5 Ways Your Company Can Use Twitter Hashtags

If your company has a Twitter account, hashtags, better recognized as #,  should be a part of your social media strategy. Follow these five tips to improve your company’s hashtag strategy.

1. Look for Business-Specific Conversations

If you use Twitter for one thing, use it to learn from others. Look for hashtags such as #smallbiz or #socialmedia to find advice, resources, and influential people to follow. While using these hashtags to learn and gain advice is great, step into the conversation once and a while. Using a hashtag about a subject you’re interested in will put you in the conversation and will allow other people to engage with you too around that topic.

If you want to jump into a more specific conversation, narrow down the hashtag. For example, looking for a business savvy person to follow? Try #entrepreneurs. Wanting to meet new people? Try #networking.

2. Keep it Simple and Consistent 

When tweeting about a new blog post about creating and developing mobile apps, don’t do this: #MobileAppCreationandDevelopment. Try this: #mobileapp #development #design. Overwhelmingly long hashtags are hard to read, making your tweet buried in the mix, and also aren’t search-friendly.

3. Create Your Own Hashtag

Large and small companies can create their own hashtags, and they should! Hashtags are a great way to generate buzz around just about anything! For example, Domino’s Pizza told followers to tweet #letsdolunch. When the number of tweets reached 85,000, Domino’s split prices in half during lunch that day. Get creative! Hashtags are a fun way to engage with you followers and be more than just a Twitter account.

4. Organize Social Dashboards by Hashtag

Whether you use HootSuite or TweetDeck, using a social dashboard can conveniently keep you up-to-date with relevant hashtags for your company. You can create specific columns by social network, search term, or hashtag.

5. Take Advantage of Follow Friday

Micah Baldwin, CEO and Chief Community Caretaker of Graphic.ly, announced on Twitter that he would suggest people to follow every week. This trend took off with the hashtag #FollowFriday and has now been shortened to #FF.

You can use Follow Friday in two ways. You can create a list of great people to follow and try to fit as many of them as you can in a tweet using the hashtag #FF. You can also group your favorite followers in categories. For example, tweet #FF #entrepreneurs and then list the entrepreneurs you like following. This is a great way to contribute to the conversation while letting people know you like following them at the same time.

These are just 5 ways to use hashtags. What are some ways your company uses them?

Below is a current example of how our business used hashtags in the hiring process.

Tips to Increase Your Twitter Presence

Calling all Twitter users! Whether you’re new to Twitter and you’re trying to build your follower base or you’re not-so-new to Twitter, if you’re wanting to increase your followers’ engagement, here are 5 simple tips you can use to build your follower foundation. Keep in mind, you can use these tips for your personal Twitter page or your business/brand’s Twitter page. 

1. Personalize Your Page

Take advantage of all the opportunities Twitter provides to personalize your page and have it represent who you are, what you’re interested in, or what you’re looking for. The left side of your Twitter page should be your primary focus. There you can put photos, logos, or contact information. For bigger brands or public figures, validating your account is a good idea. Also, use the “about” section wisely and put together a to-the-point and effective bio. When followers can quickly get a sense of who you are and what you’re about, they’re more likely to follow you. 

2. Ask Interesting Questions and Ask for Help

Create conversation; don’t wait for the conversation to come to you. Your followers are a great resource for feedback and help. If you’re a brand, questions don’t have to necessarily be about your products or services– asking someone’s opinion and making it clear that it’s appreciated goes a long way. Be creative and make it fun! 

3. Re-tweet and Reply (in Moderation)

Re-tweeting (RT) and replying to tweets is an easy and effective way of acknowledging your followers and letting them know you find their tweets valuable and informative. But most of all, this lets them know you appreciate their following. 

However, make sure your re-tweets and replies are balanced. Creating conversation is important, but remember that you don’t want your Twitter feed to turn into a long list of “@reply” posts. If anything, this will decrease your number of followers, because most of them don’t have the patience to look through the conversation to find out what it’s all about. 

4. Post Relevant Updates

By posting relevant and informative information and links, followers will start to consider you as a good source of information and will find it worthwhile to engage with you. 

