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4 Simple Steps for Starting A Social Media Presence

by Jonathan Barrick

You have the key, and there’s gas in the tank. You just need to start it up.

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YES – there are still businesses that haven’t yet made a move in to the world of social communications. It may be hard to believe, given the sheer volume of discussion about social media happening everywhere, but it’s true. For every socially-savvy business out there rocking the world of Twitter and being fascinating on Facebook, there are dozens more who are struggling to figure out what they should be doing, and where they should be doing it. There is a large portion of business owners who KNOW they need to be participating, and yet take one look at the vast array of social media tools available to them and think “Where do I possibly begin?!?”

It is for those people that it’s so crucial to provide simple, effective approaches to getting started in these communication channels so that they get off on the right path from the beginning.

Step 1 – Search for discussions

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Social Media is all about generating conversation and interaction between your business and its communities. Rest assured, that no matter what product or service you may provide, someone somewhere is talking about you. You just need to search for them. Use search tools like SocialMention as a compass to point you in the right direction, and to get an idea about where the action is occurring. This tool will tell you on what sites the conversations are happening, and also an overview on whether they are typically happy, angry, or neutral about the topics of discussion. Once you’ve found where people are talking, proceed to Step 2.

Step 2 – Read the content

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Now that you’ve found where the conversations are happening, whether it be on blogs, Twitter, Facebook, or somewhere else, the time has come to listen intently to every word. Before you can start posting your thoughts, it’s crucial to understand how these communities are talking to each other, and about you. Jumping right in with a ‘BIG SALE THIS WEEK!!’ message might be the worst possible thing you could do. You want to COMPLEMENT the conversations and CONTRIBUTE to them, not shout over them with slogans and your daily specials.

3 – Determine what value you bring

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As mentioned in Step 2, in order to be well received by the community, you need to complement the discussions taking place, and contribute to them. How you do this depends entirely on what value you bring to these conversations. Most people follow brands and companies for one (or a combination) of three reasons:

Entertainment – Videos, photos, blog posts, links that amuse or impress, etc.
Education – Helpful tips, tricks, advice, troubleshooting, etc.
Exclusives – Deals, specials, or giveaways not available anywhere else.

If you can’t provide any of those, you’re not looking hard enough. The simplest way for most new businesses to contribute to the conversation without having to give discounts, or pretend to have a sense of humor (especially if your business doesn’t) is to be a helpful expert. Take the knowledge contained in your business and share it with your community.

4 – Share, and share, and then share some more

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Once you’ve found the value you bring to your community, let it loose. Don’t hold it back, but give it freely and openly. Become the expert on your topic. Share the awesome photos you’ve accumulated over the years. Give your communities a special appreciation discount code. Every time you share, you generate value you didn’t have before. Every time you make them smile, you’re generating positive brand awareness. Every time you answer their question, you take away the opportunity for a competitor to do the same.

So there you have it. A simple 4-step approach that can be used for any company, anywhere to get a handle on how they can approach social communications. The real clincher to this strategy is Step 3 – Regardless of the channel you choose, you need to provide value. If you’re not giving your community something they wouldn’t otherwise have, in a format that makes them want to see it, all you’re doing is advertising to them. If they get the sense that this is what your social media content is all about, don’t be surprised if their fingers move to that ‘Unfollow’ button before you even have a chance to say ‘hello’.

The most important thing to keep in mind when participating in social communications is ‘Am I helping myself, or my community?’. The answer to this question is much easier to determine than you’d think. Just look at what you want out of the companies that you personally follow, and realize that your business’ community is no different. Keep that mindset, and you’re already on your way to social success.

This article originally written for http://crowdshifter.com

3 Essential Twitter Chats for Business

by Jonathan Barrick

Twitter Chats let you get info, insight, and real-time interaction with the brightest minds in the Social Media universe.
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Twitter chats are an invaluable source of insight, discussion, and debate. If you’ve never participated in one, they can be quite overwhelming! The stream of tweets in a Twitter Chat is actually more like a class-5 rapid. It’s difficult, if not impossible, to actually read every single tweet that goes through on a certain hashtag, but for the most part, the real gems of discussion will undoubtedly appear more than once as they get retweeted or quoted, so the key topics are always easy to spot.

