DreamGrow Social Media » Social Media

Using Twitter Hashtag to Gather Focus Groups

Jessica Sanders — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 14:00:00 +0000

As a growing small business, getting feedback on products or services you provide is integral to creating a thriving business. In a world where customer is king, reaching out to them will give you the most beneficial information. While there are a variety of ways to do this, Twitter has provided businesses with an easy and helpful platform for holding a focus group.

“Focus group: A group of people brought together to give their opinions on a particular issue or product, often for the purpose of market research.” -Dictionary.com

What better way to bring your customers together than by taking advantage of a social media outlet they use everyday – more than once a day. The hashtag tool within Twitter makes this an effective method of getting information into one area, without having to be in the same vicinity. To do this, you’ll need to prepare for the focus group as you would any other; however various steps of the process will differ in catering toward Twitter.

Separating Into Groups

When choosing the group, you need to be particular about what information you hope to get. To make this decision you’ll have to do your research and decide what group of tweeters will give you the most accurate information. To decide, you’ll need to comb through your feed to put together different groups.

Active: This group will more than likely be very vocal. Being active means they have tweeted to or about the company multiple times, good or bad.
Passive: This group may have mentioned the company in the past, however has never directly contacted you via tweet. Their opinions may be a bit more thought out.
Inactive: This group of people follows you, but has yet to mention you in a tweet or speak directly to you. These tweeters may be a more unbiased group, if they don’t feel strongly one way or the other about your company and products.

Choosing the Right One

Your group selections will be very important in the outcome of your focus group. “Another crucial step is recruiting the right respondents for the group. Having the wrong people in a group dooms the session,” according to Focusgrouptips.com. When deciding on whom to choose, you’ll need to narrow down your active, passive and inactive groups a bit more.

The group should have shown similar opinions, not necessarily in regards to your company, within previous tweets. This provides a better opportunity for ideas to bounce easily back and forth between them.
You can conduct different focus groups with each of the various groups. Choosing one for your active members, one for passive, etc, will give you a broader scope.

Conducting the Discussion

The difference in using Twitter as opposed to a traditional method is how you go about presenting your questions and ideas to the followers. This is where the hashtag will become the star of your research. Here is how you will do this:

Once you’ve separated out your groups, and contacted them about participating, you need to present them with their discussion topics via hashtag. You can give them one topic a day, for a week, and allow them to discuss as thoughts come and go.
You want each group to have a different hashtag, so you can go into that threaded discussion and see only the conversation surrounding those topics.
To do this, you need to address your tweet to the members of the focus group, ask the question, and then end it with the hashtag.
For example: @sarah @brian @krystin What are your thoughts on this? #questionsaboutfood
From here, you can check back to the thread to review their ongoing discussions.

Using a format that your customer is familiar with will give you the best results. When your focus group feels comfortable they are free to give you their honest opinions and answers. Then, using the hashtag helps gather the information into one place making it easy to analyze. You’ll be able to get a true sampling of your customer base, and honest responses.

Photo credit: plpnetwork.com

Bio: Jessica Sanders is an avid small business writer touching on topics from social media to telemarketing. She writes for an online resource that gives advice on topics including VOIP phone systems for lead generation resource, Resource Nation.

Using Twitter Hashtag to Gather Focus Groups is a post from: DreamGrow Social Media

Simple Tools For Managing Social Media Content

Olivia Sherwood — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 14:00:00 +0000

Looking at the way the Internet has been shaping the world around us, there is no doubt that it has changed the marketing game. Becoming a staple in business, there has been a huge jump in using Facebook ads, Twitter links, fan pages, blogs and viral content to advertise. Not only has this had major implications for large corporations, but for small businesses that are predominantly online, and even local features in communities.

With this being the case, social media is one method of marketing you cannot afford not to utilize, especially given its low cost ability to be far reaching to potential customers all over the world. Not to mention how easy it becomes to gain new markets just through current fans sharing your content to their family and friends.

But you can make it even easier to accomplish, using these excellent social media tools to get the most out of your experience.

HootSuite

Arguably one of the most popular social media tools on the web, this offering from application powerhouse Invoke Media works by connecting all of your social media, including profiles and RSS feeds, into one convenient place on your desktop. It then provides an analysis tool that is applied to each in real time.

They have mobile applications, too, that give you the same benefits no matter where you are. They boast such clients as The Onion and Time Magazine, and even The White House uses their program to monitor social media activity.

There is a free basic account that allows you to link up to five social media profiles and two RSS feeds. But for only $5.99 per month you can get their unlimited service, which might be a benefit for larger businesses or social marketers.

