What do most companies do wrong when they start marketing with social media? They lack an overall plan. They are missing their objectives. They don’t know who their target audience is?  Market research firm Forrester has coined the Acronym POST. The POST method is a planning methodology for companies to enter into social media marketing.

POST helps address “should my company have a presence on Facebook?” or “why isn’t anyone reading our company blog?” It is the central concept in the book Groundswell.

The POST method stands for People, Objectives, Strategy, and Technology.

People: This is about reaching your targeted customer. Who are they? What are their interests and their demographics? What types of social media are they most likely to use? If you’re targeting college students, use social networks. If you’re reaching out business travelers, consider ratings and reviews.

Objectives: What do you want to accomplish? Do you want to generate awareness? Influence the influencer? Build or regain trust? Energize your customers to talk about your brand?  Decide on your objective before you decide which technology to use. Figure out how you will measure results.

Strategy: Strategy in the POST method means how will things be different afterwards?? Do you want a closer, two-way relationship with your best customers? Do you want to get people talking about your products? Do you want a permanent focus group for testing product ideas and generating new ones?

Technology: After you’ve decided on people, objectives and strategy then decide the best application to use. Should this be blogging, if so, which software? Should you be using wikis, MySpace or YouTube? Perhaps you will want to form a niche community?

Too many businesses start with the Technology. They will start with “we need a blog” or “our company needs a Facebook page.” Using the POST method helps remove the guesswork.

Blogging will get your business noticed online. Blogging opens a whole new realm than you would find with just a website. Blogging is part of the Internet called social media. In web marketing, the call to action and promoting your products is the name of the game. In blog marketing, the goal is to interact and converse with visitors.

Since the goals of blogging are so very different than traditional website marketing, what results should your business expect from blogging?

1. Reach new readers: Blogs reach new readers that are interested. These are usually different than those reading traditional advertising or even your website.
2. Build a following: Build recognition of your company or your products by regularly writing interesting postings in your blog. You will build a following of readers who will know and understand who you are and what you stand for.
3. Inform customers: Do you sell or produce products? Blogs can build your market for these products by getting potential customers to understand how your products can solve some problem that they have. Give case stories of how your products are used.
4. Open up communication: Keep open the lines of communication between your company and your customer. Customer service blogs enable the flow of conversation to travel in both directions and alert you to developing issues
5. Push up your website rankings: Blogs generate regular new keyword rich content. Attract search engine interest by carefully using keywords in your headlines and blog copy. Link generously from your blog to other websites as well as your own. Using keywords in the link text is a powerful method to push up your website rankings.

You have been blogging for months, how do you measure if your effort is successful? What topics that you write are best received? Use the web analytics from your hosting company or use Google Analytics to give you these answers.

Purpose: Before you start measuring success, you need to have a purpose for your blog. Blogs that address a particular audience about a particular topic will build a larger readership. Readers return if they like what they read. If you write about a wide variety of subjects, then you won’t have a chance to develop many repeat visitors.

Feedback: Visitors to your blog give you feedback on what interests them even if they don’t leave comments. When you write something interesting you will see an increase in the number of visitors, the number of comments and even the nature of the comments. If you listen and watch, you can use this to deliver more of the content that your audience likes.

1. Numbers of visitors: If nobody visits your blog then your blog is not effective. If you write a blog posting 3 times a week, which topics or postings created the highest number of visitors? Figure out what you did right and do more of it.
2. Comments: Which postings yielded the highest number of comments and discussion? Was it the subject? Your writing style? Possibly the questions you asked?
3. Length of Stay: How long did your average visitor stay reading your blog? Were they there for 30 seconds or for 5 minutes?
4. Entry Pages: What postings attract visitors over time? These are ones that visitors find on the search engines long after you have written them. These are your reader’s favorites.
5. Location: Where are your readers from? Google Analytics allows you to see not only the country and state, but the city too. This is important if your blog is for a local business.

OK… your company is ready to launch a social media marketing initiative, what should be your first step? Should it be blogging? MySpace? FaceBook? Setting up a lens on Squidoo?

No… first you need to set up your listening tools to understand what is being said about your company, your brand or your key executives. Before you decide to engage your customers, you need to understand how people are feeling about your brand. What voices are the most influential? Where do you need to have a presence to target where discussions are already happening?

