Content That Works

You might use a search engine optimization or other content marketing strategy to attract visitors to your website, but how do you get them to join your conversation on Twitter? If you build it, they won’t come -- unless you follow these 5 tips for getting Twitter followers.

1. Provide relevant content: Typical advice from a content marketing company, right? Maybe so, but it’s dead on. Identify your target audience on Twitter (customers, perhaps) and tailor the content towards them.

The great thing about Twitter is there is no wrong way to use it. Sure, you'll see missteps in etiquette and plenty of spammers, but for the most part it's like Thunderdome: There are no rules.

There are guidelines, however, and Proactive Report offers a handy tip sheet from Ogilvy 360 for advice on various strategies—and suggestions on who to follow, what kind of content to create and how to engage for each situation.

If you're a Twitter pro you will probably recognize the various suggestions, and perhaps have some of your own to add, but if you're going to be covering an event or handling crisis management for the first time with Twitter this is a great starting point.

Call us nerdy, but last night at dinner my husband and I were amusing ourselves talking about the abundance of abandoned corporate blogs and Twitter accounts that are littering the Internet. You know the ones: They have introductory posts making grandiose promises about the purpose of the blog or social media account and then…nothing. It's particularly a shame when you find a blog with lots of activity, but then realize the top post you're reading is from October 2008.

I would love to see a statistic on how many of these accounts have been abandoned. Many more than are active corporate accounts, I'm sure.

The reasons for giving up on social media are many:

Lots of businesses are setting up accounts on various social media sites lately, but not all of them really "get it." While there aren't steadfast rules on how to use the sites, there are best practices and certain etiquette guidelines that most seasoned users try to follow. OnlineMarketingBlog hits many of them in this recent article, and while they specify the tips are for e-commerce sites, they really can apply to any business' social media strategy. Tips include:

• Collect data: It's important to understand where your customers are coming from and how they're interacting with your website and its content. Utilizing services like AddToAny and Google Analytics can provide valuable information about the habits of your audience.


• Set up Twitter and Facebook profiles: This should be pretty obvious by now, but Twitter and Facebook are emerging as the top social media sites and can greatly enhance your digital presence beyond your website.


• Engage your audience: It's not enough to just set up a website, Facebook page or Twitter account. You've got to have a back-and-forth with the people coming to those sites. Respond to comments on your website and follow, retweet and respond to others on Twitter. If all you do is sell, sell, sell on social media sites you'll lose authenticity quick—as well as the patience of your followers.

For more tips on social media best practices, visit the social media section of hammock.com.

Joe Pulizzi of Junta42 reminds us about the challenge facing companies that embrace social media face—the social media policy.

He points to a couple of different organizations (different, as in, one university, one corporation and one nonprofit) to show how a policy can help or hinder a company's efforts to use social media for marketing. The policy is important, no doubt, but it shouldn't scare off employees from tweeting or mention the company on Facebook.

Joe has some great insight on what an effective social media policy should look like.

One sign that social media are maturing is that content tricks such as lists and how-tos do no longer satisfy readers who have had their fill of hors d'oeuvres and hunger for something substantial.

That's the viewpoint of Drew Hawkins, who recently commented in a blog post titled "The Fall of Content" that "When creating content, whether it's your blog or Twitter or some other platform, you should ask yourself: are you posting something that you are genuinely passionate about? Or are you just trying to drive traffic at the expense of your reader?"

Customers are ready to move past design gimmicks - fascination by bright shiny objects - in favor of design and capabilities that make information easier to find and use. "Thou shalt not direct a visitor away from thy site" was never more true than today.

Thus content and design must work together - and also with your other marketing and communications strategies.

Hawkins isn't alone in this viewpoint or the first to express it — it's something Hammock has believed since its founding in 1991. Your online presence needs to provide potential customers and clients with content that helps them evaluate and use your products and services—what we call contextual content. And the design must be clear, easy to navigate and use.

Whether in print, online or skywritten, content and design must be not only creative, but also meaningful and helpful to our clients' audiences. Otherwise, it's like an ad that gets everyone talking - but no one can remember what the product is.

And isn't the point to have content that works for your product or service?

