By Pam Moore

Source: Social Media Today

Are you struggling with social media engagement? Struggling with building your audience? You have thousands of  Twitter followers, maybe even 50 or 100 people who have clicked “like” on your Facebook page.

However, even with this early success you’ve seen in social media, people just simply aren’t engaging with your brand? You are not feeling the social media love that others talk about.

Top 10 Reasons Why Your Audience Doesn’t Like You

1. You are not engaging. You spend all day listening or retweeting. You are not genuinely engaging with your existing network. You are on the sidelines watching the game go on.
Tip: Engage. Have a conversation. Get in the game.

2. You are not providing value. Your website may lack content that resonates with your audience. Your tweets are well let’s say, tweets. They look, smell and act like everyone else.  There are more than 10 Billion Tweets sent  in a year.  Tweeting a simple tweet that looks and smells like every other tweeter will get you no where.
Tip: Provide value. Inspire and connect with your audience. Get in their head and learn who they are and what they need.  Provide content that helps them solve real business problems. Provide tips that help them move their business forward with new skills.

3. You are not following people back. If you have people following you and you are sitting on your arrogant Twitter mountain thinking you don’t have to follow them you might want to think again. This thinking drives me nuts. Show the love. Be a good friend.
Tip: Develop a follow-back strategy. There are different schools of thought on this. My personal recommendation is at minimum make an effort to follow people back. Don’t sit high on your Twitter mountain with the expectation everyone owes you something. They don’t.

4. You are not a good social media friend. You don’t retweet. You don’t thank people who show you love. You never follow back. You don’t comment on other blogs in a genuine way. You don’t thank people who comment on your blog.
Tip: Show the social love. Genuinely engage and make your audience and network know that you care about them. At minimum let them know you know they are there! Often times if I don’t have time to thank all of my retweeters or send a series of #FF follow friday recommendations on Twitter I will send a couple tweets during the day thanking my network.  I let them know I appreciate them and all the social love they gave me!

5. You are boring. Sorry folks but it could be you are just boring. I am seeing many people who have a boring profile picture, boring content. They are the same ones who sit all day and retweet news feeds of mortgage rates or market news. They are providing no value and not engaging.
Tip: Brand yourself.  Understand your audience. Who are they and what do they need. Who are you and what can you offer them. Give your business and brand a personality. Dare to stand above the norm.  If you shoot for status quo that is exactly what you will receive, if you’re lucky. It may be less.

6. Your website stinks. If you are boring, your content  is boring and your website stinks you have three strikes and you’re probably already out of the social media game.
Tip: Social media is about conversation. Engage in conversation with interesting content, design and brand.   Hire a web developer and freshen up your website.  If you don’t have the funds to do such then find a self-help site or teach yourself WordPress blog at minimum.

7. Your social profiles stink. If your Twitter background is the default and your Facebook Fan Page has no customization you once again are shooting for status quo.
Tip: Hire a consultant or an agency to spice up your profiles. If you don’t have the funds the leverage an off the shelf service. There are several Facebook Fan Page engines you can use yourself that are affordable.

8. Your Facebook Fan Page is all about you. What are you doing to engage your audience?
Tip: Engage your Facebook audience.  Have fun.  Ask them questions? Do some research. Ask them what they need, what they want.  Leverage the discussion tab to invite people to introduce themselves.

9. People don’t know the real you. You are hiding behind an avatar (social media profile photo). You are not sharing the real you. You are using corporate speak. You aren’t using video, no interesting blogs.
Tip: Let yourself shine. Try out video.  Come out behind the avatar and let people get to know you.  Don’t be afraid of video.  If you use video you will attract people who like you, people who want to business with you.

10. You are afraid. Because of what I said above you are afraid to come out and play in social media.  You have been intimidated by the mean blog posts that are surfacing the net on social media gurus, wannabe gurus etc.
Tip: Don’t let the bullies scare you! Be confident. Have fun. If you don’t you are never going to make it in social media, business or life.

Your Turn!

What are you doing to build community? Are you really engaging? What are you doing right that others can learn from? What do you find most difficult in building and engaging with your community?

Source: Social Media Today

Posted by Augie Ray

Source: http://blogs.forrester.com

Google has said nothing about its rumored social networking offering, but it may be that the company has just revealed its secret weapon to take on Facebook.  The new Priority Inbox feature in Gmail hints at social media’s next great battleground: Relevance!

Facebook itself inadvertently demonstrated the value of relevance and what is most wrong with the current Facebook user experience.  The Facebook Places announcement event two weeks ago was the geeky event you’d expect, but there was an unexpected moment of clarity and beauty in the midst of the typical discussion of APIs, partners and functionality.  Facebook VP Chris Cox told a story set in the future that defines the true promise that social networking has yet to fulfill:

“In 20 years our children will go to Ocean Beach and their phone will tell them this is the place their parents had their first kiss, and here’s the picture they took afterward, and here’s what their friends had to say.”

