The first place to find someone who has the credibility and the intent to influence others to change their behavior is in your own network. Going back to The YOU MATTER Manifesto, you already have the power and ability within your means to be an influencer. If you have credibility within a topic and ask those with whom you have strong ties to repeat information about something you like, they will do it because of their belief in you. If you did not like a product or service, and suddenly find something nice to say about it, your circle will sit up and take notice. I strongly believe that consistent engagement on social media is the best mechanism for building your influential base.

Existing businesses can turn satisfied customers into influencers. When someone writes a testimonial or review, post it on your website or send it out through your social media network. Then let them know what you have done and suggest that they tell their friends. Those in the HR field are fortunate that HR Examiner has done the grunt work and developed a list of 175 HR influencers based on Brian Solis’ three principles of influence – reach, resonance and relevance. If you’re not in the HR, you can search for your experts, analysts and journalists, or perform your own keyword search using such phrases as “best,” “worst” or “recommended” related to your product or service, and engage in conversation with them.

The Leadership Learning Community published an article, “Applying Social Network Analysis to Online Communications Networks.” Although directed at healthcare, the principles of focusing on pertinent keywords and linking them with other related topics can help identify top influencers and communication hubs. To test the relevancy of their keywords they used Social Mention, a real-time search platform which gathers user generated content from across the social universe into a single stream of information to help identify key individuals. Factors in their analysis include strength, sentiment, passion and reach.

Tools like Klout and Kred can be used for discovering influencers, but I still maintain that Klout lacks transparency and scores based on popularity, not influence. Klout is limited to social media, compared to a contextual measurement tool like Appinions which measures influence beyond social media. It provides scores based on preference, imitation and trend-setters, and can help define who said what on a particular topic. For example, if I share a Warren Buffett quote and get 1000 retweets, likes, or comments, then Klout assign me a high influencer score based on my popularity, even though I was not the original author. Appinions, though, ignores my shares, retweets, and comments and instead properly awards Warren Buffett with the influence.

A newer entrant to the contextual influence measurement field is Traackr, which promises to find relevant influencers based on all public internet activity, manage engagement, and measure results. Their rankings are keyword based and can help identify influencers around specific topics based on reach, resonance and relevance. In addition to user-defined searches, they also offer lower cost alpha‑Lists, where influencers define topics they feel passionate about and then create and maintain their own Traackr influencer lists. A new feature is Traackr One which they are billing as “iTunes for influencer lists.” Although I basically like the algorithm they use, something about this is getting too money-based when the influencers start maintaining their own lists. This seems like a conflict of interest at the least and calls their impartiality into question.

Unfortunately the art of finding one key influencer is not yet an exact science. That’s why I’m agreeing even more with the philosophy of targeting large numbers of ordinary influencers.

“Everywhere I turn, I hear and read that you need to use social media to reach the maximum potential of your business. I have signed up with Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google, but I cannot find a user manual on any of the sites. I know kids today are born with this knowledge, but what can an old guy like me do to find out how to use these sites to promote my business.” -Tony

I was surprised at the advice the “old guy” on the panel, Jay Goltz of The Goltz Group, gave to this business owner. He essentially said to hand over the social media tasks for your business to a college intern, and seemed to imply that using social media for marketing is a waste of this business owner’s time. Judging by his own website and social media presence (or lack thereof), he has taken his own advice.

I know I live in a bubble because I work in the field of digital marketing, but I was surprised that there are still prominent business leaders out there like Mr. Gotz that are not taking social media seriously. It was a sobering reminder for me that there are still many businesses that are being left behind, and are in danger of dying if they don’t adapt. Here’s the advice that Tony should have received from the panel:

Educate yourself.

Get educated on the shift in marketing that social media has caused, and what best practices have changed because of it. As a small business owner that is being pulled in a million different directions, I’m sure Tony doesn’t have time to really dive in to all of these social networks and learn how to use them personally. He also probably doesn’t have time to daily monitor blogs like Mashable.com to gleen information on how to use social media for his business and then try to piece it all together.

What he needs to focus his time on is reading books and case studies on how companies are using social media, and begin to understand the overall concept. This knowledge will inform the important decisions he makes about what platforms he will use, who he should delegate the task of running social media to, and if his business should start using social media in the first place. I think Groundswell by Charlene Li, Likeable by Dave Kerpen, and Thank You Economy by Gary Vaynerchuk are great books to form this base knowledge.

Don’t think promoting, think relationships.

Tony wants to use social media to promote his business, just like all business owners, but this mindset is exactly what will make him ineffective when he goes to start using social media. He should think in terms of building relationships instead. His customers are using these social networks to keep up with friends, celebrate life moments, share what’s important to them, communicate with loved ones…all the things that go into building relationships. Tony’s business should use it in the same way. Promoting mostly means broadcasting your message with your fingers in your ears, which is easy to tune out. But none of his customers are going to tune him out if he is actively conversing (meaning talking AND listening) and building relationships with them.

Build a strategy before you start.

