CMS Weekly

Posts Tagged ‘Twitter’

Thinking About Using Facebook as Your Company Web Page? Think Again
Transcript From Episode CMSW2009-09-28

From Hubspot’s Inbound Marketing Blog, some opinions on using social media instead of a traditional website for your business. Attractive option, particularly for really small businesses – and it is easy to get swept up into all the excitement. There’s a place for Facebook and Twitter in your marketing toolkit, but don’t make it the only tool.

Here are some of the reasons:

1. Control – You can maintain control of your own website built from scratch or with a CMS tool. And you should maintain this control. Don’t leave your important business presence to the mercy of a company like Facebook. Their rules state that accounts are only to be used to represent individuals, and they can wipe out your presence if you violate that rule.

2. Creativity limitations – There are limits to what you can do inside existing social media tools. And there’s a risk that they could also make across the board changes that would impact your business.

3. Search limitations – a custom web site is simply better for bringing in new customers

Ideas to consider instead:

1. Create your web page on a custom domain and add a blog to your site. Link these to your Facebook or Twitter pages.

2. Create a Fan Page under Facebook, where users can post pictures, comments, discussions, etc.

Don’t ignore the social media – used correctly as part of a comprehensive marketing plan it will help you understand your customers better. Find out more about inbound marketing at InboundMarketing.com.

This Week’s Episode

The Productivity Myth: Step Away From the Twitter, Get Back to Work
Transcript From Episode CMSW2009-08-10

Employers it seems are very worried about lost productivity due to social media usage. The fact is that there are already tons of other outside distractions at work ranging from instant message, email, workplace socializing and the never ending cigarette break – so this is not a new problem – but an old concern applied to a new technology; similar to what we see when the ranks of psychologists hit the TV news circuit to describe some new addiction caused by technology.

During the same time that Facebook grew from 100 million users to 200 million and Twitter went Oprah, U.S business sector productivity has increased 2.0 percent. This is a bit off the recent historic rate 2.5% – but I don’t think anyone during this recession is blaming that on Twitter.

Companies that think they may have a productivity problem because of social networks and the like actually have a measurement problem – that is – they don’t know how to objectively measure whether an employee is meeting standards of productivity. In the absence of clear measurement – they resort to punitive actions (blocking these sites, monitoring employee behavior) that can damage morale and trust.

If your sales team is nailing their numbers do you care if they are on Facebook? If your call center is handling volume with great customer satisfaction – do you care if they use Twitter?

Lastly, most companies don’t recognize that they often expect employees to check email after hours and bring work home when needed. If this is the expectation then blocking employees from accessing these social sites during “work hours” is not a fair bargain.

My recommendation for companies is to clarify job performance criteria and establish clear guidelines on how to productively engage social media (social media savvy employees are an asset not a liability)… and to build those guidelines collaboratively with their employees using these very same technologies. My favorite guideline comes from IBM (they have the best guidelines that I know of) which says, “Don’t forget your day job”. Enough said.

This Week’s Episode

Corporate Twitter Toolbox: Twitter Tools for the Enterprise
Transcript From Episode CMSW2009-08-24

Mashable has the corporate Twitter Toolbox. From tweeting and responding to customers to tracking the conversation and measuring the effectiveness of Twitter campaigns, there is a bevy of great tools out there for corporate tweeters.

Finding the right Twitter applications is a challenge for social media managers, though, because new apps seem to spring up each day and they often have overlapping feature sets. Sudha Jamthe, Social Platform Strategist for PayPal X Platform advises companies on innovation and building engaging communities, and she says Twitter is a great listening post for companies to monitor conversations related to their brand and engage with customers. She delivers an extensive report on the market leaders in the different categories of tools available to manage a corporate social media campaign.

First, she advises marketers to use the Forrester Profile Calculator to find out where your customers are before you start pouring resources into a strong Twitter presence. The technographic profile shows how many of your customers generate original content through blogs and tweets, and how many mostly just read available content. Radian6 and Techrigy’s SM2 help to further categorize your customers by the specific social media tools that they use and find out where and if they are listening or posting.

Once you have a strategy, tools like Hootsuite and CoTweet help you execute. Companies like Disney, Dell and FOX use Hootsuite, a web-based Twitter client that supports multiple tweeters from one corporate Twitter account. In-depth reporting is available for each tweet and is a very valuable feature for a corporate social media campaign.

CoTweet also offers integrated Bit.ly reporting as well as multi-user and multi-profile support, and is used by Jet Blue, Sun Microsystems, Starbucks, Whole Foods, and even Twitter itself. TweetDeck and Seesmic are the two most popular desktop clients for enterprise use. Both are robust solutions with multi-profile support but not multi-user support, so work well for a solo community manager. iPhone solutions include Twittelator and Tweetie, both supporting multiple profiles.

The final step is tracking the conversations around your brand. Twitter Search is sufficient for many companies that just want to follow the chatter. Twitter Grader tracks and measures the influence of individual tweeters. Twazzup and Twitturly are useful for tracking a hashtag campaign. And another set of tools is no doubt in development right now, so keep your eyes and ears open.

This Week’s Episode