Dlvr.it

This blog feeder from Pheebo is an excellent little tool that makes it easy to deliver customized content to each social media profile. For example, you can post a link with a long title to your Tumblr or Facebook account, and then provide the same content on a smaller scale for 140 character-based Twitter.

It also works as a post schedule system, which is convenient. It can get tiring having to use a separate website for creating scheduled posts, especially since most don’t allow you to do more than two or three at a time. With Dlvr.it, you can post not only multiple comments for different times, but for different websites.

But best of all, it is completely free. You can’t beat that.

Postling

Another well known and popular application by the same guys who brought you the handmade shop site Etsy, this is a social media dashboard that collect all of your accounts into one easy place. Not only can you post to sites such as Twitter and Facebook, but you can write and post blog content on your WordPress from the same place, then provide links anywhere you need them.

In addition to these benefits, you can get a daily social activity report on all accounts in your email, and it has a live update service that monitors reviews and comments about yourself or your business.

The downside is that the free version is very basic, without the analytics tool. You have two options for paid services: either the Plus at $9 per month, or the Premium at $49 per month.

Conclusion

Of course, these are only a few of many social media tools. But they are some of the most popular, and some of the best around. If you have been looking for a way to better monitor your social media and make it work for you, this is your chance.

What are some tools that you use? Let us know in the comments.

Olivia Sherwood is a social media enthusiast and creative writer for PsPrint, an online printing company. Follow on Twitter and Facebook.

Image Credit: Gaurav Mishra.

Simple Tools For Managing Social Media Content is a post from: DreamGrow Social Media

How to Pick the Best Social Networking Site for Your Business

Pam Velazquez — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 13:30:00 +0000

There can be no argument regarding the potential value of social networking sites for small businesses and entrepreneurs. Social networking sites are free to use and very effective. Those two facts help combine to make very useful tools. Of course, there is also the factor that if you are not using social networking, your competitor probably is doing so, and this puts you at a considerable strategic disadvantage.

Which social networking site will ultimately work best for your business has a great deal to do with issues including what you are attempting to accomplish, and what kind of clients or customers you are wanting to reach. The most important step is that you do have a social networking strategy.

Don’t Put All Your Eggs in One Social Networking Basket

There is something to be said for not “putting all your eggs in one basket” where social networking is concerned. If you are thinking that Facebook and Twitter, for example, will always be highly useful tools you could be setting yourself up for a virtual fall.

Remember MySpace? Yes, not all that long ago it seemed as though everyone was on MySpace, but that is not the case today, as this website’s traffic continues to drop and drop. In fact, while News Corp bought MySpace for $580 million in 2005, it was recently sold to Specific Media and Justin Timberlake for an undisclosed sum, which CNN reported was just $35 million.

As In All Things-Diversify

So which social networking site is right for you? Paradoxically, the answer to that question is that none of them and all of them. By diversifying your social networking presence, you safeguard your strategy against poor management decisions within social networking companies. For example, should MySpace have really self-destructed the way it did? How about Friendster? Of course not, but you had no control over this situation. Yet, if you’ve invested heavily in one social networking platform and essentially ignored other platforms, you could ultimately pay the price.

If you are using social media to generate revenue, you need to be very careful in how you approach your social networking decisions. In short, remember to diversify in case something bizarre or unexpected happens.

Currently, the social networking giants are Facebook, Twitter, and to a lesser extent LinkedIn and YouTube. There are, of course, other regional players, but those four are the most important social networking sites for entrepreneurs and small businesses.

Find Different Ways to Communicate with Your Clients

The ways that you communicate with your customers and potential customers should be as diverse as possible. You should strive to find a variety of ways to reach your customers ranging from social media to building your newsletter database and creating high quality content so that people see your website, and you, as a resource. Do this and you will be a bit more insulated from the rise and fall of the social media giants and their accompanying egos.

Image credit: KEXINO

How to Pick the Best Social Networking Site for Your Business is a post from: DreamGrow Social Media

Facebook IPO is Coming [INFOGRAPHIC]

Priit Kallas — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 15:36:04 +0000

Facebook’s IPO is coming. After going through the 213 pages of Facebook S-1 PDF file I decided to create a visual representation of the most important numbers in the document. The first half of the Facebook infographic is about the users and the second part is about the company.

Feel free to share and re-post and please link back to the source (CC license).

Facebook IPO is Coming [INFOGRAPHIC] is a post from: DreamGrow Social Media

How Many Social Media Accounts Is Too Many?

