It will be interesting to see how Buzz takes on the other social networking sites. It appears to be blending Twitter, Facebook and FourSquare into one formidable challenger, but is it likely to be that “killer” of any or all of these? Ummm… doubtful. I think it offers a different way of sharing media but it’s unlikely to lure over Facebook or Twitter users. It’s likely to be attractive to a small percent of existing Gmail users who are not already using one of the other social media sites.

The biggest issue I predict with Buzz is that it’s not a stand-alone application. Meaning someone who’s never heard of Buzz will only be aware of it if they have and use Gmail and are connected to someone else who also has and uses a Gmail account. It’s kind of like an invitation to a party that you already have to be attending in the first place. Google could have made Buzz accounts accessible with existing Gmail accounts (and provided the Gmail integration), but it should have made Buzz its own site with allowances for other non-Gmail accounts to participate. Perhaps that’s phase two though, after testing it on a smaller scale. We’ll wait and see if it’s really a buzz or just a buzzard.

Well, if this is a problem of yours, then your life is about to get a little easier! I recommend HootSuite for those managing multiple twitter accounts. It’s what I, personally, use now for managing my own personal Twitter account as well as all of our Mannix Marketing Twitter accounts for Saratoga, Lake George, Albany, the Adirondacks, etc. (I switched from Tweetlater after just one day of using Hootsuite!)

HootSuite has been more than a timesaver; it has been a lifesaver for me! It’s a fun, cute design, and it makes things incredibly easy….

- Hootsuite Screenshot -

The above is called your 'Hootsuite Dashboard'

Simply set yourself up with one username in Hootsuite, and you can add in all your Twitter profiles, and then update them all right from one place – without having to sign in and out, etc. You simply click on the profile icon (upper right) that you want to update, and then type your status in the box at the top. It is SO easy!

You can even schedule tweets in advance. You just click Send Later instead of Send Now and then choose the exact date and time you would like to send.

Hootsuite also lets you shrink links down into a special format, which allows for link tracking (as well as more room in your tweet). It will keep track of how many people clicked on that link so you can test the effectiveness of different messages. It will also tell you where those clicks are coming from. So, for example, if you have your twitter feed feeding into your Facebook page, you can easily tell if you generated more clicks from your Tweet or your Facebook post. It’s really helpful.

What I really love is that it lets you pull in your friends feed for all the people you follow. This is what makes Hootsuite unlike many other platforms where you are just a one-sided broadcast for yourself and not connected to the rest of the Twitterverse. With Hootsuite, you stay connected!

You can even customize your columns to show exactly what you would like, where you would like it. So if you don’t care about having your pending messages there, but maybe you would rather have a private messages column, you can do that. Or if you would like to have your Sent Tweets column first and your Home Feed second, you can do that too. It’s completely customizable.

Best of all, Hootsuite is free to use! You can do all this and not pay a dime. It’s really great, and I recommend you give it a try!

Find more information about Social Media Do’s and Don’ts…

Not sure how to get started on Twitter? Give us a call! We’d be happy to help you out! Mannix Marketing 518-743-9424

Now that we know who your target audience is, we now need to know how to go about finding them and being found by them.

The first tip I will talk about is on Twitter.com, a link near the top of the page called, Find People.

We’ll use the same target audience scenario from the previous post:

1. People who love, need or use different kinds of shoes
2. People who live in or near Rochester NY…and when you overlap these two sets, you get… 
3. People who love, need or use different kinds of shoes and live in or near Rochester – those most likely to buy from you…in addition, you may also want to target…
4. Industry peers (competitors) to share knowledge and peruse & pursue their established lists of followers. 

Find People is a search tool that sorts through Twitter usernames and their name. So if we search on ‘rochester’ (we are using the default tab, Find on Twitter), you will see something like this:

Since you are targeting everyone in Rochester, you should be following all of these Twitter users (don’t be too aggressive). You have to be a little careful with searching locations… just make sure the user is from your location.

