• As a listening tool for news, trends, aggregation, curation, and opportunities to engage specific types of list members
• As a way to focus on those certain profiles you don’t want to miss Tweets from
• As an alternate to following abandoned accounts, over-sharers, and/or social media me monsters
• To vet potential follows by reviewing their content, activity level, and online behavior before following
• As a mini CRM so you know which Twitter chat, marketing conference, social network, or networking event you made initial contact from
• To alert account holders, they get a notification by default via email when you add them to a list, that you have shown an interest in them
• To use with 3rd party tools for segmentation, measurement, analytics, and automation (use carefully)

If you thought the video was helpful, please share it with others and consider subscribing to the Cirrus ABS Youtube channel.

In a bygone era business owners tended to conform to known best practices, many of which happened also to be a common courtesy. Take, for example, the lowly ‘no vacancy’ sign. Seems simple enough, right? I mean, why would a hotel operator force a weary traveler to drive in, park the car, go to the front desk, and ask for a room when a simple roadside sign would let the traveler know up front that no room is available? Of course, current-day businesses have a penchant for asking “Well, what else can we sell a potential customer”, but I’ll save that for a future post.

In today’s online marketing climate we all too often depart from the best practices, standards, and common courtesies we previously afforded our fellow man. I am sure in at least some instances, the argument is that it’s a matter of finances, but that would be a scapegoat.

For the sake of context, it is 3 a.m. and I’ve been attempting to plan a family vacation for the past several evenings. I’ve found myself constantly frustrated by completely inept vacation planning and resort websites, and lest you think this was simply because I arrogantly KNOW that the company I work for could do better, let me assure you this is genuine frustration, resulting from fundamental omissions and an absence of common sense.

Look, if I arrive at your hotel website, and you have ‘no vacancy’ for the time period I seek, please give me a sign—a quick and easy method of discovery—so that I do not waste my time or yours. No, I don’t want to call you or wait for an email response. You know what your availability is, and there is simply no excuse for not having an online representation of it in 2013. And while you’re at it, please indicate when your availability was last updated. One hotel operator made a point to tell me that they have been booked for over a year when I called him after visiting his website. I wanted to let him know that he had the whole year to update his website to indicate the lack of availability and save both him and me the time and hassle of discussing it. Having to wait for email responses and play phone tag meant my losing the ability to use a preferred airport and having to pay hundreds of dollars extra for airline tickets.

I couldn’t help but laugh when one of the last of the 25 or more sites I checked out—a hideous-looking site that must have been created back in the late 90’s—actually got it right. This small-time operator, Bob, who looked to be in his 60’s by the friendly picture on his site, clearly gets it. At the very top of his site it states in big, bold all-cap letters, “2013 BOOKED SOLID TO APRIL 5TH.” Thanks, Bob, I’m moving on.

Ironically, many websites encouraged me to CALL NOW; so I did and immediately became disenchanted when I was greeted by an after-hours recording. But you just told me to call now and gave no qualifier or indication that you didn’t literally mean…now. I applaud the use of a call to action in this instance but must deduct points for execution. Best practices dictate that henceforth you may not use the CTA “call now” if in fact nobody’s going to answer my call at the time I make it.

One of the most common issues I have with these sites is the use of ridiculously horrible pictures to display the rooms and the property. Maybe I should say “imagery” instead of “pictures,” since many sites also attempted to put a floor-plan drawing of the rental online that might have been helpful if it had not been unreadable and therefore as bad as the pictures. Sadly, this problem is not limited to their websites, but has now infested newer and popular services like AirBNB and Tripadvisor. In a few cases, I was able to find better photography of the property on sites not run by the property itself.

What is truly sad is that just about any grade-school child who has a smartphone could take better, and more compelling, photography than what is depicted on these sites. Find a kid with an Instagram account, and it’s certain to represent your property better. Remember you are asking for hundreds, if not in many cases thousands, of dollars from people. Fix your photography.

In closing, I am left to wonder if the people creating or maintaining these sites have ever themselves planned a vacation. I’d similarly ask if they have used the Internet in the past decade, because it has been that long since some of these sites have been updated, let alone built.

Regardless, if you can’t adhere to best practices or standards, how about at least treating your visitors with some not-so-common courtesy?

(NOTE: This post has been sanitized with judicial editing for SFW readability. )

Header photo by PunkToad and the neon “no vacancy” photo by Taber Andrew Bain.