Building strategy before using social media for your business is very important. You should know what social media networks your business is going to be active on (it doesn’t have to be all of them, but Facebook and Twitter are a good place to start). You need to figure out details like what type of content you are going to post, what you are going to do if someone complains about your business, who is going to run your social media presence, and how you are going to measure success and failure.

A great thing to do is sit down with a social media consultant. A good one will walk you through the strategy process and answer any questions you have. When you’re looking for a consultant to work with, ask for referrals from other business owners so you know you’re getting someone who understands social media as it relates to business objectives, instead of someone who is just on Facebook all day.

Delegate carefully.

Be careful who you delegate social media management to. I do agree with Mr. Goltz when he says that Tony should delegate social media responsibilities to someone else if he can’t fit into his daily tasks or feels that the learning curve is too steep. But, Mr. Goltz’s suggestion to delegate to a local college student is laughable. Whatever is said on social media is the voice of your company, and it can’t be deleted. Do you really want someone with no business experience, no customer service training, and no knowledge of your company to be the voice of your business to your most valuable customers? I’m guessing not. If you ask me, that’s where the steep learning curve is. Here’s a couple ways you can delegate:

Choose an employee to run your social media accounts.

If you choose an employee, choose someone who is a great communicator. Someone in customer service or sales would be a good place to start. Also choose someone who maintains an active presence on social networking sites personally, and consider investing in some training courses or conferences in social media marketing for them to attend periodically to stay up to date on the latest trends, technology, and best practices.

Hire a company to manage your social media presence.

There are some great companies (Shift Digital being one of them) that will come alongside your business and run your online presence for you. Again, try and find a referral for a Digital Marketing or Social Media Marketing company from some of your business contacts, because for every one really great agency there are ten phonies out there. Also, don’t skip the education process just because you are hiring a team to run social media for you. You still need a base knowledge to know if the agency is doing you right, and to know what types of things you can do or change to make them more effective.

Are you a small business owner that is using social media successfully? What advice would you give Tony?

IBM has released its 2012 IBM Global CEO Study of more than 1,700 Chief Executive Officers from 64 countries and 18 industries worldwide.

The study reveals that CEOs are shedding the command-and-control nature of corporations that has existed for over a century, and introducing openness, transparency and employee empowerment.

The reason for this fast-moving change: companies that outperform their peers are 30 percent more likely to identify openness as a key organizational influence.

These outperformers – often characterized by a greater use of social media to facilitate innovation and collaboration – are embracing new workplace paradigms:

“Although organizational openness might sound soft, CEOs are looking for hard outcomes. Through diversity of thought and the free flow of ideas, they expect innovation. By turning the workforce into a market intelligence network, they’re expanding their ability to sense shifts and respond nimbly. By empowering employees to act on their own ideas, CEOs are building employee accountability, initiative and loyalty. And by equipping employees to work in an open environment, they are arming the people who represent their brands to the world.”

Here’s why social media will become kind of a big deal: to get closer to customers, partners and employees, CEOs will be shifting their focus from using e-mail and phones as primary communication vehicles to using social networks as a means of direct engagement.

As the accompanying graph indicates, only 16 percent of companies are using social media to connect with customers, but that number is expected to surge to 57 percent within the next three to five years. The CEOs in the study predict that social media will push past websites, call centers and channel partners as the number-two way to interact with customers.

“Social networking has and will continue to significantly change how we do business. The way we collaborate with our customers will be transformed.” – Enrique Salem, CEO, Symantec

B2B CEOs were quick to point out that social media is not just a B2C phenomenon as many in the B2B arena have mistakenly believed.  A U.K. CEO explained B2B social media’s applicability this way:

“Our B2B customers are also consumers of social media; you cannot split the two.”

A Japanese electronic industry CEO described how his company is helping B2B customers innovate by “incorporating the end user’s voice directly into product development.”

And a Swiss CEO added that, while social media has marketing merit, it has even more important value via the insights it delivers: “We use social media less as a marketing or distribution channel and more as a knowledge platform to obtain information about customers.”

Despite the gains it will make, CEOs are still struggling with social media:

• CEOs are struggling to separate social media’s hype from the actual opportunities.
• With social media, they are seeing the control of their brands go from their institution to individuals.
• They are fearful that social media is growing faster than best practices can be established on how to use it.
• They aren’t sure where to start.
• CEOs are not personally immersed in social media, which puts them at a precarious arms-length position…

“[CEOs] are making critical judgments about a disruptive technology without much firsthand knowledge. And they’re uncomfortably reliant on the counsel of less experienced Generation Y advisors.”

All too often, website owners try to solve the problem by doing things that don’t really help — like changing the color of the background, switching to a different layout, or making the pictures bigger.  Unless your website is a complete disaster, people aren’t basing their purchase decisions on whether or not it’s “pretty”.

So, what should you do?

Unfortunately, you’ll never get to sit down and actually talk to people who have clicked the “back” button instead of the “buy” button to see what turned them off.  However, you might be able to solve the problem by reading my open letter to “Mr. Website Owner”.

Could it be that you’re making the same mistakes he is?

