For our latest promotion, we decided to take the idea of silly/fun hashtags (a way to categorize tweets on Twitter) that often pop up and turn that concept into a contest, as well. Since they’re a telecommunications company, we thought what if we asked people who they would call – past or present, living or dead – if they had a magic phone. We turned #magicphone into the hashtag.

A blog post on the company’s site noted that at two random times during a 24-hour period we would choose the person who had tweeted #magicphone closest to that time and award them a Kindle, thus, the contest.

Well, as you may or may not have seen, #magicphone really took off. However, after a staff post-mortem of the promotion and conversations with several Twitter buddies, we realize we may have created an unintended annoying side effect especially for locals in Charleston (where #magicphone got started): filling up your Twitter account with a lot of #magicphone posts.

So we wanted to issue a #magicphone apology on behalf of Step Ahead, Inc. We realize now that the way we chose to select the winner (by selecting a random time) encouraged people to spam #magicphone over and over in the hopes they would land on the right time. Creating a bunch of spammy repeating posts was certainly not our goal.

We wanted people, if they were interested, to tweet it once or twice, tag two others, and be done with it. But instead, lots of people just posted the same tweet over and over and over again. If you were following multiple people doing that, your Twitter account quickly filled up with #magicphone.

Sooo…. we’ve decided that for future promotions like this we’ll allow folks to enter once per day only via Twitter and hopefully reduce the spammy tweets so it’s a bit more manageable – and fun, like we intended. We’re all learning as we navigate the ever-changing world of social media and we feel like every time we do a promotion and tweak and refine, we’re helping our clients have the best social media presence they can have.

Overall, though, Magic Phone was a success, sending more than 4500 people to our client’s Web site and exposing them to their products. Heck, I even got Trista Sutter (oh come on, you know she was The Bachelorette!) to tweet it!

I hope that helps make up for our mistake, Charleston Twitterers. Please know we did not intend to be annoying and never want to aggravate our best Twitter buddies.

So if you see #magicphone again, don’t worry. Hopefully, you’ll only see it a couple of times and you can choose to participate or not without a disruption to your Twitter day.

Thoughts? Suggestions?

FourSquare is a location-based application that you run on your smart phone that allows users to “check-in” when they are out and about. Headed to Publix? Check-in. Out with the guys at the neighborhood pub? Check-in. It definitely appeals to the exploratory and competitive nature of people. It’s like a combination game + communication tool.

FourSquare not only sends out a message on Twitter every time someone checks into a new location, it rewards users by declaring the most frequent traveler to a particular location the “mayor” and awards fun “badges” for checking in often. Additionally, FourSquare allows users to see which of your friends have checked in recently near your current location.

Some smart business owners are beginning to see the benefits already, especially restaurants, retailers, attractions, etc., of driving traffic to their business. With a few simple techniques, you too can use FourSquare to your advantage. Here are a few ideas to get you going:

1. Reward the Mayor – Offer the current “mayor” of your business a perk of holding that position. Maybe it’s a free dessert with every entrée they purchase or half price on all haircuts. To retain their position they will have to come in often, spend money and hopefully bring friends. And maybe others will “check in” more often to try to become the new mayor.
2. Encourage New Clients – The first time a customer “checks in” to your location, offer them a deal or special as a thank you for stopping by.  Something like a free coffee refill the first time they try a new café would encourage new business.
3. Build Traffic – Need your booth to look busy at the next big trade show? Enter everyone who stops by and “checks in” into a drawing for a great prize.
4. Work Together – Gather a few local organizations and create a Scavenger Hunt for the FourSquare crowd. People enjoy using technology to have a good time, and bonus if there’s a prize at the end! You may even get a little local attention!
5. Work the Tips – Use the tips section of the FourSquare app to announce specials and promotions. Users feel like they are being let in on a special deal.

The best part is that FourSquare now supports these “check in” offers. They want you to use their service to build your business, so they’ve invited you to submit your special offers to them and they’ll show them to people who “check in” near you. Here’s a great example from a Coffee House in North Carolina who’s offering a special to anyone who checks in at their location.

If you have a business and still have questions visit FourSquare’s Business page or give us a call to help you make the most of FourSquare.

What creative way could you use FourSquare to promote your company?

The weather was a bit chilly, but the sun was out, and it was a beautiful day to be outdoors. You may have noticed a color theme in our group photo. Three of us showed up in the same shade of purple, completely unplanned!

Chad Norman, the interactive communications manager at Blackbaud, has been a pioneer who’s extremely innovative in his use of social media to help keep his company connected, improve customer support and drive traffic.

We picked Chad as February’s social media star, because he has developed a mature social media program at Blackbaud that’s been incredibly successful and he’s constantly on the look-out for new tools and new ways to improve their program. Here’s what Chad had to say about social media:

What is your job/company/profession/title?
Currently, I’m the interactive communications manager at Blackbaud, the leading provider of technology for nonprofits.

