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Intuit’s social media campaign drives conversion on par with its transaction sites

Tuesday, September 7th, 2010

By Jan Carroza

This is worth repeating.

Intuit drives conversion with social media on par with its transaction sites.

If anyone continues to doubt the influence of social media on sales, this is the time to acknowledge the value. Oh, and remember, BTW, it’s still basically free. Unlike traditional or pay-per-click advertising, for the most part, the only real cost is the time of staff or an outsourced team to create, manage and monitor the messages.

How did they do this? Kira Wampler, Principal of Ant’s Eye View and formerly of Intuit, described the process at the August Social Media Breakfast Seattle meeting, saying that it all started by word of mouth. Once they had a track record, they demonstrated it to develop partnerships that took it all further.

What was the compelling word of mouth message? Helpful engagement.

Identify the Pain Points of your Prospects

Intuit asked businesses to describe their biggest challenge and how they solved it. As the program grew to over 1.2 million visits and 2000 stories, they partnered with bloggers. Leads were more valuable than the average.

Responding to a common desire for businesses to be noticed, Intuit built a program called Love A Local Business, to award small business grants. They also employ a widget to extend their message across retail sites increasing traffic 360%. A whopping 40% of traffic votes…

Reputation Management Is So Worthwhile

Incredibly, they found they could reduce the negative messages. When they started into a new venue, such as Facebook, they typically found that negative messaging made up 65% to total sentiment. With careful attention to their audience, they reduced negative sentiment by 30%.

Two great suggestions Kira had for the audience:

  1. Make sure all your social media URLs are entered into your website analytics. Analysis from this data will help you share your interpretations with your management and drive the next decisions for your efforts.
  2. Survey your customers to see where in the purchasing process they might use social media. Are they reading online reviews? Encourage them to post one for you.

Time Management is Possible

One of the biggest objections I’ve heard to getting into is how much time it can take. At Intuit, the management takes about 4 hours a week by one employee. They prioritized social media starting with the most impactful, Amazon’s reviews. Once your social media sites and management tools are all set up, the day-to-day can be very productive for a focused individual.

How do you make social media management work? Find the right response to your target’s pain points, be helpful, track your messages in a focused manner and you too might see social media success that matches or beats your paid advertising campaign.

You can watch the entire talk at http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/8840696.

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Posted in Articles, Blogging, Facebook, Local business, Social Media and Social Networking | No Comments »

Auto Blogging Through Content Generator Tools

Thursday, August 26th, 2010

Are your blog posts being picked up and re-posted on sites that have little or nothing to do with your company or service?  This could be the work of auto blogging software, “clipping” services and/or plug-ins.

As an example, let’s say you blog about technology; specifically apple products.  These tools search blog posts for keywords you selected and add it to your website seamlessly.

What are the benefits?

Fresh content

Low cost

More visitors

Save time

What are the risks?

Poorly written content

Content that does not match your values or message

Overwhelming amount of content – some of the products or services mention 10,000 pages.

Too many voices creating a lack of continuity

If you decide to use auto blogging methods, give some thought to:

What is on your website and blog becomes your voice and your message.

Automated means just that, automated.  No proofing for spelling and grammar errors.

Make sure you agree with the content, specifically the premise, conclusions and recommendations.

Fresh content may not attract the right visitors.

You should read each and every post word by word and decide whether it stays or goes.

Some of these services offer free demos and that would be a good place to start.  In looking at 3 different services, several were a flat rate one-time-only cost and one was a monthly fee.  The prices for the services I found offering the flat rate varied from $67.00 to $165.00.

Blogging on a regular basis can become tiresome and downright tedious at times.  Other times you may have bloggers block.  When I am at this point, I go out and see what others in my area of interest are writing about.  I learn, I laugh, I fume, I learn more. That is the part of blogging that I want to do personally.

Next up, discussion from the blog writer’s perspective regarding being auto-blogged.

CMP.ly/0

I have not received any compensation for writing this content and I have no material connection to the brands, topics and/or products that are mentioned herein.

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Posted in Articles, Social Media and Social Networking, Twitter | No Comments »

How is your company using social media?

