Should You Post About Topics Unrelated to Your Business?

Current Events and Topics

Often times, there are current events, professional sports games, political movements and other things happening in you community that are important to your customers and followers. Should you get involved in the conversation about these topics? Obviously there are are some simple examples. Sports Bars should definitely post scores, reactions and announcements about your local teams. Sports Bars' customers want this information and may even consider their favorite sports bar a source of information on this subject.

But what about a small retail store or a non-profit? When is a good time to take part in the conversations and when should should they just stick with posting about what they have going on? If you run a local non-profit group, your followers will most likely not be looking at you as a source for updates on every single game during the baseball regular season. But if the local team wins the World Series, that probably warrants an excited or congratulatory social media post.

The magnitude of the topic or event should be considered. Does this impact my organization and its followers? In the example just given, regular season baseball games don't the non-profit or community, but winning the World Series is something the whole city and community celebrate. As part of the community, you should not be left out of the celebration.

Your Social Media Experts Should Not Project Themselves

An important factor to always keep in mind is the voice of your social media accounts. Like all aspects of your communication and marketing there should be a consistent voice that is concurrent with your brand. Is your organization, young, fun and casual? Then the way you chat on social media should probably reflect this.

It often seems that one or two people are put in charge of creating the content and messages that will be posted on social media accounts. These people always need to remember they are posting as the organization and not as themselves. The wording, phrasing and expressions used should reflect the brand of the organization, not the personality of that individual.

They should also consider this when it comes to current events. The questions should be "Is my organization and my followers interested in this subject?", "Is this topic beneficial and does it positively reflect my organization?" The top or current event may be very important to the individual in charge of your social media, but it may not reflect the brand of your organization.

Marketing During the Holiday Season

Well, the holiday season is upon us. This week, in the U.S. we will celebrate Thanksgiving and Christmas is fast approaching. This is a huge time of year for retail, restaurants and other businesses as people take time off, buy gifts, spend time with family and take advantage of special offers and sales.

Holiday Marketing

Because more stores, restaurants and businesses offering specials and sales during this time of year, there is more noise to compete with. Consumers are bombarded with ads from every angle. If you want to be heard this time of year, you may consider increasing the amount of messages you publish to social media, run more events on "off" nights (such as the middle of the week) and make your promotions can't miss opportunities.

This time of the year is one of the most competitive. If you don't want to be missed, you have to make sure your offers/events are heard and you have to make them worth coming to. Remember that most every other business is also running a sale. Let people know why yours is better.

Cyber Monday

Don't forget about Cyber Monday. If you have an e-commerce website or even if you allow people to purchase gift cards or simple items online, make sure to take advantage of Cyber Monday. Every year, millions of people participate in an online shopping surge the Monday after Thanksgiving. Make sure your business or restaurant does not miss out.

Play Off the Current Events and Holidays

Back in July (in honor of the Olympics), we presented a Tuesday Tip with suggestions for playing off of current events and pop culture with your events and promotions. These type of themes promotions can be used even by small businesses and give your marketing a sense of relativeness and freshness.

Read the Full Article Now >

Monitor Twitter Keywords and Generate Leads

In the Social Conversation Area of Squareberry, there are three main sections: Search, Social Feeds and Inbox. The Search section allows you to monitor keywords on Twitter. Any keywords you add will be on the left tabs and feed in public tweets using those keywords.

Search Tips

1. Use quotation marks to search for phrases. When you are inputting a search term, you can add quotation marks to search for the whole phrase. If you search for multiple words without quotation marks, your results will include Tweets with those keywords, though the words may be separate in the tweet.

2. Add Local Terms. Use your city name, neighborhoods, or local phrases to help bring in Tweets from people talking about your specific area. There are so many Tweeters out there, you want to do the best you can to bring in the best possible leads.

Reply to New Leads

Social conversation goes both ways. Not only will you monitor what is being said, but you can easily join the conversation. Hit "Reply" next to any of the Tweets in your search and you can instantly reply to that person. Recommend your business, answer their questions or even ask for feedback.

Think of these Tweeters as leads. Everyone out there Tweeting is a potential customer or new follower. The more you engage and be part of the conversation, the more traction your can gain, people you can influence and business you can generate.

