Here are some more questions from the Sitecore 5 Ingredients of Social Media for Your Website Webinar.
Q: How can we use facebook for a non-profit company, what are your recommedations of what kind of info we should display on facebook?
A: There are hundreds of Facebook Groups and Fan Pages for non-profits. I would start by searching Facebook for Non-Profits on Facebook and check out the Fan Page that has almost 300,000 members. There is a lot of great information that will get you started.
Q: How do you ensure that the content people put on your website is in good taste?
A: Unfortunately you can’t control what people post in forums and on your social media pages so you have to have someone delete inappropriate content. By inappropriate content I mean spam or offensive material. You should not delete negative comments about your product or service. Address those comments in a reply and contact the person offline to resolve their complaints. Most of the time when you respond to them in a timely fashion they will be satisfied and will post a positive reply on your website.
Many content management systems have modules that will detect and not publish spam and offensive material. Wordpress uses a plugin called Akismet that blocks spam comments.
You should also use social media monitoring tools like Trackur or Radian6 so you will be instantly notified when inappropriate comments or complaints are posted. Responding quickly is the key to heading off an online disaster.
Q: How do you use Facebook for business? I use it personally.
A: Keep your business and personal Facebook pages separate unless you are a consultant or professional service provider and your name is your brand name. Look at the Facebook pages of the companies we talked about in the webinar and see how they’re using Facebook. Also search for any major brand name and see how they’re using Facebook.
Q: Is it better to have your blog as a different url than your company website?
A: This is an ongoing debate with many SEO experts. Some say its better to have your blog and website on the same URL because you’ll have more focused content on one domain name. Others say it’s better to have the blog on a different URL and on a different webhost so you can generate a lot of links between the two sites.
Personally I’ve tried it both ways and I think it’s best to keep the blog and website on one URL. It’s hard to maintain two different web properties unless you have staff to keep the content fresh on both sites. Google likes to see a lot of related content on one URL so it will help your search rankings by combining them.
Q: What is the best free social media monitoring tool out there? What is the best very low cost one?
A: If you’re on a low budget you can set up Google Alerts to monitor specific keywords you are targeting. Every time Google finds those keywords you will receive an email (or a daily digest so you’re not overwhelmed by emails). You can use tools like TweetDeck which is a free program that lets you monitor Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.
You can also search Google for “free social media monitoring tools” to see what’s out there. I recommend using a paid service because “you get what you pay for” and Trackur seems to be the best low priced tool I’ve seen.
In case you missed our webinar here are links to the webinar recording, podcast and slides.
http://mediacontent.sitecore.net/5IngredientsSocialMedia/5IngredientsSocialMedia.html
http://mediacontent.sitecore.net/5IngredientsSocialMedia/5IngredientsSocialMedia.mp3
http://www.slideshare.net/sitecore/5-key-ingredients-of-social-media-for-your-website
Ted
Sphere: Related ContentWe had a lot of questions from yesterday’s 5 Key Ingredients of Social Media for Your Website webinar that I didn’t have time to answer so here we go.
Q: Are the social media components on “the knot” available via the Sitecore Developer Network?
A: You can use RSS which is available in Sitecore CMS to pull content into your website. Twitter has an RSS feed so you can display your Twitter stream on your website and LinkedIn has a public RSS feed so you can display LinkedIn updates and Answers on your website. Facebook turned off it’s RSS Feed last year so you can’t display your Facebook News on your website but you can install Simply RSS in your Facebook account and pull in your blog posts, LinkedIn updates and your Twitter stream. LinkedIn lets you pull in RSS feeds so you can display your blog and Twitter updates on your LinkedIn profile. This diversifies your traffic and automatically updates numerous social media properties.
Q: My biggest issue is, I have two kind of posts on our fb-fanpage. 1. I love the company, you’re the best or 2. This product is broken, damaged etc. and questions concerning customer support. I have trouble getting customer service involved with FB and don´t know how to handle those messages as an it proffesional. Any tips?
A: Since customer support doesn’t want to get involved with Facebook, you can create an Support tab on your Fan Page that contains ways to contact customer support. Search Facebook for play.com and you’ll see their extensive Customer Support list under the Info tab.
Q: how much impact do custom tabs (canvas tabs) have (programmed with Facebook Markup language). are they alot more effective than “normal” facebook sites
A: I’m seeing more Facebook pages using the Facebook Markup Language which allows you to create Fan Pages that look like your website. This extends your brand to Facebook and lets you add newsletter opt in forms and custom content.
Q: For your customers to develop content on your website, what are some recommended platforms to develop that? I have looked into Google Friend Connect as one way, but it doesn’t do everything.
A: There are solutions for any open source or .NET content management system. For example, Joomla has Community Builder which lets you build your own online community. If you’re running on .NET you can look at www.onesite.com. Another option is to use a hosted service like www.ning.com which is very customizable.
