Internet Marketing, Social Media, Business | StuckInTheFunnel

Social Media Automation – What's Good and Bad About It?

This post was originally written for the blog Raleigh Web Insights.

When discussing the topic of Social Media with our current or prospective customers we often get the response “I don’t have time for that”. While Social Media is a labor intensive form of marketing, it does provide the personal touch your audience is looking for. Many businesses are unaware that you can actually automate a good portion of your Social Media Marketing.

With a little planning, you can syndicate your online content and reduce the time it takes you to spread your message across all of your social pipelines.

Here are a few tools that can help you do this:

• Tweet Deck (update Twitter and Facebook simultaneously).
• Word Press Twitter Plugin (Display your Tweets on a Word Press Blog)
• Twitter Feed (Automatically feed your blog and other RSS content to Twitter)
• Hoot Suite (for scheduled Tweets and other workflow)
• Posterous - (Allows you to email content and have it distributed to multiple Social Networks Simultaneously. )

Benefits of Social Media Automation:

• Allows marketing staff to spend less time on copying/pasting so they can focus on generating original content and other critical business tasks
• Keeps your content/brand consistent across all social networks.

Negatives of Social Media Automation:

• Can result in neglecting social networks. Make sure you continue to login and build up your following and relationships.
• It may cause you to get labeled as a Spammer or robot. It’s important to comment on the content created by others. Don’t just send your content into the pipeline without participating in other discussions.

Social Media automation can improve your business processes, but remember to use the tools available ethically and build your audience organically.

Tags: Internet Marketing, Social Media, Twitter

Twitter Brings Dell 3 Million in Sales

While attending a Twitter for Brands event hosted by New Media Age in London Last Friday, Dell employees claimed that their Twitter account has driven $3 million in sales since it was first created in 2007.

I am curious as to how Dell tracked the correlation of their Twitter activity to their additional sales.

How did they use Twitter to generate these sales? Did they Tweet about specials, direct message followers or gain new customers by finding them on Twitter?

These claims are evidence that when used effectively, Twitter can be a viable marketing tool. However, a recent poll on Linked In/Harris poll revealed that only 8% of marketing professionals and consumers think Twitter is a usefull promotional tool. Are they right or do they just not know how to leverage the SMS dispatch service effectively?

I think as more companies like Dell show off the value of Twitter, more marketers will educate themselves and adapt their marketing plans accordingly.

Tags: dell, Twitter, twitter for businesses

Weird Twitter Error

So, I accessed my Twitter profile tonight to check my follower count and this error was thrown:

This is something I have not seen before. Generally I get a Twitter branded error page when their is an issue.

Any ideas?

Tags: Twitter, Twitter 400 error, Twitter Error

Company Sold Michael Jackson Twitter Followers

The guys over at Mashable got an interesting news tip today. 

Apparently the company uSocial:

1. Sold Twitter followers which is a clear violation of Twitter’s terms of service.
2. Claims to have sold a whopping 25,000 followers to Michael Jackson.
3. Sold votes on Digg.com despite a cease and desist order that was issued to them.

Mashable was shocked to receive such a press release since it is obviously some risky PR. However, I have seen been seeing more and more of these risky press releases lately and they seem to…work. Think of KFC’s new “Unthink KFC” campaign that promotes their new grilled chicken. It obviously attacks their brand, but works at capturing consumer interest.

Tags: Michael Jackson, Michael Jackson Illegal, Twitter, Usocial

How Google Calculates Twitter Page Ranks

As many already know, Google began indexing Tweets and Twitter profiles not to long ago. Since then a lot of Search Engine Optimization experts have been trying to find the secret behind Google’s ranking algorithm for Twitter content. While observing my Hoot Suite panel today, I was steered torwards an interesting video released by Matt Cutt, a Google Engineer.

Despite speculation, it turns out that Google does not actually apply any special ranking factors when indexing Twitter content. The rules that apply to any web page also apply to Tweets and Twitter profiles. The number and quality of inbound links to specific Tweets or Profiles dictate how well they rank against others.

Google does not provide additional weight to profiles with  a large number of followers due to the ease of gaining followers and the questionable tactics used by marketers on the site.

Bottom line: optimize your Twitter profile and Tweeted content for Google the same way you would any other web page.

Tags: Google, seo, Twitter, Twitter Page Rank