Hay There, Friends!  Whether you are wearing your “small business owner cap” or are a personal social media user, if you are feeling a bit lost when it comes to Twitter, no need to stress!  As you know, Twitter is a platform that is all around us today.  When Twitter is leveraged as part of an strategic social media marketing effort, it can be a very effective way to reach your target audience.  Twitter is one of the components of an online presence that Hay There Social Media (@haythereSM) helps its small business clients with.

I was recently privileged to join the hosts of the Internet Advisor Show on WJR 760AM in Detroit: Gary Baker, Foster Braun, Cal Carson and Ed Rudel & Erik Anderson to “talk Twitter.”  We covered the basics and talked through some examples of how companies are using Twitter in particular to enhance business communication.  The outline below gives you a basic framework to wrap your arms around this particular social network.

As you can imagine, there are countless elements to talk about with regards to Twitter, so I’d love community input!  What Twitter tips and best practices do YOU swear by?

I. Basics

• What it is
  • Created in 2006; 300M+ users today
  • 140 characters, microblogging service
  • Short snippets breeds quick to the point messaging
• How it works
  • Set-up an account
  • People, sports teams, companies, media publications
  • Some people have multiple twitter personas or may tweet for other organizations
  • Username = your twitter handle
  • You follow people & people follow you
  • In your stream you see tweets from those you follow & people who follow you see your tweets
• Terms & Definitions
  • #hashtags –
    • Categorize content
    • Like a subject line in an email
    • Follow a conversation in “search”
    • Some common hashtag examples
      • #FF = follow Friday (recommending people to follow)
      • #quote
    • No formal directory but sites that can show activity (#hashtag.org, twememe.com)
    • #hashtag topic is really popular, some people will put that in their tweet for greater visibility
    • #charliesheen example – against twitter rules, can’t be irrelevant or repetitive or self-imposed
  • @mentions = “at mentions”
    • Publicly referring to someone / pulling them into the conversation
  • RT’s = Retweets
    • Like forwarding content along –
    • When influential people RT your tweet, it can help a brand
      • (Klout – the gold standard for measuring your influence on twitter)
  • Verified – blue check mark badge
    • Established authenticity among well known user accounts
    • Not open to the public
    • Twitter advertisers, partners, etc.
  • “Trending”
    • What is most relevant at that moment vs. something that has been popular overtime
    • What’s occupying people’s attention on twitter at that moment
    • Globally & Locally

II. Enhancing Business Communication

• Industry Research
  • Twitter.com/search – No twitter account needed to go see what people are saying about your business & industry today
• To employees from company
  • Faster than email
  • People feel part of the online company culture & community
  • Companies can have policies in place to say whether or not you can mention the company in your twitter profile description, (common to see “TITLE at___, tweets are my own” as a “disclaimer”)
• Customer Service
  • In-house teams for larger companies
  • Example: #comcast – or @comcastcares
  • It can take some issues “offline” (ones that need a resolution in more than 140 characters)
  • Saves $ – answering questions via Twitter may satisfy 10 phone calls that come in with that same question
  • Out in the open?  Yes, but good to have transparency and other people can see tweets being answered by a company
• Conferences / Events
  • Enhance offline events –  spread the reach (Hay There Social Media tweeted live from Alzheimer’s Association Event)
  • Enhances /reinforces other mediums (TV, Radio)
    • See it at the bottom of Anderson Cooper and at the bottom of the TV screen during American Idol
    • Before commercial breaks the pose twitter questions
    • Detroit example: #backchannel, #earlyrisers
  • Deepen the engagement off and online –example: Mackinac Policy Conference.
  • Tweet-ups – gatherings in-person by people you’ve only known via Twitter.  Extension of virtual connections.
• Twitter Parties
  • Created by Amy Bair, Resourceful Mommy Media
  • Completely online; 1-2 hours
  • Set time/ dates and all hop online and talk about a topic
  • Can be great for product launches
  • You can participate or just “listen in” to learn
• Marketing / Sponsorship
  • Product give-a-ways at a Twitter Party
  • Brand Campaigns –example: “Random acts of Shaqness” to grow Shaquille O’Neal’s brand
  • When leveraged effectively, Tweeting can be incredibly powerful way to spread awareness virally
  • For certain calls to action through Twitter, you can get charities involved to benefit for example

III. Not Just Limited to Large Corporations

• Small businesses / personalities
  • Cost-effective marketing
  • Can run specials–physically convene people to your location
  • Hyper-targeted customers
• Quality vs. quantity –
  • Depends on the type of business – might want national followers, or perhaps just local
  • Targeted followers that want to hear from you, they feel they are part of an exclusive club
• All about value!
  • What followers want
  • Delivered in the way they want it
  • Entertaining
  • Unique – never before had this kind of platform!

