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social media

What Makes MY Tweets Interesting?

by Wendy Boyce on March 1, 2010 · 1 comment

I recently attended a Social Media seminar hosted by a local Chamber of Commerce. My goal for this first part in a 3 part series was to make sure I wasn’t missing the mark on any major social media networks I have been using. By no means do I consider myself to be a ‘guru’ in social media, but what I found interesting was the number of business professionals who were not using what I consider the 3 major social media sites (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn).

It was a reminder to me that the small business owners I represent each day in my role as their eyes and ears on the internet is that most of them don’t have a clear understanding of what social media is or, or what it can mean to them. I have to think of my clients as those of the 50 or so professional folks in that room who were not yet on Twitter and barely have a LinkedIn profile, let alone how those things will help them.

After the meeting I got talking with a few folks, two of which admitted they were on Twitter, but just not ‘tweeting’ yet out of fear of not having anything interesting to say. Questions immediately started running through my head about how to pull out information from these folks about what was tweet-worthy info, or what their respective communities may be interested. What would I want to know about if I were in their follower base? Here were a few questions I had:

what is your line of work
who are your first line customers
what questions are you frequently asked
what problems or concerns do your customers or audience typically have
what praises do your customers or audience typically have

So a municipality might tweet about leaf pickup, plowing policy and village or town events. A manufacturer might tweet about supply and demand, industry news, or product innovations. A politician might tweet about the issues that are pressing to his/her constituents. A student might tweet about what’s going on in school or look for input on that thesis they’ve been working on.

As for a social media enthusiast like myself? Well I just tweet about any and all of it. I find watching what others are doing to be the most interesting. I am intrigued by how much people value their relationships in the twitterverse and it’s evident in their tweets that they do. (which I think is just about the coolest thing).

Twitter has also brought the world together during crisis – look at this past week with the earthquake in Chili and the predicted tsunami. The waves turned out to be smaller than expected, but if you watched the Twitter stream in the hours prior, everyone was working together to get the word out – in concern for the well-being to those at risk.

Still not sure you have anything interesting to say? Start spending a few minutes here or there watching your followers – as someone tweets something you find interesting – send a reply – open a dialog. You might be surprised to see a new relationship unfold with the conversations that follow, and the folks that end up following along as a result.

Good luck and happy tweeting!

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Adding Vertical Response Opt-In Forms to Facebook Pages

by Wendy Boyce on February 12, 2010 · 5 comments

Having spent the time today teaching myself how to add an email opt-in form to a Facebook page from Vertical Response – I found myself getting a little frustrated. Now that I’ve got it figured out – I’m going to save you tons of time in digging for the info (it’s not altogether straight forward for the basic user).

Assuming you have a business page on Facebook – AND – you are using Vertical Response for email marketing and list segmentation, you can create a tab on your Facebook page that will invite your page fans and visitors to sign up for (or opt-in to) emails from your company, group, etc… My assumption is that other email marketing tools will work too, but I have only tested VR at this point.

So to start out – head on over to Vertical Response and create your new list. I recommend creating a list that will store only the opt-ins from Facebook. After all, we want to know what conversions (if any) are coming from our Facebook pages.

To add a new list – follow the steps under Lists and then “Add New List” in your Vertical Response account. You then need to create an opt-in form just for that list. Follow the instructions to create your opt-in form and copy and past that form script into a text editor like notepad – we’ll need that when we get our Facebook page tab ready to go.

Note: When creating that new list and opt-in form, I do recommend using a custom thank you page that can be added to your Google Analytics Goals.

Now here’s where I got hung up – you need to add a customizable tab to your Facebook page, so before you can do that, you have to install the Static FBML application to your Facebook Account. (I am now a fan of this application since I know how to use it

To find Static FBML, click on the “Edit Page” link in your Facebook page and scroll down to Browse More Applications. Click on the Static FBML link (shown at right here).

This will take you to the application page on Facebook. You will need to add it to your Facebook page before you proceed.

The nice thing is, if you manage multiple Facebook pages you can add it to all of them at once. Scroll through the list and select the page(s) you want to add it to and we’ll continue on.

Once you’ve done that, head back to your Facebook page and click on “Edit Page” – don’t worry we are almost done! Once you are in your Edit screen you should scroll down and see the Static FBML link you’ll want to click on Edit.

Note: Have your text editor open where you’ve saved your form code so you can copy it to Facebook.

Change your title and then simply copy in your form script and then add any additional content. Note that FBML does not like <html> <body> and <head> tags, so you can format tables, paragraphs, etc – but avoid those few tags.

UPDATE (2-19-2010): Due to Facebook updates – you’ll need to add a “&” to the end of your FORM METHOD String to enable this feature to work. I had to go back to the Vertical Response Lounge to get this resolved (which by the way is a great resource).

<form method=”post” action=”http://oi.vresp.com?fid=26230b1027&” target=…..>

In the completed example below I have included a basic table format with some additional content to let users know what they’ll be receiving once they opt-in:

There you go! You have just learned (much quicker than I did), how to add email opt-in forms to your Facebook pages. (See the live example.) This Static FBML application can do much more than just adding email opt-in forms. My next experiment will be with promotional content and coupons – but the possibilities are limitless (within the confines of the application) as to how to utilize this application.

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Add-This: A1-Webmarks (What is it?)

October 21, 2009

A1-Webmarks…. if you are like me, you’ve never heard of it before and just think – jeesh! another site to have to worry about. So let’s check it out.
At first glance I see that it was very recently added to Add-This (mid-late October of 2009). They define as “Webmark” as follows:
A webmark marks a [...]

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What is your Social Media personality?

May 28, 2009

A while back I wrote an article called “What’s In A Name?” which further explains the meaning behind my social media handle “SocialPMChick”. The article was written in fun, but there is some truth and reason to how you define yourself online. We are so much more than just a name without a face, and [...]

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Skittles Goes Social!

April 23, 2009

Skittles/Mars takes the giant leap into the Social Media arena with a bold new web presence that fully utilizes social media tools such as Twitter, Facebook, Wikipedia, Flickr, YouTube and more.
Don’t be suprised when you visit this edgy new site – if have to second guess whether you’ve landed on the right page or not. [...]

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