Top Reasons I Follow Back on Twitter

Let’s face it, the Twitterverse is made up of individuals and brands. While the branded Twitter accounts are staffed by people, the persona of each Twitter account is either an individual or a company or a brand. For example, General Motors has a branded Twitter account, and they also have product branded Twitter accounts.

Like you I receive dozens of new Twitter followers every day. When I plow through them, I usually make my decision to follow back (or not) in under 5 seconds. Here are the criteria I use to make my quick decision. I should point out that these are my criteria. I don’t suggest for a minute that these criteria should be yours. To each his or her own on follow back decision criteria.

I should also point out that my Twitter persona is mostly about marketing. I do very little personal tweeting. When I do it’s usually on the weekend when I may be watching a ballgame or something otherwise leisure related or an occasional random thought.

Why I Follow Back an Individual

Your Twitter account is visually appealing to me. You have more than one photo or you have a creative custom design that is unique. And, you look like an interesting or fun person I would want to meet in person. Age, gender or ethnicity do not affect my impression.

Your most recent tweet was recent (in the last 24 hours). People who don’t tweet daily are not of interest to me. Remember, these are my criteria. You may not share my follow back criteria.

Your tweets are relevant, interesting and they contain links to interesting content. Your tweets will somehow add value to me.

Your profile has a link to your blog or website. If you get my attention and I want to know more about you, you make it easy.

Your profile bio is descriptive. It paints a picture for me about who you are what you care about. It’s uniquely about you.

I get the impression (quickly) that if I met you at a dinner party, I would want to have a conversation with you.

You RT others and reply to others. The absence of either RTs or @ replies immediately tells me you’re using Twitter for one way communication.

You may use hashtags, though sparingly. This tells me you participate in Twitter conversations. This isn’t a huge factor, but I notice it.

Your follower to following ratio is greater than 1. For newer accounts (less than 1000 followers) I’m flexible on this if all other factors are compelling.

A scan of your Twitter home page generally communicates that you use Twitter conversationally, not as a promotional megaphone.

A sample individual Twitter account I like from @AmyMengel:

Why I Follow Back a Brand

The Twitter account design clearly communicates a message about the brand. Whether it’s a logo or other graphics, I get a quick understanding of the brand’s main message and persona.

The profile description clearly communicates the brand’s message and purpose. It contains a link to the website or blog where I can learn more about the brand.

When skimming the Twitter home page I see interesting content with links to more content. The tweets and links inform me, educate me or entertain me in some way.

If the brand offers promotional tweets, they are done tastefully, professionally and in a way that adds value.

The Twitter account is very transparent. You don’t B.S. me. You demonstrate interest in your followers.

You tweet with a human voice. If you’re a brand and you sound like a non-human, I’m not interested.

You engage your followers with @ replies and RTs.

If you get criticism you respond to it openly and swiftly.

You tweet daily.

A sample brand Twitter account I like: @Teddy’s Pride

Do you have other criteria you use when deciding to follow back individuals and brands? Share them below…

@berniebay

Unconventional Marketing by Nadine M Rosin

Happy New Decade!

As I kick off a new year with my podcasts I want to reiterate the mission of my podcasts.

I seek to bring you interesting people that are doing interesting things in marketing in order to share their experiences with marketers around the world for education and inspiration.

My first podcast guest in the new decade is Nadine M. Rosin. Nadine is an unconventional person in several ways. It’s her unconventional approach to life and marketing that offers great inspiration. Nadine is a certified therapeutic body worker and a non-denominational minister who performs weddings in Tucson. Nadine is the author of a book titled The Healing Art of Pet Parenthood. The book was inspired by the loss of her dog Buttons. Buttons was diagnosed with cancer when she was 8 years old and was given just 6 weeks to live. That’s when Nadine got unconventional…

An Unconventional Person
Nadine is less likely than most people to accept the conventional way of doing things. She subscribes to the cliché “necessity is the mother of invention.” When the veterinarian gave her dog Buttons 6 weeks to live, Nadine sought and found the causes of the cancer. Rather than deal with the symptoms, Nadine took a holistic approach to Buttons’ cancer. Over the next four months Nadine cleared out all toxins in her home. Essentially, she cleansed Buttons’ environment inside and outside and strengthened her body nutritionally so her dog’s body would heal itself. It worked. Buttons lived another 11 years and died of natural causes at age 19.

The Marketing Lesson in Mourning
Nadine observed that people (especially in the U.S.) are encouraged to keep sorrowful emotions bottled up. She points out that it’s not healthy to hide these powerful emotions. It’s not how we heal. An example Nadine offers is how during President Reagan’s funeral the esteemed media praised Nancy Reagan for not showing her grief in public. It’s a normal human emotion to mourn over the death of a loved one. It’s authentic and healthy to grieve. Grieving gives us a healing process.