Dear Mr. Website Owner,

I logged onto your site today, and while I found your products/services to be somewhat interesting, I didn’t buy anything from you.  Instead, after leaving your site, I headed over to one of your competitor’s websites to spend my money.

Why?

Well, it boils down to these 5 reasons:

1.  You care more about Google than me

Yes, having a good Google ranking can fetch you tons of traffic.  However, Google spiders aren’t buying your products.  They’re not signing up for your email list.  They’re not going to Tweet your link to their followers or “like” you on Facebook.

As powerful as Google might be, they’re not the only thing responsible for your bottom line.  Even if you can convince Google’s spiders to rank you at the top of the results, you still need to make sure that humans like me are impressed by what we see when we arrive.

Simply having content on a page isn’t enough.  You need to make sure that your human visitors aren’t playing second-fiddle to your spider visitors.  When I visit your website and see things that are clearly meant for the search engines and not me — like keyword-stuffed content, odd links shoved in all over the place, or a landing page that’s really a doorway page — I don’t take you seriously.  And if I don’t take you seriously, I’m going to head elsewhere to spend my money.

There’s also one other big things to remember — Google is a fickle mistress.  Those rankings you have today could be gone tomorrow with the flick of an algorithm change.  If you’re relying solely on Google for your online success, you could be wiped out during the next Panda update, a Penguin tweak, or some other change named after an equally-cuddly animal.

2.  You don’t speak my language

Just because your content is geared for humans doesn’t mean it’s geared for the RIGHT humans.  You might be a 40-something business guy, but I’m not.  If you want me to buy your makeup, try out your skin care line, or take your women’s health product seriously, talk to me like I’m a 30-something woman.  Otherwise, you’re going to have an awfully hard time convincing me that you understand my problem.  If I don’t think you truly understand the issue I’m dealing with, it’s going to be hard for me to believe that your products offer the features and benefits I’m looking for.

I’m not saying you actually have to be a member of your target audience to sell things online.  But if you want to succeed, you’re going to have to be able to put yourself in the mind of your target audience.  What would you want to know?  What questions do you need answered before you’ll feel comfortable buying something?  What problems do you have that need solving?  How are those problems affecting your life?

3.  You make me hunt for information

I understand that custom products and services can come with varying prices, so you can’t always post a firm price on your website.  All I ask is that you make getting a price quote easy.  If I have to send you an email with my name, phone number, URL, budgetary guidelines, and first-born son just to get a price quote, I’m not going to bother — which means you’re not getting my business.  After all, I’m looking for a price, not an opportunity for you to call me and try and upsell me.

Even if your prices are in big bold letters right in front of my face, that might not be enough.  For example, if I can’t find an “About Us” page on your website for the life of me, I’m probably not going to do business with you.  After all, the internet can be a scary place.  If I’m going to hand over my hard-earned money, I want to have some idea of who it’s going to.  I don’t need your life story, but a picture and a short bio would be nice.

4.  You don’t offer any “extras”

By “extras”, I don’t mean freebies.  I mean things that set you apart.  Remember, there are millions of people out there who do what you do — or offer something that’s darn close to it.  If you don’t show me concrete reasons why I should do business with you, you’re simply encouraging me to spend my money elsewhere.

Want me to think that you’re an expert?  Prove that you are one.  Want me to see that you’re devoted to customer service?  Show me what you’ll do once I place an order.  Want me to know that your products and services really are better?  Tell me why in a way that’s easy-to-understand and legitimately informative — not just a bunch of sleazy sales hype.

5.  You think I’m dumb

Speaking of sleazy sales hype, you’ve got to get rid of yours.  I can see right through those pie-in-the-sky guarantees.  I’m not impressed by all of your bright red exclamation points.  I know that when things seem too good to be true, they usually are.

If you think I’m going to fall for all of that — and just blindly buy your product — you obviously don’t think I’m very smart.  And if you don’t think I’m very smart, I’m definitely not going to do business with you.

You see, Mr. Website Owner, the real problem is that you’re not thinking about things from your customers’ perspective.  You’re so wrapped up in marketing gimmicks and the latest (but not greatest) internet trends that you’ve completely lost sight of what your target audience is looking for.  Think a little more about us, and we’ll think a little more about you when it comes time to buy something!

Sincerely,

Nicole

While Google+ was ‘by invitation’ only during its first three months of existence (and that’s still the case for Pinterest, which doesn’t seem to impact its growth), it became open to everyone in September 2011 and had reached close to 90 million users by year’s end. Microsoft is obviously attempting a different approach here, with its hush-hush entrance in the public sphere.

So, is this a social network or a search tool?

Anyone can register very easily simply by signing in through a Facebook account, which most us have to begin with, or a Windows Live account. Then what? A search made in so.cl lets users share links although it must be said searches are powered by Bing. Users can then share media, videos, find people and information, create montages of visual web content. Sounds familiar? Indeed, it seems a lot like a crossing between Google+ and Facebook, but with a much stronger focus on search as the backbone premise of existence. In fact, unless users mark the searches as private, results and data publicly posted to So.cl will be available to other entities and individuals on the network and within Bing searches.