Twitter Chats typically recur on a weekly basis, same day, same time, and cater to a very wide variety of topics. There are chats for any subject of interest that you could possibly have, and I’d like to point out three key Twitter Chats that anyone in business can definitely benefit from. Here are the ones that are 100% worth a look:

#bizforum – The newest of these three, Bizforum has been operating for a couple of months so far, and the results have been (in my opinion) incredible. Bizforum takes the form of a Twitter debate, posing a topic to the group each week, which consists of 4 sub-topics discussed throughout the chat. Things can get heated, as the moderators encourage you to avoid the ‘It depends..’ point of view in favor of stating your opinion and your reasons why. It’s a rapid-fire learning experience that brings the best of both sides of an issue in to the limelight.

#bizforum recurs every Wednesday evening, 8pm EST

Moderated by @samfiorella and the team at @senseimarketing – more details here: http://socialroadmaps.blogspot.com/2011/05/bizforum-is-born.html

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#brandchat – If you have any questions about branding, this is the chat that will answer them. Brandchat has been operating longer than I can remember, and has a substantial following including some of the greatest minds in the world of branding. Topics change each week, but the overarching subjects fall in to one of four categories that rotate each week including Small Business Brands, Personal Brands, etc. #brandchat is a great chat to get involved in if you’re working to build a brand of any type. The content that gets shared here is always top-notch.

#brandchat recurs every Wednesday morning at 11am EST
Moderated by @brandchat and the team over at http://brandchat.info

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#blogchat – One of the longest running Twitter chats in existence, Blogchat is the brainchild of Mack Collier. It’s focus, of course, is Blogs and everything to do with them. In addition to simply providing solid tips and great advice for bloggers of all skill levels, Blogchat actually reviews blogs throughout the chat discussion that have been submitted by anyone who wants their blog looked at. This is an amazing opportunity to learn from the best, and get tips to take your blogging efforts to new heights. If you’re a veteran blogger, or a newbie, there is always something that you will learn here and be able to apply for immediate results on your blog.

#blogchat recurs every Sunday evening at 9pm EST
Moderated by @mackcollier – more details at http://mackcollier.com/social-media-library/what-is-blogchat/

I’d encourage anyone looking for a forum to throw around new ideas, get advice, tips, and help for anything related to business in the online space to check out any or all of these Twitter Chats. With the quality of discussion I’ve experienced personally, and the great ideas that present themselves every week, I’ve got the distinct feeling you won’t be disappointed!

This article originally written for http://crowdshifter.com

Powerful Brand Experiences – The Story of Two Coffee Shops

by Jonathan Barrick

What makes a brand experience so powerful that customers will drive a half-hour just for a cup of coffee?

I love coffee. That’s no secret, to be sure. Lots of us do. But for me, and for many others, the whole ‘experience’ of coffee stretches way beyond just what’s in the cup. It’s a sensory experience that  complete with sights, sounds, smells, and of course the taste of the great coffee.

This is why Starbucks is so successful at charging a premium for a simple ‘cup of coffee’. Their customers place additional value on the environment and the experience that Starbucks provides, and they are some of the fiercest brand advocates you’ll ever meet. Long before I discovered Starbucks, however, I was fortunate to have experienced a similar brand adventure at not just one, but two independent coffee shops. Each one had a totally different approach, but they both turned me in to one of their most dedicated customers.

The first coffee shop that earned my brand advocacy occurred a long time ago. It was a little coffee/cigar shop in the downtown area of Barrie, called Lil’ Habanas. I discovered this place through a high-school friend after he raved about how great the coffee was. We went down there one evening with a group of friends, and what an evening it turned out to be!