What does this have to do with marketing you ask? Good question. Keep reading…

Create Content About Which You’re Passionate
The experience Nadine had with her own pet coupled with the observations of how people need to grieve even after they lose a pet, inspired Nadine’s book. Her book helps “pet parents” to grieve and heal after the loss of their pets.

Nadine never had a budget to market her book. She doesn’t have a warehouse of books to send out for promotion. But, Nadine does have a warehouse full of passion. She started her marketing plan with a 3 minute video, which serves as a trailer about the book which she posted on YouTube. Then, she searched for videos on YouTube for “pet memorial” and found people offering tributes to a pet which had recently died. Nadine would leave a short, authentic and sympathetic comment in her handle: authorgirlpetparent with a link to her video. Many people would click on her video and find her book and buy it. Eventually, many people came back to her video to comment on how helpful the book was to them in their healing process over their pet loss.

Shoestring Marketing

Nadine designed her website herself with no prior experience. She just learned how to do it. She found and visited online pet social sites to find conversations with people about their pets and engaged them. Two such sites include Dogster and  DoggySpace. The people she encountered on these pet social sites actually speak in the persona of their pet.  She started making friends on all these social sites and establishing her brand in her own persona of Authorgirlpetparent. This marketing strategy cost no money. It did “cost” her about 6 hours each day after work, which she admits flies by because she is so passionate about the topic and her online relationship building. One such online connection got her an invitation to be flown to an event where she was the keynote speaker.

Nadine is very focused on the details of her online relationship details. She sends a personalized direct message (DM) to every new follower on Twitter and Facebook. She also gives free help to other pet parents who have holistic questions. She offers a 30-minute one-on-one consultation. No one is turned away who can’t afford one.

Marketing 2.0 at Work

Nadine’s content marketing and relationship building strategy is intuitively exactly as I wrote in my book, Marketing 2.0. Nadine has developed a content marketing strategy and prioritizes the connections she makes online with people on pet social sites and through Facebook and Twitter. Nadine also blogs regularly on her pet parenthood blog and accepts, speaking engagements where ever possible.

Experiential Marketing
Nadine is creating experiences with people when she connects with them. She shares her own personal experience through her story about her deceased dog Buttons. For example, someone on Facebook contacted Nadine about a friend who had just lost a pet. This person posted Nadine’s video on her friend’s profile. This person turned out to be Yvonne DiVita an active social media expert who supports women in business and pet owners (pet parents). Yvonne bought and read Nadine’s book.  She contacted Nadine to help her market it. She offered Nadine valuable social media advice to accelerate her social media marketing on Twitter and Facebook.

Results in Motion
When I asked Nadine how she measures results, I could tell she was a little uncomfortable with this topic. As an author of a book, I understand that conventional results measurement is all about measuring book sales. But, until Nadine’s book sales gets into in six figures, she won’t be excited measuring that result. So she ignores the numbers. Instead Nadine measures the results in motion, which includes:

What kind of emails is she getting from readers?
How much are other people trying to connect and help Nadine?
What’s the value of her new connections?
Do her connections offer value that can contribute to book sales in the future?

There Are Many Inches in a Mile
The unconventional path to book sales for Nadine wasn’t so unconventional after all. Nadine figured it out as she went along. Her passion and commitment combined with her authentic approach to connecting with people has allowed her to learn successful marketing strategies as she experimented with them.

Nadine is measuring milestones. As I state in my book, marketers can measure the outcome of relationships developed online. These milestones are stepping stones to end results. You don’t get from an inch to a mile in one step.  It’s ok to measure the inches you achieve on your way to the mile.

One small example of measuring inches for Nadine is the way we met. I found Nadine when she was featured in a newsletter article put out by our mutual publisher, Wheatmark Publishing. I was impressed by her story so I contacted her to to be a guest on my podcast. Who knows what doors may open from this podcast interview.

I hope Nadine’s story as a pet parent and as a marketer inspire you in some way. I invite you to learn more about Nadine and her book here. I’m sure Nadine would enjoy connecting with you, to share common interests in marketing or pet parenting.

Bernie Borges
@berniebay

P.S. To learn more about developing content marketing strategies like Nadine’s check out my book, Marketing 2.0.

Psychotherapist a Self Taught Inbound Marketer

Ken Donaldson has a very unique vocation.  He is a licensed mental health counselor, aka a psychotherapist. Ken also calls himself a life coach and a relationship coach. Ken has been in private practice for sixteen years. While Ken is a psychotherapist by vocation has had to become a marketer. Here’s his story. The podcast interview has the whole story…

When Ken first got started in his profession, he expected it to be much easier to develop his practice. He created about 1000 business cards and waited for the phone to ring.  But the phone didn’t ring. He quickly realized developing his practice would require marketing.  So, he started speaking. That was a good start because when Ken spoke to a roomful of people he created more exposure for himself. His speaking gigs usually produced some client referrals and more speaking gigs. Ken eventually realized he had a business. So, he set out to learn how to grow and run a business.

