Seven Reasons You’re not Using Social Media Correctly to Generate Leads

Social media is a great inbound marketing tool that allows businesses and marketing teams to interact with prospects, cater to customers, promote their content, and yes, generate leads. When a business uses social media right, prospective customers have the opportunity to access great content and information via a platform they already populate and actually want to gather said content and information.

Additionally, when prospects do “bite,” many of them are willing to provide their contact information, click to obtain more valuable content, and then come back for more, illustrating the concept of effective use of social media for lead generation beautifully. And a good chunk of B2B marketers are on top of this: According to BtoB Magazine, 48.9% of B2B marketers who use social media say use it for lead generation, making lead generation one of the top applications for the use of social media. Unfortunately for some brands, they don’t always realize there are true tactics in order to use social media effectively for lead gen, and they approach their social media presence blindly.

To make sure you’re business is appropriately using social media to boost its lead gen efforts, check out the following list to ensure you’re not making any of these rookie mistakes.

7 Ineffective Ways to Generate Leads From Social Media

1. Not being where your target customers are. It’s not important to maintain a presence on just any social media network in order to engage with potential and current consumers; you have to be where they actually are. If you are posting content and updates blindly to Twitter, but members of your target market aren’t present there, what’s the point? The first step in effective use of social media for lead generation is to research and determine which social media sites your target audience is active on a regular basis. That way when you do share content and information, you can know you’re working to build awareness for your blog, product, service, and other types of content you offer on a regular basis. Awareness is a key preliminary stepping stone for lead generation, since prospects likely go through a period of learning more about your business and deciding whether or not they should research your company further.

2. Not providing valuable content. If you’re just pushing out content about your product and why it’s so “awesome,” more than likely, people will not want to share or engage with it. If someone is following your brand on Facebook, it’s probably to see what valuable content and offers you can offer them. Rather than product-focused content, focus on content rich with tips and tricks which can help to relieve your target customers’ pain points. When you target the content you’re offering to the different marketing personas you have defined for your business, then your prospects will be much more likely to engage with your brand and therefore, more likely to complete a lead-capture form for a piece of your content. In short, providing targeted, useful content will help you generate more qualified leads who may genuinely be interested in what you have to offer.

 

This post was originally written for Hubspot. To continue reading on the 5 other areas that are ineffective for lead gen through social media, please read my full post here: https://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/29111/7-Reasons-You-re-Not-Generating-Leads-From-Social-Media.aspx#ixzz1exWAVlTg

Implementing an Efficient Lead Management Process in Six Steps

Lead management bridges the gap between marketing and sales. It’s a customer acquisition process which identifies potential buyers (leads), educates them, engages with them, and when the leads are considered qualified, get passed from marketing to sales.

Is your business following an organized and effective lead management process? Doing so can improve the results of your lead generation efforts and ultimately contribute to more sales. If your business is lacking a solid system for managing leads, the following five steps will help you create and implement a successful and efficient lead management process from start to finish.

Step 1: Identify and Understand Your Leads

This initial step is crucial to the success of each of the others. You need to determine first and foremost who your potential buyers are to develop a process that will enable you to identify in which part of the sales process these prospects stand.

First, your marketing team should identify buyer types and what their personas are. This will help you identify your ideal lead picture for your product or service. This persona can be carved out by identifying the following:

  • Demographics: Where do your ideal customers live? What’s the size of the company they work for? What industry market are they in? What are their problems, wants, and needs?
  • Behavior: Are they reading blogs, whitepapers, or just searching via Google to find the information they’re looking for?
  • Lead Source: How do your best leads typically find you? Do they come from direct traffic to your website, did they read an article mentioning you, did they see one of your tweets?

You should also dig deeper by trying to understand the mindset of your ideal customer. Is he/she the business owner, the VP, the tech guy? Determine where he or she lives, what he or she reads, and how he or she visited your site.

