The Reciprocal Consulting Blog

Twitter Chat has become one of the most popular features of the social media service whose mascot is a funny-looking bird. The way it works is the moderator, or facilitator, of the chat creates a hashtag that all members of the chat session can use to keep up with the conversation. While the hashtag is useful for keeping up with the chat, there are some tools that you can use to make tweeting easier during the chat session. One such tool is TweetChat.

The benefit to using TweetChat is that everyone who is a member of the chat session can make their tweets via TweetChat and the tool itself will automatically insert the hashtag after each post. That’s important because many members of a Twitter chat session will often forget to include the hashtag when they post.

So what are the benefits of hosting a Twitter chat session?

First, you can use it to develop relationships with your biggest fans and customers. Set a chat session to discuss an important topic in your industry and see who shows up. You can also offer discounts on items to people who show up at the chat sessions, so you can use it as a marketing and promotional tool. The biggest benefit to hosting a Twitter chat session is that you can often find new followers due to the public nature of the chat sessions. Because they are public and not private anyone can see the chat in progress. That means anyone who is following your hashtag or who performs a search for keywords that any member of the chat session uses will see your chat session and possibly join. Followers of each member will also see the chat and may join in.

Hosting Twitter chat session can lead to more followers and more business for your brand. It’s a great social media tool.

An SEO company conducted an experiment with a well done control test that sheds some light on the connection between organic search rankings and social media promotion. The conclusion is that Google+ promotion increases search rankings. I think there may be some nuances this test doesn’t touch on, but it looks pretty reasonable to me that they’ve drawn the right conclusion.

I have noticed that Google+ is a good reputation management tool.

If you look at the results of the study, they seem to indicate that acquiring new Google+ followers is the best activity for increasing one’s search engine rankings, but that could be misleading. The results are based on gaining just 100 new followers. Would the results be the same if the number of new followers were 1,000? How about 5,000?

Next in line for increasing search engine rankings is getting +1s. It actually makes sense that getting more +1s would increase search engine rankings. This doesn’t surprise me at all.

That Facebook promotion actually does increase Google rankings does surprise me a little bit. But I’m glad to see that it happens. Facebook has done a lot to make itself a walled garden so a lot of your activity isn’t measured by Google. Evidently, Likes and shares are.

Tweets and retweets can also increase search engine rankings, but only by a smidgen. The only thing that surprises me about this is that the results are much lower than expected. I’d have thought that Twitter promotion would do more to increase search engine rankings.

Finally, simply acquiring new Twitter followers not only doesn’t help, but there was a slight decrease in search engine rankings. That’s another surprise. But this might not have anything to do with Twitter. If no other social media activity took place, then the slight decrease in search engine rankings might have been as a result of that lack of activity.

Given these results, it seems to reason that if you engaged in Google+, Facebook, and Twitter promotions simultaneously, then your search engine rankings should improve relative to the amount of activity engaged by your competition. Nice test. I’m glad someone undertook it.

It appears that large companies have given up their blogs and flocked to social media instead. The reason they’re giving up is because they say that social media is easier to manage than a blog. But is it?

I love this paragraph by Cynthia Boris:

Just remember that if you want your social media outlets to benefit you, you have to do more than just keep the lights on. You have to provide meaningful content that engages your audience. In that respect, it’s just as hard as blogging, but most people don’t see it that way.

Not only that, but …

What blogs give you that you don’t get with social media, is a chance to communicate without all the noise. On Facebook, you’re one of a dozen posts competing for instant attention. An hour later, you’re off the front page and forgotten.

What Cynthia Boris doesn’t say is that your company blog also provides you with search engine optimization benefits that Facebook and Twitter don’t offer. OK, Twitter does offer a little bit of SEO juice, but it’s nowhere near what your blog has to offer.

