Social media has had a fantastic year, the industry is becoming mainstream and everyone wants to get involved. This is potentially fantastic news for businesses and consumers alike however there is a downside to the increased attention social media has gained.

For the past few years, advocates of social have said time and time again that success lies with simple engagement and until recently, I would have to agree. But as with every industry, as soon as everyone catches on to an innovative and different idea, it just becomes the norm. This is the age old problem of supply and demand, there is a limited amount of supply (attention given by users) and an ever increasing amount of demand (demand for user attention) basically between everyone involved in social media, we have completely saturated the market.

So what does that actually mean? Well basically it means our job has just become a whole lot harder, it’s time to move away from the very basic strategies that most companies have applied and start differentiating ourselves, not just from our competitors, but from every other corporate voice. You need to think about what you and your business are going to do that will make you stand out from the growing amount of social media noise.

What can you learn from KLM?

One company that has done just that is KLM, yes they are a huge company with a massive budget but that doesn’t actually affect what they did and how they did it. Their basic idea was to reward their customers by giving them small gifts, nothing major but it makes a big difference to that person’s day. Customers were identified from tweets and Foursquare checkins, the team then did a little background research on the customer and what they might like and they gave them the gifts. Enough from me, just watch the video.

So what have they just achieved? Over 1,000,000 impressions, great content for their YouTube channel and some very happy customers. Now what would that kind of return normally cost your business? I would be very surprised if you could get that kind of response using anything other than social media and a small amount of investment and time.

It’s not just for those with a big budget!

But what about the smaller companies, what can you do? Well think about what you can offer and how you can offer it, if for example you own a small independent coffee shop, why not monitor the online conversation among your existing followers and if someone is having a bad day, just offer them a coffee on the house. What has that cost you? £1-£2 and what will you get? A tweet, a happy customer, the chance to put a smile on someone’s face and a great brand image, not bad ROI if you ask me.

Get thinking, be different, things are getting harder but if you wait until everyone else is doing it then you’re late to the party and you’re going to have to do far more. The earlier you make the move, the cheaper it is going to be. What’s the worst that can happen if you do it now?

Ever since the announcement of Search Plus Your World I have been excited, it pulls in social data and gives the user the results that can suit what they are looking for on a deeper level than the simplistic keywords. But wait, that is what I would love to say, however after a few weeks of playing around with the personalised search, I have to admit, I hate it with a fiery passion.

I love social media; it’s no secret. I love the fast paced style that means when people I follow make terrible content posting decisions; I never have to see them again. Google has just taken that away from the average user completely; we now have to wade past the posts that we didn’t care about 4 months ago that are now top of our search results.

You may think it is as simple as removing these users from circles, but let’s be honest here, that is highly impractical and what’s more, why should we need to do that?

I do think what Google are trying to do is great, but they are not going about it in the right way. I used to be a big fan of the real-time twitter integration to results and was very disappointed when it was removed, one of the best things was that it had a its own segment in the search results but by no means took up the entire first page.

I think we can all agree personalisation is great, we all like a service that feels like it was designed for us and us alone, but is the motive far removed from great customer service and only designed to boost user numbers and to try and make themselves more relevant?

I think we are all beginning to lose trust in the overlords of the internet, for example, is there any need at all for them to leave out Twitter? If there is I would love to know what it is, yes I know that they have given the “reason” but does anybody buy it? Nope, I didn’t think so.

It has been shown by the introduction of the “don’t be evil” button released  that it is an unnecessary act, so why did they? I think we can put it down to simple self promotion. Google want their $500m to pay off and although there is a strong level of user adoption (apparently), I don’t think it has made the splash that they were expecting.

We have all seen the quote “there are lies, damned lies and statistics”. If you don’t look deeper than what you are told then you are never going to get the full picture and with that, you are never going to be able to make informed and sensible decisions as marketers but even as users.

Google claims to have over 90 million users. Well fantastic, that is a huge number to gain in such a short space of time. I am a cynic but 90 million seems so over inflated, yes, there may be 90 million user accounts but are we going to call an inactive user account a user? We are lacking the relevant figures like, how many people use the service daily.

