Tag Archives: twitter

Twitter Tip: Why Do People Put Periods In Front of Tweets

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In the past month or so, I’ve seen several people that are very socially active make a simple faux-paus in their tweeting that is restricting the audience of their tweets. After explaining the action (as it wasn’t really an ‘error’) all of them said something along the lines of “I never knew that” so I thought I’d write a quick blog post to let everyone in on the secret that’s not a secret.

When you compose a tweet that begins with a mention (@), Twitter considers it a conversation between you and that user.

An example tweet: @VelocitySales Bacon is king! It is so yummy! #bacon #nom

In this tweet, because it starts with a mention (@VelocitySales), Twitter interprets this as a conversation between the tweeter and that user. This is true even if the tweet is meant as a tweet and not as a reply like if you are simply mentioning a company/person in your post as in:

@Ford has the best cars in the universe!

You may just be tweeting your general sentiment about Ford cars but Twitter thinks you are having a conversation with Ford.

Why is this important?

The only people that see those tweets in their Twitter stream are COMMON FOLLOWERS (i.e. people that follow both you and whomever you mentioned), NOT everyone who follows you.

This obviously decreases the visibility of the tweet.

Don’t fret though. There is a very simple solution to this:

Put a period at the beginning of the tweet, like so:

.@VelocitySales Bacon is king! It is so yummy! #bacon #nom

OR

.@Ford has the best cars in the universe!

Now, Twitter interprets these as actual tweets (vs. a reply or conversation) and will show these to all of your followers.

Sometimes, it is appropriate to have a conversation with a person and only include yourselves and common followers. However, there are many businesses who think that when they are tweeting back to consumers or answering a question to a tweeter that all of their followers are seeing it… and they’re not.

I see many people doing this in tweets that are obviously meant for a general audience (their followers) … some very prominent social media personalities.. so don’t feel bad or stupid because you didn’t know this. Who knows how many informative or interesting tweets I’ve missed because of this…

Don’t make yours one of them.

 

 

 

The FTC May Have Just Killed Twitter Marketing For Dealers

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Yeah, in the most absurd move ever, the FTC has determined that Twitter is not excluded from regulatory laws requiring full disclosure on products or services. The Wall Street Journal reports that any disclosures that would apply to any other advertising also apply to Twitter.

Hmm. Let’s think about that a moment. On a platform that allows only 140 character submissions, how, exactly, do you tell your followers about a great lease special, factory incentive or other promotion AND include the tiny, almost unreadable, 2 paragraph disclosure in 6 point font at the bottom of the ad? Well, you don’t.

So, what does that prohibit by default? Pretty much anything you want to promote that requires a disclosure and, for most car dealers, that’s just about everything. Heck, most factory incentives have disclosures. Contests, giveaways, or any other promotion (social media or otherwise) as well as coupons, service specials, and other customer offerings would also be excluded.

The easiest way to determine whether you can or can’t tweet something about any special, ad car, incentive, lease special, promotion, coupon, service special, parts special etc. is by following one basic rule:

If it needs a disclosure, you can’t tweet about it.

See, that was simple wasn’t it?

Now, all of the above being said, Facebook’s Terms of Service in regards to contests, promotions and such are violated, trampled over and ignored all of the time by both vendors (who know better) and by dealers (who may or may not).

That being said, Facebook can’t investigate your dealership and fine you for non-compliance with advertising regulations either.

So, has the FTC effectively killed Twitter marketing for businesses?

It depends on what you’re tweeting about.

If your tweets are informative, quality content or customer service and engagement focused then no. If your strategy is to blast your inventory and specials to Twitter on some sort of robotic RSS feed that forces everyone to not listen to you anyways, then yes.

You make the call. It’s your business but the U.S. Government has spoken.

Update 3.14.13

I spoke with Compliance expert Jim Radogna about this issue. He researched the actual FTC ruling & found the relevant passages and, in his opinion, you can still tweet specials, etc. as long as there is a clear link to the disclaimers included in the tweet. While the Wall Street Journal article seemed pretty straightforward, it’s in his opinion that they’re incorrect in their translation of the ruling and how it applies to tweets.

Business Insider reports that the FTC released more information outlining a way that businesses can continue to use Twitter to market without actually needing the disclaimer physically present within the tweet. Just use “Ad:” within the tweet

Social Media 201: Beyond Facebook and Twitter

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You’ve ventured into the world of social media. You have a Facebook page, promoted it in your marketing and in your store, started posting great content and the people that started liking your page are engaging with you. You created a Twitter account, have been tweeting and re-tweeting content, built a following and are starting to get re-tweeted and mentioned. Life is great! You did it!

…whoa, hold your horses.

As the title of this article indicates, Facebook and Twitter, while a great beginning, are far from a conquest of social media. If we were playing Risk, you just conquered Australia. There are a lot of territories left and some are pretty big. Let’s take a world tour and hit on some more social media sites as you take your social media efforts to the next level.

