Twitter is a great platform to use as part of social media marketing plan, but if after using Twitter – following people, having people follow you, getting amplification by re-Tweets, etc. – you are not finding value, maybe it’s time to clean up your relationships!

After four and a half years on Twitter, my account is overdue for a purge. It’s bloated and is not as useful as it could be. For the first year or so on Twitter, there weren’t that many other people around, so we ALL followed EVERYONE.  I knew it was time to clean house because I was no longer reading my Twitter stream, but reading my Twitter lists or visiting people’s Twitter page directly. Part of me didn’t want to ‘offend’ anyone by un-following after I had already extended an olive branch. You know what? Chances are I’m not providing value, entertainment, knowledge, or a service to a good number of their accounts either. After finding TheTwitCleaner.com, I have started the process of the purge, and set a calendar entry for every six months to revisit the process. While I have no hard and fast rules for keeping a follower versus un-following, there are some general guidelines I have in my head as I visit each page TwitCleaner recommends to un-follow. Of course as they will state, these are suggestions, it’s up to you to visit each account and make your own judgment call.

I’m sharing my fast and loose guidelines for un-following a Twitter account here. Now you understand why I don’t follow you anymore — or why I still DO.

Un-Follow Guidelines:

• You tweet in another language. It’s not you, it’s me. Sorry.
• You offer no original content. If your entire Twitter stream consists of ReTweets that tells me you have no original thoughts or opinions of your own. If you are a business on Twitter, I will make exceptions, but not many.
• Your Tweets are nothing but links back to your blog. Again, businesses I expect this from and are saved from the cut (@CNN this mean you) but as a HUMAN with a Twitter account, I want you to talk with me, not link-bait to your content. That’s what RSS is for.
• You don’t have anything interesting to say above the fold. That’s right, I’m lazy. While the scroll wheel works fine on my mouse, I choose not to scroll to find conversations of value. You’re only as interesting as your last 10 Tweets.
• You like to kill things. I am not joking here. Somehow I managed to follow a good number of hunters and fishermen. I’m not against hunting or fishing, but not a fan of shooting wolves from helicopters or details about breeding night crawlers let alone reading messages about it.  If your personal ethos or morals are in direct conflict with mine, you get un-followed.
• You are overtly pornographic. Trust me when I say I’m no prude, but honestly, I don’t care about YOUR *personal* life, I care about MINE. And mine is not on Twitter.
• You are pushing the ‘hard-sell’. Listen, we are all selling. All day, every day, we all are chasing coin. I am not interested in getting more Twitter followers, losing weight, getting whiter teeth, or higher rankings in Google. Well, actually, I am interested in all of those things, just not from YOU.  If all you talk about is your own product or company and providing no other value, I have no need to follow your account.
• Anyone trying to sell me what my company already does. Seriously, did you even READ my bio before you started spamming my DM? I work at a social marketing and technology firm. I really don’t need to hire you to teach me how to use Twitter to increase traffic to my website.  If you aren’t selling but providing value, entertainment, or resources then I will follow the account.  It is when they reach out or auto-Tweet pitching to me it all turns sour.

Follow Guidelines:

• You are a friend. A real life in the flesh friend that I would invite to my house for dinner. Even if you Tweet about your goldfish all day, I still love you and value the insane babbling you publish on Twitter.
• Rockstars in my profession. Yes, it’s the popular kids thing to do, but they wouldn’t be rockstars if they weren’t providing value. Chances are a lot of them are my friends as well.  This seems to conflict with my guideline for not following people in my own industry.  Think of this as ‘aspirational marketing’ rather than stealing or stalking.
• You provide a valuable community service. @RedCross and @InstantAmber are perfect examples. I will never drop an account where there is the possibility that just one message can save one life.
• You are a business that ‘gets’ IT and knows how to use social media / social marketing to build community. Trust me, I have private lists for those of you that don’t get IT, as well as some slides in the conference talks I do.
• You are a client or business industry I have my eye on. I’m a very good businesswoman. I know how to use the information that comes out of the magic box and onto a computer screen to work my business. By the time I walk in your front door, everything there is to know about your firm that’s in (digital) print has already been implanted on a chip in my brain.
• You are a person that behaves like a human. Sometimes I just like to follow people because I find them interesting, or know other people that would find them interesting or valuable. Being a connector is just as important as being connected. Expand your circle, your interests, and maybe you will grow with it.

