Blue Tent Marketing

By now I’m sure you have heard all about Twitter. Twitter is the social media phenomenon that has swept the world and allows an individual to have a voice that can be so powerful that the President of the United States will listen. This gives us all the opportunity to speak what we want, when we want, to whomever we want. And the fact is that people are listening. For a business, this can be a very powerful tool to connect with customers and potentially generate new business.

Many of our clients are starting to use Twitter and Facebook to Leverage the Persuasive Power of the Social Web. With that in mind we thought it would be good to give you ten Twitter tips to help you get the most out of every tweet.

1. When you’re initially setting up your account try to keep in mind all of the keywords that you are targeting on your website and include those into your bio. This gives your company the opportunity for more exposure and will help connect you with the right audience. Also try to theme your twitter page with the same graphics as your website.
2. Make sure you monitor your brand name and keywords that are related to your business. This gives you the opportunity to respond to people that are obviously interested in what your company is about.
3. While you are monitoring your brand name be sure to respond with in the day. Keep a watchful eye of everything that is being said positive or negative and respond accordingly.
4. When you use twitter to respond to tweets or comment on other tweets be sure to keep a casual tone.
5. Be sure to respond to everyone that addresses you. It shows that you are intone with your business and your in touch with your cliental.
6. When your posting tweets be sure that your not trying to sell something every time. Try to post articles related to your industry, blog posts, behind the scenes at your business, and things of interest to you.
7. If you see an post that you like retweet it. This shows that your not just on here to post, but that your actually reading other tweets. A retweet or RT is the ultimate Twitter compliment.
8. When you do offer deals or promos try to offer a couple of Twitter exclusive promos.
9. Tag your links with URL shortening services such as bit.ly to track the amount of traffic your site is receiving. Also consider tagging your links with web analytics tracking code such as Google Analytics.
10. One last thing: Have fun and be social – it’s all about interacting with others and sharing information openly – albeit 140 characters at a time!

Let us know your thoughts on how you’re using Twitter to connect with your customers and colleagues.

– Tim Hampton
SEM Account Manager

Today, all it takes is an angry person with thumbs and a Twitter account to start trashing your business online. Recently, a lead came into us that clearly displayed this newfound phenomenon and the persuasive power of the social web:

Please Describe Your Needs: Please help with a few negative comments about our business consisting of 14,000 patients and over 30,000 implants placed to date. Less than 5 negative google comments are destroying 8 years of a business I have spent everyday building 16 hours a day.

Ouch! Less than 5 negative comments posted on Google are destroying 8 years put into building a successful business. The weight of that statement is astounding! This prospect (from the dental industry) is prepared to spend upwards of $10,000 per month to address these negative comments that were posted on the “social web” and are adversely affecting his business in a very severe way.

There are good and bad effects of this evolution of the web into the social sphere. On the good side, consumers have more control, more information, and more voice to affect purchasing decisions. On the bad side, the reputation of a great business, established over many years of hard work, can now be tarnished almost instantly by a few dissatisfied customers.

Which raises the question: How is your business leveraging the power of positive feedback online?

This is perhaps one of the most important questions for a business of any size to be mindful of when evaluating the importantance of social media to their business. The answer is obvious: It’s critically important. It simply doesn’t matter what type of business you’re running. Whether you’re in lodging and vacation rentals, dentistry, dermatology, the ski rental or restaurant business, the end result is the same – it matters what people say about your business online.

I recently returned from a trip to the Victoria House in Ambergris Caye, Belize (it was amazing, albeit a bit pricey, but don’t take my word, see what others have to say). As I was checking out I noticed a beautiful guest book (pictured at right), full of glowing reviews from past guests. The only problem was that these glowing guest comments weren’t reaching the right audience. That’s where we come in.

We create programs that reach out to your most satisfied customers, and turn them into your most enthusiastic online brand advocates – thus leveraging the power of the positive.

Anyone that’s ever read the letters to the editor in their local newspaper realizes that many of the letters are people complaining about something. The social web has made it even easier for people to make their complaints heard. The trick is combat and overwhelm those negative experiences with positive ones. However, expecting these positive reviews to appear on their own is a dubious approach indeed.

This is where the strategic approach to social media comes into play. You’ve got to find ways to first identify who your most satisfied clients are, and then make it easy for them to share their experiences online with the right audience – whether it be on Google, TripAdvisor, Yelp or elsewhere. Think of this type of expense as reputation maintenance. And we all know that it’s easier and less expensive to maintain your vehicle on a regular basis than it is to neglect it and be faced with expensive and inconvenient repairs when they inevitably occur.

Click here for more information about how we can help your company or organization leverage and maintain its positive reputation online.

– Josh Lewis
VP Marketing
@Blue_Tent

We just returned from our first annual pilgrimage to the GooglePlex for the Google Partners Summit – a weeklong event for Google Analytics Authorized Consultants (GAACs) and Website Optimizer Authorized Consultants (WOACs). The highlight of day one, was the keynote entitled “Crime Against Humanity” by renowned Google web analytics guru Avinash Kaushik.

