DIY PR by Penny Haywood Calder

Got some thought provoking tips on social media from Seth Liss, SunSentinel.com's news community manager. He's making the point that a lot more people are using social media now and it's harder to get noticed. But social media is still a better bet than advertising for driving business to ecommerce sites, so it's worth making the effort.

He kicks off with the obvious: drop the drab everyday stuff.

When you do post a newsworthy event, he points out that it's the details that make it more interesting. How did it happen? Where? How does that make you feel? Not easy in 140 characters, but when was really good communication ever easy?

He reminds us to avoid engaging in a 1-2-1 conversation on public sites - it's really boring for everyone else.

He also reminds us to place posts with links into context. We need to judge for ourselves whether the link is worth pursuing.

It looks as if people have had enough of blatent promotional messages from their friends. Edelman's Trust Barometer survey shows "the number of people who view their friends and peers as credible sources of information about a company has dropped from 45 percent to 25 percent since 2008." (Edelman's annual Trust Barometer survey is based on nearly 5,000 25-minute interviews with informed people aged 24-60 in 20 countries).

He suggests sharing good information is the key to being interesting. Develop interesting sidelights on your business sector to demonstrate your knowledge in action.

Plus timing is key. Most people dip into their social media accounts so they miss a lot: If you can spot patterns when key people are posting, you can predict when they are more likely to see your posts.

Finally advises: listen first, then comment. "If people know you are interested in what they have to say, they will most likely be curious about what you have to say as well."

I'd say: there's no quick fix. It's a case of listening well before you speak to have a better chance of engaging with well respected people with a good following. People who enhance your own line reputation, and in turn, that boosts your online business.

Labels: DIY PR, ecommerce, online PR, online PR and marketing, online sales, PHPR, PR, social media

It's reported that Xbox Live will integrate Facebook and Twitter directly into online gaming, bringing a whole new audience to Twitter.

Labels: Facebook, social media, Twitter

Klout now lets you see the most influential Tweeters on a topic so you can build a Twitter list of the results. The Klout Twitter app measures the influencing powers of individual Tweeps to "find the people the world listens to"

Labels: ecommerce, influence, influential, Klout, online PR, social media, Twitter

Is the real cost of 'free' social media our friends' data?

Labels: marketing, online PR, social media

Social Media Trends for 2010 from David Armano in Harvard Business Review: social media will be more popular, more mobile, and less social.

Labels: online PR, social media

Promote your brand consistently by registering an available username on the best social media sites. You can find out what's available at namechk.com/(without www).

Labels: boosting your business, business names, social media

Tom Davenport's The Next Big Thing blog at Harvard Business says forwarding info is a way of saying, "I know what you're interested in, and I'm thinking about you."

But he points out "you can go too far with forwarding" and advises against being "a mass forwarder". Many executives complain they got too many indiscriminate forwards.

He says, "Forwarding to a list (or retweeting to a list of followers, BTW) cheapens the networking value of the act. It's the online equivalent of finding a credit card offer from Capital One in your mailbox".

Labels: Harvard Business, PR, social media, social media etiquette

It's great to see that the things that really work in any form of human interaction are the lasting traits for success online. That's according to an interesting post at Top Rank Online Marketing blog called "Let's revisit these 16 rules for social media optimisation (SMO) and see which are still relevant"

Different social media sites wax and wane, but a lot of the best practice tips come down to attending to the basics of good communications: listening and reacting appropriately, plus good ideas, clearly presented.

And there're lots of good tips too.

Labels: communications, online PR, SEO, social media, Top Rank Online Marketing

It's easy enough to find comment mentioning your business name or key search terms on websites, forums and in the news using Google plus their news alerts service.

But finding the most influential tweeters on Twitter in your sphere was a bit of a hit or miss using apps like Twollow. Not any longer. Have just discovered WeFollow on Twitter and I can recommend it. It is a directory and you can use it to find entrepreneurs, celebs etc.

But use it on a keyword search and it will dig out the people who are tweeting in your sector. The results come back ranking Tweeters numerically according to the number of followers they have attracted, which gives a fair indication of their influence.

And helps you see where you are in the pecking order. You do have to register to be placed, so it's not totally comprehensive, but I suspect most people wanting to be seen as a heavyweight in a subject area will be seriously tempted to sign up.

http://wefollow.com/

Labels: ecommerce, online PR, SEO, social media, Twitter, wefollow

Twitter is like Marmite. Clients and colleagues either love or loathe it. Those that hate it inevitably say something like: who cares what you had for breakfast?

And they're right. Validating your lonely existence is not what Twitter is about.

There's plenty of rubbish on the internet, but we don't dismiss it out of hand just because of that.

We are seeing more enquiries about how to use Twitter effectively. And no wonder clients are interested. ComScore shows Twitter has gone from under 10 million monthly unique visitors to its site world-wide in February, to 32 million in April, up from 19 million in March 2009. Even more impressively, that score only includes website visitors, not the millions who access it via phones.

But if it's the early adopters of funky new social media you are after, or if you think Twitter is the cool place to be, think again! It's months since I read in the ad magazine, Revolution that the super cool had already abandoned Twitter when the corporate suits moved in for a clutch of other social media platforms.

It keeps happening. Remember all the fuss about Friends Reunited and MySpace? A lot of money piled in and they're not exactly flavour of the month now.

There are loads of new social media platforms all hoping to be the next big thing.
That doesn't stop companies engaging with the Twitterati, as long as they do engage and don't just sell: that goes down like a lead balloon in any social media format.
But it's wise to stay flexible and avoid putting all the eggs in one social media basket. There are plenty of next big things brewing.

Labels: ComScore, online marketing, PR 2.0, social media, Twitter