For the past few months, my colleague, Katie Safrey, and I have been drowning deeply immersed in launching and running some exciting (and successful) social media programs for our clients. We have finally surfaced to take a breath, and thought we would share a few downright practical tips from the Twitter trenches.

Note: These tips apply to both B2B and B2C Twitter programs. There is little difference, in our opinion. Why? It’s all about talking to the INDIVIDUAL! That individual (1) is making the decision, (2) is recommending (3) is talking about your company, products, or services.

Remember: Companies don’t buy, recommend or talk about products. People do!

So, for starters, we are fanatical big on research, preparation and launch plans before executing a program, and this, believe it or not, goes for Twitter too.

The following prep work has made it really easy and smooth for us to launch successful and sustainable Twitter programs for our clients, and keep us all focused:

• Define your goals and objectives
• Research your target audience and target market
• Define the boundary of your conversation
• Create a launch plan to include all components of setting up a Twitter handle
• Research and create a list of “first 50” people to follow before the account launches
• Create an “editorial calendar” to use as a source of themes and tweets so you can begin with valuable tweets
• Create a Twitter Usage Policy
• Define who is going to be tweeting on behalf of your company
• Determine beforehand metrics for measuring the success of the campaign (more to follow on this in an upcoming post!)

We are also big on setting real expectations for our clients. While everyone is excited that there is finally a “free” and easy marketing channel, here’s what we remind them:

• Twitter is not a magic formula that will bring awareness, branding or leads overnight
• It takes time and consistent effort for you to build a true, valuable following
• Start by setting a goal of a minimum of 5 tweets per day
• You must engage with other users to build your following (Re-tweets, follow Fridays and conversation go a long way!)
• You need to be committed with a long-term steady time investment
• Yes, its takes time and resources to consistently tweet; make sure these resources are in place before launching the program
• Valuable content is key to your success
• Don’t concentrate on quantity, but quality of your followers

And keep in mind, Twitter is not an end unto itself, but compliments and works well in tandem with your other marketing and social media efforts.

We would love to know if this is helpful to you – or let us know your experience. Leave your comments or shoot us a DM on Twitter: @yasminbendror or @ksafrey

- Bad Tweet: When Good Companies Give Bad Tweets: http://bit.ly/17oXKG
- 6 B2B Viral Campaigns that Delivered from Marketing Sherpa http://bit.ly/2CXsR1
- Do PR Agency CEOs Need To Be Twittering? http://tinyurl.com/pwff33
- Skills for the PR Professional in Today’s Job Market http://bit.ly/LcHbU
- 8 in 10 execs say SM can enhance relations w/ customers & build brand rep. But 51% fear SM hurts productivity http://bit.ly/BZMTv
- What Happens on Twitter… Stays on Twitter?http://bit.ly/L0u8b
- About.com: How to Get Along with Your Boss http://bit.ly/axtaP Presented without comment
- NYT must-read explaining Twitter outage. It was a Joe Job + DDOS attack in an ongoing cyber war btwn Russia & Georgia. http://bit.ly/f2FM9
- Follow technology bloggers onTwitter @techpicnic – http://techpicnic.com
- Follow journalists on Twitter @muckrack
- Great resource for VCs, Angel Funders on Twitter – http://venturemaven.com – @venturemaven
- Great site: http://twittorati.com “where the blogosphere and twittershphere meet” @twittoratinews
- Must read report on correlation b/w brands engaging in SM & their revenue growth by @charleneli @Elowitz http://bit.ly/jY5H4
- Free Kit on How to Use Facebook for Business! Thanks to MarketingProfs/HubSpot http://bit.ly/CltQO
- Good read: @Oneupweb “Flickr: Using Images to Tell Your Story” Flickr images rank high w Google SEO, its a no brainer http://twurl.nl/aw7sda
- Another great chart from @MarketingSherpa: Generating High-Quality Leads is B2B Marketer’s Number One Challenge http://bit.ly/3Jn2lq

Have a great tweekend!