An effective monitoring system allows your company to be proactive and respond to complaints in as little as 15 minutes after they are posted. By actively monitoring social media your company can develop a reputation of reaching out to and helping customers. By reacting quickly to criticism you are more likely to convert complaints into product evangelists.

There are a number tools that do a very good job.

1. Google Alerts let you track web, blogs, news and groups for any phrase you want. (Free).
2. Trackur monitors all major search engines, not just Google (Starting at $18/mo)
3. Brandwatch combines alerts combined with data analysis. (Free weekly alert and paid plans)
4. BuzzMonitor is an open-source social media aggregator that you host on your own web server. Software downloads are free. Developed by The World Bank.

Blogs are being relied upon as a source of healthcare information. But can medical blogging be hazardous to the health of your healthcare career? Physicians and nurses can share their stories and insights. They can also risk revealing confidential patient information. Authors of medblogs need to understand what they can and can’t say

Medical blogging is a way for the medical professional to show their caring and knowledge about medicine. Medblogs are important as a source to learn about disease, treatments and prevention.

So why is there such a controversy about medical blogging? Hospital administrations have shut down physician blogs. The lifespan of a medical blog tends to be short because of HIPPA compliance issues. Bloggers must make sure that if they describe an actual case that they do not use any of the18 health information identifiers noted in the HIPAA regulations.

David D. Perlmutter, a professor in the KU School of Journalism & Mass Communications has put together a Medbloggers’ Hippocratic Oath to help in navigating the special problems that medical blogger face. The following is an excerpt from David Perlmutter’s blog:

I swear that:

1. I will never reveal information about patients in my blog that allows readers to identify them in any way.
2. If I blog under a pseudonym, I will still inform readers of my correct credentials and degrees so that they can assess my expertise.
3. If I refer to controversial health care information, I will make sure to recognize opposing views and to provide my readers with adequate citations so that they can read more on the subject themselves.
4. I will not blog to sell directly my services, my practice or a product in which I have any financial interest.
5. I may state my opinions and ideas with passion and conviction, but I will not engage in personal attacks and the vilification of anyone in a way that would undermine the decorum and dignity of my profession.

I had a call from an owner of a dry cleaning business who wanted to increase his business. He offers dry cleaning and laundering that includes a pick up and delivery service for the local area. He is well established and but he does have competition. He has a small website that is ranked #1 for the major search terms.

I told him I would come up with some ideas. We set a time to discuss my recommendations. So what did I recommend?

Blog: Add a blog to his current website. Blogs work differently than websites. They actively broadcast their content. Adding a blog to the website will regularly add keyword rich content to the website. We needed to choose topics that would interest prospective clients.

Keyword research showed that people regularly search for ways of removing specific stains from specific garments. The shop owner confirmed that customers regularly asked these types of questions. We decided to use these questions as ideas for writing blog posts. We decided to use community names in each posting to help with local searches.

Google Local Listings: We looked at his local business listing which is a free service from Google. We saw that he had two very positive reviews. The other search engines offer similar listing services. There are a number of popular social review sites such as Yelp.com. We decided to periodically as customers to write online reviews about what they thought of the service.

Other ideas: We discussed adding a page for his business on Facebook. Creating a profile on LinkedIn. Adding a Lens on Squidoo.com. But at this point he wanted to implement the first two ideas.

I was researching alternative ways to bring in targeted traffic to websites. I came across a website that promises to deliver targeted traffic by redirecting visitors through expired domains, redirectedvisitors.com. Their prices are quite reasonable. 5000 unique visitors are $28.95, that’s less than a penny per visitor.

They offer to redirect visitors from expired domains. These are domains that registrars are holding for up to 90 days while they are trying to get domain owners to renew. Redirectedvisitors.com contracts with registrars to sell this search engine traffic that is already targeted.

This sounds like a good clean traffic. They promise that you will not receive the same visitor twice for the entire duration of your ad campaign. This is based on the IP address of the visitor.

This looks like a great deal. My first step was to contact redirectedvisitors.com. They don’t have a phone number on their website and I couldn’t get a response from their contact form on their site. This stated to make me suspicious.

My next step was to do a search on Google to see if others were happy or upset with their results from redirectedvisitors.com.

