For 2012 we’re also blending some short and sweet video blogs into our mix. Check this latest one focusing on the Importance of Listening – a key component for social media success.

So the greatly anticipated ‘Timeline’ is here folks, get ready to see a barrage of negative status updates from your many Facebook friends complaining about the hefty change.

The Facebook Timeline will be featuring on your profile whether you would like it to or not and the social media gods are giving us 7 days to preview your profile before it goes live – giving you some very much needed time to clean up your profile. 

How the timeline works is like this – The new Facebook profile is divided into two main columns, with a line down the middle representing the passage of time. The passage of time throws up any saved status updates, friendships, photos, events or wall comments – going right back to the birth of your profile. Everything is there and everything can be viewed by your friends until you decide to ‘hide it from your timeline’. We, the Facebook public, are being encouraged to add life events which were not captured by Facebook, in particular those that occurred before users joined the social network.

Whatever you love and whatever story you want to tell, you can add that to your Timeline.

Your profile now also contains a large banner that Facebook are calling your ‘cover photo’ – this is a large image, of your choice, that remains public to everyone on Facebook, including non friends – so choose wisely.

If you’re like many of us at Carvill Creative and have been on Facebook for what seems like forever – I would suggest you put aside a good couple of hours to sift through your Facebook past and ensure you’re happy for it to be regurgitated to your present.

Get ready to click “Hide from Timeline” a fair amount in these hours  You can find this very important button under the “Edit or Remove” pencil icon that appears when you hover your mouse over the top right corner of every Timeline post. You can remove anything on your timeline that you would rather people didn’t see by simply using this button.

Remember, it’s not just  photos that Timeline digs out and highlights— it’s every inappropriate status update you’ve ever posted and every message your so called  university ‘friends’  may have written on your wall at some ungodly hour.

You can also remove or hide posts through your “Activity Log,” which presents everything posted on your profile in a more compact, easy to understand form.

In order to ensure that all your Facebook albums have the privacy settings still intact – visit your albums page and look at the tiny icon on the right hand side of each album. This is where you will have the option to change the privacy on your albums; Facebook explains what each symbol means and should ensure that pictures are only seen by the right people.

If you are concerned about what is appearing publicly on your profile then just opt to, ‘View As …’

On your Facebook Timeline, you should see a little gears icon with an arrow next to it on the far right. Click on it, and then choose the “View As” option. This will let you look at your profile as if you were a stranger or let you pick a specific person to see what is viewable to them on your profile.

If you want to get the timeline now, simply click here ‘ https://www.facebook.com/about/timeline

Or you can wait until you see an announcement at the top of your home page.

Enjoy the post… Vikki

Vikki Mills is Social Media and Marketing Executive at  Carvill Creative – the online visibility experts. A digital marketing and design agency based in Maidenhead, Berkshire.  The agency covers all aspects of online visibility – covering social media marketing and social media training, user focused website planning and conversion focused website design

After reading a brilliant article called ’12 Social Media stats that will rock your world’ – I’ve taken 10 of the most rocking figures and shown you what they could mean for your business.

1.      Over 70% of the internet population are using social networks

• This doesn’t just include Twitter and Facebook and it highlights that social media is now considered mainstream – so don’t ignore it

2.      In Europe 50% of people are a member of just one social network 

• Find out where your customers and clients tend to hang out – is it Facebook? Twitter? Youtube? Or is it all three? Find it and utilise it.     

• Don’t be cliquey in your social networking – incorporate newcomers to the group.  Just because they are new doesn’t mean they’re not good. Remember what Facebook did to MySpace – blew them out of the water!

 4.      Peak usage for Twitter is between 2pm and 6pm

• This is quite a small window so remember these times and ensure that you tweet within them.

 5.      The average Facebook session lasts 37 minutes.

• This is a relatively short time indicating that users have a short attention span when it comes to reading content online. Keep your content – short and interesting.

6.      36% of people have posted about a brand on social networking sites.

• This means that people don’t just talk about their cheese sandwiches and which movie they saw last night on social media. Large proportions are talking about brands – their products, services and customer service. If your customers are talking about your brand then make sure you’re listening.

7.      42% of social media users have actually had a conversation with a brand via social networks.

• This figure indicates that social media users are not afraid to contact brands over social networks. If your brand is on social media do you have the resources in place to ensure that 42% of people are being answered and not ignored?

8.      The average number of Facebook contacts per users is 133 (on Twitter it’s 59)

• While these figures look small remember that ‘people know people’ and that small numbers turns into frighteningly large numbers when the 6 degrees of separation rule demonstrates how friends of friends can balloon your reach. That’s why it’s important to get customer service spot on as bad news travels far and wide.

9.      Only 15% of social media users have been contacted by a company after posting a negative experience.

• This shocking statistic gives you a chance to stand out from the crowd – Listen to your customers and provide a level of customer service that others are failing to offer. 

10.   79% of consumers have passed on a negative experience and 82% will stop doing business with a company because         of a negative experience

• Getting it right clearly matters. Social media can help you turn these potential defectors into your most vocal supporters

There’s no doubt about it – 2012 looks like the year of the Tipping Point for businesses seriously looking to engage with social media in the UK.

I’m not saying that we are anywhere near mainstream adoption, but the ‘it’s just a fad’ response is fast becoming a distant memory for organisations of all sectors, shapes and sizes.

However, how organisations go about adoption is key.

If we view social media platforms as far reaching communication channels, then that poses the question to organisations as to how they can leverage these channels to deliver on business objectives.

Let’s face it – the remit of any marketing strategy is to deliver on the business objectives – to ultimately drive activity to achieve results that make sense for the business.

Therefore, social media isn’t something an organisation does just for the sake of doing social media, (because everyone else is!) but rather to deliver business on objectives – hopefully as part of a well defined marketing strategy.

