Having been a Twitter participant for 445 days (at time of writing), I was thrilled when I came across this nifty little service by the folks at Mirror Me. They compile your Twitter stats to create a tag cloud of your “twitterverse” – or more simply the content of your tweets, who you follow, your interests and what you most actively tweet about.

It gives a really interesting insight to your online profile and is a great way of connecting with other people in the twitterverse with similar interests, or even targeting a particular topic or interest.

I think it could also be a great way to identify whether what you are saying out there in the ‘verse is being perceived as you intended. A look into your tag cloud could reveal whether you need to tweak your language, refine who you follow, or like in my case carry on as usual because I’m pretty happy with my reflection.

Check out your Reflection at Mirror Me. What does it say?

We’ve all been there before. Bored to death by yet another uninspiring presentation.

But it no longer needs to be that way. By following a few simple rules and thinking a bit creatively, presentations can be engaging, inspiring and memorable. There are also some great new presentation tools that can transfer the boring into blazing!

Here are my top tips to help you create and deliver great presentations:

1. The pen is mightier than the keyboard

Don’t even think of tapping out your presentation on the computer before you have sat down and storyboarded the whole thing using good old fashioned pen and paper. Brainstorm, sketch or storyboard your presentation as a first step. This is where you can visualise the flow and bring your ideas to life before you spend the time digitising it. This will save you hours of time in the long run and help you get your thoughts and key points in order.

2. Know your audience

Knowing your audience is vital to developing a good presentation. As with any communication, by knowing your audience you are able to tailor your content and appeal to their needs specifically. It’s about them, not you!

3. Follow the KISS principle

Keep It Simple Stupid! This goes for a whole range of elements associated with presenting. Font types and colours should be kept simple and clean (see point 9). The number of points per slide kept to a minimum (point 9) and fancy transitions between slides avoided – just because they are there, doesn’t mean they should all be used!

Keep your messages simple and avoid jargon. This does not mean dumb things down, but just keep language simple and easy to take on board.

4. Tell a story

Giving a presentation can be likened to performing on stage, and all great performances are supported by a great story. So do just that by integrating stories into your presentation to support your key points. By telling a story, your audience is most likely going to relate to some parts of your story, identify with it and then remember it. But please remember to keep them short, relevant and memorable. Stay on point!

5. Develop key messages

Ask yourself what the one or two things you want your audience to take away from your presentation. From this you should be able to craft a key message that you can weave throughout your presentation. When thinking about a key message, the word “key” is vital. It must be very specific and not more than two or three points/ideas. It should be relevant to your audience and avoid cliches. By having a strong sense of your key message and objectives, it will be a lot easier for you to keep your presentation on track.

6. Content is King

I know I said not to use cliches, but I still just can’t go past this one. Content content content. The content of your presentation must be rock solid. And the better you know your content, the more confident you will be in delivering the presentation and responding to your audience’s queries. A word to the wise on content. It does not necessarily mean overpopulating your presentation with facts and figures, but rather choosing the most important and backing them up with supporting narrative (and possibly notes – see point 13).

7. Follow the 10 minute rule

Neuroscientists have found that after about 10 minutes, we start to get tired and tune out. To counter this, every 15 minutes or so, break up your presentation with a video, appearance by a guest presenter or a demonstration. That way you keep things fresh and your audience engaged.

8. Include Twittercues and hashtags

I don’ think there is a presentation I’ve been to in the last 18 months where there isn’t a selection of the audience keen to share their new found knowledge via Twitter. Me included. As a presenter this gives you a great opportunity to spread your knowledge even further. So make it easy for your tweeple by following these simple steps.

• Assign a twitter hashtag (#) to your presentation and let your audience know at the beginning. That way people can tag their conversations to it and form a connection point for others taking part in spreading the communication.
• Create twitter friendly headlines so people can easily repeat your messages without having to think about re crafting them in under 140 characters.

