With brick and mortar stores, it’s easy. If a customer comes in and makes a purchase, that’s a sale. While ultimately that’s still the goal, the process of getting to the sale is much more involved now than simply putting an ad in the Yellow Pages. With all the new ways to spread the word, how do you know you’re improving conversion rates from interest to sale and having an impact?

One of the best ways is to track your communication, ideally through an employee working in social media monitoring productivity. Metrics like how many questions have you received through your channels, how many positive/negative interactions have you had and how many thank you’s have you received are valuable, as is how those interactions have grown or changed over time. These twitter tactics and Facebook practices show that you care about your user/customer base.

As well, utilizing link, shortening services such as bit.ly or tinyurl allow you to track the number of clicks over time as well as the source of those links (and where they’ve been shared,) allowing you to track how your customers interact with each other.

So how does this translate to your business growth? It’s all about what people are saying, and if your business is a positive contributor to the social media world (marketing on twitter or Facebook) and considerate of the way your customers access you, word of mouth will take over on its own.

Lou Perseghin lives in Providence, RI and works for a non-profit managing volunteers, recruiting members and handling marketing efforts.

Image from sbsearchmarketing.com

Last weekend, I witnessed an astonishing thing. Concrete personal benefit as a direct result of my social networking efforts.  The Creator’s Project, “a new network dedicated to the celebration of creativity and culture across media,” held a competition on its facebook page. Whoever could accrue the most “likes” on a single post would win two tickets to the Creator’s Project official launch in New York, featuring musical performances, films, and art exhibits.  Simple.  A friend of mine dutifully wrote a post, then sent a facebook message to a limited circle of friends with an emotive and humorous back story, a link, and a simple request.

Not a bad start, but not a great one either.  And definitely not enough to secure a win. Your main base of friends/readers/customers/what have you can be your greatest promotional asset. Don’t be afraid to appeal to them, albeit sparingly. Luckily I didn’t need to be asked—the content marketing deviant in me immediately came to life. Surely this was the perfect opportunity to use social networking as a marketing tool? After a solid hour’s effort, I solicited a large fraction of my friends list, with five separate drafts tailored to different audiences within my network.

Making a demand of the network you’ve spent so long cultivating can be a delicate process. Keep these key points in mind when you start drafting:

• Make it personal. No one wants to be bullied by a robot.
• Provide some back story so your readers know what they are supporting. But don’t drag it out.
• Acknowledge that you are asking something of them.
• State your gratitude along with any benefits they could receive.
• Humor helps, but make sure to be sincere.

While my recruitment rate was less than 50%, that in addition to my friend’s previous efforts was enough to secure two tickets to the Creators Project’s New York event.  And there you have it! Concrete results.

In this case I made a request based on my confidence in existing relationships.  And that is why you’ve spent so much time cultivating your company’s online persona. You too are developing relationships that you can one day call upon. Provide support for your target market.  Return their comments. Show that you care about their input. If you have really taken the time to invest in solid content marketing that actually provides a service for your readers, you may find that they’ll be willing to champion your cause when the time comes. Then when you really need them, go ahead and make the ask.

But the real winner in this story, of course, is the Creators’ Project. I can pat myself on the back all I want, but by offering even the mere chance of something truly phenomenal, they got me to do their work for them. The Creator’s Project facebook page is gaining fans daily by transforming existing followers into active recruiters.  Have you offered your readers something spectacular lately?

Nicola Fairhead is an ideaLaunch editorial intern with a ferocious appetite for writing, editing, and consuming content.  She has quickly become a content marketing evangelist.

Image courtesy of http://andpluckyourstrings.files.wordpress.com/2009/12/man_loudspeaker.jpg

An Alternative to Cold Calling

In the past, a blind e-mail to a name in a large directory was the standard way to source new work. With Twitter, it’s now easier to gain direct access to those same people without a filter. Responding to their tweets through @ replying and re-tweeting is your in, and building your own informative feed that blends your current work with your unique voice is your sell. It shows your work and unique personality, something lost in a one-shot e-mail.

Build Your Sources/Employers

Sharing your current work through your twitter feed serves a two-fold purpose. It shows that you’re busy (and reliable), and showcases the topics you cover. If you’ve done your due diligence connecting with editors, content managers and marketers in position to hire freelancers, they know you’re out there and more importantly, know how to connect with you. As well, connecting with other freelancers in your industry is a great way to gather new sources and information for your current projects by asking pointed questions and responding in kind.

Utilizing a few minutes of your time a day building a network in 140 characters or less could yield work and sources down the road.

Lou Perseghin lives in Providence, RI and works for a non-profit managing volunteers, recruiting members and handling marketing efforts.

Image from media.giantbomb.com

In the world of blog marketing, people link to your content, not websites. Those few friends who read your blog are your most valuable asset, your first link to driving traffic inbound. Linking your existing social networks is the best way to employ this established group, but you’ll need to do some work on your end.

