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I have a Facebook profile, a Twitter feed, a LinkedIn profile and a bunch of other social media networks that I use less frequently. In addition, our company has pages on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. I’ll admit that keeping up with all of these feeds – posting, reading, replying, comprehending. figuring out how to not look like an idiot – is overwhelming and sometimes a pain in the butt.Then to make the situation even more complicated, Google launches Google+. Now I’m really in a quandary. Typically, I check Facebook, then Twitter, and finally LinkedIn. I read and if I see something interesting I Like, Comment, Share, RT, or DM. During the day, if I see an article that I like I’ll Tweet it to my massive number of followers .

With my Google+ I feel like I have one more (maybe one too many) social network to read and update. The result is that I’m getting a headache and my butt is hurting even more.

I try to automate a few of the connection so that I don’t have to updated each site manually. I decided about a year ago to use Twitter as my main launch pad and automate my Tweets to Facebook and LinkedIn. LinkedIn makes this easy – all you have to do is add your Twitter particulars to your LinkedIn profile – done. Making a connection from Twitter to Facebook is relatively easy using www.dlvr.it. I also automated posts from our blog to be delivered to my Twitter account. All of this seems to work well.

With my new Google+ account I thought that I would just add it to my dlvr.it account and send those posts to Twitter which would also updated Facebook and LinkedIn. No such luck. Apparently the API for Google+ is not available. This was a few weeks ago. Today I thought I would do a little research (on Google) and see if anyone had figured out a work-around solution.

The answer is Yes. There is an excellent post on dlvr.it’s own blog called Connect Google+ to Twitter and Facebook. I did have trouble finding my Google+ user id but found the answer here: How Do I Find My Google Plus User ID? [Google+].

I haven’t had time to test all of these connections, so good luck if you try it.

Enjoy!

This infographic, quite literally, has many of the tricks for search on Google that I use on a daily basis:

• Site:
• Intitle:
• Define:
• Calculator
• Keyboard shortcuts (I love those)
• Ctrl-L (in the infographic they use Command which is for Mac users)

Enjoy.

Our discussion started on Twitter after I sent Doug an article I read in the daily email from www.eMarketer.com called Social Media Comes up Short for Agency Prospecting.

Doug has a good point that using social media to sell tangibles (computers and books) is easier than selling intangibles like consulting and profession business services (legal and accounting). The part that we discussed on Twitter but not mentioned in the article is that although a company can’t “sell” services from social media platforms, it sure helps on the marketing side with credibility, interaction, community and support. In other words, companies that offer a service can still benefit hugely from a strong presence on social media platforms like Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and YouTube. The strength comes from the marketing side not direct sales.

Great article, Doug. Keep them coming.

Today I received an email from Airmiles offering me 100 bonus reward miles if I spend $100 or more at Safeway before the end of October 2. Kudos to Safeway and Airmiles for creating a near perfect promotion.

Here are some of the features that I noticed:

• A direct email piece to someone who has opted in
• A reasonable offer of 100 Airmiles points that gets my attention
• A criteria for obtaining the reward – spending $100
• An element of urgency because the offer expires at the end of October 2nd – about 60 hours after the email was sent
• And an easy way to redeem the offer – just print it out and take it with me when I go shopping

What more can you ask for in a promotional offer? Not much.

Receiving these types of offers is fairly routine; I get these emails all the time. I’m a card carrying member of Airmiles and I often shop at Safeway, in part because I get Airmiles and also because Safeway is close by.

What seems to be a new feature in the email is the fact that I can see which of my friends Liked this specific offer on Facebook. Notice the arrow and circled area in the screen shot below. This is an interesting disclosure of information. On one hand it is no big deal. 17 of my friends thought this was a good offer and Liked the post. Cool, I might be interested in the offer because they are. Of course it is fun to see what other people are interested in and Like.

On the other hand, do I really want to know that they have an Airmiles card and that they shop at Safeway? In this case it seems innocuous. But it does feel like I’m on an old fashioned telephone party line where I can listen in on the conversations of everyone who is on the line. It is possible that at some point the disclosure of information could be in the territory of “too much information”.

I can think of a possible situation involving airlines (Westjet promotes Airmiles) and hotels (Best Western and Delta are both members of Airmiles) which could make for some interesting discussions between couples or even business associates. The implications between couples are obvious if one person is in a city and a hotel without the other’s knowledge. But a similar scenario could occur between a buyer and a seller. Imagine this situation:

One person is a potential buyer for a substantial purchase from a vendor. They connect on LinkedIn and because they hit it off well, they also become friends on Facebook. No issues so far. Then Airmiles sends out an email for Westjet offering a special promotion of Airmiles to a specific city. The buyer Likes the offer and clicks the button. The supplier receives the same email and notices that his potential vendor is planning to use Westjet to fly to another city. The city of destination happens to be the headquarters of a significant competitor. Now the buyer knows that the suppler is going to that city. Oops for the supplier – he may lose the relationship with the original buyer and may never get the deal with the potential buyer in the city of destination. Like I said, disclosure of “too much information”.

