In this post I’m going to explain the 3 popular social networks: Twitter, Facebook & LinkedIn. All provide varying stats themselves or via third parties. However, they need to be used together with your web stats software such as Google Analytics. Google Analytics will track those visitors who visit your site from any social networking you do, however, it won’t track activity within the social networks themselves as some people only interact there rather than click back to your site, so this is where is gets more complicated!

To find out how many people visit your website from the social networks, you need to log into your Analytics account (or whichever you use) and find traffic sources. This will at least tell you how many people are interested enough to visit your site after interacting with you in the social networks.

Twitter

Twitter itself doesn’t provide any stats in your account as it’s more of a conversation than people visiting a particular page. Within Twitter itself, or your favourite Twitter client such as Tweetdeck or Hootsuite, you can see who replies to your messages or ‘retweets’ your messages. You can also find out how many people follow you, how many people you follow and who they are, as well as information about what ‘lists’ you are on and who is on lists you have set up.

From there, third party software gives you further information and one of the best is Hootsuite. If you use Hootsuite to tweet and you decide to include a link within your tweets, Hootsuite will provide a short link that can be tracked, so you can find out how many people clicked on the link you shared (links typically look like http://ow.ly/xyz ). This is really useful as you can find out whetherf the links you share are clicked on or not and how many clicks they get, thus giving you information as to the kind of information people like to read (whether its your own content or someone else’s).

Clicks from Twitter or from links shared in tools such as Hootsuite to your website, will also show up in your Google Analytics account, so you can find out which links were clicked on via the Twitter software you use, such as Hootsuite (which gives stats on links clicked on), and if they went on to visit your site, which is recorded by Google Analytics. Software such as Tweetdeck doesn’t give stats as to which of your links were clicked on, but if you use a url shortening service such as Bitly (see below), you can set up an account and use it to shorten links.

Other Twitter tracking tools include:

Bitly & Goo.gl. These are popular link shortening services which tracks each time someone clicks on your shortened links, mostly used within Twitter due to limitation of characters in each tweet. Both of these tools allow you to set up your own accounts so you can log in and track which links were clicked on. The image below shows stats from our Bit.ly account, how many times a particular link was clicked on and the total aggregated for that particular link across the web.

BufferApp . Buffer allows you share links you like to your Twitter and Facebook accounts at different times of the day and gives you information on click throughs and if any of those links were shared on. This gives you an idea of which information you share is popular with your network. The image below shows some links we shared on Twitter via Buffer and how many times they were clicked on or re-tweeted.

Facebook

Facebook has its own tracking called Facebook Insights, which is specifically for Facebook Pages. The stats provided by Facebook Insights include how many people have ‘liked’ your Facebook page in total, and the number of new likes in the time period of the report, how many people have read your posts on the wall along with any interactions (comments etc).

Image shows Facebook Insights stats for our Savvy Marketers Facebook page

More detailed information gives a demographic breakdown of your visitors to your page and which countries they come from, which sections of your page they’ve looked at and where those visitors came from, e.g email newsletter or your website. It also tells you which links you shared were popular with your Facebook audience.

As with Google Analytics, this gives really useful insight into which type of information your Facebook page visitors like, where they come from, so you can learn where the best place is to promote your page and even the demographic audience of your products and services.

You can find out more about Facebook Insights in one of our previous posts: Using Facebook Insights

LinkedIn

LinkedIn doesn’t have specific stats, although when you log into your profile you can find out how many people viewed your profile in the last week. However, if you want to find out how many people visit your website as a result of finding you on LinkedIn, these stats will show up in Google Analytics or whichever web tracking tool you use.

There are more advanced features in the paid for version of LinkedIn, however, the majority of people use the free version which meets most businesses’ needs.

Whichever social networks you use, it’s important you track your activity not only to your website, but within your favourite networks so you understand your reach within the networks and how popular your messages are. This means you can refine how you use the networks to ensure that the time you spend on them is time well spent!

You can find out more about this and tracking the wider aspects of online marketing in our  Online Marketing Tracking & Measurement Guide

How do you track your social networking activity?

I hate to be the one to break this to you

Sam & I have to accept some of the responsibility because we encouraged you to get started, to join the main networks and to actively engage with people. We also introduced you to lots of automated tools to make life easier.

