While there are many social networks that would fit into this conversation (Google+, Pinterest, Tumblr), there is one in particular who’s growth and engagement is already attracting brands.

Instagram is now the world’s largest mobile social network. When you look at it’s astounding growth numbers it’s hard to deny that brands should think about a presence in the community.

Already, we’ve seen great examples of brands using Instagram including Starbucks, Red Bull, Threadless and Burberry. Take a look at Room 214’s POV document which outlines some great thoughts and tips on how Instagram can be used from a brand perspective.

Social media marketing is deeply rooted in word of mouth. As social media folks (ie. gurus, specialists, slackjaws) we focus on a specific channel, but our end goal is the same: get people talking about our brands and our clients.

As we explain in the video above, effective WOM marketing follows five key principles:

• Credible – Honest and Authentic
• Respectful – Transparent and trustworthy behavior
• Social - Listening to, participating in, responding to and encouraging conversations
• Measurable - The ability to define, monitor and evaluate a program’s success
• Repeatable – The ability to deliver on these principles over and over again

If you like what you see in the video above, you can grab some free presentation slides, and information downloads below. It’s something visual and fun to include in your next presentation about WOM marketing.

WOMM Presentation Resources:

• Download principles 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
• Download the Information Sheet
• Download the Powerpoint slides

Well, I’m here to tell you that it’s not enough. Having social media accounts is certainly a great (and quite necessary) start, but if you don’t use them to interact with your current and potential customers, there’s really no point.

Luckily, I’ve picked 3 simple and free social media tools to get you pointed in the right direction:

• OnlyWire: Have a few social media accounts, lots to say and little time? Check out OnlyWire. This tool enables you to post content across multiple social networks at the same time, with the push of a button. The service includes all of the top social and professional networks, and the free version allows for 300 submissions per month. Say goodbye to multiple log-ins and hello to your customers.

• Roost: Use Facebook and Twitter, but not always sure what to post or when? Give your content a boost with Roost. Their free Campaign Creator connects to your profiles, lets you schedule single posts or entire campaigns, and analyzes their reach to suggest areas for improvement. This tool can also apply a fancy algorithm to your Facebook data, spitting out a score that determines whether or not your audience will drive business to your location. It’ll even tell you the geographic spread of your fans.

• Timely: Under the impression that the more times you hop on Twitter and drop your knowledge the better? Timely begs to differ…according to this tool, it’s not about the number of times you tweet, it’s about which times you tweet (however, please don’t forget that first and foremost it’s about the content). Timely will analyze your last 199 tweets, figure out the best time slots, and auto-schedule your posts based on the data. Now you can start dropping that knowledge when it’s most likely to be picked up.

With new social media monitoring tools (many of them free) popping up almost by the day, there should be no excuse for neglecting your networks. Start engaging with your current and potential customers and you might be surprised by the increase in online conversations surrounding your brand.

For small businesses not up to speed on social media, this form of online networking can open up a plethora of opportunities for companies who are looking to better engage their current and potential customers.

But what happens when your social media plans go astray? Is it too late to fix them or can you make the necessary changes and still capitalize on all social media has to offer your company?

The answer to those two questions is no and yes, respectively.

Understanding Your Social Media Mistakes

The first and foremost task is realizing what the mistake is, how it happened, and what can be done about it. Once those areas are understood, you can be on your way to bettering your social media efforts.

So what are some of the top SM mistakes your small business should try and avoid? They include:

• Not being social media oriented to begin with – This sounds like a no-brainer, but you would be surprised how many companies are slow to catch on to social media. Whether they think it is not worth their time or they don’t believe they have the resources for it, both are bad excuses. When used correctly, social media for a business can be quite profitable, both in terms of public relations and return on investment (ROI).;

• Not tracking your SM metrics – What’s the sense of doing something if you’re not going to track the results? Too often, companies will throw stuff out there for the public and not measure the ROI. Take the time to delve into the analytics and see what aspects of your company’s SM program is working and what needs attention;

• Not engaging when you get feedback – If you have a company blog, Twitter, Facebook accounts etc. you’re more than likely going to receive feedback from both current and potential customers. When an individual sends you questions and/or comments regarding your products and services, you need to respond in a prompt manner. In the event you don’t, the individual contacting your company is likely to take their questions and/or concerns elsewhere, perhaps your competition. This includes responding to negative feedback, something too many companies shy away from;

