John C Havens of BlogTalkRadio

The speakers at this year’s BST conference will be sharing their insights into how social media works within business. To give you a glimpse of what you can expect at the live event (which happens on Tuesday, May 5), here are 3 questions with Tactical Transparency author and Director of Partnership Marketing & Integration at BlogTalkRadio, John C. Havens.

Q:  Why should companies be investing their time and effort in social media?

A:  Why shouldn’t they?  This question in 2009 is, to me, the equivalent of asking, “Should your company have a website?” in 1995.  Social media is simply too broad a spectrum, with too wide a variety of opportunities (many of which are free in cost if not minimal time) to ignore.  Specifically, however:

• SEO—  The more content you create online with your brand’s messaging, the more opportunities Google has to raise your rankings.  You cannot expect to have just your main website/portal and get the kind of presence on Google that you need.  Utilizing your blog, Tweets, BlogTalkRadio shows or any other medium that lets you put in metadata including your company name/keywords is a MUST.  Period.
• Presence—  As I talk about a lot in my book, if you don’t demonstrate that your brand is trying to have a presence online, people will wonder why you’re silent.  (If they wonder about you at all.)  More likely, they’ll be listening and interacting with your competitors, who have demonstrated that they care about what consumers think.
• ROI—  The ROI is substantial, and please stop thinking, “but I have to have X number of comments on my blog post,” or “a social media campaign is no better than a banner ad.”  Let’s talk COA—if just one person comments on your company blog (even to complain) and you connect with them in a real manner, what did it cost you to do so?  $150 for a series of postcard/direct mail campaigns? No—the time for one person at your company to respond and connect.  Yes, you have to have a person in the company who does those things, and they have to know what they’re doing, but you get the point: stop wasting stamps, and utilize the free, permanently digital PR that you can get when you demonstrate that you will answer customers/employees with a real voice, where you hear their concerns and address them.

Q:  Tell us about one emerging social media trend that you’re keeping an eye on, and why.

A:  Twitter, like everyone else.  But BlogTalkRadio uses it as a broadcast medium to help boost the live listenership of shows.  We’ve increased live show participation by 12-15% by having all of our hosts who tweet do so 30, 15, 10, 5, minutes before a show and then during.

Q:  What are some ways you have seen companies directly benefit from using social media?

A:  Please download the case study for our recent Wal-Mart campaign for the movie Twilight.  We were able to demonstrate actual lift in sales via social media, which is the holy grail for any social media campaign.

Learn more from John C. Havens and the rest of our speakers at the 2009 Business Smart Tools Conference on May 5 — register here!

Earlier this month, Dan Zarrella of HubSpot posted a highly-detailed blog suggesting that 22 tweets a day was the best way, statistically speaking, to use Twitter.  His research included the Twitter habits of more than 1.6 million Twitter users, with emphasis on the habits of the most-followed (or, in Twitter parlance, most popular) users.

Undoubtedly, this “22 tweet” proclamation was then pinned to the bulletin boards of countless marketing offices and pasted into numerous Power Point pitches.  But, as Zarrella pointed out in the blog’s actual title (“Is 22 Tweets-Per-Day the Optimum?”), that number is flawed, because it doesn’t tell you the whole story.  For example:

*  It ignores the content and context of what’s actually in the tweets

*  It doesn’t specify the time of day those tweets were sent — or seen

*  It doesn’t indicate how many people are actually seeing those tweets, vs. the potentiality of the Twitter user’s entire aggregate audience

*  It doesn’t delineate between original tweets and retweets (or “forwarded” tweets from others)

*  It implies that the “most-followed” Twitter users (like Barack Obama, The New York Times and Zappos) are being followed as a result of their frequency of Twitter use, rather than their brand-name attraction.  (Obama’s account, for example, has been dormant since January 19th.)

*  It defines Twitter success solely in terms of followers, without regard for whether one’s audience will take action (in terms of sales, marketing, activism, direct feedback, etc.) based upon that user’s tweets

Unfortunately, marketers, consultants and advertising agencies are so eager to quantify the impact of social media — if for no other reason than to understand what percentage of their bugdet (and time) they think their clients should be investing in it — that they’re looking for any statistical shorthand that can help make their work (and their clients’ decisions) easier.

But just as you can’t quantify a baseball player’s impact on the game based solely on his batting average, you can’t summarize social media’s impact on your business based strictly on a pre-determined criteria of “followers,” “views” or “comments.”  The “22 tweets” results are interesting and, in some cases, may be useful, but when it comes to conversation-based metrics, mathematical statistics only tell one part of the story.

Image by ©aius.

We have a lot of smart, talented and insightful speakers coming to the next Business Smart Tools conference on May 5.  But as well-versed as they are in the ways of social media, marketing, business growth and general communications, there’s one thing they DON’T know (yet):

What do YOU want to learn about at the BST conference?

