Author Archive

Writing for your blog or community pages can be a challenge. Make your life easier by covering and sharing content that is part of your everyday work.

Here are five quick tips I just gave a client Bryan Davis who provides mobile phone and telecommunication services.

Five Quick Content Themes

1. Question of the week – the answer to a challenging question you were asked this week i.e. just share what you said already
2. Latest new phone gossip – an overview of content you have read in the course of doing your daily work
3. News round up – the top news as found in your Google Reader that week. You choose this on personal opinion or pick the ones with the hightest PostRank score
4. Money saving tip – you do this for clients every week. Share the love!
5. Industry Insights  - your opinion on something topical and how it relates to your audience

You dont have to change the future of the planet with your blog posts – you just have to add value to your audience. Twist these five suggestions to fit your work and you will soon find creating content easier.

It’s all very well having lots of followers but the trick to growing them is to be part of the few that everyone wants to follow. It would be exhausting trying to round up everyone. I say:

Be part of the few. The masses follow the few.

So how do you do this?

Finding Content

A good way to identify key influencers is by finding content created by them. Unless you are using a premium social media monitoring tool a good way to do this is through RSS feeds of search results which you collect in Google Reader.  Most search engines allow you to subscribe to results via RSS feed. There are many you could use, just look for the RSS logo on the results page.

• Goole Alerts
• Socialmention
• IceRocket.com

For this example we are using Google Alerts. Set up a Google Alert and receive it via RSS Feed into Google Reader.

To summarise, once you have the search results coming into Google Reader you simply need to identify the authors, decide which are key influencers and then seek to engage them.

See Which Content Gets Shared Most

By using the PageRank extension on your browser – I use Google Chrome – you can see which blog posts are getting talked and shared about the most. Look for the mid to high scoring blog posts as an indicator of who is most influential.

Use The Author Name To Find Social Profiles

Click on the authors name and see where it takes you. Often there will be a profile page.

Look for links to Twitter and copy their Twitter name

Visit PeekYou.com, Pipl.com and finally Google to search on their name and username

This will show you the channels where you can find more content and connect with the author.

Find The Most Influential Bloggers

Once you have someone’s Twitter name you can see who is the most influential. Again by using extensions in your browser this is easy. Add the Klout and PeerIndex extensions and you will see people’s scores against their names.

Connect and Say Hi

It is rare that people actually tell you when they follow you. I recommend you send them a personal message whatever network is it on and tell them why you are following them and that you are looking forward to reading more from them, speaking with them or even meeting them. A good way to do this is to actually leave a comment on some of their other content and then tell them;

Just left a comment on your great blog about Going To The Moon. Looking forward to reading more. Would be great to connect.

Comment and Share Regularly

No relationship is ever established instantly. If this person is high profile they may get lots of people connecting and following them. You need to show over time that you are interested in them and that you can offer value back to them. You will do this by consistently commenting and sharing on their content. People don’t use social media or write blogs to stay anonymous. You noticing and contributing is an asset to them and over time a relationship will be established. In order to do this you need to stay aware of the latest content and updates. Put your key influencer targets in a Twitter List of Google+ Circle. Add RSS feeds of their content to your Google Reader and put them in a separate folder. Now you can promptly comment or refer to their content. If you are worried about looking like a stalker, well judge for yourself where you are adding value or where you are simply hunting someone down. Consider it flirting!

A consistent approach to this method will ensure you are able to engage key influencers. When these people talk about you or with you all their followers will get introduced to YOU.

Have you got such a strategy? What tools and tricks do you use? Feel free to share them in the comments.

One of the biggest challenges when creating content is finding time around your existing work and all your other social media efforts. What you should do is use the content creation process to engage your audience.

The great benefit of doing this is when you do finally publish it you will have a ready prepared audience eagerly waiting for it. What’s more if you produce your content on a subject that is topical to your business it will be easier to write, you may learn something new and you will also likely generate more enquiries.

Share Content Plans With Followers

When you first start to create a piece of content you may often wonder what people want to know about. Using trending topics and discussions with lots of comments is a good way to find out. You could of course just ask. A LinkedIn discussion, Facebook update or just a quick tweet will do nicely.

Planning an industry survey – what’s the biggest challenge you face in using social media for your business?” Please reply and RT

Survey Your Respondents

Once you have some responses put together a quick survey. Google Docs surveys are simple and free to deploy. Share your goals and intentions along the way as this will make people feel more involved. You can even offer early access to the data as an incentive. A quick blog post is a good way to do this. You can share details of the blog post on back your social profiles, such as the LinkedIn discussion.