If you are not on Twitter, well, um, you should follow us: @sandrafathi, @lesliecampisi, @yasminbendror

And if you missed our tweets, I thought of summing up the best ones over the passed week. I hope you’ll find them useful:

- If the Twitter community was 100 people… see the picture. I love this…. http://om.ly/?DAFs

- Chart from @MarketingSherpa: Information Sources for Large Purchase Decisions Changing http://bit.ly/eiPDN

- Interesting article on Mommy Bloggers & swag – Why don’t folks begrudge celebs more for their free swag http://bit.ly/2mhcut

- Word of Mouth Research: Brand names that are easy to pronounce are worth 33% more on the NYSE http://is.gd/1SNjn

- Need a job? Show them you can Twitter http://bit.ly/18UL9p

- Why SM is critical to small businesses too – Managing an Online Reputation. Tips from NYT http://is.gd/1W34F

- How to Use Twitter for Business: An Official Guide Finally Arrives ReadWriteEnterprise http://bit.ly/Abwz3

- Do you think iPhone owners are happier than most folks? iPhone App tracks happiness for Harvard researcher http://bit.ly/5SSk5

- The Joy of Tech: Warning Labels for Bloggers http://bit.ly/32dhM0

- No one has a better take on the Zappos/Amazon deal than Seth Godin. Read his blog on this at http://bit.ly/wZ63I

- Twitter Cracks Down On Spam Accounts, People Lose Followers http://tcrn.ch/YIx

- Twitter isn’t for kids – Did you know 84% of Tweeps are 25 or older? And 20% are over 55! http://bit.ly/P60U1

- Great Lessons “5 Critical Lessons from a Social Media Campaign Gone Horribly Wrong” http://is.gd/1RiVK

6 Tips to Building a B2B Website for Business

If you want to build a B2B Website that roars with energy and engages prospects, converting them into qualified leads and customers, these simple tips can guide your thoughts for a more profitable online property:

1) Ask yourself; “Who is my best customer?” We ask our clients to review their sales statistics and CRM data for client job title, role, gender, geographic location, age, associations, level of education, and more. By getting to know your best customer, we can help craft an online experience that meets their needs, and appeals to their aesthetics.

2) Create a persona to reference against copywriting, marketing approach, and site flow. The persona (a representation of your ideal customer’s characteristics) should be based on statistically relevant information and should be leveraged as a way to constantly reflect the interests of your current and future target audience. You can look at each area of content and ask yourself, “If I was this person, would this interest me? Would I know what to do next? Would I do it?”

3) Really understand your customers’ goals. By really exploring the goals of the typical user, we determine what type of functionality will best match the user’s goals while providing a structure that can simultaneously support your corporate goals.

4) Qualify your leads. Commonly used qualifiers include online calculators, whitepapers, case studies, testimonials, video, demo’s, tutorials, webinars, e-newsletters and more. Online qualifiers collect prospect data, track their activities, and reassure prospects that their needs are understood.

5) Think about an online revenue channel. Some businesses don’t naturally lend themselves to being an online revenue channel. But thinking out-of-the-box on e-commerce can take your site from a marketing cost center to a sales revenue center overnight.

6) Even if you are not in the position to conduct a direct e-commerce transaction, use today’s Web technology to track and report sales back to the 24/7 online marketer.

Wendy Flanagan
Co-President, MurrayMedia
wflanagan@murraymedia.com

Wendy Flanigan is also Chairperson for NJ MarCom Council, serves on the Board of the NJAdClub, moderates an online B2B forum for the American Marketing Association, and is a member of MENG. These are great resources for marketing professionals!

So, Samir Balwani has a blog called Left The Box where he blogs about Web strategies and social media and of course, he’s on Twitter @LeftTheBox. He just blogged about a recent experience he had with Yoostar.com and its blogger outreach program: Yoostar invited key bloggers to NYC to demo their new product (check it out, its loads of fun), go back home and blog about it, spread the Word and create a big BUZZZ!

Samir was one of the bloggers invited. His blog is all about what Yoostar did right and why it was such a success. Please read his blog, its worth it.

I’ll sum up my key take aways:

- Give people (after all, bloggers are people too) enough lead time. They too have lives, schedules. Don’t send an invite a week before the event, please.
- Personalize and individualize the invitation. Do your research about that person and tie in his/her blogging and coverage with why you want him/her at the event and why it will make all difference.
- Give them some added-value, something fun, unusual or novel to experience over and above the event itself.
- Give an enticing, interesting, passionate presentation or demo. Nobody, but nobody, wants to sit through another boring PowerPoint.
- Be creative, think and do something out of the box. Bloggers love this.
- Make sure the information in the press pack is easily accessible. USB flash drive is a great idea.