Business owners, CEOs and marketing directors should be thinking ‘how’ can we plug social media into what we currently do to maximise reach and realise objectives etc. However, probably due to eagerness to get onto the channels, often what we see is businesses diving into social media without any real thinking or planning.

This simple model (adapted from the brilliant book by Olivier Blanchard, Social Media ROI)

Outlines how one should ideally be approaching social media.

Social Media Planning - Plan, Listen, Analyse - before you Engage

So to summarise and get back to the point I started with, plan, listen, analyse before you engage.

@Michelle Carvill is owner and Marketing Director at Carvill Creative – the online visibility experts. A digital marketing and design agency based in Maidenhead, Berkshire.  The agency covers all aspects of online visibility – covering social media marketing and social media training, user focused website planning and conversion focused website design.

For marketing and social media advice – view the Carvill Creative Blog

The art of retweeting a tweet seems simple enough. On most applications you can simply press the ‘retweet button’ and you’re away…or at least you think you’re away….

However it seems that hundreds of competent tweeters get this simple action very wrong.

In the midst of tweeting excitement, many people tend to forget that they need to tailor the tweet in order to include the entire tweet content plus your ‘RT @handle’.

If you fail to amend your tweet by condensing a few letters or emitting a word or two – you are in great danger of going over your 140 characters and therefore missing out your vital ingredient – your hyperlink.

If you are using Twitter on your android or iphone – it’s less easy to commit this crime. The Twitter app on smartphone really dumbs things down for us and we are given the option to simply retweet the tweet as it is – ‘no RT @handle’ needed. Twitter.com actually allows for us to do this as well.

However if you are a Hootsuite user, for example, things aren’t so simple. You just need to remember to amend the tweet and allow enough character space to write ‘RT @handle’ and then include all the tweet content. It’s also worth noting that most tweets will need some editing as the majority of tweets take up the required character space.

When you hit that retweet button in Hootsuite – it very kindly takes the tweet for you and adds the ‘RT @handle’ in front of your tweet  -  however, that doesn’t mean to say that the whole message will now fit into 140 characters. If you just then hit send – you’ve most probably chopped off the end of your tweet and therefore your link, which is a waste of time for everyone involved!

We hope this small complaint on our part will help to stop people getting over excited with their retweeting and delivering half messages. Please help to spread the word by sharing on this blog  – in the hope to eradicate retweeting errors.

Enjoy the post… Vikki

Vikki Mills is Social Media and Marketing Executive at  Carvill Creative – the online visibility experts. A digital marketing and design agency based in Maidenhead, Berkshire.  The agency covers all aspects of online visibility – covering social media marketing and social media training, user focused website planning and conversion focused website design.

As one that loves to blog to share my experiences and tips, then I thought I’d create a blog post that brings together my year of blogging in 2011. Social Media has really come to life for all businesses great and small during 2011 and no doubt 2012 will prove to be a very interesting year.

I’ll be blogging as usual throughout 2012 sharing my news, views, tips and advice – but for now, in case you missed any of them, I’ve handpicked some of my favourite posts. Not all of them made the cut (we really did do a lot of blogging last year) so I hope you enjoy the roundup from 2011.

Don’t forget the business basics… the product has to stand up

Key business basics – this blog post focuses on the fact that your product really should be great. You really can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.

Social Media – 12 Questions Answered

I was approached by a business student who was writing her dissertation on how social media channels were impacting marketing.  This post is rather lengthy, but covers my answers to questions such as; What are the reasons behind social networking sites?,  Are social networking sites important and why do people use them? Do they increase business and engagement? Are social networking sites a cost effective way of advertising a business? And more.

Are you promoting your good points? Testimonials, videos, reviews…it all counts!

Many businesses miss out on promoting their great points. We have positive statements and gems waiting to be shared. This post looks at how you can be leveraging the ‘Recommendation Generation’.

5 Social Media Myths well and truly Busted

This was a popular post and resonated with many. I often meet people that say that social media is great because it’s all free. Oh yeah? This post looks at that myth and others.

Do you know the keywords for your business?

When I’m working with clients or running social media training workshops we always cover the importance of ‘keywords’. Effectively, they are your online dna for your business. The words people type into search engines to find your products or services. Know them and use them wisely. This post shows you why and how.

Twitter Stats and Trivia

We all love a bit of trivia and stats are usually pretty compelling reading. This post plays up to those curious needs we all have. Gems such as the lifetime of a tweet etc.

Creating a personalised Twitter background

This post does what is says in the title. It’s the facts and sizes about creating a personalised Twitter background. Some of the logistics for this may need to be reworked in line with Twitter’s new identity – but the ideas around what you can be sharing are still relevant.

Social Media Marketing – Take it seriously or leave it alone!

They are important and far reaching marketing channels – so in the wrong hands, things can get dangerous.  This post takes a look at how you can be leveraging them effectively.

A Practical Introduction to Google Adwords

At Carvill Creative, whilst we certainly don’t specialise in Adwords, it’s important that we understand how it all works. This post is exactly as it says, a practical intro – some do’s and don’ts for successful online advertising campaigns.

In the world of social media – don’t underestimate the power of your profile picture

First impressions count – so be sure you’re making the right impression.

Facebook for Business

In my humble opinion 2012 will be the year businesses (b2b and b2c) really start to leverage Facebook. This quick post offers a bit of a scene setter.

Facebook Statistics that will convert you for Life

Vikki, our lead social media exec, contributed a few posts to our blog last year – this is one of hers, sharing stats and facts about the mighty Facebook.

Blogging – a few fast tips and a definition to clear things up

Blogging is central to successful social media activity. It’s effectively a quick and effective way to share unique, compelling content. This post offers some tips for all to consider.