Unfortunately in a desire to be helpful, we may have misled you as to how best to use each of the main online networks and the automation tools, so you get good results for your business.

Here’s what we mean:

Too Much Too Soon

Using an automated ‘welcome’ tweet to direct me to your Facebook page or profile is irritating and inappropriate. Just because we’ve just connected on Twitter doesn’t mean I want you in my LinkedIn or Facebook network as well. Give me time to get to know you better first!

Social networking is not a numbers game. 

If I met you for the first time at a networking breakfast, you’re not very likely to invite me round for lunch on the following Sunday, are you? And yet you expect me to become a ‘friend’ or link to you as a fellow professional before I’ve had a chance to find out if I really want to.

Overdoing the Automation

One of my personal pet peeves is visiting someone’s Facebook or LinkedIn profile to find nothing on their wall but a long list of tweets. This happens when people link their accounts together and delegate their updates to the automation tools. I’ve even seen people using Twitterfeed to broadcast updates from authority sources and doing nothing else!

That’s a bit like sending someone else to attend all in person networking events on your behalf, and expecting that will build personal and business relationships.

Social networking is about being ‘social’ with your connections. You need to take part, and that means listening as well as broadcasting.

Updates Should be Different Depending on the Social Network

Your communities on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn are very different from each other and need to be treated accordingly.

Twitter is fast moving and ‘in the moment’ which is why it works so well for breaking news. It’s also useful for sharing snippets of information and links to useful and interesting stuff.

Facebook is much more friendly and has become a place for publishing, sharing and commenting on personal observations, inspirational quotes, videos and photos.

LinkedIn is known as the network for professionals and provides opportunities to connect with fellow professionals. I classify small business owners as professionals too.

If you use Google+ you’ll know that ‘Circles’ allow you to differentiate what you share with whom, but the same feature doesn’t exist (yet) for other online networks.

You wouldn’t share exactly the same information with each of your family, friends, colleagues, networking contacts and prospective clients. Nor should you send exactly the same updates at the same frequency to all your social networks.

Further reading: 

Sharing on Social Networks – How Often is Too Often?
10 Powerful Tips to Increase Fan Engagements on Facebook

If, like me, social networking tends to go to the bottom of the list every day as there are 101 things you’d rather do or have to do, then these tips will at least keep up your presence and give you some ideas as to what you could share on your profiles.

1. Follow/connect with interesting people who share interesting things, then you have information you can share with your followers.

2. Make sure you automatically update your profiles with your latest news or blog posts. This can be automated by using applications such as Twitterfeed, RSS Graffiti for Facebook and ensuring your blog is linked to your LinkedIn profile.

3. Share photos particularly if you have a business where visuals are important, although any business can benefit from sharing images. Apps like Instagram or Twitpic for Twitter make this much easier.

4. Update more than one profile at a time with your latest news. Use some of the tools above, or if you use an application such as Hootsuite or Tweetdeck, make sure your social networking accounts are linked to it so you can update multiple accounts at once.

5. Pre-schedule updates – again if you use Hootsuite or Tweetdeck, you can pre-schedule updates to go out even if you’re away from the office or on holiday.

If it’s ideas that you lack, then the following may help you find interesting things that you could share with your network:

Reading blog posts or articles on what’s happening in your industry sector and sharing them (this is probably what we do the most). If you use Google Reader or Feedly to subscribe to your favourite blogs, it makes life much easier.

Share your thoughts and opinion on something that’s happening in your industry.

Share information about your favourite hobbies or things you like. This means that information you share isn’t just about work, but people get to know you a bit better too.

Participate in discussions that really interest you as you’ll be able to contribute in a meaningful way, rather than just posting because you feel you ought to, or making a comment for the sake of it.

If you want to find out a few more tricks and best practice techniques on social networking, then the following resources are some of the best ones around, certainly the ones we read regularly to make sure we’re as up to date as possible.

Social media examiner  -  always has excellent articles on getting the most out of social media.

Mari Smith  - Although she has positioned herself as an expert on using Facebook she also writes useful posts on other aspects of social networking.

Econsultancy – one of the leading UK resources on internet marketing generally, with plenty of insight on social media marketing.