Please feel free to elaborate on any of the points above…social media is continually changing so the more contributions from more “Tweeters” the better!

Thanks for reading!

Now it’s time to claim your photo!

PLEASE CLICK HERE.

A new window will open taking you to an online photo gallery where you can retrieve your photo. We look forward to everyone putting these photos to good use to make a strong online impression!

Quick video message:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Hay There Social Media Team Members and I joined WordPress WordCamp Detroit this weekend.  There were many talented developers, tech savvy folks and WordPress enthusiasts on-site for this 2-day event.  WordPress is a platform I’ve supported since the beginning of my own blogging journey and I’m always amazed to learn about more dimensions and solutions this incredible platform delivers.

So the 1^st question is, “Why should you blog for your small business?”

First of all, it’s important to note that a blog is part of social media…a big part!  If you have read my blog posts before, then you will see that I often compare an effective online presence to a perfect martini.  A martini is made up from a few quality ingredients, mixed in the right quantity.  A WordPress blog is the vodka in your  social media martini…the main ingredient and hub of your online presence!

Think of your blog as an online conversation about your business. Each day, you interact with current and prospective customers, sometimes in-person, on the phone or via email.  Your blog enables you to continue that dialogue online on an ongoing basis and reach an exponential amount of people.  Through a small business blog, you are able to interact and engage with your audience online through written or even video posts.

When you create trust with your prospective customers, it can be a natural step for them to want to do business with you.  Apply your knowledge to write valuable blog posts about your industry and showcase your expertise. Businesses have customers and customers are readers; your blog can help readers get to know more about your specialty and how you can help them.

The 2^nd question is, “Why should I use WordPress?”

It’s important to think of WordPress as much more than a “blog.” Entire websites can be built on a WordPress.org platform, which allows for greater control of the look, feel, functionality of your site as well (as and budget) as your business evolves and needs change.

Some bloggers start on a WordPress.com platform but WordPress.org is self-hosted, which means you control all the elements – visual and mechanical.  Even if you are a WordPress novice, the basic steps include getting a domain (from GoDaddy), website hosting (I like HostGator) and then downloading WordPress.org.  (Additional details on these steps to get WordPress going in my eBook, “The Social Media Tutorial for Small Business Owners,” so feel free to opt-in to my blog to receive a copy!).

Just like we use “apps” to enhance our mobile devices, WordPress “plug-ins” can be added to your site enabling everything from ecommerce capabilities (shopping carts) to helping block spam comments.  Since the focus of Hay There Social Media is on helping small business owners effectively leverage social media, plug-ins that allow people to share your content via social media very easily are “a must.”

I personally love that WordPress is a “walk before you run” environment. The themes and ease of use give you a professional look to start with and you can add features as your needs change – and as your budget allows for that change!  Already have an expensive website and can’t begin to think of “switching” to WordPress?  Have a portion of your site that is a pain to deal with?  I would love to put you in touch with any of the talented developers from WordCamp to see how WordPress functionality can make any aspect of your current online presence better.

The most important step is to take action! Decide to do a blog for your small business today.  The next time you have a conversation with a prospective customer, take a few minutes to type out a few paragraph in a Word document and save that as your first blog post.

If you are leveraging other social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube and want to effectively put a WordPress blog to work, contact us today so we can help get results for YOUR small business.  We’d love to hear from you.

Thanks for reading!

Calling all movers, shakers, entrepreneurs and those that love Michigan and want to help shape its future!  Are YOU attending the Michigan Emerging Conference?

Don’t miss this forward-thinking session on November 14, 2011 at COBO Conference Center. It’s time to motivate, collaborate, and dominate!

The conference is made up of an impressive array of leaders on the Advisory Board and is made possible by tremendous partners and out-of-the-box thinkers.

CLICK HERE to learn why YOU need to attend!

Also, it is no coincidence that Michigan Emerging is taking place during Global Entrepreneurship Week.  See what the power and potential of the young entrepreneurial movement is doing for our country!

Hay There Social Media will be at Michigan Emerging…here’s what’s in it FOR YOU!

Are you a LinkedIn user that doesn’t have a profile photo?

Do you dislike the photo you currently have or have one that’s just plain outdated?

If you answered “YES,” then Hay There Social Media has the solution for you!