We have seen in the past couple of weeks that Pinterest has just tipped the 10m users mark but for any of you on both platforms (and I am sure many of you are) there is just so much more quality interaction on Pinterest. How is that possible with such a small amount of users in comparison to Google+? Simple, people are coming to take a look and sticking around because they enjoy it! Where as I am assuming a lot of people take a look at Google+ and don’t see where it fits into their day-to-day internet routine.

OK so that may have looked like a tangent but I really think Google are panicking, they just don’t seem to have a grip on their own platform or any of their users and are simply shooting from the hip, guessing what their users want without any idea whatsoever.

Google are letting themselves and their users down, Google+ is currently at best mediocre, if they improve the platform and then focus on the complementary features, they will achieve so much more.

I understand that there has been a lot of pressure on them to have a fully functioning network that can rival Facebook. But how is that supposed to happen in 7 months? Forget what the sensationalists are saying, Google has the potential to get there.

If Google reduce the amount of social clutter and find a far better way to include social sharing into search then I’m all ears, but until that point, I am happy to steer very clear of Search Plus Your World.

I would love to know what you think about it all and what you would like to see in the future of direct social integration to search?

But what does this actually mean for you? Basically it means that you are going to get results from Google+ within your search, these will be split between personal results from people in your circles and also just general results from Google+.

Google have been very clever with this and have made it an opt-out system and as we all know, most people will not bother changing it or won’t even know how. As the adoption of Google+ increases and with an estimated 400 million users by the end of the year this social media powerhouse will be influencing SERPs for a long time yet.

But should we accept the inevitable and adopt Google+ into our SEO strategies? My simple answer to that would be a resounding yes! There is little point in resisting the changes that Google implement just because we don’t like them. You would not keep your pre-Panda strategy out of principle so it is time that we welcomed this strange social media hybrid into our lives and made the most of it!

Source: Threeten10.com

Is what Google are doing moral? Well this is the question that has really been raised by companies like Twitter. Twitter are not included under the title “Your World” and they claim that this new move has reduced their visibility, now we get into a very complicated and muddled part of this story.

Twitter uses NoFollow tags for all its links and this is Google’s reasoning for their low rankings within Google. But what does NoFollow actually mean, well, this is a hot topic at the moment and there are differing opinions. Some prominent members of the SEO community such as Will Critchlow have said that NoFollow does not mean not indexed it just means that no trust is passed on from the host.

@mattcutts thanks – I understand (tho always described nofo as “no trust passed” rather than “can’t be crawled”). But many non-SEOs confused

— Will Critchlow (@willcritchlow) January 13, 2012

It is interesting to see how this will play out and may actually be a blessing for SEOs as there may finally be a definitive answer to the value of a NoFollow link.

Do you use Google+ for your clients and if not is it something that you would consider? Tell us in the comments.

I have a strategy to get users in your circles, improve brand image, sharing and interaction. It is simple enough and uses the Google+ features that people are seeing as a bad aspects and using them to your advantage.

As I’m sure you now know, you can’t circle users until they have circled your page, this makes sense but seems to be stopping people that are used to twitter from making the most of it. Why should they circle you? You need to make a reason, it is up to you to make them want to be part of the brand experience.

Your number 1 weapon here are the Circles and in particular selective sharing. This is basically a very simple method of reward that gets users to interact with the page.

Use your circles to crate a hierarchy of followers. Different content is shared with different circles (this is how they were designed), by doing this you will make the users in the higher circles feel special and valued. Below is an example.

• You have public updates for the general population

• First Circle – For everyone that circles your page – they get the ocasional exclusive update as well as public updates

• Second Circle – For those who have commented positively or +1 a post that you have made – More exclusive content and everything from the First Circle

• Third Circle – For the regular commenters and +1ers – even more content and possibly occasional discounts for the members – Everything from the second Circle

• Final Circle – Now the members of this circle are the biggest brand fans, they get rewarded with content, prizes, discounts and anything else you want to offer – everything from the third Circle

This whole strategy comes down to content and exclusivity. You want the members of each circle to know where they are so post to each one once a week thanking them for being followers and tell them where they are in the hierarchy and what they get as a result. Knowing is all part of it, if they know that there is levels above them then they will try and get there which is fantastic for you as you get them to interact more, share your content etc. Money cant buy interaction and loyalty.

