The Free Plan

The Free Plan will have a maximum of two users and two social media channels.  This plan will provide access to all of MediaFunnel’s features except for background Brand Monitoring and Alerts.  Standard searches will be available.

There may be some additional features added in future that will not be included in the Free Plan.  The Free plan will not be advertising supported.

The Standard Plan

The first two users and two social media channels will always be free.  Organizations that need a third user and/or a third social media channel will need to subscribe to the Standard Plan, which also includes Brand Monitoring and Alerts.  Each User/Channel (a combination of one user and one social media channel) beyond the two, free User/Channels will cost $4.95 USD per month.

As a configuration example, if you have two users and five social media channels, you will need a total of five User/Channels, for a total cost of $14.85 per month (since the first two User/Channels are free).  If you decide to add up to three more users, you will not pay any extra, since you are already paying for five User/Channels.

If you have five users and two social media channels, you will also need a total of five User/Channels, for a total cost of $14.85 per month (since the first two User/Channels are free).  If you decide to add up to three more social media channels you will not pay any extra, since you are already paying for five User/Channels.

So the math for the monthly charge is: take the number of users you need, or the number of social media channels you need — whichever is higher — and subtract two.  Multiply the result by $4.95.

By following some simple guidelines, you’ll increase the engagement level of the event attendees and increase your audience to include people that aren’t able to make it to the event.

Integrating Twitter into Your Next Event

Choose the hashtag to use for the event beforehand.

In order to get people using a single hashtag for your event, and not a number of different ones, choose the one you would like people to use well in advance of your event. Do a search on Twitter for your choice of hashtag to make sure it isn’t already being used, and once you’ve got it, define it on WTHashtag. Defining it before the event helps those who might stumble across the hashtag to understand what it stands for.

Tweet about the event before it begins.

Beginning a week or two before the event, tweet about it using the hashtag you’ve decided on. This helps more people to know about both your event and the appropriate tag to use during the event.

Use the hashtag in all promo materials.

Prominently display the hashtag on your website, blog, promotional materials, and event schedule. Make it obvious that your hashtag is the one to use for the event. If you have a PA system to announce speakers or news at the event, be sure to mention the hashtag during those announcements. Print attendee’s Twitter username and the event hashtag on the name tags that you hand out.

Display the speakers Twitter usernames.

Putting the Twitter usernames for presenters, speakers, host, and sponsors on the event schedule lets attendees interact with them before, during, and after the event. This is especially important for those users who have a different username or who use a variation on their name.

Monitor your event’s Twitter stream through a hashtag search.

During the event, use Twitter search or a tool like TweetGrid to monitor all tweets which include your hashtag. Listening to the Twitter conversations is a powerful practice for learning what is or isn’t working at your event, for getting direct feedback from attendees, and for finding ’shareable’ insights from the event.

Respond to tweets from attendees about the event.

If issues about your event come up while monitoring the Twitter stream, make sure that someone is authorized to respond to them and to take any appropriate action. These types of tweets could range from “Turn up the A/C” to “We need more chairs in room 205″.

Display the event Twitter stream on a monitor in an accessible spot.

Dedicating a large monitor during the event to display all of the tweets using your hashtag is a fun way to let people who are just arriving know what’s happening at the event in real-time. It also encourages people to tweet – we all like to see our comments and insights displayed in public.

Use Media Funnel’s guest tweet feature to let people post to your stream.

One of the unique features of Media Funnel is the capability for guests to post to your stream via email, SMS, or from a widget on your website. The guest tweets are moderated, so you maintain editorial control over your stream, and they can be published when you decide. Possible uses include allowing those people not in attendance at the event to interact with questions or comments, giving attendees a bigger audience for their insights through posting to your stream, or enhancing your own live tweet stream.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Use the event or host’s Twitter stream to retweet insightful comments.

Retweeting the comments of attendees on your company’s account, the event host’s, or a dedicated event Twitter account, is a great way to further engage attendees and to help broadcast your event to a larger audience. Doing so will also help to build your following.

Integrating Twitter into your events can add value and engagement. What tips do you have for using Twitter effectively at events?

[Derek Markham is a writer, a father, a WordPress addict, and social media butterfly who loves to share what's new and interesting in his world in under 140 characters.

Hit him up with an @ reply anytime!]

Image: © VectorZilla.com – Fotolia.com

To set up the brand monitoring keywords for your account, click on the ‘Settings’ tab in the upper right hand corner, then select ‘Manage Brand Monitoring’.

Next, select ‘Add New Monitoring Term’.

Enter the name of your brand, or a keyword related to your business, as well as a description for the term (it can be the same as the term).

If you would like to also create an email alert for this term, be sure to check the ‘Create alert’ box. If you would only like access to the monitoring term via the web interface, leave this box blank. Click on ‘Add Monitor Term’, and you’re done.

