ACT! 2010 Gets More Social

This content from: Duct Tape Marketing

The latest release of ACT! CRM software (2010) includes a feature that I’ve been pushing for and am starting to see as standard fare in CRM – the inclusion of a contact’s social media activity stream. Now, from inside a contact record you can view that contact’s activity on Facebook, LinkedIn, or twitter. Subscribe to RSS for their blog or even custom searches for their industry or competition. In addition, you can respond to something you read right from the record.

The bottom line is that having this kind of data can help fill in the total picture when it comes to a prospect or client and make you much smarter and more efficient in your follow-up and relationship building. I contend that you should be paying attention to this kind of information anyway, so now it’s easier to do.

Social media activity for a contact displays inside the record (click to enlarge)

Another great feature is the full integration of email marketing. ACT has enjoyed a nice relationship with an email service called SwiftPage. The SwiftPage offering is now fully baked in as a paid subscription option called ACT Email Marketing. This subscription allows you to easily market to any segment or your entire database through email from within ACT! The service has some very robust campaign features (a record can be added to your database and a campaign and automatically receive a series of predefined emails.) Tracking user interaction with your emails sent is also very powerful with this tool, giving you the ability to analyze your hottest leads based on whether they read or take action in response to an email.

Overall I think I like the layout better and search throughout is much improved. You no longer have to back to the lookup screen to find a specific record.

There are many CRM tools to choose from, but for many small businesses ACT! is plenty powerful, simple and low cost. With these enhancements it’s an improved tool as well.

Disclosure: Sage Software, the maker of ACT!, is a client of Duct Tape Marketing and the Duct Tape Marketing Coach Network.

Today two videos were released that involved me and that I think would be of interest to readers.

1. Video interview with Gideon Shalwick – in this video Gideon interviewed me on a range of aspects of blogging.

In the video I talk a little about how I got started but the rest of the interview is packed with a range of tips on how to improve a blog.

The interview goes for just over 33 minutes and includes a special bonus offer that Gideon is giving for anyone who buys my 31 Days to Build a Better Blog Workbook through his affiliate link.

2. Twitter Tips for Businesses (and Individuals) – this video is me talking to a set of slides/presentation that I’ve been giving lately at conferences and internally for a number of businesses.

The video goes for around 40 minutes and while it was developed for businesses wanting to get started with Twitter it covers a lot of tips that I think would be relevant to bloggers and individuals with other agendas. The first section covers how I find Twitter benefits my blogging but moves on to a lot of more practical tips on how to use Twitter Effectively.

In total these videos give you over an hour of content – I hope you enjoy them!

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

Two Free Videos (and a Special Offer) for Bloggers and Twitter Users

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Out of curiosity, how many of you use GMail Chat? I had used it a few times in the past; however, I really started getting into using it over the past few months with work related to AM Beat. Ever since starting to use it regularly, I have become an avid user of the chat client. It allows me to communicate directly with the people I e-mail so instead of having to wait hours or even days for a response I can get an answer immediately.

Sure I could simply chat or call these people using another client (AIM, Skype or even Facebook chat), but there is just something about being able to do it while checking my e-mail that simplifies and expedites the process of getting any work done.

I regularly e-mail about two dozen people on matter related to AMBeat and as of late, I have been chatting more than I have been actually e-mailing. The increase in productivity this has caused has been tremendous. It has literally saved me days in waiting time between e-mails. The only downside is that my conversations are not all automatically saved and threaded as they are with e-mails.

How do you feel about networking online via instant messenger? Is it unprofessional even if it may be more effective? After all, AIM is more targeted to teens than business owners, but then again so was Facebook.

This content from: Duct Tape Marketing

3 Ways to Find Twitter Users by Profession

Let’s face it, as a business tool twitter gets a lot more interesting when you are following people who have conversations and point to content that you find relevant for your business or industry. But, on the surface, finding people related to your business can prove a little challenging using the built in twitter search tools. You can easily use the advanced search features to find people by geography and those using obvious industry terms in their tweets, but there’s a lot of data missing from this kind of search.

Enter services that allow you to focus on search by profession, or at least keywords, in bios. In addition, these tools return results with user snapshots that provide information about a person’s number of followers, tweet activities and recent tweets, making it much easier to determine if this is someone you might want to follow. With a couple tools you can even dive in and learn more about the people a person is following, adding yet another layer of information.

Here are three tools that can help you locate twitter followers by profession or professional interests.

• TweepSearch – this new, free tool from Damon Cortesi, who also created TweetStats is my current favorite as it seems to have the most flexibility in terms of search and sort.

• Twellow – this service from WebProNews was the first of its kind back in the day (what’s that about 9 months ago) and is more like a directory than a search tool, but I still like way it puts people into categories like a phone book.
• Twitterrel – a fairly new offering and focused tweet search to find people talking about related topics.