For now, this is what will get you kicked out of my club or in the door with a handshake. Don’t take it personally, it’s my club, not yours. You have every right to un-follow ME. Of course if you think I’ve un-followed your account in error and you are about to Tweet the meaning of life or the next PowerBall winning numbers, feel free to @ me and get my attention. But DM the PowerBall numbers to me, don’t make it public, I really don’t want to split the prize. I need a vacation and could use the coin.

I am finding myself un-following a good number of people/businesses but categorizing them in lists instead.  This is a GOOD thing (for me anyhow).  Filling up my Twitter stream with pages of links to Etsy items or makeup tips is counterproductive to me.  By having you on a list, I can still consume your ideas/content/links but on a better schedule for me.  Don’t take it personally, instead, find a way to make your content and message relevant to ME – then I’ll pay attention and open my wallet.

(Edited and republished from an article written by Lynette in 2010.)

Over the years of working with businesses to get them involved in social media, expand their success, or dig out of a failure, we have come across some of the worst business ideas around! This type of thinking has stifled companies from successfully moving ahead using social media. By identifying these ideas and working on improvements head-on you can improve the way your business interacts and attracts business.

1. Assume social media is a quick and/or cheap way to get business

We all know that accounts on social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn are free, but that’s about where the free meal ends. Earning customers on social media is no different that earning them anywhere else. It takes time, money and resources. Using these platforms on a personal capacity requires simple tools. Using these platforms in a business capacity requires business-grade tools. Even if you can develop a toolset using free software, the people using those tools are not free. Interns are free/cheap labor and are at a company to learn. They are never EVER a good idea to use as the frontline communication contact for your company. Would you put a professionally inexperienced person as your senior sales person? Would you send an intern to close a deal with possibly the biggest client your business has ever seen? Of course not. So don’t put an intern or someone without solid business and professional experience in front of potentially millions of customers. People with limited professional or social media experience can still be successfully, and inexpensively, utilized in the company’s social media plans. Just be sure they have strong leadership and guidance along the way, otherwise it can cost you a lot more than money.

2. Believe that current social media platforms are built to last

How is that MySpace page doing for you? Everything ‘hot’ can be everything ‘not’ very quickly. Facebook is not social media. Twitter is not social media. Social media isn’t defined by any particular website or platform, but is the notion of using online technology to communicate and share ideas with other people. Learn how to communicate online, create compelling content, share ideas, listen to others, and how to match the activity on social media networks to business goals. Those tactics and skills will transfer to the next great social network and will help you in all the currently-hot places on the Internet.

3. Skip training since times are lean

Most of your employees are on Facebook at home so why invest in training? Social media is a ‘no-brainer’, everyone’s using it so how hard can it be? Successfully using the advanced tools, monitoring platforms, workflow management and reporting is not as simple as posting a “status update”, not to mention the etiquette, technology and communication skills needed. When you use social media platforms for a business, you need business-grade tools to track and measure business goals. These tools require training. The success or failure of using these tools, and social media in general, is dependent on how well the tools are used. Training provides a sharp competitive edge that is critical in this economy. Simple as that.

4. Think that social media will make up for deficiencies in the business

Putting lipstick on a pig does not make that pig any more attractive. If anything, it draws attention to shortcomings and generally makes the situation worse. If your products, services, customer support, distribution channels or any other critical part of your business is lacking, social media cannot fix it. One approach is to get your business in tip-top condition first before ‘going public’ with social media, otherwise you leave yourself open to well-earned criticism that just may dissuade you from going forward. It is perfectly fine to start improvement processes while utilizing social media, and even brining your customers along for the journey. Use the platforms to solicit help, suggestions, success stories, and criticism from customers. Just be prepared and willing to act on the suggestions and publicly show progress.

5. Read the latest social media books and blogs and do exactly what they say

Just as every diet does not work for every person, every social media plan or strategy does not work for every company. The beauty of social media communication is that is completely customizable to your business needs at the moment. While we highly recommend a few dozen books on business and social media marketing, it’s best to approach them like an a la cart menu. Pick and choose the ideas that resonate with your business needs and tweak them to make them your own. Following someone else’s path does not mean you will duplicate their success.

6. Incentivize customers to care about your company

Paying for people to talk about you does not generate the same success as people that want to talk about you because they like you. Constantly giving away coupons or free products in exchange for a “Like” on Facebook does not make that person loyal to your brand and can actually hurt the perceived value of your products. We have seen too many companies fall into the trap of buying Twitter followers, caught in the constant loop of running contests, or sending bloggers free products to try to win their audience. While these tactics do work in moderation, finding ways to get customers to willingly participate with your business online will result in longer term success.