Whether you’ll be there in person or you’re hoping to catch glimpses of the event online, let us know what topics and questions you’d like to ask Scott Monty, Cindi Bigelow, John C. Havens and the rest of our illustrious lineup.  That way, our speakers will be able to tailor their talks toward the needs of the audience, and help you down the path toward the answers you’re after.

This past weekend, Chris Brogan started a great discussion on his blog about the latest video for Bigelow Tea (which was produced by Business Smart Tools’ parent company, Creative Concepts). The video features Cindi Bigelow talking tea with complete strangers in New York City — some of whom have never even heard of Bigelow before, despite it being one of the top-selling teas in the city.

The comments on Chris’s blog reinforced a lot of the reasons that Bigelow thought the video was a good idea in the first place:

* It provides the company with a public face and personality
* It lets Cindi share the history of her family-owned company
* It presents the “good” and “bad” of being recognized (or not)

But despite all the positives, some potential drawbacks were mentioned as well — particularly by fellow blogger Nalts, who points out the difficulties of:

* interesting casual viewers in a business-branded video
* promoting something without a YouTube “star” attached
* navigating the attention spans and entertainment needs of a casual audience

And guess what? All of these comments are what made producing the video worthwhile, because:

* Cindi was able to connect directly with people on the streets of New York
* The Bigelow brand developed newly-interested followers online
* The company received creative suggestions on what did (or didn’t) work for various viewers

But, most importantly, the video got people talking about tea (and Bigelow Tea in particular). And that’s the primary goal of any social media marketing: to generate new discussion about a brand. Because people can’t buy your product if they don’t know it exists.

You can hear more about Bigelow’s approach to social media when Cindi Bigelow speaks at the Business Smart Tools conference on May 5!

Does your start-up, web or tech company have a product or service that’s geared for business? If so, you may be able to demo at the Business Smart Tools Conference on May 5!

Demonstrating companies will be invited to join the conference at no additional fee, but you must submit the following information for our consideration:

* Company name, URL and contact info
* A brief summary of your product / service
* An abbreviated business plan

Demos will benefit from both online and offline press, plus the opportunity to network with our social media-focused attendees and speakers. Whether you want feedback, business leads or increased visibility, drop us a line and see if your product or service is a match for the BST Conference!

Photo by Amit Gupta.

On the social media service Twitter, individuals post messages of less than 140 characters. If another user thinks that information is worth repeating, that person can “retweet” the original post themselves, usually with a nod to the user who first posted it. It’s the social media equivalent of the telephone game, although “copy-and-paste” reduces the risk of misquoting the original person’s statement.

Mashable contributor Dan Zarrella has been studying the hows and whys of “ReTweets,” and his findings are quite interesting. Perhaps the most surprising find is that retweets seem to gain momentum over time. That is, the more often a message is repeated by others, the greater its total number of retweets — which would seem to imply that people really like talking about what everyone else is ALREADY talking about. In this fashion, the original tweet begins to operate like a beach ball at a concert — it only takes one person to throw the ball into the crowd, but it takes each successive person bumping it back in the air to keep the ball (and the message) alive.

What makes something worth retweeting in the first place? Zarrella has his suspicions (and makes a great case for “politeness”), but he’s also running a survey to get firsthand feedback from Twitter users. He’ll summarize that data once it’s compiled. Meanwhile, look for people to become incredibly creative within their 140 character limits as they strive to keep their beach balls in the air.

Image by Brandi Tressler. If you enjoyed this article, consider following us on Twitter.

Twitter is a public instant messaging tool. It happens NOW. And because it doesn’t thread conversations together, or provide them with permanent landing pages, Twitter is a lot like Vegas — what happens on Twitter usually stays on Twitter (unless someone else blogs about it, or searches for it, later).

Blogs are more permanent. They provide one specific URL for each post AND for the comments to that post. This helps people who weren’t “there” catch up long after the conversation is over, and still add comments that may be relevant to the blog’s author.

But this isn’t an “either / or” situation; your business needs both.

Real-time tools like Twitter help you stay up-to-date with what people are talking about NOW. Hopefully, they’re talking positively about you (and you’re talking back). But if they’re expressing discontent, you can use the immediacy of the moment to engage them and help them solve their problems (without having to read about it a week later).

Long-term tools like blogs provide a context to your message, and help potential customers find valuable information about your services (and your ideas) without requiring them to be “there” with you at all times. (They also provide trustworthy SEO juice, compared to the fluctuating search value of tweets on most search engines.)

Learn the value of using both types of tools. Because you want people talking about you NOW, but you also want them to be raving about you LATER.

Image by jaboobie.

People are talking about you. No matter who you are or what you do, if you’re in the public eye, someone is talking about you. In a perfect world, they only have good things to say, but the hard truth is that at least some percentage of what’s said about you (or your company) at any given time will be bad.

Sometimes very bad.

