Every business also needs a VP of Marketing, Finance, Operations and all those other boxes you’ll likely find on an org chart.

The problem with the very small, even solopreneur, business is that because you’re doing all of these jobs, often concurrently, you don’t tend to departmentalize the various functions as you must.

In many cases, you most relate with the tactical work that seems to consume most of your day. The busy work is where you feel most productive, it’s how you make stuff, sell stuff and ship stuff. I mean, who has time to fantasize about the goofy title of CEO anyway?

And that’s the rationale we use so we don’t have to do the really hard work.

A CEO’s primary function in most organizations is to look beyond today, tomorrow, next month even, and determine the resources, strategies and innovations needed to take the organization to a place of unknown some 12 or 18 months from now.

Some people naturally think this way; most can’t rise up above the noise of the urgent to do so.

Unless and until you force yourself to actually play the role of CEO in your business (even in 15 minute increments) you will constantly find yourself struggling to maintain that which you can effectively keeps your arms wrapped around.

You play the role of CEO – even if you have no one else to manage or account to – by carving out time to think long term, plan long term and measure and correct short term on a consistent basis.

You play the role of CEO by creating an annual growth plan, brining your entire team together for a day each quarter to report and access, holding weekly all hands meetings and even daily fifteen minute check-ins to get a sense of how people are progressing with priorities and projects.

All of the above can be done with an actual team or all by yourself – the point is to wear the CEO hat in this intentional manner, no matter the situation.

This takes the kind of discipline that few have. You have to get good at separating your routine from what needs doing – wear a suit on your CEO days if that helps. Make an org chart with all the boxes and magnets that allow you to move yourself from box to box. Have your printer make business cards for your various roles – do whatever it takes to get yourself into performing the essential roles in your business as though they mattered.

Because, actually being the CEO in your organization may be the most important fifteen minutes you spend each day.

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How can you make the most of LinkedIn for your B2B company?

Here are 25 tips to help you get the most out of it:

1. Create a company account: In addition to your personal account, set up an account for your company on LinkedIn and connect with existing business associates and clients to establish a network of people who already know your brand and its products or services.
2. Optimize your headline: Write your headline to emphasize the value you offer clients.
3. Use keywords in your company description: Incorporate keywords into the description of your company on your LinkedIn page.
4. Include your logo: Strengthen your brand by unifying your profile with your other marketing tools, including by using your logo front and center.
5. Create a custom URL: LinkedIn gives you the ability to create a custom URL—optimize yours to include your brand name.
6. Share your URL everywhere: Once you’ve established a custom URL, use it on all your marketing materials, from brochures to emails to your website.
7. Build connections: Make sure all your employees are part of your company’s network on LinkedIn, and reach out to your existing contacts and customers to build your network with people who already know your company, its products and services.
8. Make new connections: With LinkedIn Groups, you’re able to message other members even if you aren’t personally connected to them—take advantage of these connections in order to build your network.
9. Ask for introductions: When you think it could benefit your business, ask your contacts for introductions to their contacts.
10. Search: Through LinkedIn’s search feature, you can locate people (by industry, location, job title) and gain information about your industry.
11. Make honest recommendations: Giving valuable recommendations not only benefits your contacts, but it also shows you have a spirit of goodwill and makes you seem trustworthy.
12. Ask for recommendations: Having quality recommendations give a profile credibility with users and may help attract new leads for your business.
13. Answer questions: Establish yourself as a leader in the field by answering questions that are relevant to your field.
14. Ask questions: Just as answering a question can help establish you as thought leader, asking questions can engage prospects and expose more people to your company.
15. Post status updates: Show your contacts that you’re active on LinkedIn by updating your status regularly—weekly if you wish to be included on LinkedIn’s update emails—and integrate important keywords.
16. Make the most of links: Your LinkedIn profile will allow up to three links—use them to point to valuable sites with names that maximize SEO value.
17. Link to your blog: Link to your company’s blog on your profile to increase its exposure, as well as to give contacts more info about your brand.
18. Integrate with Twitter: Link up with your company’s Twitter account to maximize the power of your social reach.
19. Join existing LinkedIn groups: Join the groups that are most relevant to your company’s services or products so you can keep up with what’s being said.
20. Participate in groups: Post regularly in LinkedIn Groups with comments and responses, and post links because members will be likely to click through.
21. Use groups to encourage blog commentary: Post links to your blog posts in groups, and ask questions that will encourage commentary on what you’ve written.
22. Respond to messages: Set up your notifications so that you’ll receive newsletters in your email inbox, and respond right away.
23. Use polls: Polls allow you to conduct market research with your LinkedIn network—then share results with your contacts.
24. Advertise: LinkedIn offers paid advertising that can be targeted to the specific audience you choose—with perimeters able to be set based on geography, groups, job titles, gender, age, etc.—and conversion rates have been shown to be 122% higher than those on Google.
25. Keep things current: As with any social media effort, it’s of vital importance that you keep information up-to-date. Let prospects see that you’re active on LinkedIn in order to encourage interaction.