But the question remains unanswered: is it a social network or is it a search tool? As an experiment geared towards students, the search component comes out the strongest, but adding features such real time videos make it seem like G+ hangouts wannabes. There were many skeptics when G+ came out, and its stickiness remains questionable even today with very low engagement rates, in particular when comparing with the other big ones: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and even Pinterest. So what’s Microsoft So.cl’s unique selling proposition? Or said differently, what’s in it for me? The answer isn’t quite clear, which at this point represents is Achilles’ heel.

Not too late, but…

There is no such thing as arriving too late in the social media sphere, as Pinterest has showed us all, or even Instagram and Google+ in the past year. MySpace was on top of the world when it was overtaken by Facebook, which is now the 901-lb gorilla in this realm. But as things evolve so quickly, it’s those networks that will adapt to consumer behaviors and needs that will not only survive but strive in this context. Perhaps the biggest unknown is who will dominate in the mobile sphere, since there are presently very few mobile-native social media platforms that have gone mainstream, except perhaps Instagram. Is Microsoft onto something here by targeting the next generation of avid social media users, students? Is there a plan to integrate so.cl with its Windows Phone platform?

What do you think? Will you be joining so.cl or will you wait until it becomes a more prominent public network?

I took my daughter sailing for the first time last weekend. She was very interested in how I know where to steer.

I explained to her that there are pieces of yarn on the sails that tell me where to point the boat as the wind shifts. They are called telltales. If the yarn on the outside of the sail flaps, I make subtle adjustment to go in that direction. If the inside telltale isn’t straight, I point the boat in that direction.

If only online communities came with telltales….

Well, you’re in luck. They do. Every online community has key ratios that help online community managers and social strategists to know where to point their efforts.

Just as telltales on a sailboat indicate why the boat is slowing and what actions need to be taken to address its performance, the goal of these community engagement metrics is to help organizations understand why certain things are happening and why they are getting certain results.

Here are 6 key customer engagement metrics to measure at least monthly in your online community:

Metric #1) Visit to New Registration Ratio

What It Measures: This ratio measures the ability of your marketing messages and website to recruit and convert people who visit your website into online community members.

How to Measure: Divide the number of new online community registrations by the total number of visitors to your website.

Sample of Visit to New Registration Ratio:

Metric #2) Visit to Login Ratio

What It Measures: Are increases in members accessing your online community a result of more members finding value in your community and returning, or just an overall increase in website visitors?

How to Measure: Track the number of people who visit your website against the number of returning members who log into your online community. Tip: It is also helpful to combine the new registration and returning logins to see the overall community access (new and returning) to website visit ratio.

Sample of Visit to Login Ratio:

Metric #3) Login to Post & Comment Ratio

What It Measures: This ratio indicates whether or not your organization’s online community is seeing an increase in contributions by members.

How to Measure: Create the ratio by tallying the number of forum or blog posts, idea submissions, comments, or file uploads, then dividing it by the total number of logins.

Sample of Login to Post & Comment Ratio:

Metric #4) Post to Comment Ratio

What It Measures: This metric determines if the content being produced in the community is driving engagement.

How to Measure: Compare the number of blog post, forum entries, idea submissions, or file uploads to the number of comments these items receive.

Sample of Post to Comment Ratio:

Metric #5) Login to Action Ratio

What It Measures: By comparing activity with logins, you have a ratio that pinpoints the effectiveness of your community-building tactics inside your community. If you measure activity alone, you don’t know if you are seeing an increase due to better engagement tactics inside your community or a general increase in members visiting your community.

How to Measure: Actions are defined as including blog and forum posts, comments, posting and downloading files, watching videos, “friending” people, sending private messages, and many other actions depending on the community. Divide the sum of these activities by the overall community logins.

Sample of Login Post to Comment Ratio:

Metric #6) Members to Completed Profile Ratio

What It Measures: This ratio gives you an idea of how committed your target audience is to the community.

How to Measure: Divide the number of completed (or mostly completed) member profiles with the overall membership of the community.

Sample of Members to Completed Profile:

Tip: For all of these customer engagement ratios, it is also helpful to track the average so that you can report on the success of a specific time period compared to your online community’s typical performance.

Online Community Takeaway

Tracking an online community’s ROI should not be elusive for companies and membership organizations. Measuring success and making adjustments should not be a mystical skillset. However, understanding online community ratios and tracking customer engagement data is critical.

As online community consultancy, FeverBee, recently blogged, “Without data you’re working in the dark. It’s the community equivalent of judging climate change by looking at the weather outside.”

During the online community planning process, be sure that your online community software platform can support your reporting and business intelligence needs.

Social Buzz

Search engines have used hundreds of different factors to determine how to rank pages in their results. While factors like keywords and inbound links will still play a role, many search engines are now starting to put increased emphasis on what is happening in social media. This is sometimes referred to as “social buzz” and it can have a direct impact on how your pages are ranking.