• Not providing fresh content – In the event part of your SM campaign involves blogging, you cannot blog once or twice a month as a business and expect to gain a large following. Along with the obvious reason for wanting fresh content (being viewed as up with the times), the major search engines will treat you more kindly if your content is fresh. Stale content leads to a lower ranking and less eyes on the page;

• Not thinking ahead – Remember, social media is always evolving, so you need to have your finger on the pulse. If your company chooses to outsource its social media needs, make sure you are working with a public relations or marketing firm that has your best interests in mind, not what is best for them. If you’re doing the SM campaign in-house, then sit down with the marketing team (assuming they are leading the project) and ask them to plan out what they will be doing tomorrow, the next day and the next day regarding social media. When consumers come to your site, you want them leaving with that ‘wow factor’ and not the ‘I’ve seen this so many times before’ factor.

Utilizing a strong social media campaign for your company is actually easier than you think.

At the end of the day, being social in today’s world has a lot more rewards to it than being anti-social.

Dave Thomas, who covers among other subjects’ business phone systems writes extensively for www.business.com an online resource destination for businesses of all sizes to research, find, and compare the products and services they need to run their businesses.

• YouTube videos are 50 times more likely to appear on the first page of Google results than a text page
• YouTube is the second largest search engine in the U.S.
• As of February 2011, visitors were spending around 2.9 billion hours on YouTube per month

When you look at the facts, YouTube optimization makes a whole lot of sense. To get you started, here is a great video series that covers everything you need to know about YouTube SEO.

Content Optimization:

• Start Building Content: You should be creating a portfolio of content on YouTube. Plan to build in video with your normal campaigns. But video production is so costly, right? Wrong. All you need is iMovie and an iPhone to start creating content. If that’s too much to handle you can try one of the many screen share tools, an online slideshow creator, or a text-to-video service like xtranormal.

• Keep It Relevant: As you begin creating content, ask yourself this question: “Will this be useful in three months?” If the answer is no, it’s unlikely that your video has real replay value. Try to create content that will be relevant in the future… think long shelf life.

• Do Your Research: Before you begin making videos, do some keyword research using YouTube’s keyword tool. This will give you an idea of which videos will be successful. As an example, if you search “NBA” in Google, you’ll get results on players, news, and game scores, etc. If you search “NBA” in YouTube, many of the top videos will be about dunks, brawls, and highlights. This is a clue that a dunk compilation will likely do much better than a player profile video.

• Competitive Research: Do a normal YouTube search for some videos that are similar to the content you want to create. What is already working? What do people seem to like? What is most popular?

Metadata Optimization:

• Optimize Metadata for Video Search: Your metadata can help you appear in searches and gain traffic, but your content has to be good to experience true success (surprise). However, a well optimized video can help your visibility. Optimize your video title, tags, description, and category to appear in searches. Remember, YouTube search works differently than normal search engine results. If you need some clues, go back to your competitive and keyword research and see which video titles are performing the best. There is a great explanation of metadata here.

• Thumbnails: YouTube thumbnails are automatically chosen near the 1/4, 1/2 and 3/4 marks. As you create content, plan to have something visually interesting happening at one of these points. Most people will only have a choice between these three thumbnails, so pick the most visually interesting one. In the case that you are a YouTube partner, you can upload whatever thumbnail image you would like.

Video Promotion:

• Leverage Existing Networks: The obvious thing to do is promote your videos on your website, email newsletter, and social networks. Take advantage of any platform where you have the ability to post a video.

• YouTube Promoted Videos: YouTube promoted video ads allow you to target your videos to specific keywords and pay for views. As a bonus, when you run promoted video ads, YouTube allows you to create a call-to-action link on your video, which can be used to drive traffic to another site. There is a great tutorial on how to do this here.

• Annotations: Use annotations on your other popular videos to drive traffic to newer videos. This can easily be done through the YouTube Annotations tool.

• Link building: In many cases, over 40% of views on your videos will come from sites outside of YouTube. Create a plan to reach out to bloggers and other sites, and build embeds of your YouTube videos.

YouTube Community:

• Channel Design: Spend some time on your YouTube channel. A blank YouTube channel is much like a blank Facebook page. Create a color scheme, upload a background, and organize your playlists, subscriptions and other modules.

• Moderation and Response: Keep a close watch on the comments that happen on your videos and your channel. Be sure to answer questions and respond to comments quickly. Treat these folks like you would treat visitors to your other social pages.

• Engage Fans: Videos with more ratings and comments will appear higher in YouTube search results. Within your content, you should encourage fans to rate, comment, and subscribe to your channel.

