Hootsuite Recommendation for Social Business

There are a number of good utilities available for managing multiple social media and social networking properties like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. Hootsuite has become our recommendation and the tool we are implementing for clients. Here are some of our main reasons:

Multiple accounts: Hootsuite allows you to manage multiple Twitter profiles, LinkedIn profiles, Facebook profiles and Facebook pages. It allows posting to one, many or all accounts at the same time. You can also organize tabs and columns to group accounts by personal preference.
Browser integration: We recommend Mozilla Firefox and Hootsuite has an add-in that is required for our clients to make sharing information and scheduling tweets and post in advance an easy task.team members
Metrics: skip the url shortener, Hootsuite does it for you but adds tracking for each link
Security/User control: Multiple users can log-in to Hootsuite and have privileges to the same account without access to the primary user-name and password. this is a deal-maker for any entity that wants to spread responsibility for social accounts across more than one person. Read more

8.5 Slang Expressions for Business Professionals to Avoid

We have been gathering a list of negative (as well as positive) behaviors for a class we intend to launch entitled, “Twitter: Business Ethics and Behavior.” Our original intent was an exercise around how to sell without being obnoxious, how to build authentic relationships and having a following that matters. It should come as no surprise that our focus group and crowd-sourced feedback led to the conversation itself. Semantics and syntax were at the core of most people’s impressions.

Social business in public “social media” spaces now requires professionalism. If you are using Twitter, Linkedin, Facebook, Orkut, Bebo or posting live video on Youtube, Vimeo, Viddler or Justin.tv for business than these are the idioms your audience thinks it’s best to avoid. Keep in mind, your children are going to read this stuff ten years from now when they search for you online.

Social Media Marketing Revolution

The experience of providing services and training in social media marketing and integrating those efforts into traditional marketing and PR strategy has led us to some concrete observations. Our business is shifting into social business design. Online platforms for community engagement and relationship development now impact every point in sales, marketing and customer service. Read more

Social Media Business Tip: Know Keyboard Shortcuts

Something I learned about being proficient on a computer, as simple as it sounds, is not being “mouse-dependent.”

Here’s a secret (sort of). The software you use to manage social properties is your browser. Irregardless of hardware platform, social media, blogging and online research are easier and faster if you:

Use your keyboard in addition to your mouse
Know and use the right-mouse button
Understand and take advantage of your browser
Group your online activities by bookmark folder and browser window

I’ll discuss #s 2 – 4 in a future post. Let’s make you a bit faster with keyboard shortcuts for now Read more

Social Strategy: Know your target audience

Thanks to Forrester Research for developing this tool to determine the mix of your perspective audience in social media. It’s based on Forrester’s Social Technographics® consumer classification model.

Social Media Path subscribes to this model as a tool for understanding your target audience. Our business is based on building social strategy by first examining customer behavior. The result is clear expectations and better customer relationships.

Features of this profile:

For an explanation of these groups (Creators, Critics, etc.), see a presentation (8 slides) or read Chapter 3 of Groundswell
Bars indicate the percentage of the selected demographic that are in each Social Technographics group.
The white marks indicate the same percentages for the whole population of the country selected.
The index indicates how the demographic compares to the population — a score of 100 means the demographic is the same as the population average.
The message “No data available” appears when you request a profile for which Forrester survey samples are not large enough to provide a reliable answer. This occurs for age groups in Japan, Metro China, and South Korea. To see profiles in these countries, set the Age to “Not specified”.