We use it for fun, we use it to arrange our social life and we use if for business.

Your Facebook business page wall is the home where your business’ fans, friends, customers and critics can all interact directly with your company. They can post questions, comments, feedback or fan mail. Fellow fans of your business may even interact with each other.  Many individuals will interact with content your business has posted itself.

There are three ways people can interact on your Facebook Business Page that you should be monitoring.

Wall posts: Anyone who ‘likes’ your page can post content to your page’s wall. And that means ‘anyone’! They can say good things, complain, talk about a recent experience they’ve had – whether it was good or bad. These remarks are user generated content about your brand and as such are very powerful.

Comments: These are an opportunity to react to a wall post. Both you and your fans can comment.  Think of it as a mini conversation that started from the original post.

Likes: The classic thumbs up! If someone ‘likes’ a wall post, this means they like the content of that post or they are agreeing with it.

Another important thing to understand about the content that gets posted to your page’s wall is, that the more people interact with a wall post, the more ‘viral’ that post becomes. For example, when a individual posts something to a page’s all, that action is also referenced on the wall of that individual’s personal profile. Same goes with ‘liking’ and ‘commenting’. Also wall posts that receive an exceptional amount of ‘likes’ and ‘comments’ often show up in other Facebook users’ ‘news feeds’.

Your ‘news feed’ consists of the most relevant and important items occurring in your network. Your goal should be to react to the most important items in your business’ news feed and get your wall posts featured in others’ news feeds.

(Taken from – A guide to streamlining your social media process – Hubspot)

Blogging for business blogging, Social media for business, social media strategy

www.twitter.com

What you should be monitoring in Twitter

There’s lots of valuable information available to marketers in Twitter if only you can find it…

Here’s some hints and tips on the type of information and tweets you should be looking out for!

Relevant questions about your company: If someone tweets ‘should I buy X product or a competitor’s product?’ you want to be ready to respond. If not directly by offering helpful content about your business, perhaps you could point that person to a customer of yours if you can’t help directly.

Relevant questions about your sector: Being helpful by answering someone’s question is a great way to develop credibility with that person. In the event they need a product or service related to one your business provides they might end up coming to you!

Requests for support: If a customer tweets a request for help (either directly to you or perhaps via their network) it is very important that you notice that tweet and respond accordingly. Happy customers are key to a successful business.

Complaints and feedback: Critics are always out there, and it’s important to acknowledge and resolve issues when you can. Leaving them unanswered is the worst option.

Competitor mentions: Monitor those conversations for information and data, other people are praising them, complaining and asking questions – it’s free competitor intel.

Praise: It’s a wonderful thing to receive – why not say thank you? Retweet it.  Save it to your favourites. It’s wise to appreciate those who appreciate you!

(Taken from – A guide to streamlining your social media process – Hubspot)

Blogging for business blogging, social media strategy, Twitter

Search engine optimisation is a key service of ours, and in our travels we come across thousands of blogs and social media presences that are being used as just another way of getting up the search engine rankings. All this content is being created for the search engine spiders, with little thought as to how valuable it is to web users. It is true that making frequent posts, promoted through social media channels will attract the search engine spiders to return to your site more regularly. Optimise that content and it’s highly likely you’ll see an upwards shift in your rankings. It might be a good strategy for bringing people in, but is it enough to keep them?

Whilst high search engine rankings are important for the businesses that we deal with, developing a long term brand is much more important.

To maintain a brand, customers and potential customers need to be engaged. So here is the simple RED or Dead rule to remember each time you make a post: Read more…

Blogging for business, Social Media Marketing blogging, Social media for business, Social Media Marketing, social media strategy

LexisClick Online Marketing have recently completed work on a tasty project – a blog for Moroccan hotel and travel site Morocco Gateway.

Morocco Gateway is a site with the mission to provide independent and reliable information and advice on a range of Moroccan riads and hotels, which negotiates special discount rates at a wide selection of hotels and riads in locations such as Marrakech and Fez. The site, which is administered by LexisClick, has been running since 2006, and after a conversation with LexisClick’s MD Stephen Bavister, Tim Evans, Managing Director of Morocco Gateway, decided to launch a blog. LexisClick were only too happy to help. Read more…

LexisClick News blogging, LexisClick News, Web Design

Look before you tweet...

Social Media – everyone’s talking about it. Facebook, Twitter and YouTube make the headlines on a daily basis – for positive and negative reasons. The vast majority of businesses, organisations and community groups have Twitter feeds, Facebook fan pages, LinkedIn profiles or other forms of social media engagement.

