Are you responsible for Twitter and Social Media in your business? Perhaps you’ve been feeling a bit lost after CoTweet closed its free version (shame on them) … here are a few alternatives you can look at

HootSuite

- yes I said alternative to CoTweet – personally, I like to use my own bit.ly Pro URL so this was not an option.
- Hootsuite has a very reasonably priced premium version and it has clients for pretty much any device

MarketMeSuite

- MarketMeSuite is looking the most promising ‘free’ solution.

Integrated with LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter

Tools for scheduling tweets just like CoTweet or HootSuite.

GroupTweet
- GroupTweet could be good for sharing access to 1 Twitter account in much the same way as CoTweet

SocialBro

- I’d forgotten all about SocialBro til a colleague showed me the latest logged in / dashboard.

- Definitely one to join and compare.

Damien Saunders

Android Mobiles are taking over the world … and that seems to be supported by the latest statistics or trends. If you’re thinking about mobile marketing .. and wondering ‘what is all the fuss about Android’, then this presentation is for you.

Only the latest Android Insights and Statistics

• 10 billion app downloads (December 2011)
• 200 million activated devices (November 2011)
• 400,000 Android Apps (December 2011)

We can only wait for the next Google I/O conference to confirm how these numbers are growing!

Damien Saunders

The Definitive Guide to Foursquare has been updated for 2011 … and will be sent out this week.

This guide contains all you need to know to get started with marketing using Foursquare. It covers:

• Statistics you need to know
• Ideas for making your business marketing with Foursquare better
• What key incentives you should have to reward Mayors
• Tips for tracking and monitoring
• much much more …

This presentation will be sent out for free to registered members – it’s not too late to register now

Damien Saunders

The team at Emailvision have contacted me a lot in the past 3 days … since I wrote a short article on cross channel campaign problems and a lack of testing.

I will say that Emailvision team that I have spoken to have all been great – it’s good to know they switched on people who are passionate about their company and what they do.

The problem with integrated cross-channel marketing is …

James from Emailvision resolved / pointed out a few things -

1. If you use an HTTPS connection to Facebook there was an issue (now fixed)

2. there was an issue with replicating data to the Akamai CDN (now fixed)

3. Facebook use another party to identify spammers which is part based on domain name (not in their control).

4. The link to contact Emailvision from Facebook was now going to an error page (today)

Campaign Testing is import for your brand & domain name reputation

As I wrote this week … on email and brand reputation, it is very very very very important to get your campaign tested end to end to be sure its all going to work.

It’s also important, unfortunately to change things if someone else breaks something. Your customer / potential customer doesn’t know anything about Akamai or CDN or HTTPS connection issues.

So in the next couple of weeks I hope to go meet a London based rep from Emailvision and get a good demo of their tool.

Damien Saunders

Digital marketing has its benefits mainly that it’s easy to launch a social media campaign without any prior relationship with the victim.

I’m more annoyed at the damage young companies do to their brand, reputation and domain-name … at wasted opportunities from legitimate startups who just spam any contacts in one e-mail blast.

Last week, I got an email sent to me with someone elses info – yet it was an invite to join their London business network. The business owner even replied to me. What a wasted opportunity to get it right at the first step.

WTF – you don’t know me so don’t spam from legitimate e-mail marketing services

It’s nice to know that companies like Mailchimp and Aweber make it so easy to send out an e-mail blast – but really, if you didn’t read the terms of service, if you bulk upload to Mailchimp, you have to CONFIRM that you legitimately know me.

So why is it companies insist on sending spam and then violate their agreement with Mailchimp or Aweber?

And why would you wast that first contact for your new business by being ignorant and spamming all those potentials?

Really – you only damage your company domain & reputation

Think again … if you’re a new business never use cold email lists because:

1. Google Mail, Yahoo & Hotmail along with other email service providers will automatically send all your email to SPAM folders and you’ll never recover from that

2. Service providers like Mailchimp will cancel your account forever

3. You’ll never get anywhere with SEO, Adwords, etc if Google decides your domain is bad.

First Launch E-mail Strategy

To get going with first launch and early email marketing campaigns, use all the contacts you personally know. 70% of them will open the email if they know its from you and none of them are likely to unsubscribe are they.

I don’t claim to be an expert at digital marketing – but I know customer experience is majorly important. You’ve got to get your first contact right.

Damien Saunders

Have you seen this … This has to be the future of customer service and online shopping — say goodbye to messy forms or complicated shopping charts. Those crazy people in Tre Sweden www.tre.se just like to push the envelope here. And maybe some of those other mobile operators or utility providers can do this too.

Once you’ve checked out this promo video – go take a look at the 3 LiveShop – it uses Adobe Flash embed video chat for the fun stuff.