What do you think? What ways have you used LinkedIn to boost your B2B?

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Nowadays, times have changed a little. Online marketing is just as important as traditional offline marketing. With the sprawling nature of the internet, all of a sudden small brick and mortar shops are faced with online competitors and are eager to find a way to stand out from the competition.

One easy way to stand out from the competition is to adopt the “feemium” business model that has worked so well for apps creators and mobile game developers. Freemium simply means to offer something for free to bring the traffic into the store or office and then focus on upselling the clients with additional services or items.

Let’s explore how this works in the online world of apps and mobile games.

How Do Game Developers Make Money?

With the increased adoption of smartphones and tablets and apps, sites like iTunes and Amazon’s app store, prices have dropped to typically 99 cents per sale, if not less. How does one make any money in mobile game development?

Volume is the obvious answer, as the “Tablet Market and Smartphones Market: Global Database & Forecast (2010 – 2015)” report from Transparency Market Research states, global tablet sales for 2011 is at 67 million, and smartphone sales are at 469.9 million, and that’s just from one year. Even with product sales to just a sliver of that market, 99 cents could lead to a boatload of money. And if the money from sales isn’t enough, mobile ad networks make ad sponsored apps a reasonable alternative.

Freemium Model

With prices as low as 99 cents, how can you make money going any lower? That’s where the freemium model comes into play. The word “freemium” comes from combining the words free and premium and involves basically giving your product away, making money off the sale of advanced features and services.

With the freemium model in a mobile game app, users buy tools like a gold sword instead of the regular silver sword or perhaps an oven that cooks 20 percent faster. The actual cost for one of these features is minimal, a little time and effort from a graphic designer. You then repeatedly sell the new option at just a little expense, and watch the money pile up.

Successful Freemium Stories

The freemium model has had its share of success stories, the biggest being the billion dollar IPO of Zynga, popular social game designer and creator of the Farmville phenomenon. In Farmville, people harvest crops and Zynga makes money from an in-game store that sells tools to do tasks faster or make the farm look prettier.

Freemium also doesn’t limit profits. With typical software sales, you sell the product and get all the revenue up front. With freemium, instead of just making $1 (less the sale’s cut to the store) from the initial product sale, an in-game store can sell something, like extra lives, repeatedly.

That’s how Electronic Arts made their money with Bejeweled Blitz. According to a recent NY Times article, the free Bejeweled Blitz game brought in five times as much money as the $1 original Bejeweled version. In the same story, you can also see how mom and pop shops are getting in on the action, too.

Future of Mobile Gaming

Freemium is the future of mobile gaming. According to analytics company Flurry, in June 2011, 65 percent of Apple’s App Store revenue came from in-app purchase options. Users want to kick the tires before turning over their hard-earned money. Unless an app offers something unique, like your bank offering a way to deposit a check, users are more apt to pick a free download than pay 99 cents to try it out. If it is any good, they’ll stay around. Then, you monetize the relationship.

All in all, freemium is here to stay. The big unknown is how many people can be converted to paying customers. If you make a good enough product and offer reasonable upgrade options at minimal cost, there’s a good chance that many will convert and you’ll make more than you would have with a paid version.

How Does Freemium Help Brick and Mortar Businesses?

The Freemium model goes well beyond that of simple gaming platforms. Brick and mortar establishments would do well to look at such models and build the needed customer experience in order to attract both new and old applicants.

In a recent study, 42 percent of consumers purchase products and services after experiencing them for free. The trial and experience generated by personal use ensures the customer develops a better sense of recall and encourages them to share their experiences through word of mouth.