However, social media strategy is still somewhat baffling for many businesses, big and small, and social media campaigns remain complex to analyse – the concept of achieving positive ROI from investment in social media is quite alien to many brand owners. The ‘now’ factor of social media is also something many businesses have yet to master – recently Vodafone were forced to apologise, profusely and repeatedly, after a homophobic tweet was sent on their official account by a member of their team.

As soon as it was spotted, the tweet was deleted, but not before it had been screengrabbed, retweeted and repeated across the internet. With social media, someone, somewhere, is always watching, and it’s impossible to cover something tweeted or blogged by mistake because the chances are, someone will have seen your errant message and, especially if it’s juicy, inappropriate or downright offensive, chances are, they’re going to repeat it.

The most important thing when using social media to interact with clients and potential clients is to take a moment to think. Like sending a drunken text message to an old flame, what seems like a good idea in the heat of the moment may not in fact be as fabulous/funny as you think. So before tweeting, pause a moment. Would you say what you’re about to say if your client was sitting in the office in front of you? Would you stand up and say it to a room full of people? And is it on brand with your company’s profile?

Of course, whoever is looking after your social media campaign is only human, and mistakes will happen. Whether it’s in the form of an innocuous typo or missing link, or tweeting to the wrong account if you manage more than one, or if it’s something a little more serious, such as a disgruntled employee, bad joke or hacked account, there’s only one thing you can do: acknowledge that the mistake has happened.

Trying to cover it up will, in the long run, have a more negative effect on your brand or business. If necessary, apologise. Like Vodafone, if the breach is serious enough, issue a short statement distancing yourself from the offensive message and reassuring your followers that the matter is being dealt with.

Vodafone were also subjects of a – slightly less reported – positive social media story last month, which showed how companies can use social media to interact with customers, investigate and help solve their problems. Popular Conservative blogger Iain Dale went straight to his blog to report his horror when he received a monthly mobile bill of £2,500 from Vodafone. The blog post was instantly tweeted and repeated to friends and followers of Iain on Facebook.

Iain’s tweet was spotted by Vodafone’s web relations team, who undertook a month long investigation and, after concluding that UberTwitter was the most likely culprit, Vodafone waved the charges – totaling £5,400 after the same thing happened for a second month. They even changed his tariff to a better deal, saving him more money. Result? One very satisfied customer, who promptly blogged, tweeted and Facebooked his gratitude.

Social media platforms enable you to interact with your clients like never before. Complaints, queries and praise can be handled in real time, and if the result is a positive outcome for your client, the chances are you’ll get some positive publicity across the social networks in return.

The key things to remember are to reply promptly to queries, offer to contact customers with problems directly to resolve them, to acknowledge any mistakes as soon as they are noticed and apologise if necessary, and above all, think before you tweet – and make sure your employees are doing the same.

Click the following link to read Iain Dale’s positive social media customer service experience.

Social Media Marketing blogging, facebook, Social media for business, Social Media Marketing, social media strategy, Twitter

It has taken a while to get my notes from this key note seminar at the TFMA (Wednesday 25th Feb 2009) event in London together. There was a very interesting panel of speakers with a number of important points raised that should be considered when developing a social media strategy for any business. We’ll be building on some of the points raised in future posts.

On the panel were key representatives from Facebook, Reuters, BBC and YouTube, read on for a summary of the key points raised .

The session opened by explaining the success of social media marketing in President Obama’s campaign for the White House. It was the first time that social media had been used on such a scale in a political race and was used to great effect by Obama’s team to gain massive advantage in terms of winning support and engagement from voters.

Blogging was discussed as an important element of any social media strategy. Pete Clifton, Head of Editorial Development at the BBC, commented that his view and that pushed at the BBC, was if the content is no good there is no point in having a blog. Blogs need to be updated regularly and provide value. Key to this is that the person responsible for the blog needs to be prepared for the commitment (although it doesn’t look like Pete is as his blog was last updated 9 months ago – at the time of writing). He explained that the stronger the focus of the blog the more likely it is to provide value. Interestingly he commented on how his editorial team are using blogs to explain the difficult decisions that they make and how they can use it as a device for being open and accountable.

This really reinforces the advice that we give to our customers on blogging for business. Through out the discussions, there was a recurring theme that marketing needs to be authentic. Customers are much savvier to marketing and respond much better to honest messages. Blogging is a fantastic way of presenting an open insight into your business or organisation and expressing its personality.

Tim Faircliff, General Manager at Reuters Media explained some of the challenges and opportunities social media is presenting at Reuters. How it is very important that they integrate the latest technology without undermining their core values. He explained how the business’s core values are clearly set out for all members of the business. He also stated the importance of having an anchor around an individual or subject when using social media. This point reinforces the message of focus when using blogs and social media.