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It was a totally new experience for me, as I’d never really been in a cigar shop before. The smell of a Cohiba and Montecristo cigars filled the air, mixing with the aroma of fresh brewed coffee. Classic literature filled the shelves, ready to be picked up and thumbed through. Chess boards and leather lounge chairs were setup near the humidors in the back. Lighting was strategically placed where it needed to be, but not so much that it was too bright in the place. The owner of the business was always behind the counter, ready to guide you through their selection of both coffee and tobacco. It was a complete sensory experience unlike any other.

The crown jewel of the Lil’ Habanas experience, however, was a unique coffee that you couldn’t get anywhere else. It was called ‘Chico’s House Swill’, and it was mind-blowing. See, this coffee was created only once in a while. When some of the bean canisters of the different flavours would get nearly empty, Chico would take all the miscellaneous leftover beans and toss them in to one canister, grind ‘em all up, and brew the results. For some reason, this ended up as the best coffee I’ve ever had, even to this day. It was different every time you had it, and you were never disappointed. It was magic.

Sadly, Lil’ Habanas closed its doors after a handful of years, but I’ll never forget the experience of walking in the door, being greeted by the familiar scents of coffee and tobacco, and being overjoyed that one of the coffee pots proudly displayed the ‘House Swill’ label.

The second coffee house that had me at ‘hello’, was called Coffee & All That Jazz. If you live in Toronto, you might be familiar with it, as they still have a location operating on Howard Park Ave. But the location that captured me wasn’t the one in Toronto, but in the small town of Cookstown, about a 45 minute drive north of Toronto, and about 25 minutes south of Barrie. The Cookstown location was in an old home on the main intersection, entirely converted in to a coffee house.

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The environment couldn’t have been more different than Lil’ Habanas. Bright windows, eclectic artwork by local artists, gorgeous vintage coffee bean canisters, and the entire home was filled with the greatest in classic and modern jazz tunes. Funky mugs featuring retro coffee brand ads, great baked treats and snacks, and a Baskin Robbins-esque selection of flavours that ensured you could try a new taste almost every day for a month. It was great, and there was nothing like it in Barrie.

Now, at this point you might be asking “You drove almost a half-hour just for coffee?” – My answer: You bet. Did it almost every weekend. It was one of our favourite places for my wife and I back when we were dating. I remember vividly driving down highway 27 in the fall, past forests full of gold and red trees, the cool air blowing through our open windows. Then, walking in to the coffee house, greeted by John Coltrane and the smell of fresh espresso.

I’ll never forget being downright depressed when we heard the Cookstown location was closing. It meant a lot to my wife and I, and we always used to admire the photography on the walls and would say ‘We should buy that picture for our first house.’ Well, a few months before Coffee & All That Jazz closed the Cookstown coffee house, I drove back by myself, ordered a cappucino, and asked them if I could buy one of the photographs on the wall, as a gift for my wife. The one I chose: A black & white shot of the vintage coffee canisters. It was the one image that always popped in to our heads whenever we talked about that place.

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This image borrowed from http://coffeejazz.ca/

Reminiscing here about these two long-lost coffee shops has been both a wonderful experience for me, and also enlightening. It speaks volumes about how incredibly powerful a unique brand experience can be. It creates fierce advocates, who speak with admiration of your business. It creates dedicated brand loyalists who will drive almost a half-hour for a $2 cup of coffee. It creates memories that shape how your customers will view every other similar business they ever walk in to. By creating a powerful brand experience, you can set the standard by which all others are judged.

I miss those coffee shops, but I’ll sure never forget them.

Why More Businesses Should Be Using Instagram

by Jonathan Barrick

An Instagram picture is worth way more than a thousand words. Why not let them speak for your business?

Instagram is a ridiculously easy to use photo sharing service. If you’re not familiar with the app, it essentially allows you to snap a photo using your iPhone camera (or choose one from your existing photo library), crop it, tilt-shift it (fancy word for ‘blur’), and ‘stylize’ it using a variety of pre-set photo filters. You can then publish your creation directly to your choice of sites including Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and a few other social networks.

