For those of you who are new visitors, here’s a little background on these screencast reviews. Every Tuesday we provide a free review of a company’s Twitter or Facebook presence, blog, or other social media initiative in five minutes or less. We share the screencast videos here so everyone can see them. If you’d like us to review something your company is doing, leave a comment here, drop me a line on Twitter or get in touch via email (jason at ewaydirect dot com), and I’ll add your name to the list. Each week, we pick a company at random to review, so get in touch if you’re interested!

Now back to Crowd Seats. Check out the screencast video below for some of my thoughts on how Crowd Seats is using Twitter and some quick recommendations that I have for them.

It’s always tough to cover everything in five minutes but I hope you enjoyed this review. If you have any ideas for Crowd Seats, leave a comment so Justin can see your thoughts. Don’t forget to drop me a line if you’d like me to review something your company is doing.

Also, since this is the fifth review that I’ve done in this format/style, I’d love to hear your thoughts to see how I can make these reviews better. Any feedback is appreciated!

#CRME11 @ekolsky -- Does your company recognize the value of customers beyond their wallets?

August 10, 2011 9:46 am via HootSuiteReplyRetweetFavorite

@PaulContentMan

Paul H. Simon

Paraphrasing @mjayliebs: #SocialMedia "complaint" channels forcing improved cust service - companies can't hide #CRMe11

August 10, 2011 9:47 am via TweetChatReplyRetweetFavorite

@neilglassman

Neil Glassman

Phone skills harder to find now among young people than social media skills, say contact center managers - @mjayliebs #CRMe11

August 10, 2011 9:53 am via TweetDeckReplyRetweetFavorite

@CRMOutsiders

CRMOutsiders

What do customers want? "Know me, be competent, be trustworthy ,be likable, be relevant, be available," says @CRMStrategies #CRMe11

August 10, 2011 10:24 am via TweetDeckReplyRetweetFavorite

@Bucholtz

Bucholtz

#CRMe11 key skills in an Am-hoc world: access, awareness, agility, empowerment & creativity @CRMStrategies

August 10, 2011 10:40 am via HootSuiteReplyRetweetFavorite

@ahall3649

Art Hall

Interesting stats from @BrentLeary 93% of Americans think businesses should have a #facebook presence. Well duh! #crme11

August 10, 2011 12:04 pm via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@CRMAdvice

Software Advice

"Pushing marketing 1.0 messages over marketing 2.0 channels won't work." - @BrentLeary #CRMe11

August 10, 2011 12:16 pm via SeesmicReplyRetweetFavorite

@BlakeLandau

BlakeLandau

@PaulContentMan: #CRMe11 via @BrentLeary company that buys tech w/o changing philosophy will see things happen that they don't like. So True

August 10, 2011 12:32 pm via Twitter for BlackBerry®ReplyRetweetFavorite

@i_AMwilliams

Alex Williams

"The Revolution will be measurized" - @BrentLeary #crme11

August 10, 2011 12:41 pm via TweetChatReplyRetweetFavorite

@CRMStrategies

Brian Vellmure CRM

@brentleary: Folks that were more strategic measured for sentiment. #crme11 #crm #cem #scrm

August 10, 2011 12:41 pm via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@dmyron

David Myron

Not just about Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) but about Customer Lifetime Influence (CLI) @brentleary #CRMe11

August 10, 2011 12:45 pm via TweetDeckReplyRetweetFavorite

@johnrmatthews

John Matthews

If you come across interesting tweets that you’d like to nominate for inclusion in this series, feel free to drop us a line during the week @eWayDirect.

What is a Klout Score?

According to them, “It’s the measured influence based on your ability to drive action. Every time you create content or engage your influence others.” It uses the data from your Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Foursquare and (most recently), YouTube accounts.

According to Megan Berry, Marketing Manager for Klout, “Our goal is to measure everywhere people are creating content and influencing each other online. For most Facebook is more personal and LinkedIn more professional, but we see influence happening in both platforms.”