9. Graphics and Text

Part 1: Graphics

We’ve all heard the saying “a picture paints a thousand words”. A visual message with text has a greater power to inform, educate or persuade a person. So when developing your presentation, think about what graphics you could use to make or support your point. Remember that you want your audience to be focusing on what you are saying and not reading a large amount of text on the screen behind you.

Repeat after me. “Thou shall not consider Microsoft Clipart as a form of an image!” They are tacky and so old school and should be banished from the land never to return. There are plenty of places that you can source great images for free or relatively cheaply. My favourite one stop shop is iStock Photo (paid), but you can also get free images from a range of sites. Budget Stock Photo provides a great list of those sites here. When using free stock, please take note of the licensing and royalty requirements and make sure you follow the rules.

Part 2: Text

I am not going to go into specifics on how many bullet points per slide, or words per line, because every person has an opinion on this and there is no scientific “magic bullet” as to what works best. However when thinking about the text on your slides, consider the following:

• Where do you want the focus of your audience to be? If its on you and your talk and not reading the slides while you try to engage them, then keep text to a minimum.
• People can only retain a certain amount of information at any one time – some theories say three. So use the text to highlight a key point and then thrill your audience with relevant and memorable stories to back it up (see point 4).

10. Ask the question “So what?”

When thinking about the content and delivery of your presentation, ask yourself one simple question. So what? That way you will force yourself to consider why you are including a particular piece of information in a presentation, and in turn remove all the irrelevant and snooze-worthy content. The question also helps you determine whether the point supports your key message and that way, keeps the flow of information to your audience on track.

11. Theme your presentation

This is something that is not always easy, but with a bit of creative thinking, can really make a presentation stand out from the crowd. One of my favourite presentation gurus Jesse Desjardins does this so well. Below is one example where he has themed a marketing presentation around Lady Gaga.

A more simple way to theme a presentation is to look at incorporating some branding elements into your theme. For example if you are presenting to a new client or a group from a particular company, you could incorporate their brand’s colours and font type throughout your presentation.

12. Know your technology

There are two elements to this point about technology. One being the software you choose to use for your presentation, and the other about the equipment and set up you may have available to you at the venue.

There are some great new presentation softwares out there. In addition to Microsoft’s Powerpoint, Mac’s Keynote software lets you narrate your presentations. Knack Ink recently created a presentation for a client using a web-based software called Prezi (more about that here).

To the second point. Understanding the set up and technology available at your venue is so important to the success or failure of your presentation. Here are some considerations:

• Will there be internet connection and if so, what speed? This will determine whether you can link directly to the internet for elements of your presentation.
• What cables do you need to include – extension leads, projector leads etc, mic leads?
• Is the room equipped with speakers? This will determine whether you can include video and sound bites in your presentation. I remember franticly running around a remote country town in North Queensland trying to find a cable to plug the computer into the speakers for a presentation that revolved around having sound. It was just something that we never thought about in the rush of everything and its not something I ever want to repeat! A checklist is a handy thing to develop for this.

13. Provide supporting notes

This supports my previous point (9) by providing the balance between a clean minimilist presentation and giving your audience all the information they need. So many people are worried about giving every piece of information on their slides, they end up bombing a presentation because the audience is so busy reading slides and not actually listening to what they’re saying. A simple solution is to provide supporting notes to the audience. This can be done in several ways:

• In a separate document that outlines the slides and provides your supporting points and key messages. This is best provided after your presentation is made.
• Recorded, transcribed and sent to your audience via your website or on email.
• Narrated using software such as Keynote, which allows you to display your slides with supporting narration.

14. Be confident

This point barely needs explaining. A confident (and passionate) presenter draws their audience in and takes them on a journey. Confidence comes from practice, practice and more practice. Apple’s Steve Jobs has been known to spend two days rehearsing a five minute presentation. Sounds extreme, but if you want people to take time out to listen to you speak, you need to respect their time by giving it your best. One very helpful exercise is to think about all the possible questions you may be asked and going over your responses till you feel like you can knock every curve ball out of the park!