Every blog post you write is another chance to be seen in a search result. Your blog itself increases its SEO chutzpah with longevity. And you can build invaluable internal links with a blog. Facebook has blocked Google so your posts aren’t going to be indexed and your links back to your site won’t be seen. Twitter is in bed with Bing, not Google.

I’m not saying don’t use Facebook or Twitter. They have their place. But having a blog is one of the best SEO tools you can have. If you have trouble coming up with content, maybe you should think about hiring someone else to manage your blog.

Are you a CEO? Do you have direct access to the CEO at your company? If so, then you should do everything you can to convince him or her to open up a Twitter account and start tweeting.

According to the latest survey, 77% of consumers and 82% of employees trust a company more when its CEO tweets.

Tweeting puts your CEO on the front line of customer service rather than hiding behind a desk on top of a 700-foot ivory tower. That spells “inaccessible,” and in an age of expected accessibility it is the cardinal sin. Your entire company will benefit if your CEO isn’t afraid to get his social media hands dirty.

That doesn’t mean he should just jump in without getting a primer first. Certainly, you should have your PR or marketing consultant discuss the pros and cons of Twitter and develop a social media strategy.

I wouldn’t stop at Twitter either. Try out Facebook, Google+ and LinkedIn as well. All of your top executives should have a social media presence.

It’s hard to ignore social media in today’s world. It’s so expected that if you ignore it you will be relegating your company to the trash heaps of history. And there are enough companies heading in that direction without yours joining them. The best part about social media is that you don’t have to spend all day working it. You can have a viable plan with just 15-30 minutes a day.

If you’re a CEO, work out your social media plan now.

Recent news shows that Twitter – chirp chirp – has acquired Posterous. So now for the obvious question, so what?

The move has many speculators suggesting that Twitter will eventually shut down Posterous. After all, Twitter’s own message hints that the reason they made the purchase was to gain access to the engineers working on the Posterous platform:

Posterous engineers, product managers and others will join our teams working on several key initiatives that will make Twitter even better.

If that’s the case, then don’t be surprised if you do see your Posterous account suddenly in jeopardy. But Twitter is trying to be sensitive to your needs:

Posterous Spaces will remain up and running without disruption. We’ll give users ample notice if we make any changes to the service. For users who would like to back up their content or move to another service, we’ll share clear instructions for doing so in the coming weeks.

It think it would be wise to take them up on their offer and back up your content. There’s the possibility that Twitter will allow Posterous to continue, but I doubt it. These types of acquisitions generally lead to closures, and it’s understandable why. They are a drain on resources and an expense, not to mention a distraction from the purchasing company’s primary mission. So, the business philosophy is to cut the fat.

Should you ditch Posterous right now? No, I wouldn’t say that. You should adopt a “wait and see” approach. Keep posting as before, but be prepared to take your content elsewhere should Twitter decide to close the service.

In social media and Web marketing, that’s the way the cookie crumbles.

What is the most popular social media website for business-to-business marketing? If you guessed Twitter, then you’d be right. But which social media site actually delivers more leads? According to Mediabistro, that would be LinkedIn.

Big surprise?

The sad part is most small businesses aren’t using any kind of social media measurement tool, so how would they know where the majority of their leads are coming from? Twitter might be more popular, and easier to use. But it isn’t more lucrative. The ROI is actually coming from the social media site that specializes in B2B networking.

But LinkedIn doesn’t just beat Twitter for lead generation. It beats ALL social media websites. Even blogging.

While most small businesses are using social media and have a strategy for it, most of them also don’t use any kind of social media metrics. That brings to mind an age-old question: If you aren’t measuring it, how can you change it?

Businesses who do business with other businesses need to figure out how to measure their social media marketing campaigns. And it helps if you use the social networks that your target audience is using. If you are targeting consumers, that might be Facebook or Twitter. If you are targeting other businesses, it is more than likely LinkedIn.

One thing is for sure – we live in a social media age. But don’t just do it because your competition is doing it. Doing it because it is right for your business.

