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Preparing for Twitter’s New Layout

April 15, 2014 by Ben Smith Leave a Comment

Guest post by Courtney Doman, Digital Marketing Manager at Social: IRL sponsor, Spredfast. Originally posted in the Spredfast blog.

Twitter recently started rolling out its new look for desktop. Initial feedback is all over the map from high praise (“stunning visual format!”) to skepticism (“Haven’t I seen this before?”) It’s only natural to have an opinion about the new look, but getting hung up on specific changes is for the birds. Smart social marketers are already thinking about how to make the most out of their renovated real estate.

Here are five things you can do to make the most of Twitter’s new layout:

1. Update your profile picture

The aspect ratio of you profile picture hasn’t changed; it’s still a square. But things are getting much bigger in the new layout. Upload a 400x400px image to ensure that your profile picture looks great in the timeline and the new larger format profile picture at the top right hand of your profile page.

2. Add a new header image

This one will bum out the clever people and brands that had a “picture-in-picture” thing going on with their profile picture overlaying the header image. In the new layout, the profile image is left of center and only overlaps a small portion of the cover photo (okay, even we’ll admit, this is quite similar to Facebook.)

This frees up a broad swath at the top of your profile to share an image that tells your brand story. Look at the two different stories told by Chobani and the New Zealand All Blacks. Two very different, but equally compelling messages, conveyed with a single image.

3. Pin an important tweet to the top of your profile page

With (well over) 5,700 tweets per second being published every day on Twitter, it’s easy to wonder whether your brand’s message is being swept away in the mad currents of your followers’ Twitter streams. Now, if you have an important message to convey, you can pin a tweet to the top of your brand page so that it’s the first tweet a visitor will read.

Quick tip: don’t use this space to introduce your brand- that’s what your bio is for. Use it to communicate timely information like details of an upcoming sale, a match or episode specific hashtag to enhance a second-screen experience, or an important cause your brand is supporting.

4. Take advantage of new photo sharing features

Before rolling out these new desktop updates, Twitter announced social enhancements to photo sharing via mobile. You can share up to four images in a single tweet and tag up to ten people in a photo. All without taking up any more of those precious 140 characters. While these updates only affect mobile publishing, you can still view tweets with multiple pictures and photo tags from any device.

How can your brand use these features? Think about events like new store openings, or tab your design department to create a diptych, triptych, or tetraptych (we had to google that last one) where each individual image, as well as the collective collage tells a story. Michelle Obama used this feature to share photos from her recent trip to China.

“I hope you’ll keep…building bonds of friendship that will enrich your lives & enrich our world” —FLOTUS in China, pic.twitter.com/fxmuQN9JL9

— The First Lady (@FLOTUS) March 28, 2014

5. Think about your audience(s)

While your brand may have an established presence and following on Twitter, remember that many of these changes have been motivated by Twitter’s desire to draw new users to the network. This is great for brands seeking to engage and invite more people to participate in their social community and experiences. Understand your audience and share content that will engage your community, new members and old alike.

6. Remember, a lot of your audience is mobile

76% in fact. These changes to the profile page currently only affect desktop views. Keep an eye out for how these updates may potentially impact mobile use, but for now, don’t take your eye of the ball in optimizing tweets for on-the-go consumption.

Are you looking forward to the new visual layout? To help you get started, we’ve created a cheat sheet to make the most of your visual timeline:

Top Ten Social Media Resources

January 25, 2014 by Ben Smith Leave a Comment

We’re pleased to share our latest “top ten” collection of social media resources – a carefully curated list featuring a valuable mix of tools and checklists, practical guides, and insights and case studies from leading industry pros.

If you would like additional resources sent direct to your inbox every other week, you can subscribe to our free email newsletter.

Top Ten Resources:

1. Facebook Marketing Goals for 2014 – Now more than ever, success in Facebook marketing takes strategic planning and execution, and a working understanding of the many tools and resources Facebook makes available. In this post, Jon Loomer does a great job in identifying, outlining and explaining 14 key Facebook marketing goals for the new year. A great resource. >> READ MORE

2. Three Questions to Answer Before Your Social Media Campaign Launch – What is the objective of this campaign, what are my key performance indicators, what does success look like? This post from Ignite Social Media provides a valuable walkthrough of these three important questions you should ask and answer before launching any new campaign. >> READ MORE

3. The Social Experience: 12 Leading Brands & Visionaries Explore the Elements of Great Social Programs – Social media leads from Whole Foods, RadioShack, Caterpillar, ARAMARK, HomeAway.com, and industry pros such as Jay Baer and Ann Handley provide valuable insights in this free e-book from Social: IRL partner, Spredfast. A highly recommended download covering issues such as content marketing, building engaged communities, social customer care, and converged media strategies. >> READ MORE