If you are attending the Michigan Emerging Conference, come visit Hay There Social Media and get a professional headshot taken that you can be proud of!

Hay There Social Media will be providing all attendees, speakers, and entrepreneurial thinkers alike with the opportunity to get a complimentary professional headshot taken for their LinkedIn (and other social media) profiles!

Photography by William Cowger, The Business Photographer.

Hay There Social Media provides turn-key social media consulting and management solutions for small business owners and individuals.  A strong online presence backed by an effective social media strategy can be an incredibly powerful way to market and build your brand.  Social media has changed the way people communicate and make impressions about each other and our businesses. Put your best foot forward, have a strong profile photo!

Are you a small business owner that is currently using social media to connect with your target audience?  Are you trying to grow a following on twitter for your small business?  At Hay There Social Media, we help small business owners implement effective social media strategies everyday that help grow their businesses.  With Twitter being one of the major, omnipresent social networks, we receive a great deal of questions about how to use it to get results.

On Twitter in particular, it is easy to get overwhelmed by the sheer volume of users and messages.  A recent example of how were able to help a successful business sort through Twitter is MD Moms, makers of Baby Silk Skin Care Products.

A Hay There Social Media Team Member, @sheriwatkins, was tweeting with @MDMoms about their large follower base.  With over 63,000 followers, they inquired about editing their follower list to make sure it’s comprised of legit, quality target audience members.  (A very important consideration for a company that makes such quality products.)  Sheri was able to provide them some specific insight and action items and they were more than appreciative!   See the screenshot below:

Whether you’ve been using Twitter for your business for a while or if you’re just getting started, in today’s blog post, we are outlining a few action items to set yourself up for success so YOUR business can get results through Twitter.

1) Follow people organically.

It is important to note that the plan to “grow a following” must include ensuring your following consists of the right quality of users vs. quantity.   (After all, what is the point of marketing your business to thousands of unqualified individuals that don’t result in more business for you, right?)  There are a number of programs that enable you to “auto-followback” any twitter user that follows you, but that requires you to surrender some proactive quality control.

We recommend that you listen before you follow; pick a few twitter users from your target audience, see who they interact with and listen to what they talk about.   You want to leverage the expertise and personality of your business through social networking platforms and that includes “introducing” yourself to the right mix of people.  Since you are dedicating your time to this, be choosy about who you follow.  Stay away from the default “egg” avatars or profiles with no description or something random.

2) Lock down your tweets.

Protecting your tweets is a strategy we rarely implement as it does limit one’s audience when trying to promote a product/service (which can be counterproductive!). It can dilute the activity of “social networking.”  One quick example, if one of your followers’ re-tweets one of your posts only the followers you both share will see them.  Depending on the nature of your small business, this strategy might be well suited for the messages you choose to tweet out, but again, a practice for careful consideration.

3) Commit to ongoing monitoring.

There is no way to cut corners on this part.  On Twitter, it is important to get rid of the “spammy” followers and you can do so by clicking on your followers list. It will take a little work, but you can block individual followers. Next to the “Follow” button is a down arrow. Click on that and one of the options is to block a follower. You can also use this tool to report spammers.

Feeling like you just don’t have the time for this activity? We can appreciate that! Using social media is a time commitment, but it’s not insurmountable; it takes time and effort to implement any effective marketing campaign and social media is no exception.  The quality of the work you put in will pay you back ten-fold.

If you are overwhelmed on figuring out how to establish an effective social media strategy and manage your presence on networks like Twitter, Facebook and your company blog for example, please contact Hay There Social Media.  Check out our list of services so we can get social media results for you today!   Thanks for reading and we look forward to tweeting with you soon

Hay There Social Media was on-site at the MGM Grand and tweeted LIVE from the event @alzgmc #chocolatejubilee! Sweet Chance donors provided prizes and entries were conducted via social media (foursquare check-in and winners announced via Twitter and Facebook).

This fun evening of entertainment and scrumptious desserts was led by:

Honorary Chairs: Danialle and Peter Karmanos, Jr.
Event Chair: Lil Erdeljan
Event Co-Chairs: Amyre Makupson and Richard Astrein

Media Partner: HOUR Detroit

VIEW THE ALBUM OF CHOCOLATE JUBILEE CONTRIBUTORS HERE!