In essence, the “free trial” is a better ad than a simple banner or PPC link because the personal interaction automatically breeds a sense of loyalty. Examples of brick and mortar applications can be as simple as a:

• free orthodontic or medical consultation
• free legal advice on a set day and time
• free appetizer from a local restaurant
• free 8×10 photo from a photographer
• free real estate consultation
• free week-long pass to a local gym

When the customer comes in to claim their free item, the business owner should have other items to sell. If the overall experience is pleasant for the new customer, then they will likely return and quite possibly refer your business to their friends.

The over-arching theme is the experience. Utilizing the freemium model is paramount in market competition given the consumer can (and will) research most of the data themselves regarding whatever service or product they desire or need.

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Point being, we all know what the outcomes of social business transformation can be … a more connected organization, culture change, stakeholder value, faster more efficient customer support, innovation, enterprise collaboration, employee engagement and (insert all the other buzz words).

But one outcome, which isn’t talked about much, is how social business can enable better marketing. I believe this. I believe this just about as much I as I believe that Magic Johnson is the greatest player to have ever played the game of basketball. And if you know me well, you know I am serious and can argue for days about this topic and usually win.

Here are a few examples of how this works. It’s not theory. It wasn’t a dream or vision.  And I didn’t read it somewhere. This works and I have done it. I believe it.

• Real Time Marketing: Content is the number one challenge for marketing organizations today; especially for global firms with multiple social media channels and stakeholders. A social business (via collaboration, knowledge sharing, process creation and governance) can enable marketing to create content that matters – relevant content (the right content, at the right time, in the right channel, to the right customer).  This is done by creating a collaborative narrative about the product or brand internally coupled with real time monitoring of brand/industry related topics and conversations.
• Real Time Monitoring: The establishment of a real time monitoring center (or command center) requires a significant amount of cross-functional collaboration with customer support, IT, operations and applicable business units. The last thing marketers should be doing is making technology decisions without consulting with, or better yet, partnering with IT. Real time monitoring can ensure that the organization is front and center in the conversation – handling/escalating support issues, intercepting sales related conversations or general community engagement. And marketing teams are on the engagement front lines and have the opportunity to become more strategic in the organization by driving social business initiatives.
• Marketing Analytics:  There are two truths about social media analytics.  Either organizations aren’t measuring their social media marketing efforts OR everyone in the organization is measuring it differently. In either case, that’s an ugly problem. Especially when the CMO wants to know how many people were reached globally through social media or is curious about engagement rates were for a given time-frame. A collaborative analytics framework will ensure everyone in the organization is measuring social consistently and will enable marketers to shift and iterate their content strategy based on real time data; and of course give the CMO what he/she wants, when he/she wants it.
• Marketing Governance: I have written about the Social Business Center or Excellence in the past.  One responsibility of this team is to create systems and processes that will enable other marketing organizations, product teams, geographies and regions to build social media programs locally that can scale and take into consideration those very specific cultural trends and behaviors. Again, this goes back to content. Also, this type of governance can prevent organizations from creating a multitude of external communities without proper planning like identifying a community manager, content plan, measurement and crisis plan. The last thing you want for your business is 178 social media channels that undoubtedly confuse the hell out of customers.

I am sure you have your own examples of how social business can enable better marketing. These of course are my opinions. But hey, what do I know? I am just a marketer.

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This new research from Harvard shows that to increase the workflow productivity, you need to add more tasks to their schedule that involve helping and communicating with other people, because sometimes individual constant tasks can become redundant, and that is where the individuals can lose focus. Michael Norton, an Associate Professor for the Harvard Business School had the following quote that will also help with coworker productivity.

“Since nobody can put more physical hours into a day, managers who want to give their employees a sense that they have free time need to address ‘psychological time’”

Within Norton’s recently published paper on this premise, he noted that if the employees think that their time is well spent, they feel like they do have more time to be productive, and more enthusiastic and satisfied with their work ethics. Norton also specified three other key ways to increase coworker productivity (source: BusinessInsider).

• Make employees participate in a company volunteer effort – Particularly if they can use part of their workday to do it.
• Let employees know how their day-to-day tasks are helping others – If they can hear how the employee helped a customer, this will also make them more satisfied with their job.
• Use fun strategies to encourage team members to help each other – Norton tells of one experiment where salespeople were given $20 bonus money and told they had to spend on another team member. Those teams sold more than other groups that were told to spend the $20 on themselves.

Other than the points above, how do you increase the productivity and focus of your coworkers? Let us know below in this post’s comments section.