How is it Measured?

According to Klout there are three main parts:

True Reach- “The number of people you influence. We filter out spam and bots and focus on the people who are acting on your content. When you post a message, these people tend to respond or share it.”

Amplification- “is how much you influence people. When you post a message, how many people respond to it or spread it further? If people often act upon your content you have a high Amplification score.”

Network- “indicates the influence of the people in your True Reach. How often do top Influencers share and respond to your content? When they do so, they are increasing your Network score.”

Why it is Important?

Measure, measure, measure! There is great deal of pressure in the marketing world to measure social media. People are spending a lot of time validating social media to clients and probably people within their own company. Klout is a popular (and free) way to measure social influence. Sometimes, even people who don’t in believe in its merits end up recognizing it.

I believe that Klout can be  a good part of a larger influence measure or score. For example, I wrote a blog post on “How Evaluate Blogs for Blogger Outreach Programs”, where I point out that companies need to identify some baselines so you can rank the blogs and see which ones are the best fit for your outreach program. Those baselines are to find bloggers who are passionate about the subjects they write about; blog metrics like PageRank, monthly site traffic and Technorati authority; evaluating bloggers subjectively to see if they fit with your brand; and other numbers bases on social media presence, like a Klout score. I think it’s ok to use Klout scores when they’re part of the puzzle or part of an overall strategy.

Why it is Not Important?

It’s not perfect. Klout provides what topics you are influential about along with a number score. I have never met a person who had “correct” or “right” influential topics. My currently influential topics are oatmeal, marketing, forums, social media, and drinks. I will take marketing and social media. Good job, Klout for getting that right! As for forums, I tweeted once about forums and now I’m influential about it? Ok? Whatever, I take it. Oatmeal is one I don’t understand. I’m actually on a low crab diet, so I have not eaten oatmeal in about six months. The only thing I can attribute to that, is sometimes I tweet about the comic website, “The Oatmeal.”  The last one kind of makes me mad. Drinks? I assume it means alcoholic drinks, so I will assume the others will believe that too. I’m not much of a drinker (and if you are, each to their own) but I try to keep my Twitter and other social media sites as professional as possible because I use my Twitter account as a networking tool. It’s not the end of the world because you can hide topics, but still it’s the principle of the thing.

About 2 weeks ago, Mark Schaefer wrote on his blog about how some companies are using a job candidate’s Klout score in hiring decisions. This stirred quite a debate with over 140 comments on the blog post. If you have some time read through them, since many people made some very interesting points. Here is a part of an important comment made by Nicole Cairns:

“As for Klout’s validity, I’d like to point these two users out: @hipstermermaid has a Klout score of 77. He/She runs a parody account, is anonymous, and tweets about beer and liking music that’s more obscure than your music. @acarvin has a Klout score of 78. Andy is changing the way news is produced and social media is integrated within an organization. The fact that these two rank even on the same chart as one another, much less within one point of each other, is a serious problem.”

So, take Klout as a gain of salt. If a person has a high Klout score, make sure to look at the full picture and don’t take the score at face value. And I will give Klout props for trying to create the best possible way to score influence. Over time, I believe it will get better. But it’s not there yet. In the meantime, people should focus on creating great content and connecting with people.

And remember to follow eWayDirect on Twitter, because we need a better Klout score. Wink, wink.

If you’re new here, you’re probably wondering what this social media screencast mumbo-jumbo is all about. Here’s the deal: every Tuesday we’ll be providing free reviews of a company’s Twitter or Facebook presence, blog, or other social media initiative in five minutes or less and sharing the screencast videos with you here. If you’d like us to review something your company is doing, leave a comment here, drop me a line on Twitter or get in touch via email (jason at ewaydirect dot com). Each week, we pick a company at random to review, so get in touch if you’re interested!