Ken started educating himself on how to run a business by attending workshops, reading books, blogs and websites on marketing. While Ken doesn’t consider himself an aggressive marketer, he realizes that compared to most of his colleagues in his profession, he is like a Chris Brogan.

Marry Yourself First

Ken is the author of a best selling book: Marry Yourself First. His book is a compilation of “the best of his best advice” for people to live extraordinary lives.  His book offers 24 key life principles that give people success. Ken’s strategy is to market his book as a way of marketing Ken Donaldson. And vice versa. He has two websites. His primary website is Ken Donaldson.  And, his Marry Yourself First website promotes his book.

Video Marketing

When Ken first developed his website he was advised that it needed audio. So he added audio. Then he was told he needed video. So he added video. He learned that it wasn’t as difficult as he thought it would be. He also created a small website called Ask Ken Donaldson. Ken creates short video responses to the questions he receives. Then, he posts them on YouTube and on his website. He currently has nearly 90 videos. Ken’s content marketing strategy is to produce free advice and give it away through his websites, his blog, Facebook and Twitter with video as a primary form of content delivery.

Location, Location, Location.

As the old saying goes in real estate, Ken has learned that in marketing it’s content, content, content. Ken’s strategy is to give his best in 3 to 5 minutes. He produces content that delivers on the 3 E’s reaching people who are interested in his content. Ken’s videos are very authentic and human. For example, during a vacation in Utah he created some video with beautiful scenery. It was totally unscripted, raw video because it was so casual with some good advice from Ken.

Trading Dollars for Hours No More

Ken’s practice is doing well. His content marketing strategy effectively drives clients to his practice. In 2009 he got more clients from the internet than ever before in his sixteen years. He attributes his success to being more visible, more available and more downloadable.  He eventually plans to “trade dollars for hours.” He’s already started producing premium content through his 5 CD program and has more plans for more premium content.

Ken’s brand is growing and his business is thriving. I feel strongly that these content marketing, inbound marketing strategies apply equally to all business of all sizes across all industries.

In addition to the website links for Ken above, you can connect with him on Facebook and Twitter. He’s a good example of a niche marketer having fun while enjoying success.

If you want to learn more about content marketing strategies, check out my book Marketing 2.0.

@berniebay

What Are You Grateful For?

What Are You Grateful For?

This Thanksgiving I, once again, marvel at how much I have to be grateful for. I have a wonderful family who loves me unconditionally. I have a loyal staff that loves me (nearly) unconditionally. I have a client base that probably loves me a little bit, too. I have many friends who put up with me. And, I have Tweetsgiving to thank for using social media to build classrooms in Tanzania.

If you’ve never heard of Tweetsgiving, get ready for goose bumps as you learn its story. Stacey Monk founded EpicChange, a 501c3 U.S. “that amplifies the voices and impact of grassroots change makers by sharing their stories in ways that raise visibility and funds to support their extraordinary efforts to create hope in our world.”

In Thanksgiving 2008, Tweetsgiving was launched two days before Thanksgiving as a 48-hour celebration of gratitude, and it became the number one trending topic on Twitter and raised over $10,000 to build a classroom in Arusha, Tanzania. Anyone who contributed to Tweetsgiving had their Twitter name displayed on the wall of gratitude.

Tweetsgiving 2009 will repeat this marvelous display of gratitude only on a grander scale. This year there are more sponsors and people rallying around this wonderful cause.  This year’s event will raise funds to build an orphanage, a classroom, a cafeteria and a library at Mama Lucy’s school in Tanzania.

There are three ways you can get involved in Tweetsgiving 2009. 1) Attend a gratitude party in a city near you.  2) Spread the word. Tell your friends online and offline about it @tweetsgiving 3) Host a party. Have friends over to raise funds for Tweetsgiving 2009. Of course, you can always donate some of your hard earned money too.

The best part of Tweetsgiving (besides the smiles on kids’ faces in Arusha) is the role that social media plays. Strike that….The best part is that people (you, me and anyone who cares) can have an impact simply by using social media to spread the word. Just by a few clicks, we can help educate poor kids in a far away place.

If you don’t have goose bumps yet, you haven’t clicked through to Tweetsgiving.

Happy Tweetsgiving!

Measuring Results in Social Media Marketing

This blog post an updated excerpt from my book, Marketing 2.0.

Measuring results is one of my favorite topics in marketing. Since the invention of marketing (I couldn’t find that date in Wikipedia), executives have wanted to measure the effectiveness of marketing dollars against sales in order to determine their return on investment, or ROI.