3 from B-Reel & B-Reel Films on Vimeo.

Damien Saunders

To market to market to buy me a Foursquare … It’s that time of the year and your readers maybe thinking of shopping, overseas travels or going out for food. So be the expert you know you are and tell them where to go! These are good tips for anyone building an online social media identity who doesn’t have their own offices or is a mobile worker.

Last week I started a new series focused on Ideas using Foursquare for social media marketing with guides that will help increase customer satisfaction and improve retention.

Today, will be looking at how writers, journalists and bloggers can use social media marketing to offer some insights that leave your readers hanging off every written word.

Easy guide to Foursquare Marketing

Try these tips to give added value to your reputation and social media marketing

Claim your Identity on Foursquare

1. Create your own ‘brand’ identity on Foursquare – it’s ok if your brand is ‘You’
2. Put a Add To Do tip button on your website
3. Cross promote Foursquare on your website, email news, Twitter, Facebook or printed material
4. Tell your readers to put Foursquare on their mobile to discover places to go while they are away
5. Checkin and leave tips at interesting locations just like locals or tourists do.
6. Create offers on foursquare that help get people visiting your shop.
7. Whenever you review a place add a link to the Foursquare short url (just like the Add to Do tip button).

Do you need help with Foursquare marketing? Let me manage your social media marketing? I’ll give you an individual proposal tailored to your needs.

Damien Saunders

To market to market to buy me a Foursquare … for Cafes & Restaurants it’s the time of the year when your customers maybe thinking of Christmas comforts to have at home so get them in your store now. Last week I started a new series focused on Ideas using Foursquare for social media marketing with guides that will help increase customer satisfaction and improve retention.

Today, will be looking at how can use social media marketing to offer some tasty food tidbits that leave your customers wanting to come back for seconds.

Easy guide to Foursquare Marketing

Try these tips to get value added to social media marketing

Claim your Cafe or Restaurant on Foursquare

1. Create your own store identity on Foursquare
2. Put a Add To Do tip button on your website
3. Cross promote Foursquare on your website, email news, Twitter, Facebook or printed material
4. Tell your customers to put Foursquare on their mobile to discover places to go while they are away
5. Checkin and leave tips about your specials of the week or day.
6. Create offers on Foursquare that help get people visiting your shop.

ADVANCED TIP Foursquare Swarm Badge Party

Run a [ id="1932" type="post"]Foursquare Swarm Badge Party[/] in your shop … it’s easy to setup and good fun!

Do you need help with Foursquare marketing? Let me manage your social media marketing – I’ll give you an individual proposal tailored to your needs.

Damien Saunders

As travel professionals know, your customers want holiday experiences to always remember and preferably off the beaten trail. This week I started a new series focused on Ideas using Foursquare for social media marketing with guides that will help increase customer satisfaction and improve retention.

Today, I will be looking at how you can use social media to offer up some pretty amazing travel experiences using Foursquare. If your clients don’t want to read a Time Out or carry a Lonely Planet – then Foursquare is the perfect guide for locals!

Easy guide to Foursquare Marketing

Try these tips to get value added to social media marketing

Create your travel store on Foursquare

1. Create your own store or travel brand identity on foursquare
2. Put a Add To Do tip button on your website and blog
3. Cross promote Foursquare on your website, email news, Twitter, Facebook or printed material
4. Tell your customers to put Foursquare on their mobile to discover places to go while they are away
5. Checkin and leave tips at interesting locations just like locals or tourists do.
6. Create Tips on Foursquare that help get people visiting your shop or website.
7. Create a list of key tourist places including the Foursquare short url for them.

Advanced Tip – use Twitter & Foursquare to follow and friend your clients – invite them to ask you ‘questions’ about places to go see.

Do you need help with Foursquare marketing? Let me manage your social media marketing? I’ll give you an individual proposal tailored to your needs.

Damien Saunders

Foursquare this week should break through the 5 million users mark and it has taken about 8 weeks to add an extra million. While Foursquare is still the most popular of the location based social networks (anyone using SCVNGR??) other services are making a better play at location marketing.

Slow down in the rate of new users

The latest RJ Metrics graphic for Foursquare convincingly shows the decline in the week on week growth of new users. Is this something to worry Foursquare? Personally I think activation of new users is less of an issue compared to retention of existing users.

Active users split between the brands they follow & Foursquare followers

Foursquare should be the Number One shoppers network – it has a large enough install base, it has more than 7.5 million locations or stores and it works on your mobile – which is probably in your pocket right now (or you’re reading this on it). So the problem, I believe is that Foursquare users are split between active users who check-in everyday at the stores & brands they love (aka Brand Followers) or they check-in regularly and are interested in their checkin history, earning badges or being mayor (Foursquare Followers).