Where have you been fishing for business lately? It’s tough to choose, isn’t it? There have never been so many great places to cast your line or net. As a business owner, you need to know where the fish are biting, not just where they are swimming. Let’s take a look at some simple tips for fishing for business in the “Great Social Media Channels.”

Our first tip is that you need to decide what your available budget is for this business-fishing trip. Your budget must include fuel (resource allocation), availability (corporate buy-in/employee bandwidth), and tackle (tools to market with). You must also take into account your past fishing experiences, so you don’t get your business into rough waters. Note that it may be wise to solicit the help of a guide (a social media consultant). A guide can help reduce stress and increase your catch.
These decisions impact which social channel(s) you select to fish for business and ultimately the success of your trip. If your trip availability is limited and you have limited funds, you will need to select one channel, set realistic expectations, and formulate a plan to maximize your success with the tackle you can afford.

ip number two is to decide what species of fish you are after and to find which channels they are swimming in. Remember though that the channel(s) you select must also fit criteria we determined from tip number one. It is a good idea to speak with other fishermen about where they have been catching fish. These guys know their way around and can help you avoid potential hidden hazards. Be careful, though, of the old codger who claimed to catch a whale “that one time, over there.” He has been telling that same yarn for years. And no matter how great any fisherman tells you a certain spot is, ALL of the fish are not in that same spot, or even that one channel.

Our third tip is to speak with the locals, or tournament guys, if you know any, and see what bait and techniques they are using. Now, don’t let them talk you into going out and buying or trying everything. They can be an excitable bunch, so remember to temper their excitement for what’s new or their favorites against what you see others using. You also need to make sure that the bait they tell you to use is not only “legal” but ethical as well. You shouldn’t just show up and throw dynamite into the channel, even if you will catch some fish that way.

On to tip number four. Learn how to present the right bait the right way: where the fish are looking, not just where they are swimming. Presentation determines if you will have fillets on the plate or just another fish story. You could be using the same bait as the other guys, but if your presentation is off, the catch rate will be too. And don’t worry if your style isn’t the same as the popular guy’s. If you find a technique that works for you, and isn’t illegal or unethical, roll with it.

Tip number five is to be prepared to catch something. It is amazing how frequently money and time is spent to get out to the fishing hole only to find you forgot a fishing net to help get your catch into the boat. And if you are just out there casting, but not monitoring your bait, you might miss a lot of bites in the first place. Few things are as disappointing as going out day after day, but returning empty handed. You may even start to believe that there aren’t any fish in this channel, or that (insert all kinds of other excuses here).

Our last tip is to record your success. Look, you can use a fancy wayfinder tool to mark every position, or you can write it on the back of a napkin, but you must start keeping track of where you have success early on. I mean, do you really want to try to remember what worked years ago or still be trying to figure it out?

A note about the old timers: You can listen to old timers, who usually know of a few good spots that “always produce,” but be careful that they are not just desperate for attention and wasting your time. Keep in mind that trophy fish become accustomed to the tricks used to catch them, so unless you actually see an old timer’s catch, make sure he’s been keeping up with the latest tools and techniques. You need to know which of his lures fish are hitting on lately, not the lure that caught him a monster fifteen years ago. Keep in mind too that grandpa has a favorite spot, and he may stick with it a little too long because, well, it’s what he knows.

A note about the new tournament pros: These tournament guys are amazing. The live, eat, and breath this stuff. You don’t. They can tell you all about the shiny new equipment and lures you should be using, but since you’re not as experienced as they are, or as passionate about it, you don’t know how to present the bait correctly. You don’t want to make this your sole source of sustenance, but you need to catch some. And that fishfinder they recommend only tells you where you are likely to find fish. It doesn’t cast, present the bait, or set the hook for you, and it certainly isn’t going to fry it up for you. By the way, be respectful of the tournament pro who is willing to help you out. You’re not paying him to be your guide, so don’t “expect” him to be.

It may seem like a like a lot of work just to fill up your basket with business, but since the old techniques of paying for someone to put food on your plate aren’t working as well these days, you might as well commit to learning how to fish for yourself. Or at least find a good guide.

Where is your honey hole? Where are the fish biting for you?

Lest someone say that we just don’t understand how hard it is, let me come clean by telling you that this article, due several days ago, kept getting brushed aside and still sat as an empty document on my desktop for hours this morning. Add interruptions and an endless To-Do list and — well, I “get” the excuses.