Step 2: Generate & Collect Intelligence About Your Leads

The sales cycle has been extended because the lead process begins in marketing where the marketing team figures out where the first point of contact was with the potential lead. The key to generating leads and knowing their source is to create and track content.

  • Place your premium content offers like whitepapers and webinars behind a lead-capture form to generate leads and gather critical lead intelligence information about them that can be used during the lead management process.
  • Add a tracking token to links you share in social media and through email marketing to help you identify leads’ behavior and interaction with your content.
  • Use your marketing analytics to determine how people are coming to your website or blog and where they are clicking. This will inform you which types of content leads are looking at and help you understand what their interests, needs, and wants are.

Capturing this information about your leads is critical for step four, lead nurturing.

To read about the other 4 steps on how to be effective with lead management, read my full post on the Hubspot blog here: https://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/28889/6-Steps-to-Implementing-an-Effective-Lead-Management-Process.aspx#ixzz1eOI8ScIh

Five Ways to Utilize Data to Improve Marketing

Your marketing team should be relying on data to see what’s working, what could use improvement, and what should be squashed as an approach. Data may seem intimidating, but it can also be a marketer’s best friend. How? Keep reading!

1. Referral Sites

It’s important to monitor analytics in order to see which sites are the best referral sources for your website. Keep track of your top ten. For example, is your blog one of your best referral sites? Then maybe you should be beefing up your blog even more in order to improve its performance as a top referral source. Are some of these sites ones where you guest posted or advertised? Continue to do so, as these can be great avenues for your potential customers to find you, visit your site to lean more, and hopefully one day convert into actual leads and customers.

Furthermore, if your blog or another site isn’t in your top ten list and you were hoping it would be, you should figure out why it isn’t working and re-work that strategy. Or perhaps admit that it isn’t working for your target audience, and focus on the channels that are working to refer potential customers to you.
Keep readying about my 4 other ways you can kick ass in marketing with data — by clicking the link below for my full post on the Hubspot blog!
Read more: https://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/27424/5-Ways-to-Instantly-Improve-Marketing-With-Data.aspx

 

Three Steps to Utilize Content Mapping to Improve Lead Nurturing

Marketing and sales teams must work hand-in-hand in order to provide a company with the leads and profits it needs to grow and succeed. But let’s back-track a bit. Exactly how does a marketing team help a sales team with those leads once they’re generated? It should all start with a content map for lead nurturing, which can help a marketing team nurture existing leads into more qualified leads for their sales team. As a result, these more qualified leads will be more likely convert into customers at the end of the sales cycle.

What Is Content Mapping?

Content mapping is the process for lead nurturing by which a marketing team prepares and organizes relevant and valuable content. Once organized, this content can be distributed to prospects depending on the type of lead and their point in the sales cycle.

Here are three ways to strategize a very helpful content map:

1. Identify Marketing Personas

First, you need to identify the different personas of the target audience you are selling to. Each of these personas will likely have a different variety of needs and wants when they’re considering your particular product/service. Once this identification had been made, you’ll be able to identify, create, and provide the valuable content different segments of your target audience wants and needs.

Depending on your company, you may have 3 personas or you may have 50. It all depends on your products/services and all the different types of people who become customers of what you offer. Are you a marketing agency selling a service to help people with their social media marketing needs? What types of people would want this assistance? You can determine these personas by examining roles, titles, demographics, goals, pain points, and more. Just make sure you define these personas in a way that allows you to easily group and segment them using similar motives and that you can clearly define their stage in the buying process.

To continue reading my other two steps on how to best utilize content mapping for lead nurturing efficiency and success, please continue reading my full post on the Hubspot blog at the link below. 

Read more: https://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/27100/3-Steps-to-Improve-Lead-Nurturing-With-Content-Mapping.aspx#ixzz1b5ZzU8C5

5 Types Of Lead Nurturing Emails You Should Be Sending

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lead nurturing, which helps move your leads down the funnel via email marketing, is essential but not always implemented properly or efficiently. Most companies would like their leads to move down the funnel and become customers. However, converting leads to customers is not just about sending random emails. The content of each email should be relevant, targeted, and communicate value that your company has to offer.