5. Go Back to the Basics with Follow Friday (#FF)

Putting some time and thought into a #FF post is worthwhile and a great form of engagement. It’s an easy way to give a shout-out to your favorite followers and let them know you acknowledge and like their tweets. It’s also a quick and effective way to make a recommendation to the rest of your followers on who to follow. 

What tips do you use to get the most out of your Twitter account? We’d love for you to share. 

15 Steps to Superior Support

Customer service plays a key role in creating or maintaining a reputable business and brand. These 15 Steps to Superior Support, provided by GoSquared, are great to constantly keep in mind when dealing with customers or clients.

LinkedIn Recommendations: Things You Should Know

LinkedIn is continuing to grow rapidly, which means more people are using the tool for intelligence, recruitment, and networking. A social space like LinkedIn can make specific individuals stand out among others; a specific way individuals can best leverage this social network is by gathering recommendations on their LinkedIn profile. 

Here are some guidelines for LinkedIn recommendations: 

1. Ask For Specific Recommendations

When you ask someone for a recommendation, make sure the request is personal and polite. LinkedIn will autofill the recommendation request text box, but remember to take that out. Replace it with asking the person for a recommentaion for something specific you worked on together. Also, ask the person to include what happened as a result of working together. Specific information showing how your skill or work was used reflects well on you. 

2. Don’t Ask Everyone

Don’t send out a defaulted autofill recommendation to all of your connections, because most of those connections haven’t worked with you close enough. You also want to keep the recommendations business related; you don’t want your best friend or landlord to recommend you in a way that doesn’t relate to business. 

3. Don’t Ignore a Request

If you receive a recommendation request from someone that you don’t really know that well, don’t ignore it. Say something like “Thanks for the recommendation request, but I don’t feel that I can endorse your work, since we don’t really know each other that well.” With a response like this, you have let the person down gently and didn’t just leave them hanging. 

4. Be Careful About How You Recommend

While a lot of recommendations look good, make sure your whole team or all of your co-workers don’t recommend each other. Recommendations like that add little value. 

5. Update Recommendations

It’s not very common, but you might want to delete some recommendations you have made. Go to the “recommendations you have made” link in your profile and withdraw it.  You can also revise a recommendation here. 

6. Say ‘Thank You’

When someone writes you a recommendation, you are given the option to return the favor. Don’t do it unless you feel comfortable recommending the person. Regardless, send the person a note saying thanks for the recommendation they wrote for you. 

Successful Pinterest Campaign by Kotex

Kotex, a feminine health and hygiene company, created a low-cost, highly-successful Pinterest campaign. This campaign gave Kotex 2,000 interactions between women and their friends and almost 695,000 impressions. Extremely impressive!

Kotex searched through thousands of women’s Pinterest boards and found 50 women that engage in the social platform regularly and have active followers. Through looking at the 50 womens’ Pinterest boards, Kotex found their interests and inspirations. Knowing this about the women, Kotex created custom gift boxes, investing $50-$100 per box, for each woman and filled the box with items they thought would inspire them.

When the women received the box, almost all 50 of them did as Kotex had planned: the women posted and talked about it online. Kotex then asked the women to take part in the campaign by sharing their stories about the inspiring gifts they received.

This campaign produced thousands of online interactions and impressions and also presented Kotex as a creative and inspirational brand.

Benefits of Facebook’s Timeline

The new Facebook timeline has caused a stir among Facebook users, especially users that are trying to build a brand for their business. Although it will take some getting used to, timeline has perks that are great for businesses.

1. Timeline encourages fresh and active content and conversation.

Timeline now makes business pages look and feel more like personal pages. Instead of just acting as a landing page with default tabs, timeline highlights active content, which is the most effective way to drive new traffic to the store and to the page.

2. Timeline provides a richer opportunity for seller expression.

Timeline gives businesses more space to showcase their brand and products. The most obvious example of this is the cover photo. This is a great opportunity to draw new customers and engage current fans. Also, the old default tabs have been replaced with photos, which is more visually appealing to viewers.