7. Automate communications to be competitive

Using technology as a substitute for interaction is not the answer to staying ‘lean and mean’. Customers can see right through this and your credibility will be lost. You can’t fake involvement with an online community by setting up scripts to automatically send Tweets or participate in conversations on Facebook. Well, technically you can, but we only suggest it to streamline a process you would be doing manually anyway. For example, automate the cross-posts of content between a company blog and Facebook is a great way to reuse content. Just be prepared to monitor and participate on each platform, which again, takes time and resources.

8. Utilize social media platforms and expect employees to ‘just run with it’

Social media does not work in a bubble. Your employees do not work in a bubble. Isolating the social media endeavors of your business from the general employee population is asking for disaster. While not every employee needs the ability to Tweet on behalf of the business, keeping your staff involved, asking for feedback and suggestions, and giving them an outlet to contribute content is just as important as cultivating communications outside the company. Your employees are your biggest advocates of your business, treat them well.

9. Assume taking what made the company successful in the past and using it in social media will work

If the current economy has taught us anything, it’s that old ‘tried and true’ methods of attracting business no longer work. There is no going back. Going forward, things like progressive leadership, a healthy company culture, creative thinking and valuable products need to the cornerstone of every business. Included in those ideas is the realization that customers expect businesses to behave differently and understand how they want to do business. Customers do not want a mailbox full of unwanted postcards or email newsletters. Customers don’t want mindless, repetitive television or radio commercials for products they are not interested in. Unless these channels are extremely targeted (which costs a lot of money), they don’t work as well as they used to. Taking these same pieces of content and dumping them into Facebook, Twitter, or YouTube – and then ignoring the conversations that spring up – won’t work either. Advertising and marketing still work. But what works is content that is customized to the needs of each customers. Homogenizing content no longer works, and the tactic actually backfires on social media. Take the time to get to know what your customers want and deliver it.

10. ???

Wait! Stop the press! Where’s the #10 worst social media idea for business?! That’s what we would like to hear from you. What’s the worst idea you’ve seen for business? Leave your #10 in the comments below, thanks.  We would love to hear your take on the topic!

What a great response we have been getting to our new Ahead of Social newsletter! Did we mention you can WIN a year subscription to Ahead of Social for FREE?  We’ve been getting entries, but as it turns out a lot of you just want the newsletter for $4.99 a month and don’t want to wait around to see if you’ve won!  Keep in mind that once the contest is over the price doubles to $9.99 – still an amazing price for 8 highly detailed social media tricks a month that get results.

Here is a sneak peek of what goes on inside just one of our Ahead of Social newsletters.  The tips aren’t quick & dirty bullet point items but highly detailed, step-by-step information and instructions on how to utilize a very specific technique to get results in social media for you or your company.

Ahead of Social Newsletter

LinkedIn is undoubtedly the most popular business networking social platform available today, but did you know that by creatively filling out your profile you can gain higher search results within LinkedIn AND Google? By making sure the things you want to get found for are listed in the *right* sections of LinkedIn, you have a much higher chance of getting found – both on LinkedIn and on Google. We are going to show you how you can change your LinkedIn profile RIGHT NOW to get results.

First, a bit about LinkedIn and Google together. LinkedIn is a very highly ‘trusted’ site in the eyes of Google. What that means is that (based on a lot of proprietary calculations and some behind-the-curtain-voodoo) Google has determined that information on LinkedIn – including your 100% complete profile – is relevant, important, and valuable and will display LinkedIn information ‘above the fold’ on the first search engine results page (SERP) in Google. LinkedIn’s high trust value combined with location-aware search results (Google can determine approximately where you are located by your IP address & customizes your search results to display results that may be physically close to your location) packs a powerful punch in getting your information SEEN by those that are most likely to want to connect with you or do business with you.

How can you take advantage of this?

The key is to know what fields and information Google looks at within LinkedIn and make sure it matches the types of search terms your prospective connections would be typing in.  Now of course by increasing your ‘searchability’ helps inside of LinkedIn as well.  Below are the main areas that LinkedIn (and Google) value the most in finding information:

Subscribe to Ahead of Social to find out!!