Monday, August 23rd, 2010

By Karen Miller

Like most people, when I saw the Wheat Thins TV ad where they delivered a year’s worth of Wheat Thins to a consumer, I was amused and intrigued by what they were doing. Of course, I went to their website, Facebook page and Twitter to see what was happening. And, they were listening to their fans and communicating with them!

Over and over it has been said that social media is all about communicating. Companies like Wheat Thins are using social media to their advantage. They are giving out coupons on Facebook, delivering Wheat Thins to those on Twitter and making product announcements on both. But this is only one example of a company using social media to their advantage.

Staples, Chase, Pepsi all have some interesting campaigns using social media that involve interaction with their consumers. The Pepsi Refresh campaign has used social media to donate millions of dollars to local and national charities. Instead of advertising on the Super Bowl this year, they are using social media sites to give away those advertising dollars to the charities. They are gaining product recognition and building brand loyalty as well as being “socially responsible.”

Chase did a similar campaign for Community Giving and Staples engages their consumers by asking questions, talking about donating to schools, showing sale items, etc. The key is engaging and communicating. Make sure you are doing both with your social media but most importantly take time to listen to your consumers.

How is your company using social media to their advantage? And what companies do you think are uniquely using social media?

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Posted in Articles, Blogging, Facebook, LinkedIn, Social Media and Social Networking, Twitter | No Comments »

Full Disclosure – FTC Updated Guidelines include Social Media

Friday, August 13th, 2010

By Jan Carroza

The FTC updated its guidelines for advertisers last year with regard to testimonials and endorsements to incorporate the impact of the new emerging technologies. Of key concern was the trend by bloggers to promote items without acknowledging payment, product or other compensation.

Why is this important?

“…both advertisers and endorsers may be liable for false or unsubstantiated claims made in an endorsement – or for failure to disclose material connections between the advertiser and endorsers. The revised Guides also make it clear that celebrities have a duty to disclose their relationships with advertisers when making endorsements outside the context of traditional ads, such as on talk shows or in social media,” according to the FTC’s release.

Each blogger, personality and affiliate needs to make these disclosures, remembering that by doing so they can show due diligence and demonstration their credibility to build and retain their reputation. Advertisers must monitor communications about their brand to make sure their employees, agents, contractors and talent all comply. For advertisers, it’s not only about reputation, but the costs in time and litigation to defend false claims.

So it’s only appropriate that Cmp.ly, aptly named for advertisers, bloggers, affiliates and celebrities who want to be compliant with these guidelines, should provide a service to note in documents, sites and social media the relationship between the author or celebrity and advertisers.

It’s a simple system and reminds me of the Creative Commons system which offers a variety of copyright options. The author can choose a disclosure and generate the appropriate badge to use on websites. From Diggcomm’s release:

Cmp.ly provides six standard disclosures that are intended to cover all material connection disclosures. Each disclosure is identified using a number as follows:

CMP.ly/0 – No connection, unpaid, my own opinions
CMP.ly/1 – Based upon a review copy
CMP.ly/2 – Given a sample by vendor/agency/brand
CMP.ly/3 – Paid post – cash payment or other compensation
CMP.ly/4 – Employee/shareholder/business relationship
CMP.ly/5 – Custom Disclosure


For ad agencies with multiple accounts, there is a complete set of tools to create disclosure policies and “badges” for each campaign. Bloggers and affiliates must review and accept the advertiser policies prior to joining the program. Advertisers and agencies can then monitor an audit trail of activities.

An affiliate, for instance, running ads with landing pages, blogs, and sites to promote products for a share of the sale will want to use the following badge:

For the occasion of this blog post where no monetary or other consideration has been paid, I would use the following badge:

Whether advertisers, bloggers, and affiliates choose Cmp.ly or any other method of sharing their disclosures, these need to be made in a public way to protect the reputations of all concerned. Bloggers want to keep their audience, advertisers want to keep consumers and stay out of litigation, and affiliates want to keep the money rolling in. While it’s one more step in the creative process, it’s a valuable one.

So go forth and disclose. Herewith, is ours:

Disclosure Text : I have not received any compensation for writing this content and I have no material connection to the brands, topics and/or products that are mentioned herein.

@social_dynamics

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Posted in Articles, Blogging, How To, Technology | No Comments »

Can Anyone Answer LinkedIn Questions?

