25 Tips to Choosing a Social Media Consultant

I wrote this blog originally at the beginning of the year and I thought it needed rehashing.

I have been discovering many people starting to enter the world of social media marketing in Indianapolis. It can be anything from an advertising firm to a small business coach. It is probably pretty confusing for business owners trying to learn about the amazing new tools available on the web. I wanted to help you out with your first steps in choosing a social media educator or consultant.

1. They need to use the tools they are teaching.

It is extremely important that the teacher is using the tools. Before you decide to use a social media consultant… investigate! Make sure they are using tools like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIN, and Plaxo. If they do not use the tools on a regular basis, they are just riding a wave.

2. They communicate with their audience.

The last person you will want to hire is someone who throws content out on the bed and doesn’t allow for two way communication. The best way to test this? Go to their Twitter account and make sure they are actually sending “RT” and replies to people. 2-way communication is key.

3. Do they call themselves a Social Media Expert? Ask about the 10,000 hours rule.

The person that calls themselves a “social media expert” is the last person you want to hire. Read Shikow”s post about 10,000 hours to become an expert.

4. Ask them their definition of social media.

If they give you a list of tools. Fail them.

5. They will run your Twitter account for you.

It is impossible to ghost a Twitter account. YOU either use it or you don’t. Ghostwriting for a blog is a different story and NOT for this post.

6. Their blog is less than six months old with no comments. (thanks Beth)

7. Ask them about social bookmarking. Do they know what it is? Do they use it?

8. Have they taught a class before on social media? Even a webinar?

It is important that your consultant or educator has experience in teaching or presenting on social media. The last thing you want to do is spend money for something that is going to be a DRAG. You want to know that you are not wasting your money.

9. Are they a Just-add-water expert?

10. They actually have a personality and GET people.

It is important that your social media consultant have a personality. What do I mean by personality? They are not stuck in an office all day pecking away at Twitter and have no sense of humor. ALSO, they are not overly bubbly and excited about everything under the sun. Sanity is key.

11. They blog more than once a week.

It is important that the investigation goes deeper into the blogging world. Your social media consultant should be learning on a daily basis and expounding upon what they are learning by blogging. This does not have to be catered specifically to a BLOG (WordPress or blogger). You can always check Twitter on how they are communicating and learning.

12. They are linking and being linked.

Complete a Google link search and make sure your social media consultant actually has people and blogs linking back to their site. It is extremely important

13. Ask their opinion on viral marketing.

It is extremely important that your social media consultant and educator understand the concepts behind word-or-mouth marketing and viral marketing. Social media marketing is a relationship driven model. The evangelists and lovers of your product or service need to have the means to shout to the world… WE LOVE YOU!

14. Check out their website.

The first step to any Internet or social media strategy is the website. Do they have a communication driven website or is it a web 1.0 brochure driven site? Are they interacting with people? Are they talking about social media? Are they talking to YOU and not about their services.

15. What do other people think about them?

Mentors are one of the greatest asset to any small business owner. Who would they choose? Maybe they think social media is a waste of time. You need to take that into account. Maybe they were burned in the past? It is extremely important to get another perspective when entering into a relationship with any type of consultant or marketing professional.

16. They advise you to start a Facebook page as the first step.

It isn’t about starting in one spot. If you are new to the world of social media it may be smart to start USING Facebook other than trying to manage all 5 but the last thing you need to do is just start a Facebook fan page. SM strategy should be surrounding an integrated marketing approach. Period.

17. The instant success test.

It takes time and knowledge to be successful at using social media as a small business strategy. If they promise instant results.. You should probably find another consultant.

18. What do they think about traditional marketing and advertising?

Ask them. If they come back to you and say that the traditional approach to marketing is dead. They are just riding the wave of no return. They will never understand the concepts of combining traditional and new media into an overall strategy. You will slowly drown them.

19. Ask them about Radian6.

Radian6 is one of the better brand monitoring companies out there. If they have no idea about Radian6. FAIL.

20. How long have they been using Twitter?

I have come across plenty of consultant who have been using Twitter for a matter of months. It is important for the consultant to know more than YOU… the client. Check up on their usage of the different tools on the web.

21. They believe in actually listening to your problems instead of convincing you about the world of social media.

22. If they are still using an @aol.com, @aim.com, @comcast.net, or @att.net email. Fail them.

23. Listen for new approaches to strategy.

Everyone is offering to be a “social” consultant. Do they talk and think differently than anyone else you have listened to? If they do… You have a gem on your hands. Creative thinkers are the best social media consultants.

24. Are they a used car salesman? Do they seem genuine?

For the sake of argument I am going to list this. Do not work with someone you do not trust. Period.

25.Do they have any success stories?