LinkedIn is widely considered a powerhouse professional business networking tool.  The community on LinkedIn has its own ecosystem and set of ‘unwritten’ rules on use and etiquette.  One hotly debated topic is how to incorporate Twitter messages into LinkedIn – tactfully.  What you decide to publish and on what platform is up to you – but there is technology available that makes it easy.  The simplest way to bring in updates from Twitter is to use the #in hashtag when sending a Tweet to let LinkedIn know that you want to cross-post just that message.  Now your professional network connections on LinkedIn don’t have to read every Tweet you send, only the ones you feel they would be interested in!

What type of information do you find works best to cross-post between your social networks?

Connecting LinkedIn & Twitter

1. Log into your LinkedIn account
2. Click on your name in the upper right corner – choose Settings
3. In the “Profile Settings” section, choose “Twitter Settings”

Here you can make changes to how LinkedIn handles your Twitter messages and accounts:

Account

This is where you can add or remove Twitter accounts that you would like associated with your LinkedIn account.

Display your Twitter account on your LinkedIn profile

This option allows you to display all of your Twitter messages on the right side bar of your Profile Page (“Add an Application” at bottom of right side bar). This is not the same as having your messages show up within your LinkedIn ‘wall’. By showing the side bar with your Tweets, you will not flood your connections timeline with your Twitter messages.

Share your tweets in your LinkedIn status

This option allows you to gate what Twitter messages actually show up as a status update in LinkedIn. Selecting “Yes, share all tweets” will publish EVERY Twitter message as a status update in LinkedIN. Selecting “Share only tweets that contain #in” will ignore all Twitter updates unless they are specifically tagged with #in and then only publish those as status updates to LinkedIn.  (Note: #li also works but is not as frequently used.)

Tweet display

Your only option here is to display rich text links (or not). It is generally accepted as ‘user friendly’ to display rich links so that readers have more information to help determine if the content is worth a ‘click’.  Checking/unchecking the option will show you a live example of each display option.

Because sometimes it’s easier to explain the steps and level of commitment to a full cycle social media technology and marketing initiative using every day examples.  So, where are YOU in the cycle?

LIFE : Crazy single life
SOCIAL MEDIA : Hit the social media platforms and be friends with everyone and anyone, with complete disregard to if they are worth it or not.  It’s a numbers game at this point!  You have an irrational need to be popular, collect friends, and honestly think that the world revolves around your status updates.  Soon you realize that at the end of the day you go home alone, and not one of your social media ‘friends’ are willing to help you move a couch into your new apartment.

LIFE : Courting/relationship
SOCIAL MEDIA : Once you see that settling down and focusing is the better option, you will need to buckle down and research to see if this ‘thing’ something you want to commit to.  Pick the traits and qualities that you most need to develop in yourself (or company) and dig deep and find out what you need to come out of the other end of the funnel.

LIFE : Marriage
SOCIAL MEDIA : This is where you have to put a ring on it and say the words “I do”.  Figure out what needs to happen (goals) to get what you want.  Think long term – you don’t think about having being married for a year and then bail.  It’s a commitment.

LIFE : Hello sex…
SOCIAL MEDIA : Tactics are the actual how-to pieces of reaching a goal.  The result of a tactic should be a tangible, measurable item that either gets you closer to your goal or achieves it.  You get out of it what you put into it – results, relationships, customers, engagement (sex might be more fun though).

LIFE : Baby!!
SOCIAL MEDIA : Humans start out as infants, then grow from there.  Start small.  You have to take on little parts first before you can take bigger bites.  If you stumble, pick yourself up, take a look at what caused you to fall in the first place, and either improve or pick a new direction.  You have to walk before you can run, and you need to learn from every step you take in order to take the next ones.

LIFE : Get schooled
SOCIAL MEDIA : Sometimes you fall down in the playground & get bullied, you gotta get back up, brush off and deal with the situation.  Take your lumps if it’s warranted.  Be sure to address concerns as they come up, ignoring problems/customer feedback won’t work & will bite you in the end.

LIFE : Puberty / growing pains
SOCIAL MEDIA : Sometimes your plans go crazy and out of control and in a different direction than you thought.  Learn to adapt and go with the flow. With a solid foundation you can weather this.  Being a teenager sucks sometimes, but it also provides us with some of life’s best lessons.

LIFE : Off to college
SOCIAL MEDIA : If you did your job properly, you need to let it go on it’s own while always providing wisdom & sometimes spending money to keep it independent and functioning on it’s own.  Don’t get caught off guard!  College kids come back home constantly for money , food and laundry.  By constantly monitoring what’s going on you can be prepared for those boomerang situations.

