Authentically Social

Corporate Blogging Tips

Authentically Social — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 01:04:09 +0000

My friends over at customer engagement company Inbox Orange recently asked me about tips for corporate blogging.

1) There is no reason to have a company blog just for the sake of having a blog. First, ask what are the goals of the blog?

2) Strategize: What are you going to talk about and who’s going to create the content?

3) Think about frequency and consistency: start a calendar and schedule posts for particular dates and times.

Read the entire post for all the tips.

Pins for Pageviews

Authentically Social — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 02:22:28 +0000

I am a massive lover of Pinterest. Not only can I get lost for hours in finding pretty things, but it is a great tool for driving website traffic. Of course like all social tools, Pinterest must be used with care as to avoid looking like a spammer. Engage, connect, and share more than just YOUR content or products.

Here’s a recent article in the Lexington Herald-Leader in which I was quoted about using Pinterest for website traffic. I’ll delve more into statistics and tips in an upcoming blog post.

Social Timing

Authentically Social — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 00:15:29 +0000

Have you ever gone to a party and scanned the room for people you know? You zoom in on your targets, then approach and try to organically pop into the conversation. After a few seconds of overhearing the conversation, you realize that it was the completely wrong time to join in. Your happy face just interrupted a deep discussion about someone’s family members recent cancer diagnosis. Gah.

Two things with social that I see all the time from both individuals and small businesses:

Poor timing: This includes not responding in a timely manner (an expectation of “timely” is set by your customer), not engaging while your customer is online (instead, only when it is convenient for you to do so), and not posting content when your customers are most likely to see it.
Improper context: This one stretches the gamut of possible oopsies, from misappropriate use of a hashtag to reacting in haste to a negative post without reading the entire background. This causes major foot-in-mouth syndrome.

To fix poor timing:

Think about when people are using your product or when they need you. I had an experience with Verizon Wireless this week where I had no email service and it seemed to be a widespread problem. Unfortunately, when the social media team clocked out, all the in-progress help they were giving users went with it.
You can utilize services like Crowdbooster so you can see when your followers are most active so your tweets have the most potential for impact.
You can also just observe when your followers seem to be most active. When are they responding to your blog or to your Facebook posts? You can also look at research like that in the infographic below from Argyle Social.

To fix improper context:

Listen before you pipe in. If you see your name come up, make sure you read the conversation participants past tweets so you can reply with proper context.
If you’re unsure of context, just ask. A short “is there something I can help you with?” goes a long way.

Here’s a great infographic that provides data-driven insights into the social media timing.

Do you schedule your social media activities around periods of high engagement? Any tips?

Pardon the Dust

Authentically Social — Sun, 27 Nov 2011 02:11:29 +0000

Welcome to Authentically Social, a social media marketing consultancy connecting brands with fans. This is the brainchild of Emily Sandford, a long-time client-side marketer and MBA with a massive obsession for all things social.

We are busy putting lots of information up on this site, so sit back, explore around, and let us know what you think!