Ask them about their history in using social media. The space is extremely new but there are people who are succeeding in using the tool. If they do not have case studies. Ask. If they cannot present you with a valuable case study… find someone else.

There are plenty more but this is just the beginning. Add to the list if you would like!

5 Ways to Track Your Competitors Using Social Media

My post on Tuesday talked about the growing trend of social media being used in order to gain more lead generation and marketing potential in businesses across the nation. You are going to need to be online. You are going to need to have a voice in this world of social communication.

Can we talk about another reason to be on social media? Are your competitors using it? This should be a deciding factor in whether or not you get involved. So where do you start? The first thing is to investigate.

1. Sign up for an account at Competitious.

Competitious is a cool tool that allows you to track, organize, and solidify data from your competition. Right now the beta is a free account… jump on over… sign up and try the tool. It also allows you to share and collaborate on different forms of data internally inside of your company.

2. Use the search tool SocialMention.

SocialMention is a keyword based search engine that aggregates different forms on content from across the web. You can search on microblogs, blogs, comments, events, and images (to name a few). Receive free daily email alerts of your brand, company, CEO, marketing campaign, or on a developing news story, a competitor, or the latest on a celebrity.

3. Google Alerts never hurt anyone.

Google Alerts is an awesome tool that allows you to sign up for… you guessed it… email alerts when a keyword is used in any type of content on the web. I have setup keyword alerts for Indianapolis social media, social media, Kyle Lacy, Brandswag, Twitter Marketing, and corporate social media. Check out this tutorial on how to use Google Alerts.

4. Do some investi-ma-gative journalism.

This should probably be step number one but it seems pretty simple… go to their website. If they are using social media in the right way they should be listing the tools in which they use. Follow them… feed them.. watch them. You could learn a ton from the way they share information.

5. Use HubSpot to track down the competition.

Hubspot has plenty of tools that allow you to track and influence different levels of your competitors use of social media. They give you the ability to track conversations online and hook up with different influencers in your industry. This is a paid service but it can extremely beneficial to the long term success of winning over the competition.

Get out there and listen to the net!

Are there any tools you have used? I would love to hear more!

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My Top 10 Twitter Business Applications

1. TwitterHawk

TwitterHawk is a real time targeted marketing engine that allows you to search Twitter on a chosen topic (or keyword) and will either auto-reply to that person or generate a list of matches for you to respond or reject. The point of this application is to hit the conversation while it is happening and they follow up. Make sure you are being sincere when using the tool. DO NOT SPAM.

You also have the ability to link track with an average cost of around .02 cents. The people over at Twitterhawk are feeling blessed and are offing 10 free tweets for signing up.

2. CoTweet

CoTweet is a web application that allows you to manage up to six Twitter accounts through a single CoTweet login. This is a great tool for businesses with more than a couple of employees using Twitter at one time. You have the ability to monitor keywords and different trending topics on Twitter. You can assign Tweets and on duty notifications for your employees! It is an awesome tool. I would recommend this for any business owner.

3. TwitterFox

TwitterFox is a Firefox (the Web browser) extension that notifies you of your friends’ tweets on Twitter. The Firefox extension adds a tiny icon on to the Firefox status bar which notifies you when your friends update their tweets. It also has a cool small text input to that you can use to update your tweets from your browser. This may be overkill for some of us that use Twitterific or TweetdDeck, but it is a cool tool to use. You may think it’s perfect if you love Firefox and Web browsing!

4. TweetDeck

There is no better tool out there for managing and organizing your Twitterati than TweetDeck. Imagine a tool that you can use directly from your desktop that manages followers, friends, replies, direct messages, groups, and anything you could possibly imagine. Tweetdeck gives you the ability to create groups that could cater to any type of subject. If you want to pull a feed from Twitter that has to do with Barney and childhood stories it is completely possible to do.

Tweetdeck can also be downloaded on your iPhone and used when you are away from your desktop. The program is easy to use and easy to manage. Built off the Adobe Air platform, it is your social dashboard for Twitter. And in respect to that little tool called the iPhone, there is a feed for that.

5. Hootsuite

Where Tweetdeck gives you the ability to organize and manage followers, Hootsuite is just as powerful when it comes to the world of Twitter productivity. Hootsuite gives you the ability manage multiple Twitter accounts, add multiple editors of the same account, pre-schedule your Tweets, and measure traffic. If you are looking for a tool to help you stay productive throughout your day and not be held hostage by the time suck police, Hootsuite is where it is at!

You have the ability to view clicks and where the click originated based on region of the world. You also have the ability to view your more popular Tweets as well as how many clicks you have received over a given time.