LIFE : Kids getting married (a.k.a. waiting for grandkids)
SOCIAL MEDIA : At this point all you can do is hold out for something completely new created by the people that carry your brand on social channels, realize you have nothing to do with you but is brilliant none the less.  Realize that now your children (brand advocates, customers, etc.) are in control and all you can really hope to provide is guidance and some direction so your grandkids don’t grow up to completely hate you and drain your bank account.  Candy helps.

It’s been said time and time again for a business to succeed in social media, they need to understand their customers.  Designing and incorporating a strategy for social media isn’t a checklist, it’s an evolution.  Jumping in and talking is fine if  you are a person, but as a company, there are some things to consider first.

1. It’s important to understand the culture of  the platforms you are interested in engaging on.  Fark or Digg has an entirely different persona than LinkedIn.  If you are interested in talking to college-humored males with a penchant for Photoshopping funny pictures – Fark and Digg are the place for you (hey, they spend a lot of money…)  Looking for sales professionals?  LinkedIn is where you need to be.  Know your audience, know your platform.
2. Don’t start with the technology – start with the goals.  Just this week a project came across our desk from a company looking to enter social media. They had already determined what technology and social media sites they wanted to be on, without having the slightest idea who they wanted to talk to, what they wanted to talk about, and who actually hangs out on these sites.  Backwards.  Goals first, tactics second.
3. Don’t just talk about your business.  Be a person first and have fun.  While it seems counter productive to chit-chat about personal items on company time, the fact that you present yourself as a human being goes a long way to building trust.  No one is saying tell everyone what you eat for lunch every day, but sharing some volunteer efforts your company engages in or publicly thanking co-workers for decorating your office (and sharing a quick picture) for your birthday shows you aren’t just about the end sale.
4. You have to be a listener, not just a broadcaster.  Ever take part in a conversation where the other person talks about themselves for 20 minutes, and when you finally get a word in, they are gazing over your shoulder looking for the next person to pitch to?  Try practicing ‘active listening‘ on the social channels before starting to start your own agenda.
5. Does it blend?  How does social media fit with your entire PR & Marketing plan?  Social media marketing is a subset of a larger comprehensive plan to launch your company into a new era of customer communication. Abandoning everything that’s worked in favor of something you know little about is a guaranteed failure.  Stick with what works, and add to it.

This article is part of a series on social media success.

What’s the ROI of your telephone?

Your phone is a critical tool to communicate and listen, just like social media is a tool.  Who ever said that social media is a direct pipeline of prime leads for your sales team?  Twitter isn’t a fat database of people sitting around waiting for you to pitch to them.  Facebook is not an e-commerce site.  Yes, you can make money from social channels (Dell claims $3 million in sales from Twitter alone).  When planning your entry into social media, items like ROI need to be addressed early and revisited often.  On the other hand, we are not saying that efforts in social media shouldn’t earn money.  How you earn (or save) money for your company should always be taken into account, but sometimes items like brand awareness, employee retention, idea generation, or customer satisfaction don’t have hard numbers or formulas to follow.

So how do you make money from social media?  It depends on why you use social media.  If you are using it as a customer service outreach (Your Call Is (Not That) Important to Us is an amazing book on the topic) then not only can you save hard money on the cost of an employee’s time picking up the phone, but the frustration and negative word of mouth so rampant with bad customer experiences.  How much money does it take to win back (assuming you even can) a customer that you’ve lost due to poor service?  How many customers do you loose even before the sale due to weak brand awareness or negative word of mouth?

Utilizing social media for sales generation?  Be there *before* the sale.  Offer help even if it means suggesting a competitor’s product.  Ask questions.  Listen.  Do more than sell – do anything but ‘sell’.  Be human.  Be well-rounded and showcase other facets of your company.  Talk about philanthropic efforts.  Provided your product or service is top-notch, all this is building trust between you and “people that may-or-may-not someday purchase your product or refer someone to you that might.”  Funny thing is, social media being structured the way it is, everyone gets to witness your efforts online and draw their own opinions on your company based on interactions they see you have with others.  In the past, the sales transaction took place ‘behind closed doors’ and not many people outside of the people involved saw the process.  That means a very limited amount of people could form their own opinions on your company outside of their own experiences.  Now the entire world can see how you treat customers, before, during, and after the sale.  The idea is scary to a good number of companies that aren’t used to operating in the new social economy.  Those companies that ‘get it’ realize that you could never put a price on (let alone actually pay to have done) the amount of positive exposure you get on social platforms.