Two Daily Deals Strategies

Squareberry's Promotions feature allows you to plan, schedule and deliver coupon promotions on social media, web calendars and more. This feature can easily be used to implement your own "Daily Deals" strategies. "Daily Deals" websites have become very popular in the last year and the concept is appealing to consumers. Taking advantage of this appeal can help any business.

Publish Your Daily Deals Daily

Tongue twister? A little bit. But you get the idea. Publish your deals each day. This means people do not know what tomorrow's deal will be. You keep their focus on one deal at a time.

Here is how you can set this up in Squareberry:

• - Create a category called "Daily Deals" or something similar.
• - Set your publishing settings for this category to be "Day Of".
• - Make sure this category is not included on any of the Views you are using on your website or for your Facebook Calendar. You don't want your entire Daily Deals schedule on display.
• - Schedule Daily Deal Promotions and tag them with your Daily Deals Category

Now, all the Daily Deals promotions you schedule will publish to your social media accounts on the 'Day Of" the promotion. They will not publish before that and will not display on your calendars and widgets.

Daily Deals Calendar

Some organizations may want their deals on display ahead of time. To do this you will schedule your promotions normally in a category of your choosing. But, you may want to have a calendar or widget dedicated to your Daily Deals. This can easily be done:

• - Create a category called "Daily Deals" or something similar.
• - Create a custom Event View in the Calendars & Widgets Area and select only your Daily Deals category so that it is the only category in the View.
• Embed a widget or calendar from this new custom Event View on your website or anywhere you like.

This new calendar will display your Daily Deals category and nothing else. You could use one of the sliders on your website to grab attention or even add the List Widget to your home page to show off your upcoming "Daily Deals".

Track Real World Results - Tuesday Tip

Squareberry delivers your events and coupon promotions across a variety of channels, including social media. It is important to track how effective the events and promotions you schedule are.

What do I track in the App?

Squareberry allows you to track the views of all your events and promotions. You can also track the number of clicks on any links you send (using our URL shortener). The Dashboard provides you with analytics on Facebook demographics, graphs showing your followers, and more. All of these can help guide you and let you see how effective you are being. But, sometimes you need to track your real world results.

What Are Real World Results?

There are tons of stats and tracking systems online. But for many local organizations who run promotions and events at their own location, results are defined at the real world location. This is where they get participation and make sales. If you owned a restaurant with 5000 Twitter followers but the place was not filled on Saturday night, would you be satisfied?

Tracking your real world results is important. When you plan and schedule an event on Squareberry, it is important to track how many people end up attending that event at your location. The analytics, views, etc. provided in the app are great, but to truly know your results you need to see how much real world traffic you get.

Tracking your real world traffic and participation in promotions that you run can help you determine your plan for promotions and events in the weeks to follow. You may be seeing few people using your lunch coupons on Monday and decide to instead run a promotion for Sunday afternoon. These decisions can only be made when you know your Real World Results.

Squareberry Drives Real World Traffic

Squareberry was built to do more than send messages online. It allows you to plan, schedule and communicate your real world happenings to drive traffic to your location. Web results are great, but the goal for many organizations will always be to get REAL WORLD results.

Tuesday Tip - Fan Only Content on Facebook Pages

Facebook Pages can be a powerful platform for generating leads, driving in new customers and retaining existing customers. A customized Facebook Page is an essential aspect of that. These customized pages and extra tabs are becoming as common as standard websites and allow for powerful and creative interactions.

"Fan Only" Content

Customized Facebook Pages allow you to set content exclusive to those who have "Liked" your Facebook Page. This can be a powerful marketing tool and leads to creative and useful implementations.

With these capabilities, you could offer exclusive items to Fans. For instance, coupons or contest entry forms to those who have "Liked" your page are great ideas for generating more "Likes". The key is to make your "Welcome Page" eye catching and clear. When people visit your page they need to know why they should "Like" it.

Don't Be Too Tricky

While offering exclusive content and elements to those who are fans, it is important to not be too tricky. Remember, the Welcome Page (content for non-fans) is seen by everyone and may be the only thing someone sees. In many cases, you have one chance to get someone to "Like" your page.

Devoting your entire Welcome Page to encouraging Likes can help you get more fans, but it also can cloud your message or make exactly what you are offering unclear. A great idea is to have a video on your Welcome Page. Videos are eye catching and attention grabbing, allowing you to deliver the message you want right away. But remember, you do want to get those "Likes". At the end of your video include a "Remember to Like our Page for More Updates and Special Offers". A message like this at the end of the video is a great way to encourage more "Likes".

