MediaFirst PR - Atlanta - Twitter

MediaFirst PR Science of Social Media Timing - when & how to engage?

Becky Boyd — Tue, 05 Jul 2011 21:55:04 +0000

It’s important to know when the highest percentage of your audience is eavesdropping on your social networks—so that when you share content you’ll get maximum exposure and achieve optimum results. This data is courtesy of KISSmetrics, an analytics provider for web-based businesses. I’ve provided data on e-mail marketing and blogging, too.

Note that the Eastern and Central time zones represent almost 80 percent of the U.S. population, so keep that in mind when timing your posts. Download pdf of The Science of Social Timing here.

Twitter:

Gain higher click through rate if you tweet between 1 and 4 times/hour.
6% of retweets occur at 5 pm ET
Best time to tweet is around noon and 6 PM EST
Best days to tweet are midweek or on the weekends

Facebook:

Saturday is the best day to share content
Noon is the optimum time
Sharing one post every two days will garner the most likes on Facebook

email Marketing Newsletters:

Between noon and 2PM, consumers are not opening marketing emails.
Holiday promotions are opened most between 5PM and 7PM
Open & click rates are highest in the morning
Segment lists by time zones
Consumer promotions are opened, read, and clicked through between 7-10PM
Dead Zone – 10PM – 6:00 AM
Consumers open marketing emails most between 6-10AM
Bounce rates are highest in the early morning and on weekends
Best sending frequency is 1-4 emails/month

Blogs

Post submissions during night time for better visibility
80% of blogs are read in the morning hours
More men read blogs in the evening and nights
Monday is the best day to get the most traffice for your blog
The average blog gets the most traffic at 11AM
The average blog gets the most comments on Saturday around 9AM
The average blog gets the most inbound links on Monday & Thursday and around 7AM
Post more than once per day to receive the most unique views

Making Press Releases Twitter Ready

Becky Boyd — Mon, 09 May 2011 14:20:47 +0000

Remember when you were a child and you sat in a circle and one person whispered something into the ear of the child next to them and this continued around the circle until the message came back to the original speaker? Was the message ever the same? Rarely!

This is what happens sometimes when we issue a press release. Journalists may trim your press release to a few sentences. With twitter, well-intentioned followers will reinterpret your release into less than 140 characters, potentially causing the message to be garbled and lose its full meaning.

What can you do to make it easier for people to pass on your message?

Suggest a Twitter-Ready Post by adding a set of words to the bottom of your press release that enables tweeters to pass on your message without distorting the meaning.  

Some tips for writing these Twitter-Ready Posts:   

Forget the flowery language – concentrate on the facts  
Use an appropriate hashtag  
Include a url pointing to the full copy of the media release  
Keep it to 120 characters in total to allow for unedited retweeting  
Don’t be afraid to use abbreviations – speak the language of your Tweeps.

New Tweet Button Shares Via Retweet, Shows Retweet Count, & Promotes 3 Twitter Accounts

jimcaruso — Sun, 03 Oct 2010 15:41:40 +0000

Twitter Goodies: The New Tweet Button

Twitter added a new type of Tweet Button, which is becoming widely deployed by news sites. This button lets visitors to your site share content on Twitter without leaving the Web page. After tweeting, the user is offerred up to three (3) Twitter Accounts to follow, such as the main Twitter Account for your site, an individual's (like yours), or any other. This allows you to promote strategic Twitter accounts while driving traffic to your website.

The buttons are horizontal or vertical with a count, or without a count.

Add up to 3 Twitter Accounts to follow to your button.

Get your code here http://twitter.com/goodies/tweetbutton or use Twitter's Sharing API to create the functionality and style that you want.

Recommend your account and up to two other Twitter accounts for users to follow after they share content from your website.

The first user @jimcaruso is mentioned Tweet

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Social Media: The Difference in Small Biz & Big Brand Social Media

Becky Boyd — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 16:20:29 +0000

With all this socializing going on, the challenge of coordinating and integrating messages across multiple social networks platforms has become top-of-mind. Businesses, large and small, are using social media platforms – but for very different reasons.

According to Erik Qualman’s book, Socialnomics – How Social Media Transforms the Way We Live and Do Business, “If Facebook were a country it would be the third largest country in the world behind only China and India. Yet, some of the core marketing and business principles of the last few centuries will still apply; whilst other basic practices will become as extinct as the companies that continue to try to force them on the unwilling public. Businesses don’t have the choice on whether or not they do social media, the choice is on how well they do it.”

