Category Archive: Twitter

Who’s doing it best on social media in Lake Tahoe?

Posted by Milena Regos on February 29, 2012

February Who’s Doing it Best on Social Media in Lake Tahoe recognition from Out&About Marketing goes to………….Northstar California or the way they used to be called Northstar-at-Tahoe. (You can read more about the name change in the #mrktchat open group on Facebook, just search for #mrktchat on Facebook to find a great explanation from Davy Ratchford, Northstar Director of Marketing on why the rebranding and name change).

Why did Northstar catch our attention this month and receive recognition out of all other Lake Tahoe businesses doing great things on social media?

For their tweeting.

They are not just tweeting like most corporations their size do, they have actually trained their CEO and management staff to tweet as well on behalf of the brand in their own voice creating more authentic and powerful Twitter feed. And we like authenticity.

Props to Adam Hawes (@Adam_Hawes) Northstar’s Online Marketing Manager for persuading and coaching his higher ups in the importance of tweeting. Adam likes to keep his tweets youthful, happy and full of enthusiasm for skiing. The way it should be. Adam also responded within hours to my request for an online interview (see below). Did I mention it was an awesome powder day? Double bonus points. This guy gets it.

A couple of tweet examples, starting with the VP/COO of Northstar, Bill Rock keeping it authentic.

Bill Rock, CEO of Northstar

Just a suggestion here for Bill Rock would be to make his Twitter bio a little bit more personal. Otherwise, keep up the great work. The are very few companies out there that can say their CEO tweets and engages on a regular basis. Nice!

One can also get the news from Northstar if they follow Davy Ratchford, Northstar’s Director of Marketing. No surprises here as tweeting is pure communication and marketing and communication is one and the same thing.  Davy does a good job responding to customers and posting timely updates from the resort.

Northstar gets kudos for not linking their Facebook feed into their Twitter account like so many other brands do. They seem to understand the importance of conversations, customer service and guests engagement on Twitter. With a Klout score of 59 (for what Klout is worth), Northstar is influential about Lake Tahoe, Skiing and Snow staying focused with their messages.

I took a quick look at Northstar‘s Twitter reach to see what kind of impact their tweets realize. Although followed by close to 7,000 peeps, their potential reach came to 31,180 for their last 50 tweets with high number of retweets and replies and 81,187 total impressions. Not bad at all. My question is: Have they been able to monetize their Twitter account or is this not a goal at this stage?

I initiated an online interview with Adam Hawes, Northstar Online Marketing Manager and asked a few Twitter related questions. You can read the questions and answers below:

Q1. Please, describe you Twitter Strategy?

A: The Twitter strategy for Northstar California Resort (@SkiNorthstar) involves several different and unique pathways, including: News Updates, Sr. Management Communication, Ski/Snow Reporting, On-Site Promotions, Guest Interactions, Public Relations, Resort Experience, and overall Positive Community Management.

Beginning each morning (before or by 6:30am PST) and continuing throughout the day, @SkiNorthstar provides up-to-the-minute destination information to our Guests and partner digital outlets, as well as address all Skiing/Resort questions, travel inquiries, and more.

Q2. What is your engagement strategy?

A: The connection between @SkiNorthstar and our Skiers, Riders and Guests is paramount. Enhancing and providing a personalized digital communication to their Experience is priority #1; the ongoing dialogue between Guest and service provider is of the utmost importance. We make sure to have fun and keep things positive and light-hearted, yet take seriously that questions need answers; at all times, our Guests more than deserve an attentive and honest response from Northstar.

Always kept at the forefront of our online actions, is the knowledge that without our incredible audiences and Following, these digital communities would cease to exist. The outlets are developed, managed and curated for our amazing Guests, first and foremost.

As well, by ReTweeting and involving our Senior Management Staff and their accounts into our main @SkiNorthstar account, the voices and messages of/from our Directors and Managers can be translated and heard by a much larger audience, providing a Resort-unique connection between Management and Guest.

Q3. How’s Twitter working for you (marketing, customer service)?

A: Twitter has been a powerful tool for Northstar, especially in the fields of Public Relations, Brand Communication, and most importantly, improving Guest Experience. Even in it’s simplest form: when arriving at the Mountain, we enjoy greeting (at random) several of our Guests that day, via Twitter. A simple—yet moving—way to welcome those to Northstar, and the results have been very positive. We love our Followers, and want them to feel as such; both when at Northstar, as well as at home.