How about using social media for talent acquisition? Product research and development?  Competitive analysis? Each group has very unique goals and should have very different strategies to using social media.

Sometimes the goal isn’t even to make money, but to save it.  Pepsi saved $20 million dollars on the 2010 Superbowl and put it towards the year-long Pepsi Refresh Project.  PepsiCo is getting much more than $20 million dollars in media coverage from the move.  Pepsi can afford to take chances like this, but can your company?  Social media is supposed to be a supplement to already successful outreach programs.  Dropping newspaper ads (if they work) to launch a Facebook Fan Page is not a smart business move.  Dumping your email campaigns (if they work) in favor of Twitter is a setup for failure.  Incorporating social media means having to take a good hard look at what you are involved with right now and cutting every single item that operates in the red.  For example, car dealerships may cringe at the thought of abandoning newspaper ads.  Just because your company (or your industry) has always done it a certain way – doesn’t mean you need to keep doing it that way.

End result, if you don’t know what your goals are, you will never reach them, social media endeavor or otherwise.

This article is part of a series on social media success from Purple Stripe Productions.

To put it bluntly, numbers matter.

Collecting numbers just for the sake of having numbers isn’t the goal.  Often times the quality of “the numbers” is overlooked.  Easy question – would you rather have 10,000 ‘fans’ that don’t really care what you are about and ignore you, or 500 ‘fans’ that are actively seeking information on your products or services?  Of course even with 500 ‘fans’ you can get impatient and wonder why your widget isn’t flying off the shelf or customers aren’t lined up out the door.  Christopher Penn has always said if you are selling Gulfstream G5 jets, and only need to sell one every two years to live like a king – you only need two followers, one of which is ready to buy a jet, and one that knows someone that wants to buy a jet.  You need to find the right numbers.

Just as you most likely didn’t have people banging down your door the day you opened for business, social media channels take time (and trust) to cultivate.  Today’s companies have no patience for waiting for growth.  Some remember the good ol’ days of double-digit growth and customers lined up outside their door with bags of money.  Some think that offline success translates directly into online success.  Some see social media is an instant ticket to success.  More yet assume old tactics and campaigns can be flipped to social platforms and work (even if they didn’t work before).  You not only have to think outside the box, you need to take a match, set the box on fire, roast marshmallows, then build a new one.  Hard work? Yes. Difficult? No.

If you’ve listened to what people have to say, you will know how to treat your numbers and how to grow them.  The key to all of this is to be sure you NEVER treat your ‘fans’ as numbers.  It’s important never to assume just because someone ‘fans’ or follows you, you have permission to spew as much marketing copy at them as you please.  Having someone follow you in social media circles merely means they are receptive in watching you and seeing if you can provide value or solutions to their life.  If you can’t produce, they ignore you, un-follow/friend, or worse yet, tell *their* friends how invaluable you are to them.

All this listening is boring. We want ACTION!  We want followers!  When do we get to talk about how awesome we are!?  We want sales driven directly from Twitter and our Facebook page.  We don’t have time to actually listen and try to provide value to people so they will fan & follow us.  We have *real* work to do during the day.  Do you expect me to hang out on Twitter all day?  My boss will think we are goofing off.

If you are not listening, and not contributing, why would people want to follow you?  What’s in it for them?  Every single time you post an update or tweet, ask yourself that question.  Telling people what you have on sale, what your product offering is, what award your firm just won – this isn’t providing value to them.  Your ‘peacocking’ (our team’s term for trying to brag online and think people will be impressed, think your important, and want to follow you).  Where’s the value?  Having 20% off of all toddler shoes this week is fine, but if you offer 20% off all toddler shoes this week when you come in and have your child professionally fitted benefits them.  See the difference?

So how do you find the right numbers?  You listen. You help. You promote others. You offer value, information, and assistance.  You LISTEN (it’s worth repeating).  By listening and responding, without asking for or expecting a sale in return, is how you grow your numbers.   Of course there is much more to gaining quality ‘fans’ and followers (depending on your goals and industry – to name just two of two dozen variables) but listening is always a rock solid start.  By showing that you are a good listener and can provide value (“what’s in it for me?”) and interesting content – THEN you may have earned a ‘fan’ or follower.  The minute you start being noise instead of information – you’re history.