Pinterest is the new kid on the block and already it has surpassed Twitter in traffic numbers. But don’t get excited just yet.

We’re only talking about one month. Was that a fluke or is Pinterest still trending upward? Will that trend continue over time?

And if it does, will traffic from Pinterest convert?

It’s best to understand that Twitter and Pinterest are two different social networks and therefore have two different sets of demographics. That might make it unfair to compare the two.

For instance, Twitter is mostly women and mostly younger people. Twitter, on the other hand, is mostly male, but only slightly. Twitter is also heavily used among the African-American and Hispanic demographics. It’s also a mostly younger crowd.

Any time you use a social media site you should take some time to study their users. Who else is using that site? If your targeted audience doesn’t use the site, then it doesn’t matter how much traffic you can potentially get from the site.

If your target market is mostly women, then Pinterest is a good bet for you. That’s not to say that you can’t use Pinterest if your target market is mostly men. But you have to understand how to reach the men who are using Pinterest, so familiarity with the platform and its limitations is also necessary.

Most marketers can effectively use Pinterest and Twitter side by side, but don’t try to use them the same way. They are different social media services and your audience will require a tailored approach.

McDonald’s decided to spend its money buying a hashtag on the popular social media website Twitter.

First, I’d like to know how you can buy a hashtag, but that’s an aside. The real issue is what happened after McDonald’s changed its hashtag from #MeetTheFarmers to #McDStories.

The original hashtag was meant to introduce McDonald’s Twitter followers to the company’s promotion of fresh produce. It worked well. Then, in a flash of brilliance that turned out to be not so brilliant, the company’s social media manager decided to open the door to the universe by expanding its Twitter promotion. Enter #McDStories.

Who doesn’t have a positive McDonald’s story, right? Indeed. And who doesn’t have a negative one. Duh.

You can probably guess what happened next. Followers started using the new hashtag to relate their own McDonald’s stories – chipped molars, regurgitation, food poisoning …. The list goes on.

I think the big lesson here is not how to respond to negative reactions on Twitter or some other social media site. Rather, the real lesson is how to prevent it from happening in the first place. This all could have been prevented had McDonald’s not insisted on opening the door to the universe. All they had to do was keep running the promotion that was working.

When things are going well, don’t change them. Rule #1. Rule #2 is, always ask what might go wrong.

Had McDonald’s social media manager lived by those two rules we wouldn’t be talking about them right now. That second question is particularly important. In social media – and on the World Wide Web in general – once something starts spiraling out of control, it’s hard to get a handle on it. If it’s out there, it’s out there. So put some thought into your moves before you make them. Ask, what can go wrong with this? If the answer is something too big to control or too embarrassing to let go on, don’t make your move. Do something else, or nothing at all.

On February 1st, you’ll be able to buy yourself a Twitter brand page – if you have $25,000. I don’t know about you, but that price seems a little steep to me.

Twitter had originally accepted a minimum of $2 million from 20 large companies on the scale of Coca-Cola and Disney for the privilege of being the first companies to have brand pages on the microblogging platform. The pages look quite nice.

The big question is, when will the rest of us gain access to Twitter brand pages and how much will it cost us?

It’s obvious that Twitter is using this opportunity as a way to raise operating funds. But the problem, as I see it, is that the companies spending the most amount of money and getting in earlier will have an advantage over companies with smaller pocketbooks. They’ll effectively be the Twitter users that set the policy for the rest of us. They could use Twitter to shut the door on their competition, and may already have.

Has Twitter sold out to the highest bidder? Has it become a haven for big brands? Will it go by the way of eBay and alienate its smaller, less wealthy users?

Only time will tell or provide any answers to these questions. Meanwhile, if you’ve got $25,000 in your pocket, then you can buy yourself a Twitter brand page. Someday, you might be allowed to establish a Twitter brand page for your company for a monthly or yearly fee. Average that over a lifetime and you could very well spend $25,000, or more, for the privilege of tweeting 140 characters at a time.