Content is King. So…what’s your content strategy?

Most businesses don’t have a content strategy in place. Do you? This post covers the importance of content in the social media age.

Cutting through the noise on Twitter – and capturing key conversations

With over 200 million tweets a day how do you find the conversations that are relevant to you? This post shares the why and how.

How to be a good Tweeter – some do’s and don’ts

There’s always something new to learn – and so we keep on sharing.

When did you last check your website’s performance? 5 Critical Checks

40% of websites get zero traffic – and of those that do, 70% of consumers don’t trust them due to poor design and user interface. How effective is your site?

How To Make the Most of your Facebook Business Page – get those ‘likes’ in

Getting people to ‘like’ your page is the first step, as once you’ve got them, you’ve then got to keep them engaged. This post looks at some marketing tactics to assist.

5 Key Elements for Success when Outsourcing Social Media Marketing Activity

It’s an important relationship so be sure you’re in for a successful partnership by heeding the advice in this post.

Creating Social Media Guidelines for your Business

How do you manage a crisis and who is responsible for what? As businesses become ‘social’ a whole new set of guidelines are required to safeguard and manage social engagement effectively.

Leveraging LinkedIn…very simply, it’s about harnessing the relationships you already have

Many people I meet say they have a LinkedIn profile. When I ask if it’s 100% complete it’s rare that they answer in the positive. This post offers tips for getting your profiles in tip top condition and leveraging LinkedIn as a business resource.

Are you down with the Twitter Lingo?

Bit of fun this one. There really is some creative language creation going on around Twitter.  This post was our most Tweeted in 2011 with 226 tweets via the blog.

Content, Creativity and Ingenuity 3 Key Drivers for Successful Social Media Engagement

One huge thing I love about social media is that fact that it drives organisations to be get more creative – this post looks at just that.

Social Media Fears:  But what if someone says something awful about us?

They’re going to be saying it whether your on social media or not – so my advice is start listening.

LinkedIn – Have you got your Products and Services in the Spotlight?

This post looks at the new spotlight feature for LinkedIn company profiles. Certainly worth doing.

Social Media Management – a Practical look at Daily Twitter Activity

We’re often asked ‘How can I fit social media into an already busy day’ – and this post looks at just how you can.

Measuring Social Media.  My Mantra is… ‘Measure What Matters’

Businesses are obsessed about measuring social media activity – more so with social than with any other form of marketing activity I’ve ever known. This post looks at ensuring you’re measuring the right things.

Ten reasons someone might unfollow you on Twitter

There are lots of reasons I’m sure, but this post focuses on some of the more obvious reasons.

And then finally, two blog posts for the Christmas week in December – a silly (yet hopefully) eye catching titled Twit(ch)hikers Guide to the Twitteralaxy Part 1 and Part 2. Effectively, a guide to surviving and leveraging Twitter – covering 20 tried and tested tips.

Here’s to a fun filled, happy, bloggingtastic and healthy 2012 .

From me and the team @carvillcreative

As promised in Part 1 of the TwitHikers Guide to the Twitteralaxy – here’s part two. Another 5 Must Know Twitter Tips – for newbies, seasoned Tweeters and everyone in between…

Twitter Tip 6 – Tune on when your audience is tuned in

The way people use social networks is changing all the time.

With the progression of mobile and smart phones – recent research from CommScore, Nielson and Forrestor – all reports that by 2014 mobile browsing will have taken over desktop browsing. (Good article here from @mashable ).

Research tells us that 48% of mobile usage is being used for social networking – and that level of momentum is having an impact on the time of day people interact with ‘social’.  There’s an increase in ‘commuter’ segments – 6.30 am til 8.30 am, lunchtimes and then post office 5.30 til 8 pm.

Do some analysis using tools like The Archivist or TwentyFeet to get an understanding of when your audience and influencers are tuned in, tweeting and sharing.

Schedule tweets to ensure they coincide with these key times – and of course, if you have an audience based overseas – be sure to take that into consideration too.

Twitter Tip 7 – Know your Keywords

Keywords are effectively like the DNA of your online visibility. What are the words people type into Google, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube when searching for your products or services? If you don’t know, you really should.

Do your keyword analysis and then be sure that you share those keywords in everything you do online.

Twitter Tip 8 – Use Hashtags Intelligently

If we stick with the premise that Tweets should be conversational – then creating a tweet which is 90% Hashtags is not great practice.  Yes, Hashtags can be brilliant anchors for focusing conversations around (particularly good for connecting people at conferences or events).

But ramming your 140 characters full of #marketing #strategy #socialmedia #snow #analytics – quite generic terms is going to achieve what exactly?

So ok, you may get on the radar of someone that is tracking #socialmedia – but what are they going to think about your conversational skills?

Over packing tweets with hashtags is a bit spammy. Used intelligently hashtags are purposeful – so use them when relevant.

Twitter Tip 9 – Decide Business or Pleasure

Having a relaxed conversational tone of voice works well when we’re conversing both offline and online. You should be tweeting as you talk (without expletives! ).

However, what determines the tone of voice you use, the style of tweeting and the content you share must be led by the ‘objectives’ of what you are using the Twitter thread for.

For example, if my objective is to grow awareness of being an expert cat groomer – and sharing my authority in that space, to broaden awareness and build share of mind as the expert that people naturally think of and refer to – then I’m going to ensure that the activity in my Twitter thread is ‘on message’ at all time.

Yes, I can be personable, friendly and communicate my personality. But are people bothered that I’ve just booked a holiday or that I’m having a cup of tea? Er…no.

If your Twitter thread is for business – then think objectively. Yes, be conversational – but make those conversations purposeful.  Sharing to 500 people that you’re bored and having a cup of tea is a waste of such a far reaching broadcast medium. It may turn off some key influencers or potential new customers. So decide your objective and retain focus.