What was the first social media technology you used?
OK, since I’m old, I can remember the BBS days, not to mention Classmates.com (boy, did they blow it!). In the modern era, probably MySpace and YouTube.

What is your favorite social media tool?
Twitter is by far my favorite social media platform, both from a professional and personal standpoint. Though SlideShare.net is a close second and is great for sharing knowledge and SEO. FourSquare is a great one that is up and coming.

How have you used social media for your business/company and how has it benefited?
Over the last two years, we’ve been using social media at Blackbaud to increase engagement, support customers, promote initiatives and thought leaders, and drive traffic to our various Web properties. We’ve definitely seen increased engagement and support – social media has allowed us to communicate in ways we never could before. We’ve probably seen the most benefits by using social media to promote and drive traffic. Our metrics are telling us that a double digit percentage of our traffic is arriving via social media, and that is a lot of growth for a B2B company like us.

How much time would you say you spend a day engaging social media?
Around one hour, and that includes everything like updating/tweeting, collecting metrics, reporting, and planning. Keep in mind that we have a mature program, and that early on more time was used. I always remind people that most of the time investment is up front (learning how the community works, developing a strategy, training staff, etc). Once it is integrated into your overall communications plan, you’ll find less and less time is required.

How do you incorporate it into your day so it’s not a time waster?
I do a couple things that help me save time on a daily basis. The first is to actually set aside time in the morning. 20 minutes on Monday to collect metrics, 10 minutes each day to write tweets, 30 minutes on Friday to recap the week, etc. Put those things on your actual calendar. Second, I try to use as many helpful tools as possible. Build a listening dashboard in iGoogle (rather than scouring the web manually), use Tweetdeck to manage your daily work flow (monitoring and responding), and roll out CoTweet to your staff (pre-write tweets, assign responses, etc).

What’s your best tip for using social media for business?
The best tip is to forget about the actual execution and focus on the bookends: Planning and Reporting. You must develop a strong strategic plan and stick to it. Your strategy will determine which tools to use, what to say and who should be saying it – not the other way around. On the back end, you need to collect metrics and actually analyze them. Don’t just count how many times you were retweeted – look at what was retweeted, and who passed it along. These collected metrics will also help you benchmark your efforts against other orgs and help you adjust your plan. Remember, you can’t just collect, you have to measure!

Is there a social media tool/technique that you think is underutilized that you would like people to know about?
Social media does wonders for search engine optimization, so I always tell clients to use anything that can help tell your story – because Google is listening. Do you give presentations? Load them on SlideShare.net. Do you take a lot of photos? Share them on Flickr. Does your audience hang on LinkedIn? Start a group to help them discuss things. All of those things will rank on page 1 for your business

Where can people find you online and via social media?
www.echohive.com/blog
www.gogreencharleston.org
www.twitter.com/chadnorman
www.facebook.com/chadnorman
www.slideshare.net/chadnorman

The podcast will air the 3rd Wednesday of every month at 11 a.m.

Check it out here and let us know what you think.

“It is our intention to make this a model for how open a social site should be”

Google is previewing their new Buzz feature as I write this:

And they couldn’t be any more clear that this is a direct challenge to Facebook. With the ability to share photos, geo-tag posts, see who’s near you and more.

It’s no secret that Google would love some of the attention that Facebook is getting on the web. Christmas Day 09 actually saw Facebook pass Google as the most visited site in the world.  And while Google’s own Orkut social site has been a terrible flop (outside of Brazil at least), they have been stealthily building all the blocks of a Facebook competitor piece by piece.

In fact, it’s only the tying together of these various strands which is holding them back. Consider these Google products working in conjunction:
Google Profile
Google Chat
Picasa for photos
Youtube for videos
Reader for articles

and you have the basics of a Facebook-like service already.

And it goes without saying that there are other features which can be tied into these, sharing custom maps, reviewing product pages, the FourSquare-like features of the new Google Buzz, NearMeNow on the iPhone/Droid, etc, etc.

So will it work?

I think it will. Buzz will start rolling out to Gmail users within the hour, and judging by the buzz (sorry) on Twitter, there’s a huge amount of interest already:
http://twitter.com/#search?q=%22Google%20Buzz%22%20OR%20%23Buzz

APIs will be available, and public info will be provided as XML feeds. Anything public will indexed immediately by Google’s real time search. There is a lot of stuff here, even speculation about using Google Voice conversations as part of the Buzz. They have put a lot of thought into spam fighting (and I must say, Gmail spam fighting is great for me). Buzz seems to offer a huge amount of potential, especially if you consider the built in user-base Gmail has.