Maya Szydlowski — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 13:30:00 +0000

Every business knows the importance of social media. You can’t watch commercials without seeing a company’s Facebook page listed, others host photo and video competitions on Twitter on a regular basis, and LinkedIn is used more than most companies’ own human resources site. However, just because a social media site exists doesn’t mean your company necessarily needs to be using it.

Simply put, Facebook and Twitter are a must for anyone trying to entice customers or followers online. These are the go-to social media sites for most users, and many potential customers will research a company on Facebook before even going to the business’ primary website. However, all those other social media sites, especially the niche sites, aren’t a necessity for everyone. Depending on your business, there are social media sites that are more geared towards your niche and will provide you with more effective marketing that is actually worth your time.

For the Product Provider

For product providers, Pinterest is a great outlet for further spreading your brand. Not only can you post pictures of your products, but you can also post blog postings in which your product was used or any other positive press you may have received. It is a great way to create a visual buzz about your product, and makes it incredibly easy for your followers to share the word about your product.

A product provider should also have a YouTube account if they have commercials that regularly receive airtime, or if they plan on hosting video competitions highlighting specific products. Otherwise, having a regularly maintained YouTube account may be more trouble than it is worth – especially for smaller businesses.

For the Artisan

For those offering self-made works of art, furniture, clothing, jewelry, and other artisan goods, social media sites like Etsy, Pinterest, and YouTube are a must. Etsy is already the go-to site for those seeking handmade goods, and Pinterest is quickly becoming a go-to site for ideas. If you want to grab the attention of this niche, businesses specializing in homemade goods need to have active accounts on these sites and need to showcase the best of the best.

YouTube is also a great site to have an account on, because artisans can give brief tutorials that customers, once they purchase supplies, can be coached through a creation process – whether it be knitting a scarf or creating a decadent recipe.

For the Service Provider

For service providers, such as lawyers, online educators, and marketing professionals, there are two main sites you should consider aside from Facebook and Twitter: LinkedIn and YouTube. LinkedIn is a great place for professionals, especially those who tend to work alone or manage a single office, to attract other professionals seeking services, however, don’t rely on it as heavily as Facebook. YouTube is also a great idea if your service is offering tutorials or how-tos on anything whether it be math lessons or setting up a WordPress theme.

If you decide to run an account on each social media site, you may find yourself wasting precious time, not reaching those most interested in your business, while simultaneously putting in way too many work hours each day. In addition to Twitter and Facebook, companies that are looking to attract the attention of professionals, whether it be a partnership or just another employee, LinkedIn is also a must. Otherwise, grab an account on all social media sites only to avoid having the competition or malicious individuals create a faux, but only actively use those that will prove the most effective when trying to succeed in your niche market.

Maya Szydlowski is a community manager for Veterans United Home Loans, the nation’s leader in VA loans and providing news and resources for the military community.

Image credit: fredcavazza

How Many Social Media Accounts Is Too Many? is a post from: DreamGrow Social Media

How to Run A Facebook Sweepstakes Contest

Mart Prööm — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 13:30:00 +0000

A popular way to gain fans to your Facebook page is to host a sweepstake contest. In plain terms this means that you are giving out a prize (or several prizes for that matter) between everyone who participates in the contest. Here are some basic guidelines and imporant things to consider when you decide to run a Facebook sweepstakes.

Set rules and conditions!

Add a set of your campaign rules to your sweepstakes application, preferably in the footer section of your application. If you get into trouble, you can refer to your terms and conditions of your sweepstakes contest. These rules include who is allowed to participate, what are the prizes, legal disclaimers (such as the prize cannot be exchanged for cash), etc.

Make your sweepstakes application shareable!

Make it so that users can easily share your campaign message by clicking on a share button which is on your application. The share should go something like this:

Title: Win 1000$ worth of prizes!

Body copy: Company X is hosting a Facebook sweepstakes contest where we are giving out X, Y and Z prizes. Don’t miss your chance, enter now by clicking on this link!

Include an ‘invite friends’ button!

‘Invite friends’ will send an application request to the friends that you decided to invite. Simple as that. This feature is as important as the share button. Make it easy for others to spread the word.

Have a specific action for participation!

What do you want the users to do in order to participate? It could be as simple as clicking on a single button which will ask them for application rights. Another great but simple action might be to make entering your email address as an action of participation. So, in other words – enter your email address and you have a chance to win X (scroll below to see an example).

For example, in order to participate in Clinique’s Facebook sweepstakes competition, one must enter several fields such as their first and last name, email address, birthdate, etc. It’s a bit too much if you ask me as the more form fields you have, the higher is the drop-out rate. Unless you are giving out a multi million prize that is.

Take participant’s email address!