Before you even start, you should strategize a content map, which will allow you to plan out your email campaign for different types of leads, and how it should be changed as they click on items, and move down the funnel.

5 Types Of Lead Nurturing Emails You Should Be Sending

1. Educational Content Email - You could start with some general educational emails that have content demonstrating the value your company can offer (without being “salesy”). For example, you could have 5 different types of educational emails you can provide depending on upon the type of lead they are. You can provide educational content regarding marketing, technology related to your service/product, selling to their customers, managing their business better, etc.
This was an excerpt of my post for Hubspot. Click the link below to read about the other 4 emails you should be sending in my full post!
Read more: https://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/25494/5-Types-Of-Lead-Nurturing-Emails-You-Should-Be-Sending.aspx#ixzz1YpEITXkm

5 Obvious Ways to Grow an Email List That You’re Ignoring

email subscribe

The simplest and easiest tools and tips are sometimes also the ones that are most ignored or easily forgotten. Encouraging your target market to opt in to your email subscribe form is key to lead generation for marketing teams. However, some marketers ignore or forget about the simple ways to increase those opt-ins. Let’s take a look at 5 obvious ways marketers can do just that…

1. Simplify Your Email Opt-In

Creating yoblog subscribeur email subscribe box can be as simple as including a title for what the person is subscribing to (e.g. “ABC Monthly Email”) and adding a simple entry box for the subscriber to enter an email address and press ‘submit.’

However, if you want a better and more efficient email opt-in box, set up a form that allows you to also retrieve their full name (perhaps location and company name as well) and demonstrate what they’re signing up for. What’s the value (see below for tips on providing value)? This not only allows you to collect more information for lead generation purposes but also ensures subscribers are truly interested in what you have to offer.

Interested in reading more, check out my full post on the Hubspot blog!

Read more: https://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/24896/5-Obvious-Ways-to-Grow-an-Email-List-That-You-re-Ignoring.aspx#ixzz1YJbh1kQG

Five Social Media Metrics Tools to Use

When it comes to social media, and any other marketing strategy, there must be a way to calculate ROI in order to see whether or not the steps being taken and the tools being used are working to the benefit of the brand. One cannot tweet without checking to see that what they tweet is getting a response and engaging the target market. It’s important to know what type of blog posts are being read more, and what type of items being shared are working towards the overarching goal, whether it be more referrals to the brand’s homepage or leads for the sales team.

Here are five tools to help you and your marketing team see if your social media tactics are working for you…

1. Google Analytics

Now we know Google has some great tools including the Google Reader, but their Google Analytics is more than essential. It is a great web analytics tool to let you and your marketing team get a better insight into the traffic that comes to your blog and/or website. It is a great way to determine how effective your social media tools have been as referral sites. For example you can see where your Facebook andTwitter ranks among other sites in referring customers to your blog or website. And you can see how often people visit, how many are unique visitors, how long they spend on certain pages, and more. It is a great way to see when traffic was higher so you cancorrelate with a certain campaign you may have had going on at that time. For example perhaps you were tweeting about a great blog post that was about a certain type of topic which people responded more to than previous posts. This is a great thing to learn from so you can see what type of campaigns, posts, and more drive more traffic to your site.

 

2. Facebook Insights

Facebook provides analytics for Facebook Pages in order for brands to monitor traffic, “likes”, demographics, and more. Although the insights are fairly simple and standard, they are still helpful in determining what posts received greater engagement than others and what works better with your target market on that specific platform. Note: you must be an admin of the Page to see the insights/metrics.

 

3. Hootsuite

Hootsuite is not only a great platform for integrating your social media tools in one place in order to Tweet, Post, etc in more efficient manner, but it’s also useful for keeping track of your analytics. In the pro model (5.99 a month) there is a feature of creating reports in order to show your boss how successful your campaigns have been and how Twitter and/or Facebook are leading prospects/customers to your website and creating more traffic. It’s also super great for click data that enables you to see if those clicks translate into transactions or impressions on your other sites. Helpful? Yes. Awesome? Totally.