Be organised and make sure that you do not neglect any circle. Plan it out at the start of each week. What are you going to give and who to? It may sound like you need a lot of content, it doesn’t have to be the case. You can do a staggered release, top circle gets first look then wait and give it to the next circle down and so on. Don’t only do this otherwise there is little reason to be in the higher circles but it is an element that you can use.

Once you have them set up and populated you need to have a clear idea about what each circle gets. Content, on social media, we eat, breathe and live content. It is the life and soul of social media, so give the people what they want. If you have a new advert getting released soon then give your top circle a sneak peak before everyone else. New product? Your most loyal fans are your focus group. But lets look beyond the simple and into the other features of Google+.

Hangouts. Why not use them as content? For example you run a food blog, why not have a Q&A hangout for your biggest fans? They can ask tips and tricks and you can connect on an even more personal level. Why not offer them a cooking class hangout where they can cook along with you and ask for help? These are rewards and people will love, then you can film the whole thing and release the video on YouTube a week later to the next circle down. Think different and think bigger than normal.

If you are a bigger brand then go bigger. You are EA Sports promoting FIFA 2012, why not have a hangout with one of your cover stars? This can work all over the world and in nearly every single industry, your followers would love to talk to their idols. Make it happen.

The user base on Google+ will grow, make sure that you are there and you are making the most of it.

Twitter is a strange beast and many people find the speed at which it moves overwhelming and that scares them off. Another reason that people struggle is because they want to put content out there but dont want to have to do it at all times of the day and night, but what is the point in putting all your content out when most people are at work and too busy to use twitter? This is where tweet scheduling works perfectly.

The idea of scheduling is made for the times that you are too busy to tweet but still want to get your message out there. Now, there are many different tools that are out there that let you schedule your tweets however in my experience the best one has to be Buffer, this extremely simple tool will give you 4 times a day to post as default however you can add more and change the times. You add a tweet and it just schedules for the next available time. I will show you how to set it up and get the ball rolling with it.

Getting Started

So firstly you need an account of course. Here is how to get started.

Setting up Buffer to suit you

One of the best things about Buffer is that it is completely customisable. You can change the times to suit you and if you have a paid account then you can even shave different schedules on different days. It is a great tool and here is how to change your schedule and get posting on a free account.

So thats it, Buffer is good to go! As a free user you can schedule up to 10 tweets at once but as a paid you can do up to 50.

A few more tips

So that was the basics of buffer but there are a few little things that can help you out.

• Buffer will automatically shorten your links so dont worry if they look really long, when you schedule them they will shorten.
• There are add ons for Chrome and Firefox web browsers that let you add a page straight to Buffer without ever visiting Buffer. This cuts down time and just makes life easier.
• Remember the reason for Twitter, Buffer is a great tool but you still need to interact with your followers.
• You can edit the times of the tweets at any time so it is trial and error to get it perfect.
• Use the analytics to see what is working the best and make sure you do more of the same.

If you have any questions then feel free to ask me in the comments and I will do my best to help you out.

Twitter is still an enigma to many of us and seems to be a much more difficult transition from the comfort of a blog than some of the other social platforms, most notably Facebook with its very slow moving interface.

What is twitter for?

So twitter seems to have started out with a relatively cult following and had gathered some pretty bad press about the mundanity of updates from attention starved teens and this only gave insight into their eating habits and how they feel about the latest My Chemical Romance track. However that is no longer the case. Don’t get me wrong there is still a large amount of personal affirmation on Twitter but this need for approval and self worth is exactly what makes it a perfect place for relationships to flourish.

Twitter is used for extremely fast moving communication and sharing. It is all about the conversation, just having automated posts broadcasting your lastest product or deal is not going to get you anywhere and the frustration will cause you to drop the platform all together.

So what do I do?

Like I have said it is all about the conversation, without it you are going to lack any real value. That leaves one option, get involved in the community that you want to be part of.

There are a number of ways to get involved, here are a few.

• Set up searches
• Follow people who are interested in the community
• Retweet anything that adds value to your followers
• Mention people that are talking about the industry
• Follow influential users
• Just get talking!