These are my top tips for great presentations. Please keep adding to the list. I’d love you to share any others you may have.

I used a web-based software called Prezi to created a multimedia presentation that integrated video, images and words. Prezi is a Flash-based visualisation, storytelling, and presentation tool that lets you create nonlinear presentations. The presentation was not only rich in imagery but was also interesting to follow visually.

While the software provides a great new alternative to Powerpoint and Keynote, it can sometimes be slow to load, particularly if there are videos embedded. The tip here is to give it a few minutes to catch up before starting the click through.

But it has been during these times of crisis that great examples have surface of how social media has played a huge and vital role in keeping people connected and information flowing when essential services are cut and the need for information comes second only to the fight for survival.

The immediacy, global reach and connective nature of social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter, paired with the widespread ownership of mobile phones, means that the social media space is an obvious and effective outlet for information flow during a crisis.

While there would be many crisis-related case studies to reference, I have focussed on three that I think demonstrate the wide application of social media in these times. They all serve quite different purposes and illustrate the many ways social media has been used during a crisis.

1. Queensland Police Facebook Page

This page is a great way for the police to connect and engage with the community. With 176,918 Likes (at the time of writing), the police force has direct access to connecting and spreading its messages to a huge following. While I can’t access the trend line for their follower uptake, I would imagine that there would have been a huge spike during the various crises that occurred in Queensland at the start of 2011. I know that for me, the floods in Brisbane were the trigger for me to follow the site.

The site is used for a range of activities, such as posting crime alerts, severe weather and traffic alerts and providing general insight into the working of the police force.

But what really stood out to me as a great example of community awareness by the police was during Cyclone Yasi when they posted translations of their press conferences in several different languages.

They identified that the Far North Queensland region was a major tourism hub and that many non-english speaking visitors needed access to their bulletins. With so much happening, it would have been a frightening experience for those who could not understand the messages from local authorities. By providing this translation service:

• it helped to better coordinate the logistics of evacuating these niche groups by helping people to help themselves, and
• provided a sense of calm to these groups, which is vital in a crisis situation.

These translation bulletins were very well received and hopefully made a positive impact on this group’s perception of Queensland (and some return visitors).

Swahili translation of a Cyclone Yasi Press Conference

2. Baked Relief

Baked Relief was a crowd sourcing phenomena that got its start when popular Brisbane food blogger, Danielle Crismani (aka Digella), baked a batch of cupcakes for a local SES during the Brisbane flood disaster in January 2010. She then mobilised her blog, facebook and twitter followers to do the same and through a simple twitter hashtag, #BakedRelief was born and people all over Australia were getting involved. You can read more about their amazing achievements here.

Danielle is a personal friend and former work colleague and I spoke to her about some of the principles behind the success of Baked Relief. When you boil it down, there were three main ingredients (pun intended) that contributed to the success.

Add Relationships, Emotion and a pinch of Opportunity and mix well.

Relationships

Danielle has been an enthusiastic blogger for some five years now. Through her blog Digella’s Emporium, she has made many connections and formed relationships with people over shared interests in food and design. She takes her blogging a step further and forms “offline” relationships with the people in her blogosphere. By actively participating in a lively blogging community she was automatically connected to people who by their very nature like to share and spread the word. She is also active on Twitter and Facebook. With these foundations in place, her ability to gain support was a lot greater than trying to start a movement from scratch.

Emotion

Baked Relief was not just about baking. It was also about emotion. While a lot of activity centred around the logistics of who needed support where, the people involved in the Baked Relief movement also shared the emotion and the stories they came across during their efforts. For people sitting at home watching it unfold on their social networks, it brought a sense of reality and appealed to the compassion of the human spirit. People felt a lot more engaged and were moved to help and spread the word. This was an organic outcome of the Baked Relief movement, but one that certainly contributed to its success. It was real, raw and authentic.

