Twitter Chats: Do You Participate? Are You a Host? We Want to Know What You Think!

Image credit: US Department of Labor

So, what do you all think about Twitter chats? These virtual chats are held on Twitter. Lots of companies hold these chats every so often to get customer feedback, answer client questions and to just generally get to know the people who are interested in the business’ products and services.

If you’re still a little murky on how your company can benefit from a Twitter chat we’ve gathered up a few ideas that may help you embrace the idea and get to chattin’:

1. Keep the chat name the same week after week, or month after month

When organizing the chat, make sure everyone knows what it’s going to be called. Pick a hashtaged name, such as #(your business twitter account)weeklychat and add the specific hashtag for the topic you plan on discussing, such as #samedaydelivery.

2. Select a trending topic

Chat about something that’s interesting and timely so people are excited to learn.

3. Use experts

If you know other people in the industry who know a lot about the topic you’re going to feature, make sure they’re involved with the chat.

“Brands and organizations have a slew of experts whose online and offline networks would flock to speak with them during Twitter chats. Employees, partners, celebrity spokespeople… these types of high-profile or knowledgeable people can be great assets for drawing in a large audience.” – “Hosting a Better Twitter Chat,” Lauren Dugan, Social Media Today

4. Promote the chat via other social media, email, etc.

Promote the heck out of this event via Facebook, Twitter and your blog, and don’t forget to include it in your weekly email blasts, too.

5. Try to respond to everyone’s questions: 

Pay attention and always try to respond to client questions or concerns. And don’t forget to favorite the tweets you really dig.

6. Follow up: 

After your chats are complete, don’t forget to write a blog post that details what went down.

Source: Social Media Today

Blogging for Your Business Part 2: Make Your Blog Better

Image source: SEOPlanter

If you and your business started blogging a long while ago, you’ve probably built up a decent readership. Your readers dig your voice and you’re able to guess (with reasonable accuracy) what topics will garner likes, shares and comments. Or maybe you kinda tried to start a blog and maybe – just maybe -- attempted to forget the fact you began that blog out of frustration, etc.

No matter if you’ve an active blog, or merely an existing dead-as-a-door-knob blog, you can still wring success out of what you’ve already created.

Keep and entertain current readers:

Know your target audience: Don’t scare away current readers by changing all of your content. Add in new types of blog posts (photo, or gif-centric posts, or fun employee Q-and-As) along with your currently covered topics. If you think you’ve lost touch with your current audience, ask your readers what they want to see on the blog.

Use free keyword research tools:

Before you begin to write your next blog, stop and do keyword research. Most keyword research tools are free and all keyword sites are relatively easy to use. After you’ve searched for relevant keywords, make certain to pick keyword phrases that rank as a “low,” or “medium.”

 

“Once you have a few keywords chosen, make sure that at least one fits into your headline, as close to the first word as possible,” Verrill says. “Try to have it appear again in the first few sentences, and your other related terms somewhere else in the copy. Only do this if it seems natural within context of the blog.”

 

Take advantage of social media:

Promote your posts on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. If you mention a particular industry service, or person, make sure to tag the company, or person in your tweet. Including people in the conversation will help you get more clicks and shares.

Source: Improve Your Blogging and Increase Traffic: 3 Tips,Jonathan Payne from Social Media Today, and Ashley Verrill from Social Fresh

Blogging for Your Business Part 1: How to Build a Useful Blog for Your Delivery Company

Image source: futureshape

You have a slick business website and have taken the time to create a few social media accounts for your company. All of these things are marvelous! But do you have a business blog?

 

You may have never started a blog because you thought creating and writing posts would be too much work. And as a blogger I understand that -- blogging is difficult and at times it’s time consuming. Also: No matter how great of a blog manager you are it can take a long time to find your audience and for your blog to find its voice.

But there are many benefits of business blogging:

• Blogging allows your employees to discuss the aspects of the company they enjoy.
• If you’re blogging (and if you’re the president or owner of the company you should be), the research for future blog posts allows you to easily stay current with trends in the industry.
• The more true and fact-filled things you write the more authority you give your business.
• Blogging allows your customers to easily interact with you and your business associates.

-Source: “5 Reasons Your Business Should Be Blogging,” by Marcus Sheridan, from Social Media Examiner

So, just how do you successfully start your company’s blog? According to the article, “How to Plan Your Business Blog,” by Amanda DiSilvestro, it’s important to plan your blog before you begin writing or promoting your services via your new, shiny blog. To make an effective blog, consider the following:

• “Who is my target audience, and what do they want to read?
• Am I going to allow guest bloggers on the blog?
• How often should I post to the blog?
• How can I track its success? What will I consider success?”

-Source: DiSilvestro, Social Media Today

DiSilvestro also provides some easy-to-follow steps that will help new bloggers plan their blogs:

Know your readers: You need to know who your audience is before you start to create content. Attract new readers (aka customers) to your blog by conducting some simple SEO keyword research. “Utilize keyword research to determine what a lot of people are searching for on Google,” DiSilvestro said. Learn more about keyword research over atCopyblogger.

Choose a snappy name: Name your blog something that will make your current customers smile and also will attract new readers. Also: Make blog titles intriguing. Starting titles with, “5 Ways to…,” or “How to,” will make your blogs more clickable.

Easy communication: Link to related articles and to your company’s social media sites often. Also: Include an “opt-in offer that readers can fill out if they want to contact you about more information,” DiSilvestro said.