TweetDeck – Accounts and Searches

Time to set up searches, but why? What you want to achieve is to find users that are interested in what you have to offer and to find people to follow and get into conversations with. A search is literally that, you are just searching for a particular phrase or hashtag. Now I may have just baffled you there but ‘hashtags’ are used on twitter mainly to show what the post is about. So for example, if I wanted to tweet about this blog post then I could say something like:

“Social media basics: How to effectively use twitter #socialmedia #twitter #guide”

#hashtags have to all be one word, there is no way around that. You would set up a search for each hashtag that you want to follow.

For this I would suggest using TweetDeck to begin with. It is free and great for searches.

Here is how to set it up:

First lets add an account

Now lets set up some searches

Now you just need to keep following the searches that are relevant to your business and start talking to people who are interested in the community that you want to be part of.

Mentions

Mentions are one of the most important parts of twitter, this is how you have actual conversations with users. There are 2 ways of mentioning someone. The first is just by including their ‘handle’ in a tweet, a handle is their username so ours is @WeAreUpstream, you would just include that anywhere in the tweet and we would be notified of it. Like below.

The other way is to reply to a post, this makes the reply not show up in your followers timelines. This is very good when having a conversation but not good if you are trying to make public tweets. Example below, the examples are using TweetDeck but it is possible to do all of this in the web browser version of Twitter.

Retweets (RT)

These are used when someone posts something that you think your followers will like. Again this can be done in two ways. There is a RT button which on TweetDeck is the arrow pointing right. The other way is to copy the post into your own update bar, add RT at the front followed by their twitter handle. Like below.

Now you have all the tools and know how to get you going on Twitter. Jump in and give it a go. Make sure that you get involved, you don’t have to go head first but make sure that you keep it up. Make twitter part of your daily routine, TweetDeck should help with this as it is always on your desktop.

Good luck!

So you now have hundreds if not thousands of likes and followers. That’s fantastic, time to relax right? Wrong. Now is where the hard work begins it is time to build a solid community.

Imagine you are planing trees. Yes you could get a forest in no time with fast growing soft wood but a hint of wind and they will all come crashing down around you. Lets look more in the long term and lets plant some redwoods.

In order to understand what you need to do you firstly need to understand how the platforms work. Today I will be discussing Facebook.

Edge Rank

Facebook has a News Feed for all users. This is where all the latest and greatest posts from friends family and brand pages end up. There is the option of viewing the News Feed in a number of different ways, however one is the most common holding somewhere in the 90% range of all users so this is what we will be focusing on.

These highlighted stories used to be known as “Top News” so if you dont think that you have seen it before then don’t worry. Now this is where things become a little less clear, there is dark magic afoot that Facebook likes to call “Edge Rank”, I know the terminology is racking up here. I will put a little glossary at the bottom for reference. Anyway Edge Rank is the equivalent of Google’s algorithm for rankings however is individual to every single user. Basically Facebook looks at a number of different factors that affect how well your posts rank.

So the 3 factors that contribute to the Edge Rank of your posts are

• Affinity
• Time Decay
• Weight

Affinity

So. Affinity is the affinity the user has with your page, this is worked out by how much interaction there has been between them and you. So likes, comments, pageviews all add to the score and each different interaction carries different scores. These have not been disclosed but the deeper the interaction the higher the score, so a like is worth less than a comment which is worth less than a share.

Time Decay

This is fairly self explanatory but often overlooked. Basically time decay is the time between your post and when the user views their News Feed.

Weight

This refers to the score given to your post. Again there are is a logical progression to this without there being a definitive score. A text update is the least valuable, followed by links, pictures and video.

So from that I hope that you can see. What you post and when you post are very important if you want that top spot in the News Feeds of your fans. With affinity you have the advantage that a page like gives you a good affinity score so likelihood is that the first couple of posts from when they initially like the page will be seen, this is the time to hook them in. You need to tailor content to suit your audience, if you are not sure what to post then ask yourself this question “Does it add value to their day?” if the answer is no, try harder.