Image credit: ronin691

Last week I published two podcast interviews with two very successful people, Adam Short who specializes in niche websites, and Maria Andros, whose craft is social media.

These two people are experts at what they do and like myself, run successful businesses teaching what they do as well.

If you enjoyed the interviews and either person resonated with you and you’d like to learn more from them and work closer with them to achieve your online goals, then take a look at their respective programs that are both available only for a limited time.

Adam Short with his business partner Alen run Niche Profit Classroom, which is a fantastic program full of an incredible amount of resources if you’re interested in building niche websites.

You can join Niche Profit Classroom for $1 to try it out, however this offer is only available until Tuesday USA time. The fee is $67 a month if you decide to stay on after the trial.

Last Friday Maria opened up 200 spots in her elite coaching program, the Social Media Traffic Blueprint. The last email I got from her said one third of the spots are sold already, so I expect this one will be off the market by the end of the week, if not earlier.

Maria’s course is elite as she works closely with each group of students, however you do pay a higher cost for this one. If social media is your thing, and more importantly, you found Maria’s style really resonated with you, then take this opportunity to have her as your personal coach.

You can find out more at http://socialmediatrafficblueprint.com/

I’m an affiliate for both these people, however as you can tell from the interviews I only recommend them and their programs because I trust them and what they provide. Their programs may or may not be right for you, so study their offers and decide for yourself.

Good luck and thank you if you join either course via my links above, I appreciate the support.

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Everyone seems to be abuzz over Twitter so even though I had created an account before and found it all but useless, I began tweeting once again. This time I actually spent time and effort on my Twitter account building up a following of around 2000 members. But my question now is this, what should I do with my account?

Sure I tweet my content and interesting links I find from around the web but the only effect this has is to drive minimal traffic to my blog. I can’t really use the account to actually follow certain people I like because I’m “following” so many people that any valuable tweets are hidden among thousands of others I receive daily.

Sure, I could have used Twitter as a communication tool only following a few dozen people that I actually have met and know, but as a marketing tool, it seemed sensible to accept all follows and follow back as common courtesy. This is what most marketers who build up large twitter follower bases do.

So, with this follower base what can I do? How is it valuable to me apart from the minimal traffic I drive to my blog and why are so many marketers obsessed over building up Twitter accounts with tens of thousands of followers?

This content from: Duct Tape Marketing

5 Tips for Getting More from LinkedIn

A pretty common question these days is “which social network is the best?” – And to that I usually say – “the one that helps you meet your marketing objectives” – and in that regard, many are great, but for different reasons.

I really like some things about LinkedIn. It has always tended towards the service oriented professional, in my opinion, but it has plenty to like in the brand asset optimization world that all businesses live in as well. My advice for most business owners is to find a social network or platform that seems most suited to your business objectives and dive in pretty deep, focusing more casual attention on the others, at least initially. Going hard and deep into one network, like LinkedIn, is the only way to gain the momentum delivered by consistent work and engagement.

So, when it comes to LinkedIn – here are 5 tips to get more

1) Your Profile

This is a great brand asset so don’t waste it. Make it informative and optimized for search.

• Add a photo – nothing says nobody’s home faster than the default icon
• Get the branded URL – something like this is what you want http://www.linkedin.com/in/ducttapemarketing – it’s something you pick during editing
• Links with Anchor text – link to your blog, products, workshops, etc. through the “other” tab and you can add anchor text for the link
• Be descriptive – use the “Summary” to tell your story in a compelling way and add lots of keywords in the “specialty” section
• Keep it active – LinkedIn has a status update feature, much like Facebook and twitter, that you should update routinely
• Link to it – put links to your profile in your email signature and other online pages. Optimization is a two way street.

The image above shows the links on my profile with carefully selected anchor text that links to pages on my site. LinkedIn is one of the few social profiles sites that allows this.

2) Give to Get

When people view profiles one of the top features is something called recommendations. While these may feel a little fluffy when you read them, lack of them can be a competitive issue. You should acquire some recommendations and I find the best way to get them is to give them. Choose people in your network that you’ve worked with and write an honest statement of recommendation. Don’t be surprised if you receive some in return.

3) Show What You’ve Got

An overlooked feature on LinkedIn, in my opinion, is the Question and Answer function. By jumping in and answering questions thoughtfully you can demonstrate a given expertise while potentially engaging contacts that are drawn to your knowledge. The key phrase is thoughtfully answering. LinkedIn even has a rating system to reward people who give the best answers with some added exposure.

The flip side of this tip is to ask thoughtful questions. This can be a great way to get useful information, but it’s equally powerful as a tool to create conversations, discussion and engagement with like minded connections.