4. Ten Tips for Reputation and Crisis Management in the Digital World – In the online era, it becomes critical for businesses of any size to have a social media crisis management plan – or even better, a crisis prevention plan. In this post, Ekaterina Walter discusses some key ways to avoid social media disasters, prevent them from escalating, or even to handle things if everything goes sideways. >> READ MORE

5. Influencer Outreach and Employee Advocacy – One of Social: IRL’s most popular interviews from 2013, features our in-depth discussion with Walmart’s Senior Director of Digital Communications, Chad Mitchell. Chad shares valuable insights on creating meaningful influencer relationships and outcomes. He also discusses the power of employee advocacy and steps Walmart is embarking on to engage, activate and empower their associates. >> READ MORE

6. Digital Transformation and Disruptive Trends: What to Watch in 2014 – As we’ve headed in to the new year we’ve been bombarded with the typical “predictions posts.” Two we would recommend come from Altimeter’s Brian Solis and Charlene Li.

In his post, Brian shares his agenda for 2014, with some key issues around social business, customer experience and digital transformation. >> READ MORE

In her post, Charlene discusses disruptive trends she is watching in 2014, and shares thoughts on the implications for organizations and actions they should take. >> READ MORE

7. Social Pros 100th Episode – Convince & Convert President and Youtility author Jay Baer, recently celebrated the 100th episode of his popular Social Pros podcast. This 50 minute Google Hangout features great conversation and valuable insights from Jay and special guests including Brad Walters from Lowe’s, Jessica Gioglio from Dunkin Donuts, Vanessa Sain-Dieguez from Hilton Hotels, and more. Highly recommended viewing. >> VIEW VIDEO

8. Digital Marketing Lessons Nonprofits Can Learn from charity: water – charity: water, a nonprofit that brings clean and safe drinking water to people in developing nations, is leading the way when it comes to redefining nonprofit marketing; they are exceptional at inbound marketing, focusing on creating powerful content to inspire people to join their cause. This post from Beth Kanter’s blog shares nine valuable marketing lessons from charity: water that other nonprofits (or really any business) can take and apply in their own organization. >> READ MORE

9. Building an Audience-Centric Content Distribution Strategy – To fully harness the power of content distribution, brands should shift from serving internal executives with branded key messages to serving journalists, influencers and advocates with relevant information focused on the end reader. >> READ MORE

10. Monitoring and Measuring Social Media: A Practical Guide – Eight practical applications for social media monitoring are highlighted (with examples for each) in this presentation from Social: IRL partner, Sprial16. Applications include competitive intelligence, industry research, market research, lead generation, customer service, crisis management, and campaign monitoring. >> READ MORE

Nonprofit Solutions Conference: Get Ignited, Create Impact, Be Inspired.

October 13, 2013 by Ben Smith Leave a Comment

Social: IRL has been proud to invest in the regional nonprofit community, working with a group of sponsors and partners to host an ongoing series of social media for nonprofits workshops. To date over 800 nonprofits have participated in this free training opportunity.

A valued partner in hosting workshop events in the Kansas City area has been Nonprofit Connect, a membership organization that links the nonprofit community to education, resources and networking, so organizations can more effectively achieve their missions.

October 21-22, Nonprofit Connect will host their annual Nonprofit Solutions Conference. This two-day conference designed specifically for the nonprofit sector, offers a valuable opportunity to learn alongside passionate nonprofit professionals and community leaders who are looking for new ways to advance their missions and bring about change. The conference theme sums up today’s current nonprofit needs… get ignited, create impact, be inspired.

Being familiar with many of the speakers on the two day agenda, and with the agenda covering many issues critical to continued growth and future success of nonprofit organizations, we highly recommend this opportunity to the many nonprofits we have connected with through our own workshop series, and to all nonprofits in the Midwest region.

To view the full event agenda and lineup of speakers and experts, visit the event website. Register using enter discount code “NoSoCo-Feehan” and save $50.

The Social Business Textbook: A Valuable New Resource for Social Communications Professionals

February 4, 2013 by Ben Smith Leave a Comment

Today, we share a guest post by Jordan Slabaugh, Director of Social Media at Social: IRL sponsor, Spredfast. We are grateful to Spredfast and each of our sponsors for their support, and enjoy sharing valuable resources they provide, such as this Social Business Textbook. While social continues to grow and change, there are foundational concepts and best practices that all social practitioners should know and understand. Spredfast created this comprehensive 45 page textbook to be a resource that helps bring members of growing social teams up to speed and the go-to primer on the main elements of social programs for those already in the industry. In addition to providing a strategic discussion of each social topic, they include models to visualize each concept, brand action items to make concepts practicable, and brand examples to show each element in action.