If a page on your site is being linked to in many posts on social media sites, it can increase that page’s search engine rankings. If people are mentioning your site or brand name on social media sites, this can also be picked up on by the search engines in a short period of time. Search engines realize that when people talk on social media sites, these topics are often important. Because of that, the search engines tend to bump up sites that reference these topics in the search engine rankings.

Getting Involved

As a website owner, it is important to get involved in social media as quickly as you possibly can. Because of the added importance of the effect that it can have on search engine rankings, you need to sign up for accounts with all of the major social media sites. Once you do, you can start interacting with other people on the site. This can be a very effective way to develop relationships and get people talking about your products, services and brand. Once you start to get involved, you might be surprised what kind of an effect it can have on your site’s traffic and search engine rankings overall.

Quality Content

Ultimately, you cannot control whether people talk about your site or products on social media. You can do your best to get the conversation started, but after that it’s up to the community. Because of this, you have to do put an emphasis on creating quality content that will get people talking. It’s your job to create the best content and then get it out there to people through social media sites. If you do a good job in creating content, it can get people talking and then help your search engine rankings.

A couple of months ago I wrote a post titled Curiosity May Have Killed The Cat But Complacency Will Kill The Marketer. In that particular post I told of the dearth of retention marketing by quoting a survey which revealed that 60% of the B2B and B2C companies surveyed devote less than 20% of their marketing budget to customer retention.

Today I want discuss another form of marketing, one that has become extremely important since the digital age was thrust upon us – inbound marketing.

There are many definitions of the term inbound marketing but I happen to love this description/definition of inbound marketing, courtesy of Trust Media:

“Inbound Marketing is a marketing strategy where businesses implement tactics to ‘get found’ by customers. Inbound Marketing involves creating and providing valuable content for your customers, promoting your remarkable content, building customer relationships, and overall ‘pulling’ the customer toward you. Inbound Marketing strategies create brand awareness, improve Search Engine Optimization, create thought leadership, develop valuable customer relationships, establish credibility, and build trustworthy reputations.”

You may have your own favorite definition of the term, but I think most people would agree with the basics of the above description/definition of inbound marketing.

Now, I highlighted the phrase “overall ‘pulling’ the customer toward you” because at the end of the day, this is the ultimate goal of inbound marketing. If your goal is to “ pull your customer toward you” in order to sell them something, then time is definitely of the essence.

Follow The “Lead”er

Way back in 2007, if someone used the word “pinterest” you would have thrown the flag at then for misspelling and only the cool kids had iPhones, Dave Elkington, the CEO and founder of a company called InsideSales.com, along with Ken Krogue, the president and co-founder, wanted to know the answer to a question that sales professionals had pondered since the beginning of time – Internet time that is.

What Dave and Ken wanted to know was how and more importantly, when sales pros should respond to sales leads coming directly via inbound marketing.

After discovering that no research had been done on this topic, they decided to do it themselves. They reached out to  James B. Oldroyd, a professor at the Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

“Because so much money was migrating to Internet marketing efforts, we knew there would be significant interest around the topic of lead response rates, timing and effort, and there influence on the outcome of a lead,” says Elkington.

Krogue recognized the changing tides and shifts that were occurring in the world of marketing, “quickly realizing the industry was migrating away from the old way of doing business (outbound) cold calling to the new digital marketing environment, centered around web leads.”

Don’t Take Five

The most dramatic finding from the 2007 study had to do with the time it takes to respond to an inbound, marketing generated lead.  “The study revealed that the odds of making contact with a new lead are extremely high if you call within the first 5 minutes of submission,” said Elkington. “The odds drop off dramatically by the first 30 minutes.  Specifically, a rep is 100x less likely to make contact if the first call is made 30 minutes after submission. The odds of making contact drop by 3000x if the first call is made 5 hours after lead submission.”

“We call it the ‘wow effect’ as in wow, that was fast! You are impressive.” says Elkington, referring to the reaction a person has when contacted so soon after submitting a lead.

But according to Elkington the most interesting data had to do with qualification behavior. Qualification is defined as the rate at which the lead contact is willing to set an appointment and enter the sales cycle.

The study revealed that the odds of qualifying a lead dropped 21x if the first contact is made 30 minutes after lead submission.

The study, entitled How Much Time Do You Have Before Web-Generated Leads Go Cold, was presented at Marketing Sherpa’s 2007 annual summit. Krogue can still remember the reaction he got from Ann Holland, the founder of Marketing Sherpa.”I told her about the survey results and the first words out of her mouth were: “Do you really have what you say you have? She couldn’t believe it.”

That Was Then, What About Now?

Since the survey findings were released and over 100,000 downloads later, one would think the number of businesses/companies would now “get it” when it comes to the need for a rapid response.

Not so, according to Krogue who says they routinely conduct audits of businesses but “the bar is still set pretty low” and that many businesses are still “not responding fast enough nor are they persistent enough.”

There also may be the case of businesses not even realizing what’s going in their own company and that some are under the misconception that their company is not as bad as others. Krogue gives an example of a national sales exec at a U.S. based insurance company who raved as to the efficiency and proficiency of their sales team when it came to web based leads.