Getting the participant’s email address means you have another channel for communication to help your business spread your marketing message. It’s smart to integrate your marketing channels, so that you take the connections you establish through social media and add them to your mailing list. Also, as it’s a sweepstake, email address can be used to contact the winners.

Follow Facebook’s Terms of Service!

It’s mandatory to follow Facebook’s Terms of Service and Promotion Guidelines to make sure that you’re not doing anything that violates them. For example, sweepstakes must be organized on Facebook applications. You cannot use Facebook’s own features (such as liking a page) as a method of participation. Also, to quote the promotion guidelines: “You must not notify winners through Facebook, such as through Facebook messages, chat, or posts on profiles (timelines) or Pages”.

Pick a desirable prize!

As with any sweepstakes, your prize will play a huge part and it might determine if your campaign is successful or not. Choose your own products/services or something very appealing to your target audience. By default, the prize should be directed towards those who actually are interested in what you have to offer. I’ve said it a couple of times already and I’ll say it again – don’t give out an iPad if you are a fishing supply store. Give out your own products or better yet, something exclusive that is not available for everyone to purchase.

Give out several small prizes!

In addition to having a main prize, you might want to consider issuing out several small prizes such as some gift cards few times per week. Even these small prizes should be appealing to your target audience. The participants will have a chance to win the big prize or some gift cards, either way – chances to win something are increased significantly!

Post regular updates on your wall!

Announce the winners on your Facebook wall, you can announce something like “We have drawn another lucky winner named Jane Doe. If you haven’t participated yet, do so by doing the following steps…” Usually these kinds of announcements will generate likes, comments and shares, all which have the potential to increase your sweepstakes viral effect.

Use like-gating features

While you cannot use “like” as a method of entering a Facebook sweepstakes competition (Facebook Promotion Guidelines), you can make it so that only users who have liked your page, can participate.

Don’t forget to use a call-to-action!

Whatever your sweepstakes message is, include several call-to-actions in your copy such as “Enter to win!”. Use these call-to-actions in your copy text, in your sweepstakes buttons, in your share texts, anywhere and everywhere.

Choose your campaign length!

Usually, an optimal sweepstakes campaign length is about 2-4 weeks. Don’t make your sweepstake last for more than that. If I want to win something, I want to know about it ASAP, not in 6 months time. By that time I’ve already forgotten about your brand and moved on.

Measure your results!

How many participants did you expect and how many participants there actually were? What did you learn that you could do to improve your future sweepstakes competitions? These are all important questions that need to be answered in specific numbers. Analyze, ask for feedback from your target audience and improve!

How to Run A Facebook Sweepstakes Contest is a post from: DreamGrow Social Media

10 Food and Beverage Related Facebook Landing Page Examples

Mart Prööm — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 13:30:00 +0000

For the last four months or so, I’ve become very fond of Facebook welcome pages and their design. I’ve already written a post about 26 great Facebook landing page examples – read it here if you haven’t yet! Now I want to take this obsession one step further and find some great landing pages in each of the most popular categories starting with the Food & Beverages- Let me know in the comments below, which category you’re interested in next (such as Beauty and Health Products, Appliances, Electronics, Services, etc). I hope you gain some inspiration from viewing these.

I browsed through hundreds of brand pages and these are the ones I want to share with the rest of you. In no particular order:

Nutella

Carl’s jr

Oreo

Pizza Hut

Nabisco Cookies

Miller Lite

TIC TAC USA

Kroger

Propel

Crisco

Let me know in the comments below which category of brands you want me to research next for some inspiring landing pages.

10 Food and Beverage Related Facebook Landing Page Examples is a post from: DreamGrow Social Media

41 Great Examples of Pinterest Brand Pages

Priit Kallas — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 14:46:23 +0000

Pinterest is growing really fast. Last week I wrote about What’s Pinterest and How to Use It for Marketing Your Brand? Now we took a look at who’s already using Pinterest for marketing their brand. As expected there are a lot of businesses who relay on visual appeal for their branding: fashion, furniture, food, etc. But there are also magazines, non-profits, and even tech brands.

If you find a way how to express your brand visually then go ahead and experiment with Pinterest brand pages. Here are a some examples from early adopters:

Mashable

Fiskars USA

Sony Music

Dreamgrow Social Media

Advanced Micro Devices (AMD)

The Wall Street Journal

Etsy

charity: water

Gap

Whole Foods Market

Travel Channel

TODAY

Amnesty International USA

TIME Magazine

Please click next page to see more examples.

41 Great Examples of Pinterest Brand Pages is a post from: DreamGrow Social Media

Social Media Timing: Should You Tweet Morning, Noon or Night?