According to web information company Alexa, Facebook is the second most visited website in the world. Adding a ‘Like’ button to your posts is an unobtrusive way to promote your blog downstream to the networks of your friends. Having friends share your links in this way will bring a new audience to your site; it’s up to you to give the content to keep them coming back and, ideally, sharing your posts with their own networks.

Another quick and easy way to get the word out is to see who’s ‘Liking’ your content and engaging them. Saying thank you and promoting their site through your own network goes a long way in building a base of readership.

Two simple changes can help you steadily build a base of readership for your blog, but it’s up to you to offer them a reason to keep coming back!

Lou Perseghin lives in Providence, RI and works for a non-profit managing volunteers, recruiting members and handling marketing efforts.

Image from glamtings.files.wordpress.com

Even Chris Brogan,  an undisputed master of social media,  admits to a few pitfalls as his operations have grown. “My first attempt at managing my inbox was a failure because I wasn’t very human about it,” says Chris.  And just by admitting his failure, he shows how great he is at being, well, human.

“In every case that you build tools and process into your business,” says Chris,  “work out how you’ll keep it a human business: relationship-minded, sustainable, and friendly.“

Wise words for any budding entrepreneur. But automated responses aren’t always the culprit. In an effort to gain credibility and come off as a no-nonsense professional, you may want to stay all business. Dry.  Formal.  Never erring from your corporate message. But social media in particular seems to reject that approach. In our last blog post, Dawn Alcott explained that heavy hitters like Seth Godin, Chris Brogan, and J. Money succeed because “they aren’t afraid to be themselves.” Platforms like twitter and facebook provide the means to establish a friendly face for even the largest corporation. Take advantage of these faculties. Crack a joke. Share a (relevant) anecdote. Sometimes all it takes is an appropriately placed “?!?” or even, dare I say it, a telling emoticon to show that yeah, you’re a person. A person who, apparently, when necessary, can  curl their mouth into the shape of an S.

This isn’t a new concept by any means. But it remains relevant whether you are a fledgling company preparing to hire your first employee, or a multinational conglomerate. If you are struggling to establish not just your company’s identity, but its personality, keep trying. Emote. Add a conversational tone to your auto-responses. Or, if either a) you’re a bit on the bland side yourself or b) you really don’t have the time to be human, try hiring writers (who tend to be bottomless pits of personality) for your content marketing needs.

And If you absolutely have to use  robots, why not use Wall-E as a model? Develop robots that will bring grown men to tears!

Nicola Fairhead is an ideaLaunch editorial intern with a ferocious appetite for writing, editing, and consuming content.  She has quickly become a content marketing evangelist.

image courtesy of http://www.hooversbiz.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/sadrobot.jpg

Maybe you’ve heard about Facebook’s problems of late. Complaints about the social networking giant’s treatment of its users’ information have been brewing for a while, but hit a crescendo around April when CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that Facebook would be deepening its connections with partner sites—whatever that means. Consumer watchdog groups, members of Congress, and the Federal Trade Commission have all expressed concerns over Facebook’s privacy policies, or lack thereof. Recent changes to Facebook’s privacy policies, including cutting the number of settings from 50 to about 15, and reducing the number of pages users have to sift through from 7 to 3, have not satisfied the more vocal critics.

In addition to the bad PR, this whole privacy fiasco—and things like Quit Facebook Day—could spell money trouble down the road as well. The bulk of Facebook’s revenue comes in the form of advertising dollars. Advertisers love Facebook, and its 400 million global users. When a user creates a Facebook profile, information gets handed over to the site—and its partners. Yes, and you didn’t think anyone really cared that you like to travel, take long drives, and eat ham sandwiches, did you? Somewhere out there, however, is an advertiser that cares very much. It is this information that allows advertisers to easily break down users’ demographics and tailor their advertising—this gives them a huge ROI.

What Facebook has seemingly failed to do is find that happy medium between respecting its users and providing advertisers with useful information. If Facebook just hands over users’ information to the advertisers willy-nilly, then eventually people will stop using the site, and advertisers will move on to the next big thing. However, if Facebook overcompensates and becomes less advertiser-friendly, the same outcome will occur. If Facebook had just respected its users’ information from the very beginning,  advertisers wouldn’t have gotten used to having such free reign over their market. See? There is such a thing as too much of a good thing.

Of course, 23, 384 people out of 400 million isn’t likely to make a huge dent in Facebook’s wallet, but Quit Facebook Day could be a sign of a trend, and Facebook needs to learn to walk a razor-thin line between its commitments to its users and to its partners.

Lesson learned—know (and respect) thy audience.