Positive comments (I could only find one)

1. “I have purchased two standard campaigns so far, and I am very pleased with the RedirectedVisitors.com service. All the traffic I bought was delivered to my websites on time.” - Lorianna

Negative comments

1. “I decided to give the company a try and order 25,000 visitors which the company claimed would be sent from Expired Domain Names… I still had not received one site visitor.”  - Mary
2. “So if you’re thinking of doing business with this company, think again, because they will rip you off.” -Bob
3. “I ordered 25000 RedirectedVisitors… I still haven’t received any visitors. I sent several e-mail to the company but haven’t had one of them returned.” - Ewjp3630

If anyone has tried this service or a similar one, I would be interested in your experience.

The eBusiness Association of Rochester, NY is putting on an all day business blogging conference on September 25, 2008. Registration is only $99 and includes a copy of the book Biz Blog Marketing by Doug Williams. The event is cosponsored with the Rochester Chapter of the American Marketing Association and Association for Women in Computing.

This blogging seminar / blogging workshop will break down the basics of the blog—the benefits, content, approach, etiquette, legal issues and provide the tools to better navigate your way. Whether you’re a novice or a familiar “voice” in the blogosphere, you’ll learn what works and how it works from a diverse group of experts who’ve been around blogging for quite some time.

Speakers include:

1. Doug Williams, Business Consultant, Internet Marketing Specialist will speak about “Business Blog Marketing.”
2. Yvonne DiVita, Business Writer, Publisher, Multiple Blog Author will speak about “Google Juice or Why People Think BLOG Means Better Listing On Google.”
3. Adam Christensen, IBM Corporate Blogger will speak about “Web 2.0 in a Global Enterprise.”
4. Deborah Colton, Assistant Professor of Marketing/International Business, Rochester Institute of Technology will speak about “Corporate Blogging Tactics.”
5. Jessica Murray, Partner in Boylan, Brown’s Business & Corporate and Intellectual Property & Technology Practice Groups will speak about “Making Legal Happy: Minimizing the Risks of Corporate Blogging.”
6. Peter Burris, Principal Analyst and Research Director, Forrester Research will speak about “Blogs: A Key Spoke in the Community Marketing Wheel.”

Registration is $99 and can be done online on the eBusiness Association website. The event venue limits this to 200 attendees.

A Forrester Research report shows that the number of new B2B Blogs fell sharply in 2007 when compared to 2006. This was because of low results and greater than expected effort. But this doesn’t mean B2B blogging doesn’t work, it means the way B2B blogging is being done isn’t working.

According to Forrester Research, the problem is that B2B corporate blogs failed to energize their intended audience and they read like “tired, warmed-over press releases.”

So what are the answers to make these corporate blogs successful? The answer is simply to give the readers information and opinions that they want to read, written in an exciting and energetic style.

1. Topic: Choose subjects that interest or fascinate your targeted reader. What information is your targeted customer searching for? Stay with leading edge, latest news and current trends. What does the future hold?
2. Passion: For successful B2B blogging, businesses need to “hire smart, passionate people.” These should be people who love their jobs, are proud of what they do and be allowed to blog with contagious enthusiasm.
3. Style: Write in a way that intrigues and engages the reader. Be mysterious with posting titles so that you entice the reader to want to learn more. Write with personality and make your blog posts fun to read.
4. Be brief: Blogs are not the place to discuss subjects at great length. Studies have shown that blog readers will read up to 300 words. If you write a 700 word blog, readers will still only read up to 300 words.

Writing for blogs is different than other types of writing. It is focused, concise and it is done with style. It requires an informal conversational and engaging writing style. Business blogging is focused around a topic and a particular audience.

1. Write for your readers: Make it interesting and valuable for your targeted reader. Provide them information, tips and advice that they are looking for and they will keep returning.
2. Headline: Catchy headlines hook your reader and get them to at least scan your post. Your post title should make people want to read it.
3. Get to the point: Blog readers are impatient and quickly move on. Skip the long intros and make your major point in the first paragraph.
4. Format for scanning: People scan instead of reading on the Internet. Pack your main points into headlines, sub headlines, bullets and numbered lists.
5. Less is more. Be concise and to the point. Blog readers are looking for information that is short and sweet. Keep postings to about 250 words.
6. Informal Writing: Write in an informal and conversational style. Write like you talk. Don’t be too technical or you will lose your readers.
7. Active Voice: The active voice is direct and much stronger. Examples: (passive) blogs written in short sentences are easier to read; (active) write blogs in short and easy to read sentences.
8. Write a draft. Then take a break. When you come back, you will have a fresh perspective and can quickly edit your blog into a final version.