Another interesting example that Tim raised was Twitter. He explained how their lead business editor David Schlesinger posted on his Twitter feed from the Davos World Economic Forum. These tweets beat the Reuters wire and apparently caused a bit of stir.

Stephen Haynes, UK Sales Director at Facebook, was asked about his view on Facebook’s meteoric rise to success. His view was that it was Facebook’s simplicity, its ability to encourage users to express themselves and the priority of the whole business to put users first, that are the secrets to its success.

A question was posed about where a not for profit should start in the world of social media promotion. The advice was to look at it as a long term strategy. Facebook would be a good starting point with its primary user demographic between 24 and 40. Creating a page on Facebook and allowing supporters to engage with the brand would then drive awareness to friends through their newsfeeds.

Marmite was given as a good example of a brand making use of a Facebook page for engaging with customers. Using the love it or hate it approach Marmite has built a substantial following on Facebook, providing an important marketing channel for the brand.

Another important concept expressed by the panel was that brands are owned by the consumers not the companies that legally own them. This is the power of social media to tap into the real owners of the brand the consumers, get feedback on it and engage in real dialogue with the people whose opinion will really affect the success of the brand.

The challenge of how to measure the success of social media marketing was raised, especially advice on which are the best metrics to use. Pete Clifton explained that the BBC bases their metrics around measuring unique users against weekly targets and expected targets for the year.

User interaction was also a key factor; however he expressed the BBC’s challenge with the current levels of volume of user generated content and how it should be managed. He also explained that the BBC was going to be much freer in letting more of the content go, to maintain the reach of the business. He gave the example of BBC produced and hosted video content which will be able to be taken and placed on own readers own blogs and websites, so that it can be consumed where ever viewer are most comfortable consuming the media.

A marketing director of a consumer FMCG brand expressed that whilst they loved using social media for themselves, how terrified they were of how to protect their brand. This really came back to the message that the business doesn’t own the brand the customers do. The example of using Mentos and diet coke to create a fountain was used. Coke tried repeatedly to prevent the video being shown on YouTube. However, they finally realised that it was a great marketing opportunity. The message was that there is always going to be good and bad feedback and that it was best not to try to control but embrace the energy to your advantage and to act on the feedback it is now so much easier to receive.

Brands that are completely open and embrace the openness of social media get a much better response. Negative comments generate positive comments

Pete Clifton from the BBC explained how twitter is changing the traditional media landscape. He gave the example of the Mumbai bombings where twitter allowed their journalists to tap into exactly what was happening to real people on the ground. He also gave the example of how the technology editor can use it to tap into bang up to date user experiences of software and the latest technology releases.

Another question was raised by WPP a leading advertising agency, who expressed that they were finding that social media isn’t generating returns.

To counter this the example of Youtube was given. Bruce Daisley explained that the site is very big with under 34 audiences. Monty Python episodes were very commonly viewed on the site and Monty Python kept fighting to have them removed. But then they realised that it could be used to promote their full films and DVDs. Using this realisation drove up sales of Monty Python DVDs by 23,000 percent, pushing them to second in the Amazon chart.

Closing comments expressed by the panel were as follows:

• Advertising formats are going to change significantly over the next few years, becoming far more interactive
• There will continue to be an explosion in the mix of business models, with Spotify as an example of this
• Traditional media sites like the BBC will be embracing more of the functionality like Facebook

With the closing thoughts:

• Transparency is vital to success– Barrack Obama
• Be yourself – don’t do a Cillit bang and try to be something you are not
• Nobody is in control

Social Media Marketing blogging, facebook, Social Media Marketing, social media strategy

Enabling readers to comment on your blog has just become easier, thanks to a new widget from Facebook Connect. Called, simply enough, The Comments Box, it enables anyone with a Facebook account to log on to any supported site with their Facebook details, and leave a comment. This is all done by adding a few lines of code to your website, and could be a vital part of your social media strategy.

While this isn’t really anything new – Google Friend Connect has a similar, widget-based system and there are commenting services such as Disqus – it will help raise awareness of your site

When a user logs in to your site and uses The Comments Box to leave a comment, they are able to post that comment to their profile and share what they have said with their friends, and by using Facebook’s APIs you can access related comments and find out what’s being said about your organisation or products. You can then retrieve these comments and display them as ‘recent comments’ on your site.

The Comments Box also lets people without a Facebook ID, or those who don’t want to use it, to comment on your site.

For full instructions on how to add The Comments Box to your site, click here:

http://developers.facebook.com/news.php?blog=1&story=198

Social Media Marketing blogging, Social Media Marketing