Back to Invest In Social. Between this site and Social Fresh, Jason Keath has a lot of good things going on. I’ve been to a handful of Social Fresh events and I highly recommend them.

Check out the video below to see what I like about the Invest In Social website and where there may be some opportunities for tweaks and improvements.

It was hard to cover everything in five minutes but I hope you enjoyed this review. If you have any ideas for Invest In Social, leave a comment so Jason can see your thoughts. Don’t forget to drop me a line if you’d like me to review something your company is doing.

P.S. I’m actually on vacation right now so I recorded this a few days ago. If you have questions or comments about this review I may not be able to get to them this week, but I will definitely respond when I’m back next week.

In the style of this book, I’m going to try to make this review short and sweet.

The Book: 

Stratten gives practical advice about the new understanding of marketing or unmarketing. In a connected and information-driven world, we have to think differently about our approach to customers. The whole book is based on the premise that everything in marketing comes down to how businesses interact with their customers. And in the end it boils down to common sense marketing and customer service. No gimmicks, shinny trinkets, smoke and mirrors… just true connection.

Stratten flat out states that traditional selling tactics like cold calling don’t work, because they are unappealing to people that you’re trying to sell to and don’t give you much of a return for your business. He writes, “If you believe your business is built on relationships, make building them your business.” Throughout the book, he shows you different ways to use social media to build relationships that are more beneficial for you and your business.

My Take: 

The book contains a lot of one-two punches, and throughout the narrative he presents a great deal of sarcasm and wit. I actually laughed out loud a few times, which is rare; I’m not type of person that does that, especially when I’m reading by myself. Most of the humor is in the footnotes, which seem to be on every page. But the footnotes are definitely worth the read.

Stratten is straight and to the point. The book is made up of 56 short, digestible chapters of stories, case studies, and observations. It’s like the “Twitter” of marketing book, a stream of different thoughts but with a unified theme. Plus, it has the same “relationship” affect as Twitter or a blog. When you are an avid follower someone for a while and read all of their content, you tend to feel like you already know them. After reading this book, I feel like I know Scott.

We hope you enjoyed this (un)review. Check out Scott Stratten on Twitter, @unmarketing.

1. He was having a ton of conversations with people
2. He has tweeted over 140,000 times

To give you some context, I joined Twitter in May of 2007 and consider myself to be a pretty heavy user. But I’m at less than 15k tweets. Of course, numbers aren’t everything. But it still blew my mind to see that John has posted to Twitter over 125k more times than I have!

I decided to get in touch with John to see if he’d be willing to answer some questions about Twitter and share his thoughts and knowledge. See below for my questions and John’s answers.

Me: How did you first get interested in social media and Twitter?

John: I actually started on Facebook first, and did that because I was working with a company that provided directory websites–how to find certain things in different cities–and thought it was a good idea to start doing more to promote my efforts on Facebook and other platforms. I joined Twitter next on May 14, 2008. I actually have been a member of LinkedIn for the longest period of time, about six years. Once I joined Facebook and then Twitter, I was hooked! I was consumed by them all and learning all I could about them Not so much to sell myself or my services, but how they could be useful tools to promote others.

Me: You’ve tweeted over 140,000 times, and you are probably one of the most prolific tweeters I’ve ever seen. What are your goals with using Twitter?

John: Well, I hope that is a good thing, the 140K+ tweets :-) I tweet a lot and the more I tweet, the more responses I get, which leads to more tweets. I daily say good morning and converse with a lot of my followers and I promote a lot of my followers. This does lead to a lot of conversations back and forth; and to me that is the power behind Twitter. These conversations build relationships, which in turn leads to business opportunities. My goals with Twitter include building relationships, promoting others and using the platform to drive traffic to my own blog and website.

Me: What do you think are the main benefits that companies can get out of properly using Twitter?

John: Twitter is an amazing listening and research platform. Search.Twitter.com is an incredible tool for research of companies, topics and people. For a business, it has to be about listening to your market, your niche, to find out what they want and need from you; as well as build a community of followers that can and will support you and promote you. It is much more powerful for someone to promote me than for me to promote myself. The same goes for businesses.