There are literally hundreds of social media sites. Luckily, you don’t have to worry about most of them, but there are a few that you should definitely have a presence on for your dealership: Google+, Yelp, and Foursquare.

Google + is the 800-pound gorilla in this mix. It has a total of about 250 million users and, while it does not have the level of engagement or activity that Facebook and Twitter has, it is essential to have a presence here. Google has migrated from a general relevance model of delivering search results to an enhanced relevance model on an individual level by integrating a searcher’s social network. G+ has the best SEO of any sites as Google, naturally, favors its own products. Google hosts 11 billion monthly searches which are mostly people looking for relevant and timely content. It is a different platform so you need to differentiate your G+ strategy from your Twitter or Facebook marketing strategies. Google searchers are looking for timely news, offers, information, articles, etc. about not only your dealership but your brand and models. This is the site where your most visible business presence will be through Google searches so it’s important not to neglect this network.

Many businesses think of Yelp strictly as a review site. While it is an important part of your reputation management and review building strategies, there are also strong social media components which exist that could be used to fully leverage your Yelp presence.  Yelp claims to have 71 million unique visitors. Yes, there are some dealers who have strong criticisms of how Yelp holds them hostage when a negative review appears. Did you know, however, that Yelp also has strong location-based components that you can leverage to make offers to people that are near your location? It can also inform them that you are there in the first place, if they didn’t already know. Make sure to explore all the capabilities of Yelp, have a complete and optimized profile and are paying attention to more than just the reviews.

Foursquare is a location-based service which is growing increasingly valuable. Foursquare has 20 million registered users which, according to the company, “check-in” over 3 million times per day and they are about to pass 750 million check-ins total. It is another free service that is also very low maintenance and can be leveraged to not only drive traffic to your store but steal traffic from your competitors. Users can leave “tips” which amount to mini reviews at your location. These are becoming increasingly important as Bing recently integrated these tips into their map search engine. You also have the ability to create “offers” that you can leverage to attract new customers. These offers appear on a user’s mobile device when they check-in at a location. The location doesn’t have to be yours, however. It only needs to be a business in the general vicinity. If your store is in an auto mall, a customer could potentially go onto Foursquare to check-in at your competition (let’s face it, every dealer is your competition when it comes to used cars). They will see a special icon that will indicate that you have an offer. Curiosity may lead them to look at it and, if it’s compelling enough, may persuade them to visit your store.

As you can see, there is more to social media than you probably ever imagined. No one expects you to master all the sites, nor should you. But you should be cognizant of which sites are available, which sites your demographic is using, and which sites are generating traffic NOW, not last month. Remember MySpace? AOL? Social networking sites come and go. The ones that are hot right now may not be in a year. Be where your consumers are engaging and know how they want to be engaged with, no matter where that is. Digital marketing, and social media marketing by extension, is an ever-dynamic field. If you pay attention, you’ll know where you need to be and what you should do when you get there. For now, these are a good start.

Article originally published in the October 2012 issue of the 3 Birds Marketing newsletter.

Why Social Media Degrees Are Like Throwing Money Out the Window

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Social media skills have certainly come in demand for job-seekers in the marketing field and many companies are asking that candidates have some knowledge in how to market using social media. Many colleges have been offering classes in the social media arena for a while now. In fact, I’ve taken some of them. However, according to an article in Social Media Today, some colleges have taken it to the next level and have actually created entire social media degrees. An article published by The Center for Digital Education refers to Newberry College which plans on offering social media as a separate major starting in the Fall of 2013.

While the desire to get educated in social media is certainly admirable, any classes except those taught on a broad level with very general studies would be a waste of time and useless, in my opinion. Social media is a hyper-dynamic field in which one has to constantly adapt. Social networking sites are coming and going all the time. What’s hot today is thrown by the wayside tomorrow. Even if the classes focused entirely on the big two – Facebook and Twitter – even those two sites change continuously and while Twitter hasn’t made too many major changes, Facebook is constantly changing what its delivering to people’s newsfeeds. Even seasoned “pros” that have been working in the field for a long time constantly have to learn, evaluate and analyze not only current social media sites but also emerging ones.

To offer a college degree solely dedicated to social media is pointless on several levels. First, for the most part, the people that a university would employ as professors are typically not spring chickens. In fact, according to Wikipedia, the median age of a college professor is 55 years old with “very few people attain(ing) this position prior to the age of 40.” According to one study, more than half of social media users are between the ages of 25-44. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that a 55 year old person isn’t able to “know” social media well enough to teach it to a bunch of 18 year olds. That being said, I believe most of those 18 year olds probably know (and use) social media more than their professors. As far back as 2009, there was a University that was offering a Master’s degree in Social Media. According to Mashable, “some of the students have already described the course as too basic.”

Learning effective marketing, in general, in association with business and writing skills is certainly valuable to a young person planning on going into the marketing field. However, how valuable will the social media knowledge that is taught to them in college be four years later which was, percentage-wise, not being taught by the most educated (social media-wise) professor? I’ve taken classes on social media in which I knew more about it than the professor, which was why I stopped taking them. My goal was to learn, not spend money for a piece of paper that says I’ve learned skills that are already outdated.