Social media agency Simply Zesty has a very popular blog and often posts excellent content on social media.

What are your tips for finding the time to network online?

Image: Clock by Dave Stokes, on Flickr

However, times have moved on and it seems that whether you like social networking or not, if you run a business, you really need to be using these sites. We’ve gone through the benefits of networking in previous posts, and I’m sure you know what they are too.

Despite that, for many of us, social networking doesn’t come easily, even with the daily ‘what shall I talk about?’, ‘will people find me boring?’ worries, finding the time is even harder – and it probably always goes to the bottom of the list if you don’t enjoy it anyway!

I’ve battled with it for several years now, particularly as there are so many internet marketers on the social networks, just sharing the same stuff seems a bit pointless. If I talk about more personal aspects of my life, then I’m sure that’s not going to really interest people either and I never remember jokes, so that’s no good!

I have found that some networks are easier to interact on than others. I confess that I hardly use Facebook and am connected to just a few friends and family. LinkedIn is much easier as you can choose to contribute to ongoing discussions and you’re not limited to a certain number of characters. Google+ is also reasonably easy to use, share and discuss shared information. My main obstacle is Twitter as the conversations move on so quickly and you can’t really have a proper discussion in 140 characters – in fact it’s quite overwhelming. In my opinion, Twitter has become more of a broadcasting platform than a place to interact and network, although I’m sure some of you will disagree.

If you feel a bit like me about social networking, then these are my tips to get the best out of it:

Don’t feel you have to go onto these sites every day. We all have lives offline (well, some of us do anyway) as well as businesses to run, so prioritise your time.

But make time each week. Once you start using these sites and connecting with people, then you do need to commit to it and keep up a presence, so perhaps aim for putting aside some time 3 times per week. Even 15 minutes should be enough to post and interact on the sites you have accounts with.

If, like me, you’re in an industry with a prolific number of social networkers, then perhaps share things you personally like or are interested in rather than just the same industry news, which everyone else is sharing.

Automate some of it. Louise has written a post about automation, specifically using Hootsuite, and it means you can be seen to be there even when you’re not: Using Hootsuite for Business.

Don’t worry too much about it. If other marketing activities are working well for you, then don’t feel pressured into spending too much time on these sites. You need to enjoy the marketing activities you choose, you’ll come across as more sincere, and probably get better results from it!

What tips do you have for the reluctant networker? Please share your thoughts and experiences in the comments! 

Perhaps you think the descriptions you add won’t have much impact, but I disagree. Getting this part right can bring plenty of benefits and is where your networking all begins. For starters, telling people what you do succinctly, with a link to your website and a photo can go a long way to encouraging connections in itself. That doesn’t include other benefits such as making sure your profile gets found in a search, either within the network itself or even in the search engines. The better connected, the more active and influential you are will also help towards your profile being found nearer the top of the list than the bottom!

Twitter is one of the easiest profiles to complete as there really isn’t a great deal to fill in. You only have 160 characters to use in your description, but still use these words wisely. Be succinct and to the point about what you do. Vague descriptions won’t help and won’t encourage people to follow you. Don’t forget to include a link to your website and a nice profile photo. Louise has previously written about profile photos, which you can read here: What does your profile photo say about you?

Facebook page set up has changed a lot recently, particularly with the new timeline layout. Many of you would have had to update your page over the last month. If you’re in the process of revising your page, then make sure you check all of your page profile is completed as fully as possible and find some eye catching images for your new layout. Mari Smith has a detailed post about all the changes and what you need to do: Facebook Timeline for Business Pages – 21 Key Points To Know

LinkedIn is probably the most complicated profile you’ll have to complete but well worth taking the time to do so. LinkedIn is quite helpful as they tell you what percentage of your profile is complete, and which bits are missing. You really need to aim for 100% to get the most benefit from it. The other important thing to remember as you complete your profile, are the keywords someone could potentially use to find your skills. It’s advisable to include these keywords in key areas such as in your main summary, your experience, your skills and expertise, where you can list your skills as keywords. Other things that help you get found are how many connections you have along with recommendations, so it’s well worth actively connecting and building a good profile that may encourage new connections and enquiries. You can find more tips on the LinkedIn blog.