Pam Velazquez — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 14:00:00 +0000

You may already feel as though you are tweeting morning, noon and night as it is, but is this the right strategy for you? In this article, we will look at sometimes neglected aspect of your tweeting strategy… what time of the day and week that you tweet? As it turns out, the times you choose to tweet could have an impact on how those receiving your updates perceive you and your business. So is timing everything? Maybe not “everything,” but you can be sure it plays a vital role.

Those wishing to convey a professional persona should note that the timing of their tweets is relevant and important to people’s perception. Forget for just a moment that you are tweeting, and instead think of the message that you are sending as being similar to an email. Would you really want to send an email out to a prospective client or existing client at 2am in the morning? This wouldn’t look very good, would it? The general conception is that you must not have a good deal going on in your life if you are awake in the early hours of the morning. While you might be awake at that time working because you are a real go-getter, others may not see it the same way.

The best time of the day to send out tweets as well is when you know people will be reading them. Keep in mind that there is a great deal of competition to reach people in today’s hectic digital communication environment. You need to take the steps necessary to maximize all of your communication and social networking endeavors. In general, the best time to send out your tweets is during business hours, especially the business hours of the majority of the people with whom you communicate. This means that the optimal times are usually between 10 AM and about 3 PM. If you send out tweets earlier than 10 AM, it is quite possible that settling in for the workday will distract people. After 3 PM people may be scrambling to finish up work or winding down their workday.

Ultimately, the most important rule to follow is to see what works best for you and adjust accordingly. Every business is different, and that means you may discover that you have the best results with your tweets at a different time in the day. Further, there are important secondary considerations as well. For example, if most of the people you are attempting to reach are based in another country or on the other side of the country, you may want to strongly consider adjusting your strategy and the time you send out your tweets.

Obviously, you will get involved with certain activities during the day and it can become very easy to forget to log into Twitter. Of course, keep in mind that you can use a tool like HootSuite to schedule your tweets throughout the day so that you don’t have to constantly remember when to send them out. The important thing is to be active on Twitter and, if possible, have multiple tweets going out everyday as well as active communication with your followers.

For more information check out these posts:

For more detail check out these posts:

We use Timely to automatically find the best times for out tweets.

Social Media Timing: Should You Tweet Morning, Noon or Night? is a post from: DreamGrow Social Media

Four Reasons Why You Should be Using Google Plus

Pam Velazquez — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 16:30:00 +0000

There are four major reasons that you should consider using Google Plus. If you are not already using Google Plus, the odds are that this article will motivate you to consider doing so in the near future. Google is an amazingly large company with a variety of long term aims and goals. This fact certainly factors into the reasons that you should consider using this social media tool to promote your business.

1. Google Isn’t Big on Failure

Google may periodically have its small failures, but the company rarely lets something “big” fail, at least not completely or quickly. When Google sets its sights on a goal on target they usually manage to accomplish something that is at least fairly impressive. Taking this fact into consideration, you are not likely to regret investing some time in creating a Google Plus profile and learning the ins and outs of how Google’s latest creation works.

2. Google Plus is an Alternative Way of Reaching People

While there are many social media platforms to use, this one is different in that has the weight of Google behind it. Further, Google Plus stands as a new way of reaching people and, as a result, it is likely to attract a different sort of crowd. For example, many people who are disenchanted with Facebook or have not become highly involved in social networking to date may gravitate towards Google Plus.

Google Plus will also allow you to reach different kinds of people in a different context. Through this tool, you may reach different consumers or reach them in a different way. This may lead to surprising new options as well.

3. It is Always Good to Have a Backup

Remember when MySpace was wildly popular and everyone was on it? It seems like a million years ago. But, in reality, it wasn’t really all that long ago that MySpace was a dominant player in the world of social networking and social marketing. Businesses were using MySpace in a variety of different ways, but today few businesses are investing serious time or money into MySpace. Instead that time and money is being directed predominately towards Facebook and Twitter. No one knows what the future holds, but Facebook could someday find the same fate as MySpace, and you should have a major backup for reaching your potential customers and clients.

4. Google Has Deep, Deep Pockets!

Google wants a piece of that Facebook action, and that means the company is willing to spend, spend, spend in order to make it happen. You can fully expect that Google will invest hundreds of millions in improving Google Plus and making it more and more user friendly in the months and years to come. In other words, you can expect Google Plus to simply improve all the time.

Google will also invest millions in getting the word out about Google Plus. If necessary, they may decide to have Google Plus “pop up” at every turn. They have the resources to make this happen and, as a result, you can bet that Google Plus is likely here to stay.

Four Reasons Why You Should be Using Google Plus is a post from: DreamGrow Social Media