Thanks for all your responses. The biggest challenge currently faced is “How To Measure Results of Your Social Media Efforts”. I compiling an industry report on this subject and will give anyone who answers my short survey early access to the findings. Please take 5 minutes to answer these six questions

Tease Your Audience

Brands such as Apple are experts at building anticipation and desire for their products by leaking out snippets of information. You can keep your audience engaged by sharing findings and thoughts along the way e.g. on Twitter:

Amazing insights from measuring social media survey. 28% of businesses say they don’t know how to measure results. 32% say the do. Which part are you?” Full report to come.

Publish Your Report

When you results are all in then it’s time to create and publish your content. Remember, you want it to have reach and you want it to drive traffic back to you. Write a blog post and place the report in it. A great way to do this is publish your documents and presentations on Slideshare.net and embed the player in your blog post. This excellent social network will help you get your content shared. If you want to use your report to build an email database turn off the download feature and put a link to your email subscription page throughout the presentation. Remember to tell people how to get it.

Share Content With Your Audience

Go back to the original contributors first. Let them know they have first access. Ask them to comment and to share it with their network. If you don’t tell people what to do they wont. After a day or so make a larger more prominent series of announcements about your survey. Do so on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn updates. Reference it in the comments of other relevant blogs and discussions. Email it to bloggers and publications who might want to reference the findings. Be sure to always drive people back to your blog for full access to the report.

I just got asked on LinkedIn to provide someone with a template for a Digital Strategy and guidelines on how to write it. Now I thought that was quite a cheek!

In the interest of being helpful and supportive to this random request from India I sent back this list which I am sharing here. There are definatly sub sections which could be expanded on. Feel free to add any suggestions to the comments below.

For the contents of a digital strategy would look at:

• Target audience – define the audience your serve
• Define their needs
• Client Objective – what are the objectives of your digital activity
• How does your product, services and objectivs fit the needs of your target audience?
• What value can your knowledge and experience add to your customers business?
• Competitor and Digital Landscape Research
  • what channels used?
  • what communities exist?
  • what trends around application and device use?
• Website content and goals – what content will attract your audience and constitutes a conversion – a sale, a subscription, a comment?
• Social channels – which are right to use
• Content themes – what value can we add to our audience
• Online Advertising and SEO – what to focus on and where
• Social Media Monitoring – listening and observing, monitoring sentiment
• Community Engagement and Management – who will do this and what style, tone, rules will be followed
• Internal Processes – how will we manage inbound requests and conversation online? Dont forget crisis management
• Reporting – what will be KPI’s, how will we measure them and what processes do we put in place to evolve.

Off the top of my head today these would be the main headings of a Digital Strategy. There are sub categories depending on how detailed your proposal needs to be.

Have you got any to add to this? Or perhaps you disagree. Please share your thoughts in the comments below.

Google +1 button is now available for all websites and blogs across the Internet. +1 is widely seen as Google’s answer to the popular Like button of Facebook as they have similar goals – both let you easily recommend web pages, that you like, to your contacts as well as the outside world.

There’s however one big reason why web publishers are more likely to embrace Google’s +1 button – it can bring in more traffic. How? In simple English, if enough people +1 a page on your site, Google could see that as a positive signal and that may help improve your site’s ranking in organic search results.

Google’s OPG have published this 1-sheet overview that explains the +1 button in greater detail.

Google +1 Bookmarklet

Most websites will add the +1 button to their web pages in the near future but until that happens, you may use the following bookmarklet to easily +1 any web page on the Internet.

You can install by simply dragging the above link to your browser’s bookmarks toolbar (or see the following video). And since this is a bookmarklet, it should work across all desktop and mobile browsers.

Thanks to orginal post by Digital Inspiration

You cant actually own a hashtag and the process of starting one is as basic as put a # in front of a word or phrase (with no spaces) and you have created one. The success of a hashtag is then really down to how much it gets adopted by others and how much they relate it back to you. Some hashtags are simple labels, others signify a group or event name. Increasingly we are seeing the success of more ironic hashtags such as #stayonyourfeet or the classic #justsaying.

There really are no rules about what can be turned into a hashtag but if you want something to gain traction and relate back to you then:

• Use the hashtag consistently
• Associate relevant content with it
• Ensure it is being filtered into your target audience
• Create a web page or other resource where the hashtag can be explained

If you want to see what #hashtags are being used for your industry or target audience right now then simply search for it on Twitter (http://search.twitter.com) or in one of the many Twitter search engines.