Back at the ‘Manage Brand Monitoring’ page, click on ‘Manage Alerts’. You now have the option to select how you will receive the alerts – either via SMS, email, or both SMS and email – when you will receive them (anytime, on a time condition that you set, or only when on duty), and how often the alerts are sent (anywhere from immediately to intervals ranging from 15 minutes to daily).

Using the Brand Monitoring alerts can give you real-time results for conversations happening around your product or service (or your competitors) on Twitter, enabling you to engage potential customers in a timely fashion.

Watch the video below for another explanation of how to set up Brand Monitoring for your account:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Socialwok’s passive feed application works within Gmail, a boon to those using Google Docs, Calendar, Gtalk, and other services, but now the startup has released a plugin to do the same for those businesses working with Microsoft Outlook.

“Socialwok brings the status-updates based content sharing model that you use and enjoy on Facebook to Google Apps. Do away with the back and forth emailing that prevails within your workgroup and adopt feeds based passive sharing where anything posted by you will be instantly available to everyone within your workgroup in realtime.”

Click here to view the embedded video.

Some of the features of Socialwok in Gmail include:

• Passive feed based sharing in your small business
• Share Google Docs / Calendar Events / Presentation / Spreadsheet and much more
• Instantly search for content within your social network in realtime
• Access Socialwok from the mobile web using your iPhone or Android mobile.
• Socialwok Gmail gadget allows you to access your feeds without leaving Gmail
• Collaborate with external parties outside of your organization using a feed
• Use Socialwok to publish updates to Twitter and on Facebook profiles and pages.

The recent announcement that Socialwok now works with Outlook means that companies using Microsoft’s enterprise email system can integrate the social features which were sorely missed by many users, leading Robert Scoble to say “Think about it as Facebook for your workgroup.”

Click here to view the embedded video.

No longer will users need to bounce back and forth between social media platforms and email folders, because with Socialwok, you can see the latest activity of any Socialwok member who emails you, and track which emails they have previously exchanged with you. Through better organization and saving of your time, these features are sure to change the way that businesses collaborate.

“Have you “Googled” yourself? Someone else? Do you know people are “Googling” you? More than 85% of executive recruiters report “Googling” candidates as part of the search process today, and almost half of executive recruiters have eliminated candidates based on what appears (or does not appear) about them online. That’s not all. Love interests, prospective business partners, employees, the news media and others routinely search those they’re interested in. Don’t be invisible. With Vizibility you can manage what others find.”

Vizibility works with you to determine what your search results will show, with a unique, personalized ‘PreSearch’ URL and a ‘SearchMe’ button. The process begins with 3 questions: your name, your current employer (and previous employer), and the information you desire to be included in search results. After the process is complete, your personal URL links to those custom search results, and the results that are not relevant (or just inaccurate) will be excluded.

The embeddable ‘SearchMe’ button can be inserted into web or blog pages, your email, your other web profiles, and even printed on your business cards or other printed materials. The basic service is free for all users, but if you want to be notified of any changes to your search results, the company charges a small monthly fee of $2.95.

For additional features, an annual subscription fee of $29.95 enables analytics for your SearchMe button. Vizibility lets you know when you’ve been searched via an email or text message. This works out to less than the monthly fee, and you’ll know when people are searching you. Add to that the fact that you can control the search results, and it sounds like a win-win service.

The current version of Vizibility works with Google, but according to the company, it will soon integrate with other search engines, such as Yahoo!, Bing, and Ask.

A recently released report from Altimeter, called Social Media Analytics: A New Framework for Measuring Results in Social Media, gives us a solid framework to begin to build our own measurement strategy:

“Marketers around the globe are ranging from toe dipping to jumping all the way into the social marketing space –yet most lack a measurement yardstick.  While experiments can fly under the radar for a short term, without having a measurement strategy, you run the risk of not improving what you’re doing, justifying investments, and the appearance of being aloof to upper management.  To be successful, all programs (even new media) must have a measurement strategy, and we’ve done just that.”

The report is a collaboration between Jeremiah Owyang of Altimeter and John Lovett of Web Analytics Demystified, along with a whole host of skilled contributors. I think this report is a huge gift to the social media and marketing community, as they’ve released it with a Creative Commons license, so others can also build on and customize it for their own (non-commercial) use. But even if you have no need to add to it, this report is a great starting point for those interested in setting up measurement standards for their own efforts.

Social Marketing Analytics is organized around four main business objectives, which serve as the foundation for measuring social marketing efforts, according to the paper. These four objectives, Foster Dialog, Promote Advocacy, Facilitate Support and Spur Innovation, also have Key Performance Indicators (KPI) attached to them by the authors, although they could easily be adjusted to fit a particular business if needed.