The reality is that in recent years, measuring marketing results, at least at the quantitative level, has become increasing sophisticated through tools and techniques. In addition to quantitative metrics, measuring qualitative results can be just as valuable.

Social media marketing measurement is very similar to measuring other web marketing results. First I’ll review the tools you can use. Then, I’ll offer ways you can use them to measure social media marketing results.

Conventional Wisdom

Let’s start with a look at the conventional web marketing metrics tools, beginning with some free tools. You may be familiar with some or all of these tools. As obvious as they are to me, I often meet marketers who are not harnessing them to their full potential.

Google Analytics—a free web analytics service that provides website owners valuable insight into website traffic details including visitors, sources of visitor traffic, pages visited, time spent on your website, keywords driving website traffic, geographic location of visitors, conversions based on a predefined goals, and much more.

Google Webmaster Tools—another set of free and powerful tools from Google providing another level of detail in studying traffic data for your website as well as keyword click-throughs and inbound links.

Google Alerts—another free service that will alert you by email or to your RSS reader each time Google finds a relevant result for a topic you’ve set up to track.

Google Blogsearch—a free search engine subset of Google’s search engine geared to display blog posts. When you search on a phrase, Google displays recent blog posts for that phrase.

Social Media Measurement Tools

As social media marketing has exploded, so has the landscape of tools and services designed to help companies measure and optimize their results. I’ll start with a partial list of free social media measuring tools. Note most free tools offer fee-based premium versions as well.

Blogpulse—a service from Nielsen Buzzmetrics that acts as both a blog search engine and blog tracker. Bloggers can track conversations taking place about topics of interest, as well as discover where their blog ranks in relation to others covering similar topics.

Trendpedia—a free service that functions mostly as a blog search engine. Its main feature involves helping people find the most popular trends in social media across a variety of topics and tracking the trend of the topic over a three-month period in comparison to other relevant topics.

Trendrr—a free service that adds a real sense of analytical measurement through its use of trending graphs. Trendrr lets anyone track, compare, and share trends on any topic across blogs and other social media.

Technorati—a free service that functions as an Internet search engine for blogs. You can track your blog content in Technorati.

Twitter Search – Whether or not your have a Twitter account, you can use Twitter’s search engine. Marketers should search relevant keywords to learn about conversations about their brand on Twitter.

The free tools listed above are a partial list of many tools available to track your content results. I encourage you to use as many tools as practical to measure and track your social media marketing results on an ongoing basis.

Staying on Course

However, tracking the reach of your content in social media is just a part of the measuring results secret sauce. You also need to gain insights so you can measure your progress and take action. A metaphor comes to mind. Social media marketing is like flying an airplane. The sophisticated cockpit constantly calculates the extent to which the plan has shifted from its course route and makes the necessary adjustment to get the plane back on its course. In social media marketing, you must similarly be tracking and interpreting in order to know when and how much you must adjust your content strategy and your tactics to stay on course.

In addition to the free tools listed above, there is an ever-growing list of fee-based tools to measure social media results. I will only list two because these are the two we use at Find and Convert and therefore I’m most familiar with them. Again, there are many other good tools available and you should do your own homework.

HubSpot – an inbound marketing software as a service (SaaS). HubSpot allows marketers to track keyword rankings, competitor’s web marketing presence, traffic analysis, leads and lead intelligence. Recently, HubSpot added social media tracking features allowing marketers to track the impact of social media on your desired goals (such as sales leads). In the screenshot below you can see the emerging impact of social media traffic.

ScoutLabs – a social media tracking tool that allows marketers to track mentions in blogs, bookmarking sites, Twitter, photos, video and more. We like the ability to track sentiment of keywords and the ability to chart trends. Below is a short video interview with Jennifer Zeszut, CEO of ScoutLabs.

Measuring Quantitative Results
There are many factors you can measure in your social media strategy. First, make sure you have clearly defined goals. Otherwise your metrics will not be meaningful and you won’t be able to measure success. Here are some quantitative metrics you can measure.

Subscribers – watch the subscriber count to your blog(s) and newsletter grow.

Followers – watch the number of followers on Twitter or Facebook grow as well any groups or communities your create.

Mentions – track the mentions of your brand and relevant keywords to learn about conversations and decide which conversations you should engage.

Sentiment – track the sentiment of your keywords to determine what (if any) changes you should consider in your content strategy and in the tactics you use. A negative trend on a topic may give you cause to back away from that topic or to change your approach to it.

Inbound Links – links are the currency of the web. Track the number of links you’re building and where they are coming from.

Comments – study the comments being made on your blog or your Facebook and Twitter accounts. Comments could give you reason to engage or add more content on a topic of high interest.