Social media changes constantly. Social networks come and go daily. Learning how to effectively market on any given social media platform is a continuous job filled with analysis and adaptation. Trial and error, testing and re-testing, then adapting strategies based on what works NOW, is how most social media professionals “get the job done”. If there was a magic bullet or concrete list of techniques detailing the best way to market on each platform, whoever wrote that would be rich. I equate it to offering a class on how to create viral videos… while the class may exist, there is no formula that can produce this result consistently or, again, whomever discovered that would be rich. Then, of course, if everyone knew how to create viral videos because some magic formula came along teaching them how, none of them would be considered “viral” anymore.

There is no way social media can exist as its own major and be relevant 4 years later. My advice would be to use college to fill up on effective marketing, statistics, and business courses, in general, and take extra time, on your own, doing what you’re already doing anyways – using social networks. Read and learn on your own from the people who are willing to share their knowledge and expertise online (of which there are many) and are taking the time to keep up with current trends, techniques and changes in the world of social media. You could try and secure an internship at a company that specializes in social media to gain some practical, current, working knowledge of social media marketing.

I guarantee that you will come out of college prepared to enter the job market and will not have wasted 4 years (and who knows how much money) just to learn at the end that you haven’t learned anything.

Stat of the Week & In the News Compilation September/October 2012

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September 24, 2012: “In the News” – [LINK]

Free Ride for Facebook “Offers” Comes To An End

If you’ve been using Facebook’s “Offers” feature with your business page, the free ride is over. According to the Wall Street Journal, Facebook began charging businesses last week to run new offers. The “Offers” pricing structure is similar to the “Promoted Post” feature, it will vary based on how many “Likes” you have and how much exposure you want, with a $5 minimum charge for smaller business pages. This move is certainly in line with Facebook’s need to further monetize its services to appease stockholders. While “Offers” may now cost money, the “Deals” feature is still free for businesses to use… for now.

September 27, 2012: “Stat of the Week” – [LINK]

5 million

Apple set new sales records last week, with the much-anticipated release of the iPhone 5. The company sold 5 million phones in just 3 days with 2 million phones sold within the first 24 hours, according to many sources including the International Business Times. Pre-orders for the first batch of iPhone 5s sold out inhours from Apple and all other vendors, the day pre-orders began–and that was just in the U.S. Today, the iPhone 5 launches in 22 countries with inventory already in short supply. Clearly, mobileusers–and smartphone owners in particular– have arrived in force. They are using their phones to read and write customer reviews, search for stores and inventory, and become more connected than ever on a more sophisticated

October 1, 2012: “In the News” – [LINK]

State of California to Employers & Schools, “Quit Snooping”!
California Ruling Bans Employers and Schools from Demanding Social Media Passwords

Last week, California became the third state to pass laws that restrict employers and post-secondary schools from requiring access to social media accounts. California joins Maryland and Delaware in recognizing that social media accounts are private by nature and that forcing an employee or student to grant access is an invasion of that privacy. As quoted in an article from Bloomberg, California Governor, Jerry Brown, says that California is “pioneering the social media revolution and these laws will protect all Californians from unwarranted invasions of their personal social media accounts.” This is a trend that will likely continue to expand as social media awareness and use increases.

October 12, 2012: “Stat of the Week” – [LINK]

48%

According to this article in the Atlantic, “Facebook alone refers more than 48% of small business web traffic.” If you include Twitter, which is responsible for 4% of web traffic, these two social media sites account for over ½ of all small business web traffic. It is becoming more important for small businesses to have and cultivate Facebook and Twitter presences. Just like traditional advertising, you want to be visible where your customers are but, unlike a billboard or newspaper ad, with social media you have the opportunity to engage and communicate not only with your customers but with potential customers as well. With almost 1 in 7 people in the world owning Facebook accounts, learning how to properly use it and other social networks to market your business is no longer optional.

October 29, 2012 – “In the News” [LINK]

In the News: Government & Business Embrace Social Media for Hurricane Sandy Notices

As Hurricane Sandy bears down on the East Coast today, evidence that social media as a common news source and method of instant communication is becoming more prevalent. According to Computerworld, everyone from private individuals, airlines, and Federal, State and local governments and emergency services are turning to social media to relay information. Google has setup an interactive hurricane map, Facebook itself set up a Hurricane Sandy community page, FEMA is using social media to update citizens, airlines are using it to update people on flights with over 10,000 flights cancelled today across the country and the American Red Cross has integrated social media into its “Hurricane” app which allows people to “update friends and family by simultaneously sending out messages on Facebook, Twitter, via text, and e-mail.” The hashtag #Sandy is the top trending topic in all areas affected by the storm. These actions validate that social media has evolved significantly from simply a way to let your friends know what movie you’re watching to a legitimate means of delivering news and information instantaneously to a lot of people all at once in a centralized location.