Q4. What/how do you measure?

A: As far as Analytics and Metrics go, we dive fairly deep into the back-end numbers surrounding Twitter Engagement and Opportunity. More than just knowing how many RTs your account received that week, for example, would be utilizing these type of statistics to help shape our own Interactions. We strive to use the Engagement medium towards curating our own site, helping us to provide our Guests and Followers the best online experience possible, while maximizing potential.

As well: knowing who our most involved Followers are and their respective Reach—and then rewarding them. Monitoring when and where our traffic peaks and valleys, how to capitalize on Time Zones, unique tagging and its moderation (and how different Followers respond to these), targeting both macro and micro influential accounts, and much more.

In summary – Northstar wins February Who’s Doing it Best series. There are many other local Lake Tahoe businesses doing a great job on social media. If you know of one, leave a comment below to be considered for next month’s series. Until then, keep up the great work and enjoy the powder from the last storm!

Categories: Blog Brands I like Business Case Studies Customer service eMarketing Lake Tahoe Marketing Ski industry Social Media Success Stories Twitter Web 2.0 tools | No Comments »

100 awesome social media marketing stats, charts and graphs

Posted by Milena Regos on February 6, 2012

This excellent collection of social media marketing stats, graphs and charts is brought to you by the great folks at Hubspot.

Highlights from the collection broken down by categories are:

Inbound Marketing

• In 2011, 61% of marketers invested more in earned media compared to 58% in paid digital media and only 14% in paid traditional media
• B2B marketers are shifting their budgets towards inbound marketing with 69% investing in social media
• More than half of marketers increased their inbound marketing budgets in 2011
• The average budget spent on company blogs and social media has nearly doubled in the past 2 years
• Inbound marketing is a lot more cost effective than traditional outbound marketing with a cost per lead  62% less on inbound than outbound lead

Search engines and SEO

• Google is the new yellow pages. 20% of the monthly Google searches are for local businesses
• 75% of users never scroll past the first page! If you are not on first page of Google for your keywords, you need to improve your SEO

Social Networking

• 2/3 of Internet users regularly use social network
• The world and business is becoming more and more social
• Social media conversations actually influence purchases
• More than 1/2 of small business owners say social media sites play an important role in active sales

Blogging

• 2/3 of marketers say their blog is critical or important to their business
• Blog articles influence purchase decisions
• Companies that blog have 55% more website visitors
• B2C companies that blog generate 88% more leads per month than those who do not and B2B companies generate 67% more leads

Facebook

• Facebook has become the preferred method for sharing content second only to email
• 51% of B2B marketers agree that Facebook is an effective marketing tool
• Both B2C and B2B acquire customers on Facebook

Twitter

• More than 1/2 of active Twitter users follow brands and companies on social networks
• 79% of US Twitter users are more likely to recommend brands they follow
• B2C companies with over 100 followers have 146% more leads/month than those with less than 100

To see the charts and graphs of these and many more stats as collected by Hubspot, check out the PDF document below. Enjoy!

 

 

Categories: Blog Business eMarketing Facebook Interactive marketing LinkedIn Measurements SEO Small Businesses Social Media Social Media Marketing Twitter Web 2.0 tools | 1 Comment »

Lake Tahoe marketing and social media super stars

Posted by Milena Regos on February 2, 2012

Tahoe Thursday Series

I like it when I see a local Lake Tahoe business doing a good job with their social media marketing efforts. In addition to our Once a Month Who’s Doing it Best in Lake Tahoe in Social Media and Digital Marketing Series, I’m going to feature a local Lake Tahoe business in our Tahoe Thursday series. If you can think of any, let me know in the comments section or send me an email milena@outandaboutmarketing.com.

Today’s spotlight goes to Tahoe StandUp Paddleboards.

I’m not going to review their website today. I like what they have done with it. I’d like to concentrate on their social networks instead. Some of them are well linked from their website. (Good start) and some I had to look for. (Constructive criticism here – I had a hard time finding their youtube channel).

Let’s look at each one:

Facebook

Active and engaged feed with good interaction with other companies.

Great custom profile photo.

Excellent use of the custom tabs. I particularly liked the Team Tahoe SUP custom tab with my friend Whitney Wall featured at the top. Great way to bring personality into your brand.