If your company is considering whether to send you to events because of uncertain return or benefits, show them the following list.

In fact, if I were running a conference, I’d make sure these tips are shared with attendees, sponsors and speakers alike.

The first step in getting more value out of event attendance is to understand the “why”. What benefit that brings value to the business can you get from attending conferences, workshops, webinars and educational meet/tweetups? I like to say that I can “make money” at any conference. The reason why is that I am specifically aware of multiple ways to create value with events – beyond simply prospecting for new business. Here are 5 key benefits you can create from event participation and goals you can set for each:

1. Grow Your Network

There is no substitute for a quality network. It takes time to grow a personal network and if you’re advocating for your company, then community development is also ongoing. Attending events online and off are essential for productive networking that can result in a variety of valuable outcomes including:

• Recruiting
• Collecting competitive intelligence
• Vendor and consultant sourcing
• Partner sourcing
• Prospecting for new customers.

When you attend events, set goals for the kinds of contacts you want to make. Go so far as to make a list of people you want to meet if they’re particularly important to your goals. Initiate new connections with qualified prospects, marketing partners, vendors to outsource to and job candidates. At the same time, reinforce existing connections with contacts in your social networking pipeline. Each day, tally them up and plan how you will follow up. Follow on Twitter, connected on LinkedIn. Share useful tips, links and info that are relevant to your interactions with them. Give to get, but have a purpose and a goal for the connection.

Make sure you have goals and a purpose to your online and event networking. If you leave it to chance, you’re leaving a LOT of value on the table – for your competition.

2. Get Smarter. Repeat.

There are numerous benefits to attending conference sessions. The obvious is to hear smart speakers give presentations on important topics with useful tips. Sometimes speakers deliver on that promise and sometimes they don’t.

Don’t let bad conference content get in the way of getting smarter.

Pay attention to how the speaker gives their presentation and observe how the audience responds. You might think the information isn’t useful to you, but if the attendees are leaning forward, writing notes and holding up their phones and ipads to take pictures of the presentation slides, then the speaker is connecting.

You can benefit from understanding how the information is presented as much as from the actual tips. The format, sequence, design and presentation of information that connects is a model you can leverage for your own purposes: whether it’s speaking at a conference or event yourself or communicating and persuading people internally.

Planning your conference session attendance is essential. Think of how many sessions will you attend and how will you capture the information presented. Will you take notes on an iPad, laptop or (gasp) on paper? Will you take photos or video (where allowed)? Do you know where to get a copy of the speakers’ presentations? Introduce yourself to speakers and ask them a key question on video so you can review later and share with your team.

When meeting new people, discuss the sessions with them. Compare notes – it’s a great way to network and to get other opinions. Before the conference, make a grid or a plan for which specific sessions you’ll be attending. Often times, there is not much time between sessions and the difference between getting a good seat and standing room only can be a matter of minutes and you might miss out on the session entirely because rooms can fill up.

3. Curate and Create Content

Content Marketing is hotter than ever but sourcing content is probably one of the biggest challenges for companies getting into the content publishing realm. The good news is that events from Twitter chats to webinars to keynote presentations and breakout sessions all provide opportunities to capture, curate and even create content. Some examples include:

• Liveblogging – Transcribe what the speakers say word for word. Listen for key quotes or pieces of information and make a “list post” around a specific topic. Pre-write an article about the session topic and fill in stats and quotes from the speakers.
• Interviews – Reach out to speakers in advance and collect tips from their presentations as a way to help boost attendance to their session. Shoot video interviews of speakers or other smarties at the conference. Record podcast interviews with the same people. Capture single tips on video from a large number of people and compile into one video. Go to exhibitor booths and ask them for a 30 second pitch on video and compile them. Survey attendees on what they like best, tips they’ve heard, etc into a compilation video. With video, you might want to get sign-offs. Also, non-speakers may be reluctant.
• Journal – Keep notes and write a summary of key points from the day and publish like a journal entry. Link to other bloggers that are publishing liveblog posts at the same event.
• Curate – Use a tool like storify to curate the buzz of the conference. You don’t even need to be at the event to do this if a conference hashtag is used consistently.
• Track Your Own Buzz – If you are speaking, make sure someone from your team is tracking mentions of you, your company and topic on social streams like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+. Monitor any liveblogging of your presentations as well. Give people an incentive to liveblog your sessions too. If anyone liveblogs one of my presentations, I will send them a copy of Optimize (for example). Curate those mentions into a roundup post on your company newsroom.