 

4. HubSpot: Keyword Grader

HubSpot offers some cool tools to their customers including the Keyword Grader. The grader allows you to measure numerous keywords in order to figure out which words are most relevant, have high volume, and optimize your website. The hardest part is determining the terms people are using to search for your products or services. Of course HubSpot has thought of this and provided Keyword Discovery to find the “best” keywords to optimize your site. In their words, “the best keywords are relevant to your business, searched often, and non-competitive.”

These keywords can then be utilized not only on your website but in your blog posts, tags, social media posts, and more. This tool is very helpful in figuring out how best tofocus your content around these keywords whether it be in your latest post or your next Tweet or your homepage. Last but not least you can also track these “search terms over time so that you know which keywords are driving actual traffic and leads, and helping you as you create more relevant content on your website or blog.”

 

5. Feedburner

A great tool that not only provides custom RSS feeds, but also management tools for your blog in order to measure how many people subscribe to your blog via email or via RSS. This is a great tool to stay on top of your blog, since so many people use feeds to subscribe rather than via email. You can see when they subscribe in order to see what post may have initiated this action.

 

These five tools are some of the essentials I use on a regular basis when it comes to monitoring my professional and personal brands.

What else do you use? Feel free to share in the comments section, as ROI is one thing we all need to measure, and the more help we get doing so, the better!

Note: this post was originally written for oneforty, which was acquired by Hubspot. 

 

Top 5 B2B Companies on Twitter and Why They Are Successful

There are many B2B companies in all different sectors and industries. And more and more have decided to come on board and utilize Twitter for their brand awareness,  consumer engagement, and lead generation. Here are 5 diverse B2B companies that are doing it right…

(1) Hubspot: An Inbound Marketing software company that realizes how vital Twitter can be to a B2B and its consumers. When I think of Twitter , I think of engaging with the consumer and interacting on a personal level. In short: being human.Hubspot does this very well, as seen from the screenshot below. They not only provide tips and blog posts (relevant content), but they also respond and @mentionpeople who want to interact with them. The “man behind the screen” laughs with the consumers, answers their questions, and comments on their blog posts. Hubspotdemonstrates the importance of being human in order to create lasting relationships with consumers, which may in turn “lead” to loyal and/or future consumers (and does not just pump out content, although that is unbelievably important as well). If I were a B2B, I would definitely keep my eyes on @hubspot for future tips of the Twitter trade.

(2) Forrester Research: What I like best about @Forrester is that they do not just talk about themselves, but Tweet about other companies. One of myTwitter rules to follow was giving praise to others and not making it a one-way conversation about how “great you are.” Would you go to a party and talk about yourself nons-stop the whole time? Hopefully not. Same common sense rules apply toTwitter: It’s not all about you. What I also thought was clever and useful is that@Forrester puts all their contact info on their Twitter background. Therefore, if the consumer wants to go beyond Twitter for communication and ask a question via phone the number is right their, “at their fingertips.”

(3) United Linen: Did you ever think of a linen and uniform company as being pro-active on social sites like Twitter? I hadn’t either, but @UnitedLinen is quite active, and what’s really cool is that the Twitter handle is openly run by the Director, Scott Townsend. This transparency and openness to show the “human” side is applause worthy. And like @Forrester, @UnitedLinen Tweets about other news worthy items, other companies, and realizes that “it’s not all about them.” In addition, they utilize promotions on Gowalla, and understand that geolocation is a great way to link with Twitter and are giving their consumers the chance to connect further with them. Clap Clap Clap, @UnitedLinen!