In an online socially connected environment such as Twitter, you are what you tweet – so make yourself valuable.

Twitter Tip 10 – Just Say No to Autoresponders

There’s nothing more ‘non targeted’ and ‘non personal’ than receiving an automated ‘thank you for following me’ message.

And when it’s coupled with ‘Thanks for the follow – now check out my Facebook page and get 100 free tips on blah blah’ – that really isn’t using Twitter for the wonderful conversational channel that it is.

What we advise is that when you check out who’s following you – if you feel it relevant and purposeful to respond – then do so.

I may say something like: Just looked at your tweets – great to connect, I’m looking forward to sharing.

Or indeed – if I see something they’re sharing in the threads that I wish to comment on, I will. Eg: “Liked your tweet about social and mobile, where did you get those stats?”

This shows the person I’m connecting with that I’m engaged, interested – and it opens up a dialogue.

Now I may not get the opportunity and indeed it may not be relevant to personally connect with everyone that follows – but if I think I’ve got a potential highly relevant influencer on my hands, then I want to get that dialogue going asap.

What better way than to ‘turn off’ such a potentially valuable asset than to send them a droning autoresponder.

So that’s it. If you missed Part 1 of the Twit(ch)hikers Guide to the Twitteralaxy you can find it here.

Together with heaps of blog posts via our Carvill Creative blog.  There are over 200 posts in the blog – so be sure to search out your subject, and you’ll find masses of relevant posts.

Best wishes

Michelle

@Michelle Carvill is owner and Marketing Director at Carvill Creative – the online visibility experts. A digital marketing and design agency based in Maidenhead, Berkshire.  The agency covers all aspects of online visibility – covering social media marketing and social media training, user focused website planning and conversion focused website design.

For marketing and social media advice – view the Carvill Creative Blog

For me Twitter has always been an exciting place to look, listen, connect and share.

However, I am aware from the dozens of social media training workshops I’ve held over the past year with literally
hundreds of people both via Business Training Made Simpleand in-house – Twitter is the one social network that seems to fox everyone.

“I want to use Twitter but I ‘don’t get it’” – is a recurring theme.  As too is – “but, what do I say…”?

So here are just 5 of my top Twitter tips for getting to grips with Twitter in an effective way for 2012.  More Tips to follow in Part 2.

Twitter Tip 1 – Strike the 80/20 balance

Of the 200 million tweets a day – it’s evident that most Twitter users are behaving badly.

Pushing links to self promote is fine – and if part of your overall thinking and planning, perfectly acceptable. However, don’t make ‘link pushing’ the only thing you do on Twitter.  Twitter enables continuous conversation – but effective conversations have to be two way (or multi-dimensional). When starting out with Twitter consider yourself in a strange land. You’ve no idea who lives in the land, are they friendly?, what language do they speak?, who can help you find your way and point you in the right direction?, who can you make friends with? – you get the picture.

In this strange land you’ve entered, would you then stand in the middle of the market square and start shouting about who you are and what you do – randomly ranting, and without even knowing if anyone is listening?

Nope, firstly, you’d use your ears and eyes and listen and watch – suss out the space, listen in to what people are talking about, what are their issues, what are they looking for – can you perhaps help them out too?

We’re equipped with two eyes, two ears and one mouth for a reason – survival. Use them accordingly for your online survival too.

Respect the channels for what they are. They’re not ‘bill boards’.  Get the self promotion balance right – aim for 80% conversation and 20% promotion.

Twitter Tip 2 – Focused Listening rather than Unfocused Publishing

In keeping with Tip1, Twitter is a rich repository for research and listening-in to the sentiment and needs of people.

If you’re using Twitter effectively, as well as ‘conversing and sharing’, you need to be listening in for relevant conversations and needs.  After all, far better to respond to someone, perhaps sharing a link to a recent resource you’ve created or a landing page etc – rather than constantly pushing out noise that isn’t relevant to the audience at large.

Make sure you’re tracking keywords and sentiments that you could respond to in a more targeted and purposeful way.  (Hootsuite is great for this, but other apps are around too to help you track, even basic Google Alerts).

Listening in overcomes the question “but what should we tweet” – if you’re answering a question, or pointing someone in the right direction or connecting them to someone you think could be useful to them, or sharing a blog post, (yours or someone elses) – then what you publish won’t be some random rantings about a new product launch – but instead a purposeful answer to a genuine need.

Twitter Tip 3 – Grow the Trust

Following Tip 1 and 2, you’ll start to grow an understanding of who to follow and growing your followers by proving useful and having genuine conversations with others.

Building a good relationship takes time and nuture.  We’ve all got a ‘friend’ that every time we hear from them they want something from us – and how much do we just love hearing from them?

Don’t become the ‘friend’ that is constantly asking something of others – “please RT,  pls sign this now, take this survey, poll”. Again, it’s perfectly acceptable to do this occasionally – but don’t make it your mantra. Consider how you’d play it ‘offline’ and remember that Twitter is all about two way conversations.  You want to give your followers reasons to know you, like you, share your content – and ultimately generate new business.  But the new business generation may be sometime down the line.

What’s important is that you grow your ‘share of mind’ in a positive and purposeful way.  So when they need to find someone they can trust to deliver a service you provide – you’re top of their mind.

Twitter Tip 4 – Have an Objective

“Yeah, I’ve set up a Twitter account but I never use it – not sure what to do with it”.  I hear this all the time.  Often it’s branded – and out there for all to see – great PR, not!

Ask yourself – would you randomly send out a direct mail campaign without thinking about your audience, messaging, call to action – and importantly, objective?   All campaigns should be about delivering on the objectives of the business. We don’t just do them for doing’s sake. And the same goes for ‘social’.

