The-Science-of-Social-Media-2012

Another tactic that gains recommendations is you writing other people recommendations. Somepeople will be compelled to write one back for you, but it’s very much hit and miss and reallydoesn’t beat the personal approach explained above.17.1 Asking for recommendations on LinkedIn Once you have clicked on the ’Ask for recommendations’ link, you will be presented with a screen asking you which job or school you want to be recommended on; choose from the drop down list. Next, select those people you want to contact for a recommendation and remember to select only your top dozen or so targets to begin with. Finally, customise your message at the bottom rather than leaving it as the default in order to make it more personal. Personalised LinkedIn requests have shown to beup to 20% more successful than the standard message, which can sometimes be ignored.18. Navigation of the site 18.1 Headline navigation Almost all of the main functions for LinkedIn are located in the top navigation bar as shown below.© 2012 Fresh Egg Limited – The Science of Social Media 51

Hovering over these will also give you more options, and in the main menu most are intuitive. When you get new messages, an orange box will display the number of new messages you have; this won’t be cleared until you have read and dealt with them. The only thing that perhaps might not obvious at first is how you get to your account settings, but access to these can be gained by hovering over your logged in name in the top right corner. 18.2 Search function LinkedIn has a very powerful search function and some advanced search functionality which extends it even further. Search is often overlooked as it appears you can only search for people. However, if you click on the left side of the search box, you will be given a choice of what you search for including companies, people, updates, jobs, answers and groups. As you type, LinkedIn will give you suggestions, making it even easier to find what you want quickly. The advanced search function is spectacular! It gives you complete control over what you search for, with extended search parameters including seniority level, groups, industries, experience and so on. The list is mind boggling but it may just be the most powerful search function in any social network. Give it a try!19. Connections and contacts Twitter calls them followers, Facebook calls them friends or fans, but LinkedIn calls them contacts. However, they are pretty much the same thing (at least on the surface). Where LinkedIn differs, though, is that your contacts are nearly always those you have approved (a bit like Facebook), and it is rare you will be added by someone you haven’t met through the line of business (although it does still happen, but is easily blocked). LinkedIn also provides an excellent system to manage your contacts. Just click on the top bar marked ‘Contacts’ to see who is on your list. This section allows you to locate your connections and offers a wide array of options to do so. You can find them by the ABC method of scrolling through, or pick a specific company, location, industry or by latest activity. You can also use this section to message users by selecting the small box to the left of their image and then clicking on ’Send message’ to the right.20. Prospecting for expert connections One of the things LinkedIn isn’t very good at is getting you connected when you first join; it takes time and a lot of effort to gain connections quickly. Some of LinkedIn almost appears to be ’off limits’ with people you’ve worked with in the past, often restricting their profile and not even showing their surname due to you having no connection with them either directly or through your own connections.© 2012 Fresh Egg Limited – The Science of Social Media 52

This is because the entire site works on the basis of you having connections and then branchingout. As you gain connections, you’ll find it easier to get even more connections. In fact, it’s rarethese days I ever go hunting for new connections as they’ll find me!Fortunately, there are some things you can do to find people you’d like to add to your networkthat mix up Google search, LinkedIn search and Twitter.Adding experts or influencers to your connections is key, but finding them, especially when youhave no direct link to them, can be hard. This is where Google and Twitter come in.Firstly, search for the company you know the person works at. A good example would be ajournalist you want to contact at a newspaper. Newspapers are prevalent on LinkedIn and oftenhave their workers associated with them. Perform a LinkedIn search for the newspaper underthe company search.This will show you a number of different people associated with the newspaper. However, weare interested in the current employees listed in the second box down. Click on the ’See moreemployees’ link located towards the end of the short second box.This will give you the entire list of those who work for the company (at least those who updatedtheir LinkedIn profile). Vitally, it also shows you their job title, although in most cases, unless youare linked to someone they already know, their details are often shortened so they only revealtheir first name and the first letter of their surname.In our example, we have decided to try and find the VP and group publisher of the Metro dailynewspaper. Through LinkedIn we establish that his name is Steve S.Now open up a Google search and copy and paste the name (including the first letter of theirsurname), job title (exactly as it’s shown on their LinkedIn profile) and the name of theircompany. Usually the first result returned will be the same person’s LinkedIn profile, but nowtheir full name is shown in the Google results. Google indexes the LinkedIn pages in full, whereasLinkedIn restricts the surname (unless you are connected already or a premium member).You should see something like this:© 2012 Fresh Egg Limited – The Science of Social Media 53

You now have the full name of the person you want to connect to and could at this point sendthem a LinkedIn request. However, they don’t know you and are unlikely to connect.Now you can use Twitter. A large amount of people on LinkedIn can often be found on Twittertoo. Ignore the Twitter search (it’s very poor!) and instead use Google once again, but this timeuse the full name of the person and his company name to search, attaching the word ’Twitter’ tothe end of your search. It doesn’t work 100% of the time, but in a lot of cases (like ours, above) it does! Now we have his Twitter account, we can do a soft introduction rather than the hardcore route through LinkedIn. With Twitter, you can follow and engage with your potential connection before eventually asking for a LinkedIn request, which will then have a much greater chance of being accepted. You may not even need to connect via LinkedIn now as you can ask questions directly via Twitter and that may be enough, but it’s always worth adding them to your LinkedIn network for a later time. You can use this methodology for all sorts of things including information gathering about a company and its hierarchy, checking out potential employees in a certain competitor or sector and sourcing experts for guest blog posts.21. SEO benefits There are some very simple and straightforward ways to optimise your LinkedIn profile, which can in turn help with SEO: 21.1 Complete your profile© 2012 Fresh Egg Limited – The Science of Social Media 54

Completing your profile is a simple enough tip, but there are lots of people who don’t. LinkedIn offers you a plethora of things to add and you should use them! For those viewing it in LinkedIn, it might even smack of laziness and from a search perspective you might be missing out on key word searches that you should be ranking for. As we already pointed out in this guide, everything you add should be genuine and honest. LinkedIn as a domain already has a lot of power in Google and you’ll find the more you complete of your profile, the higher you will rank for your name and other keywords in the search engines.21.2 Customise your LinkedIn URL This is the URL which leads to your LinkedIn profile and by default looks messy if you don’t optimise it (usually a lot like this: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/william-gates/53/698/261) To get a named URL, simply click on the ’Edit’ link in your profile page as shown below. You’ll then need to update the URL by claiming your custom link. Click on the link that states ’Customize your profile URL’ as shown below.© 2012 Fresh Egg Limited – The Science of Social Media 55

You will be shown a pop up box which gives you the chance to have a custom URL. Sadly, most ofthe names have now been taken, but you will be offered something close to your name if youentered it. Ideally you should get something close to your name (not your business at this point) sothat it can be found better in search engines. Enter a name and, when you decide on one (or a variation thereof), click the ’Set Custom URL’ button.21.3 Anchor text While there is a lot of talk about anchor text in SEO circles and its worth being reduced in Google due to recent updates, it’s still a nice extra to find in LinkedIn. You can customise up to three websites that appear on your page, one of these obviously being your business site. Select the ’Edit websites’ link in your profile and you’ll be given the chance to enter these three links. Click on the first column marked ’Choose’, select ’’Other’ and LinkedIn will give you the chance to name the site the way you want to (and in doing so you could use your top key phrase in the box alongside the link).© 2012 Fresh Egg Limited – The Science of Social Media 56