Me: What do you think is the biggest challenge brands face when trying to leverage social media? How can they overcome this?

John: The biggest challenge is developing a plan and sticking to it for the long haul. Social media is not about instant results. The results come, but they take time. Companies must take social media seriously because that is where their customers and potential customers are spending time. To do this, to overcome the hurdle of getting into social media and staying in it, companies should develop a plan and stick to it. A lot of companies handle it themselves; which is fine if they have the personnel onsite to work the plan on an ongoing basis. Many other companies outsource their social media efforts to consultants and content managers such as myself. This can work out very well, but it takes a great working relationship to make it happen.

Me: There are a lot of companies that maybe are using Twitter, but not to the extent that they could be using it. What are one or two things you would tell these companies that can help them improve their efforts?

John: Study what other companies in their industry is doing. Not to copy, but to learn what is working and what isn’t so they do not have to learn by making the same mistakes. Be consistent. Especially on Twitter, you need to be there on a daily and/or regular basis. Companies do not have to Tweet all day every day, but they need to be there consistently.

Me: What do you like to do when you’re not working?

John: A fine cigar, a single-malt scotch or brandy helps me to relax; but nothing beats the beach. Sand and surf are my two biggest hobbies!

Thanks to John for taking the time to answer these questions and share his thoughts with us. Being more conversational on Twitter and doing more to shine the spotlight on others is something we can all do a better job with. You can follow John on Twitter or visit his website, http://johnlusher.com/

The Right Way to Automate Your Efforts

Scheduling Updates

If you have the tools that let you schedule social media posts, by all means schedule away. In many cases, it’s unlikely that one person’s sole job is running a company’s social media accounts. We understand that you can’t “sit” on Facebook and Twitter all day posting. However, when you do the bulk of scheduling think about the ways to make each post different or unique. When we schedule a blog post for first tweet, we normally write “New Post: Blog Title” which is fine because we’re announcing that we’ve written a new blog post. But after that initial tweet, we try to make the other tweets interesting.

For example Jason Peck wrote a blog post “Get More Email Subscribers and Facebook Likes By Understanding People’s Motivations” that begins with a story about how, as a child, he would try to understand his parents better so he could get more sugary cereals like Lucky Charms. In the tweets about the blog post, I tried to have a little fun with the anecdote:

How to increase Facebook likes, email subscribers, and the number of marshmallows in Lucky Charms http://ar.gy/UM1

July 18, 2011 5:02 pm via Social PublishReplyRetweetFavorite

@eWayDirect

eWayDirect

The takeaway is that if you’re scheduling your tweets, try to make each one unique and special.

Sharing Others’ Content

When you find great content you should share it. Because you don’t want social media accounts to sound like “Me, myself and I”. You want people to share your content, so you should also spread the sharing love. When sharing others’ content or information don’t be afraid to add your own commentary. And if you don’t have any commentary, try to give a reason why you decided that was worth sharing. It adds something extra to the tweet and makes it your own.

Sharing others’ content can be something that you schedule or do whenever you wish.

Replying To People

When talking to user directly on social media outlet, you should always sound human. Because if you don’t you are basically spamming them. If someone is taking to time to reach out to you, reach back. To achieve this you need to check social media properties a few times a day or set up email notifications.

Automated notifications can help save time but actual responses shouldn’t be automated.

Automation No-Nos

RSS To Twitter or Facebook

If people want your RSS feed, they will sign up for your RSS feed. Most likely they are coming to your Facebook or Twitter for other reasons. So, don’t link your RSS feed to your social networks. Not only is it boring, sometimes RSS don’t display titles correctly. Tweets or Facebook posts may gain extra symbols, lose the correct spacing or cut off at the end, leaving you with sloppy-looking post.

