right way. You wouldn’t stick a mannequin behind the counter but you also wouldn’t demand that your cashiers calculate everything by hand. With the proper tools, social media automation can help you run your social media accounts, even if you don’t have the money yet to hire a dedicated social media manager.

Things You Should Never Automate

First of all, let’s address the elephant in the room: the dark side of automation. Social media automation has a negative connotation for a reason — lots of people do it incorrectly. There are certain types of automation you should never do.

  • Never create an account and leave it 100% on autopilot. Any platform — Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest, LinkedIn, etc. — requires your attention at least some of the time. You can’t just set things up and let them handle themselves.
  • Never automate customer service. You need to address problems and answer questions via social media if you’re going to have a presence there. Never leave customers to fend for themselves when an issue arises.
  • Never automate “from” live events. Bad stuff happens, all the time. If you schedule or otherwise automate tweets to look like you’re at an event, you could end up with mud on your face if things don’t go as planned. Look at this example of a tweet from LiveNation Ontario about a Radiohead concert that was canceled due to a stage collapse tragedy.

Depending on your business, there are other things you should never automate – but those are the big three that go for everyone.

Automation the Right Way

You can, however, automate some parts of the social media process to make things easier for you as a small business owner. The key is to make sure that you don’t bite off more than you can chew. You shouldn’t automate everything. So, start with a single social network, get the process down pat there, and then branch out to the next network. This is a much more streamlined process than trying to start ten profiles at once. (I recommend starting with either Facebook or Twitter, depending on your industry. Go to the network where your customers are most active.)

Let’s look at a few ways you can automate your account:

  • Automate stats tracking.

There’s absolutely no reason to collect and study your data manually. You should track stats, but instead of spending time trying to make heads or tails of Facebook Analytics and other platform-specific reports, go with a single system. Check out this really comprehensive list of social media monitoring tools. Remember, you get what you pay for. I highly recommend opening your wallet and spending a little money on an all-inclusive, detailed monitoring service unless you have the time to analyze free reports.

  • Automate your tweets.

Not all of your tweets should be automated, and some may disagree with me on this point, but I believe that it is fine to schedule some of your tweets in advance, as well as automate the tweeting process if you have a company blog.

Twitterfeed is your friend. If you sign up for this service, you can add your blog’s RSS feed and you’ll automatically tweet every new post as it is published. Unless you can think of a reason why you’d not want to tweet your own links, I highly recommend doing this. It just doesn’t make sense to do it manually.

If you are going to schedule tweets, I have two tips for you:

  1. Don’t schedule too far in advance. You want to keep track of everything you have scheduled so you can cancel the tweets if you want.
  2. Don’t schedule anything that isn’t 100%. Yes, you can cancel scheduled tweets, but don’t rely on this function. Don’t schedule a tweet that you wouldn’t be okay with going out instantly.

I recommend scheduling tweets simply because you want to spread them out over the course of a day and this isn’t always possible, depending on your business. If you do have a business where you can constantly tweet via your phone or computer in real time, that’s usually the better option.

You can schedule updates for Facebook as well, though keep in mind that Facebook uses an algorithm called EdgeRank to determine how many people see your post. (Check out this great article from NMX speaker Rich Brooks about EdgeRank if you’ve never heard of it before.) Be aware that some forms of automation can affect how well your Facebook page performs, so it’s important to do things manually when possible.

  • Get notified! (But don’t rely on notifications.)

There are tons of mobile apps that will buzz every time you get a new mention or message or whatnot on your social media profile. If you’re on the go, this will alert you whenever you need to take care of something, rather than having to manually check you accounts several times per day.

You can also set up your preferences to get an email every time there’s an interaction on one of your social media accounts. I know, I know: no one wants more email. However, what you can do is set up a dummy email account just for your social media sites and sync that to your phone. That way, it doesn’t bog down your regular email and you don’t even have to check it (other than perhaps occasionally cleaning it out to free up some space), but your phone will still buzz whenever something needs your attention.

A word of caution however: don’t rely solely on automatic notifications. You should sign into every social media account you’ve create at least once per day (twice or more is recommended) to make sure nothing falls through the cracks.

The bottom line? Not all social media automation is bad. You just have to learn to do thing the right way. Make sure to test every technique and be present whenever possible. Automation shouldn’t be the norm; it should simply be a way to add to real life presence via social media.

Want to learn more about using social media for your business? Register for the BusinessNext Social conference coming to Las Vegas this January!

Social Media Monitoring 101

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Social media matters. Whether you’re a household name or a brand-new blogger, social media is key. It’s how you establish influence. It’s how you maintain your good name. It’s how you spread the word about your products or services.

Are you making the most of it?

From big brands to small firms, top bloggers to new ones, we all need to keep tabs on what’s being said about us online. “Even if you or your clients have ‘decided’ not to actively participate in social media, it’s really not a choice,” writes Jason Schubring at Six Revisions. “Nature abhors a vacuum, and so does social media. Either you can fill the vacuum with your perspective, or your customers and competitors will fill it for you. The choice is clear.”

The Fact Is, People Are Talking

Since people will be talking about you on social media, whether or not you join them, especially as your brand expands—it’s vital to know about it, even if it’s not all good. Then you can use those mentions to your advantage. You can turn the talk into a way to boost your brand.