6. Twitterific

Twitterific can be likened to Tweetdeck but is designed more for use on the MAC desktop. Twitterific has an excellent user interface and is small enough not to be annoying. It gives you the same type of abilities as Tweetdeck but offers more keyboard shortcuts for the MAC user. The application is designed to let you view as much or as little information as you prefer when using on your desktop. Twitterific is also available for download on the iPhone as an application.

7. Twhirl

Twhirl is a social desktop software designed by the people who brought you Seesmic the video conversation website. The Twhirl application is still built in the same realm as Twitterific, Tweetdeck, and Hootsuite. It also has the ability to be run on both Windows and MAC platforms. If you are familiar with sites like Friendfeed and Seesmic this may be the tool for you. Twhirl gives you the ability to connect to multiple Twitter, Iaconi.ca, Friendfeed and Seesmic accounts.

You can let Twhirl run in the background while working and it will give you random pop-ups that display new messages. There are a couple of other cool features worth mentioning for this productivity chapter. You can cross-post messages to multiple profiles on other social networking sites like Facebook and Myspace. You an also record a video and share it on the video social network, Seesmic.

8. NearbyTweets

This is a tool for those of us who would enjoy connecting to individuals in our general location. NearyTweets is a website that allows you to search based on geography in order to build customer relationships and monitoring in real time.

NearbyTweets is still fairly new but they will have some awesome tools coming up in the future including premium business tools, ability to show nearby business on Twitter, and a page for setting your default location.

9. TwitterGrader

Hubspot, the people that brought you Website Grader, realized that there was a need to track and rank users based on a certain criteria on Twitter. TwitterGrader was the answer to that question. The site allows you to track and measure your (and others) relative Twitter power. The calculation is based on a combination of different states including your number of followers, the power of your followers, number of updates, clicks, retweets, and completeness of your profile.

10. Twilert

Twilert is the tool for the paranoid in all of us. Twilert gives you the ability to receive regular email updates of tweets containing your brand, product, service or any word you could possibly want, really any word. The service is extremely easy to setup and you will be able to stay on top of the conversation surrounding your specific keyword.

You can also use the service at search.twitter.com but Twilert gives you a more consistent feed from the world of the Twitter.

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Small Business Loves Social Media

I had the pleasure of leading a break-out session at the Indiana Small Business Fair and it was pretty awesome! The one enjoyment (out of many) that I get from speaking to groups of business owners is the look of pure astonishment when they finally connect all the dots. I can usually see the light bulb going off over the top of many heads when talking about social media. It is important to educate as much as possible in this “fantasy state” of marketing through social media. Educate. Educate. Educate.

And if you think small business owners DO NOT like social media… watch the video below.

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All That Matters Is Your Story

We are experiencing a change in the world of customer communication. It is no longer the company that is controlling the brand management but the consumer. Forget the concept of social media… we have been witnessing this transition for the past decade… and since the inception of the Internet as a worthwhile tool for communication.

Customers are now talking about you at a staggering pace using sites like Twitter, Facebook, Myspace and LinkedIN… and the list goes on. I was watching TV today and taking note of the increasinly terrible advertising that is taking place on the cable networks. I began to realize that I (along with millions of others) are no longer making buying decisions based on traditional advertising. You can take the definition of traditional advertising any way you want but in my terms it means old ways of doing business.

A great book to read from the Heath brothers is Made to Stick which talks about the concept of creating a story to push your company into the next decade of communication. I have read, reread, and read again the excellent points made throughout the book and began to realize one thing… if you do not create a story that your customers can retell you will lose market share steadily over the next couple of years.

We might not be seeing a steady decline because social media and the Internet is still bleeding edge when it comes to market penetration in a global sense. My question is simply this: What happens when we do reach the peak of market penetration for social media? What happens when your customers ARE using the tool and using it effectively? What do you do when you reach the point? Are you ready for the onslaught? Is your communications department familiarizing themselves with the tools?

All that matters is your story. You are going to be creating a story based on a marketing process but we might come to the point where it doesn’t matter what you want your story to be… your customers are going to create a story anyway. Experience is the key to the future of marketing and customer communication. They (your customer) are going to be talking NOT about your sales or PR release but how they personally experienced your product or service.

Are you preparing yourself for the new age of communication?

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Should You Use Social Media? Ask Your Customers.

There is one common thread that holds  the worlds of customer management and marketing together. There is one common practice that drives every live event, direct mail campaign, email marketing push, and billboard ad. It is pretty simple in the world of business communication… you go where your customer goes… you (try) to speak how you customer speaks… you live where you customer lives… you are on their turf.. you want to be in their living rooms… you want to be in their thoughts.. you want to be first thing they think of when the pain point arises.

How do you decide which avenue to use when you are developing a strategy campaign to reach your customers? Chances are… you are going to decide based on market reach and campaign costs… Your organization is going to ask itself: How do I reach the largest amount of people for the least amount of dollars? Period.