The world of social communications is exhilarating. As consumers, social media offers us the ability to connect with brands, products, and topics we care most about. And for brands, social media has blown open the proverbial company doors to meet the communication expectations of these consumers, leaving seemingly endless opportunities to connect with, engage, and delight social customers.

In a rapidly evolving communication space, social professionals have had to become scholars of sorts, studying up on social business practices with one-off resources and examples. But now that social business is an established field, we at Spredfast saw the need for a foundational resource to serve as a primary guide for members of ever-increasing social teams, and an expansion of the fundamentals for those of us already in the field. And with that, we’re excited to introduce the Social Business Textbook.

For some social brands, identifying the keys to social business success can feel like gumshoeing it in a complicated mystery novel. But what if these practices were presented in familiar terms, like primary school subjects, to make them more relatable? We set out to standardize social concepts to help brands get back to basics.

What made it into the syllabus?

History [Social Listening]: Concerted listening efforts focused on the people, conversations, and relevant activity about your brand to yield valuable insights to understand past events, inform current decisions, and improve future outcomes.

Government [Social Organization & Governance]: Combatting brand anarchy by defining internal structure and ensuring the right rules and guidance are in place to protect both the brand itself and the people behind the social activity.

Music [Orchestration]: Orchestrating multiple people having multiple conversations across multiple social media accounts and networks on behalf of your brand with planned workflows, approval paths, and coordinated content distribution.

Math [Measurement]: Embracing the measurement of social media metrics to perform goal-oriented analysis of social program performance.

English [Creating Social Content:] Creating and curating great content for social media distribution to increase engagement and action, and conversing with customers in ways that create value for your network and drive business outcomes.

Social Studies [Segmentation and Targeting Social Audiences]: Segmenting audiences based on demographic and technographic data provided by social networks and targeting tailored messages to individual segments.

Student Council [Social Engagement & Community]: Creating meaningful experiences on social channels that engage audiences, inspire action, and build brand awareness and loyalty.

Chemistry [Paid/Owned/Earned]: Combining owned assets with earned audience interactions and paid advertising to optimize social efforts and business impact.

“Example is the school of mankind, and they will learn at no other.” – Edmund Burke

The most insightful and applicable textbooks don’t just present concepts and theories – they show them in action. You may understand as a brand that engagement increases loyalty, but what does that look like? And who can you learn from? From the successful social initiatives of brands like REI and its engaging “REI 1440 Project” campaign to the stellar mathematical measurement efforts AT&T has implemented, the Social Business Textbook takes strategy and highlights what it looks like in practice.

“If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.” – Isaac Newton

A glance at any scholarly work will show multiple sources, citations, and perspectives of subject matter experts. With so many great minds leading discussion and research around social media innovation and success, we realized that hearing from people like David Armano, Jeremiah Owyang, Jay Baer, Michael Brito, Ann Handley, Chuck Hemann, Brian Solis and Rebecca Lieb in their own words provides powerful support to concepts presented in Textbook. We sought out some of the most insightful thoughts and guidance published by our favorite thought leaders and included them in the Social Business Textbook to provide additional perspective from leading scholars of social.

“A little knowledge that acts is worth infinitely more than much knowledge that is idle.” – Khalil Gibran

While putting together Textbook, we asked: “what are words without action?” Combining the strategy behind imperative social business subjects with real world applications, each chapter presents actionable steps for brands to begin, mature, or optimize their social programs.

From our classroom to yours, we hope the Social Business Textbook will help kickstart [or grow] great social activities in your organization.

Click here to download your free copy of the Social Business Textbook.

A Collection Of Community Management Advice

January 28, 2013 by Ben Smith Leave a Comment

To commemorate Community Manager Appreciation Day on January 28, 2013, Marketwire and The Community Manager asked community managers about what they do, how they do it, and where they see the future of community management going. They received more than 600 responses and compiled the top thoughts, tips and advice into the eBook embedded below – a great resource full of valuable insights from a dedicated group of professionals, responsible for serving customers and defining brand experiences daily from the frontlines of digital engagement.

A Collection Of Community Management Advice from Marketwire

Nonprofit Solutions Conference: Get Ignited, Create Impact, Be Inspired.

Top Ten Social Media Links and Resources

A Collection Of Community Management Advice

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