Get an anchor text rich link in LinkedIn by using the “Other” option when adding a custom URL21.4 Groups Get involved in groups that mirror your business vertical. There is a real depth of groups to be found using the search function, with at least one almost certainly existing for your industry regardless of how niche you think it may be. Joining in and exchanging communication with like-minded individuals in your industry will help gain links to your website, especially with your super- completed profile and all the correct links in place. In time, you can also start posting your website link in relevant posts, but don’t overdo it or spam; you’ll be removed quickly. The SEO benefit is potentially negligible so don’t devote all your time here if SEO is the only thing you want out if it: there are much more efficient ways of gaining links. As a complement to other work, however, groups provide a steady stream of citations and nofollow links if used wisely.21.5 Advertise your profile One of the best ways of gaining some SEO benefit (albeit third party) is to advertise your profile. We don’t mean go ahead and pay a site to put a banner up with your face on it, but actually use the link in your everyday work. Add it to your signature on your emails, your website ’About Us’ or ’Staff’ pages and link it on any other profiles you have on social media.© 2012 Fresh Egg Limited – The Science of Social Media 57

LinkedIn for businesses Chapter 322. Introduction In part one of this guide, we showed you how to setup a LinkedIn profile, optimise it and gain valuable contacts. In essence, part one was for those who don’t use LinkedIn heavily or have yet to take the plunge. In our second part, we’ll concentrate on the business side of LinkedIn, covering company pages setup and optimisation, the power of LinkedIn groups, Answers, events and LinkedIn Ads as well as show you how to network with some cheeky tips; in short, what can LinkedIn do for you and your business?23. Company pages 23.1 What is a LinkedIn company page? LinkedIn says company pages are a “central hub where millions of LinkedIn members can go to stay in the loop on your company news, products & services, business opportunities and job openings”. In reality, the company page offers a number of advantages including additional benefits in SEO, brand search domination, increased social media profile, brand awareness and, potentially, traffic back to your site. Used properly, LinkedIn company pages are a fantastic way to attract more business! 23.2 How to set up a company page Navigating to the ’Company’ section of LinkedIn, you will find a link to ’Add a Company’ in the top right of the screen.Clicking on this link will direct you to the first page of the company page setup screen. Here you willneed to enter the company name and an email address you would like attached to the ownership ofthe page. You’ll need to ensure you use a domain name email address that closely matches yourbrand name or it may not work.You may get a warning message if the email doesn’t look right, isn’t associated strongly with thename of the company you have entered or if it has been used in conjunction with another accountalready, as shown in the example below. You can’t use many of the popular free web email clients© 2012 Fresh Egg Limited – The Science of Social Media 58

(such as Gmail) to register a brand/company name: it has to show a strong link to the name of the brand within the email address. If you don’t use a strongly linked brand email account, you’ll get a message that looks like this:23.3 Optimising company pages Once you have a company page up and running, you’ll want to put aside an hour or so to ensure you can update it and optimise it before inviting people to view it. Optimising the page will help you manage it, add admins to help you and ensure all of the critical brand data, locations and images are placed on the page at the very start, thus providing the perfect foundations to use the company page for marketing and information in future. Even if you don’t plan to use the page to post information, you should still ensure the page is fully optimised as those searching for you in LinkedIn will still land on the page regardless.23.4 Admins and adding them The first section to complete is the admin section. You can add other people on LinkedIn to the administration of your page, and it’s a good idea to have at least one other person just in case you lose your account details or it gets compromised. The section is self-explanatory, although it’s worth noting that you can only add people you are already connected to, so ensure that this is the case before trying to add new administrators to the page.© 2012 Fresh Egg Limited – The Science of Social Media 59

23.5 Basic company information If you haven’t done so already, ensure the basic company information is present and accurate. You can also add multiple locations if your business is based in more than one place. The most important aspects to get right are the category and ensuring that the company is set to ’operating’ as these both affect searches dramatically.In addition to that located in the sidebar, more information on the company can be found at theend of the main edit page, thisincluding a company description and specialities. The companydescription should be as complete as possible and mirror what can be found on the companywebsite. The specialities are effectively the company’s USPs or specific signature products. Astempting as it might be, don’t try to game this section. Instead, be honest about what the companyprovides. You can keep adding these until LinkedIn gets fed up!© 2012 Fresh Egg Limited – The Science of Social Media 60

23.6 Adding brand images and logos LinkedIn offers three different types of image, these being a cover image (which is displayed at the top of your brand page), a standard logo (used on most pages your brand is shown) and a square logo (mostly used when posting or in searches as an avatar). All three images can be changed, updated and removed from the main edit page. 23.6.1 Cover image The cover image needs to represent your business clearly and can mimic the image you may already use for cover art on Facebook or Twitter. The only difference here is the dimensions used, which on LinkedIn are set to 646x220 pixels. You can upload a bigger image subject the maximum file size limit of 2Mb and then use LinkedIn to drop the image without using external software. However, for the best possibly quality it is advisable to upload a correctly sized image. 23.6.2 Standard logo The standard logo appears at the top of your company page and is restricted to 100x60 pixels. 23.6.3 Square logo This logo is used as an avatar on searches and other pages in LinkedIn and can only be 50x50 pixels.23.7 Adding products and services Adding products and services to your newly created (or updated) LinkedIn company page can be considered an easy and free way to market your company and what it offers. The pages are incredibly powerful if used well. To begin with, click on the ‘Admin tools’, located top right of the company profile page. You’ll only see this if you are an admin on the page. Under this menu, click ‘Add product or service’.© 2012 Fresh Egg Limited – The Science of Social Media 61

This will take you to an eleven step process that guides you through the initial setup of the products and services page. This will be for just one product or service to start with, but you can simply repeat the process to add more. You’ll need to ensure you have certain things to hand before you get to this page, including:  A product or service image (100x80 pixels)  The name of your product or service  Which category it fits into (these are provided by LinkedIn)  A full description of the product or service (around 200 words maximum)  At least six key features of the product (short form)  Any disclaimers or legal information that should be attached  If you have one, a YouTube video that explains the product or service (ideally from your own YouTube page) You’ll also have the ability to add a promotion pertaining to this product including any discounts or special prices by adding a URL to a page within your site and providing a brief description. Once you have completed all of the boxes on the page, click on ‘Publish’, which is somewhat located at the top of the page and not the end of the process itself. To edit the page, you’ll need to navigate to the products and services tab, click on the product or service you added and then use the ‘Admin tools’ drop-down to click ‘Edit’. You can also delete a product page from the same menu or go back in and add a promotion or a video any time you want.23.8 Company status updates Updates can be made right at the top of your company page in the beige box and don’t have to be company updates. It’s important to vary the type of posts you make to include questions, links to great content (not just on your site but other related sites too) and general business updates. In fact, anything that promotes sharing or discussion will work well.© 2012 Fresh Egg Limited – The Science of Social Media 62

