Companies are flocking to Social Media like tweens to a High School Musical convention. It’s viewed as the magic pill that transforms you from fool to cool faster than a PSA announcing you’re Zach Efron’s new BFF. The problem is that once companies realize that creating a profitable and reputable Social Media presence actually requires effort and communication, they give up.

If you want to separate your business from every one of your competitors in the social media sphere, you absolutely must be consistent!

Customers appreciate and respect reliability.  If you have commitment issues with your Twitter account (you go multiple days or weeks without even a text), you suffer from blog neglect (inconsistent and less-than useful posts), or you Facebook abandonment, you’re doing it wrong.

If you’re not willing to put in the effort to provide useful, interesting content on a consistent basis, you may want to reconsider using Social Media at all.

This week at Blog World, Social Media tycoons, Patrick O’Keefe; writer, web developer, entrepreneur, community administrator and author of ManagingCommunities.com, Amber Naslund; Director of Community at Radian6 and blogger at Altitude Branding, Wayne Sutton; Partner at OurHashtag and blogger at SocialWayne.com and Robert Scoble; Managing Director at Building43.com at Rackspace and blogger at Scobleizer will be presenting on this and many other social media mistakes made by so many new media n00bs attempting to use this new forum to help their business. You would do well to pay attention to their mad internet skillz.

Last week, I presented at SMCUV with some great friends and incredibly smart marketers, Seth Jenks and Nate Kartchner. We presented strategies and tools to help build a reliable social media strategy and manage your online reputation.

Here’s a look at Nate’s presentation on tools to use to build solid a social media presence, as well as Seth’s list of tools to create an awesome listening tool to help you manage both positive and negative feedback being posted about you on the web.

I had the privilege of speaking on having a cohesive online and offline marketing strategy.  I’m a firm believer that if you want to get the most out of an online social media campaign, you must be practicing the same mentality in the analog world.  Empower your clients and employees to talk about you however they see fit. Give them reasons to talk about you positively. Make them your advocates.

Andy Sernovitz gives some great ideas on the principle of empowerment on his blog. If more companies followed his lead on this, they would have so much more success and loyalty it might just blow their minds.

It’s also important to know who your target audience is.  If you are selling hearing aids, Twitter may not be the best forum for you, as the majority of your market has only heard of the micro-blogging platform at random moments from their favorite Fair and Balanced news station.

You need to make sure you’re paying attention to the right people with the right influence, as Janet Meiners-Thaeler explains on her site. Find your niche of advocates who are willing to talk for you, endorse you and especially trust you. If you’re willing to do this, even if the group is small, your efforts will be rewarded.

Slides from my presentation are forthcoming…

Special thanks to Costa Vida Fred for sharing his time and expertise with us in the Q&A session. What a champ!

Twitter has received a lot of criticism for their inability to retain the majority of their users on a long-term basis.  A few months ago, Marketing Pilgrim featured a research study done by The Nelson Company proving that roughly 60% of users who sign up for Twitter fail to return to the service after about a month.  Those who actually use Twitter on a regular basis blew a gasket.  They couldn’t believe it.  However, after working with hundreds of people and businesses in the past few months, evangelizing the worth of Twitter with a fury and passion, I can honestly say I’ve seen the same trend.  People just get discouraged with Twitter. They sign up full of excitement from the hype, but quickly lose momentum and interest when they don’t understand the lingo, or how to get people to follow them.  They hit what I like to call “The Twitter Road Block.”

Overcoming the road block really only requires persistence.  There are also a few tools that will definitely make the transition through the Twitter Road Block much easier:

Twitter Search

Twitter has a service called Twitter Search which allows you to search for Tweets with specific words in them.  The coolest thing about Twitter Search is that you can subscribe to specific search queries using RSS.  Or rather, you can track multiple specific keywords at the same time via your Feed Reader.  Think about it this way. Lets say you’re the president of McDonalds and you want to work on client retention and customer service.  You could search for negative words associated with your product or company name, like “Hate McDonalds” or “:( McDonalds”.  You could then subscribe to the feed, and you will be notified every time someone sends out a negative Tweet about your company.  You can then fix it.

Little do you know, whether you like it or not, people are talking about you, your company and your products on Twitter right now.  Time to start watching who, and talking back.

Don’t stop there though! Search for things you’re interested in and start talking to people who are interested in the same thing!  Twitter is a forum for discussion.  Most people leave because they have nobody to talk to.  The best way to build a great reputation for yourself on Social Media is to be social! Be the person who talks to everyone.  That is how you will gain the most value from Twitter, and how you will brake through that frustrating initial Twitter Road Block!

The Pizza Factory

One of my favorite things to see is a local company reach out to communicate and reward their customers… especially when it involves social media.  This past week I saw just such a thing.

Local restaurant, The Pizza Factory in Provo, Utah started a Twitter account.  They found and followed all the locals in no time at all.  Then, suddenly, they started Tweeting about some incredible giveaways.  Every day, about twice a day, Pizza Factory managers were giving away free large pizzas, family size pastas and entire pies for dessert.

The boys here at the office picked up on the scent of free food and decided to test the offer.  Sure enough, of the 100 or so followers that receive The Pizza Factory’s tweets, they were the first to arrive on location to collect the winnings.  They ordered their free Chicken Alfredo Pizza (which I know from first hand experience is delicious) and were ready to walk out the door when the manager asked them if they would like to claim the other two prizes that had been announced earlier that day, (a family size pasta dish and a fruit pie) because nobody had come by to claim them.

Apparently, despite offering to give away entire family-size meals, few people were actually coming by to try to claim the prizes.  This can be attributed to a few different reasons.

1. Free food is tempting. Very tempting. But if I’m not guaranteed the food, do I want to chance going in to claim it? What if the only reason I’m going is the fact that I’m going to get a free meal? Imagine the shame of turning around to explain the situation to your hungry family and friends as you walk out of the establishment. Crappy thought, no?
2. There is an unwritten law of social media stating that the main purpose of social networking is increasing communication between two parties with a mutual bond or interest.  Currently The Pizza Factory is not talking directly to anyone. They’re not engaging their fans. And, they’re not doing what is possibly the most important thing…
3. They aren’t getting anything out of it!  What good is a marketing campaign if it has significant value to your customers, but very little or no value to you?  Let me answer that for you. It is not good.

So, rather than put effort into giving your product away, why not design a quick marketing campaign that gives away food on a daily or weekly basis for people who blog about you and link to your site. (SEO 1o1: Google likes you more when you have links pointing to your site.)  This encourages involvement of lots of people at once, and doesn’t put a strange and insecure time constraint on the contest, ie: Will I make it in time to claim the prize before everyone else?

All in all, props to The Pizza factory for making a positive move in the right direction.  With a little tweaking, not only will they have great interaction with a thriving fan base who loves delicious pizza, but they will also be getting something out of it! (I’d blog for free pizza any day.)

By the way, here are some deliciously free Breadtwists on me.  Thank me later!