Connections – one of the greatest and measurable factors in social media marketing is the new doors that can open up. New connections can result in speaking opportunities, media interviews, guest blog or publication articles, key introductions and new sales opportunities.

Brand Equity – all businesses should care about brand equity. It’s not limited to large companies. Using any combination of tools described above you should study the trends in your brand. Is your company name a growing keyword driver of traffic to your website? If the trends are positive, correlate that to your sales results. If you have employees with a strong social media presence include them in your brand equity study. The relationship between your employees and your brand is tied more tightly than ever before. Take Mike Volpe as an example. His blogging, speaking, podcasting and overall content creation on the web has a positive impact on HubSpot, his employer. And, btw, both Mike Volpe (the brand) and HubSpot (the brand) benefit from his efforts.

It Takes Work!
If you’re thinking, man this sounds like a lot of work, you’re not only right, you’re onto something big! Measuring results properly is not just hard work. It’s time consuming. So, where are you going to get all this time? By eliminating non-performing marketing activities! Measure all your marketing activities. If you have losers in your marketing mix (assuming you’ve been at it more than six months) scale them back or eliminate them. Many marketers report cutting back on marketing activities such as direct mail and tradeshows after measuring success in their social media strategy. BTW, attending a tradeshow can be just as effective as exhibiting at a tradeshow at a fraction of the cost. While you’re at the tradeshow you should be posting to Twitter about the people you’re meeting and the content you’re enjoying, taking pictures and shooting video interviews with industry people and posting all this content on the web to keep building your footprint on the web. Of course when you tag this content you’ll create links and build more brand equity. And, you can measure that…

To measure your social media marketing results keep at it and measure. Keep at it. Measure. Keep at it. Measure.

Search This… Making Twitter Work for Your Business

Jackie Weber:  Inbound Search Marketing Analyst

There are 14 million Twitter users in the United States today. By the end of 2009, Twitter is projected to reach 26 million users worldwide.

Twitter is a very powerful tool. Used correctly, it can be extremely beneficial to a company of any size.

If you look at Twitter as a marketplace and choose a strategy that makes your presence nothing more than a series of automated sales offers, you’re missing the whole point of Twitter. You become the cocktail party guest who can’t stop talking about himself. Pretty soon, the room empties.

If you see Twitter as an opportunity to join a conversation and connect with a community of like-minded people and share content which is genuinely useful to them, you will find Twitter’s rewards.  You can become the graceful party guest who mixes listening with stories and draws a crowd or at least blends in harmoniously.

If you are ready to join the Twitter party, first set your goals.

Yes, Twitter requires a strategic approach. Without clearly defined goals, your business isn’t likely to make the connections or build the relationships that Twitter offers.  Don’t be like the video comatose cartoon people floating aimlessly in the Twitosphere.  Identify what your company wants to accomplish on Twitter.

Sample Goal:
“Reach out and engage with people in our industry and potential customers, monitor brand sentiment, provide product support, and spread content of interest to the community.”

Once you have defined your goals, you need to map out your plan of action.  Identify the actions needed to accomplish your goals. Define your community. Establish a content strategy. I find that mixing business and some fun makes for a more interesting content strategy.  Your plan should address staffing concerns like protocols and time demands. And most importantly, research, research, research.

It’s a good idea to bring all your key players together to brainstorm and identify your goals. The most important aspect of any social media effort (including Twitter) should be to build relationships.

In order to be effective on Twitter, your business needs to be real and be transparent. Set up your Twitter profile in such a way that anyone visiting your Twitter page gets a glimmer of your personality. Twitter backgrounds can also give your followers a sense of who you are.

There are several tools that can help you find the people to follow on Twitter. It will take time to identify and follow people of interest, and to find influential thought leaders in your community.

Two of my favorite tools for finding followers are WeFollow and Twellow. Another way to find followers is to do a topic search in Twitter Search. Twitter’s search function is very powerful.

If someone follows you, you should consider following them back! Yes, there are some people on Twitter who I don’t follow back. You know the ones who aren’t really people and who spam your Twitter stream with way too many posts. If they want to follow me, that’s fine. But I am not going to follow them.
If someone follows you and you find their content offensive, just block them using Twitter’s block feature. That way you don’t have to see their content, and you won’t show up in their follow list.

No Twitter strategy would be complete without the ability to measure results. How you measure and what you choose to measure depends on the goals you have set.

You can listen in to conversations about your brand and be in a better position to let customers know that they are important. You can measure sentiment about your brand by tracking positive and negative Tweets.

All of these goals turned to actions can be measured. Not only can you measure the number of followers your Twitter account has attracted, but you can also measure reach, geographic interest, SEO value and even brand sentiment.