Best Social Media Tips from 2011

2011 Was a Great Year!

This week we are looking back at some of the best Tuesday Tips from 2011. We look forward to providing more Tuesday Tips in 2012. If you have any ideas for a Tuesday Tip or questions/suggestions for Squareberry, visit the forum and let your voice be heard: http://squareberry.com/forum/

Here are our 5 favorite Tuesday Tips 0f 2011:

• Add your location to Drive Traffic to your Events and Promotions
• Run Events + Specials That Encourage People to Bring Friends
• Schedule Messages During Events
• Repeat But Don't Be Repetitive
• Show Off Events and Promotions on Your Home Page

Thanks for reading the Tuesday Tips this year. We hope you have a great 2012! We are very excited about the enhancements coming very soon to Squareberry!

Remember you can Like us on Facebook, Follow us On Twitter, or Add Us on Google+.

Tuesday Tip - Ask Questions + Get Feedback

Questions Get You Feedback...

...and feedback is good!

Social Media and other aspects of the web have given organizations a great opportunity for getting feedback, responses and more information from their customers than ever before. Organizations should take advantage of this to gain insight and optimize the way they do business, plan events, communicate and more.

Why is feedback so great? Well, it helps you modify and perfect the way you are doing things. It is important to constantly adjust your methods to fine tune them and create the ideal experience for your customers/visitors/etc. Questions can also help promote further conversation and discussion.

Ask Questions on Social Media

Social Media is the perfect outlet for getting feedback. You could post a simple question on Twitter or LinkedIn, or use the Question feature on Facebook. Your question is seen by the people following you, who can respond instantly. Before social media, gaining feedback so instantaneously was uncommon.

Respond to Comments/Mentions with Questions

You can instigate further conversation by asking questions to people who have already commented or mentioned you on social media. For instance, someone may mention you on Twitter, saying that they are at your restaurant. Responding with a question like "Have you tried the Salmon?" does two things: it recommends something to your guest and it carries the conversation on, encouraging them to respond further and keep the conversation going.

Squareberry Tally Feature

Squareberry allows you to place a single question on every event you make. Each question comes with 3 buttons allowing viewers to answer "Yes", "No" or "Maybe". This feature allows you to get quick feedback from your viewers while adding an interactive element to your event page.

Original Source: http://squareberry.com/news/tuesday-tip-ask-questions-get-feedback/

Tuesday Tip - Run 'Daily Deals'

"Daily Deals" are the hottest thing since... well since the last hottest thing.

They are everywhere. From the industry leaders like Groupon and Living Social to retailers and travel sites. Special deals with huge money saving opportunities are very popular. Local businesses need to take advantage of this trend an capitalize on consumer demand for these kinds of deals.

Run Special Daily Coupon Promotions

Running your own daily deals is easy! With social media, local businesses have the power to instantly and effectively reach numerous people. Your followers will also spread your deals across social networks, via email and more. Your Daily Deal can spread around your local area quickly and help drive people into your real world location.

Of course, you do not have to run one every day. It all depends on your business and market. For instance if you are a restaurant, you may want to run Daily Deals Monday - Thursday to help drive more traffic on those non-weekend days. You could run a coupon promotion that says: 50% Off One Hamburger - Today Only.

A coupon with "Today Only" and a large percentage off is eye catching. It gives a sense of real savings and it has a sense of urgency. These kind of coupon promotions can help drive real world traffic.

Mobile and Social Media Coupons

Beyond social media, it is important to be communicating to mobile devices. Your daily deal promotions should be optimized for mobile devices and reach people no matter where they are. Mobile users are often already out-of-home and looking for places to go.

Squareberry's coupon promotions feature makes this easy. You can schedule promotions far in advance and watch as automated reminders about these promotions are sent across social media, email, SMS and more. Your daily promotions are also displayed on interactive website widgets and calendars. Learn more about coupon promotions here >

Original Source: http://squareberry.com/news/tuesday-tip-run-daily-deals/

Tuesday Tip - Events + Promos that Encourage Bringing More People

Events and Promotions can drive more people into your real world location. It is important, even in the digital world, to show that you have fun and interesting things happening in the REAL WORLD. After all, your end goal is to get people to come to your organization's real world location. You need to find ways to drive real world traffic through your marketing communications.