Friday, August 6th, 2010

By Karen Miller

Everyone is good at something and everyone has opinions. Answering questions on LinkedIn is something anyone and everyone can do. This offers the opportunity for you to share your knowledge and thoughts with others who are looking for just those opinions and thoughts.

How do you go about answering questions? If you belong to a group, more than likely you receive e-mails that inform you about the latest discussion or question someone has placed on LinkedIn. You can easily add your answer or opinion to the discussion by clicking on the comment button.

If you want to get into more in-depth questions though look at the search area on the top right corner on LinkedIn. In the dropdown you can click on answers and then search for something you know about. There are many categories that you can choose from. As an example, if you have recently started a business and know some of the do’s and don’ts, click on start-ups and small business and look for the questions where you can offer your expertise. There are so many categories to pick from and you are bound to be able to answer some of the questions. You may even want to gain Expert status, but that’s a discussion for another time.

Be bold, and share your knowledge. You just might be surprised at who you are able to help and who you can meet and isn’t that what LinkedIn is all about? Have you answered any questions on LinkedIn?

@social_dynamics

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Posted in Articles, How To, LinkedIn, Local business, Technical | No Comments »

LinkedIn Expert Status

Tuesday, August 3rd, 2010

Becoming known as an Expert in LinkedIn increases the likelihood of being found by prospects, adding value to your reputation and visibility to your company. When any of the 60 million LinkedIn participants see your LinkedIn Profile, they’ll see your expertise, like Jason Alba’s (below). Your audience members are all professionals and your messages are free. For a little time expenditure, the rewards of enrichment in networking and business opportunities are well worth the effort.

In this week’s list of Top Experts, Wallace Jackson has provided 33 of the Best Answers in the category of Using LinkedIn. Over time, your accumulated answers build a body of knowledge you have shared.

People can find all your questions and answers and learn more about the breadth of your expertise:

So how can you become an expert?

From your LinkedIn page, search the dropdown box in the upper right corner for Answers:

Or use the dropdown menu under More…to find Answers Home…

Select categories that you are familiar and interested in to Answer questions:

Participating in conversations with thoughtful explanations offers opportunities to make more connections to other professionals, thereby expanding your network, your messages, and your presence.

Enjoy networking while your explore connections with prospects and other professionals.

@social_dynamics

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Posted in Articles, How To, LinkedIn, Technical | 1 Comment »

Make Sure to Back Up your Facebook and Other Social Media Efforts

Wednesday, July 28th, 2010

One-third of data is lost to user error, let alone hacker attempts

What would you do if you had a glitch with Facebook and your profile, pages, photos, videos, friends list, notes, events, links and statuses were lost?

What’s that sound? Anguish? Believe it. This happens. Not necessarily through any fault of yours. But I’ll let you Google those stories.

I want you to take a few moments to choose a back up service. For many, the service is FREE. So how can you beat that?

I have a couple choices for you to look at specifically when it comes to Facebook. Backupify and SocialSafe.

Backupify saves photos you have tagged, your friends, statuses, links, notes and events. You can set it to back up automatically daily, archive and export. It will require permission access to your Facebook account.

The free service offers up to 2 GB. At 10 GB you’ll need a Premium account for $39.95/year or for Business with 25 GB, $59.95/year. Still not bad pricing for that kind of insurance.

You can also back up the following services wit Backupify: Twitter, Wordpress, Gmail, Blogger, Hotmail, Flickr, Delicious, Google Docs, Google Contacts, Google Calendar, FriendFeed, Picasa and more.

Backupify says that in the next couple of weeks you’ll be able to back up just your Fan Pages separately from your Profile.

SocialSafe charges $2.99 to backup your Facebook friends, photos, profile and status updates. SocialSafe doesn’t currently back up Fan Pages, but has that on their boards for futures. Currently, SocialSafe doesn’t allow tagged photos to be downloaded due to 3rd party infringement issues. They are working on status updates and scheduled backups.

You’ll need to wait longer for your first backups. Backupify needs 24-48 hours the first time, for instance. For those of you on Firefox, check out the free Facebook archiving feature.