This does not change the fact that earning a grade requires you to do the work. A website is no different. Add no value to it, and you can be assured little value will come from it. I’m sorry, but content must be added regularly to your website/blog for it to be effective. This is not my will, but that of your visitors and the search engines (Google). And of course good grades and quality website traffic alike are dependent on a great many factors. Here are some quick tips for ‘making the grade.’

• Block out time, and everything around you, for creating new content regularly.
• Review past responses to questions that come in via email or phone, or that your sales staff identify as common. Any answer you give, when slightly modified, could become a blog post or an FAQ.
• Keep notes, scribbles, photos, or audio recordings of ideas you have about posts as you think of them. They don’t have to be finished in one sitting.
• Use tools like Evernote, Catch, Dropbox (Affiliate link so you get extra space and so do I.), or Google Docs to store your subject ideas. And don’t forget that you can dictate to modern smart phones. Try it!
• Create an editorial calendar that highlights the type of content for the following circumstances related to your business/market: seasons, product releases, holidays, sales cycles, events, promotions or awards, staff changes, philanthropy and sponsorship activities, etc

If you are still reading, then clearly you know how important all this is to your business. Now, what are you going to do about it? Don’t make this a New Year’s resolution, make this a New Year’s Marketing Imperative. Oh…and keep your dog away from your blog.

Politics at its heart is just a different form of marketing. There are more rules you have to follow and some restrictions on what you can do that are different from traditional marketing, but the basic difference is that, when the polls close on Election Night, you can’t change the result until the next time an election rolls around.

That may be why the lessons in politics are harder to learn: the “event” we all market doesn’t take place for at least another year, so what we’ve learned is all too easy to forget. That said, I hope there are some things you can take away from this past election season that you can use in your personal marketing efforts and apply to things you’d like to see changed.

1. An online movement that doesn’t create change isn’t a movement!

To illustrate my point, I’ll use the recent attempt by Congress to pass the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). The online marketing community realized that this legislation, if it became law, would do little to protect intellectual property online but would instead set up a lot of roadblocks for Internet users. So the community decided to take action. It started a movement in which various organizations (including ours) agreed to “turn their websites dark” in a show of solidarity against the legislation.

The protest worked. SOPA was stopped. But the movement missed an equally important opportunity. It made no effort to educate its supporters about where their individual legislators stood on the subject- and how they voted. If activists had taken the time to educate supporters better, they might have been able to impact the debate surrounding CISPA – the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act – a similarly controversial piece of legislation. With 87% of the seats up for grab in Congress this last election, the movement might have been able to change the political landscape and stave off any further draconian efforts to police the Web.

I’ve seen many of the movement’s anti-SOPA communications because I have lots of friends who care passionately about this issue. I agree with them, but I take the course many of us do: I say to myself, “they know what they’re talking about, and I trust their judgment, so I will take action when directed.” Leading up to the election, none of my friends shared a single voters’ guide or any material discussing the issue or indicating how my Representative or Senators voted on it.

It is one thing to be passionate about an issue, but to effect change you have to get off the sidelines and into the game, as uncomfortable as that might be. Politicians are not all that different from any other rational actor – they’re going to pay attention when you give them a reason. Organizing online does not give politicians a reason to listen to you unless you show them how you can impact their objectives (in a positive or negative manner). Connecting who you are and what you stand for with actual votes when they tally the ballots, or shaping how the media covers the election (and influences voters in the process) is how you will influence a politician to reconsider his or her position.

2. Talking about your favorite politician online does not win friends or influence voters!

How many readers saw friends post something to the effect:

“I need to find a way to screen out political posts from my feed so I can stay friends with people.”

Our political feelings don’t always line up neatly with those of our friends, particularly when social media have minimized the emotional investment required to maintain a friendship. By that I mean, I can be someone’s friend without having to remember key things like their birthday, their likes and dislikes, where they work, their kids’ names, what they look like, etc.

I slightly exaggerate that for effect. But you can’t expect to maintain a network of hundreds or thousands of people who all agree with you on every political issue. You also can’t expect to say disparaging things about people who disagree with you and hope to remain friends.

That said, all the commenting in the world isn’t going to help your candidate at all. Rather, it just reinforces an incorrect perception that your candidate is doing well. Facebook likes to help us figure out what we want to read most. When you’re talking about something, it’s going to show you more posts about that subject. Unless you have a lot of interaction with people who disagree with you, you’re more than likely going to see opinions that validate your own, creating a false impression that your opinion is reflected by most other people.