Sure enough, after submitting a lead of his own as a test, Krogue did not receive a follow up contact until six days had passed – hardly the optimal five minute time frame to say the least.

In Closing

According to Elkington B2B companies spend anywhere from $30 to $200+ on each marketing generated lead while B2C firms typically spend from $2-25 for each hot lead.  He says “if a CEO realized the amount of money they were throwing down the drain in terms of wasted leads and lower close rates due to no-follow-up, slow-follow-up and low persistence,  they would shake the tree and turn things upside down.”

I think it’s time to shake the tree and turn other things upside down in all sorts of other ways when it comes to inbound marketing, wouldn’t you?

Think about your own personal experience. If you go so far as to enter your contact information online via a form let’s say, all under the guise of wanting to learn more about a given product or service, aren’t you going to be more receptive to talking about it while it is still fresh in your mind?

I know I would be.

Sources: How Much Time Do You Have Before Web-Generated Leads Go Cold, InsideSales.com, James B. Oldroyd, Trust Media, Forbes

Named one of the Top 100 Influencers In Social Media (#41) by Social Technology Review, Steve Olenski is a freelance writer/blogger currently looking for full-time work. He has worked on some of the biggest brands in the world and has significant experience in advertising and marketing. He lives in Philly and can be reached via email,Twitter, LinkedIn or his website.

In this post we are going to cover the social media etiquette do’s and don’ts that will allow you to make better use of your time and develop deeper, more meaningful relationships.

How to Get Your Social Media Etiquette Right!

Listen:

This is your opportunity to find out exactly what your customers are really saying about you, what they want and more important, remedy any issues that they may have with your products or services.

Set up a social media listening post where you can monitor your brand and find out exactly what is being said about you and who is saying it. Also, listen in on what the key influencers are saying and what people are saying about them. The more information you have, the better positioned you can be!

Do Make Time:

It’s not a quick process. Look at the people in your offline social circles, those that you hold the closest. How long have you known them? How much time have you spent together doing things you loved, things you hated doing, time together just doing nothing? All of this time added cumulatively is a long, long time and bonds strong relationships.

I am not saying that you can’t develop strong relationships online in a short period of time. What I am saying is if you want advocates for your brand then 10 minutes exposure once a week is not going to cut it. If you want to receive the benefits of social media then be prepared to give.

Read Social Media Marketing for Small Business – 7 Time Saving Tips that will show you exactly how to make the most of that precious time.

Don’t come across like a broken record:

This ties in with listening and in fact gives a great opportunity to drill home the point that social media etiquette is more about listening than speaking, ranting, shouting or advertising your latest product.

Say something new, say something different, be opinionated, share content that inspires you, infuriates you, makes you laugh and you will find that many people out there will respond with their opinions and open up conversations with you.

Keep Track of Your Engagements.

If the message, conversations and tone of your social media voice is not stimulating engagement then don’t continue to allow that message to fall on deaf ears. It is a waste of time.

Back track and see where and how conversations where started and without trying to recreate the wheel see if you can reignite those flames or by using the same style of approach spark further social media engagement.

Do respond in a timely fashion:

If you left a voice message with a company for someone to call you back, how long would you wait before you started thinking that you were being ignored? 8hrs, 24 hours, 3 days? Think long and hard because if someone interacts with your business, asks a question or makes a comment then you need to react quickly. That message may be from one person but there are millions of others just eavesdropping in the wings.

Don’t be afraid to let go of your content:

Image by admitchel via Flickr

Once you put something out into the social media spectrum you have little or no control over where that content ends up, what shape it takes and the message that it amplifies.

Be aware that people will take your company video, re-edit it, and take the mickey out of you. You are operating in a different world.

Do Take care of how you represent yourself.

The web is infamous for satire and very easy for building high levels of feedback. Negative comments can snowball. If you make a mistake, you may be ripped to pieces by other web users.

Remember barriers to entry are low but the standards expected are very high, so you must plan your campaign. Just pushing abject material out into the ether will not win over the hearts and minds of your potential audience.

Don’t take social media lightly:

Here today, gone tomorrow is not an attitude that you can afford to take when it comes to developing a social media community. Updating your online status twice in a 2 hour period and then once over the next week is not good practice.

Make a commitment to sit down for an allotted period each and every day to respond to people, ask questions and share great content.

Don’t highjack other peoples’ subject matter.

Don’t take somebody else’s content, change the title and brand it as your own. That is not the way to go about things. This process is what is known as “scrapping” and is the scourge of many content creators on the internet.

Instead, add a comment to the piece and share with your audience or drop the content creator a line and ask if it would be ok to use the content providing you attribute it correctly.

Most people who create content do so with the intent of it being shared. Share it and attribute it.

Don’t ignore negative comments.

Not everybody will like what you do or say online but rather than seeing it as a negative see it as a great opportunity for your business to highlight the ultra responsiveness and efficiency of your customer service.

By showing the social media community that you do actually care about your clients’ experience you will be turning a soft cost (customer service) into a living breathing entity.