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Before and After shots of a baseball diamond, taken with Instagram

Instagram has grown to over 7 million users in the short time it’s been in existence, and it continues to grow due to it’s simplicity, and how easy it is for anyone with an iPhone to become instantly artistic with any photo.

You might be wondering just what this might have to do with business. Well, images are a crucial piece of your business’ story. No matter the product, no matter the service, without pictures all you’re left with is a giant block of text that no one wants to read.

It’s been proven that photos and video are some of the most shared kinds of content on social networks, and it’s easy to understand why. We gravitate towards images naturally. it’s much easier and faster for us to process the message in a picture, and it’s also much easier to evoke emotion through images.

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Picture frames, taken at a local art supply store, and Copper tubes, taken at Home Depot

One of the main reasons I’m suggesting using Instagram for your business photo sharing instead of, say, Flickr, is that Instagram allows you to give otherwise bland photos a bit of personality. It allows you to transform the ‘feel’ of a picture in order to convey the desired emotions. But, enough of the touchy-feely stuff. I’m sure you’d like to hear some examples of how businesses can use this service in the real-world.

Here are those examples:

  1. Salons – Allows you to share stylized photos of hairstyles, manicure/pedicure nail art, makeup, and even shots of the salon itself. This will allow you to showcase your skills, as well as the decor and environment in your salon to reinforce your brand.
  2. Automotive Collision Repair Shop – Great for showcasing custom paint jobs, or illustrating ‘Before’ and ‘After’ shots of mangled cars. Also would allow your customers a behind-the-scenes look at body repair, painting, and detailing. Convey the level of skill that is required to turn a wrecked car back in to a thing of beauty.
  3. Coffee House – This one is easy. Pics of people laughing, chatting, working in your shop. Showcase your funky ‘latte foam art’ or displays of mugs and beans. Show your customers the kind of friendly environment they can expect when they walk in to your shop.

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    Pics taken at a local coffee shop with Instagram

  4. Golf Course – If you don’t see the inherent beauty in a golf course, I don’t know what to tell you. You can post great shots of the landscaping, sunrises and sunsets over the greens, actions shots of golfers on the tee, and highlight tournaments and other events. Any kind of recreational business is a prime candidate for creative photo sharing.

This list could go on, and on, and on, but I think you get the point. It doesn’t matter what business you have, there is always SOMETHING artistic in it somewhere. Allowing other people to see what is already there can give them a completely different perspective on what it is you do. Something that is seemingly mundane and commonplace can instantly be given a totally different ‘feel’ through creative imaging. It never hurts to infuse your business with a little more personality, and Instagram makes it easy for anyone to do so.

*This entry was originally posted on Crowdshifter.com

Revisiting the Marketing Mix – A Fun Little Exercise

Ah yes, the Marketing Mix. Those classic “Four P’s” they hammer in to you when you walk in to every Marketing Fundamentals class taught in the world:

PRODUCT + PRICE + PROMOTION + PLACE

We all know them, we all love them, but sometimes they slip out of our consciousness from time to time. Even the most seasoned marketing pros have moments where they miss the mark on at least one of them. It just happens.

I’ve thought a lot about this lately, and came up with a fun little 5-minute exercise that Marketers of all skill levels can benefit from in order to gain a little more perspective on why the 4 P’s are so essential to keep in mind.

Here’s the instructions for this simple exercise:

1 – Create a simple two-column table with 8 rows in each.

2 – Label the left column “Low-cost Frequent Purchase” and the right column “High-cost One-Time Purchase”

3 – Label the rows, from top to bottom: Brand, Product, Price, Promotion, Place, #1 Reason I Bought, Alternate Brand, #1 Reason I Didn’t Buy

4 – Complete the chart as follows, starting with the left column:

  • Choose a low-cost item that you buy regularly (Coffee, toothpaste, razor blades, etc)
  • List the Brand, Product, and Price you paid in the first three boxes
  • List the most recent Promotional piece for that product you saw (commercial, ad, website, etc), and whether you believe it influenced your choice
  • List the Place you made your purchase (Walmart, Starbucks, Online, etc)
  • List the #1 Reason you bought that particular product (price, quality, taste, etc)
  • List a competing brand that would be your #1 choice as an alternate if you couldn’t buy your preferred item
  • List the #1 reason you did not choose that brand

5 – Repeat those actions for the right column, but with an expensive product you don’t buy often. (Car, Vacation, TV, computer, etc)

***BE SURE YOUR CHART IS COMPLETE BEFORE READING ANY FURTHER, OR YOU MAY SKEW THE RESULTS***

Now that you’ve completed your chart, take a look at the boxes containing the reasons you bought your preferred brands, and compare them to the reasons you didn’t buy the alternate brands. One would assume that they would correlate. Do they?

If you say you bought Crest toothpaste because you like the taste, one would assume you didn’t buy Colgate because you didn’t like the taste. Often though, the reasons we buy are decidedly different than the reasons we don’t buy. Maybe they don’t like the cap design on the Colgate tube, or perhaps it was something else. As another example, someone may buy Tim Hortons because they like the taste of the coffee, but they won’t buy Coffee Time because they don’t like their stores. Which is the real influencing factor for that coffee buyer? Is it taste, or store design? Or a combination of both?

When you get in to the high-cost column, the discrepancy could be even more pronounced, or it could be non-existent. When looking at cars for example, there are many consumers who buy strictly on price. Still others may buy on price, but eliminate options based on quality or service experiences.

What this simple exercise does is help illustrate the real difficulty in pinpointing the underlying motivation behind consumer behaviour, and how it varies based on where the consumer is in the buying cycle, the cost of the item, the amount of knowledge they have on the product, and more. It’s not always clear to the customer what the real value inherent in a particular brand or product is, and it’s especially unclear when looking through the eyes of individual consumers. It will vary from person to person, sometimes slightly and sometimes drastically.

Once you’ve done this experiment yourself, have a friend who’s not involved in the field Marketing do it for you, too. Their answers are often even more fascinating than your own, and can raise more questions about the alignment between a particular brand message, and the actual brand experience.

Hope you had fun with this little exercise! Let’s hear about your thoughts on this in the comments below!

Hunting for Engagement Opportunities on Twitter

Build it and they will come? Most of the time, it’s not that easy.


We can’t all be Starbucks or Disney. We can’t all gather a half-million Facebook fans in a week, or a hundred thousand Twitter followers in a month. It’s a simple fact that a large number of lesser-known companies live in industries where Social Media adoption is lagging behind, and those companies are going to have to work extra-hard to uncover the opportunities for engagement. However, if these companies look hard enough, they’ll find that there ARE people talking about their brands. There ARE people talking about their products. There ARE people who WILL engage with them. It just take a little hunting to find them.

Now, you’ll notice the title of this article is ‘Hunting for ENGAGEMENT’, not ‘Hunting for Sales’. This approach will NOT work if all you want to do is blast sales messages. Engagement and interaction is the key to being a superstar in social media communications. So, with that in mind, let us continue.

The first step, aside from starting to Tweet in the first place, is to scour Twitter for any mentions of your brand name, product types, competitors, industry organizations, and any other keywords that relate to your business. The easiest, most effective way to do this is to utilize the multitude of free alert services and advanced ‘Twitter’ search sites that exist. These can help you uncover any Tweet that gets posted on any number of topics with any combination of terms and keywords.

Some of the best tools I’ve found are:

Advanced Twitter Search – http://search.twitter.com/advanced
• Search Twitter using extremely detailed search criteria, including exact phrases, language, with links or without, positive or negative attitude, and more.

TweetAlarm – http://www.tweetalarm.com/
• Like Google Alerts, but for Twitter. Sends email reports to you of any mention of any number of keywords, and allows you to exclude Tweets from certain users (like yourself). Get real-time, daily, or weekly reports.

Who’s Talkin’ – http://www.whostalkin.com/
• Social Media search engine that examines multiple sources for any and all mentions of a specific keyword. Sources include Google Blog Search, Twitter, WordPress, and more.