(4) Intel: I’d be surprised if you have not heard of Intel, and it’s technological savvy-ness. And being so tech-savvy, the company is also ensuring that they are up on the latest and greatest of social as well. The Twitter account, @Intel is full of juicy details about technology, blog posts by Intel, and up to date news on what’s shaking with them, including Obama’s visit to their company site. What I like most is that they diversify their Tweets and keep things interesting. That’s a great lesson for companies who are beginning to Tweet and/or cannot seem to create engagement with consumers. Don’t Tweet about your company constantly, or just about news, or just about your blog. Keep it fresh and keep it real.

(5) Deloitte, which is more than just a consulting firm, appears to be on the “conservative” side of business — where the “red tape” may prohibit many from being active on sites such as Twitter. However, Deloitte has shown it is do-able and can be done very well, too! While @deloitte is the main Twitter handle for the company, they do have other handles by location and by department such as @deloittehealth. I think the great thing about this is the capability to effectively and efficiently handle consumer Tweets and questions in a real-time manner by the person who they want to talk to. Whether it’s consulting, health, or just a specific location, Deloitte is providing the ease of “at your fingertips” for each person.

As you can see, Twitter is useful for many purposes, and these five B2B companies realize the importance. Although they may not utilize Twitter for the same purposes, they are all doing something for their marketing strategy, whether it be brand awareness, consumer engagement, and/or generating leads. Whatever your strategy/purpose may be, do not forget that Twitter is not a fad, it is a useful tool in your social toolbox.

Note: this post was originally written for oneforty, which was acquired by Hubspot. 

5 Ways to Tie Social Media to Business Goals


Money is not only valuable, but vital to the success of each business operation. Companies attempt to cut costs and raise revenue in order to be successful. Social media can help! Social media is about the relationships we build and the ability to listen and communicate in real time. This is unbelievably resourceful to so many facets of a business operation including support, HR, PR, lead generation, and marketing research. Here’s how:
1. Customer Support: No company wants consumers to have tech/product/service issues, but it happens and should be dealt with as soon as possible. As much consumers do not want to wait on the phone for hours when they could be doing something better with their time, nor does a company want to spend extra money on phone support, especially when there’s an easier and cheaper solution (i.e. cut costs). For example, Twitter is a great resource for consumer support. Dell is a great example of using Twitter as a resource to their benefit. They have a specific Twitter handle, @dellcares,  just for consumer support, which allows consumers to reach them 24/7 with issues they may have. First, I must add a disclaimer — be sure your company can handle monitoring and answering questions on a timely basis, otherwise there may be backlash by consumers who do not receive a response to their Tweet. So, how can your company take advantage of this FREE platform for customer service?
a) Get a handle that is either for your company or specifically for support such as @dellcare
b) Monitor conversations going on about your company regarding complaints, issues, etc.
c) Circumvent issues to the right person (finance, tech, etc), which allows for a timely response and solution
d) Respond in real-time. Less waiting. Less frustration.
Then, you may just have a successful and reputable customer service which consumers rave about.

2. HR Recruiting: Is your office looking for some new blood? Why hire a staffing agency or recruiter to search for new hires, when you can do it in-house for less money? Twitter, Facebook. and LinkedIn to the rescue. How these 3 platforms can help? You can get the word out a lot faster on these social platforms. In addition, your employees can Tweet, share and/or post on their personal channels (if they are so inclined) in order to bolster the word of mouth that there are great job openings available for your place of business. For example, recently HubSpot Tweeted they were looking for developers and people (employees and followers) ReTweeted it like crazy! Great promotion for a job opening, and without breaking the bank.

3. PR: Thinking about hiring a PR agency to help your company? Hiring one can be a great idea especially for companies who have the funds to do so. PR agencies offer help with strategic messaging and consulting during crisis communication. However, for those looking to do PR in-house, social media can be a great asset to build relationships. Businesses can reach out directly to journalists and infuential bloggers through Twitter and other social channels. That way your company can build a relationship with these journalists and bloggers and maintain them over time. Or you can use this as a way to augment PR efforts, which is great, especially for smaller businesses. First step is to ensure a company Twitter account is up and running. Then utilize it to reach out to bloggers in your brand category as well as prominent journalists who you want to work with and reach out to. If you already have a social media department and/or community manager, this is a great item to add-on to their job description instead of hiring a consultant from the outside. Save the money, cut costs, and create more revenue!