Update often: Recruit employees to write blogs and come up with blog topics. And if there’s no one at your company who wants to write, consider hiring a freelance writer, or asking guest bloggers to contribute to your content. “Generally you should try to produce most of your content in-house at the start so that readers can see you really know your stuff. When you do allow the occasional guest blogger,” DiSilvestro said.

Don’t push yourself too hard: Posting once a week is enough, but two to three posts per week is ideal. “The more content you have the easier it will be to promote that blog; not to mention the more chances you have to really ramp up your SEO (blogs are an excellent way to improve the SEO of your website),” DiSilvestro said.

Part 2 of this discussion will examine how people with existing business blogs can improve their blogs and attract more customers.

The Importance of Supporting Other Small Businesses

Image source: pasa47

I’m going to take a wild guess and say that most of Courier Magazine’s readers own or work at a small business. So, I don’t have to tell any of you how important small businesses are! But did you know that small businesses tend to thrive more and find continued success when they work together?

In the article, “6 Ways Small Businesses Can Band Togetherfor Better Results,” on Mashable.com, Nellie Akalp, CEO of CorpNet.com, a filing service, said that it’s becoming increasingly difficult for small businesses to access business capital and credit over the recently past years.

Akalp said it’s important for small businesses to work together to compete with larger companies. Although it might be difficult to see other small businesses as partners and not competitors it’s essential. According to Akalp, small business owners should: 

• Seek out symbiotic and collaborative relationships with other small businesses.
• Build a collective co-op of similar businesses and individuals.

Akalp said the business owners can easily meet other like-minded company owners by:

Joining a local meetup group for entrepreneurs: Finding new business is all about finding referrals and connections. Join local groups that meet weekly, or monthly at local cafés, or restaurants. Akalp suggests checking Meetup.com, or your local chamber of commerce for groups.

Organizing a social media meetup: Get all your social media followers together and organize an in-person meetup.

Getting online: I know I just suggested that’s it’s important to get out from behind the computer and meet your contacts in person, but connecting with other small business owners online can be helpful, too. Akalp suggests browsing online communities, such as Entrepreneur Connect.

Reaching out to other types of small businesses: Even though not all small businesses may be similar to your company, you can still help other companies learn how to increase exposure. “By giving business to others, you will get business in return,” Akalp said.

Supporting other small businesses at your own company: See if you can use other local businesses to help provide your marketing materials, or serve a local coffee blend in your break room.

How Social Media can Benefit Customer Service

Source: Jason A. Howie

I’d wager that customer service is important to your company. Heck, who are we kidding – it’s essential. And over the years, more tools have emerged that help companies make top-notch customer service an every day reality.

For example, 30 years ago, your employees likely got most feedback about your delivery service from customers via phone calls, or clients who stopped by your storefront. Now, you can easily get in contact with customers immediately via email, or social media.

Just last week, Social Media Today highlighted how FedEx has successfully used social media to help the company achieve positive client responses to its customer service. And although FedEx is a large corporation, small delivery businesses can learn from the company’s social media/customer service plan of action.

According to Social Media Today, Ginna Sauerwein, a customer service veteran, has worked for JC Penney, Delta Airlines and Miller Brewery. For the past 29 years, she’s placed her talents and efforts into FedEx. As FedEx’s managing director of customer service in the western region, Sauerwein and her team check FedEx’s social media accounts to make certain the company’s customers are happy. She and her team have been doing this since 2009.

According to Social Media Today’s post:

“Providing a variety of channels for the customers to engage through, whether it’s a phone, a chat, a blog or social networks like Facebook and Twitter, appeared to be highly beneficial. Even though FedEx does online listening, Sauerwein’s team is the one responsible for handling actionable requests that customer care follow-up to help solve the issue or answer the question. Their engagement time? Mostly in a matter of minutes, not hours or days. The team tracks online buzz and digital conversations through the internal score card that shows daily interactions with ‘authors’ (yes, FedEx team refers to their customers that create content and initiate conversations online as ‘authors’) and what types those interactions were, as well as how fast the team responded.”

Now that’s interesting.

The article continues on to explain that many of FedEx’s small business customers dig that immediate customer service. Overall, the company’s social media monitoring has allowed FedEx to:

Integrate across multiple functions: Social media use allowed various departments within FedEx to collaborate creatively, and keep an open line of communication.

Keep authenticity alive: All FedEx employees are authentic with customers. Basically, FedEx’s employees talk to customers like people, and really try to relate to each customer in a unique manner.

Treat all customers well no matter who they are: All customers (the big and small) matter. Everyone should get great treatment.

Try new things: Over the years, the company has experimented with different forms of customer communication. One example Social Media Today highlights is FedEx’s piloted video chats.

Be creative: The company always strives to try new things, and FedEx employees are encouraged to find new ways to solve problems.

Source: Social Media Today’s “The Big Brand Theory: How FedEx Achieves Social Customer Service Success”

And we’re back!

We’re going to get this blog running again. Our plan is to post fresh content and commentary about courier industry news. We’ll also post extra interviews and Q&As that don’t appear in the print Courier Magazine. And from time to time, we’ll write about social marketing, small business marketing and HR tips. We’d love to get your feedback on what we post, so please feel free to comment! If you have content ideas or news tips, don’t hesitate to contact us (we’re at -- social@couriermagazine.com ).

If you want to connect with Courier on other social sites, you can find us here:

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