SocialMention – http://www.socialmention.com/
• Similar to Who’s Talkin – Allows you to drill down further and look at comments, images, news, etc, and provides positive/negative sentiment indicators. Also provides detailed metrics on the mentions it finds.

Example of SocialMention search results:

Ok, so now you’ve found a handful of people talking about your product. What do you do next? It’s a very simple 3-step process:

1 – Follow them – This is essential to creating a sense of appreciation and goodwill to them, letting them know that you’re not just spamming. Also, adding them to a custom list would be a good thing as well.

2 – Respond to them – Not just an @ message with a canned ‘check us out!’ response, but an actual reply to their message. Did they post a link to a photo? Say it was cool, or better yet, RT it with a personal message. Did they have an issue with their product? Offer help on their specific problem. Don’t just say ‘call us at 1-800-BLA-BLAH.

3 – Follow-up – Do they respond back to you? Then respond back again. Always be the last one to respond. This way you always leave the ball in their court, and if they have any other desire to talk with you, they will.

The point is this: If your company exists in a very specific industry, or a very niche market, it may not be common knowledge among your customers that they can get help/knowledge/information through Social Media channels. They may only use it for personal reasons, oblivious to the fact that there is a wealth of knowledge and interaction that you can provide to them.

By actively finding THEM, instead of waiting for them to find YOU, you’re kick-starting your community in a very positive way. You’re letting them know that you’re listening, that you care about what they have to say, and that you really want to help.

3 Lessons About Social Media Marketing Learned From Transformers

Social Media is awesome. Transformers are awesome. Coincidence? I’ll let you decide.


Lessons can be drawn from anywhere. Not long ago I remembered an old poster titled ‘Everything I need to know about life I learned in Kindergarten’. I also stumbled across one of my old G1 Transformers toys the other day. These two memories combined in to the inspiration for this post. There are some great pearls of wisdom that can be drawn from the epic struggle of Autobot vs. Decepticon, many of which can be applied to your approach to Social Media marketing. Here we go…


1 – More than meets the eye.

Ah yes, the ever-famous tagline of the Transformers franchise. It’s simple message: Don’t always believe things are how they look on the surface. The perfect example of this is the typical ‘Twitter is useless’ or ‘Facebook is for kids’ stereotypes we hear all too often. A deeper look at Social Media reveals that there are mountains of helpful information being shared all the time on Twitter, and Facebook is proving to be one of the most powerful relationship-building tools businesses have ever seen.

The Lesson: Never assume that first-glances tell the whole story.


2 – Never underestimate the little guy.


Bumblebee and Laserbeak were arguably the least ‘powerful’ Transformers in the series, and yet many episodes saw these little guys play crucial roles in the outcome of the battles. They had unique skills that they could bring to the table, just like the lesser-known or smaller Social Media tools. Just because a Social Media tool doesn’t have hundreds of millions of users doesn’t mean that you should ignore it. The more options you give your audience to connect with you, the more they WILL connect with you. By limiting your audience to only a few channels, you’re also limiting your ability to hear what they have to say.

The Lesson: Recognize the benefits to every tool you have available.


3 – Your success depends entirely on your team.


Every time the Decepticons started out a new plan, it went really well…..at first. Inevitably though, their infighting, aggressiveness, carelessness, and general contempt for everyone surrounding them led to their failure. Social Media communities don’t tolerate those individuals who attempt to game the system, speak in condescending tones, and generally just act like jerks. The keys to success In Social Media are respect, honesty, and a genuine desire to be helpful, just like the Autobots.

The Lesson: If your team is full of jerks, don’t expect to do well.

In short, if you recognize all the real benefits of Social Media, make use of every option you have available, and approach it with the right attitude, you’re well on your way to developing an effective Social Media marketing strategy. It may seem like simple, obvious stuff, but all too often it’s the simplest lessons that get ignored.

