The Texas Rangers vs. the St. Louis Cardinals. Not exactly a World Series for the ages - on paper. at least. Doesn't matter, it's the World Series, therefore, I watch (even if the Giants aren't playing!).
This year I'm taking a different approach to watching the games. I plan to check out as much social media as I can find that's tied to the Series.It'll be interesting to see who does what, who does something to suck me in, to make me Retweet, Comment, Share, or post a response.Here's a list of the social resources I'll be tracking.Twitter feeds:
(Spoiler Alert - You can just follow my Twitter List here).
MLB 1,519,567 Followers
MLB's official World Series feed 12,432
MLB PR 31,241
The Cardinals official feed 63,935
The Cardinals' Front Office 31,273
Busch Rally Squirrel 27,213
The Rangers' official feed 79,104
MLB on Fox 52,417
ESPN Baseball Tonight 41,525
Steve Berthiaume 33,692
Jon Heyman 105,782
Hashtags:
#Postseason
#WorldSeries
#stlcards
#rangers
#11in11Facebook Pages:
MLB on Facebook 699,834 Fans
Texas Rangers 873,465
St. Louis Cardinals 945,553
Fox Sports 132,286Blogs:
Joe Posnanski's Joe Blogs
MLBlogs
Keith Olbermann, Baseball Nerd
Buster Olney
Sweet Spot by David Scvhoenfield
Big League StewWhat am I missing? What will you be following?
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You built your Facebook page, launched your Twitter account and... nothing?
If you're just arriving at the Social Media party, expect to be playing catch-up for a while. Your competition may have a head-start and you can bet that your customers do, too. The good news is that in this dynamic environment, there are great tools that will help you find your customers and help your customers find you in a hurry!Your customers won't know you have a Facebook page or Twitter account unless you tell them. It might seem obvious to you now, but you'd be surprised how many business web sites do not ask their customers to join them on Facebook and Twitter. It's a must! Point them to your social media and make it easy for them to join. Put links on every page, every article, every blog post.Share your numbers! People love to go where others are hanging out, so use a Facebook button that shows how many followers you have and who they are! Remember, this is "Social!"The Internet isn't the only way to help customers join your conversation online. Your unique Facebook URL and Twitter address should be on all of your printed materials, too. Brochures, business cards, you name it. Point your customers to your pages and feed! Tell them what they'll find when they get there!Offer an incentive for joining you. If they are to join your community, they are doing so as a customer not a friend. You can find success getting them to join by running a drawing or offering free reports or e-books. Giveaways of products or services have proven successful for many. Coupons or discounts are also great incentives. But make sure they have to "Like" your page or subscribe to your feed to earn the incentive!To begin building your Twitter presence, here is a great list of step-by-step instructions from Chris Brogan on How to Build Your Social Media Influence with Twitter Lists. Follow these instructions and you're well on your way!Track your metrics. If you haven't set measurable goals over time for your social media effort, stop right here. Without a set measurable objective and timeline over which to achieve it, how will you ever know what success looks like?When you know what you want to count, there are great tools available that allow you to measure everything. Which of your Tweets are delivering clicks, getting Re-Tweeted, you name it, you can count it. Some goes for Facebook. Keep track of the types of content that your customers share, like and comment on. Run A/B copy tests. Tweet your Facebook updates and track the response when you combine efforts.Don't feel like you are starting from square one. Much of the heavy lifting has already been done for you when it comes to utilizing data to optimize your Facebook results. Here are tips that will help you succeed:
- Keep your status updates short. Posts of fewer than 80 words will maximize your results.
- Optimize your frequency. More is not better. Over saturate your customers news feed with superfluous information and you're gong to get tuned out. Research shows that an average of 2 posts per day is optimal for most businesses.
- Photos and videos generate the most response. Use them! Create infographics, use Slideshare. Visual communication will response!
- Optimize timing. Data shows that posts between 10AM and 4PM Eastern time generate the most response. Schedule your posts to take advantage.
- Thursday and Friday tend to be the best days for generating customer interaction. Use them!
Social media can be a very successful business driver. Help your customers find you and make sure they're glad they did. Then, they'll tell two friends, and so on...
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Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, Tumblr, and Twitter, too? What's next?
Get used to it. Social networks are still in their infancy. Anyone who tells you they know where all this is heading, is full of it. All I know is that if you're not jumping aboard to figure out how you're going to integrate all this into your Smarter Business Communications plan you don't have a smarter business communications plan!Twitter is 5 years old this year. Not only are businesses using it to communicate and make money, an entire eco-system of businesses has sprung up to ease the use and help increase the efficiency of this really cool micro-blogging tool.So, how can a company communicate a business message and their corporate values in 140 characters of type? And who's reading that stuff anyway?Look, if you want to reach influencers, you need to be using Twitter. Facebook has more users and LinkedIn is more B2B-centric, but according to research from Exact Target, people come to Twitter because they WANT to influence others. Daily Twitter users are continually looking for ways to add Followers and increase their influence. While the research shows that passive users of Twitter are decreasing their participation in this network, the most influential segment of Internet users are INCREASING their use. These people are even showing positive response to promoted Tweets! Aren't these are the exact people your Smarter Business Communications plan should target!To top it off, the research shows that consumers follow a brand in order to interact. Isn't that the whole idea behind this social media stuff? If you're only using these tools to pump out your press releases and promote your products and services, you're getting tuned out anyway. You have a better chance of getting consumers to interact on Twitter than you have getting them to sign up for your newsletters or "like" your page on Facebook.Consumers on Twitter want authenticity, they want insider information (remember, they WANT to influence others!), they want to get to know the people behind the scenes at your company, they want special offers, and they want to see how you are going to respond when when someone gets all up in your face. Be real. Turn off the corporate speak.One of the top complaints about Twitter is also one of its greatest attributes - brevity. Consumers say they can get what they need from Twitter without spending too much time crafting an e-mail. It's quick and to the point.Real time communications doesn't get much better than with Twitter. Within a minute of the August 23 earthquake on the east coast, Twitter had over 40,000 earthquake related messages. Within 4 minutes over 3 million Twitter users had earthquake related messages in their status updates. Imagine what this means for business. Whether for promotional purposes, internal communications, customer service, or crisis management, the ability to communicate with huge numbers of consumers in real time has never been better.Like with any new tool, getting a handle on how best to use Twitter will take work and practice. There is no one right way to use it and you should count on continually updating your methods. But if you think you can get by without playing, you might soon find yourself paying solitaire.
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