Don’t Sell Sell Sell

Social media networks are not a direct sales tool. Social networks are a place where you can develop a community of people who are interested in your brand and what it has to say. Not everyone in the community will spend money with your business and that is ok. Because if they like what you say and they share it with other people then more and more people will become aware of your brand and grow to like you.

Using social media for business is about getting people to like, know and trust you. The more you communicate and have two way dialogue, the more you will humanize your brand and start to grow a reputation in your niche.

A rule of thumb when thinking about social media etiquette is this: if you wouldn’t do it in the real world, while standing on a crowded bus, in a restaurant or a convention then don’t do it!

What rules do you follow when it comes to social media etiquette? Add your own advice in the comments box below!

Main Image by Nateone via Flickr

In short, as far as historic IPO’s go, this one was a real downer.

If the tech pundits are right and Facebook is really a waste of time and money, you might as well sell off those newly-minted Facebook shares at any price you can get, rekindle your My Space account, and start trying to figure out Google Plus.

I would suggest otherwise.

With over 900 million users worldwide (half of whom are accessing the social media site via mobile), strong monthly user engagement figures (averaging 441 minutes, or over 7 hours), and flush with 16 billion in IPO capital (for you non-math majors, that’s 16,000 million), I’d say Facebook is just getting started.

If you need more convincing, read on as I attempt to debunk the principle arguments of the Facebook naysayer class.

1. FACEBOOK’S USER BASE IS DECLINING

The general argument here is that Facebook’s user base has reached a high-water mark, and will slowly recede as other social sites and technologies lure subscribers to greener pastures. A similar riff on this theme has Facebook overturned by a hipper, cooler social networking site that speaks to the Millennial generation and younger.

The numbers tell a different story.  According to the prospectus Facebook submitted for its IPO, the social network had 845 million monthly active users (MAUs) as of December 31, 2011, representing growth of 39% from 608 million a year earlier, and 135% from 360 million at the end of 2009. In addition, daily active users (DAUs) increased 48% from an average of 327 million in December 2010 to an average of 483 million December 2011.¹

Moreover, according to a Socialbakers’ analysis from January 2012, Facebook grew 7 users per second in 2011.¹

That’s 14 new users in the time it took you to read that last sentence.

As for the cool factor, it turns out that Facebook is appealing to the young and old alike. Data from Socialbakers’ shows that the amount of Facebook users aged 65 and older grew 52% in 2011 to reach 19 million, matched by 52% growth among users aged 16-17, who numbered 66 million. Adults aged 18-24 made up the largest demographic on Facebook, at 248 million, but grew a relatively smaller 32%.¹

Appealing to blue hairs, adolescents, and hipsters alike has its own cool factor, if you think about it.

In terms of stickiness, i.e. the tendency of users to keep coming back to a site on a regular basis, Facebook’s daily active users (DAUs) increased 48% from an average of 327 million in December 2010 to an average of 483 million December 2011.¹

Pretty sticky indeed.

And then there’s the point nobody likes to bring up. Who’s going to take them on, Google Plus? Twitter’s 140M-ish users are great and loyal (I’m one of them), but in my humble opinion, Facebook and Twitter are offering a sufficiently different user experience, and as such are not in direct competition. LinkedIn is awesome for business networking, but it isn’t structured for the after-hours experience. Pinterest is a great social-visual tool for personal and business use, but again, its very model is its limiting factor.

That leaves us with Google Plus (Insert cricket chirping here).

According to a new study released by RJ Metrics that culled public data from a random population of Google Plus users, the average G+ post has less than one “+1,” less than one reply, and less than one re-share. Moreover, 30% of users that make a public post never make a second one (ouch).

And let us not forget the infamous comscore findings from last February showing that the average Google Plusser was engaging with the network only 3 minutes per-month.

If Google, the most beloved tech company in America, can’t take Facebook on, I don’t see any immediate threat on the horizon.

2. NO SEARCH ENGINE

Many would-be pundits, me included, have always pointed to Facebook’s lack of a search engine as a limiting factor to future staying power. Admittedly, they’ve done pretty good without one, but let’s entertain the idea for a moment.

Search Engine Watch recently cited a survey by Greenlight which found that 48 percent of respondents dislike the idea of Facebook launching its own search engine to directly compete with Google and Bing.

However, Greenlight’s survey also found that if Facebook launched its own search engine, it could potentially grab 22 percent of the global search market share and become the second most used search engine in every major market except for China, Japan, and Russia, where it would rank third.

“It wouldn’t need to be a spectacular engine either, just well integrated into the Facebook experience and generally competent,” said Greenlight Chief Operating Officer Andreas Pouros.

By my calculations, 22% of the global search market would work out to roughly 1.5 billion searches on a Facebook search engine each day.

I wonder if that would positively impact its bottom line…

3. SHAKY/INEFFECTIVE ADVERTISING FUTURE:

The generalized fear that Facebook’s ad monetization strategy will fail because fans do not want to be advertised to contains a grain of truth. In fact, most don’t. At least not in the traditional, here’s a banner ad next to your News Feed sort of way.