Despite what some might think, simply setting up a few social media accounts isn't enough. You have to have a strategy of how to use them.

Once you've outlined your objectives, if you're having trouble deciding which social media platforms to use to best market yourself, check out this handy chart from Revenflo to get an idea of which social media platforms will help you achieve your goals. For example, Facebook and Twitter have ended up in the Most Effective Customer Communication and Most Effective Brand Exposure categories, while Digg and StumbleUpon are considered effective in driving traffic to your website.

While it's important in your content marketing to spread your message across multiple social media platforms, it's also helpful to have a good idea of what the users of those platforms are looking for so you can tailor your message.

According to this recent article on Mashable.com, "Twitterers mostly consume news, MySpace users want games and entertainment, Facebookers are into both news and community and Digg's audience has a mixed bag of interests."

That's not to say you shouldn't post tweets that show a more personal, community oriented side of your business on Twitter and discount putting any business postings on Facebook, but it's always helpful to understand how a particular audience interacts with information.

Head over to Mashable to check out the breakdown of what users are interested in on the various social media sites.

It seems small business owners are mixed on the value of social media for business. Those who love it have seen an uptick in sales that they can tie directly to their social media efforts. Those who aren't impressed say the time investment isn't worth the effort, according to the Wall Street Journal.

But what effort were these businesses making? The article mentioned a few ways in which these companies used social media (customer service, direct sales leads). But nowhere was social media mentioned as a way to push out content.

At Hammock, we believe content plays an integral role in retaining and recruiting customers. But we're not talking about just any old content. We're talking about engaging content that people actually look forward to reading and experiencing. We call that content that works!

A new study reveals that small businesses are increasingly incorporating social media into their marketing strategies. In fact, usage of social media among small businesses has doubled over the last year: 24 percent of small businesses with fewer than 100 employees use social media versus 12 percent last year, according to the latest Small Business Success Index study performed by Network Solutions and the University of Maryland's Robert H. Smith School of Business.

The study found that the most common social media methods among small businesses is creating a Facebook or LinkedIn page (75 percent). Only 39 percent of small businesses have a blog, and 26 percent use Twitter to share information about their area of expertise.

The study also provided insight into why small business owners are hesitant about using social media to market their businesses. Biggest barriers include longer-than- expected marketing results and the fear that social media channels give customers an opportunity to publicly criticize their business.

If you're not aggregating your content on your company's Facebook fan page, you should be -- especially now that Google Analytics can be set up to track activity on the page. As this article from Buzzmarketing Daily notes, Facebook's default traffic analyzer, Facebook Insights, only tracks the activity of users who have become fans of your page. Google Analytics, however, tracks the actions of anyone who visits the page and provides information related to "visits, average time on site, visitor location, and more."

Check out Buzzmarketing Daily to learn more about what Google Analytics for Facebook can help you determine about the visitors to your page.

The latest issue of B-to-B tackles the topic of social media as a revenue-generating marketing channel—more specifically, can social media be a revenue-generating marketing channel?

The article features opinions from experts on both sides. It seems the jury is still out, but nothing sums up the dilemma better than this quote from Matt Ceniceros, who runs FedEx's Citizenship Blog:

“If you look at social media as a channel instead of a new frontier, it becomes more tangible. From a media relationship standpoint, the way we talk to print isn't the same way we talk to broadcast, for example. As the business world becomes more sophisticated in using social media, its special way of being addressed will become more sophisticated as well.”

We couldn't agree more.

You've heard it before, the people who don't really "get" Twitter say it's just for telling other people about what you had for lunch. But if you're a marketer, you know Twitter is (and can be) so much more than that.

Jason Falls knows this. In a recent post on Social Media Today, he breaks down the four social media marketing styles that he's observed using Twitter:

• The Conversationalist. Those who "use Twitter for their business, but seem more apt and willing to participate in the daily chitter-chatter..."
• The Conversational Marketer. The marketer on Twitter who "... has a more obvious, even stated, purpose for using Twitter."
• The Salesman. Falls says this is the marketer who pushes products more than 50 percent of the time, conversing with others even less.
• The Broadcaster. Falls initially called this type of marketer the "spammer," but notes many of them definitely have a following.

So, which marketing style do you have on Twitter?