Think about how you can leverage your conference experience to create new content for your company blog, articles, or process documentation. Set goals for how many content objects (blog posts, articles, videos, tweets, images) you’ll create each day. Organize what you will capture, with who and with what devices. Plan where you’ll publishing this content and when as well.  For curation, compile presentations posted to Slideshare, interviews others have posted to YouTube and liveblog posts covering interesting sessions – then add your own commentary as the icing on the cake.

The content you capture and create can supply a company blog with numerous posts and show clients, staff and prospective clients that you are on top of what’s happening in the industry.

4. Share the Smarts: Knowledge Transfer With Your Team

The explicit purpose of attending conferences is to hear industry experts share advice and insights into topics that your business can benefit from. Collecting actionable tips, statistics and other useful information form conferences to share with your team, clients and other groups in your organization can multiply the value of one person attending an event. If multiple people attend, the value can be even greater.

To make knowledge transfer from conference content work, it’s important to create a process for information capture, synthesis and distribution.

• Capture: Target specific speakers and sessions. Write questions you want answered and if the presentations do not contain those answers then pursue subject matter expert speakers to ask them directly. Capture information in text, audio, video and image. No one ever comes back from an event thinking they took too many photos. Maybe the wrong photos, but not to many. Also, be aware of conference policies on video and image capture.
• Synthesis: When you formulate questions, have specific applications for your business in mind. When you get the answers, filter the information in a way that will be practical and useful when it is shared – vs. all theoretical. Discuss the information and tips collected with fellow attendees to filter out what’s most useful.
• Distribution: Have a plan for how you will present the useful tactics, insights, statistics and case studies with your co-workers, clients and other interested parties.  You could write a report, you could create a presentation to give live or via webinar, you could compile video clips and images to narration. Individual tips could be saved on an internal knowledge base blog according to category. You could have a post-conference brown bag lunch discussion or a more formal presentation. There are many different options, but have them in mind before the conference to increase the likelihood they will actually happen and in an effective way.

Knowing you will be required to present the information you are gaining at a conference with the team back at the office can helps you focus on takeaways and practical interpretations of what’s being presented, instead of what you don’t like or the lacking presentation skills of the presenter.

5. Optimize the Marketing Value of Events

For nearly all events, I like to break things up into pre-event, during and after.  You could actually further distinguish near-after and long-after as well as a recurring component if the event is held at regular intervals, like many are on an annual basis.  Many conference speakers rely on the event to do the marketing. That’s a big fail.

Here are a few tips before, during and after the event to gain more attendees, more media coverage and post-event value:

Before the event:

• Write headlines, descriptions, tags and make trackable short URLs
• Pre-write tweets, updates and decide on a hashtag
• Submit your session to event listing sites, create events on Facebook and LinkedIn
• Create a contest or buzz around your presentation to inspire others to tell their networks
• Issue an optimized press release
• Schedule interviews with media attending the event and/or local media
• Connect with other speakers in advance
• Create a teaser for your presentation
• Announce your event attendance through email and your social channels
• When you meet people before your presentation, don’t be shy about sharing when you are speaking
• Create a check-in notice on Foursquare inviting people to attend your session

During the event:

• Create content the audience can participate with. I like to take photos of the audience and post to our Facebook page so they can tag themselves.
• Use tweetable, shareable content in your presentation
• Give something away to motivate desired behaviors like asking questions
• Always include a report or fulfillment piece in your thank you page
• Have someone on your team monitoring tweets and buzz during your presentation. Interact as appropriate

After the event:

• Curate buzz about the presentation into a blog post and/or newsroom post
• Follow up on questions asked and fulfillment deliverables
• Connect with new contacts through appropriate social channels
• Thank the conference for having you
• If you were on a panel, thank the panelists and moderator
• Thank any livebloggers that covered your session
• Use media coverage from the event in your newsroom, corporate email and other communications
• Follow up!!!!!

This should probably have been turned into an ebook on the topic, so congratulations on making it to the end of the post!  Heck, maybe we will make it into an ebook and add a few forms, checklists and examples.  In the meantime, share this list of tips with those in your organization that hold the purse strings for your event attendance. Try one or two of these tips for your next conference and share what you’ve done to get more value out of event attendance.