• Have it running as a column in your Tweetdeck
• See how much it is being used and what other #hashtags are related to it at Twubs.com
• Find out people who are using it locally to you at geochirp.com
• See what is trending around a word or #hashtag using Topsy.com

Once you have started a #hashtag one of the only free ways to create a record of every tweet with your #hashtag in is to use twapperkeeper.com. You get two free searches.

We are going to see the increasingly prominent use of #hashtags in media and quite likely everyday language – much like people can now be heard to say LOL, which was originally short text speak for ‘laugh out loud’. If you watch E4 (the UK digital television channel) then you will see them promote #hashtags for their programmes at the ad breaks. This week saw their new TV show Beaver Falls trending on Twitter and other sites with #beaverfallsE4. Interestingly as a tactic the comparison of hashtag use from analytics.Topsy.com show 852 results for #beaverfallse4 and 410 results for #beaverfalls.

Just goes to prove people love to be told what to do.

We run reports for people on hashtag use and trends so if you need some help in this area just give us a shout.

Working out the ideal name for your LinkedIn Group is just one of the factors that will help determine it’s success. Deciding how long it should be is something I have thought about a number of times. Short and punchy is easier to remember and quote but, it is harder to use keywords that other people might search for to find a Group like yours.

The maximum length that shows up on screen is 64. Here is one I am working on today. 

 TEN – business networking and cross channel trade between UK,…

It’s a closed group at present but as you can see the name is longer than the text allows. So, whilst we work on perfecting this here are my tips for naming your LinkedIn Group:

1. Keywords get you found – think about what words your target members will search for. Make sure your group name is clear and includes these keywords.
2. Dont name it after your company – your clients will still join but others may not. Think about what value the Group will offer people. That is what the name should suggest.
3. Create a logo that fits the small standard logo box (60×30). Make it visual – not a lot of point putting too much text in that
4. Keep it under 64 characters!

So there is just a couple of tips on naming your LinkedIn Group. What’s your favourite LinkedIn Group and how many characters are in its name?!

I encourage all clients to put their social media profiles on their business cards. Here is my social media business card.

Today though I took a question from a client who had concerns. They were:

1. Does having everyone’s individual LinkedIn and Twitter feeds on their business cards leave the company and/or the brand open to individual opinion?
2. Wouldnt it be of more value to have the company LlinkedIn and Twitter address? Afterall everyone who works for the company can be linked to through these addresses.
3. If someone leaves then isnt the brand at risk of being tainted by someone’s voice outside of the company remit?

So, all good questions and no doubt anyone who is pushing a social media strategy through a company will be encountering such questions. For me this is all about the power of personal brands working in support of a corporate brand. There is more value to be had when both are strong. I went out to my network and first back was Andy Piper at IBM. I asked

@andypiper do IBM staff have their social media profiles on their business cards? looking for corporate examples. Thanks

His tweet (http://j.mp/n2N6rY) back reads

@JonnieJensen we are free to do so – certainly mine do

I’ll share more examples as I get them (please tweet them to @jonniejensen). For starters though here is @delphrb card, she is Social Media marketing Manager at IBM Software .

And another, from @steve_murg who is Internal Comms and SM Manager at KCOM Group. 

Getting Connected

In my opinion the whole point of a business card is to enable people to contact the person who is providing the business card. My first thought when putting this on my card is that it helps people communicate with me most effectively.

The question of putting the company Twitter and LinkedIn addresses on the business cards is more of a branding matter. I don’t believe it helps people get in touch with the person on the card but it does promote the companies web presence. This is really the same point as above but from another perspective.

The Value of Personal Networks

As for the brand being at risk should someone leave, well this question unfortunately is contrary to everything about a social engagement strategy. No company has any real control over someone’s views even whilst in your employment, let alone after they leave. Of course, if they speak negatively about you as an employee then you can have recourse through HR procedures but the ‘damage’ is done anyway. The way to ensure this doesn’t happen is to have a happy team who all understand the social strategy in place and are supportive of it. When your team are happy, supportive and active on social media then the value is all yours. They will have a large and engaged network through which to share their information which will no doubt include links and references to your company.

To try and curtail, limit or prevent the growth of this network is counter intuitive. Those that are that aren’t bothered will just sigh at the seemingly unnecessary rules, whilst those that are bothered will still tweet and manage their LinkedIn profile, just now with less opportunity and more frustration towards their employer. Either way their reach and the opportunity to promote the company will be less.

If they have left and are speaking badly of you and you are worried about how contacts they have built up on social networks whilst in your employment will view this, then all I can encourage is that you don’t worry. Unless you are in the habit of employing ‘bad’ people or firing them for no reason then I see little reason for them to bad mouth you during or after their employment. Even if they were, you have to consider what impact this might have on their relationship with their network. If they were found to be lying or working to a negative agenda then this would harm the relationships they had spent time forming and it would damage their future endeavours.