Auto DMs

On Twitter, you should never automatically send someone a direct message when he/she follows you. Automatically sending a direct message with something like “Thanks for the follow, check out mycoolwebsite.com for more information” is the exact opposite of what social media should be; it’s boring, generic and impersonal. If you decide to directly contact someone via social media using a company account you should do so in a human way. The same goes for when you are replying to people!

Posting The Same Content Everywhere

Don’t post the same exact title or headline to all of your social networks. Twitter displays content like news headlines. You need to grab someone’s attention quickly and you only have 140 characters to do it. Facebook gives you many different content options, where you can post a status message up to 420 characters, a question, a link, a picture or a video. Take advantage of each network’s unique features and you will get a better response from your audience on each site. You’ll also increase the likelihood that people will follow you on multiple channels, bringing them closer to your brand.

Final Thoughts

With social media programs, you get what you give. If you have everything automated, you likely won’t get as much out of it as you could if you’re connecting with people in a real, human way. Like most things in social media, it’s a process. You are not going to have an amazing, new, humanized brand over night. Start to think about how to get the desired balance between humanizing and automating your efforts. It’s much more beneficial (and less risky) to do less with social media than to try to automate everything and lose the human touch that makes social media channels so interesting and valuable.

How do you strike a balance between automating some of your efforts while making sure to “keep it real?”

I wanted more chances to play Super Mario World after school, more time to shoot basketball before going to bed, and more sweet cereals like Count Chocula and Lucky Charms (and more marshmallows in them). To achieve this, I put a lot of effort into understanding my parents, so I could learn how to get more of these things without having to beg for them. Unfortunately, I never figured out how to increase the number of marshmallows in Lucky Charms, but I’m still open to suggestions…

Flash forward to now. I work for a great company that helps other companies get more of what they want – prospects, customers and revenue. One question we’ve always helped people with is “How can we get more email subscribers and generate more revenue from them?” That’s still a very valid question as email marketing is one of the most important things a company can do to grow its database and generate more revenue online.

With the rise of social media and Facebook, more people are also asking “How can we get more Facebook likes/fans?”

Important caveat: More Facebook fans should never be your end goal…but it can be a good indicator if what you’re doing is moving you towards your goals.

In answering these questions, it’s important to understand the motivations behind why people subscribe to company emails and why they might follow a company on Facebook.

Motivations For Email

The following statistics come from EmailStatCenter.com via ExactTarget’s Email X-Factor Study in 2010.

• 67% of US internet users say the motivation behind giving their email address to a company is to receive discounts and promotions.
• 55% of US internet users say the motivation behind giving their email address to a company is to get a “freebie” in exchange for my email address.
• 50% of US internet users say the motivation behind giving their email address to a company is to get updates on upcoming sales.

Motivations For Facebook

All Facebook recently released an infographic from Column Five Media and Get Satisfaction about what makes people want to follow a brand. Here are the top three reasons why people follow brands on Facebook/MySpace (not sure why these were lumped together, but they were):

• 36.9% of people who follow brands do this to get access to special offers
• 32.9% of people who follow brands do this because they’re current customers
• 18.2% of people who follow brands do this to get interesting or entertaining content

Takeaways

People’s primary motivations for subscribing to company emails and following companies on Facebook are roughly the same. People want access to discounts, deals and offers. Yes, some people may like you on Facebook or subscribe to your emails because they want to share their opinions or feel like they’re part of your community, but these aren’t the main reasons for most people. Keeping this in mind, you definitely want to think about what specific motivations your own customers may have.

Based on the research above, people are looking for tangible value from companies via email and Facebook. If you want to get more email subscribers and Facebook likes, you should probably give people what they’re looking for. You likely shouldn’t just offer both groups the same thing; ideally you want people to follow/subscribe to you on both channels to bring them even closer to your brand. I tend to believe that the best stuff should be reserved for email subscribers. Email marketing is something you have more ownership of and control over, and it takes more of an investment on the part of a user to subscribe via email than to like a page on Facebook. However, this is probably best looked at on a case-by-case basis.