Let’s hope that Twitter doesn’t become the social media website of the rich, for the rich, and by the rich.

It was bound to happen sooner or later. A lawsuit over who owns the Twitter account of an employee (technically, a former employee) who used the account in part to tweet on behalf of the employee. Sidebar: There was contract.

In the absence of case law, a case like this is far from open-shut. In fact, it could get dirty. But I suspect that PhoneDog Media saw an opportunity to bully for money.

Ask any lawyer and he’ll tell you that a business should “aggressively” protect its trademark and other business interests. Otherwise, the company could lose them. It’s a standard line, and its one that is often interpreted to encourage business owners to pursue litigation for even the most extraordinary and awkwardly absurd situations.

I’m not saying this situation is “extraordinary and awkwardly absurd,” but if you read the company’s response to The New York Times, it smacks of legal double-talk.

“The costs and resources invested by PhoneDog Media into growing its followers, fans and general brand awareness through social media are substantial and are considered property of PhoneDog Media L.L.C. We intend to aggressively protect our customer lists and confidential information, intellectual property, trademark and brands.”

When employers and employees begin to make handshake agreements regarding the latter’s social media accounts and using them on behalf of company business, it’s an area of law is very murky. It is in both party’s interest to get a contract. It could save a lot of headache in the long run and spell out the particulars that could make a lawsuit unnecessary and avoidable.

Disclaimer: This blog post is not intended to be legal advice. Seek an attorney before making decisions about your social media accounts.

First, Facebook rolled out brand pages for businesses. Then Google+ hit the scene and within three months had introduced brand pages. Now, after several years of successful operations and climbing usage, Twitter is introducing brand pages.

Unfortunately, not everyone can have one just yet.

But with 76% of small businesses saying they use Twitter, that open-to-public launch could come soon.

Currently, Twitter brand pages are only open to a few big brands such as

• American Express
• Best Buy
• Bing
• Chevrolet
• Coca-Cola
• Disney
• General Electric
• McDonald’s
• Nike
• PepsiCo
• Staples
• Verizon Wireless
• Heineken
• Subway
• and Paramount Pictures

just to name a few.

Once Twitter’s brand pages go public, it looks like small businesses will have a troika (triumvirate?) of social media brand pages to promote. So the big question is, what will be the most effective way to promote all three brand pages for maximum effectiveness?

It’s become apparent that each of the social media websites cater to specific personality types. Marketers have discovered that Twitter audiences and Facebook audiences do not line up as the same. Therefore, promotions to each service need to be unique.

That will undoubtedly be the way going forward as well. When you run your brand page specials, you’ll have to have one for Twitter, a separate one for Facebook, and then one for Google+. Are you ready?

It’s been just a couple of weeks since Google+ went public. Before then, you had to wait for a user to send you an invitation and then you entered a waiting list. Well, now the waiting list is gone and so are the invitations. But what kind of world has it left us?

In its first two weeks of being public, Google+ saw 2 million new users. Its servers slowed down and some users experienced a few minor glitches while using the service. That’s a good thing.

No outages. Nothing stratospheric in terms of hiccups. But it was noticeable.

Google+ still continues to grow at a steady and highly noticeable pace. Many users are anxiously waiting for business accounts to be introduced. That will add another level of competition between Facebook and Google+, a competitive landscape that is already pretty tough. But what about LinkedIn and Twitter?

At last count, Google was somewhere in the neighborhood of No. 5 or 7 in traffic for social media websites – right behind Twitter and LinkedIn. It won’t take much growth to pass them both.

I think we may be leaving the world where social marketers proclaimed Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter were the most important social services for businesses. In the future, you will likely hear that Facebook, Twitter and Google+ are the most useful services. Do you agree?

Did you know your tweets have a half-life of three hours? According to Bit.ly, you’ll get half the clicks on your tweets in 2.8 hours and then from there it’s all down hill. With Facebook, you have 3.2 hours.