4) Lead a Group

Anyone can launch a group on LinkedIn and lead discussions and networking on a specific topic of interest. If you take this tip to heart and put some effort into a niche group you can gain added influence with your network, but groups are also open to the LinkedIn universe as a whole and some folks find that this is one of the strongest ways to build their network. Building a group around an established brand is also a great way to bring users or customers together.

5) Repurpose Content

Since members of your network, and those of the larger LinkedIn community, may only experience your brand on the LinkedIn platform, it’s a great idea to enhance your profile with educational information. This is best done using some of the 3rd party applications that LinkedIn has collected for this purpose.

• BlogLink – displays your latest blog posts on your profile
• Box.net – allows you to create links to files such as resumes and marketing kits
• Slideshare – embeds slideshow presentations and demos
• Company Buzz – scrapes twitter for mentions of your brand or other topics you assign

Bonus Tip

Some organizations, particularly those searching for employees, might really benefit from the new Customer Company Profile offerings. Using Custom Company Profiles, a company can provide a rich, multimedia overview of careers offered, through a variety of modules including recruitment messaging, employee/recruiter spotlights, jobs, polls and videos.

One of the latest trends in the world of digital marketing is social networks and how companies can use them to build a community and establish/grow their brand. With over 100 million users registered on Facebook alone, the potential for social network branding is immense.

I recently wrote another guest post for John Chow about Facebook and how one can build a powerful presence on the social networking website. The article is targeted towards bloggers but the advice holds true for anyone trying to build any type of brand on the Facebook platform. An excerpt from the post is below:

“There are two main ways that bloggers can market on Facebook. They can either create a Facebook group or a Facebook fan page.

A group allows bloggers to create a network where readers can become group members and write on the group’s wall or in its discussion threads, share links, upload photos, etc. As a group administrator, you can mass message all members and the messages that you send will appear in member’s Facebook inboxes. A fan page on the other hand simply acts as a profile for your blog; however, instead of having friends like a traditional profile, you have fans. The advantage to this is that you can mass message updates to all fans, while there is no way to instantly send a message to all your friends. However, just like a traditional profile, any updates you make will show up in your fans’ friend feeds.”

You can read the full post at John Chow

This content from: Duct Tape Marketing

The ROI of Social Networking

One of the most common reason stated by small businesses for not embracing social networking is that they can’t measure or, worse yet, don’t believe there is any solid return on the investment of participation. I get emails almost daily from frustrated marketers who want to dive more fully into social networking, but can’t convince the boss that it’s worth it.

My response to the ROI roadblock is this – How does your boss measure the ROI of attending Chamber mixers, participating in Associations, and dropping in on networking luncheons? Done correctly, social networking on sites like Facebook is really no different – you don’t measure participation based on direct sales, you measure success based on identifying one potential strategic partner, acquiring one actionable bit of advice, or striking up a conversation or two that may eventually lead to developing a new customer. That kind of sounds like a set of solid networking objectives doesn’t it?

Of course this line of thinking assumes that you have identified a set of objectives for your offline networking, which often is not the case. But, the primary point here is to align digital networking with face to face networking and then create a set of objectives and subsequent strategies and tactics to get the most from both. But, job one is to wrap your head around social networking as, just that, networking.

Now, with job one out of the way, you’ve also got to tackle something I alluded to earlier – “done correctly, social networking on sites like Facebook is really no different” – this is where the boss is really coming from when they say there’s no ROI. So many people see social networking as a 24/7, hang out all day excuse for a job – and it can easily become that if you don’t identify and state objectives. You could also quite easily hang out at every at every networking event or meetup, join unrelated trade groups, and sponsor the local knitting club. (which would only be good if you sell yarn)

By identifying and clearly stating your objectives for social network participation (objectives not unlike those of participating in your local Chamber) you can more easily identify the networks that make sense, the type of engagement you need to create, and, most importantly, how much time and energy you can afford to invest to reach your objectives.

When you think strategically about all forms of networking the ROI picture becomes much clearer.

Image credit: AurelioZen

This is a guest post by Dennis Yu, CEO of BlitzLocal, a company specializing in local online marketing.

Can you beat my 205.9 Facebook Post Quality Score?
Google has their Quality Score and PageRank, Yahoo! has their Quality Index, and now Facebook has a Post Quality Score. There have been a lot of people asking about what a good score is and what it means, so I thought we’d share Facebook Quality Scores from a few of them (we have about 30 pages).

Here’s what Facebook says about the Post Quality Score:

The Post Quality score measures how engaging your Posts have been to Facebook users over a rolling seven-day window.

And here’s what factors govern it:

When you create compelling content, your fans may choose to interact with the material by commenting, liking, or writing on your Wall. These fans help to spread your content virally throughout Facebook, as their engagement leads to organic stories being published in their friends’ News Feed.