4. Lead Generation: Instead of wasting money on buying a prospect list for Lead Gen, why not try some cheaper/easier social media tools for lead gen such as Twitter,Facebook, Follower Wonk and more. These tools are helpful to search quickly and efficiently regarding influencers in your brand category. You can compare stats and followers of these people to see who’s worth your while and who you’d rather pass up. Although buying a list may be quicker, these tools are less expensive and if you social media experts in your company at your disposal, why not give them more responsibility and have them assist with lead gen efforts?

5. Marketing Research: No company/business can afford to fall behind its competition. Competition can be cut-throat and your business has to be able to stay on top, rather than get “cut.” Marketing research is key in these efforts to stay ahead — in order to know what the consumers are saying, how they feel towards your brand, how they feel towards your competition, and what your competition is doing. It is not enough to know on a monthly or yearly basis anymore. Businesses need to know in real-time what’s going on so they can act accordingly. Luckily, there are many social media tools for competitive analysis. These apps along with the employees to oversee these channels are key in efficient and effective marketing research that stays ahead of the curve.

So, don’t be afraid to try something different — embrace social media, because nowadays businesses and consumers alike prefer things in real-time for a cheaper cost. Utilize it, Share it, Save Costs, and Increase Revenue!

Note: this was originally a post written for oneforty, which was acquired by Hubspot.

8 Ways to Use Social Media to Track Your Competition


Your brand may be awesome in your brand category, but I am sure you have some key competition out there that you’d love to have a better handle on. Nowadays with social media being the norm and most brands increasing their transparency, it has become easier to track what your competition is up to, how consumers feel about their brand, and how often consumers engage and interact with the competition.

Topsy: A convenient search tool that assists you in searching through a stream of conversations. It is able to look through people’s web pages and conversations and detect relationships, who influences who, and what people are saying about a brand (your competition) and where. It also assists to detect what content is being ReTweeted the most — thus demonstrating that this content is of value and shows what people feel towards it. This is useful to see how your competitor is influencing its target market, what the target market feels towards the content put out by the competition and how often and how they engage with the competition. Thus, allowing you to see what they are doing better than you, and how you can compete on a similar, if not higher level.
 Twellow: “A directory of public Twitter accounts, with hundreds of categories and search features to help you find people who matter to you.” This is super helpful in order to see which competitors of yours are on Twitter and are using it on a regular and consistent basis and engaging with their target market as well. That way, you can see how far ahead or behind you may be in your brand category in regards to online engagement.
Wefollow: Similar to Twellow as a Twitter directory. It also has categories such as tech, news, and music as well as by follower counts. Once again, this tool is helpful for determining what your competition is doing on Twitter, if they’re on Twitter, and the engagement they have with their consumers. Do you feel like a detective yet?
Tweepi: This tool is helpful to get info on the followers of your competition. You can see details on each follower such as bio information, number of followers, number of updates, previous tweets, etc. Why is this cool? It allows you to get inside the consumer’s conversation with the competition and other people in the target market in your brand category. You can see what the target market thinks about the competition, how they’re conversing, what they like and don’t like.
Backtype: Great tool that allows you to get alerts about where and when your competitors are talking online. You can see what they are promoting, who they are engaging with, and what they’re saying to your mutual target market whether on their website, Twitter, or other social platform. All you have to do is enter the URL, topic or person to see the impact they are having and where. Free.
Website grader: Grades your website and your competition so you can compare how well they’re doing in comparison to you. Helpful to see who is linking to them, what their Google PR is and more! Free for web version and iPhone!
Feedcompare: 2 easy steps: (1): Type in the FeedBurner Feed Name Or Full FeedBurner Feed URL;
(2): Simply Press “Compare” Button ( Click and Drag to Zoom In ). Once you do this for free — you can compare your feedburner subscriber numbers with that of your competition and see how well you’re doing!
Xinu returns: Helpful to get and analyze statistics on website SEO, in order to gain insight on how well or how poor your competitors’ sites are doing in Google (and other search engines), social bookmarking sites, etc. Unbelievably helpful in order to stay on top and move beyond your competition on an online and offline level. Free.
Every brand in each brand category has to think about its competition and make sure they are staying on level, if not ahead of what the competition is doing. This isn’t always easy, but with the help of these social tools, it is slightly easier to ensure you know what your competition is doing online, how they’re engaging, where they’re engaging, and what your mutual target market is saying. It may feel like spying, but being a detective and strategizing is part of the fun and game of competing.