How do you look at people’s motivations in determining how to get more people to like you on Facebook, subscribe to your emails and buy more stuff/buy more often/spend more money?

Image credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/briherbst/426995523/sizes/s/in/photostream/

• “What do my customers think?”
• “Why do they Like our Facebook page?”
• “Do they find value in our Twitter account?”

Understanding how your customers think about you is a great way to gain valuable insights for improved products and services, marketing and customer service. Here a couple of ways to think more like your customers.

Social Media Monitoring /Feedback

Hit the social media websites. Look at the popular sites like Twitter and Facebook but also remember the smaller sites like message boards, forums and blogs. Search for your keywords using free tools (such as Twitter Search or Social Mention) or paid social media monitoring tools. This is probably the easiest way to find out where people are talking about you and what they are saying (thinking) about your company. Another idea is to simply call or email some of your customers and ask them what they think about you. You might be surprised what you find.

Understand What People Want

Most people follow brands via social media websites because they want access special offers or deals. 36.9% of people like your brand on Facebook and 43.5% follow your Twitter account in the hopes you will do just that. After that, 18.2% of Facebook likers and 22.7% of Twitter followers want to see interesting or entertaining content. Give them what they want, heavier wallets and a good laugh.

Understand How People Share Online

Put social media share buttons on web pages and products, so people can easily share your content. Are your customers more likely to share entertaining, informative or newsworthy content? Content related to case studies or how-tos? When you understand what people are sharing, give them more of it. When people share things about brands with their friends, they’re friends are likely to notice and take action. 60% of US social network users were at least somewhat likely to take action when a friend posted something about a product, services, company or brand on a social media site. Think carefully about how your customers share things online, what they like to share, and how you can facilitate more sharing.

Make Things Simple

Definitely make it as easy as possible for people to share your content. Don’t make contests, coupons, or sweepstakes too complicated. Don’t have too many steps for customers to sign up for your emails or register for your website. Make is easy for them to unsubscribe. In whatever you do, think of each step in a process like a barrier. The more barriers there are, the less likely customers will complete the process.

Think Like A Customer

Review your website, Facebook page, Twitter account, email newsletters, etc. and play the part of the customer. Don’t just go through the motions. Pay attention. Since you are a customer of other companies, you can pretend to be one for yours. You may notice things that you haven’t thought of before.

What kinds of actions do you take to think like your customers and gain insights on how to improve their experiences with you?

Rand Fishkin, SEOmoz
Tweets about start-ups, search and social media.

Rich Myers, CEO Talent Zoo
Mix of business, leadership and social media.

Richard Branson, Virgin Group
Eccentric and entertaining.  Also tweets about Virgin Galactic, the first commercial spaceline.

Guy Kawasaki, Alltop.com
Tweets all of the time about business, social media, and many random topics, like science and food.

Christine Perkett, Perkett PR
Mix of personal and business. Tweets some great insights.

Gini Dietrich, Arment Dietrich
Uses Twitter to connect with others. Engage with her and she will engage back. Tweets what she is reading.

Jack Welch, Former CEO General Eclectic
Old school CEO meets new media. Interesting tweets, sometimes political.

Anita Campbell,  Small Business Trends
Tweets about anything and everything business.

John Moore,  GovInTheLab
Tweets about open government, mobile and CRM. Sometimes tweets in other languages.

Ian Schafer, Deep Focus
Great insights and sense of humor.

For example, this tweet made me laugh:

I know why Google launched Google+. It's because 99% of search results lead to crap (unscientific stat).

June 28, 2011 11:11 pm via TweetDeckReplyRetweetFavorite

@ischafer

Ian Schafer

If you’d like to follow more CEOs, here is a Twitter list created by Conversation Agent. Over 250 CEOs are listed and more are added on a regular basis.