Once you’ve exhausted your resources with Rochester, now we would move on to the other part of your target audience, ’shoes’. When you are searching on shoes or sneakers or high-tops (be creative) or whatever your target phrase is, you’ll likely get some enthusiast accounts, but with how Find People works (searching on usernames & names), you will likely see many of your peers. It would be good to follow these accounts as well to exchange ideas. You can also spend some time going through their list of established followers who could also be your followers and… potential clients.

So that’s how we go about using Find People to…ummm, find people. Now let’s figure out how we can be found using the same tool.

A person who likely uses Find People is either browsing for a specific person/business that they know… or they’re searching on keywords of interest in hopes of discovering NEW people to follow. 

In our example, a person who loves shoes might go to Find People and type in ’shoes’. Thus, your goal would be to come up under this search so that you can be found by this enthusiast, followed, and potentially sell them your products and services. 

Since Find People sorts through username and actual name, it makes sense that this is where you should be focusing some attention.

Let’s take the username… if you don’t already have a Twitter account, consider including a keyword as part of that username so that you can potentially be found for that phrase. In the example, you might want to choose a username of RochesterShoes or Rochester_Shoes, etc. The problem is most people reading this post (all two of you) probably already have an established username. So this is a bit more difficult to control, plus real estate on Twitter usernames are being eaten up like they were dot com names. You could always create a second profile, or after creating this second profile, redirect the original account to the new Twitter profile. This is not always the best answer though, and there’s actually another way (an easier way) that you can be found by your target audience.

Let’s take a look at my profile for a minute. If someone wanted to find me, they could type in my usename, yllib, and I would come up. They could also find me by typing in my real name, Bill Bouchard. But look at the actual name that I’ve entered… “Bill Bouchard – SEO“… if you do another search on the keyword, ‘SEO’, I’m currently coming up on the first page for that phrase. So someone who’s interested in SEO might go up to Find People, do a search, find me there, and potentially follow me. So now, I am reaching my target audience passively, less work… cool! So, to modify your name, click on the Settings link on Twitter and you’ll see the Name field (the first field on the page). There are character limits for the Name field [20]. The key to this is striking a balance between listing your name (or brand) while having enough characters left to include your keyword (aka.. your product or service).

So back to the orginal example, you would make the Name include the word ’shoes’ if possible, you might even be able to include rochester if your brand name is short enough.

So we’ve seen how Find People is a good tool for doing basic searches for a target audience and also tips for getting found, but it does have its limits, namely you can only find people by their name. In the next post, I’ll get into some more  indepth data mining techniques that will help you really start to hone in on your target audience.

Social media fatigue can be the result of many different factors.  Successful blogging and social media development requires consistent – nearly constant – submissions to your blog site.  Twittering can become a full-time commitment in itself, not to mention Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn…the list is endless!

How can you tell when you’re suffering from social media fatigue? One symptom is simply being tired of being ‘on’ all the time.  You may feel like people are driving you crazy, filling up your screen with play-by-play rundowns of everything happening in their day, from their conversation with the person at the drive-through window where they get their morning coffee, to complaints about how long they are sitting at a red light or their latest tiff with their spouse. You might be tired of having people you hardly know send you virtual cocktails, hugs, hints, or chocolates!

You really don’t need to lose your internet marketing momentum…there are some ways to minimize the negative and accentuate the positive:

• Whether you are using your social media environments for personal use or to build your professional or business online presence, you may be tempted to simply ‘disinvite’ those people who you so anxiously lobbied as friends or followers. Is there a way to disengage or step away without being insulting? It may help just to review each location individually…each has its own privacy settings that can help to minimize the onslaught.
• If your passwords are all unique and you feel like you can’t remember another string of characters, consider investing in a secure, reliable password password manager.
• Setting limits may be your best option…keeping yourself to a particular time frame and sticking to it can go a long way toward relieving the stress – yes, we said stress – that can accompany the feeling of always needing to be submitting to these locations.