My theory is that if you post the same type of content all the time then not only will you get a lower interaction rate, I think the weight attached to the post will drop. This is only a theory and not proven, however it is always really good to switch up what it is you post. To begin with you need to experiment to find out what works best, if you get 20 likes at 6pm and 1 like at 4pm then you know when you should post. Each individual page will have a different optimum time to post, but if you take in to consideration your demographics then you can take a fair guess at when they will most likely be online. This will act as your starting point for experimentation.

Text is not always bad. Take Snoop for example. 1 text update got an amazing reaction from his fans.

OK so you have your time to post and you know you need content. We are making solid progress! Now how best to decide what to post?

What to post?

Try and allocate different days to different areas of what your business does, this may sound difficult but it will give you structure and purpose when posting. Here is an example for an estate agent.

Monday: New house Monday

Tuesday: Advice on what to look for when buying a house

Wednesday: General tips

Thursday: Advice on how to make your house as sellable as possible

Friday: Surgery – Open question day

This is a very basic schedule but it will help you and your fans know what to expect from each given day.

Now as for how often you post. This is a contentious issue within the social media community but I am a firm believer that it depends on the audience and the content. So try to make sure that you are not flooding your fans News Feed with post after post but make sure there is at least 1 post per day. Even on the weekend.

There are tools that can help you with social media schedules and monitoring. My favourite at the moment is Sprout Social from $9 a month it will give you all your analytics as well as let you schedule posts for when you are too busy. Now don’t think that it means you can schedule posts and let it look after itself, social media is all about being social and getting involved in the conversation.

Time to be social!

So people are liking your posts and commenting on them. They are posting to your wall, it’s all going on! Now it is time for you to keep the conversation going. If someone comments on a post then comment back or like their post. Ask them questions and start debates. This is all fantastic for your page and the more conversations breeds conversation so things will only get bigger and bigger.

It is important that your page has a human feel to it and that people know who they are talking to. A good way of doing this is to sign each post with the posters name. This also helps if there are multiple admins to ensure that everyone has their own voice when posting.

In a couple of posts time I will cover what you do when your Facebook page has gained pace and you have a good amount of regular interaction.

One final note. Look out for spammers, they are everywhere and make your page look bad so keep an eye on it!

Chime.in is a new networking site where the users can share and find all their interests, topics, communities, friends etc.  Even though is very new, in the community you can find most of the topics you are interested in.

The community has a bit of everything:

• Followers

Following people on this social platform is more than Twitter followers and Facebook friends. In Chime.in you follow people because you are interested in the information they share. Normally the people share or “chime” their interests like articles, good pictures, links going to their favourite blogs.

• Shares

Videos, photos, links and comments…you can share everything you want (like in most of the platforms).

In the chimes or posts you have a maximum of 65 characters in the headline and 2000 in the “body text”. You can also add a maximum of 5 interests that here act like categories, tags or labels.

Here the Retweets from Twitter and shares from Facebook are almost the same. You can re-share all the information that the users shares, although you are not following them.

One issue I found is that I cannot send the post from Chime.in to Twitter although I have connected my Twitter account with my Chime.in. When I try to share one chime from Chime.in to both platforms it doesn’t work. Does anyone know how to do it? Maybe I’m doing something wrong but I couldn’t figure it out!

You can like what the members of this community share and at the end of the day Chime.in team decide the most popular shares between polls, links, chimes and media.

• Interests

Are you interested in photography? Fashion? Social media? Branding? You can follow these interests and make your shares be part of the topic timelines by adding “tags” when you share a chime.

For example: If I like the photography and when I share a good picture in Chime.in I can add the interest (like kind of categories, labels or tags) “photography” so those following this interest will be able to see my share even though they are not following me.

• Communities

People with similar interests focus in on a specific topic are the ones that are part of the communities. You can be member of the community and share information related with the topic of the community.

You can also create your own community easily:

1. Chose a topic
2. Go to “Build a Community”
3. Chose the interests for this community.

In my opinion the communities are the strength of this new social platform. Active users are sharing their interests in the communities making easier for us to find large amount of information.

Chime.in iPhone App

I have the iOS 5 installed in my white iPhone 4. I like all the apps so I downloaded the Chime.in app around one week ago.

The application still doesn’t have any ratings, but anyway I decided to use it. Maybe I can be the first one!