Twitter works like most other social media: You get out of it, what you put in to it. For small and medium-sized businesses with clear goals, an effective plan, and the right metrics, Twitter can be full of rewarding relationships.

A Lesson in Personal Branding: Brent Britton “Attorney 2.0″

Attorney 2.0 Brent Britton

One of the success stories in my book, Marketing 2.0 is about Brent Britton. Brent is an intellectual property attorney. Though he’s not that old, Brent has been on the Internet since the stone ages. He’s a former math and science nerd who graduated from MIT. He went to law school then went to Silicon Valley to practice law and help companies manage their intellectual property.

One of the Oldest Industries (not that one…)

Brent is definitely an exception, not the norm. Not too many lawyers use the social web. Brent is quick to point out that the legal field is a bit stodgy.  The legal profession in general is made up of technology laggards. If you ask most law firms “why don’t you use social media” most will say “that’s not where we get our clients.” But, Brent’s use of the web has been second nature. I give Brent a lot of credit for his personal branding. I asked Brent how he does it while being part of a law firm and complying with strict industry regulations.

Brent is Human Before He’s a Lawyer

What’s brilliant about Brent’s social media strategy is its simple logic. Brent’s use of the social web is nothing more than an extension of his personality. He points out that we are all social creatures. The Internet has become a communication tool for him.  And, since he’s been on the Internet since its commercial inception, it’s truly second nature to him.

Brent’s Social Media List

Brent’s blog is his primary communication platform on the web. But, he also podcasts, is active on Twitter and Facebook, LinkedIn and guest writes for publications. Brent is also a regular speaker at events. His witty personality has earned him several emcee roles at events and conferences.  Brent emphasizes that he has never been hired because because the client likes the firm he’s with. He is hired for him. Therefore, it’s important to allow his personality to be available and the social web is a natural platform for this.

Brent’s Advice to Lawyers Considering Using Social Media

Brent’s advice to other lawyers is simple. He says don’t obsess about getting on Facebook and Twitter every day. Just be natural. Brent posts as thoughts come to mind. He understands that our lives are mult dimensional but they can become one dimension on the web if you allow it. He advises to know who you’re speaking to when you blog, Tweet, or post on Faceook. Brent uses the same philosophy I advise in my book about your approach to using the web: educate, enlighten or entertain them.

Brent’s Blog Strategy

Many lawyers have not yet embraced social media. Brent’s blog strategy is very interesting.  On his blog, Brent discusses intellectual property. Lawyers must play by the bar rules. Brent’s blog is not intended to give advice. It is meant it educate, enlighten or entertain. He admits it does require a careful balance. But, he also knows that most business people don’t understand patents, copyrights and trademarks. Therefore, Brent’s blog takes a lay person’s approach to explain what it’s about. You won’t get legal advice on his blog, but you may learn something about these topics. If you want legal advice, you’ll just have to contact him. The blog is where Brent can communicate his knowledge through informational content. People who like his content call him for real legal advice. The blog also has his picture, his Twitter handle and other tidbits about him that humanize him. Imagine, meeting a lawyer who is actually normal and even likable?! This brings it full circle. Someone who calls him at his firm for legal advice that got to know him on the web has actually begun a relationship with him before they have met him. That’s what his strategy is about.

It’s All Organic

Brent does not apologize to say that all his activities have been done simply and naturally over time without much effort on the technology side of things. For example, Brent has ignored SEO and analytics best practices on his blog. He doesn’t measure anything other than he gets phone calls from people who have read his blog.

Which Social Tool Would You Use?

I asked Brent which social communication platform he would use if could only use one? Brent said he would choose his blog as the medium. The blog is where he can communicate his knowledge and generally portray his personality.  You just might say that a blog is the “mother” of all B2B social media communication tools.

For those in B2B who doubt the power of social media marketing, just ask Brent Britton. Or, listen to this podcast (above)…

Epic Change, Cause Marketing on the Social Web

Interview with Stacey Monk. Founder, CEO of Epic Change.

If you’re not familiar with this story, get ready for some goose bumps. In addition to warming your heart, this story is a great example of cause marketing with many valuable lessons for marketers.

Epic Change is a 501(c)(3) non profit organization founded by Stacey Monk and Sanjay Patel. They help social entrepreneurs who are change makers share their stories to get funded for a charitable cause. Their current project is partnered with (change maker) Mama Lucy in Tanzania to build school classrooms in the Arusha district of Tanzania, Africa. First, a little background on Stacey Monk (herself an impressive change maker).