Even if for some unexpected reason they did have an agenda or some reason to attack you then this is even more reason for the rest of your team and your brand to be well connected online with strong active relationships. The trust and support of this collective network will have much greater reach and volume than that of a scheming individual. This is intrinsic to the value a sound social media strategy brings.

Offer Disclosure

Having said all of this, of course putting their Twitter and LinkedIn profile on their company cards means that their views could be construed as those of your company. If this bothers you and you feel the HR policy does not cover this then I would suggest that you ask them all to include a disclosure in their online bios e.g. “All views are mine alone” “Views are all mine”

So, that’s my view on all this. I believe you have more to gain than lose. Is your Twitter and LinkedIn profile on your business card? Share a picture if you have one and comment if you disagree.

A quick share for you. Last night I was invited to give a speech at the awards night of the MEBP Young Dragons Initiative. Young people 14-16 years old have set up and ran their own businesses for the past 12 months under the guidance of the Medway Education Business Partnership and their schools. 

It was an inspiring night. Around 30 young entrepreneurs represented 6 businesses. They showed business plans and market research. They talked through how they had raised capital, issued shares and managed cash flow. This wasnt some fancy school project with no real outcomes or risks. Actual products were produced with raw materials that had to be paid for – and in numerous instances had been negotiated heavily to get a good price.

Facing Your Fears

In times where economic conditions are challenging and jobs for young people hard to come by I was blow away by their vision and the confidence with which they had gone about the work. On the night they had to stand at the front of a large auditorium and speak to around 100 people including dignaturies and business owners. There are plenty of adults who are more scared of that than are scared of dieing, or as Jerry Sienfeld put it 

Surveys show that the #1 fear of Americans is public speaking. #2 is death. Death is #2. That means that at a funeral, the average American would rather be in the casket than doing the eulogy.

Influence And Social Media

I gave a speech on the Importance Of Creating An Influential Online Presence Using Social Media to those in attendance. The experience that the Young Dragons will have gained from the process will serve them for the rest of their lives. If they had shared in online it would now be accesible to litteraly billions of people. They have no idea where that could lead and right now they dont need to worry about that. So long as they are building up their social capital, telling a story that adds value to others and building an engaged and influential audience their futures will look much more positive than those who are not. 

Are you building this for yourself? In just a couple of years you may be up against one of these young people. I hope you are ready. Because they are!

The Digital Business Britain Manifesto is a drive to push and support UK businesses to make better use of digital media. It is manifesto I am supporting.

The iniative is gaining momentum in Government, Corporate and Local business communities. As a business owner and entreprenuer it is all our responsibilities to utilise digital media effectively. We have an opportunity to use the people who know these tools best – the 16 to 24 year olds – and drive our businesses success forward. You can listen to my speech on influence and social media and view the Digitial Business Britain Manifesto, then get behind this movement.

Adding social media links to your business cards is vital for networking and helping people connect with you. As a bare miminum I suggest that you include Twitter and LinkedIn links on your business cards. You could use things like a QR code and links to your YouTube channel if you have one as well. Prioritise based on where people can best see your content and most importantly, where they can contact you. Lets keep it simple for now.

Here is a link to various downloads for social media buttons. I place the relevant icon in front of the text. You can do as fits your card and branding.

My suggestion for Twitter is that it reads

Twitter @jonniejensen

For LinkedIn I suggest the full url. Each person should create their own vanity URL / personal URL. If you have set this up the link to your LinkedIn page will read something like

www.linkedin.com/in/jonniejensen

or

http://uk.linkedin.com/in/jonniejensen

Although they put the UK bit at the start it is not actually needed. I prefer the www version.

To set it up:

1. Log-in to LinkedIn
2. Click Profile>Edit Profile at the top near left of your page
3. In the public profile line of your profile click ‘Publish’ or ‘Edit’
4. On the right hand side of the page is a box titled ‘your public profile URL’ or ‘edit your public profile’
5. Click ‘customise your public profile’
6. Try to get 1^st ‘your actual name’ and if you can’t, go for 2^nd ‘your twitter name’
7. Click ‘Set your custom URL’
8. In ‘Customize Your Public Profile’ click ‘Make my public profile visible to everyone’

Your profile will read http://uk.linkedin.com/in/username but you can also use as www.linkedin.com/in/username

So my recommendation is that it will look something like

www.linkedin.com/in/jonniejensen

Twitter @jonniejensen

Trust that helps you get some new business cards created.