That doesn’t mean those links are dead. It means you’ll see a gradual decline in links after that half-life has expired. The recommendation is for you to submit “second chance” links to allow other followers who didn’t see the first one an opportunity to see your links. That’s a suggestion made by Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Land.

There’s another reason you want to send out these “second chance” shares as well. You want to test another teaser message.

Remember, what you say (the reason you give for your followers needing to click a link) about a link determines to a great degree whether or not a link is clicked on. With a second chance share, you can test another teaser and capture clicks from people who saw the first link but weren’t intrigued by your teaser message.

Either way you look at it, tweeting and sharing the same information more than once is becoming a common practice. I’ve seen marketers share the same message across multiple days. The reason they do so is because they get more click-throughs.

Twitter has become all the craze. Even small business owners are getting into it and trying to figure out how to make the most of their 140 characters. Here are 12 guaranteed ways to build value into every Twitter message.

1. Use short URLs. Bit.ly, ShortURL, TinyURL, and Is.gd are just a few of the services you can use.
2. Optimize your tweets for keywords.
3. Include a hashtag and make your hashtag a part of your message (for example: Why didn’t I #think of that?)
4. Make your message sing like a news headline.
5. Retweet your favorite Twitter users and do it often.
6. Build relationships using the @mention feature.
7. Tweet different items than what you would share on Facebook, LinkedIn, and other social networks. Keep your audience in mind.
8. Don’t add more than one link per tweet.
9. Keep your Twitter messages on topic. Don’t send out frivolous tweets about topics you are not passionate about.
10. Don’t tweet too much. Spread your tweets out throughout the day.
11. Shorten your messages to leave room for your shortURL link and a hashtag.

Keep these 12 tips in mind when using Twitter for your business social networking. Remember your audience and what they are following you for. Build value into every tweet.

I have no doubt you’ve likely heard of Twitter, but have you heard Paper.li?

Paper.li allows anyone to become an instant publisher by creating a daily newspaper that republishes tweets based on the publisher’s preference. When you establish a newspaper on Paper.li, you choose a set of keywords and triggers that Paper.li uses to find information to publish in your daily newspaper. Then, when each issue is published, it tweets your newspaper with @mentions of all the news spotters who have contributed to your edition. It’s an awesome social curation tool.

Social curation is something new. It essentially means that you “curate,” or compile, content from the Internet inside of a social media platform. Paper.li is the perfect example.

You can benefit from Paper.li without being a publisher. All you have to do is continue tweeting interesting links and Paper.li publishers will pick those up and run them in their newspapers. How does that benefit you? A lot.

As a news spotter, you get an instant profile on Paper.li. No need to even sign up for an account. Your profile lists all the stories that you find and tweet which get picked up by Paper.li publishers. Through that, you can gain new Twitter followers and even more readers to your blog. From that, you hope more business.

With Paper.li and Twitter you have the potential to create all the social buzz you can handle.

Google+ has been getting a lot of attention lately. After breaking a growth record of 25 million visitors in its first month, some Internet marketers are speculating that it could siphon traffic away from Twitter and/or Facebook. But will it?

I suppose anything is possible. Maybe Google Plus’s privacy features will take some of Facebook’s traffic away, but I doubt that it will have a huge impact. Maybe its commenting and interactive features will lure people away from Twitter, but I doubt it will do much of that either. There are reasons to see Google+ as just another social media site to add to your current stream of meeting places.

But then you have to ask the question, How much time do I really have for social media? Can you manage a Facebook profile, several Facebook pages, a Twitter account, LinkedIn, and Goolge+? That’s a lot of media.

The best question for any social media site is “Where is my audience hanging out?” Answer that and you’ll be able to see where you should hang out too.

Google+ has a lot of value. I think its uses will grow and transform. And I think it will attract a lot of users. But I don’t think it will replace what we’ve already been using. But that’s just me.