Some things I realised when using it is that the notifications didn’t synchronize with the site. If you have seen the notifications from the computer and then you go to your Chime.in app you have se same as you had before to see it in the computer.

Other thing is that the app it doesn’t warn you when you have new notifications. For this reason you have to check it every time you want to know if you have new notifications.

I like the design because with a glance you can see your Chimeline and your interests Chimelines. You have also the option to choose between two different designs:

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My Conclusion about Chime.in

The platform is quite new and I think they will be improving it.

I acknowledge that the design and functionalities are very good if you consider it is still in beta. The option to upload a background image is one thing that give a plus to this platform because you can make your profile more personal (you cannot do it in Google +).

The last few weeks I found myself spending more time here than in my Facebook so I can say that I’m enjoying it.

I think is a good place to find interesting information, are you on Chime.in? What do you think?

At the moment it seems like you can’t visit a brand page on any platform without bumping into some sort of promotion. They are being done in so many different ways that it is very hard for the those that are new to social media to understand what the best method of promotion actually is. This can be true for the industry professional to the small business owner trying to make their way in the minefield of social media. It has been shown over the past week that there is a lack of willingness to interact with brands on social media and the British public are the most reluctant, this doesn’t mean that it is time to give up it just means that it is time to work harder and a promo is a great way to get some initial contact.

What Kind of Promotion?

OK so you have made the decision that you want to run a promotion. What is it that you are actually going to offer your audience? The options in my opinion are limited to 2 main types of promotion.

The Giveaway

The giveaway is literally that, giving your followers/fans/friends a small thank you for being part of your community. The actual giveaway is very important and is the very first part of your strategy. You have to think about what your audience are actually going to want, it doesn’t have to be a big giveaway but enough to make it worthwhile for user. As a business your biggest asset is your profit margins, some kind of discount is always very welcome and is likely to incise new customers as well as existing ones to purchase. You don’t have to wipe out your whole margin but a decent offer should be made of no less than 10% but no more than 25% as you don’t want to devalue the products and create an expectation of price that is not sustainable. You can give away products but this might not be as effective as it will cost you more and may not be what every user is looking for.

The Competition

You could also offer 1 bigger item that the user has to enter a competition to win. This is good for cost tracking as you will know the overall cost before the competition has even started but depending on the platform that you are using comes with some very strict rules. Facebook is very protective over their basic features and as a result no competition is allowed to use them. It is therefore not possible to make the competition entrants ’Like’ the page in order to enter, it has to be done using a third party application like Wildfire, this does cost money and also makes people less likely to enter as it is not as simple as 1 click. It is also against the rules to contact the winner through Facebook

That is not to say that all users will be reluctant and this does also come with 1 major benefit. All users that enter will need to fill in a form, giving you their email address and name. This will be very useful for future promotions as it will build up a mailing list for direct marketing efforts.

Now What?

We now have an idea of what you are going to offer and hopefully you are all happy with that. That is however the tip of the iceberg. Now comes the design of the promotion, this will be different depending on the platform that you are using. Twitter has a very different dynamic and style to Facebook and promotional efforts should reflect this difference. Of course there are other platforms that can be used but for simplicity I will focus on these two as currently they are the most popular.

Twitter

Twitter is a very fast moving platform and as a result promotions should take this into account, giveaways and competitions can both be used on Twitter. The best option is the 2 hour promotion. Pick your time of day very carefully by monitoring interaction levels for a week or 2 before the launch of the promotion. I understand that this sounds like a lot of work but you have invested and therefore want to get the most out of your money. One trick for tracking the interactions that you get is to use Buffer, this is an app that picks 4 times throughout the day to post and lets you schedule posts accordingly. Monitor what happens as a result and then pick the time that has worked best, these can be tweaked but see how you get on with the default times first.

Now before you start your promo decide what you want to achieve from it. More followers? People talking about the brand? Both? Twitter has no restrictions on promotions so it is up to you how you run them. Picking one outcome is easier to track as you just monitor new followers or tweets about the promo and use that as the eligibility metric however to get the most for your money you can monitor both follows and tweets.

For the tweets you need to make sure that you are asking the entrants to use a hashtag that is relevant with the tweet, below is an example.