A Life Changing  Trip

Stacey always had the inspiration to work in the non profit sector. After graduating from college, she needed to repay student loans so she joined the workforce as a management consultant working in change management. She consulted for businesses and public sector clients on this discipline.  In 2007 Stacy took a life changing trip to Africa where she volunteered at Mama Lucy’s Shepherd’s Junior school. When Stacey returned to her consulting practice, she learned that the landlord sold the land that Mama Lucy’s school was on. That motivated Stacey to act on her life long dream of working in the non profit sector. She and Sanjay founded Epic Change and took on Mama Lucy’s school as their first project.

Using the Social Web to Raise Funds

Epic Change adopted social media out of the gate as a way to reach people for donations through LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube. They had a zero dollar budget. Stacey started using Twitter without any idea why. She connected with interesting people around the world which couldn’t have otherwise happened. One of those people is Sam Lawrence who has a popular blog called Go Big Always.  One day Sam said he didn’t feel like writing a blog post. Stacey volunteered to write it for him. She knew that Sam has a large following.  So, Stacey wrote a guest blog post about how she is going big to build classrooms in Tanzania through her non profit Epic Change. Sam shared that blog post on Twitter and it wound up reaching hundreds of new followers. It quickly struck Stacey how she could reach many influential people through Twitter and blogging.

That experience was a huge light bulb. Stacey figured out the power of the social web by connecting with influential people who can spread the word. Stacey’s connection to Sam Lawrence was game changing. His network turned out to be a huge door opener for Epic Change even though Stacey didn’t have a personal connection with Sam. Many new donors and new relationships came from that one connection with Sam Lawrence.

TweetsGiving 2008

Stacey started spending more time on Twitter as a result of her “going big” blog post and her new found connections on Twitter. This inspired Stacey to create a fund raising event called Tweetsgiving. Avi Kaplan, a new friend she met on Twitter, wrote a touching blog post thanking her for mentor-ship and passion for giving.  She was moved by his gratitude. So, Stacey invited the Twitter community to participate to show their gratitude. She asked influential bloggers like Jeff Pulver and Chris Brogan to invite people to give thanks for whatever they were grateful for and invited them to donate to TweetsGiving. The TweetsGiving event took place over just two days preceding Thanksgiving 2008. The goal was to raise $10,000. Over $11,000 was raised in just two days! TweetsGiving alone enabled Epic Change to build a classroom for Mama Lucy’s school in Tanzania.

TweetsGiving Success Factors

Why was TweetsGiving so successful? One reason is clearly stating the financial goal of $10,000 and stating what the money would be used for (to build a classroom). The call to action was to donate $10 for one brick. All the donators are listed on the wall of gratitude in the school.  The wall of gratitude was painted by local artists.  It reads: “This classroom was built from gratitude…Thank you!” All the donors are listed by their Twitter handle as shown in the picture below (that’s my Twitter name in the callout).  The entire classroom is enveloped by the wall of gratitude.

Five classrooms have been built as of this writing. And over $75,000 has been invested to secure land, a school bus, install flushable toilets and implement solar power. Over 300 children are now attending the Shepherd’s Junior school under Mama Lucy, which is triple the size since the beginning of the project! Equally important, this model is now proven which allows it to scale. Mama Lucy has also been certified now in national exams. Her school recently scored #1 out of 117 schools in their district in Arusha, Tanzania!

Building a Technology Lab is Next

An online vote has been mobilized to build a technology lab. Twitter people got involved in the voting along with the local people in Tanzania by going to internet cafes in town to cast their vote to get the funds for the technology lab. For many of them it was their first experience using the internet and they got to use it to vote to get more resources for their local community. On Stacey’s next trip they will teach people how to use the internet. The local people in Tanzania will also get to participate in TweetsGiving 2009.

TweetsGiving 2009

I asked Stacey about plans for TweetsGiving 2009. She was not ready to announce the financial goal when I conducted this interview. But, I’m sure we’ll learn about it very soon. She assured me the goal will be bigger than the 2008 goal. And, I have no doubt it will be exceeded once again.

Experiment that Paid Off

Stacey Monk’s story has so many inspirational lessons for us as humans and as vocational marketers. The main lesson I want to emphasize for marketers is to be willing to experiment. When Stacey launched TweetsGiving 2008 she didn’t know what to expect and she wound up exceeding her goal. She reached out and engaged influential people who helped her exponentially reach many more people. Stacey also produced content every step of the way. Her most successful content was user generated content, especially content that is produced in Tanzania in the way of photos and video.

Inspiration to Others

Many others have been inspired by Epic Change including me. I wrote a story about Epic Change in my book, Marketing 2.0.  Shel Israel has also covered Epic Change in his book, Twitterviille. Stacey was invited to speak at South by Southwest Conference where she learned that others have been inspired by her as a result of TweetsGiving. Many are frequently reaching out to Stacey for advice on raising funds on the social web for a charitable cause.