1. What is the best time to post? Weekends and off-peak hours. Saturdays and Sundays were the best days for interaction, while Thursdays had the lowest interaction rates. The best time of day to post was during 6:00pm-5:00am.

2. How many times should I post per day? As many times as you want. Study shows that with each post made throughout the day, interaction rate drops for each subsequent post. However, Facebook EdgeRank highly weights recency in posts, so if an admin doesn’t post frequently their fans may never see their posts.

3. What type of content elicits the most interaction? Photos by far have the highest interaction rate, which is 200% higher than the lowest, links. Photos are followed by status messages. Links are the most frequently posted content but have the lowest interaction rate.

4. Should I ask fans to Like and Comment on my posts? Yes! Asking to Like increases interaction by 216%. So for Facebook page admins, using call-to-action is definitely an effective way significantly boost your interaction rate.

5. Should I ask my fans questions? Questions don’t increase interaction rate, but they do increase commenting rate. Make sure to ask fans to answer your questions with a comment. But, asking questions also helps.

6. How long should my status messages be? Posts from about 40 to 140 characters are most common, but lengthy Facebook status updates show higher interaction rates than shorter ones. Don’t be afraid to share longer stories with your fans.

7. How long do my posts last in the Newsfeed? 50% of clicks happen within 1 hour, 90% happen within 9 hours.

The whole study is published online and downloadable as a PDF. Were any of the results surprising? Please share any additional tips you might have!

Doug wrote and excellent summary of the session in his regular column with The Star Phoenix.

A quick quote in Doug’s own voice, “This week I had the privilege of helping put on a social media seminar for First Nations communicators. Representatives from the Siksika Nation and the Piikani Nation, both in Alberta, were in attendance at our Social Media Strategy for First Nations “Quickinar.” Jeff Nelson, my partner in producing Quickinars, and I received much help in producing this seminar from Wayne Courchene, a social media success story in his own right.”

Doug also mentioned our collaborator, Wayne Courchene. We would not have been able to host this event without Wayne’s effort, guidence and connections. We are grateful. Wayne writes a blog of his own at: Iskote.

In Doug’s article he quotes some of the case studies that we reviewed including:

• AFN Chief Shawn Atleo and his blog at nationalchief.blogspot.com
• Excellent videos by various students encouraging others to vote: http://firstnationhelp.com/
• The Alberta Saskatchewan First Nations Metis Nations page on Facebook with over 14,000 Likes
• Two tourism sites developed around First Nations culture: Wanuskewin Heritage Park in Saskatchewan and Head Smashed in Buffalo Jump in Alberta (great video on this site)
• A Facebook page created by Nechi Training, Research & Health Promotions Institute
• Self-described Urban Native Girl Lisa Charleyboy has a fabulous blog that was “born out of a love for writing, fashion, film, beauty, pop culture and all things Indigenous.” Lisacharleyboy.com

But don’t let me steal Doug’s thunder, have a look at the article which was also published on Social Media Today.

7. LinkedIn

I mentioned in the previous post that the Events feature on LinkedIn is useless. The alternative of sending individual messages is better but a pain in the ass. Essentially, what you need to do is compose a message and send it to all your connections to whom the event would be interesting. I’m using the free version of LinkedIn. This means that I am limited to sending a message by 50 connections in one message. If I only had 50 connections this would be easy but I have nearly 700 connections just in Calgary. That means nearly 15 separate emails. And to make things really frustrating, LinkedIn won’t let you use the select all feature if there are over 50 in the same alphabetical section. In other words if you have 52 connections under the C’s then you have to click 50 times, sent that email and then go back into the C’s and select the last 2. As I said, a pain in the ass.

So instead of keeping things simple on LinkedIn, you have to follow these steps:

• Compose a message
• In the To field, be sure to select the city you are targeting
• Then select the contacts you want to send the message to
• If there are over 50 in one alphabetical section, you have to manually select contacts
• Then send the message
• To send to the next group, start with the latest message in the that you have in the Sent folder
• Click Forward to send this message to a new group
• Drop the FW: and the date part that is automatically added
• Then pick the connections for your next group
• Eventually, you’ll get to the bottom of your list

I did get one complaint from a person on LinkedIn. He commented on the fact that I sent out the email and included his name in the visible part of the list. My first thought was, “”get off LinkedIn if you don’t want people to contact you.” But I calmed down after my knee jerk reaction. In fact, he had a good point. When you draft a message in LinkedIn you should un-select the default so that the people reading your message can’t see who you have sent the email too. See image below – be sure to click off the check mark.

8. Facebook

I thought I would take the same approach with Facebook. I even went so far as to separate all my friends into 2 groups: Personal Friends and Business Friends. But then I decided not to send out messages to anyone. I still might. I just need to think about this and figure out what to say.