Studies show that the integration of multiple platforms collectively boosts the chance that a message will reach its target. But, first, marketers need to begin with their business objectives – Do you want to drive awareness or create engagement?

Small businesses generally use social media to drive awareness. Measurement is in the form of tracking website visitors, leads, and fans or followers. Small businesses aren’t really focused on engaging in conversations. Rather they prefer to generate awareness of their offerings in hopes that this will create a lead that will lead to a sale.

Big brands prefer to create engagement with social media with the goal of building quality contacts. Marketers want to stimulate conversation and will present the same message differently on the various social media platforms. Measurement is in the form of positive mentions in mainstream media and improved sentiment analysis.

Whether you are a marketer in a small or large company, the key is to take the plunge into social media, and to use social media across all platforms, including Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, and more.

Twitter Influence and Tracking Tools

jimcaruso — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 22:05:07 +0000

Here is a quick list of Twitter tools, Websites with differing measurements of influence.

Update 8-4-2010: I found these two Twitter visualization tools that I like:

1.) http://isparade.jp This is a Japanese site for Twitter visualizaiton.

2.) http://twittersheep.com TagCloud from the bios of followers.

For real tracking, I like Filtrbox ( http://www.filtrbox.com/ ). Fitrbox has tool to check your influence, http://www.filtrbox.com/twitter.htm ranking you on a scale of 1-10 (10 is highest). Also, you can access this through their API.

Twitter Influence Trackers:

http://www.twitalyzer.com

http://twitter.grader.com

http://www.filtrbox.com/twitter.htm

http://addictomatic.com

http://tweetstats.com

http://twittercounter.com

http://twinfluence.com

http://www.buzzom.com

http://twscore.net

http://friendorfollow.com

http://klout.com

http://topsy.com

http://followerwonk.com

Twitter Activity

http://topsy.com

Twitter Statistics

http://tweetstats.com

twitteranalyzer.com <~ Results not valid

TweetEffect.com <~ Results not valid. Did not even come close to showing which tweets yield new followers or unfollowers.

20 Twitter Marketing Tips for Social Media Success | MediaFirst PR

Becky Boyd — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 13:17:29 +0000

20 Twitter Marketing Tips for Social Media Success Everyone tweets these days, but some people just don't get it. Social Media can be a great marketing tool for spreading the word about your company, yourself, your industry, your customers, etc. Here are some tips to make you successful!

1. To avoid readers’ annoyance, don’t make your profile background appear like an advertisement.

2. Display your photo and let people know they’re NOT chatting with some faceless marketer.

3. Follow people on the basis of your interest and significance, not because the crowd is following them.

4. Post frequently (this means more than once daily!) to let people know you’re an active and responsive Twitter user.

5. Your Twitter profile must not be based on the “I” factor. Nobody is interested in your daily meal intake, and instead your posts should be more relevant to what users would actually like to see.

6. Make your discussions interesting by sending links of relevant info. For example, discussion surrounding SEO can be accompanied with a link of “best SEO tips for beginners”.

7. Be personalized when you communicate with others. After all, people should know there’s a human being on the other end and not some anonymous company advertising its products/services.

8. Whenever somebody becomes your follower, thank them by generating personalized ‘thank you’ emails. If you can’t thank every single follower yourself, employ auto-generated software that does the job for you.

9. Don’t wait for people to respond and start chatting yourself using the ‘@ directive’. For example, you can write @ john: I totally agree with your point, but don’t you think it’s better if… (Your argument here) …this will make people answer you back and provide their own feedback.

10. Don’t forget to reply to people who’ve used the similar ‘@ command’ or direct message at you. It’s your responsibility to respond to people who are taking time out to write to you.

11. If you have a small followers list, don’t worry. What matters is how active and influential those people are around the twitter community. So build quality followers, not quantity!

12. If you are following useless and inactive people, remove them from your list.

13. Don't send useless information; people will think you are a spammer.

14. Add your twitter name to business cards. Add a Twitter button to your website so people can follow you easily. (same goes for LinkedIn and Facebook)

15. To know your reputation on Twitter and to make sure it’s clear, search your Twitter name through the ‘Twitter Search’ option.

16. If you find people on Twitter search commenting about you (either in favor or against), participate in the conversation. If they’re talking good, thank them. If they’re talking bad, remove their misconceptions by pointing out the good.