Along with the KPIs, the report lists vendors to watch for each particular indicator, and the authors also state “There is currently no single vendor that can effectively measure all aspects of social media.” Many businesses are using mashups of different vendors for measuring different indicators, and building a ’social media dashboard’ for listening (and engaging customers), is usually one of the first steps in social media strategy, although it may be that collecting all of the data with no clear objective or standard might be simply an exercise in collecting data.

In reading Social Marketing Analytics, I was impressed by the details included for each objective, especially the formulas given for measuring and tracking the metrics in order to create a baseline and see the changes which happen with properly executed campaigns. I highly recommend reading and downloading the report for anyone involved in marketing or social media. It’s a valuable resource, even if all you do is use it as a jumping off point for your own efforts.

[Derek Markham is a writer, a father, a WordPress addict, and social media butterfly who loves to share what's new and interesting in his world in under 140 characters. Hit him up with an @ reply anytime!]

Image: © ktsdesign – Fotolia.com

“Twitter @Anywhere is an easy-to-deploy solution for bringing the Twitter communication platform to your site. @Anywhere promotes a more engaged user base for your site. Use @Anywhere to add Follow Buttons, Hovercards, linkify Twitter usernames, and build deeper integrations with “Connect to Twitter.” “

Twitter’s @Anywhere brings some of the best features of the ubiquitous microblog platform from their home page right into yours, and it’s quick and easy to implement for those comfortable with adding a couple of snippets of Javascript to a website.

According to Twitter, @Anywhere means “more tweets, more traffic, more follows, more engagement, more users, more insight”.

“Embed a Tweet Box on your site and help your users share what matters to them. Push your content throughout Twitter–from Twitter.com to Google search; from SMS to the tens of thousands of apps. Seamlessly activate Hovercards wherever you mention a Twitter account. Form long-lasting relationships that follow users throughout Twitter. Twitter Connect provides simple Sign In for tens of millions of engaged users. Access a network made of interests: not just friends, but news sources and businesses small and large.”

Features of @Anywhere for site owners:

• The @Anywhere application will ‘linkify’ (convert to a link) any Twitter names mentioned on your site, simply by adding the ‘@’ symbol in front of a username.
• Users who mouse over a Twitter name will see a Hovercard (a small, context-aware tooltip that provides access to data about a particular Twitter user) with a Follow button, enabling following of users right from the page.
• Easily add a ‘Tweet box’ with either pre-filled text or empty for users to fill in, which makes it simple for users to Tweet directly from your post or page.
• Add a ’smart’ Follow button to your site so that users can follow you without going to your Twitter profile page. The ’smart’ feature detects whether or not they’re already following you.

See Twitter’s documentation for @Anywhere for more information.

For detailed instructions on integrating Twitter @Anywhere on a WordPress site, check out How to Add Twitter @anywhere in WordPress.

[Derek Markham is a writer, a father, a WordPress addict, and social media butterfly who loves to share what's new and interesting in his world in under 140 characters. Hit him up with an @ reply anytime for help, conversation, or just to say hey!]

Foursquare is a geolocation-aware application that runs on the iPhone, Android and BlackBerry smart phones, with a game and competition aspect to it. Users ‘Check-in’ at locations they frequent, earning badges for various accomplishments, and can ’shout’ their location to their friends or share via Twitter. Users can make it on to the ‘Leaderboard’ with frequent or multiple visits around town, and can compete for the most number of visits to a single location, earning the title of ‘Mayor’ of that business. At first glance, it seems little more than a game, but businesses can take advantage of several features to help promote their products or services.

The most obvious feature is simply listing (or verifying the listing) the business with the service. For Foursquare, it’s as simple as searching for it and then adding it if it’s not found. A listing for your business means that it will show up when users are nearby, and saves them time from having to add it when visiting. Both Google Local Search and Bing search are highlighting venues listed at Foursquare when local searches are performed, so making sure your business is correctly categorized and spelled will help with more visibility for your business.

Another feature for businesses is offering specials to loyal customers, either to those who rank as the Mayor, those who visit a certain number of times (“Get a free meal on your 10th visit.”), or for those who unlock a certain badge. These specials can be considered in the light of Seth’s thoughts about margins: “(Gross margin) is vital to understand, because it tells you how flexible you can be with a promotional strategy.” Giving a deep discount (product at cost, perhaps) and gaining a new customer at virtually no cost could be a powerful tool in your guerilla marketing arsenal. Head over to the Business page and click the button at the bottom to Add a Foursquare special to your venue.

“We call attention to venues who offer special treatment to foursquare’s users. If a foursquare user is at your bar/restaurant, we’ll tell them what they have to do to unlock a free snack or discounted drink. If they happen to be across the street or two blocks away from your venue, we’ll let them know that your business gives special treatment to foursquare users and that they should swing by for a visit.”