Pics linked from: http://tfwiki.net/

A Different Kind of Influencer – Find Your Enthusiasts

I have a really hard time putting any kind of stock in to a Klout score. It just seems extremely artificial to me. After all, a quick look at those with scores of 100 yields an awful lot of pop music personalities, whom I shall not name because they clearly do not need any additional referrals. Klout strongly believes that these individuals hold a massive amount of influence, but the question remains: What are they influencing people to do? Retweet their stuff? Buy their song on iTunes? Big deal. Above and beyond that, the real influence of celebrities doesn’t really amount to too much.

One can easily argue that individuals who are ‘experts’ on a particular topic have far more actual influence than celebrities, because they often post blog articles and advice that people will put in to practice, thereby changing the behaviour of their audience based on the information that they share. If they share a review of a web design technique that works, or tips for communicating in the social media world, many followers will heed their advice and put those tips in to play for themselves. This, in my opinion, is a much more accurate description of ‘influence’.

But there’s a third group of people who hold ‘influence’ in the digital world. They’re not celebrities. They’re not experts. They are what I call the ‘enthusiasts’. People who are absolutely nuts for whatever it is they are talking about. They live it and breathe it. Whatever it is, it is their passion. It could be cars, PC’s, flowers, web design, photography, woodworking, travel, or antique toys. Everyone is passionate about something, and everything has someone who is passionate about it.

These individuals are a new kind of influencer. Finding these individuals and engaging with them can create a brand advocate of far greater strength and loyalty than any well-known expert. After all, if a popular expert endorses a product or service, there is a good chance that there is some mutual benefit coming back to them from that company. Either they got the product for free, or were paid to do a review, or simply got the benefit of being featured on the company’s website. Not to say this is bad, because most popular experts got to where they are by being good at what they do. They evaluate products and services very methodically, and tend to have broader experiences to draw comparisons from. But an enthusiast? They probably paid for whatever it is out of their own pocket.

There’s something to be said for having super-passionate enthusiasts interacting with you, sharing their opinions and reviews, and becoming your best friends. Social media amplifies their voices and creates a whole new level of word-of-mouth. Someone with 200 followers who’s crazy about your company tweeting about your stuff for weeks (or months) on end can have far more reach and influence than a single tweet in the daily stream of an expert to an audience of 30,000.

Ultimately, if you are carefully checking Klout scores and looking at follower counts in order to determine if mentioning or responding to a specific individual is ‘worth your time’, you may be missing out on a huge untapped resource of ‘influence’. Every single person who mentions you is worth your time. You never know who’s voice will really carry the farthest in the social media world.

4 ‘Share’ Button Tips – Choosing the best buttons for the job.

There are as many types of ‘Share’ buttons as there are Social Media sites, so how do you pick the right ones for your site and avoid the clutter?

There’s no denying that you need to have share buttons on your site or blog. They are an absolutely essential feature, and are crucial for anyone who wants to encourage sharing of content in an easy way that’s familiar to your users/readers. But there are SO MANY options out there, how can you effectively choose the right buttons without cluttering up your pages?

Each SM site provides code for their own button designs, and often there are multiple options that are different sizes, shapes, colours, etc. In addition, there are mutli-source sharing button options that pull in virtually every possible share option in to one expandable button, like those from AddThis or AddToAny.

Should you use only a couple of the most popular buttons? Or maybe just go with a multi-share button that covers every option? Or just go with the one share location that you WANT people to use? Well, there are a few good rules-of-thumb that I’ve put together that might help you choose which ones are really the best choice for your particular application and audience.

1 – Size, colour and shape

Visually, your share buttons should both blend in with your site, and stand out enough to be easily noticed. Sound like a contradiction? Perhaps, but think about it this way: the ignition on your car could be a tiny slot concealed to blend right in with the dash, but that would make it hard to locate when you need it. Or, you could make the ignition super-easy to find by using a big red button the size of your fist, but that would look out of place and silly.