As media outlets become more polarized and we continue to gravitate toward those that reinforce our point of view, this problem will only get worse. Unless you’re actively working to reach out to people online who you know are planning to vote for the ‘other guy’ or not vote at all, you’re not helping your cause by just talking about it online.
Technology has made it so much easier to participate in the process. There are tools you can use to organize people and collaborate online. You can even make get-out-the-vote calls through the Internet. Candidates and advocacy groups are always looking for new ways to make helping more convenient, and the Internet always seems to be the solution.

Whether your ‘other guy’ is an issue or a candidate, a small amount of effort can make a tremendous difference! Just looking at the recently concluded Presidential race, the five closest states were decided by a margin of 5% of those who voted. Sixteen states (including those five) were decided by 10% of those who voted! This year there are many races for the U.S. House of Representatives that were decided by less than 5,000 votes – some by even a few hundreds of votes.

Organization makes all the difference, translating your online activity into offline action is what can change elections and deliver the results you want. If you learn anything from this election, it’s that saying “meh” is not enough – you have to find a way to impact the process if you want to see change. Contact me if you want to learn more about how to transform online activity into real change – I’ve helped people figure out how to win elections and influence voters for over a decade, and I’d enjoy helping you design a strategy to achieve your goals as well!

As to what you will receive for your fee, Facebook officially states, “Promoting a post simply bumps it higher than it would otherwise appear in your audience’s news feeds.” And “Promoting a post does not affect who can see it. Instead, it bumps the post higher in news feed so more of the people you shared it with are likely to notice it.” There is no defined indication of how long the post will persist, you may not define the audience, and it seems clear that there is no guarantee that ALL of your friends, or subscribers, will see the post. This would certainly include people who have chosen to hide your posts in the past.

While Facebook doesn’t say how long the promoted post will persist, the feedback from friends points to them staying visible for a much longer period of time. One friend saw my test message, for the first time, 60 hours after it had initially been posted.

According to Facebook, any kind of personal post may be promoted, except those in groups and from third party applications like Instagram. Events can only be promoted from posts used to share the event, not from the event creation page.

Promoted posts for both personal accounts and Pages share some similarities, but there are also some key differences. For starters, anyone can promote a post from a personal account, except for accounts with over 5,000 friends.  Facebook Pages must have 400 “Likes” before they may promote a post.

Unlike page promotions, which can be paused, your only recourse for an errant or unwanted personal post promotion is to delete the post.

An odd quirk is that personal posts must first be published before they can be promoted. Once a post is published it can still be enrolled for promotion for up to six hours after. Promoted posts from a Page can be set up before you post, if acting as the Page, and although Facebook claims there is a 3-day shot clock, I have seen posts that are weeks old which still have the promote dropdown option. Additionally, you can set a budget on promoted Page posts, whereas personal post promotions appear to be currently fixed at $7 (though indications are that that’s open for change).

Now, if you are going to pay for your post to be promoted, you will likely want to know how it performed. Sadly, the sponsored analytics are sorely lacking. Upon clicking on the sponsored indicator of your promoted post, you are given nothing more than a percentage breakdown of regular views versus paid views. For my money, I’d at least like to see a total number of people who saw the post, but this is currently only available for Facebook Pages.

Do you see yourself paying to promote your content? And how will you feel about receiving promoted content from your friends? Comment below.

Like many businesses operating in a difficult economy, government and political offices are forced to consider time as a commodity, not just a factor in completing a project. When it is difficult or impossible to increase the resources you have available for unanticipated spikes in activity, figuring out how to leverage what you already have generates significant value to your organization.

While I’m not as active in politics now, I still follow it fairly closely. The presidential conventions presented a great opportunity to look at how the campaigns plan to connect with activists in the buildup to the elections in November.

One thing people often miss is that convention speeches and activities are focused on people who are paying attention to the election at that point in time. Generally speaking, activists (on both sides) and highly educated politically independent voters are the people who tune in for the convention speeches. These are the folks you recruit to help you identify voters and get those voters to the polls in November.

The most critical element of the convention speeches is the audience they provide. According to Neilsen, the Republican National Convention drew just over 30 million viewers on the final night and the Democratic National Convention had 35.7 million viewers on the night of President Obama’s speech. Over the course of both conventions, not a single night of coverage had less than 20 million viewers. Even if half of the people watching are from the other political party or otherwise immune from influence, that is over 10 million people watching the speeches at any given point during the convention coverage.