You can also decide who the message goes to, so for particularly large organisations or where the following you have is exceptionally large, you can target specific groups of people based on the size of the company they work for, industry, function, seniority and location.23.9 The follow button To get more people to follow the brand, it’s a great idea to utilise the follow button provided by LinkedIn on the developers section. This button can be added anywhere you can place HTML, so don’t restrict it’s posting to your website, but consider adding it to email footers and signatures, forums (if they allow HTML signatures) and other parts of the website such as ‘Contact’ or ‘About us’ pages. The button can accessed and created on the LinkedIn developers section. This allows you to create a bespoke version which changes the orientation and count mode and then provides you with the custom code that needs to be placed in your website. Remember: the button should be placed above the header and if at all possible within the header area and close to your brand logo so that it captures as many people as possible. Placing it in the footer won’t get the same level of clickthrough and placing it in the front page but not throughout the site will be similarly unsuccessful.23.10 Gaining initial followers To get things kicked off, use simple marketing methods that will help gain more followers initially. Send round a group or company email to let everyone know the page is up and running and encourage them to follow the company. It’s also a good idea for them to update their own profiles with the correct links to the company page via their CV. Make sure the button gets placed on the website and a link added to all company email footers with a direct link to the page and the LinkedIn logo. Once you have your products and services page up and running, make sure you ask for recommendations for them from previous satisfied customers. These recommendations will show on the product page, too, further demonstrating your credibility.© 2012 Fresh Egg Limited – The Science of Social Media 63

24. The power of LinkedIn groups 24.1 Introduction Perhaps the easiest way of explaining what LinkedIn groups are is to liken them to private dedicated forums with a few extras. Some groups are by invite only, others require an administrator to approve your inclusion but many are free-to-join public discussion areas usually centring on one theme or topic. There are thousands of groups already, but on the off-chance one doesn’t exist for your industry, business or point of interest, you are free to set one up and administrate it. In fact, for some companies, particularly those in human resources or recruitment, having your own group on LinkedIn can be considered to be nothing short of essential. 24.2 Setting up a group It’s important to note that before you go ahead and create a group, you should be prepared to spend 15 minutes setting it up and have already sourced a suitable, eye-catching logo for it. You’ll need to ensure the logo can be shrunk to 102x153 pixels in order to be the main avatar for the group. By clicking on the ’Groups’ tab in the top navigation, the next screen will allow you to ’Create a group’.24.3 Weekly group message One of the great parts of running a group is the “Send an announcement” option contained in the ‘Manage’ section of the menu for groups. This allows you to send a message to everyone involved in the group, a massively powerful way to reach those interested in what you have to say. Ideally, you won’t use this option too often, certainly not daily, but a weekly roundup of what is happening in the group and which posts have been particularly useful or full of discussion are usually very welcome for members who don’t frequent the group on a daily basis. There is a tremendously useful post on HubSpot for those who want to know how to strategise this particular option within LinkedIn, which we would fully recommend following to get the most out of the messages, particularly for generating new leads.24.4 Driving traffic to your site using a group There are many ways in which you can help drive traffic to your home website from the group you set up. There isn’t a specific surefire way of doing this but groups offer plenty of opportunities to capture traffic. Among these are:© 2012 Fresh Egg Limited – The Science of Social Media 64

 Adding the website URL to the group profile  Using your RSS feed from your blog or news section to the news section of the group  Sending the weekly message to group members and including a related article from your site  Creating discussions in the group and including a link to a relevant piece  Adding the URL of your website to the welcome message You should also ensure your website URL is on your personal profile page so that those new to the group who check you out can see where you come from. This indirectly helps improve traffic referrals, too.24.5 Group analytics LinkedIn introduced group statistics in November 2011, thus providing a comprehensive way of measuring your group and its activity. There are currently four main areas of statistics available: ‘Summary’, ‘Demographics’, ‘Growth’ and ‘Activity’. You don’t need to do anything to get these statistics, just access them via your group page.© 2012 Fresh Egg Limited – The Science of Social Media 65

24.6 Statistical summary The statistical group summary allows you to view the amount of members, how many comments there were in the last week, what type of people use your group, their location and which function is most popular.24.7 Demographics The demographics section covers seniority, location and industry as shown below.© 2012 Fresh Egg Limited – The Science of Social Media 66

24.8 Growth This section gives you a few nice graphs showing new members and total member growth since the start of the group. The longer it runs, the better the stats. This section also includes data on member amounts, new members joining in the last week and the rate at which week on week growth of users is occurring.24.9 Activity The final section available in group statistics looks at activity; it’s probably the most important. From here, you can analyse how busy your group is. It includes data on how many comments were made in the last seven days, discussions started, job changes and promotions that occurred with graphs detailing the last 12 months of activity in comments and discussions.© 2012 Fresh Egg Limited – The Science of Social Media 67

25. Networking tips and how to find people LinkedIn has some very powerful search functions, but sometimes it will partially block a user from seeing all of the information on a user profile. There are ways to get around this using a mixture of LinkedIn, Google and Twitter to get more information about someone and connect with them. If you are prospecting for a new client or just want to connect with someone in another company to exchange ideas, LinkedIn is a fantastic resource. For example, if you know the job title of the person or people you need to contact, LinkedIn can help you compile an amazing list of people in just the right jobs. If you need to contact the marketing manager or a journalist at a newspaper, LinkedIn is exactly where you will find them. You can search using a company name and LinkedIn will return a list of all those working at the company. This does rely on people keeping their LinkedIn profile up to date, although it should be noted that most people do simply because they know employers now check them regularly. Anyone who switches job usually updates quickly too. In our example below, we wanted to hook up with journalists and bloggers from the Metro newspaper. As such, our first search was for “Metro Newspaper” in LinkedIn’s company search. The search results returned us a list of 158 employees working at Metro Newspaper, though it restricted us from knowing their or full names due to not having any existing links to them. The good news, however, is that LinkedIn does display the job title. We initially found an advice columnist called Kim S. Armed with this information. We headed to Google and search for the term “Kim S. Advice columnist at Metro Newspaper”. The results returned like this:As you can see from the Google search, the indexed page returned actually reveals the surnameof the person you looked up on LinkedIn, whereas LinkedIn does not let you see this information© 2012 Fresh Egg Limited – The Science of Social Media 68

unless you know them, are connected or go directly to the URL (therefore assuming you knowthe person’s exact surname).Now we have the surname and have confirmed it is the same person by clicking on the link andchecking the job title, we can now connect with them. However, before we do that, it’s worthconsidering how few people accept others on LinkedIn if they don’t already know them or arelinked in some way. As such, the best thing we can do at this point is connect on other platforms.Twitter is excellent for this as it will enable us to build up an understanding about the person(through reviewing their tweets) and allow us to spend some time interacting, retweeting theirposts and thanking them for content if it’s appropriate.First, however, we need to find them on Twitter. The best thing to do initially is check they’veadded their Twitter to the LinkedIn page as many others do. If not, don’t worry: we can useGoogle again. Just use their full name and the word “Twitter” at the end of the search query. Ifit’s a common name, you might need to include other facts you can glean from the LinkedInprofile such as interests or company name, job title, etc.You can even send them a DM on Twitter after a short while asking if it would be okay to connectvia LinkedIn. The fact you will have been visibly interacting and hopefully chatting on Twitter willmake it much more likely your offer to connect on LinkedIn will be accepted. It then gives theperson a chance to see you and your profile on LinkedIn and potentially lead to a healthyworking relationship.It doesn’t have to be journalists (although we have found this works very well) but anyprofessional person where you can mutually benefit from the relationship.Unfortunately for us, Kim wasn’t listed on Twitter, so it’s back to the LinkedIn search for us!© 2012 Fresh Egg Limited – The Science of Social Media 69