Before you dive into setting up a Twitter account ask yourself what the purpose of the Twitter account is. Is it customer support, brand awareness,  a specific short-term campaign, garnering support, lead generation?

The objective of the Twitter thread determines everything you do with it, right from the name you use, the picture the bio, the people you target, your influencers – pretty much everything. So don’t start out blindly.

Think, plan and learn before you dive in.

Twitter Tip 5 – Quality over Quantity

At the beginning of every training working, I ask each delegate what they are looking to get out of the day. A recurring theme on the Twitter Strategy workshop is ‘to grow the number of followers’.

This is indeed a credible and relevant objective for Twitter. However, big warning here – focus more on the quality of your followers than the quantity.

What’s the point of having 10,000 followers if not one of them is engaged with you and listens to what you have to say.  They won’t be sharing, hearing or engaging with you.  Therefore, what you are sharing is totally ineffectual. It’s just noise.

Growing a targeted, engaged and purposeful audience takes time.  To own an engaged audience means they’ve got to grow trust in you – and have time to learn that what you’re sharing is 90% great stuff. Therefore, when you say something, they’re more likely to be tuning in.

These are the right type of audience to acquire – key influencers, who, when you share something of relevance – they share it with their audiences, extending the reach, leveraging their audiences and growing more awareness for you.

So, to summarise:

•  Remember the social platforms don’t behave like traditional platforms. It’s not about ‘pushing’ messages out one way – but rather, having a conversation, one to one or one to many.
•  Leverage the social channels to listen in to the needs of people. Social channels enable this like no other traditional media, so don’t waste the opportunity to listen and learn by only spouting forth.
•  Unless you’re Lady Gaga – it’s not about having huge followings – but more about finding the right following.

More to follow in The Twit(ch)hikers Guide to the Twitalaxy  – Part 2.

Meanwhile, do share your views and tips with me too – I’m all ears…

Best wishes for a happy Christmas and a fun filled and prosperous 2012.

Michelle

@Michelle Carvill is owner and Marketing Director at Carvill Creative – the online visibility experts. A digital marketing and design agency based in Maidenhead, Berkshire.  Covering all aspects of online visibility –  marketing strategy, social media marketing and management, social media consulting and training, user focused website planning and conversion focused website design.

For marketing and social media advice as it happens – subscribe to the Carvill Creative Blog

If you’ve noticed that your Twitter followers fluctuate in numbers, perhaps there’s something you’re doing wrong. You might be turning tweeters on and off without realising it.

Take a look at our top ten twitter sins and maybe you’ll discover why people don’t always stick around to see what you have to say…

1. We’ve said it before but we’ll say it again, don’t send automated direct messages– the majority of people dislike them and consider them spammy. They are very impersonal and lead people to believe your Twitter activity will follow the same pattern.

2. You’re giving your followers the silent treatment – if you go a month without tweeting, people will assume you are not reading or engaging with other tweeters either and therefore not worth following.

3. Self centred behaviour – If you only provide links to your own site, this is rather selfish and will put followers off from sharing your content. ‘Do as you would be done by’.

4. Cheekiness – You ask for RT’s all the time…many consider this bad Twitter form and rude, if your content is interesting enough you shouldn’t have to ask for Retweets

5. Being plain boring – ‘You snooze, you lose’ – If you only send links to articles and don’t engage with your followers you’ll put people off following you, we want to hear your own thoughts and views as well as those you agree with.

6. You are an emotionless cold hearted tweeter– this makes people think you’re a robot and stops them from falling in love with your timeline. If you give a little charisma to your tweets, people won’t unfollow. Simples.

7. You’re a celeb stalker – those tweeters who only tweet celebrities are very boring to follow, they probably won’t reply either so you are wasting your time!

8. Being an egg – if you keep your Twitter profile picture as that little egg then we’d be very surprised if anyone even followed you in the first place!

9. It goes without saying really but any offensive language, sexism, racism or swearing will wave farewell to the majority of your followers. Especially at this time of year, it’s not very Christmassy.

10. The biggest sin of all – you mention other tweeters in links that are not relevant to them or part of a conversation. This is just straightforward spamming and asking for an unfollow!

Stay tuned for more tips – follow us @CarvillCreative

Enjoy the post… Vikki

Vikki Mills is Social Media and Marketing Executive at  Carvill Creative – the online visibility experts. A digital marketing and design agency based in Maidenhead, Berkshire.  The agency covers all aspects of online visibility – covering social media marketing and social media training, user focused website planning and conversion focused website design.

Social media activity should focus on delivering the objectives of the business.

You have to ask yourself what those objectives are and have absolute clarity so that you can then measure impact from social media.

For example – if one of the business objectives is to improve lead generation – then there would be a mechanism created to deliver that.

Let’s say, that lead generation objective translates through to a campaign which is all about driving people to the website to fulfil a specific call to action to drive leads. In such a case, the website home page or specific landing page would have some call to action in place which entices users to engage with (eg: as we do via our free marketing plan or social media plan on the Carvill Creative home page) – and ultimately capture data.

To drive people to find the call to action, you are likely to embark on a number of activities: Adwords, SEO, Email, Newsletter promo, Email signatures and social media.  Not only sharing and promoting to those following you on Facebook and Twitter and LinkedIn, but you could use social media to listen in and track keywords, capturing relevant conversations and directing those relevant people to your website to get the free whatever, they insert their details, you’ve captured data. Et voila, you can then measure how many ‘leads’ you’ve captured.

Providing there are some Analytics on your website, then you would be able to track exactly where traffic to your site is coming from, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn etc – and measure activity. Of course, you can also ask the user to tell you in the webform they complete to fulfil the call the action – ‘How did you hear about us.’