Not at any point during the convention was there an effort to drive viewers moved by what they were hearing to connect with the campaign. This is downright criminal. I went back and listened to the full speeches by the presidential candidates to be sure I wasn’t crazy! Not a single call to action during either speech

… not a request to opt-in to a text message update

… not a website address

… not anything!

As the election increasingly tightens, both campaigns may find themselves looking back to consider what more they could have done to recruit more volunteers through their convention messaging.

There has also been a tremendous amount of missed opportunity in terms of their email outreach strategy. I actually subscribed to a campaign’s email list once, but I’ve been included on it multiple times because my contact information was “acquired” though other means. I use the Gmail trick with the “+” symbol to track how my email address gets passed around. The consequence of this strategy is that they haven’t consolidated my addresses on their list.

I get each email from this campaign sometimes once but more often at three different times. I didn’t think much of it at first; I just figured that at some point they’d either, 1) stop, or 2) segment and hit me with some different messages, especially since I’ve never interacted with a single piece of mail they send.

The kicker is, they’re all the same … exactly the same! No different message, no attempt to a/b test messages to see if I might respond to a different offer or call to action. Now we’re talking about roughly 220 messages over the last six months! That’s over one email each day! One stop to look at their campaign analytics and just try something different for groups of addresses on the list could have a huge impact on their results. The campaign is already creating the data; all it would take is a quick look, a quick click, and they could shake the message up a bit.

Now I don’t live in a swing state, so much of the Presidential campaign activity passes me by. We sit on the sidelines when it comes to most of their outreach efforts. The convention and online marketing campaigns are the largest “windows” into their activity that we get to peek through during the campaign. From that standpoint, the campaigns aren’t leveraging what they are already producing very effectively.

One of my favorite things we do at Cirrus ABS is help people sort through online strategy questions. I talk to people all the time who know they want to do something online but are afraid to direct resources to a project that isn’t going to produce significant value. Click here to learn how we can help you identify which online marketing strategies make the most sense for your business, so when the opportunity presents itself to speak to millions of people you won’t miss a chance to direct people interested in your message to a channel where you can convert them and achieve your goals!

Let’s talk about the quirks first.

1. The image upload minimum is 1252×626 pixels, but the display is actually 520×260 pixels with a thin dark gray border and rounded top edges. Since you’re not designing at a 1 for 1 size, it will make matching up the rest of the template difficult. See the green example to see what I mean.
2. The profile picture is centered with what appears to be a rounded 4 pixel border. (Display size roughly 178×178) And, as Derek Pillie pointed out, they all get the gradient added.  This makes matching backgrounds, for a transparent look, an issue unless you now change your background.
3. The name, username, description, and location are all centered and will of course be dictated in part by how much data exists. *I have not tried playing with left, center, or align right overall design settings yet, but I see no indication or examples of that changing this area.
4. I couldn’t find any language specifying what could, or could not, be in the header. In other words, prepare for a lot of self promotion, calls to action, contests, and general garbage clogging up headers. This does of course free you up to add a phone number or other tactful and useful information in.
5. *UPDATED* There is an issue, as pointed about by Chuck below, on how the mobile and tablet versions display. Needless to say, there is no way to correct for this in the template. Just be aware of it and try to review your profile on a mobile device before putting a stamp on your work. Certain types of Twitter header layouts are going to be more prone to issues than others. Check mobile and tablet header samples, in both iOS and Android flavors, here.

To make things a bit easier, at least for those of you with Photoshop or Gimp, I created this Twitter header template (sample of cheat sheet below). If you don’t have Photoshop or Gimp you can use this full size .PNG cheat sheet. If you use the .PNG version, you will just have to overlay it via whatever program you are using for position hinting. Please note this is not my most precise work ever, but it worked well for the variations I tested with. It’s my hope that this will help you get more creative with the available space and serve as a reference to keep your text areas free of things that will inhibit legibility of the Twitter header. By all means, let me know if you spot any issues and feel free to share it with others. There are plenty of other step by step Twitter header examples and how-to’s, so I will just point to Twitter’s own info about how to add a header photo. You won’t see a change to the new profiles UNTIL you upload a header image.

Did you find this helpful? How about being a peach and sharing it out to Pinterest for me. Need some internet marketing help? Give me a buzz at 877.817.4442.

That may seem like a bold claim, but a brief history of content delivery tells us that as early as 1960 and increasingly through the 1970’s newspapers devoted significant effort to producing compelling designs to attract more readers. Television, always a visual medium, has dramatically accelerated the emphasis on set design for distributing news and has developed creative ways to display callouts and advertisements incorporated into their existing broadcasts. As websites started playing a larger role in how we consume information, and designers were unleashed, bending and sometimes breaking website design best practices to deliver a compelling visual experience.