According to a May 2012 poll by the Associated Press (AP) and CNBC, 83% of Facebook users in the US hardly ever or never clicked on online ads or sponsored content when using Facebook.²

These fears were stoked when GM dumped its 10M in sponsored ads (they still spend 30M to Ad agencies for FB brand marketing).

This entire argument is a big media canard operating under an outdated push marketing premise.

Social media ad spend, especially for bigger brands, is most effective when it is used to build an online following and provide a context for deeper consumer engagement. This approach is especially effective when brands include a targeted, geo local focus to their ad campaigns. This is where Facebook’s ultra- fine-tuned ad targeting data machine can really benefit advertisers.

Put another way, for every GM, there’s a Pepsi.

Pepsi is a great example of an established brand that has created a cutting-edge social strategy, effectively utilizing five critical aspects of social media marketing: consumer engagement, user-generated content, data aggregation, geo-local, and inbound marketing.

Engagement models aside, many big media types are really teed off that Zuck and crew are not courting them. Facebook has been less than accommodating to big agencies ready to plop down millions to access its trove of user data. Why? It goes against Facebook’s strategy. They know the future is in social mobile local context-based, mobile-enabled marketing. This type of geo-local ad targeting is often best suited for small businesses.

The responses of more than 100,000 Facebook sellers surveyed by Payvment, which provides a Facebook ecommerce platform, confirm this point. The survey showed Facebook sellers are doing their part to fuel Facebook’s projected $5 billion in ad revenue this year. More than a third of respondents (39%) reported having used Facebook Ads to drive traffic to stores. Nearly 70 percent of that group said they plan to use Facebook Ads again.³

Sellers cited effectiveness in fan and customer acquisition as their top reason (68%) for planning more Facebook Ad campaigns. Other reasons included the ability to start and stop campaigns (60%), Facebook’s targeting capabilities (60%) and Facebook Ads’ ease of use (55%).³

Put that in your pipe and smoke it, Madison Avenue.

Moreover, Facebook’s Groupon-like Offers platform provides small businesses a less invasive form of geo-local based small business advertising, and unlike Groupon’s services, it’s free.

Finally, Social Media Examiner’s comprehensive 2012 Social Media Marketing Industry Report of over 3,800 marketers confirms that more than 90% of marketers surveyed plan on using Facebook Ads in the future.

4. WEAK MOBILE STRATEGY

With 488 million active mobile users, to say Facebook’s future lies in mobile would be an understatement. However many experts have worried that Facebook has not clearly outlined a viable mobile strategy moving forward.

Happily for Facebook, it has a head start on the competition. As cited above, in March the average Facebook mobile user engaged with the social network for more than 7 hours, according to comScore. US social mobile users spent more time on Facebook on average than Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Foursquare, and Tumblr combined.

Facebook is “just getting started” with its mobile app, said Zuckerberg, who explained last week at an investor event that as Facebook collects more specific data, such as which friends “like” certain products, mobile ads will be better targeted to users.

The social network is building a mobile empire one company at a time. Recent acquisitions of Instagram, Lightbox, Tagtile, Glancee, and now Karma confirm Facebook is serious about mobile.

With a huge capital injection, and a big head start, I wouldn’t bet against Mr. Zuckerberg on this one.

CONCLUSION

I’m no Wall Street insider, but for my money the data, and the future, favor Facebook. So why all the negative press? What gives?

Part of Facebook’s problem is that Mark Zuckerberg is the CEO you love to hate. His wearing of the hoodie when he was supposed to be glad-handing Wall Street bankers is emblematic of this point. Most of us were introduced to Zuckerberg the man from the movie The Social Network, where he was portrayed as a snarky, backstabbing, arrogant, nerd.

Amplicate.com, a website that collects consumer opinions posted on social media, found that 69% of over 3,000 social media users polled “hate” Mark Zuckerberg. Many referenced his arrogance.

Of the 31% who “love” Zuck, the responses were often tepid at best. One such response: “he’s not as insanely greedy as he could be.”

Well, you’ve got to start somewhere.

If anything, the fact that Facebook has become so enmeshed in society and has remained as popular as it has with the anti-Steve Jobs at the helm suggests it’s here to stay. Imagine Facebook’s popularity with a charismatic Jobs-esque, i.e. god-like, leader at the helm?

After all, somehow even Google’s Larry Page and Eric Schmidt have managed to create the most well-liked tech brand in America (side note-to someone who reads about the shenanigans of big tech companies every day, Facebook seems to feel fairer and look fouler, while Google looks fairer but feels fouler, if that makes sense).

My advice to Zuck? Hire a good PR firm, and try not to laugh too hard on your way to the bank.

What do you think of Facebook’s prospects for the future? Chime in!

¹ Marketing Charts, “Facebook Ad Revenue Grew 69% in ’11, Now over 3B”

² eMarketer, “Is there a problem with Facebook Advertising?”

³ Business News Daily, “Facebook Ads Have Big Fans Among Small Businesses”

Graphic Courtesy of PC World