Stacey’s Advice to Marketers

Stacey is very grateful for the attention she has received, not for self serving reasons, but rather for the positive impact it’s having on Epic Change. Stacey advises marketers to consider partnering with charitable causes to make a difference. Along the way, you can reach influential people who align with the charitable cause. When for-profit businesses adopt a cause marketing mindset there are several winners. One of them can be the marketer. But, the biggest winner is the cause.

Thanks for advice Stacey!  I can’t wait to hear about TweetsGiving 2009.

BatchBlue Software Rides Perfect Storm

Michelle Riggen-Ransom is co-founder and Director of Communications at BatchBlue Software, a Providence, Rhode Island software company focused on small business owners. BatchBlue’s first product is called BatchBook. It is a web based social CRM tool. It allows small business people to manage their contact network while also tracking conversations with them on the social web including blogs, Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, etc. This allows a small business to keep a more complete picture of what’s important to their contacts. BatchBlue Software is almost three years old at the time of this podcast interview.

I have written a story in Marketing 2.0 about BatchBlue Software. During a recent interview with Susan Bratton of DishyMix I shared that story, and I learned that Susan has become a big fan of BatchBook.

Starting a Software Company in a Weak Economy and in a Crowded (CRM) Market

Michelle gets an “A” in humility. She actually says they’ve been very lucky these past three years. As if luck allows a start-up to thrive in a weak economy. But, the timing of the start of the company has coincided with the wide adoption of business blogging and Twitter and Facebook and the whole social media world becoming more popular. Michelle and her co-founder Pamela O’Hara were very quick to embrace the tools of the social web to do two things which are at the center of my book. They use the social web to produce content, as well as share content. And, they build relationships. Everything they do is focused on their customer…Everything. The social web has matured before their eyes as they launched their company. It has been a perfect storm for BatchBlue Software.

A Product Centric Blog Strategy

The BatchBlue Software folks were bloggers before they started the company. So, it was natural for the team to write blog articles about their respective area of expertise and interest. While Michelle blogs about community events, Adam blogs about technical issues and Pamela blogs about product features and benefits. People who subscribe to the BatchBlue blog can find out about the company, the products, the people. BatchBlue treats the blog as a human way of communicating.  It’s not a promotional strategy. It’s a communication strategy focused on the customer.

A Twitter Strategy that Rocks

At first Michelle didn’t see much marketing value in Twitter when she first started using it (didn’t we all start out as skeptics?)  It occurred to Michelle that making connections with people is very powerful no matter what the platform is.

Today, they have two Twitter accounts plus each person at BatchBlue has a personal Twitter account. The branded BatchBlue Twitter account has become a great communication channel for customer service. Customers often communicate to BatchBlue through Twitter about product related topics.  Michelle makes sure to respond very quickly (she calls it real time).

Michelle often re-Tweets customer’s comments as a way of sharing their feedback or compliments. Michelle likes to show her gratitude this way.  Michelle admits that her personal Twitter account sometimes blurs with her BatchBlue life. But, that’s ok. Most of us do that.

Small Business BUZZ

What I find most interesting about BatchBlue’s Twitter strategy is an initiative called SBBUZZ. This is a Twitter stream which occurs on Tuesday nights. SBBUZZ is a community of small business owners who come together on Tuesday nights on Twitter to discuss topics of interest.  SBBUZZ already has over 10,000 followers on Twitter. The only rule for SBBUZZ is you must be respectful and you can’t pitch your company until the very end of the event when people are given the opportunity to do so. There is no phone conference. #SBBUZZ is purely a Twitter stream event. All the credit to the value of this community goes to BatchBlue as the host of this community. This a great example of content marketing on the social web. Other aspects of BatchBlue’s content marketing strategy include regularly scheduled webinars, Blue Papers (as opposed to white papers) on popular topics, newsletters and links to presentations.

Consider how you can create a community where the community gets great value and you get the leadership credit for it?

Small Business Web Initiative

This initiative was born at SXSW. Michelle and Pamela partnered with Freshbooks, Mail Chimp, Shoebox and Outright to integrate their software products. Each of these software companies serves the small business customer market with non competing products. They’ve come together as a suite of products in the Small Business Web.  Any software company can join the Small Business Web as long as they have an API and a shared passion for customer service.

Measuring Success

BatchBlue admits they are doing well and they are looking forward to launching a second product in 2010. Michelle admits that using the social web is working effectively, but it is work. Michelle admits they are still learning and experimenting but they are hitting their stride. Michelle’s advice is “be thoughtful and put in the time that is required, because it is work.”

Michelle welcomes your connection and input on their strategy, their products and even their karaoke parties. You can reach Michelle by email at mriggen at batchblue dot com, and you can connect with her on Twitter.

I look forward to watching BatchBlue Software continue to experiment and learn and grow.

Bernie Borges
@berniebay