About a month ago, Google and Twitter decided to part ways, though no one is clear as to precisely why. The result has been the end of realtime search at Google.

It seems that Google has plans to resurrect realtime search with Google+ as a prominent feature. I have two things to say about that.

1. First, adding Google+ to a product that was useful and helpful is a good idea. After all, the product was owned by Google. So I’m all for adding Google+ to realtime search. However, in its current form, Google+ won’t be able to carry the weight of realtime search. Include it, but don’t rely on it too much.
2. Secondly, realtime search was – and is – valuable without Twitter. I understand that Twitter was a huge contributor, but Google couldn’t figure out how to make realtime search work without it? I think any service that relies upon one dominant player for success is doomed to failure from the beginning.

The bottom line is this: Realtime search is important. But it shouldn’t be reliant upon one service for it to be successful. Search engines that employ realtime search should think about diversity. And that goes even – maybe especially – for Google.

If you’re looking for good reasons to use Twitter (and I mean reasons you haven’t thought of yet), here are three good reasons to hop aboard Twitter right now.

1. By following the A-list bloggers and your favorite Twitterers, you can often find great blog ideas just by reading what others are saying. You can check out the latest trends and get blog ideas as well. Twitter is an endless source of ideas for your blog. Just don’t plagiarize.
2. No matter where you are located, you can always find interesting people to follow (and be followed by). Use your Twitter stream as a networking tool and discover who is in the know. Build relationships that lead to new business.
3. The search engines now return real-time search results. These are results that are returned within seconds and include Facebook status updates, Twitter messages, LinkedIn updates, and other social media interactions. Your published tweets have a real good chance of appearing in real-time results if you optimize them for search engine traffic.

Social media is an ever-changing landscape. Twitter is a fast growing social media publishing tool and it’s become more and more relevant by the day. Start using Twitter today.

You can count on one thing for sure: Social media is going to keep getting better.

Here’s a fun fact: Twitter has recently acquired Backtype.

So what does that mean?

Given that Backtype owns Backtweets, the Twitter analytics service, it can only mean one thing. Twitter is headed for a major innovation that will involve the use of analytics for its users.

If you are a current user of Backtweets, then you’ll be allowed to continue using the service for free. New signups, however, have been put on hold. So here’s the question: How long will new signups be on hold and when will the new Twitter-run Backtweets go full time? Also, will it be a paid service or free?

My bet is that Backtweets will offer a free version, but there will be a paid version for businesses, and if you are business Twitter user it would likely be in your favor to pay for the analytics so that you can measure the effectiveness of your tweeting.

Another thing that is likely to happen is the integration of short URLs with analytics. You’ll have to be able to track and measure the click-throughs on your links whether they are short URL links or long URL links, and if short URL, you’ll need to be able to track and measure your effectiveness whether you use Tinyurl, Bit.ly, or another service. Backtweets might also be able to offer analytics for Facebook and LinkedIn as well.

What do you think? Is this a good acquisition for Twitter? Will it improve your social media marketing efforts?

A new report based on a survey of social network users says that LinkedIn is the most important social network for 59% of the people who use them. That’s LinkedIn, not Facebook or Twitter. That might seem unusual considering that Facebook and Twitter get most of the hype.

But, frankly, I think it makes a lot of sense.

Facebook is still a place for personal networking for a lot of people. It’s where they go to connect with friends and family. Yes, they also can set up a page for their business and network with people to attract new business. But being that Facebook is a personal space for a lot of people, and it is the most trafficked social network in cyberspace, the threshold for a high ROI is rather low. In other words, there are challenges in turning a Facebook networking plan into a profit. But it’s not impossible.

Twitter has become much more of a micropublishing platform. And it hasn’t quite caught on with the mainstream just yet.

LinkedIn, on the other hand, is a business social networking tool. People who use it use it for business. Period. So it makes sense that it would deliver the highest ROI. What do you think?