By Karen Emanuelson 
8 Easy Ways to Personalize Social Media
We’re all human. We respond when we believe someone is reaching out to us personally. Especially in today’s mass email marketing and social media bulk posting, a message that speaks to an individual is rare – and usually appreciated.
Here are 8 easy ways you can personalize your social media posts and tweets:
- mention individuals – clients, potential clients, someone you met at a networking event, your lunch meeting
- post on a client’s page (or tweet using the client’s Twitter handle) to publicly thank them for their business
- post and tag photos from events and daily activities around your organization
- recognize volunteers and those in your network who have helped
- ask relevant questions – a client recently noted that she gets the most reactions and comments from her weekly “So, who’s ready for the weekend?” posts on Fridays
- conduct simple polls – Facebook Business Pages offer this option
- IMPORTANT: interact with online communities by commenting, liking, and retweeting others’ posts and tweets
- MOST IMPORTANTLY: respond to all posts and tweets from others that mention your organization with an acknowledgement comment as simple as “Thanks”, “Glad you enjoyed the session”, or” How can we help fix the situation?”
By Karen Emanuelson  Some say learning to use Twitter is like learning a foreign language because the “Twitterverse” uses unique terms and symbols. Below is a quick guide to twitter terms to introduce you to some of the words and symbols used.
One of the easiest ways to learn how to use Twitter is to observe how others are using the social network. Even if you don’t have a Twitter account, you can visit the Twitter search page and learn what others are saying on Twitter about the topic. This is also a great way to read what people are saying, in real-time, about a particular industry, product, or news event.
Print out the guide below to help you interpret what you see. Once you spend some time watching others tweet, you may be ready to jump in and join the fun. We’ll post our 12-step Twitter Strategies and Best Practices Guide soon. In the meantime, post your Twitter questions on the Reciprocate LLC Facebok page. Enjoy!
Quick Guide to Twitter Terms for Newbies
@ – use to call out usernames in Tweets. Use “@Username”
Avatar – profile picture
DM – “Direct Message” – private message. Use “d username” to specify the recipient
Fail Whale – Error seen when Twitter is overcapacity.
Favorite – click on the yellow star next to a message to mark it as one of your favorites
#FF - “Follow Friday” Used to suggest who others should follow on Fridays
Follow – subscribe to someone’s Tweets
Follower – someone who subscribes to your Tweets
Following – number of Twitter users you are following
Handle – Twitter user name. Your handle is http://Twitter.com/username.
# – Hashtag – used to indicate keywords or topics. Provides a way to search for similar Tweets
HT or h/t – used to acknowledge the person who originally shared the content being tweeted
Lists – curated groups of Twitter users. Used to tie individuals into a group into your Twitter account
Listed – your Twitter account is included in a list created by another Twitter user
Mention – using the “@” followed by a Twitter user’s name as a “shout out”
OH – “Overheard”
Promoted Tweets – Tweets paid to appear higher in search results
Reply – public message. Begin Tweet with “@username” of person you are sending reply to
RT – Retweet – a Tweet forwarded by another user. To send a Retweet to all your followers, use “RT”
Suspended Accounts – Twitter’s way of reducing spammy and inappropriate Tweets
Third-Party Application – product created by a company other than Twitter and used to access Tweets and other Twitter data.
Timeline – real-time list of Tweets
Top Tweets – most popular Tweets; determined by Twitter
Trending – real-time list of most popular topics on Twitter, usually designated by a hashtag
Tweet – a message posted via Twitter. Also a verb: Tweet, Tweeting, Tweeted
Tweeter/Twitterer – someone who posts and reads Tweets
Unfollow – stop following someone on Twitter. Their Tweets will no longer show up in your home timeline.
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By Karen Emanuelson
You’ve hear it all the time. “You NEED to have a Facebook business page.” ”You NEED to get on Twitter.” “You NEED to be on Pinterest.” But do you really?