Opportunity

Ask Danielle if she had planned to launch something like Baked Relief before the Brisbane floods unfolded and she would have called you crazy. It was totally unplanned and unscripted. Like life, you have to take the opportunities when they arrise. It could not have been forced or planned, it was something that happened when whole bunch of ingredients were put together. Danielle just happened to be the Chef with the wooden spoon that mixed them all up and had the courage to go on the amazing journey. I am sure Danielle would also tell you that she never thought it would get as big as it did, but that is the very nature of social media – it’s viral, it’s immediate and it’s opportunistic at times! In this case in a good way.

3. Voices from Japan

My third example of social media in times of crisis is less about using social media to drive outcomes, but rather how it can be used to connect people and provide a lifeline during times of great dispair, confusion and disconnection. This story was first written on ABC.net and I have posted the original content in its entirety. I felt trying to change it would be a diservice to the original post.

Yesterday, I found a link from a friend of mine to a facebook post by a young Japanese man, Jun Shiomitsu, called Japan Quake as Seen from Twitter (Translated by me so quality questionable). In the longest facebook post I’ve ever seen, Jun has translated an incredible list of testimonials, from people in Japan bearing witness to simple acts of kindness amongst the chaos.

The posts are striking in their simplicity, their celebration of small moments of humanity, and their pride in Japanese resilience and co-operative spirit:

http://twitter.com/RUMI88LoL/statuses/46342599149240320
A strong voice
Yesterday, I was impressed and touched by the actions of my neighbor’s 13-year-old-boy. He was home alone when the earthquake hit. But instead of hiding, as soon as the earthquake quieted down, he jumped on his bicycle and rode around the block repeatedly shouting at the top of his voice, “Is everyone alright? Is everyone okay?” At the time, there were only women and children and the elderly in the homes. I cannot describe how comforting it was just to hear a strong voice asking if I was okay. Thank you!

http://twitter.com/VietL/status/46376383592677376
Reminded of the goodness of the Japanese people
This earthquake has reminded me of that Japanese goodness that had recently become harder and harder to see. Today I see no crime or looting: I am reminded once again of the good Japanese spirit of helping one another, of propriety, and of gentleness. I had recently begun to regard my modern countrymen as cold people … but this earthquake has revived and given back to all of us the spirit of “kizuna” (bond, trust, sharing, the human connection). I am very touched. I am brought to tears.

http://twitter.com/izumi823/statuses/46387948681297920
Touch of art
I saw artists and painters trying to keep things upbeat by painting or drawing beautiful or encouraging drawings for the evacuees around them. I was touched at how everyone was doing their very best to help.

http://twitter.com/aquarius_rabbit/status/46213254376210432
Card board boxes, Thank you!
It was cold and I was getting very weary waiting forever for the train to come. Some homeless people saw me, gave me some of their own cardboard boxes and saying “you’ll be warmer if you sit on these!” I have always walked by homeless people pretending I didn’t see them, and yet here they were offering me warmth. Such warm people.

I was so moved by these tweets, and Jun’s act of kindness in translating them, that I got in touch with Jun via facebook and asked him to describe what moved him to translate the messages. Here is Jun’s reply:

“I am an MBA student in the University of Cambridge, Judge Business School. I left Japan last September to study. I have lived in Japan 29 years. I got up in the morning of the quake to numerous messages in my inbox asking me if my family was alright. Suddenly feeling sick, I turned on the news to learn about the quake.

“I immediately tried calling my family but all phone lines were dead. Only when I logged into Facebook did I know from a friend that my family was safe. Without Facebook, I would have gone mad with worry. Without Skype, I would not have been able to speak with my family for at least two days after the quake.

“An ex-colleague of mine in Japan had posted a link to a list of Japanese tweets on her facebook wall. When I saw the list, I was so touched and moved that I spontaneously started translating them and did not leave my seat until I had finished translating all of it.

“I spent around 3 hours translating the original tweets. Since two days ago, I have formed a Facebook group. Members in the group are voluntarily looking for similar Japanese tweets, while other members are helping translate them into English. The group, with nearly 650 members now, will continue updating its list of inspiring stories from eye-witnesses on the ground in Japan going forward. I am hoping that the admiration and concern voiced by people who read the translations in this group will be a source of strength and encouragement to the Japanese people who may read them too.”