This split between brand-followers and Foursquare followers must be a real headache for the guys at Foursquare HQ — because it’s the brands and the retailers who are using this for their marketing programmes. And are they believers that Foursquare is good for their customer loyalty or retention? It’s a fact (and by looking on Twitter or Facebook for recent Check-in Messages), you can find people tweeting about checking-in at places they want to tell their friends about. Which is good for the brand-followers and for the brag / show off factor.

Summary – Foursquare needs to differentiate now before location discount coupons take off

As far as 2010 goes, Foursquare will be on the list of brands and services that got peoples attention. The question looking to next year is if Foursquare can find a niche for itself between the giants of Internet – Google and Facebook AND more importantly differentiate itself from Groupon and Vouchercloud. The active users of Foursquare need to understand that Foursquare is more than finding specials for the brands they love to folow.

Damien Saunders

Results Prove Dont Auto Follow

I have not Auto-Followed Twitterers for some time – as I try to focus on building some relationship (!!!) with people who I choose to follow. If I follow you, it’s cause I’m interested in what you do or who you are.

In the screenshot below from CoTweet (my favourite Twitter Tool) – this is just a few of the Auto-DM messages I have been receiving and most are from Twitter Pyramid Plan Selling people trying to skim a few bits of cash from me clicking on their message or buying in to their marketing scheme.

It’s a Pyramid Scheme & YOU WONT MAKE MONEY

Damien Saunders

Engagement metrics and CPE are going to become more popular this year and next year, and so how do you take the offline world online? Or how can you start track the value of that billboard you just spent 10,000,000 dollars on?

Well that looks obvious! So how are you tracking offline to online engagement?

At the moment Bit.ly Pro offers free service – you provide a customer domain or sub domain and it does the rest.

Damien Saunders

In Lithuania mobile penetration is almost at 150% – so is this all from younger people sim swapping?

Mobile Youth in Lithuania (16-24 yo) are all using multi-sims for the best deals and free calls. The 3 main operators are Omnitel, Bite and Tele2. Freedom of choice means that handsets are not subsidised very much and customers have to pay full price for a phone. Even the the ‘popular’ iPhone is over priced and still exclusive with one operator and on a 24 month contract.

I previously posted about the high stats for internet usage in the younger age group .. at around 95% with internet access. what I didn’t mention is that about 1.3 million users in total have internet access via their mobile phone so a high number of younger people may have primary access to the internet only using their phone.

So far mobile youth are calling and texting each other – one thing I discovered is that MMS has not taken off. This could be due to fly by night mobile marketing tactics that have caused much negativity so I’m learning.

Of course – GetJar one of the largest free app stores is a Lithuanian company, probably with high hopes for good growth in paid for mobile internet usage and apps.

Damien Saunders

In Lithuania the usage of the internet is reaching saturation point. A 2009 official report shows 95% of young people aged 16-24 with internet access.

Lithuania has one of the highest per capita access to broadband ratios due to small land mass and population of just under 4 million. It’s also atypical of ‘westernised’ European markets and the Lithuanian youth are no different – wanting mobile phones, good clothes, good education and a future with a good job (most likely in London).

Internet Usage for the younger age group is strong because of ease of access at school, home or work and using their mobile. The same study indicated that 94% have young people have at least weekly access to the internet.

Actual demand or needs driven internet usage has a long way to go – one of the most common online activities is internet banking, internet shopping is not as common as you might expect.

Of course the usual youth internet needs are met – chat to friends, use & manage social networks and consume social media.

Are you working in Eastern Europe? Got any ideas on how to grow internet usage? or market to younger people.

Damien Saunders

The start of any social media plan should actually be the end … by that I mean decide on the goals or what you want to achieve. Any good marcomm person or project planner will thank you for this.

So what are good outcomes? what do you want to achieve? If you’re starting out in Social Media Marketing you’ll be wanting to get your ‘profile page’ or fan pages just right, get some friends and get some traction. If you’ve been using social networks for some time, then you’ll want to be looking at mentions, retweets and maybe converting these followers and fans to legit paying customers.

From the outset of writing this series of articles on Rules for Social Media Marketing, I was doing this with the purpose of sharing some experiences and insights. I didn’t set unrealistic expectations like getting 100,000 new fans (though of course dear reader, please retweet and share this with your friends and community).

Rule 5 – start with the end in mind and be able to articulate what you want to achieve.

You can read all my interesting articles on social media to get some more ideas.