Here are 3 time-saving tips to finding your organization’s target market on social media:
TIME SAVING TIP #1: Determine your target audience
The demographics of your target audience will help dictate where you should spend your online time and budget. We’ve discussed the importance of defining your target audience in our Marketing Tip #22. If you don’t want to “waste” your time on social networking sites, you must know who you are targeting before you decide which site to use for your organization.
TIME SAVING TIP #2: Determine the demographics of your target audience
One of the easiest ways to visualize your demographics is to create a mythological target customer. Then you can select the social media networks that will yield the most contact with your target audience.
TIME SAVING TIP#3: Determine where your target audience is online
Here are some interesting statistics from the website monitoring service, Pingdom, which recently released a study on social media user demographics, based on data from the Google Ad Planner Tool. While the Pingdom study covered 24 social networks, we’ll only highlight a few of the more well-know sites here.
- 51% of all social network users are between the ages of 25 and 44.
- Those 55 and older make up almost 10% of the social network users, while those under 25 make up just over 20%.
- 55% of Twitter users are 35 or older.
- The average Facebook user is 40.5 years old.
- 71% of the 24 sites surveyed by Pingdom had more female users than male users. Only Quora, Reddit, Orkut, Github, Stack Overflow, Hacker News and Slashdot had more male users.
 Pinterest is the most female-dominated site, with females making up almost 80% of its users.
 The overall average age of social network users is 36.9 years. deviantART has the lowest average age at 28.6 years; LinkedIn has the oldest at 44.2 years. Based on the data above, an organization marketing to senior males could make the decision NOT to spend their marketing time and money on a Twitter campaign while an organization marketing to 30-something females SHOULD consider Pinterest as a viable marketing tool.
Your organization, of course, will make its own decisions based on your unique products, services, industry, and desired outcomes. Spending a few minutes researching your target audience and its demographics before deciding which social media platform you NEED to be on will provide better results for your marketing time and resources.
By Sydney Anne  How To Use iPhone and Android Smartphones To Your Advantage
Do you know the difference is between a smartphone and a regular cellphone? The difference is that smartphones have mobile operating systems inside, making them a closer relative of a computer than a phone. They have a mobile browser so you can surf the web on the go and most of them feature touchscreens.
And, as most of generation Y and Z would seem to believe, if you don’t have a smartphone you miss out on a lot. And it may be true to an extent.
But it isn’t just the internet access that makes the difference
The applications (also known as apps) that one may find available on both the Google Play market and the Apple app store can have a huge impact on how you use the internet, shop, dine, and even entertain yourself.
You may be asking “why do I care? I don’t care about checking Facebook on the go or playing games when I’m out and about.” And that is fine, from a personal standpoint. But as an organization that wants to get its message out to others, you may want to start thinking differently.
Things aren’t like they used to be
Now, 8-year-old children have their own cell phones, and any child without a gaming system, such as an Xbox 360 or a PlayStation 3, is left in the dust. And, if you aren’t on the internet, or more recently, if you haven’t gone mobile, you and your organization may get left in the dust too.
Most associations, businesses and nonprofit organizations now have a Facebook page and many have a Twitter account. And many are starting to go mobile.
Going mobile involves creating an app or sending texts to your customers. This is the first in a our Marketing on the Go series. In our next post, we’ll share how one major corporation is using mobile and what you can learn from them.
In the meantime, if you are ready to take your organization mobile and would like some help, comment below or send an email to info(at)ReciprocateLLC.com. We’ll provide feedback about the best way to present your organization through a mobile approach from the perspective of your target market — whether they are generation X, Y, and Z — or baby boomers.
By Karen Emanuelson
4 Ways to use Smartphone Marketing
Smartphones can be used to reach customers in four primary ways:
- Applications
- Voting and polls
- Location-based deals
- Mobile donations
- Text to win
- Couponing
- Facebook
- Twitter
- LinkedIn
- YouTube
- Mobile Web
- Is your website mobile friendly?