26. LinkedIn advertising 26.1 Overview Advertising on LinkedIn is not, as many seem to think, restricted to recruitment companies and consultants. Indeed, ignore LinkedIn advertising at your peril. It is not only very effective at finding the right demographic to match your own company demographic objectives but also very effective at turning them into customers. It’s true however that the cost per click (CPC) is relatively high, but there is a good reason for this. Similar to Facebook advertising, drilling right into oceans of LinkedIn data allows you to target exactly the people, companies or groups of people you want to reach. Even better still, it’ll give you a very good idea of the size of your audience and suggest groups you can add. You can even segment by country, city and location. The flexibility found in LinkedIn ads means you can easily spend a lot of time refining searches until you are perfectly happy with your target audience. As with other forms of social advertising and any other CPC campaign, LinkedIn will guide you to a suggested figure to spend per click; you only pay when people click the advert. 26.2 Getting started with LinkedIn Ads First of all, click on the ‘Ads’ link. It’s not in the most obvious place in the navigation menu, but you can see below it is placed in the home screen.© 2012 Fresh Egg Limited – The Science of Social Media 70

You’ll be prompted to log in again. Once logged in to Ads, you’ll be given a screen like this: Initially, the most important part of the screen is the top menu bar (arrowed), found in the top right-hand corner. Here you can decide if you want to create the advert as an individual or on behalf of a company (note that you’ll need to be an existing admin for the company to post on their behalf). You can also create a business account from the same menu. It’s important at this point to establish how you want to set up the ad campaign as doing it as an individual will limit the campaign information to just you, whereas setting up a business account will allow you to add other people who can also monitor and see the results. You should also be aware that once you have added an admin you can’t alter their access, so be careful who you give it to and ensure you get the right details. There are different admin levels available, but standard access should be fine for all but a ‘serious power user’ of Ads. You should also be aware there is a $5 setup charge for first time users on LinkedIn Ads.26.3 Creating the first advert To kick off your first advert, click on ‘New ad campaign’ and then ‘Start new’. The first page of your new advert campaign allows you to enter the ‘Ad campaign name’, for which you can choose anything as this won’t be published, and to choose the language of your advert campaign. Next, choose where your content is located, either on an external website (just click in the box where it displays www.example.com to enter your own URL), or a page within LinkedIn itself.© 2012 Fresh Egg Limited – The Science of Social Media 71

You should ensure you add an image of 50x50 pixels, or at least one which is square in its dimension. Fresh Egg recommends making the image 50x50 originally, as when it is shrunk by LinkedIn it can sometimes reduce the clarity of the image. Note that the image can only be a PNG, JPEG or GIF and can’t exceed 2MB in file size (not that it should if it’s only 50x50 pixels). Ensure the image is eye catching, vibrant and unique if at all possible. If it’s your first advert and you’re unsure what image to go for, logos often work well in this instance. The most important part of your advert is the headline. To create one, just click in the box marked “Click to enter a headline” and type your chosen headline. The headline, combined with the image, is your most powerful way of catching someone’s eye. The critical part of this is you only have 25 characters to make an impact, and it can be difficult to get what you want to say across in such a limited space. . Luckily, each campaign you set up can have 15 different types of the same advert running on it. Fresh Egg strongly recommends making the most of this feature, as you’ll be amazed by what works and what doesn’t. It isn’t an exact science either: most of the successful adverts on LinkedIn come from trial and error, so experiment - safe in the knowledge that terrible adverts don’t get clicked, meaning you won’t get charged for adverts that don’t work! Finally, ensure you make the most of the 75 characters available in the description. With so little to work with, it’s incredibly important you get the key message across via these three areas (image, headline and description). If nothing else, you should be looking for a hook: a reason to click the link. But be careful not to over stretch, or worse still, lie; you’ll just get terrible bounce rates, no conversions and you’ll pay more for the ads.26.4 Targeting and demographics One of the key ways to help your advert be successful is to utilise the in-depth audience options available on LinkedIn. Arguably, this is the most powerful audience finder in social advertising. You can initially drill down in the following areas:  Location (by continent, country and city)  Company (useful if you want to target a specific set of companies in an industry)  Job title (fantastic for getting your message to specific roles, e.g. decision makers)  School (great in the US, not so accurate elsewhere)  Skills (good for finding people with specific skills, but relies on them having entered these skills on their profile in the exact same format as you are searching)  Groups (really powerful for targeting specific groups within LinkedIn)  Gender  Age (split in to four age groups) Once you have selected your categories and entered the details of those you’d like to find, you’ll be given an indication of how many people you are targeting. A good campaign should target at least 10,000 if you are spending small amounts, but can go up to several millions if you have the budget. In addition, make sure you have chosen at least four options from the audience section. LinkedIn says a minimum of two should be selected, but we’ve found four to be fine for almost all adverts, bar the most niche of campaigns, which might be fine with just two selections. Remember that the more selections you make, the lower the potential audience. If you selected four, but the target level drops below 3,000, consider removing one of the selections.© 2012 Fresh Egg Limited – The Science of Social Media 72

26.5 Payment and bid price The final part of the advert placement is to choose the payment method. There are good arguments for both CPC (pay per click) and CPM (pay per thousand impressions) and the right option for you will depend on your goal and the type of advert you are running. Generally speaking, Fresh Egg has seen far more success through CPC adverts. The main reason for this is that LinkedIn will continue to serve ads to as many people as it can each day to drive up the chance of them clicking, and therefore earning money from you, whereas under a CPM model, LinkedIn earns money regardless of your advert’s exposure. Most adverts appear to suggest a bid price of $2.01 (you can only pay in US dollars right now), but reducing it to the minimum in these instances is fine, though this is still $2.00. You’ll also need to spend at least $10, with the usual suggestion set at $25.00. While you are experimenting, Fresh Egg recommends setting your spend to $10 and $2.00 bid price on CPC. This is especially true if you are testing multiple ads within one campaign, as these figures are per advert and not per campaign. If you have a specific time frame in mind, you can set this, but otherwise use the ‘Continuously’ mode. Just remember the amount you set is a daily amount, so don’t forget to turn it off once your campaign is completed. Finally, you’ll be asked for a payment method which can be Visa, Mastercard, American Express or Discover, but sadly there is no support for PayPal yet. Your first payment will include the $5 account activation fee.26.6 Monitoring success Once your advert has been approved and run, you’ll start to see figures added to your ‘Ad dashboard’, and example of which you can see below. You can then tweak adverts, turn them off and add or remove them from campaigns, depending on their success levels.We’ve regularly seen levels of around 0.1% clickthrough rate (CTR), so you’ll need to ensure youhave a profit margin that allows you to spend large amounts to get the clicks, but doesn’t affect© 2012 Fresh Egg Limited – The Science of Social Media 73

your bottom line on the product being sold. In our experience, LinkedIn Ads work well for the right products, but cheap products with tight margins, for example, won’t do so well. It’s also worth running multiple ads at the same time, using different copy and different images. It is not uncommon for us to run ten adverts at the same time to find out which one has the best CTR. Once you have had them up and running for a few days, it usually becomes really clear which one works best. Through this learning, you can cut down the amount of adverts you use in the future, saving money and time in the process. Each niche or segment is different, however, so don’t assume because one style of advert worked really well in one industry that it will perform as well in another.27. Events The events section on LinkedIn is extremely comprehensive and an often under-utilised section of the site. You can find the events section under the ‘More’ link in the navigation menu. Events can be searched through using a very wide range of search terms, but work best when accompanied by a location like ‘London’ or ‘UK’. The results are surprisingly accurate and then split further by other locations and industries, to help narrow down those events you might like to attend. You can click on the further locations to trim the list even more, should you wish. You can also order the events by date or relevance, and check out old events by ticking the ‘Include past events’ box in the filter section.Full details of each event are provided, including exact location, dates and a description of theevent. Crucially, you’ll also see who else is attending from LinkedIn.© 2012 Fresh Egg Limited – The Science of Social Media 74