And last, but definitely not least, maybe the most important, treat each person like gold. Don’t rate or “value” the blogger by the amount of traffic on his blog, or how many followers he has on Twitter. Each person is important. Each person has taken the time out of their busy schedule to attend. Pamper or spoil them – not necessarily with gifts, although that’s nice – but with attention and the right attitude. Make them feel super special. But be genuine.

I know I will keep this top of mind for our next blogger outreach program.

Thanks Samir for blogging about this and sharing with us. Awesome stuff.

PS: I wrote a blog in October on Pepsi’s Rebrand: Reaching out to Bloggers. That seems like ages ago. Things have changed since then, hopefully…

You can also pre-schedule tweets that can be mixed in with your real-time tweets. For example, scheduling informative content to be posted periodically throughout the day that will provide value and be interesting to your followers. Nice feature.

There’s a cool stats/analytics tab to track click-throughs on your links and to monitor which messages perform best with your followers (you need to use their ow.ly URL shortener).

The interface is very user-friendly. The @replies, RT, DM and other convenient feature buttons are very accessible. It just takes a few minutes of playing around to familiarize yourself with it and you and your other designated tweeters can be up and tweeting in no time.

Read the HootSuite blog for lots of tips and new features and follow them on Twitter @hootsuite, of course !

I have to provide you with the full summary – its short, but so good – here goes:

You may have spent a lifetime watching hours of television on a daily basis and being exposed to an infinite number of commercials in the process but, based on that, would you consider yourself knowledgeable about producing a TV commercial? Of course you wouldn’t.

A better approach to adopting this strategy is to seek the advice of an agency or consultant specializing in social media if no one within your organization has proven experience. These experts understand what works and what doesn’t in social media. They can help you plan an effective strategy, train your internal resources and supplement your staff with the specialized skills needed to execute social media programs successfully. When it comes to social media marketing, an investment in expertise will insure a rapid return.

And this is exactly what Affect does…so don’t do it on your own, come to us and we’ll help you work out your best social media strategy.

So, David Martin, Vice President, Primary Research at Nielsen Online – a research company that delivers audience and Internet measurement metrics – released some interesting data last week on his blog on Twitter, its retention rate, and predictions on where Twitter will be if retention rates don’t improve.

You can read the report for yourself, but basically, its says that more than 60 percent of U.S. Twitter users fail to return the following month and therefore the site’s growth rate is limited.

After he received a ton of feedback and comments, David issued updates to his study and research which included 30 other applications and websites that feed into Twitter. The results didn’t change.

This is great, interesting data – if its correct – but, so what?? For me, it’s not the intrinsic issue. I feel marketers are so stuck on predictions: Where will Twitter be in the next year? Is Twitter just a fad? Does it have staying power?

Marketers are waiting for “someone” to officially give the stamp of ROI approval on Twitter, but in the meantime are not taking action, and are missing out on opportunities NOW to strengthen customer and partner relationships.

I believe that companies that are agile and have jumped on the Twitter bandwagon with a good strategy and Twitter team are getting great results that compliment their overall marketing and sales strategy. Companies like @Jetblue, @DunkinDonuts, @woot, @zappos, @WholeFoods, @SouthwestAir are just a few that come to mind. Follow them to see what they’re doing on Twitter…

Twitter is not the quintessential or all-important element of your marketing outreach. Its only one piece. But its a powerful communication piece.

If Twitter does dwindle out, so be it. But right now, times are tough, and we need many different channels to reach out to our customers and partners, to talk and connect with them.

So I believe its about acting now and making the difference.

PS: I personally think that a large amount of the Twitter retention problem is about content – and I’ve said this from the beginning – tweets needs to provide value and need to be compelling. I “unfollow” tweeters who tweet about having coffee, watching a great sunset, or getting kids from school. This just does not motivate me to continue to follow them, it doesn’t provide me with anything of value. I think if tweeters get that, less users would drop out.

My absence in the TechAffect blog is due to my month-long trip to South Africa. As you may know from my bio, I was born and raised in South Africa and left solo at the age of 24 (that’s a whole other story), leaving my family there. Of course, I have been back quite regularly over the years, but this visit came after a nearly 4 year hiatus.