Backing Up Other Social Media

Did you know that Twitter only lets you see your most recent 3200 tweets? BackUpMyTweets has with free accounts, so get started! You can pull your files to your computer for review and manipulation.

BackUpMyMail has a free 7 day trial. Beyond 1 GB the cost is $19.95/year. Pro (2 GB) and Power (5 GB) versions are coming at $25.85/year and $34.70/year respectively.

BackUpMyBlog works with WP, Blogger and TypePad to save pictures, style, comments on a daily basis. Backing up costs $19.95/year for 1 GB storage. You can pull your own blog into your RSS feeder for free.

BackUpMyPics works with Flickr, Facebook, Photobucket, Picasa and Smug Mug, checking photo accounts once/day for new pictures. The cost is $19.95/year for 1 GB and $2.95/year/GB thereafter.

So don’t worry. Take care of it and forget it. Preserve your social media efforts with a good secure backup system.

@social_dynamics

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Facebook For Business – Ask These 5 Questions

Thursday, July 22nd, 2010

By Sharon Hill

Not so many connections?  Maybe you are not doing enough.  Facebook is not the same as “Build it and They Will Come.”  You do have to work it and give as much as you get.

Here are some questions to ask about how you are using Facebook:

1. How many pages have you Liked?

2. How many posts have you made to another Facebook page Wall?

3. Have you let everyone you know about your Facebook Page and invited them check your page out?

4. If you have personal profile page, have you leveraged your personal connections with your business page?

5. Do you actually read Your Weekly Facebook Page Update?

+12 Fans this week (85 total Fans)

6 Wall Posts, Comments, and Likes this week

178 visits to your page this week

This stuff is important.  You have 12 new fans this week. Have you reached out to them to make a significant connection?  Remember Judy likes your page and tells Bob who tells Mary and so on.

You should not be passive with your Facebook page.  Just posting on a regular basis is not enough.  Slow steady growth should be your goal and be realistic about your number of people who will Like your page.  Facebook is about quality not just quantity.

Let’s put this into perspective.  Budweiser has 374,000+  Fans to their Facebook page.  Sounds like a lot when compared to 85 total Fans.  I would have thought that Budweiser would be closer to one million.  Miller Lite has even less (286,000+ Fans.)

Get out there and Like other pages and make comments on other page walls.  Give a little – Get a little in return.

@social_dynamics

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Hitting the Follow 2000 Twitter Wall

Monday, July 19th, 2010

By Jan Carroza

Twitter lets you follow up to 2000 members until you hit a wall of sorts. Many Twitter users are unaware of this policy until they reach this point. At this point you can only follow 10% more than the number than follow you. When you follow the 2000th person, you’ll get a message about these limits and you won’t be able to follow any more until you get more followers or reduce the number you follow.

The reason for this rule is to prevent abuse. Twitter tries to reduce “churn.” So many are concerned about people who “game” the system to gain as many followers as they can and then dropping followers. We address issues of following policy in a couple of our previous blogs (What’s Your Following Policy?).

Management of the 10% becomes a bit of a nuisance if your general policy is to follow nearly everyone who follows you. That 10% gets chewed up pretty fast when so many services you might use like web clients (BackUpMyTweets, Twibes, Hootsuite) ask that you follow them, but they don’t return the favor. That’s true of many terrific resources such as news and trade publications, as well as celebrities and personalities. I really don’t mind that sources like @Mashable, @Techcrunch, @MarketingSherpa won’t follow me back, but it creates a need for workarounds (see Who Will You Follow?). I’m grateful to have the Twitter list function to let me be able to organize some of these non-followers.

The upshot is that periodically I have to prune those that I follow or spending time organizing them into lists. Either FriendorFollow or Tweepler will help you determine who doesn’t follow you easily so you can decide how to manage those you follow.

This situation creates a yo-yo functionality because you can get stopped repeatedly from following. It’s like have a car that’s running in fits and starts. You’ll think you’ve cleaned it up and then you can’t follow again. I really hate not being able to follow folks back when I want to, especially when they look real interesting. I also hate not being to add new interesting people I have discovered or who have been recommended to me. So I either invest more time in unfollowing folks I may really hate to lose in my stream or adding them to lists which are limited to 20 before I invest more time in more workarounds.