Although Google+ is new, Google profiles have been around for a while and these are used to create your Google+ profile. To set up your Google+ account, use an existing Google login, then create your profile. It’s not particularly complicated but there are few key areas to complete such as the tagline which is a short summary of what you do, and is followed by a longer introduction, so complete these fully and sprinkle important keywords throughout your text. You don’t have to complete every field, but if you’re using Google+ for business purposes, then I would complete your occupation and employment. Make sure you link to your website and/or blog and any other sites you contribute towards, along with your other social profiles. It’s also worth linking to your author page on your blog. This helps Google to determine which blog posts you write. You may have seen images of people appearing next to articles they’ve written appearing in Google’s search results. There’s more to it than just linking to your author page, but this does help. You may find this post from Devonwebdesigners.com useful for actually setting this up properly: Rel=Author Step By Step Tutorial For WordPress. Finally, with recent changes to the profile layout, you can add some eye catching images, so make full use of this (you can see I have yet to do this myself).

Pinterest is as easy to complete as Twitter. Make sure you complete the description of what you do in about 200 characters, sprinkling in your important keywords. Add in your web address and a nice photo. You can connect your Pinterest account to Facebook and Twitter, to make sure this is enable too (if relevant).

The more attention you pay to completing your various online profiles, the more benefit you will have from simply being there. Then read our posts about how to use them to actually get your desired results!

What tips do you have for completing social profiles? Please share them here!

Here are a few of the benefits we’ve discovered and hope will encourage you to set up your own Editorial Calendar.

1. Avoids the “What Shall I Write About Today?” syndrome and helps you stay motivated to sit down and produce new content.
2. Enables you to tie in your blog post and newsletter topics to specific marketing campaigns.
3. See at a glance if you’re focusing too heavily on a particular topic or category, and also if you’ve been neglecting others.
4. Enables you to produce content ahead of publication time to allow for breaks, taking holidays, and any unforeseen circumstances which may get in the way of regular content creation.
5. Planning ahead means you can target special events and holidays, as well as refer to forthcoming product launches and special promotions.
6. Gives you the opportunity to forward plan and schedule tweets and updates to Facebook & LinkedIn and other networks, because you know what to put in advance.

How to Create Your Editorial Calendar

As with most business processes, the simpler it is the more likely you are to use it.

The humble Spreadsheet is ideal for creating and using as an Editorial Calendar. If more than one person is involved in creating content, then consider using a Google Docs spreadsheet that you can share and jointly contribute to (as Sam and I do).

A useful PlugIn, if you use WordPress, is WP Editorial Calendar

For more ideas & further reading:

The Right Content Strategy Tools Create Better Content

How to create a successful Editorial Calendar

Isn’t it infuriating, when you finally find the time to sit down and write your newsletter or blog post

That’s when you wish you’d kept your Editorial Calendar up to date, or made a note of those brilliant thoughts you had the other day in the shower.

The truth is that genuinely original ideas are very thin on the ground, therefore most of us have to settle with applying our personal approach to existing ideas and topics. Even so, knowing where to find those ideas can be a challenge, especially when you’re up against a deadline to publish your newsletter.

Here are a few free resources to help start those ideas flowing

Industry News – what’s happening in your area of specialisation? What news would be of interest to your audience?

Local News – especially if your market is local, you can find and share news stories about people or businesses they’re likely to know

Your Competitors – keep an eye on what they’re writing about and (no copying now!) put forward your own opinion on the subject

Article Directories – with hundreds of thousands of articles on sites like EzineArticles.com, do a search using some of your keywords to see what others have to say.

Questions from Clients – you probably saw us answer a question last week. If one person is asking it, other people are probably interested in knowing the reply too.

Traditional Media – News stories on TV, in magazines and newspapers can often trigger at least one idea.

Google Alerts – you’ve probably set up alerts for your main keywords and have them delivered to your email inbox. Read through a few to see what’s being said about your area of business.

Bookmarking Sites – make the most of articles and blog posts other people have already bookmarked on sites like Delicious, Reddit and Digg. Search by tag names to filter those on a particular subject.

Social Media – for sheer abundance of information, read through the blogs you subscribe to, what’s been posted on your Facebook HomeFeed, see what’s trending on Twitter or use their search facility; and don’t forget LinkedIn Answers.