Damien Saunders

Start a Social Media Marketing Plan in writing … as we have all probably heard or read, putting even the vaguest plan down on paper will help to make your ideas concrete! The benefit of having a plan on paper means you can consider if your plan and goals are realistic and you can decide as well how involved you want to be in social media marketing.

How to Write a Social Media Marketing Plan

Your first social media marketing plan need only cover 4 areas:

• Why use social media & why social media is good for you (read pt 1 & pt 2)
• What you want to achieve
• How you will measure success
• Where you are today

If you were to write it in wordprocessing software then you might find yourself adding more detail to flesh out the plan. You might like to add a section on who will own your social media strategy and why it shouldn’t be the PR Guy.

Setting out what you want to achieve and how you can measure success will be the focus of more articles in the next few weeks. You can read all my interesting articles on social media to get some more ideas.

Damien Saunders

Do you really need a Social Media Marketing Plan? And if your business needs a plan … why does it have to be social media?

Why Social Media

Every business – big, small, startup or established brand needs to be using social media – yesterday. I was reading a flyer today which said ‘its critical for every website to include social media’ — its not the website that needs it … its your marketing and sales plan!

Social Media (collectively all the social channels from Facebook to YouTube) provides anyone a place to share what they like, to friend who they like and ‘become somebody’. Your business, or the brands your work for have to contribute to all of this.

Social Media pays off – don’t worry about calculating the RoI before getting into social media – but you’ll quickly find that some data analysis will show that social media drives traffic to your website, traffic to your shops and helps other customers.

Rule 2 of a Social Media Marketing Plan – you have to be using social media to grow your business.

You can read all my interesting articles on social media to get some more ideas.

Damien Saunders

Social Media marketing – using Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Gowalla, Foursquare, etc needs to form part of any marketing plan across the marketing mix. Treating Social Media as a separate activity from your marketing is a No-No … In fact social media marketing should be integrated into every campaign or promotion.

Social Media marketing fits into new customer acquisition, customer retention, CRM, customer loyalty and anything else that customers do and thats true for D2C brands as well as B2B marketers.

To get started with social media marketing … don’t leave it to your corporate comms or PR person and you don’t need to hire a community manager who doesn’t know anything about your company.

The first step is to agree who owns all social media communications and let them have direct contact with the brand manager or product people … and secondly have your product and brand people setup their own Twitter accounts to track any mentions of your brand or their products.

The same is true for smaller companies and startups – don’t leave social media marketing to your receptionist or the intern – do they have a real interest in how many new customers you get each day? or how many customers walk out the door?

Rule 1 in Social Media Marketing – make it part of your marketing plans and don’t leave it to the PR person.

You can read all my interesting articles on social media to get some more ideas.

Damien Saunders

So your new business needs a website – and someone told you to build it using WordPress. Cool .. this collection of resources on WordPress for your new venture will help you:

How to migrate your website to WordPress – from experience and using a real life case study

9 essential plugins for WordPress – here’s my recommendations on WordPress plugins to get you started.

How to make a landing page template in WordPress – landing pages or static pages are great to promote a new product or service and its easy to add a landing page to WordPress

Damien Saunders

So here is an essential collection of startup resources to customer relationship management or CRM. When you go into business as a startup or entrepreneur your sales and marketing activities will need to be split 3 ways -

• Customers who are buying from you
• Nurturing Customers who will buy from you
• Generating new leads or potential customers

This may seem daunting – so from the day you open your doors or your new web business you’ll want a tool to track all your customers and maybe your suppliers too. ZOHO CRM is probably one of the best web based (SaaS) CRM solutions and its $12 per month professional version has all the tools you need to get started.

Here is an essential collection and guide to using ZOHO CRM for your startup:

How to choose a web based CRM solution – wondering why you want a web based software as a service (SaaS) solution for CRM and how to compare them – then read this

How to sign up to ZOHO CRM using Google Apps or your Gmail address – all the information you need to get going with Google and ZOHO CRM

How to get started with ZOHO CRM and import your contacts from Google – guide to getting your contacts from Gmail and loading them into ZOHO CRM

Understanding CRM what is a lead vs contact vs opportunity – ZOHO CRM has its own jargon and you need to understand this to match it against your sales process

How to change the names of tabs like leads & contacts – ZOHO CRM is easy to customise and you can easily change the names of tabs to match your sales process or terminology

Record an email address from your website into ZOHO CRM – capture a lead or email address from your website for your mailing list

Create a contact form or lead from your website – create a form for your website that adds the lead into ZOHO CRM

Respecting the Email Opt Out function – email opt out is a powerful tool in ZOHO, use it wisely.

How to send invoices to your customers – if you invoice customers ZOHO Invoice free edition is better than ZOHO CRM

What do you use ZOHO CRM for?

Damien Saunders