Time & Details:
-Pre-Glow 6:30PM (for donors of $2,500 and up)
An exclusive cabaret featuring cocktails, hors d’oeuvres and a can-can revue

-Dinner 7:30PM
Magic, mimes, musique and a feast gastronomique

-Chocolate Fête 9PM – Midnight – AFTERGLOW
DJ, dancing and chocolates galore ● Cash bar

A Très Chic event you won’t want to miss!  Purchase tickets to Chocolate Fète only by visiting http://bit.ly/alzgmc

Hay There Social Media, LLC is a proud member of the Birmingham Bloomfield Chamber of Commerce.  Since our focus is on getting social media results for small business owners, we are celebrating the business launch by having the Chamber’s first member “virtual ribbon cutting ceremony” held completely on Facebook!

This virtual ribbon cutting will be conducted by video post on Emily A. Hay’s Business Page on Facebook
To ATTEND on Tuesday, October 4, 2011 at 4pm:

1) Visit Emily A. Hay Facebook Business page on Tuesday, Oct 4, 2011 at 4pm.

2) Look for the post on the wall with the Ribbon Cutting Announcement…a special video message will be included (In case you aren’t a Facebook user, the video is pasted at the bottom of this blog post).

3) Be sure to leave a comment on that post in order to receive a very special, exclusive Facebook Ribbon Cutting ceremony only offer from Hay There Social Media!  The offer will be announced in the short video.

Thank you Birmingham Bloomfield Chamber for your tremendous support! Friends, please spread the word…we can’t wait to have you join us!

~Emily A. Hay, Founder | Hay There Social Media

Click here to view the embedded video.

Hay There, Friends…Emily A. Hay here!  Since we at Hay There Social Media LOVE putting social media to work for small business owners, we take on many projects regarding LinkedIn…the world’s largest professional social network.  We speak with executive leadership teams about how to use LinkedIn for individual use and we implement a strong company presence on LinkedIn as just part of many of our client’s social media strategies.

I hear a lot of business owners today ask, “What is LinkedIn?” or they tell me, “I get requests to join it all the time, but I don’t use it.”  Leveraging social media effectively can be a key way to differentiate yourself and your small business in this connected world! If you’ve read a blog post of mine before, you might be aware that I refer to an effective social media strategy as being like a perfect martini…made of quality ingredients mixed in the right quantity.  In today’s post, I am going to share a few suggestions of how one key ingredient—LinkedIn—can be leveraged for social media success!

As a professional (and particularly as a small business owner), a LinkedIn profile is an approachable way to begin using social networking sites.  Unlike Facebook, LinkedIn can only be used to connect with people you already know.  In this type of situation, you may be more likely to keep the “professional” and “personal” sides of your life separate (an important need many of my clients express).  On LinkedIn, the people you are linked with are “connections” of varying degrees, which allows for an effortless and dependable professional networking tool.

Within your LinkedIn profile, you will want to populate information about your professional experience and background (yes, similar to your resume, but with a slightly different tone…see an example HERE).  It is a wise measure to put specialty keywords in your current role instead of just your job title to help people find you.  In other words, instead of simply putting “Dentist” or “Owner” of your practice as your job title, include keywords such as “Cosmetic Dentist” or “Cosmetic & General Dentist.”

Not sure how to begin using LinkedIn once your profile is set up? Join a few industry groups as this is a great way to see what topics people are talking about in your industry and you may even learn that some of your associates (or competitors!) are very active in discussion forums.  Simply enter your keywords in the search box in the top right corner and select “Groups” from the drop-down.  Many groups are “open,” in other words, you simply click “Join Group” and you are a member instantly, while others you simply await access to be granted by the group administrator.  Receive daily or weekly email summaries about the latest discussion threads.

Remember when it used to be a huge burden to write a letter of recommendation for someone?  Now, LinkedIn makes it quick and easy for users to request and write recommendations for fellow LinkedIn users.  Remember, social media is a conversation about your business. As a small business owner, I am sure you have many happy positive client or patient testimonials…ask them to submit a few quick sentences for your LinkedIn profile to be sure your brand tells a consistent positive story across your online properties.

LinkedIn offers many additional tools such as professional company pages, job postings, headline news in the business world, and much more.  A company page can feature your products and services to millions of LinkedIn users and can be an effective way to get leads when managed properly.

With the internet making information so easily accessible, people are finding it more convenient to search for information through social media to make their first impressions about a business. You can see how maintaining a current profile for yourself and for your small business is very important in this case.

Interested in using LinkedIn but have enough on your plate? Helping you and your team members with LinkedIn profiles and company pages are one of the many ways Hay There Social Media can help your small business get social media results. Please contact us today, we’d love to help you take action!

Thanks for reading,

~Emily A. Hay