Start by searching within the platforms you are looking to build a presence on.  What to search for?  People that are having conversations about your company, your products, lateral industries, key phrases related to your industry, you competitors, your geographical area, or anything loosely linked to your interests.  Think of it like this, what phrases or ideas would you be listening for during a conversation at a (in-person) networking event to help identify someone as a prospect to talk to?

Search.Twitter.com and Facebook.com/search are the first places to go to start seeing what conversations are taking place. Need something more comprehensive?  Google Alerts is the best (free) option for searching the billions of pieces of information that show up every day on the web.  Once you outgrow the basic free tools, platforms such as Radian 6 help you not only search out information, but help manage your brand online and streamline your team’s outreach efforts.

The more people that are genuinely interested in you, the more sucessful you will be in social media.  Success doesn’t always equal money, success means meeting the goals you’ve laid out for your company during the strategy process.  You did think about why you need to be active in social marketing and what you want to accomplish?  Right?

This article is part of a series on social media success from Purple Stripe Productions.

Taking a step back, listening, and learning are all nice in theory, but ‘lazy’ in the business world.  Action produces results.  Listening is inaction.  We define success in how quickly we rack up the number of fans, friends, status updates, ‘likes,’ and re-Tweets.  Numbers we can count and reproduce on a chart.  How can you be considered successful if you gained less fans this week than last?  How can you justify to your management that your efforts are successful if you LOST a few followers?

The listening precursor is a real sticking point in a good number of companies.  You can see the results of not listening in multiple facets of a company.  Customer Service is reactive to problems and always on the defense.  The Sales team struggles to keep up with unique product offerings until the demand of customers hits the tipping point.  Research & Development work in silos far removed from end users.  Marketing follows a safe and predictable path that fits nicely within the niche and genre of their industry.  Human Resources is seen as the ‘heavy’ in the company.  Information technology departments treat employees like teens that cannot be trusted with the Internet for fear of rampant porn viewing and personal online socializing resulting in millions of dollars of lost revenue due to unproductive worker bees.

The bottom line – handing in a status report with slow-gaining numbers is perceived as a failure in Corporate America.  Fast. Quick. Instant.  NOW.  Because the technology (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc.) produce instant content, the perception is that success should be instant as well.  Trust takes time.

Solutions are easy to identify, but hard to implement.  Change is hard. It’s disruptive.  It’s unproven.

What if Customer Service spoke up and talked to R&D and Sales about making changes to products that they see need work?  Would customers get better products and services faster?  Would the company save money in research and marketing by producing products that the public is already asking for?  How many customers could you keep from moving to a competitor?

What if Sales took ideas from customers and (even if it wasn’t a viable avenue to pursue) acknowledged customers as part of the product cycle and a valued member of idea generation.  My Starbucks Idea is actively soliciting and implementing ideas directly from their customers.  Imagine that! Loyal customers giving free advice geared specifically towards your product and company and giving them even better reasons to spend money with you.

What if R&D could poll customers and find out what works, what doesn’t, and maybe even find an entirely new and unique market for a product?  Fiskars & Brains on Fire comes to mind (you really need to go read the case study).  Can you imagine a company that has been making a product since 1649 and has *no idea* who uses it or for what purpose?!  There isn’t a scrapbooker alive that doesn’t own a pair of orange-handled Fiskars scissors.  Crafters are fiercely brand loyal, in this case to a product and company that didn’t even know they existed.  By taking the deep dive into the culture of the customer, not only did they gain an almost limitless idea pool for new products, but built a loyal fan base second to none in their fiercely competitive industry.  All by listening and acting on what they heard.

What if Marketing focused on developing amazing content to share with customers instead of canned broadcast messages?  What if they stopped doing what the rest of their industry does and actually did something creative and interesting?  Frenzied Waters is a perfect example of a ground-breaking concept (like most things that come out of Campfire).

How about Human Resources working with employees to find what they need, how they work and learn best, and act more like mentors and less like police?  Saying there is ‘open communication’ between departments is one thing, but when people speak up and never see results, the conversation stops.

Why talk when nothing changes?  This is why it’s important to listen first.  Your customers (or potential customers) will let you know the direction they need you to go in.  And, yes, you need to listen – and adapt.  Running head-first into social media platforms without having any clue what already exists, what people want, and how to best position yourself as a helpful resource in your field are paramount to any endeavor.