Because successful internet marketing is so incredibly important, you may also be trying to keep up with your website development, content, search engine optimization, etc. Letting the experts handle some of those tasks for you can also go a long way toward helping you manage your time.

So What Do You Do?

You do like every other sheep in the pasture and you set up your account. You write something witty like, “Just setting up my new Twitter account, can I get a Twitness?” Then you find the best looking headshot (or logo) that you can find. Now what? You follow people you know, and you also start to gather NEW followers (mostly by those who’ve discovered the secrets of gathering 1000s of followers, yet oddly, they themselves have only acquired a few hundred… just Do-Gooders passing on their Goodness). So then you think to yourself in the most mathematical of ways… “if I had a crapload of followers, I could sell a ton of stuff”.

Bottom Line, You Want More Followers

Having a lot of followers on Twitter can be good. The problem is that simply having a lot of followers is NOT going to make you any more money. If you don’t have the right audience tuning in, you will end up wasting a lot of time without much gained.

So Who Do You Follow?

It is important to take an active role in seeking out new followers, but if you really want to start collecting a target audience, you need to do a little bit of work… more than just clicking to follow everyone, willy-nilly style.

Who’s your target audience? For this example, let’s say you have a website that sells all kinds of shoes online. Let’s also say that you have a physical store in a specific location, Rochester NY (where I hang my hat). So the people in your target audience are either:

1. People who love, need or use different kinds of shoes
2. People who live in or near Rochester NY…and when you overlap these two sets, you get… 
3. People who love, need or use different kinds of shoes and live in or near Rochester – those most likely to buy from you…in addition, you may also want to target…
4. Industry peers (competitors) to share knowledge and peruse & pursue their established lists of followers. 

Now you know who you need to be in your audience… the next step is how to go about actively finding these people (as well as how to be found by them).

Stay tuned for the next installment, that I will call… Part 2: The Wrath Of... okay, it will probably just be called Tip #1: Using “Find People” To Find And Be Found. Anyway, it will be AWESOME!

Don’t forget to contact your webmaster when you have any information that needs to be modified. You’d be surprised how many places need to be updated! Let’s say you’re moving … well there is the easy place to start which is by emailing all your contacts in your address book or sending a “We’ve Moved” card snail mail style. But don’t stop there!

Your website needs to be updated first and foremost.  Contact pages, contact forms, footers and wherever else your address may be hiding – the webmaster will find it!

Do you have a FaceBook account? Log in and go to the Info tab, you can edit and update your address there.

Don’t forget to update your Google Local Account. This is very important! An old address will result in an incorrect listing. Follow the guidelines below to correct that with Google.

To add or edit a Google Local Listing, click here:  http://www.google.com/local/add.

To edit Google Maps, click here:  http://maps.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=68474#modify

To edit the location of a place, you can switch your view to Satellite and Show Labels. This allows you to move the marker accurately, as you can see both roads and satellite imagery.  After you search for a place, click the appropriate marker.  The info window appears. If the marker is in the wrong location, click Edit. Click Move marker. Click and drag the marker to the correct location. Use the X to help you place the marker. Consider placing it at the entrance of the location, as this helps improve the accuracy of our driving directions. Click Save. Google Maps saves your changes.

If you move the marker more than 200 meters away from its original location, your change appears after further review.

If Google Maps does not allow you to edit a business location, this is because the business owner has already verified information for that business in the Local Business Center. You cannot edit verified listings. If a listed business is yours, claim your business.

Remove a place:

After you search for a place, click the appropriate marker. The info window appears. Click Edit > Remove Place. Choose the reason that Google should remove this place and any comment you have. Click Remove Place. Google will investigate the place you have flagged for removal.

Some of these sites will take time to approve your requests. So, put this as a priority! Make sure you check all your social media sites: MySpace, YouTube, Twitter, FaceBook, Digg … you get the idea. After all, if someone wants to get ahold of you, they want to get ahold of you NOW!