As people increasingly consume information via social channels like Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Google+, and Empire Avenue, the relative power of designers will only grow. We hear everywhere – at conferences, in webinars, online during chats – that strong visuals are driving engagement. It’s not that you get more “credit” for having a nice picture or a strong graphic – readers are just more likely to be drawn to that content. More traffic to your content increases your credibility and improves your placement on those channels.

If you want quick evidence of this trend, look no further than the design concepts being used by the above-mentioned social media to present information. Following the lead of Pinterest after explosive growth on that channel, each of the platforms mentioned above went to a more visual display format that emphasized the use of graphic elements in presenting information. If your content doesn’t have a picture that Facebook can use to preview the content, statistically speaking your content is less likely to be consumed than content with graphic previews.

I am not suggesting that your content isn’t important or that it doesn’t deserve attention. The simple fact of the matter is that the human mind responds strongly to visual imagery and we subconsciously are drawn to content that is complimented by strong visual elements. If you want people to read what you took time to produce, you need to find a way to draw attention to it or promote it. A good rule of thumb you can use is that for every minute you spend producing content you should spend four minutes promoting that content.

So what are you to do if you’ve decided to develop a website or write a blog and you have no game when it comes to graphic design? First, you have my sympathy: while I have been graced with some gifts, graphic design and photography are not among them! As with anything else, this becomes a resource issue. Do you spend money acquiring good images, find someone who can create them for you, or take the time to learn how to make them yourself? It becomes a tricky issue because Google and other organizations are working harder to identify people who illegally use unlicensed images and content. If you’re going to use another person’s picture, be sure you have permission to do so and that you credit them appropriately.

To learn a whole lot more about enhancing your marketing efforts with killer audio, video, photography, and other imagery, register now for the free upcoming Cirrus ABS seminar, “Audio, Video, and Imagery for Online Marketing.” Your presenter will be Kevin Mullett, Cirrus ABS’s director of product development and a recognized marketing and social media specialist.

Here we have a local Dairy Queen franchise that created their own Facebook account and developed a campaign to promote the page from their physical locations. We can see they provided signage that, while not sexy, gives us clear direction on what they want us to do and where we should go to perform said action. They go on to tell me what is in it for me, which is something most companies leave out. This is where I normally would drone on about the importance of the all-powerful WIIFM concept: that’s “what’s in it for me,” for those who have not heard it before. But let’s look instead at why their execution falls short.

Upon liking their page and checking in, I asked the cashier what I get (holding up my phone) for this Facebook deal. She turns to another gal in the back and asks, “Hey what do they get for…” Long story short, neither of them knew what I was supposed to receive. After informing them of their own offer by showing them the details, then ordering, I asked if she wanted the code from the phone to mark that the offer had been redeemed. To my surprise she said, “No, I just over-rode the pricing.” The significance of this action is critical. The restaurant now has no idea that social media was a factor in this sale. Because the marketing method that brought me in was not tracked, no attribution will be given to social media. This, of course, means belief in its value will not be reinforced and, subsequently, the program is likely to be canceled.

Here are a few of the most common social media failures I see:

• Failing to promote social media channels via traditional channels like radio, tv, and print.
• Slapping social icons on printed materials with no WIIFM call to action. Icons are just notifications and are inadequate for compelling people to take action.
• Not articulating a reason or incentive to participate with you socially.
• Forgetting to make everyone in your business aware of all offers available to customers and how to assist them in the redemption of those offers.
• Failing to record redemption codes and anecdotal evidence of wins, such as asking, “How did you hear about us?”
• Using some new technology, network, or tool, like QR Codes, because everyone is doing it instead of because it fits your strategy, goals, and objectives.
• Unreasonable expectations of performance from social media, when little effort or resources are allocated to it.
• Placing a higher burden of proof on social media ROI than any of your other forms of marketing.

While it would be easy to pass any one of these things off as an isolated incident or one that is limited to small businesses, these things routinely happen with large multinational companies and small businesses alike. I could tell you about the banana shake Foursquare incident with Rally’s, the Ruby Tuesday door icon and drink coaster, or even the Orlando Airport QR Code failure, but I will save those and hundreds more for another day.

Are your social media efforts generating results? Do you see friends making poor social media decisions? Let us help, because friends don’t let friends fail at social media.