By Dennis D. McDonald, Ph.D.

For additional titles in this series see Social Media Engagement Tips: Don’t Give Up on Email Just Yet and Social Media Engagement Tips: Don’t Drop the Ball .

I admit it — I use Twitter. If I’m at my desk I check in throughout the day (I don’t access it by phone but by browser). Right now I follow 690 and 1,432 follow me, so I’m certainly no “A-lister.”

I do find it useful (and admittedly, entertaining). I use it to post news about new blog posts of mine, to respond with wry or sarcastic comments to the tweets of others, and to post links to interesting stuff I notice as I scan the news throughout the day. Occasionally stuff I post gets “retweeted” so that makes me happy (though I have not attempted to calculate the ROI of re-tweeting). I’m regularly pleased by the links provided by folks whom I’m following that provide insights into topics I’m tracking. Following Twitter will never replace Search, I believe, but it’s a useful component of what in the technical publishing world we used to call “current awareness” only here the currency value is dependent ...

Well, Danny Sullivan has put his finger on something many of us have been wondering about - how come the traffic from Social Media is much less than it ought to be and know it to be?

“….. One leading argument has been that some Twitter applications on mobile devices load pages within the application, rather than using an external browser, and so aren’t getting registered by Google Analytics. Also, some mobile browsers might not process JavaScript. I could see at least four iPhone-based requests like this. But there were plenty of other requests that appear to be from full-fledged desktop-based browsers. Why weren’t they showing up?

One clue is that of the 34 requests, only 5 of them contained “referrer” data, information that some browsers pass on that indicate how they found the page in the first place. For Google Analytics (or ANY analytics program) to properly indicate how much traffic a particular site is driving, it needs as much referrer data as it can get.”

When you add mobile applications  that often can’t load javascript AND add other applications that don’t generate a referral, it makes sense the traffic we think we’re seeing vs. the traffic we actually get, .. ... read more >>

You’ve built a team. You’ve sorted out some roles and responsibilities. You’ve got a listening tool system in place, and you’ve got a sense of what you’re going to say. Now it’s time to start participating - in other words, talking to your customers online, in the places where they congregate.

For some organizations, getting ready for that may mean a discussion (or a series of them) with IT and management about dissolving certain firewall restrictions and/or being able to install applications on individual desktops. This means laying out your case for social media participation in compelling and clear terms: “We know our customers are asking for us to be present on these sites because of X learnings we’ve captured through monitoring. We have selected Y sites as our outposts and Z tools for internal and external communication because….. Here’s what the time and capital requirements will be for our team and the expected benefits to our participation….” (You get the idea).
You may need to do some negotiating and addressing of concerns and potential risks and rewards of social media participation. To help do that, consider the tools you’ll need to make that participation as effectiv..... read more >>

Let’s be clear, there are no rules for who you need to follow on twitter.  You follow who you want, block you want, and talk to whomever you want to talk to.  I’ve had several people tell me that I should follow them or that it’s twitter etiquette to follow everyone who follows you.  I want to be very clear about who I follow and why I follow them.

I respect and value every twitter follower I have but I cannot follow 1,300 peop... read more >>