Here is the illustration they gave:
Old URL

New URL

No doubt, this will also help your public profile get found in the search engines because, as you know, SEO is all about targeting keywords!

But Wait… That’s Not All!

You can also reserve custom usernames for your Facebook PAGES. This is particularly useful for businesses on Facebook. You can then print this custom (easy-to-remember) url on your business cards, website, marketing materials, you name it. PLUS it will help your page get found more easily in the search engines by choosing relevant keywords for your Facebook username.

When Is This Happening?

Early bird gets the worm, so make sure you reserve your Facebook username as soon as you can! They are making this available at 12:01 am EDT on Saturday, June 13, 2009.

Things To Keep In Mind…

• Usernames are PERMANENT and cannot be changed (so double check your spelling)
• You can use letters, numbers and a period to create your custom Facebook username
• If you want to reserve a popular Facebook username (ie. John.Smith), reserve early!
• Trademarks and Copyrights can be protected or reported
• You must be an administrator and have over 1,000 fans of your Facebook page in order to reserve a username

Get More Info On Facebook Usernames

• Facebook Blog Announces Usernames Coming – http://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=90316352130
• Facebook Blog Elaborates On Usernames For Pages – http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=91106469821&ref=blog
• WHERE TO RESERVE YOUR FACEBOOK USERNAME! http://www.facebook.com/username

Don’t have a Facebook page? We can help set one up for you! Give Sarah Lamansky a call to discuss the details: Toll Free – (888) 395-9035

What is TweetLater?
TweetLater is a 3rd-party social media tool for Twitter that allows you to schedule your tweets in advance. Here’s a look at how it works… For example, right now you want to say, “Good morning everyone!” but an hour from now, you would like to say, “Check out my new blog post! (LINK)” and tomorrow night at exactly 9:23 pm, you would like to add a tweet that says, “Don’t go to bed before reading this (LINK)” …and just for fun, let’s throw in that you would like to say “RED SOX RULE!” once every 3 weeks. You can actually schedule these all at the same time using TweetLater. That means that – in a matter of minutes – you could have your Twitter account up to date for the next 2 days, 2 weeks or more! It’s that easy, and it gets better.

It’s Not Just Twitter…
Have you ever used Ping.fm to manage your social media accounts? If so, you’ll be delighted to hear that you can import your Ping.fm information directly into TweetLater, essentially using the service to update not only your Twitter account, but also your Facebook, Myspace, LinkedIn, Yammer, etc. This option is currently only available with the TweetLater Professional version, but highly recommended.

It’s Not Just One Account…
Have a personal Twitter account and a business Twitter account? Own a restaurant in Albany and a restaurant in Saratoga? Have 10 other Twitter accounts? No problem. TweetLater allows you to store multiple accounts and make updates to them separately or as a group. Let’s take the restaurant scenario, for example. You have some news that applies to both establishments to announce on Twitter (such as, “Chicken ala Vodka special $17.95 this week only!” or… “Mention our Twitter name for a free dessert when you dine with us!” or… “Got a birthday party or event coming up? Host it in our private dining room!”) and then you have other news that is specific to the location (such as, “Don’t miss local favorite The Proof performing live tonight at 7pm!” etc.) It is helpful to have the option to pick and choose which accounts get which updates and schedule them accordingly.

Okay, So How Much Does it Cost?
There is a FREE version with many options and unlimited Twitter accounts allowed. The Professional version is currently less than $30 at the time of this post and offers many more options, including Ping.fm integration, recurring tweets, advanced filtering and more. Compare the price to how many hours you can save using this tool each week to determine if it’s worth it for you.

Never Hurts To Try It!
I could go on and on, but the only way you can get a true feel for whether or not TweetLater is a useful tool for your business is to try it out yourself! You can sign up for a free account, and even get a free trial of the Professional version to see if you like it.

So a summary of our take on TweetLater?
It’s a HUGE time saver, easy to use and 100% worth it to pay for the Professional Account, especially if you have multiple SMO accounts and not just Twitter.