28. LinkedIn Answers Our final section covers LinkedIn Answers, another undervalued area of LinkedIn. This area has a number of uses for you, your business and for a plethora of other reasons. Social media trainer, Nicky Kriel, lists 15 different reasons to use ‘Answers’:  Research – to find out more about a subject  Generate ideas  Check keywords and the terminology that people use in your business  Get answers from experts  Show your expertise by giving helpful answers  Get feedback and opinions on a topic  Raise your profile  Find experts by investigating the people answering questions  Test the market  Stay current within your industry  Find potential guest bloggers/writers  Find industry influencers  See the questions people ask and answer them on your website or blog  Make connections with people  Be seen as the expert in your area by regularly answering questions Fortunately, LinkedIn has made it really easy to use. To get to the ‘Answers’ section, use the ‘More’ link on the navigation menu. You’ll be presented with the options of asking a question or answering them, together with a list of the most recent questions from your own network and a league table for those experts who have racked up points.You can also search through old questions to find answers, or see which ones still needanswering. The Advanced Answers Search section is extremely comprehensive and provides away of finding specific questions and answers by drilling down through category, sub-categoryand sub-sub-category levels.© 2012 Fresh Egg Limited – The Science of Social Media 75

In addition, you’ll be able to easily monitor your own questions and answers via the ‘My Q&A’section.To help with your own profile, or perhaps just because you are a nice person, you can answerpeople’s questions and earn points, which could mean being featured on the front page.The important thing to remember is that LinkedIn Answers provides a massive catalogue ofexcellent resolutions to common problems and also gives you a chance to show your worth,experience and knowledge in a very public manner. You should also remember that yourresponses are logged to your account, so make sure that any answers you give are fully qualified,sourced and factually accurate - just as quickly as you can earn great kudos from great answers,your reputation can be badly damaged by a bad answer.© 2012 Fresh Egg Limited – The Science of Social Media 76

Facebook timeline Chapter 429. Introduction On 29 February 2012 Facebook launched time line for brands. Time line for brands works in a very similar way to that of time line for personal pages, however, the impact on the way in which brands use their Facebook page will change dramatically. We’ve made it easier to spot the good and the bad from the updates via the use of icons with a brief explanation of the change if you don’t have time to read the entire document. Signifies a positive change Signifies a negative change Signifies caution required30. Timing The first things you need to know are:  Time line for brands is available right now;  You don’t have to transfer your page over to time line right away;  The deadline for changing to the new pages is 30 March, after which Facebook will force the page live.31. Key changes The key changes and how they might affect your brand: 31.1 Page aesthetics The most striking changes occur at the top of the page. No longer do you have a “wall;” instead a “time line,” with the biggest addition being the cover image which allows a fantastic piece of real estate to display a brand image. The image size is 850x315 pixels and while Facebook offers a resizing and movement option, it currently doesn’t seem to be working as it should so Fresh Egg recommend an optimised image being created to the correct dimensions.© 2012 Fresh Egg Limited – The Science of Social Media 77

The first caution however is this: Facebook has been very specific about what you can and can’t post in this area. For example, you aren’t allowed to post special offers or discounts or in fact any calls to action whatsoever, not even a phone number or anything that might appear in your “about” section. Facebook says the cover image must NOT include:  Price or purchase information, such as \"40% off\" or \"Download it at our website;\"  Contact information, such as a web address, email, mailing address or other information intended for your page's “about” section;  References to user interface elements, such as Like or Share, or any other Facebook site features;  Calls to action, such as \"Get it now\" or \"Tell your friends.\" Covers must not be false, deceptive or misleading, and must not infringe on third parties' intellectual property. You may not encourage or incentivise people to upload your cover image to their personal timelines. Crucially too, the image quality in this section is very poor so careful consideration by designers will be required to ensure colours don’t bleed and that the image looks as good as it possibly can. Even the new Coca-Cola page suffers from this problem. “Add critical milestones to the timeline BEFORE it goes live and add interesting moments in time for your brand such as new products or critical changes” The other major change is the layout, now stored in time line order (by date) for all to see. This makes it incredibly important to ensure you review your history and ensure there is nothing there that could embarrass the brand. This information has always been there and it includes all Facebook activity since you owned the page (including all user comments), however it’s now ordered in such a way that makes it very easy to find by year and month. Great opportunity to add brand image at the top of the page No calls to action or advertising allowed in the image High degradation of image quality Historical posts are now much easier to find No calls to action or promotion allowed in the cover image31.2 Applications and tabs The other major change is the positioning of applications and tabs. In the past these were easily displayed on the left-hand side menu and frequently visited by users. Adding a new one was simple© 2012 Fresh Egg Limited – The Science of Social Media 78

and placement optimised and while it is still easy enough to add new tabs, there is a majorrestriction in place now.Firstly, the tab area has now been moved to just under the cover image at the top of the page, butit’s restricted initially to just four slots, as shown below:The first slot used is for photographs, while the second by default is the amount of likes. You can’treplace the photography tab, however all other tabs can be moved around.In addition to the top four tabs, a further eight can be added using the small down arrow with thenumber in it on the left-hand side of the tabs. The last eight slots are not shown by default whenthe page loads, and only appear when a user clicks on the down arrow making the top four slotsprime real estate for your applications and messages. “Clicking the tiny arrow at the end of tabs allows you to edit the positions of other tabs by then hovering over them and clicking the pen icon”Clicking on application tabs still works much the same as it did before, however the page that loadstakes users away from the time line and away from your like button, making it much harder toinclude “like-gate” competitions and applications, but not impossible.The new application pages have also changed and for the better. Instead of the highly restrictive510 pixels width limitation, new applications can use up to 810 pixels. Old applications are stilldisplayed, however they are shown in the centre of the page at their previous 510 pixel width andwith white space surrounding them. Updating these as soon as possible (if they are to becontinually used beyond 30 March) is crucial.Finally, the new tabs also require their own bespoke image thumbnails and old ones need to beupdated. Older applications will attempt to use a default image which doesn’t completely fill thenew area.You can add a new thumbnail to applications by initially clicking on the small down arrown in thetab section and then selecting the application by clicking on the pen icon (top right corner of theapp thumbnail) and finally selecting “edit settings.” This will bring up the edit box for theapplication allowing you to change the custom tab image. Note: you can’t change the default imagefor likes, photos or videos and the image dimensions of the new tab images are 111x74 pixels.© 2012 Fresh Egg Limited – The Science of Social Media 79