However, with @replies to tag people, the ability to ‘like’ or comment on posts, photos and updates, many may see this as too close to Facebook to be worthwhile.

So, what do you think? Can Google finally make a success of their social strategy, or is it too similar, too late?



Well, Domino’s did respond, but a little too late to repair the damage done. They created a Twitter account to answer people’s questions and also put up a video of the CEO on YouTube apologizing for the incident, noting the employees had been fired and explaining that is not what goes on behind the doors of Domino’s.

Fast forward about 8 months later. Domino’s has taken a hard look at itself in light of what happened last year. They’ve decided to be honest about their failings and are trying to regain consumer confidence in their established brand.

So when you think of Domino’s pizza, do you think yuck or yum? Turns out most people think yuck J. Domino’s took a look at what people were saying about their pizza offline and online and heard things like “your crust tastes like cardboard” and “your sauce tastes like ketchup.” And what do you know, Domino’s actually listened!

They’ve put together a new campaign courtesy of the creative folks at Crispin, Porter + Bogusky (of Burger King’s “king” ads and other very innovative and different campaigns) called “The Pizza Turnaround”. The campaign acknowledges their criticism and shows how they’ve reacted: creating an entirely new pizza from scratch.

The Pizza Turnaround

They’ve put together two great little YouTube videos, one showing the company listening in to focus groups and coming up with a new pizza, and the second, my favorite, with the head chef showing up at the doors of some of the harsher focus group participants and inviting them to try the new pizza. Bold and real.

At the Door of Our Harshest Critics

I LOVE it! I wish I could get more companies to follow in their footsteps. They’ve turned a really negative incident with the employee video into a catalyst for change for the company. People can always identify with you when you acknowledge failings (we all have them) and try to fix them. I think this will be a turnaround for Domino’s … well, so long as the pizza is actually good. I haven’t tried it yet.

Oh, and by the way, I am one of the few people who genuinely liked Domino’s pizza the way it was . Yea ketchup sauce!

What do you think of Domino’s tactics? Smart or stupid?

Some of these bumps include comments from unsatisfied customers and fans who spam your page with rude or irrelevant posts. You must address these issues quickly, and here are some tricks that I have found work well.

Some view unsatisfied customer comments as a hazard, but I view them as a blessing! I am so lucky to have that customer tell me directly about their experiences and allow me the opportunity to correct them, as opposed to just vent about it to their friends and family, and sometimes the entire Internet! If a company can fix the situation or sometimes just apologize, that customer is more likely to have a positive view of the company.

When you get that customer complaint post, here is what you should do:

1. Make sure to apologize and thank them for sharing the information in a timely manner. Ideally, you should be checking your Facebook page at least once a day. If the comment sits on your wall for a week with no response, it may irritate the customer even more and make your business look unprofessional to the other fans.

2. Attempt to fix the situation or explain what you are going to do to prevent that same situation from happening in the future. It may be wise to ask the customer to email the details of their experience. This just keeps more unflattering comments off your wall, and allows you to continue the conversation privately with the customer.

3. Continue to monitor the comment and keep in touch with the customer until they are satisfied with the situation.

When your Facebook page hits a certain number of fans, you will eventually start to attract some spammers. Some may just post links to their sites, and some may post rude or obscene comments. Either way, you must deal with these quickly.

1. If the post could be offensive to your other fans, immediately delete the post. You can do this by clicking the “delete” link under the comment.

2. If the post is not too offensive, you can try to reach out to the poster and remind them that other fans read the wall and to keep their comments PG rated, or whatever is acceptable for your page. It also helps to have a “policy” outlined on your page discussing what is considered unacceptable content and noting that if it is posted, it will be removed.

3. Some spammers will not stop. In this case, you should report them to Facebook. To report a spammer, just click on the “report” link under the comment. This is sometimes the only way to protect your page and your fans.

Do you have any tips for dealing with rude or obscene posts? Have you ever had to report anyone?

We picked Meghan as January’s social media star, because she’s on the front lines of journalism embracing all that social media can do for this industry. She “gets” it where so many media outlets continue to struggle.

Meghan started the WMBF Facebook page in August 2008 with only 10 fans, but has grown the page to over 10,000! Daily, she manages multiple social media accounts for WMBF, including Twitter, Facebook, MySpace and, one you may not have heard about, Bubbletweet. Here is what Meghan had to say about social media:

What was the first social media technology you used?
Facebook. Over the years, it’s slowly become the No. 1 way I can keep a personal connection with my family and friends back in my hometown of York, Pa.

What is your favorite social media tool?
Definitely Twitter. Believe it or not, I was actually against getting a Twitter account, because I didn’t see the point in posting to the world what I was doing 24/7. Now it’s one of the first things I check on my Blackberry when I wake up – to see who’s doing what and what topics are making news in the Web world.