Room 214 works with a local non-profit called iEmpathize to help put an end to child sex trafficking. When we created a new welcome tab for their Facebook fan page, we challenged ourselves to emotionally connect visitors with the cause.

Here are a few quick tips on how non-profits can make the most out of their Facebook page:

Create an Emotional Tie

If you want your Facebook visitors to emotionally connect with your cause, make your cause relatable. Big stats scare folks away and allow them to compartmentalize the problem as something too big to change.

However, when you break down the statistics and present the issue in a digestible manner, it becomes easier for a visitor to connect.

Our simple ticker communicates the issue in a very understandable form: time. For every 30 seconds you spend on the iEmpathize Facebook page, another child is forced into sex slavery. You can watch the clock tick down as more and more children are forced into this nightmare. This helps visitors realize the urgency of the issue, and allows them to emotionally connect with the problem we’ve presented.

Tell a Story
Human beings love to have information presented in the form of a story. Call it psychology or biology, but it’s something you always need to consider when you communicate with people. Through the use of video and images we were able to effectively tell the story behind iEmpathize and their cause.

This quick brand essence video tells the story of a child who did not end up in the sex trade thanks to the work of iEmpathize.

These photos of real artifacts from the sex trade tell the hauntingly real stories behind the lives of children in the sex trade.

Offer Small and Big Ways to Show Support

Most visitors will not choose to donate, but many will want to show their support. Give the casual visitors a simple way align themselves with your cause, and at the same time make it easy for potential donors to make a contribution.

What we’d like to focus on is a point made by Tech Crunch. In their haste to split these two entities, the folks at Netflix neglected to acquire the social network properties before their big launch. TechCrunch highlights the user who owns the @Qwikster handle on Twitter, who is currently trying to sell this handle to Netflix.

After a look into the top social networking sites, it seems that they have not created an official page on Facebook or YouTube. There are however 7 unofficial fan-created Qwikster pages, all aggregating negative comments about this change.

So why is this oversight so bad? Why is it important to lock these online real estates down before you launch a new brand, company etc?

Control

Because Netflix did not secure these, they are not in control of what their critics and customers say about them. Had they obtained official accounts prior to the announcement, they could give customers and their company an official forum to comment and respond. The messages are out there, and it seems they are doing very little to respond or explain, which is not going to endear them to their customers.

Random Squatters

They now have to deal with people who are holding onto these properties, and will potentially have to pay them in order to acquire (some speculate in the six figure arena). People can get mighty greedy when they have the whip-hand over a corporation. This cost could have been avoided had they handled this in advance, or gotten a similar handle i.e. @QwiksterOfficial. In addition to the cost, they could have avoided a very public discussion about what kind of deal this yoo-hoo was after.

Confusion for Customers

Not having official outlets for your customers to comment, complain or ask legitimate questions can be very confusing. If they comment on an unofficial forum and never get a response, they may feel negatively about your brand.

Embarrassment

Netflix is a revolutionary company; nothing that they have done can change their impact on the digital-media landscape. However, it’s kind of embarrassing that an Internet-oriented company did not think of this in advance. It seems they don’t really even have a cohesive branded presence on YouTube as Netflix.

Four Easy Steps to Avoid This

1. Determine which social networking sites are the best fits for your company. It is usually smart to incorporate more incase you need them, or at least protect them.
2. Research what is already out there, if there is someone who already owns your brand name, what variation could you use across all of the social networks (i.e. if @MyersCorporation is taken, consider @MyersCorporationOfficial), consistency is key.
3. Grab them! (it will probably take less than an hour)
4. Figure out how you are going to consistently leverage these accounts, so that they become synonymous with your official brand.

In an age of quick surfing and shrinking attention spans, businesses are looking for new ways to talk about what they do. And with video, it’s possible. Video gives you the opportunity to tell your story. Period. And by leveraging the power of brief and concise storytelling, video can quickly capture and communicate the essence of your business, service and brand to a broad population of people.

The Value of the Medium

Video gives you a medium that can shorten the time your costumers may require to make decisions. In a climate where authenticity is key, video adds a layer of trust and intimacy to your content – and by leveraging it in sites such as YouTube, instantaneously puts it into the public sphere. Add the power of social sharing and search engine visibility to drive traffic, and you have the opportunity to capture an attentive audience like never before.

But while all this is true, you still may ask, is video really that important?

Short answer: yes.