Here’s what Twitter tells you about this policy: “Every account can follow 2,000 users total. Once you’ve followed 2,000 users, there are limits to the number of additional users you can follow. This number is different for each account and is based on your ratio of followers to following; this ratio is not published. Follow limits cannot be lifted by Twitter and everyone is subject to follow limits, even high profile and API accounts (read more at: http://support.twitter.com/articles/66885-i-can-t-follow-people-follow-limits).”

Caution: “Please note, however, that regularly following and unfollowing lots of accounts is a violation of the Twitter Rules and can result in account suspension.”

In general, it’s a good idea to always keep your following ratio 10% or less of those that you follow. If you’ve done a lot of exploring to reach 2000 that you follow, but your content and engagement have only gotten you a few hundred followers, you are going to have to do a lot of unfollowing and/or waiting until you get many more followers. Planning ahead should prevent the inconvenience and the grief.

@social_dynamics

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Posted in Articles, How To, Technical, Twitter | No Comments »

Twitter is About Engagement. Enrichment. Expansion of Horizons. What’s Your Following Policy?

Wednesday, July 14th, 2010

By Jan Carroza

I think Robert Scoble is right on about what the secret, or the opportunity, is that Twitter presents us. I stumbled on Dave Fleet’s response to Robert Scoble’s post that “following more people doesn’t guarantee you’ll get more out of Twitter.” I think Fleet is wrong. I thought this was worth some full-blown discussion about following policy. Should you follow everyone who follows you?

I loved and agree with Scoble’s post on the secret to Twitter. Following people should not be about “gaming” the system to get the most followers.

The value Twitter offers is to meet new people and keep up with people you know. Connecting. Engaging.

Finding and making new connections is the point. Enrichment. Expansion of your horizons.

Quantity for the sake of size isn’t what’s important. It is to be expected that the number you follow will increase as you explore new conversations.

Expect Expansion: Follow Friends and Colleagues as they join Social Media

Let me give you examples from my own experience. I find that most of the people I work with in the B2B and marketing spaces have been slow to join Twitter. They don’t get it. They are still suspicious. They think everyone is “gaming” to get the most followers, and haven’t yet found their Killer App or the compelling reason to join.

Marketers who haven’t found Twitter yet? Right. The good news is that I’m finding more and more of my pre-Twitter network slowly coming in to join. The same has been true of watching them participate in LinkedIn. I still know some very savvy marketers who haven’t felt the need…yet. Just this week, a client finally joined LinkedIn. It was only a matter of time. I expect at some point the holdouts will continue to join and participate, and I will see them and connect with them in these other spaces as well. I look forward to it.

Industry hash tags are still new outside social media and technology users. Maybe 40 people contributed at the #ResponseExpo tag during their meeting in April. Two other shows I attended had little or no presence. It’s just a matter of time until meetings and attendees create and find value with Twitter. These are natural ways followers grow that continue to be meaningful.

Expect Expansion: As You Meet New Folks in Business at Conventions, Events

I have enjoyed the opportunity to meet new people at Social Media Club events for both Seattle and Tacoma as well as at Tweetups in Edmonds and on Bainbridge Island during Washington State’s wine celebration. At each event, I’ve met new, interesting people with lots to share. Back home, I can keep up with their projects on Twitter (as well as Facebook and their blogs). These new friends are a source of support, education, and humor. The same is true for the Bainbridge Island blogger group. These folks are writers and social media marketers eager to be early adopters so finding and following these folks is to be expected.

I’d say Twitter has increased my ability to enjoy all social media. I meet people in LinkedIn or elsewhere that follow me on Twitter. I find great blogs I never would have discovered without it. My Twitter followers grow because I have meaningful relationships with them on other social media.

Expect Expansion: When Interesting People Find You

I meet interesting people in far off places I would never meet otherwise. Just today I was followed by a German realtor with wonderful pictures to share of the Black Forest. Without Twitter I wouldn’t have had this experience and certainly not met someone who lived there!

You can definitely continue to get more out of Twitter by following more people. Several tools will help you manage your Twitter experience so you aren’t overwhelmed by the volume and you can continue to enjoy your journey. See Your Twitter Policy: Who Will You Follow?

@social_dynamics

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Posted in Articles | 2 Comments »

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