Twitter, the other Social Media

Think ten years ago if businesses could target specific demographics, customer bases, at any given time, especially targeted consumption times like lunch and dinner hours, with coupons and special offers, daily specials and open times for a hair cut or an oil change.

For free.

What's amazing to me is that for the most part it seems it's still ten years ago around here. Some businesses are using SMS for contact, but in my interactions with our local economy, including your FB pages, Twitter is still underused and misunderstood.

Time for that to change, that is if you're the entrepreneur who wants to increase traffic, sales and reputation. Here are a few ideas to that end, concepts for specific types of business from service to professional, along with ways to increase your Twittter base.

Good Tweet Service
Businesses based on appointment traffic can use Twitter to alert their followers of openings, cancelations and rescheduling without inconveniencing their clientele. When hair salons and auto lube services enlist their clients as followers on their Twitter feeds they can be in constant contact, making known of unscheduled times slots throughout the day or cancelations that have opened up others.

I searched a number of services for St. George and came up empty on a dozen or so until I searched "st george salon." This is what I found from Fusion Organic Salon:

Other services such as hospitality and restaurants can tweet weekend packages and daily specials, chef spotlights, recipes, recommendations. Those entities who encourage retweets through incentives programs create a customer base that's doing their marketing for them by retweeting posts and recommending the day's lunch special.

Medical and dental services can exploit the same, managing patient services and interactions on a level that serves the best use of time for all involved. Provider profiles can be created to increase reputation and diminish anxieties associated with, say, visiting the dentist.

Professional services such as attorneys and accountants can create a continuity of contact with followers with tax codes updates, business calendars, best practices in liability protection, all possible under 142 characters. These tips promote branding and when followers find value in the post they're likely to retweet.

Transaction-based services like real estate can exploit Twitter on so many levels. Imagine being able to instantly update clients on new listings, linking to virtual tours, or instantly advising of offers.

My favorite jazz club in the city (the city, there's only one) is Yoshi's. They tweet performance schedules, drink specials, how full the house is, wait times, and use tickets as incentives to retweet.

Retailers, only your imagination limits your reach on Twitter. From comparison shopping to "blue light specials," clearance slashing to new products and brands, contests and incentives to encourage traffic during slow times, not to mention customer service.

Follow, Follow Me
The trick to the success of any of these tactics is developing a follower base, and you can't follow without your own Twitter account. Once established, follow the followers of other local businesses, especially your competition. Encourage clientele to follow your business and explain the benefits of doing so. Teach them, walk them through setting up their own Twitter account. The dividends will compensate the two minutes it takes.

With a following, give them a reason to read and retweet:

Personalize - Create two accounts, one for business and the other about your expertise in that business, giving your followers that "back stage" exclusivity that non-followers don't enjoy.

Market -  Place your Twitter ID at point of purchase (along with a laptop to enlist followers), include it on business cards, display ads, billboards, any advertising. And of course, cross market with your Facebook page, your Gowalla of Foursquare ID, any social media you're using to create buzz.

Educate - Tweet links to relevant and interesting articles, how-tos, reviews, tips, market conditions, new products.

Motivate - Use contest and give-away incentives to increase followers and retweets.


Automate
All the above is pretty simple and effective once you get the hang of it. Tweeting takes just a few moments thanks to the character limits. (Doesn't hurt to work out your tweeting prose beforehand to make the most of 142 characters.) Tee are ways, though, to automate messages using third-party applications such as Hootsuite and SocailOomph. If you're scheduling sales events or weekly menus, automating contact with followers provides some consistency. Just be careful not to cross the line into spamming.

Privacy

Fan Pages versus Clicks

The New Social Media Divide

Nothing to Hide

Privacy Elite

Middle of the Road

Page Post Metrics

Post Metrics
You can get analytics on how many people your post reached, how many people engaged with it, and how many people talked about it with their friends. Learn more about:

• Reach  The number of people who see your post
• Engaged Users  The number of people who've clicked anywhere on your post
• Talking About  This The number of people who have created a story from your post, including sharing, liking or commenting 
• Virality The percentage of people who've created a story from your post from the number of people who've seen it. 

To view these metrics, visit the Page Posts section of Page Insights.


Impressions measure the number of times a post from your Page is displayed, whether the post is clicked on or not. People may see multiple impressions of the same post. For example, a fan might see a Page update in News Feed once, and then a second time if their friend shares it. 

Reach measures the number of people who received impressions of a Page post. The reach number might be less than the impressions number since one person can see multiple impressions.

Customizing Your Facebook Page

Pages

Become a fan of Successful Pages

Find them here.

While imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, take a look at how they work, and if you find something you like that may work with your project, adapt it.

Here's some Criteria

Interaction - Does the page encourage interaction? What content works best? What doesn't?

Soft-Selling - What influences exist within the content that suggest or persuade?

Creativity - What makes the page more interesting in the rigid environment of Facebook?

Informing - How and what information is used to educate and inform?

Start with the Profile Pic

The death of FBML and Static FBML was the beginning of new end runs to creates unique landing pages, but before you dole out $19.95 a month, see what you can do to get the most out of the most prominent feature on the page, your page's profile pic.

Facebook doesn't go out of their way to tell anyone this, but they'll allow profile pic sizes right up to 180x540 pixels. Yes, really.

This image from GCC's latest expedition depicts that aspect ratio.

There's some debate to the efficacy of exploiting all of FB's allotted pixels. Social Media Examiner suggests that since the tab navigation position is affected by the position of the profile pic, you should balance the height of the pic to keep your page navigation above the frame.

Likewise, your page's profile pic and the accompanying photostrip should work together graphically. Designers could get very creative here.

This screen shot of Manchester Library's page is a great example of working the profile pic and the photostrip together:

Obviously, the profile pic image for GCC didn't start out that way. It began as a 2592x1936 image, or a 4:3 aspect ratio.

The image itself was composed vertically, lending itself to the narrow aspect ratio of the profile pic. I imported the image into iPhoto, used the cropping tool where in Custom mode I entered the values of 180x540.

There are other ways, applications and software, where you can end up with the same results.

Once saved, I exported the image to Facebook and made it GGC's profile pic, being careful as well to edit the thumbnail so I'd end up with an identity other than the monolith or the water.

The Photostrip
This addition to Pages seemed to open up some additional possibilities as illustrated with the Manchester Library above. The problem, though, and disappointing to many designers, is that the photostrip does not load in the same order every time the page is displayed.

For example, I took an image and divided it into five separate images in an effort to make a mosaic, but ehen I uploaded the images in order into a FB album, the images displayed in the photostrip at random versus the order I created.

Shoot.

So, instead I grabbed an image with a strong horizon and manipulated the chroma on a five point scale and uploaded the images. I'm not really happy with it, but it illustrates the point. I'm going to shoot images specific to this and upload them to take advantage of this feature.

Groups

Facebook recently updated its Groups feature that lets you share, chat and e-mail with small groups of friends. Groups, is designed for a small number of people who know one another—think families and coworkers. Here, you can share pictures, comments and articles privately with only the people in the group. 
Zuckerberg said that Groups were developed to combat "the biggest problem in social media": sharing everything with everyone, when you really only want to share something with select people. "'Just friends' was the most private setting," Zuckerberg said. "But you might not want to share something with hundreds or even thousands of friends."


Where to Start


On the left navigation of your Facebook page is a link to Groups (if it's not visible, choose More). Clicking this will take you to a homepage displaying the groups that you have joined in the past. Or you can visit the Groups landing page at http://www.facebook.com/groups. Click "Groups," or if you've yet to be in a group, click "More" and then the "Groups" link. 

Name your group accordingly. I'm creating a group for my friends from high school. Under "Members" I've added a few names. I just start typing the names and with a few letters Facebook suggests names from my friends list of who I may wish to add.
Note that the default privacy setting is Closed—this means that the members of the group are visible, but everything that anyone posts is hidden to those outside the group. Additional settings are Open, in which all content is public; and Secret, in which both members of the group and content are private. Click Create to finish the setup.

Groups Chat

Groups Chat allows the conversation you have in the pop-up window to be accessed and seen only by those members in the group, (rather than just the one person you'd chat with otherwise). So if you do enable this, remember, everyone in the group could be watching. The Chat link along with other Groups features is found on the right side menu, under Members. 

3. Creating Documents

Groups can also share documents. This allows you to create new documents and share them with the group. You can't upload existing documents. 

Document formatting features are limited: You can bold and italicize text and create bulleted and numbered lists. 

Other Groups Features

The Groups Menu also has links to features to create events, view photos, edit group, and leave group. Below these FB suggests other people who have the same group affiliation to add to your friends and group. 

Activating the Event feature enables a planning window that allows scheduling, qualifying the event, where the even will be held, any additional information, and the ability to select a default list or customize the list of invitees with a check list of invite options. 


View Photos displays any pics that have been shared in the group along with uploaded video. 


A vital control feature for Groups is Edit Group

Edit allows formatting of the Groups page by including an image and a description. Control include Privacy, Membership approval, and setting up Group Email.