Q: Have you found a tool that aggregates the various social media metrics in a way for more easily created reporting?
A: Social media monitoring is an evolving market and there is a range of products for different price points. You can look at tools like www.trackur.com which is low cost but high in features and www.radian6.com on the higher end. Do a Google search for “social media monitoring” and you’ll see many products. MarketingProfs.com has some case studies that review social media monitoring products.
Q: Help me understand how to apply SN to a Local Service company doing Bathroom Renovations
A: You could create a Facebook Fan Page and upload before and after photos of your work. You can also upload those photos to www.flickr.com and to your website. People love to look at pictures and they love to share their photos. You could even do a Twitter campaign where you encourage people to Tweet a picture of their bathroom and the person with the ugliest bathroom would win a discount. Then you could feature them in a Before/After campaign on your website and Facebook Fan Page.
I’ll answer more questions in my next post.
Thanks for attending our webinar and here are links to the webinar recording, podcast and slides.
http://mediacontent.sitecore.net/5IngredientsSocialMedia/5IngredientsSocialMedia.html
http://mediacontent.sitecore.net/5IngredientsSocialMedia/5IngredientsSocialMedia.mp3
http://www.slideshare.net/sitecore/5-key-ingredients-of-social-media-for-your-website
Ted
Sphere: Related Content
Facebook created an online uprising last week by proposing a new Terms of Service agreement for all users. In case you’re not familiar with the Terms of Service agreement, it’s the long legal document you agree to every time you sign up for an online account. The document is designed to protect the website owner from lawsuits resulting in visitor misuse.
The Terms of Service agreement grows longer and longer every day like every other legal document. As people abuse the system, the website owner adds more to the agreement, protecting themselves and reducing your rights. You’ve probably noticed that you receive new Terms of Service agreements in the mail at least once a year from your credit card companies, banks, insurance companies and every other company you have an ongoing relationship with.
Have you ever taken the time to read these long, boring documents? I never used to but now I read every one. It’s amazing what they’re cramming into these agreements, reducing your power and giving permission to the vendor to screw you every chance they get. Take a look at one of the recent agreements you received from your credit card company. They basically say by using the credit card you give them permission to sell your personal information and sell you purchasing habits to anyone that wants to buy it. They also say they can raise their interest rates and charge any fees they want whenever they want.
Facebook is the latest website to update its privacy policies and it caused an uproar. Facebook has been under the gun forever because of its policies. The controversy is about who owns the content you publish on your Facebook page. Many have interpreted the agreement as saying Facebook owns everything you post on your page and they can do anything they want with it, even after you close your account.
Of course Facebook says this isn’t true and Chris Kelly, Chief Security Officer at Facebook, recently answered a slew of questions from Facebook users. Here’s the interview with Chris Kelly.
The bottom line is that you need to read the Terms of Service and Privacy Policies of every company you do business with. Be careful what you post online and assume everything will be plagiarized or used by others in some form. Isn’t that what community is all about?
Let me know what you think about internet privacy or lack of there of.
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I found a great new tool that automatically Tweets your new uploads to Flickr. Check out SnapTweet to set up your free account. Simply enter your Twitter login and your Flickr URL and your accounts will be connected. Upload a new picture to Flickr and it will be Tweeted automatically.
How does this help drive traffic to your blog or website? I have my blog connected to my Twitter account using the Twitter Tools plugin. My blog also connected to my Facebook account using the SimplyRSS application in Facebook so every blog post appears on my Facebook page automatically. I also tie my blog posts to many other social media sites using my RSS feed that I created at Feedburner. It’s an automated system that automatically updates many sites once I create a blog post. A quick and easy way to generate traffic to your blog and website.
Sphere: Related ContentI was reading an interesting article in Search Marketing Standard last night about the use of Social Media by the Inc 500 companies. Take a look at this chart of the fastest growing companies compiled by The University of Massachusetts Dartmouth Center for Marketing Research.
It’s very clear that social media has been accepted by the masses and has become an integral part of every smart company’s marketing strategy. Small businesses have been embracing social media for years and the big boys are scrambling to catch up./
At the Social Media Strategies Conference last month, it was clear large companies are embracing social media but haven’t figured out the best way to use it. They’re experimenting with it to see how their target audience responds to their presence on sites like Facebook, MySpace, and even Twitter.
Most large companies haven’t directly funded their social media campaigns and they’re splitting up the blogging, tweeting, and commenting among staff members. Some companies alternate blog posting between different employees while others scour the internet for ongoing conversations about their company. When a negative conversation is found, they jump into the conversation to do damage control and turn it into an opporunity to build a strong relationship with a disgruntled customer.
It’s clear that social media use is on the rise and will continue to grow as more people embrace it. How are you using social media to promote your business now and how do you plan to use it in 2009? Please comment below and let me know how it’s been working for you and what hasn’t been working for you.
To your online success,
Ted
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