A great way to do this is by creating events and promotions that call for groups to stop by or encourage individuals to bring friends with them.

Real World Events and Promotions

Events are great. Events with a lot of attendees are better! You want your events to draw as many people as possible. A great way to maximize this is by encouraging people to come in groups. For instance, if you are hosting a "Trivia Night" you may want to tell people ahead of time to form teams or encourage their friends to come and cheer them on. Instead of one or two people coming that night, you may get a group of 5 or 6.

With coupon promotions, it is great to run specials that require more than one customer. For instance: "Buy One, Get One 40% Off". Now your coupon is driving in a pair, not just an individual. But, there is no reason to stop with pairs. You can publish coupon promotions like: "30% Drinks for Parties of 5 or More".

Mobile Marketing

Mobile Marketing is essential to driving in groups. During social nights, friends are out looking for places to go and things to do. In many cases, where they end up is not determined until right before.

Mobile devices allow followers to see you on social media, email, SMS and more. Your events and promotions need to be communicated on mobile devices. Mobile coupons are a great way to drive people straight to your location with the intent of spending money. Events show there is something to do at your organization's location. Followers easily share your happenings with friends and family as they plan where and when they are going next.

Communicating your events and promotions on mobile devices is essential to driving groups into your location.

Original Source: http://squareberry.com/news/tuesday-tip-events-promos-that-encourage-bringing-more-people/

Tuesday Tip - Snag and Share

Social Media is built for sharing. The networks connect people and places with ideas and happenings. Your organization needs and wants to be part of the conversation and sharing. In most cases, this means publishing original content about your organization. But, sharing ideas, events, and messages from relative and interesting sources is another great way to utilize Social Media. Remember, what is important is that people stay connected with you (for any reason).

Social Media Sharing

Sharing interesting information gives your followers stronger reasons to keep following you. You become more than just an organization or person, you become a source for useful and/or interesting information and ideas. Let's say you are a restaurant with a music theme. You could snag the category "Rock n Roll Star Birthdays" and show off the birthdays of legends of Rock N Roll. You can publish these as reminders on social media and more. You are now becoming a source for interesting music information that is appreciated by your followers.

This kind of interesting and fun content can help your organization spread virally. People will turn around and Retweet and share your information to their friends and followers. It can help you gain more followers and reach more people. It also shws you have fresh content and gives your followers a bit of a change from your normal events, promotions and messages.

Snagging

Snagging is a Squareberry feature which allows you to grab categories of events and promotions to display, organize and publish in your account. You can grab a holiday calendar, your favorite football team's schedule or even a category showing off the national "Food Days". Snagging makes it easy to add a lot of content to your planner quickly and with little effort. In a matter of minutes you can build a full calendar of interesting events and dates.

Original Source: http://squareberry.com/news/tuesday-tip-snag-and-share/

Google+ Launches Pages

Go to Google and search "+Pepsi" - you will immediately be taken to Pepsi's page on Google+. This is an interetsing new feature which enhances Google Search, allowing people to easily jump to an official page on Google+.

Google is now offering Google+ Pages to anything and any organization. They are designed to allow brands, products and local businesses to have a voice on Google+ and connect with their customers. Pages can even host Hangouts, allowing businesses to connect face to face with their customers. Google is sure to release more enhancements to their pages, including localization and more media/application options.

Here is an article from AdAge about the new pages: http://adage.com/article/digital/google-open-business/230862/

You can also see the official blog post from Google here: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/11/google-pages-connect-with-all-things.html

The Squareberry Team is excited to integrate with more platforms and we feel Google+ is a great opportunity for Squareberry to take advantage of. Please stay tuned for updates on Squareberry integration with Google+, as well as other leading social media platforms.

Klout Standards: Do Customers Even Care?

Klout has been the reigning industry standard in the ever-sporadic social media sphere for 3 years already. It has become a standard for measuring social influence and reach. And just like any social analytics platform, Klout has rolled out changes last month in order to determine new categories in measuring social media influence. For web-savvy netizens, a person's Klout score is a validation of how his social media accounts are reaching people and how they influence the users that they reach, but for customers who don't really care about how many followers they have on Twitter or fans on Facebook, your Klout grade is a mere number. Why? Because most people don't really have a firm idea about social influence measurement and scoring.