Your Own Material – if you’ve been writing for a while, go back and revisit old posts and newsletters; you’re bound to be able to update or add to what you said before.

What’s missing from this list? Where do you get your ideas from to help create content?

No matter how many followers you have on Twitter, friends or fans on Facebook and connections on LinkedIn, Email Marketing is still a more direct way to get people’s attention. That isn’t to say you can afford to ignore social networking, because you can’t. But the different media will complement each other and work well together.

There are many ways to build a list of email subscribers, although we would strongly advise against buying a list as we covered in previous posts. Building your own list needs to be a priority objective if you want to take advantage of this very cost effective method of online marketing.

Try different ways to encourage people to subscribe to receive your Email Newsletters and marketing messages

Business Card – Use the reverse of your card to promote the free give-away available when people go to your website and fill out the sign-up form.

Email Signature – Add an invitation to get your free give-away to your standard email signature. This is easy to do both in Microsoft Outlook and if you use a service like WiseStamp (for GMail, Hotmail, etc.) Here’s a screenshot of mine:

Article Marketing – When you submit articles to other sites and to article directories, use the link in your Resource Box to take people to a page that tells them about the benefits of signing up to your list, and has the form there too.

Blog Posts – Within the body of your blog post, occasionally make reference to an article which is only available to subscribers and provide a link to the sign up box. Take care not to overdo this tactic as you don’t want to upset your blog subscribers!

Facebook Page – Don’t forget to provide a sign-up page linked to your Email Service Provider (as we have – see below) for fans to subscribe to receive your email newsletters and messages. If they already like your page, they’ll want to get more of the good stuff you share!

Here are a couple of general points to bear in mind when creating the sign-up forms, that have been proven to increase willingness to subscribe.

Keep your form as short as possible: just email address and first name are really all that’s needed in most cases. If you make the form unnecessarily long with lots of ‘required’ fields, people are less likely to sign up as they may be reluctant to provide too much detailed information about themselves.

Also, reassure them that you will store their contact details securely. State your privacy policy and link to it as well. Here’s a link to ours, feel free to model it.

There are more tips on list building and Email Marketing in our Guide.

It’s almost 4 years since I started blogging, using social media and other “technology” apps and tools to further my business. I’ve been thinking about it as Sam asked me to write a blog about my experiences with social media and I pondered about a variety of things.

It’s not just at New Year that one should revise their strategy, update their thoughts and perhaps even change their game plan – business wise. I do it on a regular basis – and with the help of social media and all the applications I have come to use, rather quickly. I guess that’s the beauty of all of this – as a small business I can change my marketing, change my strategy or update my website in the blink of an eye! Or can I?

Well yes, it means I am more in charge than ever before, instead of relying on people to do something for me, pay them and hope to god they do it right, I can now just get on with it myself. But of course this all takes time – nothing ever gets done with NO effort – people seem to forget that! And I have had to spend time learning about the technological ins and outs – and as time goes on brain cells do struggle! But I do enjoy it and I feel very good that at the ripe old age of 45 I was an “early adopter”!

I do think that people do think this takes no effort – and when they find out this does work they still think it’s a waste of time.

On one side you have the “twitter scorners” as I call them. They know nothing about it or might have just tried it for a few weeks and just don’t get it. On the other side you have the “new evangelists” – the ones that have tried it, stuck with it and now feel it’s their confessor and best friend rolled into one.

I went through both those stages – I think we all do. I thought I was way too old to mess with the kids on Twitter until someone explained the business strategy behind it and gave me a case study. The same with Facebook and LinkedIn – didn’t know how to really use them although had been on them for years and years, but I was sceptical and thought them a waste of time. But I have always prided myself on being open minded, so the case studies gave me a light bulb moment. That’s how I function, I need examples. Many people aren’t shown examples, so they become “Twitter scorners” forever. Some people of course use social media purely for fun and that’s ok.

I did not quite get into being an evangelist – I always thought telling the world your troubles and being negative was never a good thing for anyone, least of all me. But I did wax lyrical about social media because I did have some rather early wins with it – I was introduced to famous people in my industry, I even blog for one now. And I got £37,350 (T/O) worth of business in my first 6 months. Rather exact right? That’s because even though these are “newish” technologies, applications and business tools, it doesn’t mean you should not apply old world style business processes – like measuring ROI.