So what do you gain by listening?  The most obvious benefit is learning what your customers are talking about, what they need, what they hate, how they live, and how they need *you* to help *them* solve problems. Fiskars listened and gained product insight and an army of crafters.  Discovery Channel provided a new form of personalized, interactive entertainment with Frenzied Waters.  Where conversations used to take place between co-workers around a water cooler, or drinking coffee around a kitchen table – today’s chit-chat also takes place ONLINE.  Drug companies do not create medicine to alleviate (or cure) illness that doesn’t exist – and friends don’t recommend a product they haven’t tried and had success with.  Restaurants don’t put food on menus people won’t eat – and people don’t bring friends to dine at restaurants they haven’t been to before and loved.  Businesses exist to provide a product or service required by the consumer.  No consumer need, no product, no trust, no business.

Secondly, keeping tabs on competitors isn’t such a bad idea.  The danger here is that you get caught up in every move they make and may get drawn into mimicking their efforts online.  If it worked for them it must work for you, right?  Problem here is you don’t know what their goals are, what goes on behind the scenes, failures they have had in the past.  Sometimes it is hard to be different, stand out in a positive light, or provide a truly unique product or experience.  Regardless if you reach that goal or not – you have to try.  If you copy your competition, then you are really no different than they are, and that just made the decision for the customer more neutral.  “Them or Us” – makes no difference.  You need to make a difference.

Keeping your ear to the ground for the ‘next big thing’ gives you a competitive edge and a brain-trust of consumers that are already telling you what your next product or service should be.  If fifty people a day, every day, called your company asking for the same set of products – would you provide it?  Social media channels work the same way, only you need to “pick up the phone,” BE QUIET, and listen to the conversation.  Take notes.  Implement innovation.  Be proactive.

Moving forward requires you to be on solid foundation to start with.  If you are offering shoddy, broken, or inferior products or services no amount of good will or social outreach will save you.  There is a fear that by listening to what customers are saying about you online you open yourself up to negative feedback.  Guess what? Customers (and employees) are saying it regardless if you want to hear it or not.  Trust us, it’s better to hear it, take your lumps, fix it, and move forward.  If you don’t listen to existing and former customers, you will never know what it will take to move you from good to great in their eyes.  You know the saying – it’s easier (and less expensive) to keep a customer than gain a new one.  Listen to the customers you have and make them a true part of your product cycle, it’s one of the only ways to figure out how to gain new ones.

The answer is simple – BE SOCIAL. Now of course if you get that part, you won’t need my company’s help or to even finish this article series. For the rest of us that realize we are learning every day no matter how successful or experienced we are – read on…

It’s 2010 and while it may be old hat for some, most companies had technologies such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn on their radar at least from last year (other companies realized the revolution started in 1984).  Wait it out, be safe, see what others in their industry are doing (and if it works…)  Without realizing what goes on behind the scenes and viewing only the tweets and status updates, many are tempted to jump right in.  Show progress, DO SOMETHING.  Great from a personal perspective, but it doesn’t fare as well professionally.

After working in this field for well over a decade, we are finding patterns in the resistance, adoption, and implementation to social media.  Understandably, not all companies are set up to be ultra-progressive and on the bleeding edge of technology.  The thing is, the curve is starting to see the crest, and holding out any longer puts you on the dark side of the slope.  Even a 70 year-old brand can adapt.  Hell, a 360 year old company can adapt.  If they can – YOU can.

There is no more ‘wait and see’ in this economy.  Results are proven, so long as you are not expecting social media to be a direct line to your company’s bottom line.  If you treat social media as a telephone, and not a sales database, you will see results.

Becoming engaged in social media doesn’t mean a mad rush to smash on the ‘publish’ button and produce content.  A good part of the ‘need’ to get on social media platforms is a result of several factors, in a very predictable course.  With each step, there are traps to avoid and strategies to accomplish goals.  The dangerous part?  The process that leads to success and the (multiple) ones that lead to failure look very similar to the untrained eye.  Trying to tackle social media endeavors using the same tried and true tactics and initiative you’ve used in the past will FAIL.  In the past being active looked like productivity.  Activity = Progress.  Not so anymore.  Sales people thought that the way to make more sales was to call more people.  The game has changed, and fact is, you need to learn the new rules (or make your own) – but it is NOT the same as it’s always been.

Over the next few days the Purple Stripe team will be publishing the following articles related to the different steps involved in developing a social strategy.

• Publish SOMETHING!
• More Friends Please
• Show Me The Money

A few additional topics may surface as well.  We welcome your comments and thoughts, and hope that over the next week we can help you find some soft spots in your social media plans and set the course straight!

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