Slightly improved visual stimulus for tabs by introducing a tab image Fantastic improvement on tab pages with width increased to 810 pixels from 510. Limited tab exposure to just four in the top line Difficult to use drop down arrow hides a further eight tabs Limit of 12 tabs Update the tab thumbnails to use 111x74 pixels Update applications to take advantage of the 810 pixel width31.3 Welcome/landing pages The bad news is, welcome pages no longer work. At least you can’t force a user to land on the page when visiting your Facebook page as you could on the old version of pages. The good news is, welcome pages can still play a valid role in Facebook pages and can take advantage of the new increased 810 pixel width. Fresh Egg recommend disabling old welcome pages until the design fits the new 810 pixel width and these pages can still be made to inform users about the page through direct links from websites, Facebook adverts and through the placement of the tab in one of the four top row positions (if free). Forcing users to a welcome or landing page no longer works31.4 Pinning Pinning is a great new feature and one that should be adopted at the earliest opportunity. Simply put, pinning is like a sticky message you create that appears at the very top of the time line and stays there for seven days. It also appears in your natural time line. This can be used in many different ways including prompts to competitions, pieces of content that are important, key notes or new features, calls to action, new gallery uploads or anything important you want your fans to see first when they arrive on the page. “Pin posts to the top of the timeline that encourage engagement, a poll© 2012 Fresh Egg Limited – The Science of Social Media 80

or a question that is topical works really well”To pin a message, simply hover over a message and click the pen icon. A drop down menu willappear allowing you to “Pin to Top.” Once clicked, the message will be placed at the top of the timeline with a small orange icon signifying it has been pinned. Sadly, pinned items retain no history onwhether they were pinned or not once the seven day limit expires. Pinning content will become one of the most critical tools on time line for brands31.5 Private messages One of the excellent new features is “private messages.” This feature is a two way communication tool for both users and brands allowing brands to take the conversation away from the time line when required in to a much easier to manage customer service environment, which also allows the time line to stay clutter free. At the same time, it also allows users to directly message brands if they have problems or issues they want to discuss without placing this on the brand’s time line page. Some may argue this means there is less opportunity to show other users your brand listens and reacts; however some will still prefer to do this on the time line, and – whichever way they approach the brand – they should always be dealt with, in a positive and polite manner. Brands can now encourage users to message them when making a query on their time line rather than asking them to email or call or use a third party service. A user can message the brand by clicking on the “Message” icon at the top of the page.A brand can only message a user that has already messaged the brand. To reply, simply go to theadmin panel section and click on the message. A new page will load allowing the brand to directlymessage the user back.© 2012 Fresh Egg Limited – The Science of Social Media 81

Private messages are a crucial improvement for brandswanting to take problems and issues out of their Facebookpages.© 2012 Fresh Egg Limited – The Science of Social Media 82

31.6 Important size and image changes This section covers the various changes to image sizes in the new time line page. Cover image – 850x315 pixels Tab pages – 810 pixel width Tab thumbnails – 111x74 pixels Brand icon (main profile picture) – 180x180 pixels The increase in page width and addition of cover art are all positive moves The downside is the amount of work required to re-create all the old images in the new format32. Other features 32.1 Admin panel One of the new additions on time line pages is the admin panel. This is only visible to those who are already added to the admin list or the creator of the page. Clicking on the admin panel button gives access to all of the old features with a few different ways of getting to them.The admin panel also reveals information about the users interacting with the page including anyprivates messages sent to the brand, who recently liked the page, and the old style notificationswhich were difficult to find sometimes.There are also several other buttons in this new area titled “manage” (which gives options to usethe page as Facebook), “build audience” (which is home to all the promotional tools such as advertsand emailing people) and the “help” section.© 2012 Fresh Egg Limited – The Science of Social Media 83

Having all the admin functions in one easy to find panel is excellent32.2 Publicly available user information The new way of showing the amount of likes in the page (as part of the app thumbnails) also gives more information than previously when clicking on the link. In the past, this figure would show the amount of likes (fans) on the page and how many people were talking about it. Now, the page shows not only likes and interaction but also details about the page’s following such as demographic information and a graph on the rise and fall of activity. This information is now publicly available to fans or non-fans of the page. The example below shows Coca-Cola: Although there is caution here, there is nothing a brand can do about this information showing, but it has made keeping the Facebook page busy more important32.3 Use Facebook as the brand The ability to post as brand has not changed, although this activity has moved. If you have set your page settings to “Always comment and post as brand” in the “your settings” section of your admin panel, then you will post as brand on your page as normal.If however you have not ticked this option, you will need to switch to the brand when you go to thepage. To do this, open your admin panel, navigate to “Manage” and click the drop down box. At theend of this box, there is an option to “Use Facebook as” which needs to be clicked.© 2012 Fresh Egg Limited – The Science of Social Media 84

© 2012 Fresh Egg Limited – The Science of Social Media 85

33. Frequently asked questions 33.1 Should we upgrade to time line right away? While many brands will upgrade right away, Fresh Egg recommend ensuring the history of posts is reviewed first and that all of the image changes are made before putting the time line live. Brands have until 30 March 2012 before being forced to change, therefore putting in place a strategy to manage the various resources that will be required to move to time line (graphic design, application updates, post checking) is the most important thing.“Even when your brand page is ready to go live, spend some timefamiliarising yourself with the position of options in the new adminpanel, it will save a lot of time in the future” Brands who have easy access to update the brand image, tab thumbnails and application images should consider switching quickly, especially if they have no issue with historical posts or applications that are not going to end in the next few weeks before the deadline. For those brands that have expensive applications using the old 510 pixel width where the application wouldn’t be used after the deadline should avoid switching to the new time line until the application has ended. This will avoid lengthy changes and extra costs which would be incurred to upgrade the applications to meet the new dimensions of time line.33.2 When should we upgrade? Brands should upgrade as soon as they are happy they have updated all of the images to the correct dimensions, reviewed all of the historical posts or are happy with them being displayed and have altered all applications to take advantage of the new size rules, although making sure the applications work correctly in time line is also critical, especially if using third party applications that don’t yet support time line.33.3 What do we need to do before upgrading?  Review ALL of the posts on the time line, removing any which the brand feels contradict the ethos or values of the brand or that could be potentially embarrassing;  Ensure all of the applications in use are fully optimised for time line, including the correct 810 pixel width, the app thumbnails and the way they work;  Update all imagery to the new standard sizes and ensure a professional, non-marketing image is added to the cover art section;  Update any critical “about” section elements, especially as these cannot be placed in the image header. This includes corrects telephone number, address and biography;  Add the original date of company formation or foundation to the timeline. Without doing so, you will not be able to add any other milestones;  Add interesting facts to the timeline via the milestones option including changes of office, new, significant product launches and anything you think users might find interesting;  Ensure you get used to how “pinning” posts works;© 2012 Fresh Egg Limited – The Science of Social Media 86

 Familiarise yourself with all of the new options, where they are and how to do the simple things such as post moderation, image uploads and changing the position of thumbnails in the tab section. “If you don’t have the resource to make these changes or you would like advice on implementing time line for brands before 30 March, please give Fresh Egg a call”33.4 How do we get our welcome page back? Sadly, the welcome page system will not work the same way as it did before. Brands can still have a welcome page, but you cannot currently force people to land on the page when they come to the Facebook page, instead they will always land on the default time line.33.5 How does like-gating work on time line? This is another option which Facebook didn’t like on the old pages and therefore has not come over to time line. There is currently no way of like-gating a page in the same way as the old pages (forcing them to the page), however there is a work around. If you have a page which requires “liking” the page to enter a competition or use an application, you can still do this. Ensure the new welcome or landing page is 810 pixels wide and physically include within the code of the page a “like” button which likes your Facebook page. Prompt the user to press the like button to enter/proceed and the application can work just the same as it did before. You can also consider using Facebook adverts to drive people to this page and don’t forget how powerful the new “pinning” feature is as you could post on the time line about the competition or page and link to it from the post. Once done, simply pin the post and it will remain at the top of the time line for seven days. You can also move the application around in the tab section to one of the top four positions.© 2012 Fresh Egg Limited – The Science of Social Media 87