Many organisations get hooked on metrics such as the increase in Facebook likes or Twitter followers – but actually, if those metrics don’t matter to the end objective – then it’s futile measuring them.

Just as in good old fashioned marketing – a business should be measuring impact towards the business objective.

What you measure will totally depend on the objective you’ve set – and may differ from team to team.  For example – see diagram below.  You’ll see that the Online Reputation Team are concerned about ‘sentiment’ and measuring positive and negative statements about the brand / products or services. Whereby the Business Development Team are focused on measuring number of new fans / followers, competition signs ups, lead generation.

For our clients each month we do report on metrics such as:

• Number of followers
• Likes
• Klout score (online influence score – however, we’re looking at other metrics as we’re not convinced Klout is an indication of much actually).
• Website traffic / provenance
• Ranking
• Twitter grade
• Website grade

But if these metrics aren’t relevant to bottom line, then you’re not really measuring impact, but rather activity.

There’s an excellent book by @thebrandbuilder – aka Olivier Blanchard, ‘Social Media ROI’, which I highly recommend.

But to finish where I started… measure what matters.

@Michelle Carvill is owner and Marketing Director at Carvill Creative – the online visibility experts. A digital marketing and design agency based in Maidenhead, Berkshire.  The agency covers all aspects of online visibility – covering social media marketing and social media training, user focused website planning and conversion focused website design.

For marketing and social media advice – view the Carvill Creative Blog

Offering and delivering good customer service is fundamental business sense – they teach it in the kindergarten of business school, so there really isn’t any excuse when businesses fail to deliver a decent standard of customer service.

By nurturing your customers, attending to their needs and approaching any problems with care and reason, you should help to ensure that your brand builds a good reputation and legacy that will stand you in good stead for the future.

Word of mouth is still as powerful as ever, if people experience good things with your company, they will tell others. We must remember that ‘telling others’ in a social era – includes – tweeting, blogging, facebooking etc.

In this social era that we’re now in – where anything can be made viral and where the everyman is given a very loud voice (attached to a megaphone that can reach Australia) – keeping your customers happy couldn’t be more important. The Social Era has provided us with platforms that give customers the opportunity to have their say. However, it also gives brands the opportunity to fix any problems, respond to queries and generally offer a high standard of customer service.

Knowing all of this – I was shocked to a hear story this weekend about the internationally respected brand that is ‘Armani’ and their major downfall in Customer Service.

A friend of mine had bought a coat on Friday in the Armani Exchange store in Westfield Shopping centre for £300. After being assured that she could return the coat within 14 days she purchased it, got it home and to her surprise realised that her boyfriend had bought the exact same coat for her for Christmas, knowing that she wanted it. Touched by this unusual display of attentiveness from her partner she took one of the garments back to the Armani Exchange Store in order to get a refund.

Shock horror – Armani’s response was that they don’t offer refunds unless the item is faulty and she was only entitled to a £300 gift voucher or exchange! (Apparently the small print on the receipt explained this).

Tearful and distressed she had no choice but to leave the shop with the coat, in the hope that Armani’s higher powers would view this situation as very unfortunate and see it as an opportunity to offer a high standard of customer service out of good will.

Armani have done completely the opposite by not only denying any form of refund but by ignoring two emails to two separate people – very foolish on two accounts. Being ignored has not only angered her but further encouraged her to take further action in using social media to get heard. She tweeted about her very negative experience with Armani and asked for others to come forward and share their grievances.

Armani have not responded, which we can only assume means that they are not watching social media and therefore are in no way in control of what anyone says or reports about their brand. This is again – very foolish – any praise their brand receives will go unnoticed and any criticism will go unresolved. After reaching out to the masses of Twitter, tweeters came back to her to instruct her on various tactics that they had had to apply to fix the challenge – largely around ‘making a hole in the garment and reporting it faulty’.  Really.

Does anyone at Armani know that people on Twitter are giving out this kind of advice?

Does anyone at Armani know that this blog has been written about them?

If someone from their company was watching social media and listening to what their customers were saying perhaps they would understand that not only are they being bad mouthed across powerful social platforms but that disgruntled customers are encouraging each other to damage their stock in a desperate attempt to be refunded. If I was Giorgio Armani, I would certainly want to know about this.

With social media being so powerful we have made communication not only immediate but also global. Armani’s stock is most frequently purchased by young people, who are the best versed in the use of this media. Any negative experience that any customer has can be blogged about, tweeted about, facebooked about and made viral quicker than any refund can be put through a till.

Armani should be listening to their customers, offering an acceptable level of customer service and building on their brand.

Unfortunately for Armani, my friend is a social media consultant and will be using her expertise to ensure that other social media users are very aware of Armani’s very poor customer service.

Has anyone else out there experienced poor customer service of this kind? Does anyone have any examples of good customer service being utilised through social media? Feel free to share – we’d love to showcase them.

For more tips and advice on using social media follow us on Twitter - @CarvillCreative

Following the social media training that we provide, once teams know what they need to be doing – the next question is…” HOW do we get started?”

Here’s a very quick guide to how to go about effective daily Twitter management  for general  awareness.  This schedule is by no means prescriptive and you can work the timings around your requirements .

Clearly, your activity will focus around the objective of your Twitter account. For example – if your Twitter account was for Customer Support – then you’d refine in line with requirements. But this schedule largely relates to a ‘general’ awareness, daily PR focus.

For each Twitter account:

• 8.30 am til 9.00 am (You may be able to do this during your commute via your smartphone so it may be earlier).

Review account activity:  Check your Twitter streams for @mentions, direct messages and what your followers are talking and tweeting about – respond, thank, RT, engage and react accordingly.  Dependent on level of ‘engagement’ this can be speedy or lengthy – and of course, it depends on how many accounts you have. So you may have to revise your timescales here a little.