As always, if you like these tips, be sure to get your copy of Optimize for a deep dive into an integrated approach to optimizing your online marketing.

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PPC (Pay-Per-Click) Google ads are found above and to the right of your search results. Written with your keywords and key phrases in mind, they are highly targeted and are only seen by people searching for your product or service.  As the name suggests, you only pay when someone clicks your ad, so they can be quite cost effective (if you know what you’re doing).

So how can you make sure your ads are effective?

Well, here are 7 tips to help you create powerful PPC ads.

1. Know your audience

As with all your marketing, your advert will be targeted at a specific audience. It is important that you make sure your message is written specifically for them. Writing something for everyone will result in a wishy-washy ad that doesn’t attract anyone.

2. Include your keywords

The whole point of PPC is that it’s targeted, so make sure your keywords are included in the heading and body of your ad. Not only will this highlight your ad’s relevance, it will also reassure the potential customer that you are offering what they are looking for.

3. Keyword only headings are a no-no

It may be tempting just to cram all your keywords into your heading, but it will create something ugly and meaningless. Your heading should be benefits driven, offer a hook and contain your keyword. That’s quite a tall order considering you only have 25 characters to play with, so you’ll have to get creative.

4. Be focused

Each ad you write should be focused on one benefit only. You only have 25 characters for your heading and 35 characters for your description, so there’s no room for waffle.

5. Call to action

The best ads will have a call to action. It could be your phone number or a link. Either way it will add value to your ad and give you a way to measure its effectiveness.

6. Proofread

So important and yet frequently forgotten about – proofreading will prevent you from looking like a total amateur and publishing an ad with a blaring typo in it.

7. Test

The only way to make sure your ads are working as hard as possible for you is to test them. Try different headings, calls to action and benefits to see which brings in the highest response rate. Only through this continual process can you find the perfect formula.

Over to you

Do you use PPC advertising?

If so, leave a comment below and leave your top tips for getting the most out of your ad.

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As Google explains the changes made:

• “Edit one or more of your listings’ data at once
• Search through your listings, filtering by specific information or for listings with errors
• Upload new listings using a data file or by adding them individually within the interface
• Tell us how we can improve this new interface by clicking the “Give Feedback” link”

Here is a video tutorial explaining the new features for new users not allowed to do bulk upload yet.

Here is another short video highlighting the features for already-verified users for bulk upload.

What do you think of these new features? Do you find them helpful in managing multiple locations? Please share your views in comments below.

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The idea behind a Twitter Chat is very simple. A group of people with a common interest gather together at a designated time to share ideas and discussion. The chat is united by a “hashtag” so that all can follow along. For example, #CMChat gathers people who are in the country music business and #CookingChat brings together cooking enthusiasts. There are chats for every imaginable interest and the list is growing all the time.

There are several powerful benefits of chats:

• Chats are a great place to learn and exchange ideas with like-minded individuals from around the world.
• It is an excellent place to meet interesting new contacts. When you find a chat that you like, it would be a good idea to follow these individuals and perhaps even create a list of the chat members.
• Chats are a great place to gain awareness for your own brand and ideas.
• Participating in chats creates connections and content that can enhance your personal influence.
• A company, brand, or individual can establish a voice of authority by creating and leading a chat.
• Chats have become so popular, some companies are paying advertising fees to sponsor them. Yes, you can make money from a Twitter chat!

So how do you get started?

The first thing to do is find a relevant chat. The best way to keep up with this dynamic list is to google “Twitter chat schedule” and you will find a detailed list of chats by subject, day, and time. It will also list the leaders of the chat and provide a link to the most recent session.

Once you pick your chats, there are a couple ways to participate. First, follow the people who run these chats and get their updates on upcoming chats. When the chat is scheduled to happen, you can search for the designated hashtag in Twitter.  The best way to follow along is to use a free service like TweetChat or TwitterFall, platforms specifically designed to enhance your Twitter chat experience.

A word of warning: On the most popular chats, the tweets may be coming at a furious rate!  It can be challenging to follow when there are concurrent conversations occurring.

Participation is key for reaping the benefits of Twitter chats. Ask and answer questions, add insight, discuss. These are usually very open and friendly forums, so don’t be worried about posting a “stupid” comment or question.

Many times, there are pre-determined questions and the moderator will pose these in the form of this example:  Q1 What is the best way to get value from a Twitter chat?  Participants answer accordingly: A1 One idea is to participate actively and help newcomers.