For a more detailed analysis of the power of Foursquare for local search, read Chuck Reynolds’ and Jay Baer’s posts about geolocation apps and business, and check out Chuck’s Slideshare presentation here: Local Search Marketing using Foursquare

[Derek Markham is a writer, a father, a WordPress addict, and social media butterfly who loves to share what's new and interesting in his world in under 140 characters. Hit him up with an @ reply anytime for help, conversation, or just to say hey!]

According to David Berkowitz at AdAge,

“Facebook has announced to its partners that in the next two to three weeks, the “Become a Fan” concept for branded pages will be replaced with the more prevalent “Like” button and brands will no longer accumulate “Fans,” but “Connections” instead. This change narrows the list of actions available to Facebook fans, and consolidates the bulk of interactions fans will have with brand content to “Like,” “Comment” and “Share.”

There’s been some debate about whether using the term ‘Like’ for a brand is as potent as the term ‘Become a Fan’, and because the news was only communicated to advertisers, not all users, some confusion is likely to be seen from this change. Berkowitz goes on to say, “Consumers needed to think twice about whether they’d become a fan of a brand because it meant something, even in a small way, to include that as part of their persona.”

Social media marketing consultant John Haydon said, “The biggest impact this change will make it a subtle, but important one. As more and more users begin to adopt “liking” Pages, it may be harder to identify true fans.” Indeed, if it’s as easy as agreeing to ‘Like’ something by clicking a button, perhaps brands will gain more ‘Connections’, but those connections may not be as engaged as people who would willingly call themselves ‘Fans’.

For publishers, TechCrunch hints at the power of the coming ‘Like’ button for websites, as opposed to the current ‘Share’ button:

“Good for publishers? Yes. But it’s also very, very good for Facebook as hundreds of thousands of websites will rush to format their content to exactly Facebook’s preference and send over all their data without a second thought.”

[Derek Markham is a writer, a father, a WordPress addict, and social media butterfly who loves to share what's new and interesting in his world in under 140 characters. Hit him up with an @ reply anytime for help, conversation, or just to say hey!]

But is sending all of our activity to every single platform helpful? Is it even ’social’? Or is the shotgun approach to social media causing us to lose traction with our followers and fans?

One of the most important things to understand about our social media efforts is that each platform, or channel, has a different audience with different interests and desires. Our Facebook fans might not really care about every comment we leave on Digg, or every tweet we send out. But many people are doing it anyway, and the end result of this shotgun approach may end up with them losing some fans, not increasing the level of engagement.

For many, it may be that they’ve been told that sending out their links to as many different places as possible is good for search engine visibility, or that it helps to be fishing in many different ponds at the same time. And while that might be true in general, if we drill down on which of the tactics get the best results for each platform ( number of clickthroughs, number of shares, etc.), we may find that by being more selective with our updates, we actually get more engagement, which ultimately leads to more traffic, more email opt-ins, more leads.

Using a shotgun approach and sending one update to all of our profiles at the same time may seem to be less work and less time than doing each one individually, but in the end, it’s the results that speak the loudest. If we spend a little more time and thought on our social media efforts, the increased return on those investments could be the difference between being lost in the crowd and being a rockstar.

We can start by determining the reasons why people engage us on the different platforms. Why do people follow us on Twitter? What benefit do they receive by becoming our Facebook fan? How often do people leave comments on FriendFeed or Buzz instead of the original article page? How many times do they actually click through and engage us on our own blog or website?

Most of this information can be found with a quick study of the number of Retweets, ‘Likes’ and ‘Shares’ on Facebook, and comments left on our profiles and blogs. Additional insight on this will come from using Google alerts for our business name, our usernames, and our product names, or by using a reputation management tool. We can also go to each of our profiles and view them as if we’re a potential follower or customer. Would we follow that profile? Or does it look just like broadcasting of the same links and information? For additional feedback, we can simply ask our followers and fans how we’re doing on each platform.

Once we’ve got a basic understanding of what works for each of our different networks, we can begin to tailor our efforts to the wants and needs of each group of users. For instance, a blog post with a really catchy title might get ‘curiosity clicks’ from Twitter users, but it might not hook our desired audience the way that a specific, keyword-rich title would. Sharing a link with the digg or StumbleUpon toolbar might work for generating organic diggs and StumbleUpon reviews, but it also might work against us with those users who want the original link.

The tactics we use to increase the level of engagement on the various social media platforms will be different for each business, and the time we spend doing the research on best practices for our audience will be time well spent.

What methods have you found to be most useful in increasing social media engagement?

[Derek Markham is a writer, a father, a WordPress addict, and social media butterfly who loves to share what's new and interesting in his world in under 140 characters. Hit him up with an @ reply anytime for help, advice, or just to say hey!]

Image: © Sandor Kacso – Fotolia.com