• 9.00 – 10.00 am

Scout all relevant trade press, review your Google Alerts, Twitter keywords tracking in Hootsuite (or other apps such as Twilert or SocialMention), Twitter search and relevant blogs and portals that you subscribe into – and review any up to date and relevant news. Speak to marketing / sales team – or if relevant, senior management team and ensure you’re up to date on any marketing activities, business news and promotions that can also be shared across your Twitter account(s).

• 9.00 – 11.00 am

At the same time as researching, be scheduling your day’s tweets into Hootsuite (or other preferred social media management dashboard – ie: Tweetdeck, Co Tweet etc). Don’t schedule all tweets to follow one another so that you block up your audiences feeds, spread them out,  usually with hourly intervals – and if it’s big news, don’t be afraid to ‘repeat the tweet’ but be sure to give it a different ‘spin’. Remember, apps like Hootsuite won’t let you simply cut and paste to repeat a tweet – so be sure you’re using a different context to introduce the link.

• 11.00 am – 11.15

At Carvill Creative, our team keeps their Hootsuite account open all day. So whatever method you’re using, check back into your accounts regularly to review any activity, mentions, RTs etc – and any engagement.

• 11.15– 1pm

Content creation.  This activity and timescale related to it will vary dependent upon how many blogs you’re writing – and what content (if any) you are creating.  At Carvill Creative we manage several blogs for clients – so we write at least one blog post a day for each client – so that we’re building an effective pipeline of compelling, relevant and keyword optimised content.

Set yourself a target to create a content pipeline to ensure that each blog is updated with relevant and keyword optimised content daily.  Keep your website / blog refreshed with new and relevant content. That way you have a place to send your Twitter audience that adds value to your business.

The shift in when we’re busiest on social networks…

Timings for when people are most active on social media are changing. At one point – it was very much that most activity happening in the PM. People were more likely to RT (retweet tweets) in the afternoon – and engagement levels were generally higher.

With the emergence of smart phones and social apps – activity is shifting. Early morning (commuter time) between 6.30 am and 8.30 am is now a busy hub of social activity – lunchtimes, and then another spike at the end of the day – 6.00 pm til 7.30 pm ish.  So be mindful of this when scheduling your tweets and looking at engagement.

Finally…

Remember – each account is an important communication channel – and you are acting as ‘brand custodian’ – it’s not just about pushing messages out – but about sharing the personality of the brand and engaging and communicating with your audiences.

If any challenges arise, then speed to response is absolutely key, so be sure to keep monitoring your accounts throughout the day.

@Michelle Carvill is owner and Marketing Director at Carvill Creative – the online visibility experts. A digital marketing and design agency based in Maidenhead, Berkshire.  The agency covers all aspects of online visibility – covering social media marketing and social media training, user focused website planning and conversion focused website design.

It’s always interesting to see how different businesses approach social media. Everyone has their own way of using it and their own style – most obviously because everyone’s looking for different results.

That’s the beauty of social media; it’s flexible and able to deliver a variety of results that can be tailored by you, if you plan your activity strategically.

For example, if you wanted to use Facebook to nurture clients and build on relationships – your approach might be very different to a business that needed to really push their services. It doesn’t mean that one approach is wrong, there is no right answer – as long as you are achieving what you want to achieve from your activity.

This Twitter profile @LeonRestaurants – are using Twitter to build on their company’s success by listening very intently to their customers and their advice, complaints and praises. You can see from their tweets that they are really listening to what people have to say about their business, taking it on board and using it to steer their company in the right direction.

If a customer tweets them saying that they’ve experienced bad service or poor food – they are responding almost immediately with apologies, complimentary gifts and requests for explanations on how they can improve. What better way to achieve perfection than by listening to what you’re doing wrong and fixing it. They don’t seem to be using Twitter to push their restaurants or even their food – they are merely at the moment using it like a customer service tool. If you’re a new company, then this must be an extremely effective way for you to gauge how your business is being received – the results are straight from the horse’s mouth and come with the opportunity to go back and speak to the customer directly.

A business that wants to use their Facebook page to nurture their clients, keep them informed of activity within the company and generally engage and enjoy their customers interaction – might go about it in a similar way to an egg production business we found on Facebook called ‘Castel Farm Eggs’

Carvill Creative stumbled across a really great interview with ‘ Castel Farm Eggs’  who are based in Guernsey – you can see their Facebook page here . You should be able to see from their page that their approach is fun, imaginative and clearly working for them – using amusing photos and catchphrases to engage with their community and in turn build awareness of their brand. You can’t help but think that if an egg farm in Guernsey can make social media work for them, then anyone can!

Castel Farm is already very aware of the benefits of Facebook, arguing that:

‘The great thing with Facebook, for example, is that it is interactive, whereas a website only really tells you how many hits you have had, and a contact link etc…its very one dimensional.’

When asked later on in the interview – ‘How much business can you attribute to social media marketing in comparison to other forms of marketing? They responded by saying:

‘This is really difficult to quantify, but we have definitely had orders from these sort of platforms; we are also acutely aware that our end users are the people of the Island, so to stay in touch with them and let them now what we are all about is great, a sort of “electronic word of mouth”. But what you also achieve is a sense of fun that can really humanise your business.’

You can see the full interview with Castel farm eggs at this page  .

The interview really highlights how much can be done with these channels if they are utilised correctly, it’s not all about using them for direct sales – they can very much help to seal the deal but along the way they serve a lot of other purposes as well.

If you think your company can benefit from social media, think about what you want to achieve from your activity and give us a call. We will help you plan and implement a social media strategy that is right for your company. You can call us on 01628 634066 or email vikki@carvillcreative.co.uk for more information.