“Win an X from X just RT this and follow @X #examplehashtag”

Sign up for a trail account with a monitoring and engagement platform such as Sprout Social which I have found to be good value as well as a very good way of monitoring your social media. Add a custom search for the hashtag, this is very easy to do with Sprout. You will have to match up the follower with the tweet in order to see if they are eligible. Do this by going through the tweets and matching them to a new follower, not the other way around as you may still be getting organic followers that may make this process take longer.

Now it is time to either pick a winner or direct message (DM) the entrants a unique code for a discount, unique is vital to avoid it being shared. If you can’t DM them then they are not following you.

Sit back and let Sprout do the hard work, it will tell you your new followers and you can let it count the amount of tweets that you got as a result. Good work!

Facebook

Now it is time to tackle Facebook. A giveaway is the easiest promotion on Facebook as you can give everyone who likes the page a reward, this should be a generic discount code that you change every couple of weeks to help with tracking and stopping the code getting exploited by all of the discount code websites out there. Sign up with a company like North Social who charge around $20 a month for a plethora of apps including the fan giveaway which prompts the user to ‘Like’ the page in order to get the offer.

You can use the Facebook insights to measure the effect of this promo. Run it for as long as you want but keep an eye on the effects both for the business and the social profiles.

Now you can always offer a sweepstake on Facebook and again this can be done through North Social and is included in the $20 a month. They have tutorial videos on their website for each app so check them out and see which ones suit you best.

The downside of a Facebook sweepstake and a giveaway is that you have to have custom graphics made in order to brand them effectively. This cost needs to be taken into account when you are looking into promotions.

Measurement on Facebook is far easier as you can use the built in analytics which Twitter is unfortunately currently lacking.

So that about concludes the basics of promotions but I will be talking about the followup to a competition in Fridays post.

Any questions just put them in the comments.

The mentality of a twitter user looking to gain attention

Your average twitter user seems to plod along happily posting updates and doesn’t seem to care if anyone is listening or if they are falling on deaf ears, which is perfect for them. Not the case for people who are involved in the ‘industry’ around social media or in fact nearly every web based industry. They crave attention of influential users and see being followed by these members as a sense of personal validation and a sense of pride, a RT sends them crazy.

The Unfollow

It is clear that people do not like being unfollowed, I mean I don’t like it but I don’t notice half the time and don’t think about it for more than a split second for the other half. However people who feel that a follow is a validation of their own knowledge and self worth do not react well to being unfollowed by ‘thought leaders’ (these are the people that normally have a couple of hundred thousand followers). I have seen a number of blogs that mention a very prominent user who recently unfollowed 130,000 people. Firstly how can you follow that many people and have any idea what is going on? It completely voids the point of following someone.

The main reasoning behind an unfollow is that usually you dont find the person interesting. Is that so bad? If someone at a party is immensely boring, you try not to spend the evening with them. Why should this be any different?

The Reaction

There were some fantastic ones when Chris Brogan (who I don’t follow and never have) unfollowed everyone.

“@chrisbrogan unfollowed me, so I just unfollowed him!”

“I haven’t read @chrisbrogan’s tweets much lately. Maybe that’s why he unfollowed me.” <– I found this one fairly worrying!

Just because someone has unfollowed you it does not make you less of a person it just means that what you post is not interesting to them but is to the people that do follow you. Posting links from Mashable all the time can become tedious and people are bound to grow bored as it is something that they probably look at everyday and people do get fed up of seeing the same stories over and over again. Which is something a lot of people including myself have been known to do.

So what should you do?

Twitter is a tool that can be use in a number of differnet ways

1. You can get great news stories and blog posts from people that you follow
2. You can talk with people with similar interests from around the world
3. You can keep in touch with friends and share links with them

At no point should twitter be a tool to see how many followers you can get. It is about conversation and adding value to your followers, they decide if you add value and if they dont think that you do then an unfollow is the way forward. At no point should you add all of the people that add you unless they happen to talk about things that you find interesting and by the looks of most people on twitter I doubt that is the case. If you are seeing a lot of unfollows then it is up to you to remedy it by adjusting the way in which you post, times of day and content. It will never be for everyone but the people who stay are going to be worthwhile and have a conversation with them!