So almost four years into it and I have made some strategic changes to how I put myself out there.

For me, social media is part of my business toolbox – it’s marketing, PR and strategy rolled into a bundle that gives me direction to develop my business. It takes time, it takes effort and it takes dedication. But then if you want your business to succeed – doesn’t everything? I still don’t know it all, no-one ever does. The best part though and the one thing that makes me chuckle, is that I get approached by “Twitter Gurus”, “Social Media Supremos” and people that I met 6 months ago who knew nothing about it then and all of a sudden are giving social media workshops for £500/day and would I like to come along?! These people want to help me develop my social media – but first things first – check me out and see what work I do and how active I am before you start promising a myriad of wonders for me. And can I just say that most of these people did not even start out as marketing professionals. You can tell I have a bit of a bee in my bonnet about this!

Well I do, because it’s a learning process that takes time, and to begin with you really need to understand business and business development, marketing and brand development. Old fashioned business adages, but they do apply – they are the foundation to your business. It’s not about just sending out a few tweets and a few blogs out into the ether. I come from a business background and so feel very comfortable with all that stuff and having nearly 4 years of active non-stop social media work behind me, I feel rather confident about the things I have learnt. The good and the bad.

So a few tips and they’re FREE by the way!

Do not broadcast non-stop about what you do. It’s boring, it’s arrogant. Who wants to listen to anyone drone on about how good they are or about their products and services.

You want to be seen as THE voice of honest good reputation on your speciality – so share industry information you have found with others, showcase other people’s work. This makes you look like an authority – people start to trust you.

Meet the people (for real!) you have formed a good relationship with – collaboration is exponential, it feels good, it brings money in and gets your name out there.

Do show off your work or share your blog, but not every 5 minutes. For every one of your own work share 5 others. It’s a good balance.

Do create a strategy – what do you want to achieve in social media? Brand recognition? Get more clients? Meet other industry professionals? Whatever the goal is – develop it as you would offline.

Never ever comment on a client’s work – as sure as night follows day, they will read it and they may not like it! So keep negative comments to yourself.

Enjoy yourself – stay focused – stay positive – because oddly, online chats give people a very good idea of what you are like!

Lastly, remember – think twice about what you put out there – if you hesitate, don’t post it. A thoughtless or nasty comment will get out there and stay there!

Françoise Murat is a degree qualified Architectural Interior Designer and Garden Designer. Eco but not Loco! She specialises in: Architectural interior design for domestic clients, bars and restaurants and a garden design service for the domestic market, property developments and urban landscapes. Visit Françoise’s blog, Rendez-Vous Deco & Jardin. 

A blog is so important to the online success of all small businesses that it can truly be called the real heart

Have we convinced you yet that your blog is important? OK, here’s why it is:

It is the heart or hub of your online presence, and is the bridge between your website and the social networks.

For service business owners especially, a blog is where you can demonstrate your expertise by regularly adding written, audio or video examples of what you do, and provide proof that it works. It also a place to announce new products or services in a non-salesy way.

It’s the place where you can build online relationships with your readers who, if you’ve targeted them correctly, are also prospective clients for your business. Your blog gives them the opportunity to get to ‘know, like & trust’ you much more easily than  short updates of 140 characters.

It’s where you can send social networking connections to learn more about you, somewhere that isn’t just a sales page. It always amazes us when people still do this.

When you publish a new blog post, you instantly create new material to use as informative updates and share on your social networks.

By regularly adding new posts you increase the occasions on which Google & Bing will return to visit your blog. This in turn increases your general online visibility and rankings in the search engines. It’s a vital component of your content marketing strategy as this excellent post by Ardath Albee shows.

If you have chosen a self-hosted blog then your blog is a part of the internet owned by you. Which is more than can be said for Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc…… even if you do pay for hosting and buy a premium blog theme, setting up a blog is still an extremely cost-effective way to establish a professional presence online for your business. It’s also where you have total control over the content and are free to make as many changes as you wish, as your business develops and grows.

If you’d like to learn more about blogging, here are details of a short guide which may be helpful.

So, how are you treating the real heart of your business online?

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