• Your share button should be sized to be proportional to the other elements on your site.
• Your share button should be the right shape for the location of the button so that there’s a decent amount of space around it, without being too close to other elements or sticking it in the middle of nowhere on your page.
• If you have a dark background, use a lighter button. Light background, darker button. Just like text, dark-on-dark and light-on-light = bad.

2 – Location, location, location.


Example: Mashable is great at placing their share buttons in an easily accessible spot, and makes them scroll with the page so they are always visible.

Where you put your share button is just as important as how it looks. I’ve seen some web pages with the share buttons at the very bottom of the page, lumped in with things like the privacy policy or the ever-useful site map. Other times I’ve seen it scattered in multiple places on the same page. Ideally, you want your share button to be easily accessible, but not intrusive. In sidebars, below product title headers, or at the end of blog posts are all great locations that make it clear what information you’ll be sharing.

• Very rarely do you need more than one set of share buttons on a page.
• It should be clear to the ‘sharer’ what content will be shared.
• If your share button isn’t easy to find, it won’t get used. Don’t throw it at the bottom of your site.

3 – Single-site share buttons vs. multi-site share buttons.

This is where things get tricky. It really depends on the type of content on the page, and the type of users you are attracting. If it’s a blog, for example, you’ll likely want a multi-site share button so that readers can share it in any way they want (Tweet, Like, StumbleUpon, Re-blog, email, print, etc).

If it’s an individual product, then a pair or a trio of individual site share buttons (A ‘tweet’ button, a ‘like’ button etc) may be the best way to allow users to simply indicate that they endorse that particular product. In addition, those individual site share buttons usually come with a ‘counter’ to display how many people have liked or tweeted the page. If your users appear to have an affinity to one particular social media site, Facebook for example, providing them a native share button for their preferred site may encourage them to share more.

Also, there are combo-buttons that typically feature Facebook ‘Like’ and Twitter ‘Tweet’ buttons with counters, as well as a multi-site ‘Share’ button that ties in all the other sites. These are great all-round solutions since they combine the best traits of each option in to one share tool.

• Multi-site share buttons are excellent for educational/informational materials that users would share in many different outlets.
• Single-site share buttons are simple, easy ways for users to share that they ‘like’ or approve of a particular product, service, or singular piece of content.
• Combo buttons provide the best of both worlds.

4 – Familiar trumps freaky.

Do a Google search for ‘social media icons’ and you’ll get countless options of funky, sleek, crazy, and cool social media icons made by graphic designers that you can use on your site. The only problem is that the majority of these really only appeal to other graphic designers. The vast majority of your users will simply be looking for the ever-familiar Facebook ‘F’ or Twitter ‘T’ icons in the official colours used on those sites. Even a passing glance will generate instant recognition of what it is and what it does. Using an icon for your button that looks like a bottle cap or a lab experiment beaker may get the occasional user to think ‘wow, that looks neat!’, but hardly encourages your average user to click on it.

• Always use the official logo, colours, and appearance whenever possible for your share buttons.
• If your share buttons look different from everyone else’s share buttons, you may lose potential sharers because they don’t recognize them.

Overall, what you really need to look at when deciding how to setup your sharing options is what really fits with your site or blog. This is one instance where the Keep It Simple Stupid mantra really should be kept in mind. Just like all things in web design, people like simple navigation over complex, clean design over cluttered, clear calls to action over hidden links, and ease of use above all else.

Don’t forget that all of these buttons and widgets will come with analytics so that you can easily monitor how they are performing, and how users are interacting with them. Be sure to check these regularly, for they will reveal fascinating insights that you can use to help refine your ‘sharing’ strategy to encourage more and more shares.

Here’s a list of share button resource links that you can choose from when incorporating share functions in to your site:

Multi-site Share Buttons:
http://www.addthis.com
http://sharethis.com/
http://www.addtoany.com

Single-site Share Buttons:
http://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/plugins/like/
https://twitter.com/about/resources/tweetbutton
http://www.linkedin.com/publishers
http://www.tumblr.com/docs/en/share_button
http://www.stumbleupon.com/badges/landing/