Like any social media tool, Klout thinks their recent changes will improve the service amidst the violent uproar by users who saw their scores plummet. It's understood when people get upset whenever their numbers are reduced, but with Klout it's a bit irrational. Last week, people were dousing Klout with a gamut of complaints regarding their scores when in fact they don't really know what goes into their Klout score. How can you be seriously disappointed when your Klout score is reduced but you don't even know how your score is really computed? The same goes with how Google doesn't really divulge how it's algorithm works. That is why SEO specialists keep trying to nail the search giant's algorithm.



Some of you might agree that a Klout score is simply feeding a person's ego online. A mere validation that you belong to the "who's who" in social media circles if your Klout score is high. No wonder Klout has been answering tons of queries and complaints regarding scores. So are the changes in Klout scoring crucial in reaching your target niche and turning users into potential customers?

If you have great content on your Tumblr blog which are being reblogged by other Tumblr bloggers but you don't even share your posts on Twitter or Facebook, then you reach people through Tumblr alone even if you don't have enough retweets or shares. Should your Klout score be as high with those who tweet their blog post instead? Or for instance, you tweet your blog post which is retweeted by 10 followers that have at least 20 followers each. On the other hand, you share the blog post on Facebook as well and is shared by 5 of your friends that has at least 4k friends to share it with. Can you easily pinpoint which social account is better in terms reaching potential customers whenever you share your content? The idea here is that not every social media account is really significant to one's Klout score. If your reach isn’t as influential as your other social media account then a drop in your Klout score shouldn’t come as a surprise.

Social influence measurement is a bit tricky, it's like acupuncture or astrology which doesn't have any firm scientific claims to prove it's validity and feasibility. You can't turn people into instant customers if they are clueless about something. And it doesn't really help educating people about something that keeps on changing. Even if it's the most widely-used social analytics tool in the planet today.

Tuesday Tip - Scheduled "Real Time" Messages

Social Media is all about NOW! People want to find out what is happening, what is being discussed and who is doing what. With more and more people using app friendly smart phones, the world has become even more instant.

Scheduled Social Media Messages

While you may be planning your social communications far in advance, it does not mean that things can not sound current and spontaneous. It's all about what you say and how you say it. For instance, a message sent by a restaurant may read: "Things are going great at our weekend brunch, you still have time to stop on in. Brunch is served for two more hours. Stop by!" This message could have been scheduled two months in advance to go out precisely at 11:00 AM on a Sunday morning.

Anyone seeing the message would think it was written that Sunday by someone at the restaurant, when in fact it was planned and scheduled far in advance. This message, of course, coincides with a real world happening that is taking place at the restaurant. Its wording is in real time and it has a call to action. People who see the message no exactly what is going on and what they can do.

Social Media + Mobile

These "real time" messages are perfect for social media audiences who are constantly looking to be updated with new and current information. In the world of smart phones, Facebook and Twitter mobile usage is huge. You can reach people who are already out of their homes looking for places to eat and shop or activities to participate in.
"Real time" messages give the sense thats someone is there. There is activity and life at your location. People want to go places that are actively. Drive them in with your scheduled social media messages.
With Squareberry, they may have seen an automated reminder about your event or promotion days before. They knew about it but for some reason had not gone. Your real time message can drive it home and drive them in to your location.

Essential Points in Improving Community Management

As brands enter the world of social business, community management is becoming one of the most used buzzwords. Marketers now view the Internet as a market where they can increase brand awareness and promote products by leveraging social media networks. Facebook has become a destination-location for both merchants and consumers as well. In fact, some business owners think that Facebook pages are the new websites (SEO specialists will disagree!), but the way Facebook has paved the way for enhanced communication and portable medium for brand information made it more than a website. Facebook fan pages offer more than what a regular website can do to establish a business' online presence.

A brand's Facebook page puts a premium on user engagement and community management. Both are essential aspects when it comes to marketing. Community management is one of the essentials in today’s public relations. It elegantly combines customer relations management and brand development in many ways. Veteran community managers know that every comment, suggestion, or rant of a customer is valuable and can help a brand improve in a significant way. Multi-national brands like Dell and Gatorade are two companies that augmented their social media outreach. Dell launched the IdeaStorm blog after the controversial Dell Hell, and then came up with its Social Media Listening Command Center to serve its billions of customers who talk about Dell online.