- Advertising
- Banner ads
- Text Messaging
- QR codes
- Phone calls – old-school technology or personal touch?
Want help sorting this out?
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( Unless of course, you’re reading this on your smartphone … then you’ll either need to borrow a friend’s phone call so you can scan the code or simply click here to send us an email)
This is the second in a series of tips on marketing to smartphone users. Read smartphone usage statistics here.
By Sydney Anne 
You’ve mailed out discounts, offered repeat customers free services or products, and now you feel stuck. How do you reach new people and keep your current customers coming back? Relax. We have something you can try. Holidays.
You may be saying to yourself, “What? That doesn’t make sense!” But it does. Use traditional holidays or create new holidays to offer your customers coupons and discounts. Both can give customers a good ol’ laugh and you a reason to connect. The result? Customer satisfaction and business growth. Win. Win.
Here are some examples:
- March 2 is National Dress in Blue Day. Give customers the ability to wear blue, snap a picture, and submit it for 5% off their next order.
- The blues got you down? Try March 14 instead. Pi Day opens up the communication lines with your customers as you can share and swap pie recipes or offer “berry good deals.”
- Don’t have a sweet tooth? Don’t fret! March 26 is Make Up Your Own Holiday Day. Use this to your advantage to create a holiday geared towards your industry or ask your customers what holiday they would create.
Here are some existing holidays to use as idea starters:
Month-long celebrations
Red Cross Month
Employee Spirit Month
International Ideas Month
National Frozen Food Month
Holiday Weeks
National Write a Letter of Appreciation Week (March 1-7)
Universal Women’s Week (March 8-14)
National Spring Fever Week (March 18-24)
Daily Holidays
1 – National Pig Day
2 – National Dress In Blue Day
3 – What if Cats and Dogs Had Opposable Thumbs? Day
4 – Cadbury Chocolates Birthday (debut 1824)
5 – Namesake Day
6 – Michalangelo’s Birthday (1475)
7 – National Be Heard Day
8 – Organize Your Home Office Day
9 – Panic Day
10 – First Telephone Message (Sent 1876)
11 – Daylight Savings
12 – Napping Day
13 – K-9 Veterans Day
14 – Pi Day
15 – Absolutely Incredible Kid Day
16 – Freedom of Information Day
17 – St. Patrick’s Day
18 – Awkward Moments Day
19 – Let’s Laugh Day
20 – First Day of Spring
21 – National Common Courtesy Day
22 – As Young As You Feel Day
23 – World Turtle Day
24 – National Chocolate Covered Raisin Day
25 – Pecan Day
26 – Make Up Your Own Holiday Day
27 – Quirky Country Music Song Title Day
28 – Memorial Day
29 – National Mom and Pop Business Owners Day
30 – I am in Control Day
31 – Earth Hour – 8:30 PM
The possibilities created by using holidays as a marketing theme are endless. Turn each day into your own, and keep your customers coming back for more. Come back next month for some April holidays that will have you hopping to new heights!
By Karen Emanuelson  Reciprocate has surveyed thousands of small business owners since 2010 and found that few are actually using Twitter effectively. While we typically recommend that Reciprocate clients use social media platforms such as Facebook and LinkedIn first based on their target customer base, Twitter does have a place in online marketing for both B2B and B2C organizations.
In fact, numerous companies directly credit their Twitter accounts with boosting their bottom line. Online tech news giant Mashable offers insight into several of these success stories through 7 Twitter marketing campaigns to learn from.
If you decide to venture into the world of Twitter, here are 7 tips to get you started:
- Your Twitter account is part of your brand. Be mindful when setting your Twitter “handle.” While Twitter tends to be more casual then LinkedIn, make sure your tweets are consistent in tone and style with your brand.
- If you are having trouble coming up with things to tweet about, consider organizing tweets around a specific event like a press release, product launch, speech or event. Also, don’t be afraid to retweet (RT) others’ tweets if they are relevant to your audience.