Do you know who’s talking about you? Are you tracking your social media influence?

Here’s how.

Find out What Are People Saying about You

First things first: once you know you want to monitor your social media presence, you have to figure out what that means. What are you looking for exactly? To put it simply, you’re looking for your brand. You want to find everything that’s being said about you on every social network. You want to keep up with the social media community in all its forms.

Things You Might Find:

  • Tweets mentioning your brand
  • Content shared from your site on Facebook or Twitter
  • Pins to your content on Pinterest
  • Mentions on other blogs or websites
  • Reviews posted on industry sites (i.e., Amazon, Travelocity, yelp)
  • Links to your site in blogrolls or articles
  • Other content regarding your industry or specialty

What all this content possibility means is that it’s not enough to have social media profiles. You also have to watch the networks. Take the big-name payment processor BluePay as an example. On the bottom right of the BluePay website, you can see this is a financial company that’s active on both Twitter and LinkedIn; yet those profiles are only part of the equation. To know what’s being said about BluePay, you’d have to do some research. In other words, you need to know how to monitor social networks.

How to Monitor Social Media

In today’s Internet-centric world, there are plenty of tools available for monitoring your social media presence. Here are some highlights:

1. Google Alerts.

Through Google Alerts, you can set up automatic keyword searches for the name of your brand (or its competitors) and receive regular updates via email or RSS feed. So for a company like BluePay, for example, this would mean notification every time a press release goes out or a news article mentions you. You can set your queries to filter for only news, blogs or video mentions; or you can include any and all references.

2. Network-Specific Searches.

Within each network, it’s also possible to search for your brand and see what’s being said.

  • Twitter Advanced Search: Like Google Alerts, Twitter Advanced Search allows you
    to set up specific criteria for searches of content on Twitter.
  • LinkedIn Search: There are many ways to search on LinkedIn, whether for people
    or job listings or through updates or companies. One especially helpful place to check is the Advanced Answers Search, where you can hunt down any mentions of terms relating to your industry. If you’re a graphic designer building your brand online and looking for new clients, you might search for questions/answers regarding design
    issues.
  • Flickr, Delicious, Digg: All of these networks allow you to set up RSS feeds for searches on your brand name and industry terms.

3. Facebook Insights

Maybe your company sees the value of social media enough that you’re already on Facebook and other networks. TSI is a good example of this—they have an active Facebook fan page where they’re regularly linking to industry news and company updates. In this case, you can log right into your Facebook dashboard and use the Insights section to gain knowledge about fans, page views and new wall posts. Staying up-to-date on what your audience is saying on your own page is especially important, as fans will expect you to be listening.

4. Klout

Designed to measure influence, Klout can be a powerful tool for bloggers and business owners. It shows you a tangible measurement of your online influence and offers several tools that can be helpful. Use it to find information about competitors or professionals in your industry who are on various lists; see what topics users are assigning you +Ks in.

As you gain information and insight into what’s being said about your brand and your industry online, the next step is knowing what to do with it. Do all mentions matter? How can you respond to them?

Know Which Mentions Matter Most

The Internet is democratic in that anyone can have a voice. Yet not everyone’s voice has the same influence or reach. A user’s scope of influence is directly related to the power of their communication. So part of knowing how to respond is knowing whom you’re talking to.

Evaluate the User’s Influence

  • How many followers, fans or subscribers does the user have?
  • How many Retweets?
  • How many external links point to their blog?
  • How many comments do their blog posts attract?
  • Do people respond to them often?

After you’ve analyzed a user’s network and influence, then you can determine how to respond to them.

How to Respond

Remember that in social media as in every other part of life, people are people. Behind every profile, there is still a person posting or Tweeting, someone with whom you can converse and connect. So how do you do it? How do you turn online mentions into good press?

It’s all about Engagement.

Joe Hall writes at Search Engine Land that “Proper engagement needs to contain either one of two things: a ‘click’ factor or a ‘response’ factor. A click factor is an incentive for the user to click through a link … A response factor is an incentive for the user to respond and engage in dialog.”

How can you encourage clicks and responses? The most basic answer is to ask for them, through clear calls-to-action that prompt responses. Here are a few ideas:

  • Ask a Question: One of the surest ways to start a conversation is by asking a question. When you see someone Tweeting about recently buying your product, why not respond by asking how they’re enjoying it? Or if someone says they had a bad customer service experience, reach out to them for more info.
  • Give a Solution: When a user is expressing a problem or concern, there’s nothing like giving them a solution. When you reach in a LinkedIn discussion board about a manager looking for a better precision measurement tool, tell him about yours. When you learn someone can’t find your product at their store, see if you can get it there.
  • Offer an Incentive: Other effective engagement techniques include contests, giveaways and other promotional strategies that give the user an immediate benefit or reward. This could be “Test this product for a chance to win a year’s supply” or “Fill out this customer survey and get 20% off your next order.” Or it might be, “We’d love to send you some free samples to try.” The idea is to provide an incentive attractive to the user.

By understanding the basics of social media monitoring, you have a good start in building and strengthening your online brand. Does your company or is your personal brand already doing this? What results have you seen? Or if you’re new to monitoring, how have you seen other brands do it well—through engagement on social networks?

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