Your Post Quality is determined by the percentage of your fans that engage when you post content to your Page. It is calculated on a rolling seven-day basis. The number of stars depends on how your Post Quality compares to similar Pages (for example, Pages that have a similar number of fans.)

So let’s look at a few of our pages and see how their level of interaction affects the page’s Quality Score in real life.

Keith has a Facebook Post Quality Score of 205.9, while MyEstateManager.com has a score of 55.4– Keith is 3.7 times higher. Why?

Looking at Keith Wilcox, you can see that nearly every one of his posts gets commented and usually has several comments. Plus, multiple people like his posts. On a side note, if you hit “like” on enough items, it will trigger a “suggestion” on homepages of related users. We don’t know the ratio you have to hit. Small fan base of 22, but highly interactive– 8 interactions. Do you know anyone else with a Quality Score higher than this?

Looking at MyEstateManager.com, it has a larger fan base– 164 fans– and even more interactions– 21. But the proportion of interactions is only 12.8%, which is 21/164, while Keith Wilcox is 36% (8/22). Thus, the percentage of interactions is 2.8 times higher for Keith Wilcox. However, his Quality Score is 3.7 times higher.

If Facebook Post Quality Score is measured by percentage of fans interacting, which is similar to number of interactions divided by fans– let’s calculate:

• In the last 7 days, Keith has had 5 unique fans interacting on his page. 5/22 is 22.7%.
• In the last 7 days, MyEstateManager.com has had 8 unique fans interacting. 8/164 is 4.9%.
• The ratio of 22.7% to 4.9% is 4.7 times– still don’t have the 3.7.
• If you count yourself in these interactions, then the number skews to 4.97, even further away.

This is not an exact math and I don’t think folks are going to count all the different variations of fans, commenting, and friending possible to determine the formula for the Facebook Post Quality Score. It’s also not clear how this Quality Score has practical value.

Will it effectively discount the price of PPC, as you see with the search engines (where Quality Score x max bid = AdRank)?

Will it evolve like the SEO industry, where Post Quality Score may drive search rankings? I can’t seem to figure out how Facebook is determining the order of search results– I’m guessing it’s as simple as whether the word is actually in the page’s name. For example, search for “harlem globetrotters”– you’ll have a hard time finding the official group, which is called “The Original Harlem Globetrotters”. Search “baseketball” and you’d expect to see the NBA in there, right? Nope, just a bunch of results that have the world “basketball” in them. Anyway, Facebook’s internal search is a topic for another post– else you can just sign up to Shoemoney’s Xtreme Internet Marketing Guides, which are free. I can see Facebook evolving in search, which will spawn dozen of experts trying to calculate how to game Quality Score and rankings, just like in SEO.

Here’s what Facebook has to say about how to increase your Quality Score:

To increase the number of Interactions and improve your Post Quality you may consider:

• Making sure that your posts, whether they are Status Updates, photos, links, or videos, are relevant to your fans. Posting engaging content is the best way to get people to interact with your Page.
• Posting frequently, but not posting an overwhelming amount of content that users may find spammy or burdensome to consume.
• Increasing your total fan base to generate more interactions: Promote your page with an ad

A couple things are true here. If you spam your list to generate more fans, it will hurt your Post Quality Score. Having a counterbalance to just raw friends (which is what folks do on Twitter and the old MySpace train days) is a good thing– Facebook should create incentives to encourage good behavior in the community. Also, they want you to advertise. I wonder if interactions from a paid ad count the same as a natural one? I wonder if this will spawn an industry of paid interaction folks, just as you see with paid links.

Let’s take a look at the Insights page from MyEstateManager.com– they provide free funeral planning advice, in case you’re wondering.

Of the 21 interactions in the last 7 days (I think they should change to 14 days, since 7 days isn’t much data and causes noise in the calculation for the small guys), 19 of them are likes. Liking is an easy way– and automatable way– to create interactions without having to actually come up with something clever to say. Perhaps people will generate tools to auto-like posts in order to drive up their Facebook Post Quality Score.

Fan growth jumped from 109 to 161 fans in one day, largely because we mass invited from my profile. As far as we know, you don’t get hurt mass inviting, even if you have thousands of fans. We’ve tested where we’ve invited 500 or 1,000 folks at a time– the system lets you do this, but it’s a manual process. Then again, inviting too many fans who aren’t really fans will potentially hurt your Post Quality Score. We should call that FPQS or something– quite a mouthful.

I’d think a better measure of quality would include percentage of active fans multiplied by a spamminess index (governed by how many people unsubscribe and how many folks don’t contribute real comments). What has been your experience with Facebook’s Quality Score? Have you been able to beat Keith Wilcox’s 205.9? What’s the maximum score possible?

This Post Is From ShoeMoney’s Internet Marketing Blog

What is Facebook Post Quality Score?