Is social media right for every business? No. However, you need to ask yourself… Are my customers on social media? Do not take advice from your own personal experiences. You may be a baby boomer business owner who has never used social media tools but you are in the minority. Baby boomers are the fastest growing demographic using social media.

The best way to find out? Ask you customer. Engage in a conversation. Do they think it would be helpful to communicate one-on-one with your employees or maybe even you?

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Twitter Usage Plan for Success

Twitter is the talk of the town from marketing firms to small business owners… how do we use this tool to increase leads and drive growth? This seems to be the question most people are asking across the business landscape. If you are skeptical and a little confused… believe me… you are not alone. I am immersed in social media on a daily basis and I am still testing strategies when using Twitter.

We are all trying to figure out this new world of online communication.. so where do you start when diving into Twitter.

Twitter is just another tool in your (business) aresenal to drive brand awareness across a specific group of people. So what do you do when first starting out? Limit your twitter use. It is extremely important to build out a usage plan for Twitter when first starting out on the tool.

An example:

Phase 1

• Use Twitter for 30 minutes a day
• Add 10 strategic relationships to follow every two days (between 30-45 followers a week)
• Tweet (send a twitter message) three times a day
• Write down all strategic relationships or new business leads formed when using Twitter

Phase 2

• Move up to an hour of Twitter usage a day. Example: designate 30 minutes in the morning and 30 minutes after the work day. You could also break the usage out over the day
• Sign up for a HootSuite account to help with Tweeting and follower management throughout the day.
• Move up to 10 tweets a day. If need be… use HootSuite for random posting through-out the day.

This is just small example of how you can build out a Twitter usage plan for yourself or your employees. There are a couple of important things to remember:

• Use the tool on a daily basis. It is important to build up a habit of using the tool.
• Measure. Measure. Measure. Measure. If you do not see some type of success from Twitter after 3-5 months.. re-evaluate your usage.
• Remember that Twitter is just another medium to reach potential consumers… don’t give up your other marketing strategies… integrate your approach

Twitter is a great tool to use for communication and brand awareness. Do you have any other productivity tips? Ways to be productive? This is just a small example but I would LOVE to hear from other people.

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What You Can Learn From Tony Robbins About Twitter

I was browsing Twitter this morning (I know. It sounds stimulating doesn’t it?) and happened across Tony Robbins Twitter profile. If you have no idea of who Tony Robbins is… go check out his website. He is an extremely influential speaker and thought leader in the world of personal development. I was surprised to find that Tony Robbins very rarely used Twitter for communication.. only the broadcasting of messages.

Some may say that Mr. Robbins is accomplishing communication by using social media tools to spread a message… unfortunately he is not. Communication is a two way street and unfortunately, one-way messages rarely harness the power of social media.

What if Tony were to take 30 minutes a week to respond to his fans and supporters? What if Tony were to utilize the some 750,000 people following him on Twitter? He is probably accomplishing some type of thought leadership and a hint of viral marketing by continuing to use Twitter in this manner… but the roads that could be forged if he did more than just USED the tool… endless.

What can you learn from Tony Robbins about Twitter? Move from automation to emotion. You can automate anything in the world but it takes the human quality out of the process. Take some time and add personal c0mmunication into your Twitter strategy. You may be pleasantly surprised.

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Getting True Value Out of Social Media

My company, Brandswag, had the pleasure of sponsoring an event that brought Jason Falls to town for a speaking engagement. I really enjoyed listening and meeting Jason for the first time and I will do it again in a heartbeat. Jason talked about the importance of offline networking being a worthy counterpart to social media. I couldn’t agree more.

If I were asked to divulged what I thought was the most worthwhile asset in social media… it would be the relationships forged in the offline environment. As a small business owner you will never understand the true potential of Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIN unless you make the effort to meet your connections offline as well as online.

Next time you are on your network… set up a meeting.

You will not regret it.

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Sometimes You Should Just Walk Away and Simplify

It is important to understand when to walk away.

There has been times in my short career (3 years) where I have needed to walk away from my desk, from Twitter, from Facebook, from website design and graphic design… to just step away and re-evaluate where I was headed and where I wanted to go. We all work as hard as we can to get ahead in life and yet the best thing we can do sometimes… is to walk away.

The communication and technology worlds are creating an explosive.. fast paced world. Everyone is trying to stay on top of the trends and trying to pull ahead. I want to encourage everyone to slow down and look internally before deciding how to communicate with the external market. Sometimes you need to simplify before you maximize.

I recorded this video last year when Brandswag was still working out of  my apartment. Ahhh the days of a start-up. It talks about simplifying your life in order to reconnect with why you started your business or job in the first place.

Please ignore the spray can in the back.. behind my head.

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