- Use keywords. The words you use in each tweet will impact your success. Twitter feeds are integrated into search engines so use words in your tweets that your target audience might use in a search. For example, if you are an accounting firm and your customers would search for “tax help”, use “tax help” in your tweets as frequently as possible to promote that service offering. You might even want to create a hashtag such as #TaxHelp.
- Provide useful information. Don’t forget to include a link to your website or registration page.
- Tweet frequently. Use a tool such as Hootsuite to schedule tweets.
- Check your Twitter account at least once a day and respond to retweets, direct messages and mentions.
- Experiment, have fun, and learn from your mistakes. You might be surprised by the level of interaction you can achieve in 120 characters
Reciprocate offers custom, one-on-one and small group Twitter training sessions. Contact Reciprocate today to find out how Twitter can help you grow your bottom line. In the meantime, we encourage you to follow us on Twitter at KarenEman and ReciprocateLLC. Happy tweeting!
By Karen Emanuelson
Domino’s delivered 400 million pizzas last year. Monster Energy is the Number 1 energy drink by volume in the U.S. What can a small business owner learn from these mammoth companies? Plenty, including how to use photos to promote your business. Regardless of the size of your staff or the industry you are in, you can take advantage of photos and photo opportunities to market your company online.
6 creative marketing ideas using photos
Here are 6 creative ways to use photos to promote your products or services online:
- Run a contest. Ask customers to submit photos featuring your products or services. Offer a prize or discount for entries. Domino’s Pizza created a special URL to promote their recent photo contest ShowUsYour Pizza.com.
- Create an account on Flickr for your business. Upload photos that build anticipation for an upcoming event or new product line. I use my Flickr account to showcase community and nature photos I have taken as editor of the North Oaks News as well as to promote my company.
- Feature one photo on each page of your website to add visual interest. While too many photos can be distracting, one large image can have a lasting impact on visitors. Additional photos may be placed in a less dominate location lower on the page. Photo gallery pages are an obvious exception to the one-photo rule.
- Send photos via Twitter. Using TwitPic, you can share photos from your PC or camera phone via Twitter in real time. TwitPic also provides stats on how many people have viewed your photo, and you can add the TwitPic widget (above right) to your website for additional exposure for your photos.
- Upload photos to Facebook. Create albums based on themes. The Monster Energy Facebook page has more than 70 company-created albums and encourages customers to post their own photos. The result? More than 5,000 photos uploaded by Monster Energy customers. Examples Facebook albums small businesses could create include:
- Holiday Gift ideas
- Why customers love us
- How we make (product)
- Before and After
- On the road
- A quick, fun way to promote your small business or organization using photos is Smilebox. This website offers a free (or relatively inexpensive if you choose to upgrade) way to create a short video display of 8-15 photos. Below is the Smilebox I created in just a few minutes using a free account to promote Reciprocate LLC.
 Click on the play button above to view the Reciprocate LLC Smilebox creation. |
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5 small business ”photo op” ideas
Opportunities for using photos to promote a small business abound. Keep a camera or camera phone handy as you go about your day. Make a conscious effort to take 5 photos each day for one week. By the end of the week, you’ll have created a photo gallery to choose from and you will have also created a mindset to look for and create photo opportunities.
Here are some possible photo opportunities to get you started:
- Products or services
- Company-sponsored events
- Employee meetings, client successes, awards, and celebrations – especially if you can feature your product, service, or company logo somewhere in the photo
- Company representatives and/or your product at trade shows, speaking engagements, and events. Stage photos in front of banners and signs which promote the event or in front of recognizable location signs.
- Before and after photos — this can translate into almost any industry but works especially well for organizers, home improvement companies, and decorators. Think outside the box. Even accountants can show a “before” photo of a mountainous pile of receipts and an “after” photo of a clean desk, featuring their company logo displayed on the monitor along with a happy customer.