Creating your own chat

Hosting your own chat can be a fun and rewarding way to create community around your ideas and subject matter. Let’s walk through the steps of creating a new Twitter Chat.

Set-up

First, I would want to secure a descriptive hashtag. At www.Twubs.com you can see if your hashtag has already been taken and secure one for your chat.

Once you have a unique name, it would be a good to reserve a Twitter handle for the chat.

To promote the chat, you may want to create a homebase on Facebook, LinkedIn group, or blog where you can make announcements and post completed conversations.

You’ll also need to pick a time and regular date for the chat. Every Monday?  The second Tuesday of the month? Find a date that fits your schedule because as the moderator, you are creating a long-lasting commitment to your community. Some chat communities have co-moderators, or even shared responsibility among all the members.

Planning the content

In preparation for your first chat, you’ll want to personally invite a few friends to get the momentum going. Create enough topic questions ahead of time to propel at least 30 minutes of chat. Involve your community in choosing topics and questions. Other chats are just free-flowing with no assigned agenda. It’s just a place to meet and touch base.

Many chats feature special guests who help answer questions and engage with participants. So for example, I have been a guest “speaker” on book chats, marketing chats, and leadership chats to name a few. If you are asked to be a guest on a chat, be sure to have the prepared questions ahead of time so you can get ready with a at least a few tweetable responses. It can be quite challenging to keep up with the pace of conversation with coherent 140-character responses!

Post-chat and promotion

As the moderator, you are creating some very valuable, shareable content so be sure to capture this. There are several free platforms to do this including ChirpStory and Storify. You can post this content on your Facebook or blog and then promote this content to attract new members.

Promoting a link to your homebase in industry publications, social media outlets and related forums is another way to find people who might be interested in the topic.

Another best practice is to email a transcript to your community members after the chat. This will serve as a reminder of the next chat and also keep people in the loop even if they miss the event.

During the chat, everyone participating will be tweeting with the hashtag in the tweet. Just the act of having the chat is a great way to promote the event.  I’ll often pop into a chat when I see an interesting hashtag pop up. As long as you stick to a consistent schedule and provide interesting content, your attendance will pick up over time.

Just like everything else, Twitter chats have limitations. The 140 character maximum can limit the depth of a commentary and even good ideas can get lost in a big chat. Still, the serendipitous connections you make in these forums are often more important than the content of the chat.

What have I missed?  How do you get value from Twitter Chats?  Positives and negatives?  Tips you can share?

Comments

Knowing the importance of conversion, and knowing how to be successful at it are completely different beasts. Which is why if you search “improve online conversion rate”, you’re met with a swell of results, most of which will provide you with the same kind of advice.

I’m sure you’ve read plenty of blog posts telling you to keep usability in mind, provide good customer service, and keep geography in mind. However, there’s once tactic which hasn’t been mentioned by many, suggested by MarketingSherpa. Allow your user-generated content to convert for you.

According to the report, an e-commerce site based around coffee has tried this tactic, and have seen their conversion rates skyrocket. Unlike sites who might provide the option for a comment or review section, ‘Coffee for Less’ the site which was profile, encourages their readers to write reviews and even provides them help to write effective reviews.

Since they’ve switched to this method, they’ve seen conversion rates increase by 125%. Also, organic search traffic has increased by 10% due to all the reviews being crawled by the search engines.

It isn’t enough to just give your users the option to comment or review, Coffee for Less utilizes five tactics when executing their user-generated content strategy. First, make sure that your reviews are search-friendly, and allow voting.

Along with making them as visible as possible, make you are moderating comments for more than being spam and profanity. If you’re looking to get certain types of content out of users, don’t allow them to post comments/reviews that are off-topic. It isn’t advisable to moderate content that’s simply negative, but make sure they’re being negative towards the topic you’re wanting to present.

Something that the site provided users, which I thought was interesting is teaching your users how to write good reviews. They did this by providing detailed instructions on how to write reviews, and also promotes reviews to let people know how to do it right.

Their final tactic is pretty well known, and is something businesses have been doing for years now; providing incentives to review. This can be giving away cash for user-generated content or giving away products.

It can be very difficult to produce content in such a way to completely turn around a business’ conversion rate. So why bother to do it on your own, when users have so much more power than you do, and can provide greater incentives for people to convert through your business online.