 

Note: this post was originally written for oneforty, which was acquired by Hubspot

3 Ways Other Than Klout to Measure Influence

Twitter influence of an individual is not just about the number of followers that he or she has. Is it ever that simple? Klout has a cool set of algorithms they use to calculate the influence someone has on Twitter, which includes the ability of a Twitter user to “make people act.” Can someone with 500,000 followers make you retweet and mention more? You’d think so, right? Not necessarily.

For example, actor Ashton Kutcher has over 6 million followers, but it doesn’t mean he has high Twitter influence. More likely than not, people who just Tweet and do not mention or retweet others, will not be retweeted or mentioned either. In addition, their topics discussed on Twitter are more likely to become trends. So how do you figure out if  you have amazing and astounding Twitter Influence (other than checking your “Klout” — because you know you already have)? Keep reading…!

Twitalyzer: A great analyzing tool to help you determine the influence you have in the Twitterverse. It measures a person’s (or brand’s) influence via their followers, references by others, retweets  and others retweeting their posts. Thus, it’s not just about the number of followers but a bunch of metrics which together allow Twitalyzer to come to your “influence” percentage. Don’t be disheartened if it’s not as high as you had hoped. It doesn’t mean you aren’t “influential’ in your twitter circle. However, it is awesome to see who you can influence, who influences you, and other great analysis that comes along with this tool. If I am promoting my brand via my personal Twitter account, it’s important for me to know what my influence is on the Twitter community, and why my percentage is that high or low. Then I can analyze who I am able to influence and use that to my advantage when building awareness and/or working on a social media strategy for a product/service/brand. Twitalyzer has 3 pricing plans ranging from $4.99 to 99.99/month.

 TweetLevel: A tool that gives your “tweet level” based on your “importance” which gives you 4 result metrics including your influence, popularity, engagement and trust. In order to determine one’s “influence” with this tool,TweetLevel looks at a “combination of the number and authority of someone’s followers together with the frequency of people name pointing an individual (via @username) and the how many times an individuals posts are re-tweeted. Other attributes were included in the final score but were given a lower weighting.” I know I couldn’t figure this out on my own, and its helpful to have a tool which will do the analysis, algorithms and funky stats for you. Once you have the “level” you or your brand is at, then you can use that to focus further on where you have more influence, and/or try to expand the influence you already have. One tip that TweetLevel (and other strategists) emphasize is that you shouldn’t “protect your Tweets” (despite privacy concerns) — it will lower your influence and make others less “trustworthy” of who you are and what you have to say. TweetLevel is currently in Beta and Free.

Twitter Grader: A cool tool that measures the “power, reach and authority of a twitter account. In other words, when you tweet, what kind of an impact does it have?” The factors that go into this tool’s algorithm include # of followers, power of followers, updates, update recency, follower/following ratio, and engagement. However, Twitter Grader won’t tell us the specifics on how they “calculate” — there’s a “special sauce” and I’d be killed if I were to find out and blog about it! So… when you get your “grade” – awesome – but what does it mean? This tool analyzes all parts of your grade for you and gives you a detailed response to help you realize how “influential” you are. “The grade is calculated as the approximate percentage of other users that have an equal or lower score.”  For example, if I received a Twitter Grade of 96.6, it means that about 96.6% of the other users got a lower score than I did. Didn’t get A’s in high school, maybe you can with your Twitter Grade. Best part: it’s Free.