Use your imagination. Get creative! Unless you are in the professional photography industry, don’t worry so much about getting the perfect shot with perfect lighting. Some applications (like TwitPic) atually lend themselves to impromptu camera phone images. Have fun but do keep your company image and marketing goals in mind. I encourage you to share links to your favorite use of company photos in the comments section below.
By Karen Emanuelson Twitter recently reset passwords on numerous users’ accounts.
If you cannot log into your Twitter account, check your emails to see if you have received one from Twitter that looks like this:
If you received this email, you will not be able to log into your Twitter account without clicking on the emailed link. Additional information may be found on the Twitter help page.
As a precaution, Twitter users are advised to not share their Twitter password and account information with third party companies that offer to increase follower counts rapidly.
By Karen Emanuelson  You, no doubt, have heard a lot of buzz about Twitter — especially from TV broadcasters and famous personalities, who seem enamoured with Twitter and it’s power for instant communication. Twitter claims more than 150 million registered users with 300,000 new users every day! According to The Huffington Report , an April 2010 study suggests that while most Americans are aware of Twitter, few are using it. So, what’s in it for you?
Twitter basics
Twitter is based on 140-character snippets of information called “tweets.” Think of a tweet as a broadcast message. You need a Twitter account to send and receive tweets. The benefit of Twitter is its immediacy. The disadvantage of Twitter is the volume of tweets sent — averaging 55 million tweets a day. It’s not easy breaking through all that noise.
There is no subscription fee to join and you can set up a profile in a matter of minutes. Twitter is one of the more casual social networking sites — more like Facebook than LinkedIn. It is used for both business and personal communications.
Setting up your account
- Decide on the image you want to portray on Twitter. Let your intended use be your guide. Even though Twitter is less formal, if your intent is to use this account to promote your business, keep your Twitter image more professional.
- Create a unique Twitter name or “handle.”
While you could certainly use your real name, most Twitter users choose a name more representative of their personality or business. MNFamilyMatters is the Twitter handle for a Twin Cities based family law practice; ESQCoach is the handle for a web-based attorney marketing site; KarenEman is my Twitter handle.
- Add a photo or graphic. Since I primarily use my Twitter account for business, I use my Gravatar – the photo I use on all my online profiles including Twitter and LinkedIn. You can use a company logo or even a graphic.
- That’s all it takes to set up the very basics. You can use the “Settings” tab to add details to your profile, including a web address, as well as design the look of your Twitter background.
Now what?
Now the fun begins. You need to find people to “follow.” The social media networks are making it much easier to cross-connect. The easiest way to get started is to find connections from other social media networking sites and/or your email address contacts lists to see who you know that is using Twitter. If you are on LinkedIn, add your new Twitter account to your LinkedIn profile. When asked, “allow” Twitter to connect to your LinkedIn profile. LinkedIn just added a “Tweets” section to their site that shows which of your LinkedIn connections are on Twitter and those that you are following.
Another easy way to find people to follow is to check out “lists.” On my Twitter profile page, I have created multiple lists of Twitter users as a way to categorize them. One list is made up of Tweeters who live in Minnesota; another includes those who tweet about Las Vegas deals (great if you are planning a trip); and another lists people who tweet about topics of interest to small businesses,
One caveat: Don’t think of Twitter as too personal. Unlike Facebook or LinkedIn, it really doesn’t matter if you know the people that you are following or that are following you. You can follow politicians, CEOs, friends, family members, industry leaders, and individuals from across the globe — and they, in turn, can follow you. That’s part of the fun!
More info
If you are hesitant to set up a Twitter account, you can check it out first. Click on the image on the left to go directly to Twitter. Without signing up, you’ll be able to see, in real time, some of the people using Twitter as well as a collection of “ Top Tweets.” I look forward to having you follow me on Twitter. I’ll reciprocate and follow you back.  RCE7FBKYKTWZ
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