How have you used social media for your business/company and how has it benefited?
In all honesty, it’s one of the most important tools I use as both a journalist and as a Web producer. Social networking takes news to a whole new extreme – it allows us to see who’s doing what, what issues are important to our viewers, and really allows us to make those important connections with those who keep close tabs on our news product.

Our Facebook fan page has just exceeded 10,000 fans – many of which were gained in 2009. That’s an outlet where we can interact with our fans with a “Question of the Day” and post controversial news stories that we know will draw a response from the public. It also allows us to strengthen the push-pull from social networking sites to WMBFNews.com.

Twitter is another – I can’t tell you how many news stories we’ve broken because of Twitter and how many relationships we’ve built with legislators, community leaders, businesses and organizations because of the exchange of a few tweets. If we can’t pull any news stories off of Twitter, it at least helps us get our brains pumping to come up with new, fresh news content for our shows.
On the flip side, we can keep better track of our competition this way.

How have you seen TV news change since you started in the profession with regard to social media?
It has exploded! I can remember when we had 20 fans on our WMBF News Facebook Fan Page and 100 friends on our MySpace page. We’ve been nursing our social networking sites since we first launched in August 2008 and now depend on it for comments on controversial stories that really affect our viewers or our market drivers. Now, you’ll see a “Facebook Question of the Day” on each of our newscasts – and a big push to become a fan of WMBF News either on Twitter or Facebook.

What role do you see social media playing in TV news in the future?
I see it as a way to gather news stories, build the WMBF News brand, draw people into our product, interact with the community and share breaking news when it happens, as it happens.

How much time would you say you spend a day engaging social media?
Ha – it feels like 24 hours a day! It’s hard to gauge because my TweetDeck is always open, I’m always fiddling with UberTwitter on my phone when I’m away from my desk and always checking out Facebook. It’s a part of the job!

How do you incorporate it into your day so it’s not a time waster?
It’s hard! I make sure that when I’m at work – that’s what I’m on Twitter or Facebook for – just work. When I go on dinner break, am heading out to do a story or am on my own time, that’s when I hop on my personal Facebook and Twitter accounts.

What’s your best tip for using social media for business?
Use it as just another tool to better your product and your overall image. Don’t ignore the fact that your viewers or clients are interacting with you on a “virtual” level – it’s the perfect time to draw people in! Engage, interact and don’t ignore!

Is there a social media tool/technique that you think is underutilized that you would like people to know about?
This is where I plug BubbleTweet, I do believe! I think BubbleTweet is an AWESOME alternative to Tweets if you have a webcam. It’s been a cool way to take people behind the scenes during a newscast, break news stories on a more personal and visual level and to show people that the news is more than just TV.

Where can people find you online and via social media?
www.twitter.com/wmbfmegmiller
http://www.facebook.com/meghanmillerwmbf

The next step is a little more challenging. How do you create a blog that’s engaging, informative, smart, witty and well read? Well, if I could bottle that up, I’d be a millionaire for sure.

But there is one piece of the blogging puzzle that shouldn’t be discarded: finding your voice. The beauty of the blog is it’s an extension of you, reflecting your opinions, thoughts and ideas. To grab your readers, they need to get to know you through your blog.

Even the most prolific writers struggle with finding their voice – that style of writing that is uniquely theirs. So don’t give up if you’re stuck, just try of few of these techniques to get started:

1. Find your focus. First and foremost, what is the purpose of your blog? It could be political commentary, information on green living, tips for parents or simply a day-to-day diary of your life.
2. Reach your readers. Think about who might read your blog and write to engage them. Are you trying to reach people interested in international news, green living, organic gardening or how to discipline a toddler? Don’t write to moms if you want dads to read too. Don’t right for left-wing politicos if you want to grab the attention of all political junkies.
3. Write like you talk – for the most part. In many ways, blogs are a compilation of your thoughts and your conversations. That’s not to say your blog should be filled with sloppy grammatical errors, but keep the writing conversational, approaching your blog post as you would meeting a friend for coffee.
4. Don’t be afraid. If you have a dry wit, use it. If you have an uncanny ability for description and can really turn a phrase, do it. Play to your strengths and you’ll quickly see a pattern in your posts.
5. Write what you know. If you have no interest in cats, don’t start a cat blog. If you don’t know the first thing about computers, don’t start  a tech blog. But if you love college basketball, start a college basketball blog. Or if you have tons of great cooking tips, start writing about cooking.

These tips can apply to company blogs as well as personal ones. You company has a focus, an audience and an expertise – all those can be honed to create a well-written blog that gives a voice to your business.

I’d love to hear how you found your blogging voice or if you have examples of great bloggers who have their own distinct voice.