Top 20 Twitter tools Chapter 534. Introduction With Twitter set to have 250 million active users worldwide by the end of 2012 and 340 million tweets being sent every day, it’s safe to say that Twitter is one social media channel that has become a big part not just of the digital community but also the public domain in general. As a social media practitioner, it’s important to work out how to use Twitter to best benefit you and your clients. And, like most social media channels, Twitter can become a time sink. Therefore, you also want to ensure you are saving time by choosing the right Twitter tools. Twitter itself has a number of inbuilt functions or ‘tools’ that can be used to help you, but it’s away from Twitter that developers have taken the API and created a huge number of third party tools. These vary in their function from tracking hashtags to fully-blown management and monitoring systems. The sheer number makes it hard to work out which ones are worth using and which may just suck away your valuable time, so this guide aims to offer some recommendations on which tools to use and why. With literally hundreds of Twitter tools available today, this ‘Top 20’ is by no means exhaustive. However, all the tools featured here are free to use or simply require a Twitter login. Some of them do have ‘Pro’ plans available, but in most cases you can use the free version first before deciding whether you do want to commit some of your budget to it. It’s worth pointing out that there is not one tool that will do everything you want. Therefore, it is worth testing and playing with a number of them to find out which combinations work best for you and your requirements.35. Types of tools Twitter tools come in a range of sizes, flavours and uses, from full-blown management and monitoring suites to simple, single function ‘apps’. 35.1 Tool categories The categories below have been identified in order to help show what sort of functions each of the suggested Twitter tools can be used for: Management & monitoring – Allow you to manage your Twitter account or accounts. Tweet or direct message using these, plus monitor brand mentions, people, trends and key phrases Analysis & reporting – Use these to drill down into the effectiveness of a Twitter account, plus create a range of stats, charts and graphs for reporting Hashtags/trending – Finding what the trending hashtags or trending phrases are, plus measuring them© 2012 Fresh Egg Limited – The Science of Social Media 88

Lists – Allow you to create lists of Twitter users, public or private Building followers/fans – Helps you to build up followers for an account Link shortening – Used to shorten long links and give you more characters for your message Each Twitter tool listed has been marked in accordance to which of these categories they would be most used for. They may well also have secondary uses.36. Top 20 tools This list of top 20 free Twitter tools is not ranked in order of importance, although some of the larger full management tools have been placed at the beginning. 36.1 TweetDeck TweetDeck is considered by many within the social media industry as the Daddy (or Big Bird) of Twitter management and monitoring tools. It was first developed in 2008 by Brit Iain Dodsworth and steadily gained popularity. In May 2011 it was acquired by Twitter (for a rumoured $40-50 million), and it was then that its usage really took off. The basic set-up of TweetDeck, which has been copied by many subsequent social media monitoring tools, is the use of columns for a range of ‘feeds’. You start by adding your account or accounts and then choose which of these feeds you want to display for each. These feeds include:  Mentions – Any mentions of your name or @Twitter name  Interactions – Your mentions, retweets, favourites, follows and list additions in real time  Search – Shows any saved or recent searches, or allows you to make a new one  Messages – Your inbox for direct messages  Lists – Content from lists you have subscribed to or created  Trends – Allows you to view trends(this can be filtered geographically if required) The range of these feeds means that it’s very easy to keep an eye on your competitors’ Twitter activity, mentions for your brand on Twitter or searches for specific key phrases or hashtags. The design of TweetDeck allows you to quickly and easily move your columns (from left to right), as well as clearing the results in them or removing them completely. TweetDeck also allows you to tweet or send DMs directly from it. You can add images and also schedule your tweets for a specific date and time. One word of warning: if you have multiple accounts set up, double-check which account you are tweeting on behalf of BEFORE clicking the send tweet button!© 2012 Fresh Egg Limited – The Science of Social Media 89

If you find that are receiving lots of updates about a specific topic or from a user you no longer wantto see, then there is a useful ‘Filtering’ function which allows you to cut down on the ‘noise’.TweetDeck is perfect if you have to manage multiple Twitter accounts or if you want to create alarge number of feeds for a single one. If you want to make lists of people without them knowing, ensure these are set to ‘Private’ when you create themAs well as Twitter, TweetDeck also allows management of Facebook accounts for Pages andpersonal accounts. These are set up and used in the same way as Twitter accounts.TweetDeck is currently free to use, which has helped greatly with its popularity. www.tweetdeck.com36.2 HootSuite HootSuite is another social media management tool and is similar in many ways to TweetDeck. However, it is integrated to support a large number of social networks, such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, WordPress and several others. The layout is fairly similar to TweetDeck in that there are a number of feeds for each account displayed in columns.© 2012 Fresh Egg Limited – The Science of Social Media 90

One neat feature of Hootsuite is the ‘Teams’ function, which particularly suits companies withseveral staff that are involved with social media activities. This allows several people to log in to thesame HootSuite account, give users different levels of access, plus assign messages for specificpeople to respond to.HootSuite has a range of functions under what it calls ‘Message Management’, which allow you to: Publish – Create and send tweets (or other social media messages), schedule and geo-target Monitor – Create search streams for @mentions, hashtags etc Use the ‘Schedule in Bulk’ function to ensure you have tweets going out across downtimes such as weekends, evenings or even when you know you’re going away on holidayAlso there is a built-in link shortener (Ow.ly), which allows you to track click-through and site visits.One advantage of HootSuite over TweetDeck, especially if you are using it for multiple social mediachannels, is the integrated custom analytics function. You can hook up your Google Analytics,Facebook Insights, Twitter and Google+ analytics to create reports.There are a variety of plans and pricing options for HootSuite.The free version only allows you tohave a maximum of 5 social profiles, therefore if you are looking to monitor for more than onebrand then you may need to go for the Pro option, which is available from $9.99 per month. www.hootsuite.com36.3 SocialBro SocialBro is another complete Twitter tool for management and monitoring. It allows you to analyse, manage and report on your Twitter community, with a huge number of additional functions.© 2012 Fresh Egg Limited – The Science of Social Media 91

Additionally, if you manage multiple Twitter users, it allows you do this all from the same mainaccount – you simply add new users and synchronise them.The intelligent dashboard layout groups your followers and friends (those you follow) into sectionsdependent on activity – New, Inactive, Active, etc. This means that at a glance you can spotpotential bots or spammers then block them to quickly clean up your twitter account.The dashboard also allows you to drag and drop the various reporting blocks around to match yourpersonal preferences.Highlight management features include: Seeing who follows you, who you don’t follow back and vice versa Backing up your entire community to a local database that can also be used offline Managing your Twitter lists and moving these easily from account to accountHighlight analytics features include: Visualisation of your followers on a map Running reports on thebest time to tweet Visualisation of your community in chartsYou can also tweet and DM from SocialBro, as well as search and tweet people directly.Another great feature is the ‘Filtering’ function. You can use this to find new Twitter followers bylanguage, number of followers, number of tweets per day and more. You can even search to see ifthey use the default Twitter avatar or a custom one.SocialBro also had a link up with PeerIndex.com, which allows you to see the ‘influence’ rankings foryour accounts and also all other users. You can view the factors of influence, authority, activity andaudience.© 2012 Fresh Egg Limited – The Science of Social Media 92