Jun has received many friend requests from well-wishers who have read his facebook post, which he has kindly declined. Sensibly, he does not make friends on facebook with people he doesn’t know, but he asks that people join the facebook group he has created, Japan Quake, Eye-Witnesses from the Ground, if they would like to keep in touch.

Social Media learnings

Here are some key learnings from these case studies.

Engage with your followers

The Queensland Media Unit are very good at engaging with their followers. They do not simply push out information, but will often respond to fan posts. This is a very important aspect of social media. It is about engaging, not using it as a one way street to push your messages out.

Communicate frequently

In times of crisis, information is a top priority. Keep your information flow consistent, relevant and current. Both Queensland Police and Baked Relief did a great job of this. For example the Baked Relief website was updated AT LEAST twice a day to provide the most up to date information.

Set some ground rules

As with life there are certain accepted rules and social norms that as a society we try to uphold. The online space is no different. While the beauty of social media is its unscripted, inclusive and transparent nature, it is still important to set some ground rules on public forums. In this case Queensland Police have a very clear set of guidelines which ensure the site is used in line with their goals to provide “important public safety and public interest information in a timely and efficient manner”.

Build relationships

Think of social media as an extension of real life. The opportunities to connect with people are huge, but remember that while cyberspace may be the meeting place, there are still people on the other side. Treat them as you would in real life and build and nurture relationships over a long period.

Strike while the iron is hot

In the time of short attention spans, decisions made in the blink of an eye and people quick to move onto the “next thing”, it is important to sieze opportunities when they arise and act immediately. While I’m certainly not calling Baked Relief opportunistic in the traditional sense, you could see how given a couple of weeks or even days, the opportunity to create the overwhelming movement of support that they did may not have been there. Crisis aside, social media works on the fly and must be timely and relevant to whatever’s happening in the moment.

Appeal to the human spirit

The social web is made up of people, not machines. So treat the people you engage with online as you would in real life. Voices from Japan and Baked Relief did exactly this. Nuff said!

So readers. What examples can you share of social media playing a part in a crisis? Or do you have examples of where social media should have played a bigger part in a crisis situation? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

While it may paint a picture that shows that we are indeed obsessed with Facebook, I look at it from the perspective that as a community, we are obsessed with staying connected and updated…constantly.

For businesses this can be both a daunting and exciting prospect.

Daunting why?

1. It means businesses getting onboard with the latest “obsession” – something driven by demand from an outside force, not a line in the “Year ahead” section of an annual report or business plan.
2. It means losing some of that “perceived” control over what is said about your business – (do you even have any control anyway?).
3. It means being flexible, honest and engaging – all the time.
4. It means creating engaging and meaningful content consistently.
5. It means truly understanding and knowing about the good, the bad, and the ugly of your company and then doing something about it.
6. It means understanding your target demographic/audience/stakeholders, their behaviours and expectations, and then catering to them accordingly.

Exciting why?

1. For all the reasons above. Let’s be honest for a minute. As a business, if you were doing all of the above well, or at least giving them a red hot go, wouldn’t you be in a much stronger position to drive your business success?

My standouts from the infographic were:

1. The 35+ demographic now represents more than 30% of the entire user base: It is no longer OK for businesses to pass social media off as a “Gen Y only fad”! People of all ages are actively participating on Facebook and other social networks and this provides great opportunities for businesses to connect and share with them. Developing an effective social media strategy and plan is a first step.
2. 57% of people talk to people more online than they do in real life: If you do not know what is being said about your business or brand online, you do not have all the information you need to develop strong business strategies. Social media monitoring provides this information. With listening in mind, I will leave you with this Chinese proverb.

“To listen well, is as powerful a means of influence as to talk well, and is as essential to all true conversation”

And now – onto the infographic. Enjoy!