Much of his presentation centered around the concept that web analytics as we know it is undergoing fundamental, rapid change. He highlighted the limitations of Javascript based analytics tracking in the increasingly fragmented ecosystem of online information consumption.

“The website is no longer the center of the universe,” he said. “In this new world, javascript tracking does not work … Current metrics for web analytics lose their value everyday.”

Marketing & Influencing People is Fundamentally Changing

By example, Avinash pointed to some of the most popular and widely consumed sources for information and online purchasing: Twitter and Amazon.com.

In regards to a book listed for sale on Amazon: How do you measure the value of content publishing on Amazon? At what point is the value of that page maximized? How may reviews are needed before the tipping point is reached upon which many new sales are generated? How do negative reviews affect the value of this page? How will we identify and integrate such influences into our web analytics ecosystem?

And how to measure success on Twitter? Avinash stressed the importance of viewing Twitter as a brand channel. Think the number of followers you have matters – nonsense! One important smart metric that we’re all aware of is the all-important “re-tweet” or RT. Check out Retweetist.com to measure the viral value of your tweets. Then divide the number of RTs per 1K followers to arrive at your RT metric. This metric shows your capacity to influence people!

“Influence not because I did it, but because you did it – that is marketing,” said Avinash.

In regards to your blog, focus on your number of subscribers – what Avinash described as the “future of permission marketing, the future of email marketing.” Another engagement metric is to analyze the number of words in posts versus the number of words in comments.

You’ll notice that many of these metrics aren’t readily available in Google Analytics. For the time being, you’ll need to “automagically pull, scrape, integrate, invent, correlate and compute” to arrive at meaningful behavioral metrics that lead to actionable outcomes. Then set long term goals and continue measure and refine your approach.

The “A” Stands for Agile

It’s clear that web analytics is evolving at lightning speed. Avinash stressed that the smaller shops, not the giants (or elephants in his words) are the ones leading the charge into this brave new world of web analytics. Take a look at companies like statsit.com, percentmobile.com, and brizzly.com for a glimpse of the what the future holds for web analytics.

Cheers to Avinash for a thought-provoking, entertaining and insightful keynote. We can’t wait to dig into his new book, “Web Analytics 2.0” – how about you?

- Josh Lewis
VP Marketing

With the emergence of social applications there has been much debate as to which marketing channel is more efficient, Email or Social Media. Although new technologies such as Twitter and Facebook can be very effective when used correctly, they are more of a way to spread news in 140 characters or less than a marketing channel. These social applications don’t replace the need for relevant, well-executed Email Marketing.

The truth is that people still use email to communicate more than any social application, but that doesn’t mean we can’t combine the two to create an even deadlier email program! 15% of your email list will read your emails and research on Facebook or Twitter to see if others are chatting about the message before taking action. Solid evidence there is room for both Email and Social Media.

About 6 months ago Blue Tent started using a Share With Your Network (SWYN) application called AddThis (which is free) that allows recipients of an email message to post the online version of the email to any social application. Through AddThis you can track which message was sent and to what social media applications it was sent to. AddThis allows you to post to any social application but from our experience Facebook has hands down been the most popular with 172 posts in the last 6 months (pictured).

Using this application allows the audience of those who view your latest email a lot larger and increases the chances of your email marketing campaigns to "go viral". With 300 million Facebook users and the average person having 120 friends, you can see how tying in social media to your email program can create fast, efficient results. By adding in an email subscribe option to the posted online version allows the postee’s friends or followers to sign up for future emails. By allowing these folks to sign up through the posted eNewsletter is key since it also further adds to your premission based list!

The facts speak for themselves. There is still a demand for properly executed email marketing while the advantages of combining your email marketing efforts with your social campaigns are simply too good to pass up. Use the benefits of social media to create more exposure, increase ROI, and increase the list size of your email campaign.

Eric Taylor
Email Project Manager

As the separation between search and social media marketing fades away, marketers find themselves standing at a crossroads. In one direction, stands the huge opportunity to increase brand awareness and connect with targeted users, and in the other lies the possibility of getting left in the dust of web savy competitors by not evolving their search marketing strategy.  If you’re looking to drive huge amounts of traffic, then focus your time on Digg or Reddit. But, if you are looking to connect with new users and generate buzz about your business and its products and services, then you might learn something from our client, Gulf Shores Plantation and their approach of using Twitter to connect with new customers.

They decided to do some routine monitoring of Twitter Search for some commonly used vacation rental keywords to open doors to a variety of conversations and connections. In this example, they found a user who was planning a family vacation to the area. TIP: use TweetDeck to follow multiple keyword searches at the same time, giving you the ability to monitor multiple conversations.

Take the time to interact within your niche on Twitter. A simple reply to @itsalltweet is all Gulf Shores Plantations needed to open up communication with this potential customer.

Twitter has earned its reputation as a real-time networking and communication tool and will continue to build strength in the Social Media sphere with quality interactions between users.

Jonathan Georger is Director of Search Engine Marketing & Web Analytics at Blue Tent Marketing and is a reformmed Twitter hater, once he realized its marketing potential.