And for all you fellow social geeks out there, here’s a BONUS 4th tool:

 Terametric: Has a new function called Optimizer for Twitter which allows for a great deal of Twitter analysis on your brand. But what I thought was really cool was the industry tracking feature. It helps brands get real-time tracking on Twitter handles, brand mentions, competition, influencers, themes, hashtags, and more. Thus, it is ideal for identifying influencers who are Tweeting about your brand/industry that you should engage with.

 

So instead of finding your own influence, you are focusing on others who are influencing the community within with your brand/product is targeting. Terametric starts at $500/month for Enterprise Product Marketing and agencies with a 1-month, no-risk, free trial. SMB’s should contact them directly for pricing.

Ready, Set, “Influence!” And here’s the Toolkit you need to get started…

Tags: Klout, terametric, Tweetlevel, Twitalyzer, Twitter Grader, twitter influence


Content Rules at Hubspot

Not only was there HubSpot TV with hosts Mike Volpe and Karen Rubin on Friday, Dec. 10th, but the guest stars of the show were CC Chapman and Ann Handley who co-wrote the book Content Rules ! Killer team or what?! Although the banter of the show was entertaining, my favorite part was after the show when everyone had a chance to catch up with new and old friends. Always great to see the likes of Tamsen McMahon, Doug Haslam and Laura Fitton among the crowd, but I also had the pleasure to meet some new faces such as Margot Bloomstein and Maggie Rulli. It was a pleasure to catch up and get to know folks during this fun-filled whiskey drinking casual setting at the Hubspot offices. I would chat more about the awesomeness of the book (which I just received an autographed copy of at the event) and how great Hubspot is, but I believe Cheryl Morris did a great job and urge you to read her post!

What I can say is every time I step into the Hubspot offices, I have great engagement with the folks who work there, the friends who stop by there, and it’s a pleasure to know folks such as Mike and Karen truly take the time to get to know each person. I also commend CC and Ann on being so personable and easy to chat it up with and look forward to hearing more about their book tour.

Keep rockin’ guys!

HubSpot TV: Halloween

Today I was lucky enough to be an audience member at the live taping of HubSpot TV. Not only was it cool because Mike Volpe and Karen Rubin host, but today they hosted as the infamous Lucy and Ricky. But they weren’t the only ones in the holiday spirit, most of the staff was decked out in Halloween attire – from Jersey Shore to Scooby Doo to Pokey from Gumby. It was a sight to behold. Lets just say, I almost cried from laughing so hard. Awesome!

As I watched Mike and Karen, I realized how laid back and enjoyable HubSpot‘s atmosphere is. The team is very welcoming and friendly. And HubSpot TV is not only informative on current topics related to social media and inbound marketing, but it’s entertaining. I definitely intend to keep up with future episodes, as I’m officially impressed on how both Mike and Karen can capture the audience and keep their attention with such relevant topics and hilarious banter.

Cheers HubSpot, you Rock!

p.s. Want to see Photos from today….Flickr it up!

Will you Geek out on Halloween?

The past couple years, I’ve seen more and more individuals admit and embrace their “geekiness” – present company, included. More and more individuals are on Twitter and learning the importance of Inbound Marketing and utilizing SEO. Now, with Halloween around the corner, will those “geeks” show off that side of themselves, or “opt out”? I would love to see some creative Twitter costumes with some bold hashtag and RT remarks. Could someone be an actual RT? In the past I’ve seen someone be a Facebook Profile Page…Lame. We can do better! Creative ideas? Thoughts?

I, myself am going to be an M&M because my 16 yr old sister made the costume for me. Free Costume? Hell yea! Maybe next year I will embrace my geekdom during halloween, but as for this year, I am embracing my sweet tooth.

Would love to hear what other people consider “creative and geeky” costumes. @mention me at @pamsahota and Share!

(p.s. here’s a few from the past)