For more tips and advice on using social media follow us on Twitter - @CarvillCreative

You may have noticed – due to some regular and shameful Facebook stalking -that you can see pictures on other people’s profiles/business pages that you couldn’t see before.

It has been brought to our attention that many people are wondering why and how this can be controlled.

This is because the default privacy settings on Facebook have changed, giving you the choice to make your photos visible to everyone, friends of friends or just friends.

Do not be alarmed as this is completely in your control and can be managed through the following steps

To edit the privacy settings for photo albums you’ve posted:

1. Go to your profile and click on the Photos section
2. Click See All (next to photos and videos
3. Use the tiny right box underneath each album that has a small arrow in it
4. Choose whether you want the album to be:

• Public (the little globe)
• Visible to friends only (the shadow of a person)
• Customised (allowing you to select exactly who you want to see it – the cog)

When posting your own photo album with your photos in it – this is, of course, all down to you. However we thought we would shed some light on a few things you can’t control.

• The privacy setting for your Cover Photos album will always be public.
• If there’s a photo of you in an album that someone else posted, only the person who posted it can change the album privacy. If you don’t like the photo, you can remove the tag or report it if needs be.
•  If you share a high resolution photo or album with someone, that person will be able to download those photos.

However – do remember that:

• Unlike other photo albums you create, you can choose an audience for individual photos in your Wall Photos and Mobile Uploads albums. Each time you post a new photo, it’s up to you who sees that photo – you can control this using the same method as above.

I recently gave a talk to over 100 accountants discussing the merits of Leveraging LinkedIn.

Whilst most business professionals do have a LinkedIn profile – a high percentage haven’t completed their profile to the recommended 100% – and many aren’t ‘joining’ up the Company Profile.

Whilst Carvill Creative has had a LinkedIn company profile for a while, we’ve not really be doing that much with it.

From an employee perspective, we’re a small team and so we have our relevant team members associated to the profile – and we’ve completed the Products and Services section so that people are able to explore, the range of products and services we provide. However, as yet, we haven’t gone to our clients and asked for recommendations for our company products and services – so we’ll be doing that soon.

LinkedIn has a great opportunity as a professional network to help businesses leverage their online company profiles. Whilst Facebook seems to be enhancing, daily, the features and functionality of business pages – LinkedIn hadn’t introduced any new features for while.

Their recently launched ‘Product and Services Spotlight’ feature – is quite snazzy. It enables you to effectively create up to 3 ‘ads’ for your products and services – which showcase above the service and product descriptions and are clickable through to relevant landing pages.

Also – the information you can add to a product and service page is now far richer – you can add videos, customer recommendations, specific product or service promotions and  offers.

If you get this company profile right – you can see how it can become another effective online presence for people that find you via LinkedIn.

So here’s the quick step guide to creating an effective LinkedIn Company Profile:

• From your own personal LinkedIn profile – click Companies tab.  Scroll down that tab until you see ‘See all’ – hit ‘See all’ and then you will have a screen outlining all the companies you are associated with. In the right hand corner of that screen you will see ‘Add a Company’.  You then add your company name.  Please note that you have to have a relevant company email address when setting up a company profile.  Eg:michelle@carvillcreative.co.uk – was acceptable to set up a profile for Carvill Creative. It’s effectively the way LinkedIn verifies that you are an employee and therefore eligible to set up the profile.

• Once you’ve added your company – then it’s a case of completing the content.  As with all online content relating to your business, you want to ensure that you are utilising your ‘keywords’ when creating the content. If you are a social media consultancy – then be sure to say that throughout your content. Just as people search Google, YouTube, Facebook and Twitter using Keywords – so they too search LinkedIn – so be sure you have optimised your online content effectively, to give yourself a good chance of being found for relevant searches.

• The content tabs you need to create for your company profile are pretty simple:

•  Overview of the company – here you can provide an overview of what your company does – how long it’s been established, partners, clients etc. It’s your ‘About us’ section of your website effectively.
• Careers – you can showcase any placements that you may have – and details of what people have to do and who they need to speak with if interested in working with your company.
• Services -(more on this in number 4)
• Analytics – here you can review some basics insights into what’s happening with your company profile.  Who’s viewing, which sector, growth of follower trends, page views, followers, clicks through to your products and services page.

• Services Tab

This is where you can really segment and showcase each product / service you provide. For example on Carvill Creative’s page we’re currently promoting 4 key services:

• Marketing and Social Media Consultancy
• Design Services
• Social Media Marketing Training Courses
• Digital Marketing Strategy and Services

For each service we’re able to spell out what we offer – ensuring each service is leveraging the relevant keywords and showcasing what we do. Not only that but on each service page, you can run special promotions around that service – and showcase video relating to that product or service. So making the service page, a great resource

On this tab now – there’s also the opportunity to create 3 ads – so we have ads for

• Ultimate Website Package for Business –  (see ad example below, which clicks through to a relevant landing page).

•  Make Social Media Work for your business – which, again, clicks through to a relevant landing page.
• General Carvill Creative ad – which clicks through to our Home Page.

On this page too – you’ll see in the right hand column the opportunity to showcase promotions: See below the one we created which clicks through to a dedicated landing page.

So you can see – that LinkedIn are giving companies a much richer array of resources to tap into – and I can only see this continuing to improve.

I’ve noticed that for certain searches I’ve done in Google – it’s the LinkedIn products and services pages that are appearing. So I would suggest to all, that it’s time to create an effective Company Profile – which you can share, and indeed get all of your employees to link to and share too.

@Michelle Carvill is owner and Marketing Director at Carvill Creative – the online visibility experts. A digital marketing and design agency based in Maidenhead, Berkshire.  The agency covers all aspects of online visibility – covering social media marketing and social media training, user focused website planning and conversion focused website design.

For marketing and social media advice – view the Carvill Creative Blog