3. Timeline offers deeper engagement insights, tools, and analytics.

The old version of Facebook insights did not deliver users with real-time data. With timeline’s new insights, users can now track how a post is doing within five to ten minutes after posting. Other new tools include: people talking about engagements, friends of fans, reach, and virality. These insights provide users with more tracking tools and instant gratification from posts.

As a business, we are getting used to the new timeline and are appreciating the new changes more and more.

For more information on these benefits, check out Mashable’s article discussing reasons Facebook brand pages are good for businesses.

Localizing an Internet-based Business

In many popular social media and marketing blogs, the controversy of targeting online versus targeting local is a trending topic. This is a problem many companies face, and the answer can be difficult to find. What do the majority of bloggers say the answer is? A blend of both online and local.

Chris Brogan, President of Human Business Works and an active blogger, says the most important thing he is studying about this issue is understanding how the Internet makes local work better.

It’s important for companies to have relationships with both the online trust agent and the local hero. Brogan says this is “a missing piece of many companies’ puzzles.”

Creating a contact database is a start to blending. The online trust agents can direct companies to local heroes. There are people that have a job, online trust agents, and people who live to serve, local heroes. The majority of the time, connecting with local heroes will be the most helpful.

Local marketing is growing, but it still has a long way to go. In his blog, Brogan provides statistics on how small businesses are (or are not) using the web:

• 40% of small businesses don’t have a web site
• 81% of entrepreneurs still don’t take advantage of social media
• 47% don’t think that Facebook, Twitter or even LinkedIn are beneficial to their business

Being a local web development company that provides services for local (and not so local) companies, these statistics are shocking. So how do we reach these small businesses? According to Brogan:

“Make it dead simple. That’s how you’ll sell them.”

After reviewing this issue, questions rise:

• How will companies continue to blend the online and local even more?
• How will companies help people understand what they offer?

What do you think? 

Launching a Social Media Contest

In the past, we have created fun Facebook contests for our clients that have successfully increased “likes” and page activity. Something as simple as giving away a gift card or a unique item will generate interest and activity on social media platforms. Mashable’s article on how to successfully launch a social media contest provides great tips and insight. Here are some tips that we have found helpful.

1. Know who the contest is targeting and why.

The first step of creating a contest is understanding your target audience and the objectives you want to come from the contest.

2. Make the contest rules simple.

Be sure that the entry process of the contest is easy to understand. Also, make sure the requirements of the contest are clearly explained and laid out.

3. Continuously communicate.

It is important to continuously communicate to your audience throughout the entire contest. Communication should target both prospective contestants and active participants. You should also communicate to your audience after the contest is over, such as announcing the winner and thanking them for participating.

4. Learn from your experience.

Once the contest has ended, take the time to learn what succeeded and what failed. Use this evaluation as an opportunity to improve your future contests.

These tips, along with experience, will help you start and improve contests for your brand and for your clients.

Employees…the heart of the brand.

Mary Beth West sent this Advertising Age article to me this morning, just as I hung up the phone with a client who so desperately needs to follow this advice! It is definitely worth the full read, but I’ll paste the wrap-up here:

5 Reasons to Engage Employees in Your Marketing Strategy

They’re consumers, too
Their opinions are already fully formed and ready for you to tap.

They’re on the frontlines
The product should always be the focus in marketing, but its delivery is crucial — and employees are charged with making that delivery. Investing in their knowledge will pay off.

If you sell the message to them, they’ll sell it for you
You have to convert your employees before you can expect to win over consumers. If successful, you’ll gain genuine, loyal ambassadors for your brand.

It humanizes your brand
Using employees rather than the CEO makes your message instantly less pitchy, and consumers are more likely to trust people they can relate to — people like them.

You might just get something
Remember, this isn’t just a ploy. Tapping your talent for their creative input could produce a sea of duds, but it is also likely yield some solid, workable concepts that fit your brand. (And that a winning idea came from the mailroom is a PR line in and of itself.)

Serve your customers using social media

Best Buy is using social media to connect employees all over the country—putting them in the driver’s seat and making them brand champions within the company. Employees are able to share ideas, communicate, offer up new product solutions, support one another, get information, and so on. All with an end goal of better serving their customers.

Is your company up to something social media cool? Tell us about…leave a comment here.