Image from sdow.semanticweb.org

Hiring freelance writers to handle social media requires educating the writer on the products or services being offered, the voice of the company’s marketing and the language used by the target market. For most social media campaigns there is not a need to go deep into detail on the specifics surrounding the industry being promoted. Freelance writers see the process of learning about a company’s products or services as part of the writing assignment and expect to have materials and information presented when they begin the writing project. The writer is also likely to request copies of other current marketing materials to understand the voice the company uses in marketing and other online content to convey their message. The specific language used by the customer may come either from the company, a branding research department or research by the writer themselves.

Resources writers can use for research:

1. Blogs
2. Social Media
3. Keyword research tools
4. Forums
5. Competitor websites
6. Complimentary company websites
7. Customers’ websites

As with any other content, keyword use is important in social media content creation. Social media freelance writers can incorporate the client’s keywords to help with the overall search engine optimization strategy.

Jennifer Gniadecki loves to write. You can find her on any given day writing lists, blog posts, articles, assignments, outlines or fleshing out story ideas on her laptop.

Image from watblog.com

One way you can use SEO writers to maximize your Facebook presence is by having them create SEO articles that reference your company and website for submission to third-party sites. Buy SEO content with links back to your site, have it posted anywhere else besides your company site, then post the links to that content on Facebook.

When you hire a writer to submit articles for this content marketing campaign, tell them not to write about your company in glowing, biased terms, but rather to list your website as a resource or as a reference related to the topic at hand. You don’t want to create biased articles with a sales pitch or a hard sell, just mentioning the site and actively linking to it will do.

These one-way links can be very helpful for increasing your search engine clout, but they also act as free PR over the long haul.

Another way to create effective Facebook content is to have your writer come up with a series of Facebook posts based on a specific keyword or topic. For example, if you’re trying to promote a brand new set of widgets, have your writer do a series of how-to posts on what it takes to get the most out of those widgets. These can feature links to third party sites with how-to information, reviews, or other favorable material. The key to this campaign is to offer a Facebook-exclusive discount, freebie or perk at the end of the series.

Have your content writer come up with one final post, stating something along the lines of “We’ve talked this week all about how to get the most out of these widgets. Now here’s your chance to get one at a discount. This is for our Facebook fans only, so reply via Facebook to win.”

Catering to your Facebook audience specifically is an excellent strategy to build awareness and reward your current Facebook friends.

Joe Wallace has been a writer/editor since 1992 and is always open to fun new ways to market online businesses. In addition to running Freelance-Zone.com, he blogs about music at Turntabling.net and runs a small press specializing in snarky t-shirts.

Image from paradivision.com

A lot of companies use Facebook. Not so many use Facebook in ways that helps promote a website or SEO content effectively. What can you do to make the most of your Facebook page? For starters, give the job of maintaining the page to someone as a daily task. Even if you have to hire a freelancer to do it, it’s an expense that’s worth the money when done effectively.

The daily tasks of a Facebook pro should include getting new friends or fans, networking with other like-minded Facebook users, posting links to relevant content (not the stuff on your site) and posting links to the SEO content on your site.

Make sure your Facebook person keeps the ratio of “selling” links back to your own site low compared to the general interest links. Social media users are wary of business that seem to self-serving. Consider the general interest posts as “bait” to keep users interested in your Facebook site, and the posts you use to direct the user back to your site as the reminder of who’s running the shop.

Your Facebook person should inject their personality into the Facebook presence; the human touch is very important on social media and any indication that a real live person is working your pages is a big plus. Don’t neglect the human touch on social media any more than you would in your sales department. These may seem like two separate entities, but they’re really working towards the same goals. Creating Facebook content is another way to sell your brand, it deserves the attention and time investment you put into it.

Joe Wallace has been a writer/editor since 1992 and is always open to fun new ways to market online businesses. In addition to running Freelance-Zone.com, he blogs about music at Turntabling.net and runs a small press specializing in snarky t-shirts.

Image from gamefire.com

Imagine being able to follow a New York Times journalist directly from her byline, tweet about a video without leaving YouTube, and discover new Twitter accounts while visiting the Yahoo! home page—and that’s just the beginning. Twitter has proven to be compelling in a variety of ways. With @anywhere, web site owners and operators will be able to offer visitors more value with less heavy lifting.

With recent reports that Facebook has more web site visits than Google and drives 44 percent of social sharing on the web, Twitter’s stepping up to the plate by integrating itself into the rest of the web. Part of the reason Facebook has such monumental numbers is the ease with which its users can share information (you can record a video onto someone’s wall without ever leaving it or doing much more than pushing a button). Facebook has even surpassed email as an information sharing platform, probably because it’s so much less exclusive; when you share something on Facebook, you do so recognizing the possibility that it will be viewed by others. Google attempted this with Buzz, but instead the buzz was all about Google’s failure to allow its users to incorporate the social platform into their own lives—err—email. Hopefully Twitter’s been paying attention to the latest social developments, successful and failed, and their further integration into the web will allow Twitter skeptics or hesistants to join the conversation.