Monthly Snapshot of Video Viewing Stats

Last month, comScore, released data from the comScore Video Metrix showing that last June, 178 million U.S. Internet users watched video content, a solid one million user increase from June 2010. On top of that, the average viewer watched 16.8 hours of video content and the U.S. Internet audience engaged in over 6.8 billion separate video viewings, an all-time high.

If these statistics show anything, it’s that video consumption is trending upward. 48 hours of YouTube content is uploaded every minute and according to a recent Pew report, 71 percent of online users are now accessing video sites like YouTube and Vimeo, compared with 33 percent 4.5 years ago.

With YouTube surpassing Yahoo as the 2^nd largest search engine on the Web last year (2^nd only to it’s owner Google), it should be clear to everyone that video offers the opportunity for unparalleled exposure to a massive internet audience that is only growing steadily larger.

As attention spans continue to dwindle, being able to effectively tell your story in a timely fashion will only become more of a challenge. This means we must not ignore the millions who watch video, and are becoming accustomed to consuming content through this ever-growing medium. It is clear that video is here to stay. Now it’s up to us to stay with it.

At Room 214, we have been searching for a better wat to tell the world about the great work we do. We found that video is a great way to creatively illustrate the stories and strategy behind our work.

In the video case study above, we walk you through our creative development of a store locator application for the Sanrio and Hello Kitty Facebook pages. So far, we’ve had some great response.

The Store Locator tab (and this video) were recently featured on Facebook Studio, a site which highlights great examples of marketing on Facebook from around the world.

For those of you who would like more details, you can also grab a PDF of the case study from our Slideshare account.

What do you think? Is video a good way of telling the stories behind our work?

We’d love to hear your thoughts!

What Attribute is Your Brand Looking for?

One of the first steps is to understand the method of influence people can have. After reviewing these, you can better identify which segment you’d like to pursue, culling down the numbers significantly. For instance, Ed Keller and Jon Berry, authors of the ‘The Influentials’ identify five key attributes:

Activists (Specialized): these are the active members of a topic/brand/community who entice people to take a certain action or get involved. If you need this person to incite action in others, activists will help drive response.

Connected (Broad Stroke): influencers who have sizable numbers of connections across the social networks. If you are looking for sheer volume of brand impressions this can be a powerful attribute.

Impact (Trust and Aspiration): these people influence others by being reputable by many and are trusted. If you are looking to build brand goodwill or trust with your customers, this validation from a trusted source can help.

Active Minds (Professional Dilettantes): these people are jack-of-all trades because they have influence across many different topics. These influencers can be helpful if you have many products and the audiences are segmented differently.

Trend Setters (Early Adoption): these people are ahead-of-the game and can influence others before an idea/product is popular. This can help build early excitement and credibility for your brand or product.

After reviewing these, which do you believe will have the greatest impact on your customers?  Looking at the attributes should help you start to understand who you need to pursue and the impact that they will have.

Where Does Your Target Audience Hangout?

Selecting one or multiple channels is another big factor in the social influence equation.  This is where your demographics and existing research comes in. Using this information will help you determine the best method to reach your customer.

For instance say you own a company that makes products geared toward boys aged 13-17.  Based on those demographics, what channel is best to reach them? Where do they hang out online? Where is it likely that an influencer could reach them? You can probably have a gut feeling about this, but make sure to double check the statistics of the channel to confirm your assumption.

Selecting the best channel to reach your target audience will help you identify the major players in that space.

Which Numbers Matter for Social Influence?

This depends on each social channel you have selected, so let’s give you a breakdown of the numbers to look for on the top three most popular social networking sites (in terms of size):

Facebook & Twitter: Fortunately, there is a handy-dandy tool called Klout that will calculate several variables of influence for you, on a rating of 1-100. Best practice dictates that a score above 50 is usually a good influencer. When you are searching for particular topics within Facebook and Twitter, note certain people and double-check their Klout.

YouTube: While many people don’t think about this as a Social Network, it actually is ranked #2 in terms of size and activity. Look for activity in a influencer’s channel:  comments on a video, responses to comments, subscribers vs. subscribe ratio.  This will show you how this person’s content is received, whether they are popular and if they engage with their community.

Other Social Networking Sites: Look for engagement factors, not just sheer size of community: discussions, comments, sharing. Look at how an influencer responds to commentary; are they helpful and problem-solution oriented? Do they suggest further action? What kind of information do they share? (Links, suggestions, products).

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This process can feel like an extremely overwhelming funnel: taking hundreds of millions of people and figuring out who is a best fit for you. Using these guidelines should help you understand how to take the top of this funnel and scale it down in order to find the best influential fits for your company.