Archive for March 2009

LinkedIn Tip #10 Business or Pleasure

March 5 2009

LinkedIn is a pre-requisite for business networking. Sure, Facebook is great for catching up with old high school and college chums, but it lacks the buttoned-up, professional feel and usability of LinkedIn. Seriously, do I want my customers, vendors and business associates checking out my high school yearbook pics. No, not really. Silly pics in our VLG fan club that reveal a little of our creative personality, yeah, okay.

However, if you are able to divide your network into business (LinkedIn) and pleasure (Facebook) it opens the door to a great two-pronged approach to networking. It allows you to cast the net a little further than you might otherwise to build a larger network of peers on LinkedIn. Don’t give up an opportunity to grow and develop your business, because you haven’t played golf with someone, or worked with them, or gone to university with them. You can open yourself up to new relationships, professional relationships. Could you have leveraged this ten years ago?

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Advanced Twitter, Part III

March 4 2009

Yesterday we promised more information on how to use #hashtags to leverage Twitter. You might use # to track bugs with your software or complaints from users. On the other hand you could use # to announce and track tweets about a new product or service. Some have used # at trade shows to create a real-time conversation between and among attendees right on the show floor.

You’ll find stories #hashtag communities tracking a presidential address, or the wildfires in California. The possibilities are seemingly limitless, but are likely most effective when creating short-term crowds that gather and disperse quickly.

If you don’t define yourself on Twitter others will. Creating a #hashtag is just the first step. Once you have one in place it is a good idea to define yourself on Tagal.us. Doing so will not only gives you (us) the ability to track your tag. It’s not a perfect science, but it holds promise for those looking to take their tweets beyond 140 characters.

If you’d like to provide us a little feedback about this blog just add #vlg to your tweet.

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Advanced Twitter, Part II

March 3 2009

Now that you are tweeting and following with your brand new Twitter account you might be looking for a way to sift through the minutia. Highly relevant content flying around on Twitter never makes it to you. You see only what you follow.

What if you want to follow what you don’t see? That’s where the hash (number sign) comes in. The good folks that created Hastags.org thought it might be a good idea to build real-time news communities. Here’s an example.

At VLG we are always looking for feedback about us, our website, our philosophy, or the marketing campaigns we build for our clients. Lots of us have Twitter accounts, including one “corporate” account. If I post a tweet about any of the above it might look something like this:

@mosimmons what did you think of about our new homepage? #wefightboredom.com

If others at VLG make the same request of their Twitter followers, we’ll be able to track that specific #hastag to see results for all tweets that include #wefightboredom. Run out to Hashtags.org, search for your tag to capture aggregate results. What you’ll find is a clunky UI that spits back raw, but useful data.

Tomorrow we’ll show you how to leverage #hashtags, clean up that data, and tweet with confidence.

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Advanced Twitter, Part I

March 2 2009

Twitter may not be for everyone. However, if you recently signed up for a Twitter account and started following your friends, or colleagues or your company, it might be time to take your game to the next level. If you manage your company’s Twitter account(s), you may find our advice helpful.

We need to get you into the right conversations. You need to follow the right people, because on Twitter it’s the company you keep that gives you the content you need. Following the eating and sleeping habits of others may not be the best use of your time. Following people and companies that share your interests is a great way to pick up industry news.

Search by industry keyword, company name, or even the name of titans in your industry to find good follows. If any one person you follows seems to dominate the conversation on your page, you might consider dropping them to unmask other content. Conversely, we suggest you only tweet on average three times a day. Call it the 10:00, 2:00, & 6:00 rule. We’re in the central time zone, so this allows us to hit both coasts with relevant content during business hours.

Remember, Twitter’s one of the few places where following actually makes you a leader.

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Brands: Bend Don’t Break

March 1 2009

We talk a lot about brands. We’re a marketing and advertising agency so it’s hard not too. A year ago, or maybe two years ago we started telling our customers to put their brands on the back burner. There’s no need to march your brand out out in front of your target audience where it will twirl and dance and preen and distract your target audience from your message and your story. Harsh words for someone with a brand management background and a tough sell for us, but we’re sticking to our guns on this one.

Maybe there is a different way to communicate this to our clients. I’m starting to think we should ask them to just let the brand bend a little bit. It won’t break as long as you have a compelling story. To be fair, we do work in the B2B space more often than not. The growth of social media and crowd sourcing brand control on the consumer side no longer rests with the Brand Manager. You might give it a nudge in one direction or another, but branding now resides with consumers and brand evangelists.

In Texas speak, brand control is kind of like bull riding. It’s not the cowboy, but the bull that’s in control.

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