Photo via Brian Solis

Today, more organizations and local businesses are realizing the sheer importance of enhanced community management using their social media accounts. Obviously, Facebook consumes most of the time of users who go online. One of my colleagues at Squareberry even mentioned that for most people - Facebook is the Internet. I bet most of you will agree. Without a doubt, people are flocking the Web to log in on their Facebook accounts. And whenever a user logs in on his Facebook, it's always an opportunity for every brand to catch a potential customer's attention. Community managers are the bridge of between brands and customers. It's not enough that you use a monitoring tool like Radian6 or Squareberry. The community manager is the linchpin in improving Facebook Page Management.

Here are some essential points in supercharging your social media account whether it's your Facebook page or Twitter account:

Encourage Thought-Sharing

Content has always been the fuel of the Internet. Without content, the Web will be a desolate place. As user-generated content or UGC becomes valuable to brands, community managers should entice fans and followers to increase brand mentions by sharing photos, videos, and most importantly, thoughts.

Humanize your Page

People always want something to discuss about. Feed them relevant content and they will easily respond with substantial feedbacks. The more they feel that a brand interacts with them, the more user engagement is increased.

Think like a Publisher

Feed your followers with "branded content", this will pave the way for their contacts to notice what they're Liking or Sharing. Thus, extending brand awareness outside of your followers' network. Branded content begets user-generated content as well!

Offer your Fans "Control"

Restrictions on Facebook pages is censoring user-generated content. You have to understand that your Facebook page is like a customer service center where every suggestion or rant should be attended to and approached in an objective manner.

Turning Lemons into Lemonade: Will It Work for BlackBerry?

Earlier this month, BlackBerry users were stunned by the massive service outage. RIM customers particularly in Europe and South America have experience difficulties in accessing messages and some email delays as well. Canadian-based RIM said that the huge outage was caused by a certain bug, most pundits speculate that RIM's saturated email system is the culprit for the system to collapse. After RIM fixed the issue, they tried to make amends with their customers by offering them a wide-array of premium apps for free. Aside from that, customers will get a month's trial of technical support service and current customers will get one month extension.

Free apps? Is this enough to easen the pains of the giant lemon that RIM threw at its billions of customers? Reality checked, damage has been done. While BlackBerry has been the only reliable and instrumental communications tool during the Virginia quake back in August, customers are an unforgiving lot, customers are to be pleased and not to be asked for sympathy. Remember Dell Hell? A couple of years ago, digital journalist Jeff Jarvis blogged about the lemon he encountered with a Dell laptop. Dell's customer service was poor at that time, they ignored Jarvis. Little that they know that Jarvis' snowball started rolling which eventually turned into an avalanche of online rants. And before Dell knew it, Dell's blog post sparked a movement dubbed as "Dell Hell" which has every customer throwing their complaints about their Dell gadgets. Twitter was still an "infant" at that time, and Dell had no practical medium to use to address every complaint there is on the Web.

After months of enduring Dell Hell, the computer giant came up with Direct2Dell and IdeaStorm blog both of which aims to empower the customer while enhancing customer service. Arguably, Dell is the pioneer of social media command centers which puts a premium in customer-company collaboration. Even CEO Michael Dell started a blog so he can interact with customers by using his blog as a podium for his personal insights. Dell has redefined customer relations management by turning a lemon into a lemonade stand. So what can RIM learn from the Dell Hell ordeal? Check out the list below:

Admit your Fault

Customers don't care if you're the best mobile service provide in the planet. They always expect you to deliver, but most importantly, you have to admit if a flaw like a service outage happens. Ignore a customer's rant and tons will walk away.

Offer a Consolation

People appreciate free stuff, but if you're offering free stuff as a consolation, always assure that the freebie is useful enough to make them forget your mistake. Also, a consolation means that your apology is really sincere, and that makes a customer special.

Assess Consumer Behavior After A Lemony Event

Always remember your customer is either your bestfriend or worst enemy. But most importantly, customers are your walking ads so better to monitor what your customers are saying about your brand on social media networks.

Improve your Command Center

Establishing your accounts across social media platforms is very crucial. Let an experienced community manager handle your Facebook pages and Twitter accounts, a community manager that knows how to calm flashmobs knows how his social media tactics very well.