This year, GoDaddy ran yet another oversexed Super Bowl ad, and some viewers were once again offended. But thanks to the instant “zeitgeist tracking” that happens using social media tools like Twitter, people were not only sharing their displeasure, but GoDaddy competitor Network Solutions was able to use all that negativity to their advantage, urging current GoDaddy customers to shift their hosting duties to Network Solutions as a (profitable) sign of protest.

And, as others noted, all of this happened right under GoDaddy’s nose, even though they employ someone named GoDaddyGuy to monitor their company’s reputation on Twitter. Whoops.

So what’s a company to do? How can you manage negative publicity when social media allows messaging to travel so wide and so quickly?

Join them.

When Dell was getting trashed by Jeff Jarvis due to their horrible customer service, they got the message and, as part of the solution, created a blog to better connect with their customers (and help stave off the ill effects of Jarvis’s negative tidal wave).

ComcastCares is how Comcast uses Twitter to answer customers’ questions (and manage customer expectations).

Ford’s one-man social media machine, Scott Monty, personally corrects and rebuts any misleading or misinformed Twitter discussions about Ford and their vehicles by providing links to relevant info and statistics.

Even public servants are getting into the game. When ticket-holding visitors were barred from attending the inauguration during the “Purple Tunnel of Doom” snafu, they used Facebook as a way to rally and demand satisfaction — and at least one official who’s taking responsibility for that mistake actually joined Facebook specifically to apologize to the group publicly.

It’ll be interesting to see how this GoDaddy “snafu” shakes out, since one undeniable side effect of all the negative publicity is that people are still, for better or worse, talking about GoDaddy. But since you can also never truly control what people will say about your brand, the next-best thing you can do is engage those people who feel negatively about your brand directly. Find out what’s causing their negative opinion. Is it a problem you can fix? Is it a case of misinformation, or under-information, that you can improve?

Instead of arguing about why you’re right, use these instances as opportunities to learn what you or your company could be doing better. Because the only thing worse than people talking badly about your company is people not talking about your company at all.

Image by neoliminal.

Twitter is a public instant messaging tool. It allows users to send updates or answer one another’s questions, but within limits of 140 characters (that’s numbers, letters, spaces, punctuation, etc.) per update. Thus, brevity is key.

So how could something so simple (and, some might say, so seemingly useless) become an increasingly important tool to help businesses engage with their customers? To answer that, let’s look at the way some businesses are using Twitter.

* ComcastCares is Frank Eliason, a one-man damage control unit for Comcast. If a Comcast customer has a tech support issue, Frank is often their first — and sometimes only — point of contact. He can personally diagnose the problem and often helps a person resolve the issue without having to spend precious hours on the phone. And what’s good for Comcast’s customers is good for Comcast.

* Adagio Teas uses Twitter to poll their customers about their tea drinking habits, offer tea tips, announce new products and flavors, and issue coupon codes that are redeemable in their web store.

* Mimobot is Evan Blaustein, founder and CEO of Mimoco, which produces stylish USB Flash Drives designed to look like outlandish cartoon characters. He uses Twitter as a way to keep in touch with his audiences, announce sales, promote Mimobot booths at trade shows and more. But he also hosts a series of daily contests designed to keep his followers (or “subscribers,” in Twitter parlance) paying attention; contest winners receive a free Mimobot.

* Huffington Post is the Twitter arm of the powerful political blog of the same name. Their Twitter account is an aggregator of all their authors’ articles; it sends out an automated update every time a new piece is posted. To them, Twitter is purely a promotion channel.

* Betty Draper is a character on the AMC original TV series Mad Men, which uses Twitter as a novel way to interact directly with their audience through the personae of their characters. (At least, that was the assumption; the reality of the situation is a bit more complicated…)

As you can see, there are numerous ways that a business can choose to engage their audience on Twitter. And judging by the number of followers each of the above examples has, their customers consider these companies’ approaches to add value to their web experience.

So… how could YOUR company use Twitter? (And, if you already are, what’s YOUR approach? If you’d like to see more examples, check out this list of the Top 40 Brands Using Twitter on Mashable — and, while you’re at it, follow us on Twitter!)

Image by herzogbr.

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Business Smart Tools founder Valorie Luther sat down last summer with MediaPost‘s Cathy Taylor to discuss social media — namely, who’s using it, how and why. Having reported on the media for over a decade, Cathy brings a unique perspective to her assessment of the social media landscape.

Among her observations:

* Twitter has become a “virtual water cooler” for telecommuters who crave social interaction but work from home.

* Companies are still slow to embrace social media, except as a means of damage control during a PR crisis.

* Before a company dives into social media, they’d benefit by first LISTENING to what their customers are already saying about them online.

If you’d like to hear more from Cathy, be sure to check out her blog (Adverganza) or follow her on Twitter — and while you’re at it, follow us on Twitter, too!