I am a strong believer in signs. So when I got three in one week – all relating to QR codes – I took notice. It’s not that I haven’t seen or heard of them before, it’s that it was the first time I had seen one printed. The spot, a British bridal magazine.

So what is a QR code?

A QR (Quick Response) code is basically a two dimensional bar code that can be read by Smart Phones using a QR code application. The code can be generated to include  information such as a URL, text, SMS message, event invitation (VCalendar), Google Maps location, social media tags, links to YouTube and PayPal, Vcard details (see mine above)…the list goes on.

QR codes can be printed anywhere and provide an exciting extension of your traditional print material to your online presence.

A short history

QR codes were created in 1994 by Toyota subsidiary, Denso Wave. They are common in Japan – found on everything from business cards to bananas – and have had an increased uptake in other parts of the world over the past few years as wireless and mobile technology becomes more accessible and intrinsic to our way of life and consumer patterns.

Spreading digital love

Driven by the ongoing proliferation of mobile applications, the integration of QR codes can be an important consideration for your marketing and communications strategy and campaigns.

The possibilities are endless and here are a few examples of how QR codes have been used to spread digital love.

The recently launched Jake Gyllenhaal movie, Source Code, aptly uses mobile tagging in its marketing campaign. You can read more about it here.

Dan Smigrod at That’s Great blog does a GREAT job of listing out 101 fantastic uses for quick response codes.

Here to stay or just a fad?

View the complete report here.

Australia is notably absent from both the top 10 and the “strong growth” section. I personally have not seen a QR code used in Australia with exception of my British bridal magazine. I am curious to know why and perhaps there is some further digging but I will leave it for another post, another time.

In the meantime I have had a lot of fun generating my own QR code. Still to be tested, and possibly coming to a business card near you.

Get your own QR code

When you go looking, there are plenty of places to get your own QR codes. Here are a few to check out.

QR Stuff

QMCODES Q-Lytics

QR Codes Australia

Sticky Bits

Sources

Social Wayne

2d Code

Mashable

Some businesses have embraced it and are reaping huge rewards, while others are watching from the sidelines, and in my experience, have comfortably placed themselves in one of the following categories:

1. blissfully ignorant
2. eyes wide shut waiting and hoping that it will go away one day soon
3. don’t think it’s for them or their industry/business
4. know they should be doing “something” but can’t get their boss/CEO/person who makes the big decisions to even consider it
5. those petrified of losing control over what is said about their business/brand.

Do any of these sound familiar? If you recognise yourself or your business in the list above, I recommend you check out the Social Media Revolution 2 video below. It is a refresh of the original video with new and updated social media and mobile statistics that are hard to ignore. Based on the book Socialnomics by Erik Qualman.

I know that until about 18 months ago, I was a social media virgin. Then I was enlightened by the wonderful opportunities to connect, engage, understand, contribute, learn and debate through social media. It is something that really excites me and I am constantly trying to understand where the challenges and opportunities are for my clients – they are all different.

One consistency is that it is never too late to join the revolution, but it is something that needs careful planning and consideration – particularly for businesses. It can’t be treated as the SHINY NEW TOY that you get at Christmas and have discarded by New Year.

There are some simple steps that you need to think about. Here are a few ideas.

Not surprisingly, there were very strong links – at least in the planning stages. Why? Because regardless of whether we are engaging online or in person, the key consistency is the human element involved.

One thing that has changed however is the need for businesses to drive, and importantly maintain, this engagement on an ongoing basis. This is a move away from the traditional one-off campaign style engagement where companies push out a series of messages for a specific reason.

If the Holy Grail of engagement is “content-rich, two-way communication between brands and their customers,” it requires businesses to keep up their end of the conversation with a consistent stream of high quality content. That means the end of the campaign style mindset and the end of interruptive messaging (PR Newswire).

Before we get too far, let’s clarify. Content marketing goes by many different names and here are some you may have heard of before: branded content, branded media, custom publishing, custom media, customer media, customer publishing, member media, private media, corporate media, corporate publishing and corporate journalism.