Other tabs worth mentioning are the 2012 boards, telling us what to expect, the welcome tab and the Explore Project.

Overall, a visually beatiful Facebook page. Great job! Can they get even more engagement and likes and perhaps introduce Facebook commerce?  Do they have a well put social media strategy in place? If you want to check your Facebook EdgeRank score for free and establish a benchmark for the company, Facebook Edgerank Checker is a good free tool to use for that. For more detailed Facebook Analytics and intelligence, hit me up.

Twitter

Twitter is one of my favorite networks. The Twitter account for Tahoe SUP didn’t disappoint visually. Great custom background image carrying our the brand with urls to other social networks and website assets.

A quick check on Klout shows Tahoe SUP at 21 with topics of influence of construction, plastic and surfing. What is Klout? Klout has positioned themselves as the standard of influence on the web, a very interesting and controversial topic of conversation. They give you a score of 1 to 100 and the higher your score is the most influence you have on the web. They also analyze your conversations and tweets and assign topics to you they believe you are influential in.

With a fun sport like paddle boarding I would imagine that Tahoe SUP can do a lot better on Twitter. To see the entire Twittalyzer dashboard for Tahoe SUP, head over to the this link. Sure, Tahoe SUP can do better with their twitter activity but at least they are not cross posting Facebook to Twitter as many bigger brands wrongly do. (More on this in another post).

YouTube

The Tahoe SUP YouTube account is also customized with their brand. With 8 videos and 31 subscribers, I’d venture to say they can definitely improve their video presence. Although, they are fairly active with 8,635 views to their channel.

I loved their video on paddle boarding with dogs in Lake Tahoe with the dog whisperer as featured on National Geographic. Nicely done. Who doesn’t like going out on the lake with the dog and enjoying the outdoors.

and finally the Tahoe SUP Blog

Prominently featured right on the home page, Tahoe SUP has an active blog. One thing I couldn’t figure out was how to leave a comment on a blog post but maybe I just missed it. If I didn’t, adding comments to the blog will be a good improvement.

I particularly like the integration of photos, videos and the team within the blog. It makes it easy to look around and get a feel for the sport before you jump both feet into it. And as a passionate paddle boarder, I highly recommend it.

Overall, Tahoe SUP is doing a good job with social media. I’m sure they have limited resources to spend online and if their products are flying off the shelves already, then I’m sure they are analyzing what makes the most sense for the company. I see a lot of opportunities and potential to grow their business and connect with paddle boarders around the world.

I hope spring comes soon and we can all go out and enjoy the sport. I know I can’t wait to grab my Tahoe SUP and go out.

 

 

Categories: Blog Brands I like Business Facebook Lake Tahoe Marketing Small Businesses Social Media Social Media Marketing Success Stories Twitter Video | No Comments »

7 action steps to creating your Social Media Strategy

Posted by Milena Regos on February 1, 2012

Photo credit: Flickr. Sean MacEntee

2012 is the year that you need to create a social media strategy for your business if you don’t have one yet. Just make this your goal and I promise you it will pay off.

Radian6 report recently released states: “Strategic users are almost three times more likely to execute activities for engaging prospects than informal users (53% vs. 19%)” — and they were likely to see increased revenues.”

A few critical items to include in your social media strategy are:

1. Company Goals and Objectives – Why are you on social media and how does it align with your business goals. You can’t look at social media alone. You need to consider how it complements your existing marketing efforts and how it contributes to your overall business objectives. Starting off with your goals is the best way to make sure you are actually getting involved on social media in the right places and for the right reasons. Measuring your success down the road will also depend on the type of goals you are setting up for your company.
2. Listening – what are people saying about you, your brand, your competitors and your industry. Is it positive or negative. What can you learn from this information and how can you use it to improve your business, your marketing and your social media efforts. An absolutely critical part to every social media effort, listening is what will make you successful on social media. I see way too many companies skipping over this part and not spending enough time and resources to actively listen. Yes, it takes time but thankfully there are plenty of free and paid software options to streamline this process for you.
3. Content Strategy – a very important part to your overall social strategy is the content that you are going to send out to your community. Identify who is it that you are speaking to, what interest them, what makes them share your content, how often they would like to receive it and in what form – video, podcast, text, photos. Create an editorial calendar with your topics and leave some space for breaking news and stories that will come up. Think of the Call to Action you want to include with each piece of content and identify how your content relates to your business objectives.
4. Engagement Strategy – now that you have a clear picture of the type of content you are going to create, think of how you are going to distribute it on the social web. What are your internal or external resources for engagement? How much time can you dedicate daily/weekly to engage and be present? If you don’t have sufficient internal resources what can you outsource to a qualified person or an agency. I don’t recommend outsourcing everything you do as you lose your voice and your authenticity but done properly you can outsource certain tasks.
5. Tactical Strategy – only after you have considered all of these steps, you can dig deeper into the tactical area of your social media. What platforms are best to use to reach your customers. Obviously, we have the BIG FOUR: Facebook, YouTube, LInkedIn and blogging but there are niche social networks that may be more applicable to your business. For example, Pinterest is driving more traffic than Facebook to retailers. So even if Facebook has a huge population base, a social network like Pinterest may be your winner for increasing sales. Having a centralized social media hub from where you can distribute your content will help tremendously with saving time. A good social media platform will also help with your engagement and measurements. We work with a few and can make a specific recommendation for your business if you need assistance in this area.
6. Measurements and Benchmarks – a big conversation topic these days is the return on investment from your social media marketing. Although, there are no industry established measurements yet, there are so many ways to measure your efforts that unless you link them to your objectives (see 1) you will get flooded with data. Starting with your reach (fans and followers), engagement rate, leads, sales, share of voice and customer service just to mention a few, there are indeed ways to measure your efforts. If you are not sure where to start, give us a call and don’t be too alarmed. Only 13% of marketers today are saying that they are very effective at measuring their social media marketing.

7.  Review and Adjustments - a very important part of every social media strategy is the periodic review and adjustment. Once a month, take a look at what’s really going on, compare it to your plan and make the necessary adjustments to improve your social media effort. Drop the things that are not working and do more of the stuff that’s working. Only after applying your strategy in real life you will know what’s really sticking with your audience and what makes them engage with your brand.

If you need help with your social media strategy, give us a call. We’ll be glad to help out. And if you need more ideas for your social media plan, take a look at Radian6 30 ideas for your 2012 social media plan. I’m sure you’ll find some interesting nuggets of information that you can apply to your business today. Your turn – do you currently have a social media strategy and if not are you planning on creating one soon? Let us know in the comments below.

 

Categories: Blog eMarketing Facebook LinkedIn Measurements Photosharing Social Bookmarks Social Media Social Media Marketing Twitter Video | No Comments »

Has your Twitter account being hacked? Here’s how to stop the spam

Posted by Milena Regos on January 17, 2012

All of the sudden your Twitter account gets obsessed and starts sending out DM (direct messages) messages to people in your network to take a look at pictures, lose weight or check out a link with horrible things being said about them.

 

If this happens to you, most likely your account has been hacked. It happened to me yesterday and it’s not pleasant. I ended up spending hours apologizing and fixing the issue. It looks like this hack is spreading as I’m seeing more and more direct messages from people that are being hacked.

The following steps will help you take care of the hack.

1. Go to Twitter.com, click on your profile page, go over to settings and change your password immediately.

2. Disconnect any suspicious third party applications that are using your Twitter account. For this, you need to click on the Applications tab showing below and click on Revoke. This is a tricky one as you never know which application was hacked. To be sure, I disconnected all of them. You will need to reconnect the ones you want and still use.

3. Delete any tweets that contain the malicious link. To do so, go over to Twitter.com and hover your mouse over your tweet. Once you see the delete button, click on it.

4. Send out an apology to people and advise them not to open any suspicious links that came from you.

5. To read more about how to protect your account in the future or deal with other safety related issues, you can visit the Twitter Safety Center. To prevent your account from future hacking, ensure safe tweeting.

I hope this article helps you with cleaning your Twitter account or preventing it from being hacked in the future.

And finally, if you google twitter hack, you will find plenty of tutorials on how to do it. Please, don’t go there.

Ashton Kucher‘s, the Huffington Post‘s and other Twitter accounts with large followings were also hacked lately. Be cautious as to what links you click on and make sure you are only giving your password to trusted sources. In the meantime, Twitter is working on making their environment safer.

 

Categories: Blog eMarketing Social Media Twitter Web 2.0 Web 2.0 tools | 2 Comments »