Make Sure It Won't Happen Again

The title says it all, always evaluate what caused the error whether it's on the technical area or a CRM issue. If you make the same mistake twice, then you are your own problem.

Tuesday Tip - Promote Your Complete Online Presence

It is important to promote all of the various places your organization is mentioned, listed, referenced or promoted online. You never know how someone interested in your organization will find you or where they will come from. Having a consistent and well kept complete online presence can help drive real world traffic from all corners of the internet.

These online locations may include:

• Review Sites: Yelp / TripAdvisor
• Search Engines: Google Places / Bing Maps
• Professional Listing Sites: Manta / Angie's List
• Social Media Sites: Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, Gowalla

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Links Back to Your Website

External links back to your website are an essential aspect of ranking higher in search engines. Having your organization listed across various websites and online areas gives you more links back to your website.

Get More Followers in More Places

Have more Facebook "Likes" and less Twitter followers? Have a bunch of Twitter followers but nobody "Liking" your Facebook Fan Page? It is fairly common to have a lopsided presence one way or the other. It is important to leverage your followers to gain more followers across social media sites.

If you have a strong Twitter following, send a message encouraging people to connect on Facebook. If you have a lot of fans on Facebook but a small number of Twitter followers, encourage your Facebook fans to get on Twitter. Rather than just asking, it is a good idea to offer exclusive content or promotions to people on certain networks.

For instance, you could post an update on Facebook which says: "We will be giving away a free gift card on Twitter this weekend! Follow us on Twitter to be part of the contest!". Special promotions or offerings like this can help drive followers from one social network to another.

Encourage Reviews

Reviews are a very important aspect of your online presence. They can help with SEO, drive new customers in and keep your reputation clean. Numerous bad reviews can turn away new people and hurt your online image. It is important to encourage people to write positive reviews about your organization online.

Rather than just sending a message asking people to review you, you should make it easy. Find your listing on a review site and send the direct link out to your followers on social media. Make it so easy that all they have to do is click and write a short review. Not everyone will do this, but the more you try the more results you will get to improve your online presence.

People Talking About Metric: What’s The Real Score?

Facebook launched the newest addition to its Insights Page Analytics called People Talking About. The People Talking About metric enables users and page admins to view a fan page's various interactions such as Likes, Mentions, Photo-tagging ,and Sharing a post which are all fused into a single metric. While Google now thinks like a "publisher" with the launch its new content-enhacing tools, Facebook's making marketers think like publishers through the People Talking About metric.

Like I've said on one of my previous blog posts, the new Facebook metric seeks to bring out more quality content out of brand’s fan pages because any user can easily view if the page's engagement is doing well. But as the new metric rolled out last week, I have yet to see the value the new metric brings to page admins and community managers.

Where's The Value Then?

As much I don't want to make a comparison, whenever Google Analytics releases a new metric it presents its value right away. Does the same goes for Facebook? Another column called "Virality" will be added on the Insights page that will gauge the reach of a particular content posted on a fan page. You can attain Virality figures when you have the numbers of People Talking About then divide it to the content's reach.

The great thing about this Virality metric is if it can let page admins track the posts that bring more user engagement and increase interactivity levels within the page. Page admins can easily ascertain which videos entice more conversations or blog entries are shared the most.

More Content to Increase Engagement

As businesses become more social, Facebook page content isn't limited to what a company announces, promotes, or shares. User-generated content is what fuels every social media platform. But for pages to receive a plethora of UGC fuel, community managers should always be the linchpin of a conversation.

While posting a photo or sharing a video could merit a Like or Share, it's a must for community managers to increase user engagement levels through thought-sharing. Why? While Facebook mentioned that People Talking About metric will only classify every comment whether positive or negative as one, Sentiment Analytics is a crucial factor in determining consumer behavior towards a brand.

My Take As A Page Admin

One of my colleagues mentioned that People Talking About will pressure page admins to increase interactivity. It's true, getting 10k fans every week to increase fan page count is already passe. Marketers and community managers should begin thinking like publishers because content triggers UGC which fuels virality in order to increase brand awareness.

My only concern is that, how a page admin can identify who shares content or mentions the brand in order to generate a comprehensive demographics report. I know this brings another privacy issue to the table. Anyway, for page admins and community managers, I'd like to leave a message in relation to the People Talking About metric - Is the right target niche talking about your brand?