But what does it actually mean?

I won’t go into great detail in defining all of these terms – Lord Google and Sir Wiki can help you with that. But essentially – and I like this definition by the folks over at Junta42 the best – it is creating and distributing relevant and valuable content to attract, acquire, and engage a clearly defined and understood target audience.

Sounds great, makes sense. We should all be doing it right? Simple.

Not so fast. We’ve all heard of the famous saying, “if you fail to plan, you plan to fail”. It is no different when planning to develop your branded content or content marketing strategy. Here are a five key things to think about.

1. What are your goals?

It is important to first understand what you are trying to achieve, whether it is increased brand awareness, more sales leads, or greater outreach. This will help to keep your content program on track. Remember, your goals must be specific and measurable.

2. Who are you trying to target and what do they want?

Almost as important, is understanding who you are targeting and what their needs are. It’s no good feeding out information that is neither helpful nor interesting to your target audience.

Marcie Avram, Associate Publisher/Marketing & Content Strategy, Rodale Custom Content and Marketing, says “Engagement is everything and content is the currency. This requires speaking to the target audience in a way that resonates about things that matter – developed for the right platform. If the content is not truly relevant, the engagement opportunity is lost”.

3. What resources do you have?

Decide what resources you have to develop your content. Do you need to hire someone or outsource this expertise? Either way, you need to be able to commit to delivering high quality, engaging content and maintaining open and honest dialogue.

Steve Rubel, SVP and Director of Insights for Edelman Digital says “We’re increasingly seeing that if you’re not creating content on a regular basis, your brand is not being heard”.

4. What tools are you going to use?

This point ties in closely with two and three above. You need to understand where your target market congregates. What platforms are they using to communicate? Where do they get their information? How do they share information?

Social media and its multitude of communication platforms has made it easier than ever to reach customers directly, while simultaneously making it more of a challenge because of the shear number of outlets to manage.

Most of these social media platforms – think blogs, Facebook, Twitter, You Tube and LinkedIn to name a few, now make it easier for you to automate updates across multiple platforms. This saves you time, but also makes sure your brand can be seen in multiple places.

As important, is making it easy for your customers to share your information with their own networks. Facebook’s “Like” button, is a great way to spread your content and automatically feed your information directly to people’s social media. Facebook “Deals” is helping businesses create communities of followers by offering deals when you check in with them. Check out the video here. This new feature really highlights the power of word of mouth endorsement. Foursquare offers a similar opportunity.

According to the Edelman Trust Barometer, 60% of people need to hear something about a specific company to believe the information is likely to be true.

5. How will you receive feedback and maintain two-way communication?

It is important that you have the tools and mechanisms in place to monitor the buzz that is happening out there. It could be to track trends and issues (a great way to develop ideas for content), hear what people are saying about you or your competitors. There are many free and paid tools out there to monitor this. Whatever the case is, you need to be listening to be able to understand your markets and participate in the conversations that are happening around you. If you don’t fill that gap, someone or something else will.

Similarly, when it comes to directly communicating with your audience, make it easy. Give them multiple platforms to contact you on. This could be via a Facebook page, a contact us page on your website or blog, the ability to comment on your blog posts – this not only enables them to contact you, but is a great way to initiate genuine engagement with your followers.

Final food for thought

Build trust over time. People see through the sell. The aim is to first create a band of loyal followers or evangelists that will help spread your content. This can only be achieved if your content has the following elements or a combination of them all.

• Is helpful and solves a problem
• Is entertaining
• Is honest and genuine

Don’t rush into an online social engagement initiative without clearly defining the goals and benefits to both you and your target audience. Without these in place, your chances of success are low and you may erode any customer value you already do have.

Be consistent. This goes for both the messages and approach you take to engaging with your audience as well as the look and feel of your online presence across all the various channels.

Sharing is caring

What companies or organisations do you think are doing a good job of their content marketing? We’ll be sharing some of our hot picks in an upcoming post and would love to know your thoughts.