A recent addition to SocialBro is ‘Real-Time Analytics’, which shows live Twitter activity in relation to yours using 100 accounts every 10 seconds. SocialBro is currently free to use. www.socialbro.com36.4 Trendsmap Trendsmap is a tool that displays real time local Twitter trends in a very visual way. The main area of the site is a map of the globe, which is littered with words. These words are topics, keyphrases or hashtags that are popular on Twitter in real-time. New trends appear and disappear, with those that are trending remaining constant. At a glance you can see the more popular trends, as these are displayed with larger boxes.The map allows you to manually grab and scroll across the globe, plus zoom in and out to locallevels. The data doesn’t go right down to villages or small towns, but it’s certainly good enough toshow you trends for regions and larger towns. There’s also a search box to find either locations ortopics quickly. If you’re running any local campaigns then use Trendsmap as a way of discovering Twitter users with authority in particular locations© 2012 Fresh Egg Limited – The Science of Social Media 93

Another useful section of the site is shown when you click on a specific country or town, whereupon you are presented with a snapshot of information for that request including:  Latest local trends (these scroll through in real-time)  Trending local links  Trending videos  Trending images  Popular people  Latest tweets  Weekly popular tags Trendsmap is free to use and no sign-up is required. www.trendsmap.com36.5 HashTracking HashTracking is a really useful site that creates extensive reports on a singular hashtag. This is ideal if you have used one in a campaign or event and need to report on the effectiveness of it. The tool is currently in a closed beta state, which means you have to just register your email address to be notified when it is out of beta. However, you can still run free sample reports on hashtags – the one drawback is they only report on activity within the past 24 hours. Generating a report for a specific hashtag is free – you simply have to connect with a Twitter account.© 2012 Fresh Egg Limited – The Science of Social Media 94

The report shows how many impressions were generated for a specific hashtag and how manyfollowers they reached in the past 24 hours. It also shows who the top 10 tweeters for the hashtagwere by number of impressions, as well as who sent the most tweets and who has the mostfollowers.The report also shows how many original tweets there were, how many retweets and how many@mentions there were.One thing to note is that it uses on a sample of 1,500 tweets when it generates the report, so thiswill not give you all Twitter activity that has involved a particular hashtag if it is very popular.HashTracking.com is currently free to use, but it is in closed beta so there are no pricing plansavailable for extended reporting yet.www.hashtracking.com© 2012 Fresh Egg Limited – The Science of Social Media 95

36.6 TweetReach TweetReach is a really simple tool that measures the effectiveness of a particular tweet. This makes it useful for reporting on tweets that form part of a campaign or even to test your tweets to see how different factors can affect their success. By entering a screen name, hashtag, phrase or URL you can see results for reach, exposure and impressions.The report also gives you details of the contributors, top contributors, most retweeted tweets and atweets timeline.The snapshot reports are free, but only show the most recent 50 tweets. However, this is a greatway to give you an idea of how something has performed.One excellent feature of TweetReach is that you can save the reports (if you register, which is free),print them or even export them as Excel and PDF documents. Use the contributors and top contributors lists to identify key users for you to follow and engage withTweetReach allows you to run a free ‘snapshot’ report, but there is also a TweetReach Pro service,available from $84 per month, that allows you to measure tweets in real-time with a Tracker. It alsogenerates snapshots of recent tweets with individual reports.© 2012 Fresh Egg Limited – The Science of Social Media 96

www.tweetreach.com36.7 Follower Wonk Follower Wonk is a really useful tool for analysing and growing your Twitter community. Its five core functions are:  Search Twitter bios – Search your followers, friends or the whole of Twitter  Compare users – See how your competitors stack up  Analyse followers – See who the followers/friends of any account are  Track followers – View changes in your social graph  Sort followers – Sort your followers by name, account age, etc. Requires paid credits If you’re looking to target particular followers or grow your community with the right sort of people then Follower Wonk is perfect. A good example is if you were looking for “social media bloggers”, where a quick bio search would pull up all those who have it listed. When signed in you can follow these directly from the list, but you are also presented with a large amount of information, such as number of followers, number of people they follow, age of account and also an influence score.There’s also a neat ‘advanced search’ feature so you can filter based on factors such as location,name, URL or even number of followers.© 2012 Fresh Egg Limited – The Science of Social Media 97

Follower Wonk is free to use, but has a credits system. Credits can be earnt are renewed every two hours;, you are given 25 as a non-logged in user and 150-250 as a logged in one. You use them up by searching bios, comparing users and analysing followers. There are a large number of things you can do using credits, and there is also the option to buy them in order to use some of the more advanced features or if you are running lots of regular searches. Use Follower Wonk in conjunction with TweetDeck to build your Twitter lists. Find the followers you want using the search functions of Follower Wonk then add their names into your TweetDeck lists directly www.followerwonk.com36.8 Twitterfeed Twitterfeed is a really simple tool to use and, as its name suggests, allows you to connect feeds automatically to your Twitter (or Facebook) account. This is useful if you want to automatically tweet out your blog posts or other feed-related content.And, since it’s from the people behind bit.ly, it naturally comes with a tracking function that countsclickthroughs.upsetting it up is super-quick – just add an RSS feed source and give your feed a name. There’s alsosome advanced settings so you can decide on the frequency of posting (to avoid potentialspamming), refine what from the blog you want to post (title, description or both) plus prefix orsuffix your post (which is handy for adding hashtags).© 2012 Fresh Egg Limited – The Science of Social Media 98

Twitterfeed is currently free to use with just a sign up required. www.twitterfeed.com36.9 TweetStats TweetStats offers a snapshot of stats for Twitter accounts in a graphical and easy-to-read format. Simply enter a Twitter name (yours or someone else’s) and click the button. It takes a few minutes to run, but you are then taken to a dashboard with charts and graphs split into two separate areas: Tweet Stats and Tweet Cloud.Tweet Stats: Timeline of tweets – Number of tweets by month from when your account started Tweet density – When you tweet, by time of day and days of the week Aggregate daily tweets Aggregate hourly tweets Replies to – Which accounts are replied to the most Interface used – Which interfaces are used most Who you RTTweet Cloud:This shows you two clouds, one with the most popular words you use and one with the hashtagsyou use. The more you use a word or hashtag, the bigger the size it is in the cloud. By clicking onthese words or hashtags you can see the tweets that they are used in.© 2012 Fresh Egg Limited – The Science of Social Media 99

You can update the stats every 8 hours if required by simply re-entering your username. TweetStats is currently free to use. There is an option to ask for more advanced statistical reporting, which is likely to have a cost attached. www.tweetstats.com36.10 Listorious Listorious is a useful quick search tool that allows you to find ‘experts’ on Twitter. Searching for tags or keyphrases gives you the information of relevant Twitter users, including their bio, profile picture and number of followers. If you’re signed in to Twitter then you can follow people directly.The same search allows you to select ‘Lists’ and be presented with results to match. Again, whensigned in you just hit the ‘Follow’ button and the list is yours.Listorious is also a good way of promoting your own account on Twitter. It takes just a minute to listyourself, which you can do by tagging your account with six tags you want to be known for. www.listorious.com36.11 Twitter Counter Twitter Counter is another useful reporting and analysis tool to give you some basic headline stats. By entering your account name then signing in to Twitter, it will give you a host of stats about your followers, who you are following and your tweets.© 2012 Fresh Egg Limited – The Science of Social Media 100