It’s a great story, isn’t it?  But today’s Facebook experience offers no chance this experience could actually occur.  Instead, here’s what would happen based on the current Facebook functionality:  Those kids will visit that beach and their parents’ precious story will be nowhere to be found on the Ocean Beach Places page.  That wonderful 20-year-old status update and picture will be buried under 500 pages of less meaningful messages such as “Don’t buy a hot dog from the snack bar,” “Here’s a picture of some hot babes I took here,” and “Beach kegger party this Saturday night, dudes!”

The noise in social media is getting deafening.  In addition to the hundreds of friends we follow in Facebook, brands are putting the full-court press to capture user attention and “likes” in Facebook.  Not only can you “Like” JCPenney on Facebook, but you can also “like” their stores, JCPenney-sponsored concerts, a weekly store ad application, and a pair of Faux Leopard Fur Socks (plus every other item in their online catalog).

It used to be that only social media professionals complained about the “drinking from social media firehouse”;  today, I am hearing more and more “Facebook fatigue” from average users.  Of course, few are turning away from social media; no behavior within Forrester’s Social Technographics ladder has grown as substantially in the past two years as that of “Joiners” — people who maintain a profile on a social network.

More people, more apps, more Facebook-enabled sites, more places, more status updates — it all adds up to a cacophony of voices vying for our attention.  I recently missed a friend’s announcement of the birth of his child on Facebook — that important news was lost in an ocean of viral videos, places check-ins and summer vacation photo albums.

This is why the new Gmail feature may provide a hint at what is up Google’s social sleeve.  According to Google’s blog post, it launched Priority Inbox because people are “getting more and more mail and often feel overwhelmed by it.” (Sound familiar?)  Google adds, “Our inboxes are slammed with hundreds, sometimes thousands of messages a day…. It’s time-consuming to figure out what needs to be read and what needs a reply.”  (This isn’t a problem you have on Facebook and Twitter, is it?)

Gmail’s Priority Inbox doesn’t require users to set complex rules.  Instead, Gmail intuits what is important to users.  It can predict what you care about by observing the people you email the most, which messages you open, and to whom you reply. You can also click buttons to mark a conversation as important or not important. The new Gmail feature is meeting with great interest and approval — “Priority Inbox” became a Twitter trending topic within a day of Google’s announcement.

Will Google tackle the problem (and opportunity) of relevance in social media?  If Google can make our inboxes more relevant, why not our Facebook and Twitter feeds? (Back in February, I predicted that Google Buzz would be a Relevance Filtering tool;  perhaps I wasn’t so much incorrect as I was premature.)  And make no mistake — Facebook understands that social tools need relevance to attract and retain users.  I expect 2011 to be the year of relevance in social media, and the winners will be the social applications that make our lives richer, not noisier.

What does this mean to marketers who are seeding millions of messages into social media every time someone uses a loyalty program, enters a Twitter hashtag sweepstakes, makes a purchase or “likes” a pair of JCPenney socks?  If a status update reaches a social network but no one sees it, does it exist?  My friend and associate Nate Elliot is working on a report about how marketers can overcome social media clutter. I’m anxious to see his recommendations, but this much is clear: In a future where being relevant will be vital, marketers must get people to have authentic conversations about products and services and not merely to click “Like” buttons or tweet hashtags.

Source: http://blogs.forrester.com

We recently helped out the home automation specialists, Savant Systems, build a brand new website! Check out this blurb from our case study below, or click here to read the full account!

In under four months, Savant Systems increased their website visits by 400%.  On average, Google linked 13,179 more visitors a week to the Savant pages, and pages viewed by visitors increased measurably.  These statistics seem as rapid and revolutionary as the introduction of the iPod to the music market.

Savant’s secret to Internet success is just as probable and accessible—they contracted Single Throw Internet Marketing, a talented and proficient group of Internet marketing consultants with a plethora of services the size of your mp3 library.

Savant Systems provides the height of technological chic by offering a luxury home automation system that works with Apple technology bringing your home into the future.  Savant provides services for individual homeowners and corporations.  Single Throw Internet Marketing unified this image of Savant with its web presence.

While the Internet is an indisputably powerful—some might even say marvelous—tool, it is also an unwieldy thing to manage.  Many businesses’ experience with the Internet is akin to the proverbial child laying a hand on the hot stove—they get burned, so they don’t try it again. As such, their websites are old fashioned and out of date; they do a poor job of reflecting their product or service.  They target the wrong clientele, and they don’t show up in a typical Google search.

If the Internet is a hot stove, the experts at Single Throw are wearing flame retardant suits.  They build websites from years of experience and research, and they’re quite eager to share their suits with you.  They did with Savant.

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