Since I left, I have watched and observed the painful development of freedom for this beautiful country and its “rainbow” nation, with the culmination of my hero – Nelson Mandela’s release in 1994 and the first ever democratic elections in South Africa. My excitement and hope then knew no bounds. I have been observing ever since the roller coaster of developments and it is still so interesting to witness how this beautiful country is taking shape 15 years after democracy triumphed.

So April 09 was a great time to return to South Africa!

For one, and most important, the third democratic election took place with a 87% voter turnout which is the largest in its democratic voting history, one of the largest in the world, and by far larger that the U.S. turnout for this passed 2008 election, which was 63%. I was impressed that so many people cared enough, despite long voting lines, to vote for change.

It’s been a tumultuous 15 years for the leading party, the African National Congress (ANC) and for the country. The early Mandela honeymoon years ended relatively quickly when Thabo Mbeki took over the reigns in the second election, and then was forced to resign in ’08, leaving a legacy of poor delivery on ANC promises, corruption, nepotism and worldwide criticism for his naïve stance on linking HIV/AIDS with poverty. Jacob Zuma became the ANC’s presidential candidate, despite his shady history of rape charges and more recently, corruption and fraud charges, amazingly dropped just weeks prior to the elections!

The fact that America voted for the first black president in the U.S. was thrilling to people in South Africa and has had a great influence there. The “Obama Effect” is very evident, is still very much being felt, through discussions on radio and television, on lessons South Africans can learn from the U.S. election, and has made young voters re-energized and feeling that they can make major changes in their society. It has been identified as the reason for the high registration of young people: a quarter of the registered voters were under the age of 29 and was the highest voter turnout! All wanting a better education, homes, and an end to crime and corruption.

So thank you America!

Suffice it to say, the ANC got re-elected, but lost ground. The decline in the ANC’s vote and increase in support for the main opposition parties suggests a gradual political shift. And this seems to be echoed by so many people I spoke to, from the poor to rich, young and old, saying this is the “last chance” for the ANC to prove themselves and make good on their promises.

The coming years are going to very interesting…

Then there is the build up and excitement for the FIFA 2120 World Cup that can be felt literally everywhere. I had my doubts whether South Africa could pull this off, but evidently – and I’m so glad to say – I was wrong! Ten state-of-the-art beautiful stadiums are being built in the nine beautiful host cities, slated to be completed by the end of ‘09. Each stadium a work of art – and – built with green technology and eco-friendly materials. Intensive planning has gone into ensuring that the stadiums will be versatile, multipurpose facilities able to be used for a number of sports, as well as for entertainment and other community uses, long after the final whistle of the World Cup is blown. The event is seen as more than the world’s biggest sports gathering – it is also a means to improve the lives of South Africans and of citizens of other African countries.

Remember, if you can’t get tickets to the games, don’t give up, you may still want to be there. In the summer of 2006, millions of people experienced the FIFA World Cup together at public locations throughout Germany and transformed the host country into a month-long celebration. With free non-commercial public viewings across the country, South Africa will make sure this will be another unforgettable, massive football festival for all South Africans and visitors.

As Zakumi, the official 2010 FIFA mascot says, “The main priority is to turn the 2010 FIFA World Cup South Africa into one huge, joyful and unforgettable party and show the thousands of international guests the warmth and spirit of the African continent.”

The South African wines, African Safaris, playing with wild lion cubs, feeding a mommy and baby giraffe, wild baboons jumping on our car, swimming with jackass penguins are all for another blog…

So, this has been a slight veer from my usual technology blogging. I just wanted to share my experiences and thoughts. Send me yours….

There are over 175 people registered. I’m looking forward to hearing Jeff Pulver, Jeff Jarvis, Chris Brogan, David Kirkpatrick, Gary Vaynerchuk and all the other speakers cover all aspects of the social communications landscape.

Hey, it’s not too late to register – it will be worth it!

I’m also excited to be one of the 25 tweeters on the official SocComm Twitter Team: Follow us on Twitter #SocComm to get the latest updates and impressions from the event! FYI – Us tweeters will wearing blue wrist bands.

You can also follow me on Twitter at yasminbendor.

If you are going to be there, I would love to meet you – pwease tweet me!