Using Social Media to Market Events – Part 1

Obviously, we are going to use social media platforms and techniques as a way to market the seminars. That makes sense to me and I should have kept my mouth shut. Instead, I put my foot in my mouth. I made the mistake of mentioning to Doug that I would jot down a list of what I’m doing.

Here’s the problem. Social media takes effort and time. Then on top of that I have now obligated myself to record what I’m doing. It’s like doing everything twice. Once again, I’m convinced that I’m not too smart. Oh well, here goes.

1. Eventbrite.com

The first thing we did was decide on a platform to manage the events. We looked at cvent mainly because they hosted a fantastic lunch in the Fall. But they wanted to lock us into a 2 year contract and Doug and I aren’t ready for that, yet. In addition, we had used Eventbrite for the workshop on November 29th and we liked it. It has a lot of features that we needed:

• Unique URLs for each event – http://quickinar-tweet-like-a-pro.eventbrite.com/
• Unique URL for a list of all events – http://quickinars.eventbrite.com/
• Ability to add multiple pricing options
• Ability to add discount codes
• Ability to save draft events and ability to publish an event, then switch back to draft
• Link to our account on PayPal so that it is easy for participants to purchase
• Include address and map of event location
• Some links to Social Media like Twitter and Facebook

Eventbrite has it all, so that is what we chose to go with. The one downside is that Eventbrite seems to be expensive. We are paying 2.9% on every ticket. Seems steep to me.

2. LinkedIn

Next I added all the seminars to LinkedIn under More / Events / Add an Event. My opinion, so far, is that this is totally useless. My guess is that there are millions of other events posted on LinkedIn and ours are just lost.

My next step will be to identify mavens (as popularized by Malcolm Gladwell in The Tipping Point) who I’m connected to on LinkedIn and let them know about Quickinars. I have over 900 connections so I should be able to find a few mavens.

The issue I have is that when I’m sending the mavens a message I’ll probably use the link on Eventbrite not the “event” on LinkedIn. As I said, posting events on LinkedIn seems to be useless.

3. Blog Post

Yesterday, I created a post on our blog. See Quickinars – Short Business Seminars for Calgarians. We have quite a few subscribers to our blog so they will receive an email update.

4. Twitter

A quick summary of our blog posts are posted on Twitter via www.dlvr.it.

Dlvr.it is very slick and free.

A friend of mine, Sharon McIntyre, noticed that I had double entries on LinkedIn. I checked LinkedIn under Settings (hard to find) and noticed that my account was already linked to my Twitter account. And I had setup Dlvr.it to send summaries from our blog to my Twitter status. I tried explaining to Sharon that “double impressions” are a good thing but she didn’t buy it. So I deleted the link on Dlvr.it. Problem solved – I hope.

So I have a question. On Twitter it is easy to see a list of all your Tweets. But on LinkedIn where is the list of status updates?

Oh, I found a link but it is hard to find. Click on the “More” link under the “Share an update” field.

But you’re not done yet. Now you have to click on “See all of Jeff’s Activity”. Sometimes I’m convinced that LinkedIn is managed by idiots.

5. eNewsletter

Technically, eNewsletters are not really “social media”. However, emails and eNewsletters are not dead yet. So we decided to send an eNewsletter to Anduro’s list of subscribers. We use ConstantContact which creates a shortened URL of the eNewsletter. You can view it here: http://conta.cc/hEqNYC. So far the response has been very positive. We are encouraged.

6. Quickinars Website

Doug has started developing the website. You can see a draft version here: www.quickinars.com. We are also working on having a logo developed. More on this later.

That is as far as I’ve gotten so far. I’ll write another post in a few days.

Using Social Media to Market Events – Part 2

Last November we hosted our first seminar on Online Marketing Strategy in 6 Hours. It was sold out and a tremendous success. So much so that we are offering this seminar again – re-titled as Social Media Strategy in 6 Hours.

The topics and dates for these new sessions are:

• Quickinar: Tweet Like a Pro in under 3 Hours on January 21
• Quickinar: Social Media Strategy in 6 Hours on Monday, January 31
• Quickinar: Lights, Camera, YouTube Action in under 3 Hours on Thursday, February 10
• Quickinar: Facebook Business Page in under 3 Hours on Thursday, February 17
• Quickinar: Kick Your Blog Up a Notch in under 3 Hours on Thursday, February 24
• Quickinar: Social Media Strategy in 6 Hours on Friday, March 25

As you will notice we are calling these sessions, Quickinars. This is a name that we came up with to emphasize that these are short, intense seminars that focus on relevant topics. Right now we are focusing on providing social media training for the Calgary market – we may expand.

We hope that you find these seminars useful and valuable. For the entire list of seminars and more details look at our Quickinars page on Eventbrite.

If you have questions please email me, jeff.nelson@anduro.com or call me (403) 410-3803.

Hope to see you at one of the sessions.