17. If you’re finding difficulty to fit in conversations, ‘Twitter Mashups’ can help provide you the relevant information you’re seeking.

18. Follow a controllable amount of people on Twitter who you can easily track. If your following list is too long, you’re likely to miss a lot of important discussions because the streams may pass by too quickly!

19. Use TweetDeck or a similar application to help you follow what you want to follow. For example, I follow keywords like SEO, Logistics, Marketing, MediaFirst, and my clients' companies. TweetDeck filters each keyword into a separate column so I can easily track what my clients or others are saying.

20. Keep on Tweeting! The more you tweet (relevant info only please), the more you will be followed, and the more you will be treated as a Thought Leader.

LinkedIn + Facebook + Twitter Lead The Social Media Marketing Charge For Today's Business (& Business Professional)

jimcaruso — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 05:00:00 +0000

Connect To Audiences Via Social Networks

These tools, such as LinkedIn (very B2B), Facebook (evolving to more B2B from a college-oriented service at it's start), and MySpace (very B2C and younger) let your firm have an online page or presence with it's own fans. These connections are individuals connecting to the business. Some list current and former employees. They are increasingly tied to other feeds, maybe your great press coverage. In any case, a forum where your firm and customer experiences are discussed. Beginning to see the value in monitoring and participating? The better known online social media services enable personal or professional, 1-to-1 connections. These services provide access and information on you and your firm.

Begin Here With This Social Media Starting Point

Here is a minimal plan for a social media presence for you and the company:

Customer-facing employees should be on LinkedIn and Facebook, and participate
The company should have it's own page on LinkedIn and Facebook
Employees should have a photograph on their LinkedIn page - 1/3 do not
Press releases and news should be aggregated on the company Website and probably via online services, such as del.icio.us (also now at Delicious.com), Digg.com, Reddit.com, or StumbleUpon.com
News and events can be posted on Twitter. Direct messages or replies on Twitter should be monitored, so you may respond - engaging with the audience for your firm.

There it is, a straightforward way to implement social media at your company. Remember that these tools represent are an innovation - just like any new tool that you might adopt for the business - so think of Social Media tools as part of the company's continual improvement program. (I'm a fan of W. Edwards Deming, a famous proponent of quality and continual improvement).

Get Started, Use Social Media For Your Business

Call Jim at 770/642-2080, x218 to talk more about social media and learn about our social marketing agency

MediaFirst Newsletter: LinkedIn + Facebook + Twitter Lead The Social Media Charge For Today's Business (& Business Professional)

Mon, 30 Mar 2009 21:55:16 +0000

Businesses and individuals increasingly see the value in online social media for industry connections or introductions and clearly for employment opportunities. Beyond these are company branding, business reputation management, and professional business networking. It is true that online networking can degenerate into the kind of networking event where you show up and everyone else is there to sell you what they have. But most online social networking can be contained to the important kind, not just a virtual room of vulturous vendors. "Old Style" professional connections are not dead, they've just met up with the latest technology tools. These tools, such as LinkedIn (very B2B), Facebook (evolving to more B2B from a college-oriented service at it's start), and MySpace (very B2C and younger) let your firm have an online page or presence with it's own fans. These connections are individuals connecting to the business. Some list current and former employees. They are increasingly tied to other feeds, maybe your great press coverage. In any case, a forum where your firm and customer experiences are discussed. Beginning to see the value in monitoring and participating? The better known online social media services enable personal or professional, 1-to-1 connections. These services provide access and information on you and your firm. Here is a minimal plan for a social media presence for you and the company: - Customer-facing employees should be on LinkedIn and Facebook, and participate - The company should have it's own page on LinkedIn and Facebook - Employees should have a photograph on their LinkedIn page - most do not - Press releases and news should be aggregated on the company Website and probably via online services, such as del.icio.us (also now at Delicious.com), Digg.com, Reddit.com, or StumbleUpon.com - News and events can be posted on Twitter. Direct messages or replies on Twitter should be monitored, so you may respond - engaging with the audience for your firm. There it is, a straightforward way to implement social media at your company. Remember that these tools represent are an innovation - just like any new tool that you might adopt for the business - so think of Social Media tools as part of the company's continual improvement program. (I'm a fan of W. Edwards Deming, a famous proponent of quality and continual improvement). Call Jim or Becky at 770/642-2080 to talk more about social media for business.