Unified Studies - Portland Social Media, Web Design, and Web development

Umpqua Presentation on Social Media for Small Business

At long last I gave my presentation on social media for small business at the Umpqua Bank on South Waterfront. My deep and sincere thanks to Tom Bennett for his awesome and huge contribution. Turn-out was disappointing in terms of numbers, but not in terms of the enthusiasm of those who did show up. One question that came up that I didn't have a ready answer for was Multiple people using one twitter account.

One of the businesses in attendance wanted to enable multiple members of their team to post to a single twitter account, by texting from their different phones.

When the question of "can this be done"...I said I was sure there was a work-around...(isn't there always?)

Despite having asked the question, the questioner met my response above with "Twitter says very clearly that you can't. So."

But if I say you can and twitter says you can't who you gonna believe? Well...twitter I imagine. Here's what they have to say:

Can I use the same phone number on multiple accounts, or have multiple phone numbers for the same account?

No.  You can only use one phone number for one account.

***

OK....done and done, right?

Not so fast!

What about this?

Set up a TwitterMail account. Then, everyone you want to give access to post to your Twitter account simply adds the email address in their cell phone address book and sends an MMS message to it. It posts to Twitter...I think that different providers have different protocols for sending text to an email address, but it can certainly be done.

that would work wouldn't it?

The above common sense solution, or most of it anyway, was from a discussion happening here:

http://www.sitepoint.com/forums/showthread.php?threadid=614455

 

Tom also mentioned using Hootsuite. Sensible solution too, adding multiple editors to your hootsuite account.

 

Also gave a "case study" of gDiaper's use of social media and community building. They do it right.

http://www.gdiapers.com/fair-dinkum/gdiapers-community

 

A big shout-out and thank you to the people from Little Red Press, who made the presentation worthwhile with their enthusiasm and attention, and the fact that they said it was "inspiring".

Thank you!

New survey from Razorfish - 40% of People "Friend" Brands on Facebook

40% of People "Friend" Brands on Facebook...that is one of the findings from a new survey from Razorfish who questioned 1000 "connected consumers". ReadWriteWeb does their usual excellent breakdown and analysis here.

Another crazy stat from the survey....33% of respondents report they get their news from Facebook. That is both amazing and....hard to believe...but there it is!

Simple takeaway...brands/businesses ignore the social web at their own peril...true this survey is "connected consumers" but...it won't be long before that category includes just about everyone.

Hospitals, Health Care and Social Media

The Health Care system is something that virtually every citizen interacts with over and over. As such it seems like a natural for those within the system to try exploring how social media might be of benefit to their customers/clients, as well as how it might impact internal communications and processes.

Ed Bennett, who is, according to his blog, a hospital web manager in the University of Maryland medical system, gave a presentation on Hospitals and Social Media at the  J. Boye conference e-Health track. He cites some interesting examples of social media usage...for instance, the MD Anderson Cancer Center used Twitter, YouTube and Facebook to promote use of referring physician portals...and tracked a 9.5% increase in registrations.

Henry Ford Health used Twitter in it's education program, to do a series of live Twitter-casts of surgeries....with real time Q and A with the surgeons, and garnered national press attention...and had over 500 following in real-time.

Innovis Health used a blog and Twitter during the floods in Fargo, North Dakota...they created the blog and had an update up in the first hour of the emergency...which lead to decreased media demands, and freed up phone lines for emergencies.

I can definitely see how, in the very competitive field of health care, using social media properly can become a real differentiator between service providers, and a potential real competitive advantage.

Non-profits, social media, and cause marketing.

Wow...here is a pretty comprehensive breakdown of a social media campaign, run by Scott Henderson of MediaSauce for Share Our Strength. The best part is the post-op he does, identifying where mistakes might have been made...no campaign is perfect.

Cause Marketing or Cause Me to Puke Marketing

Any non-profit looking to jump into the cause marketing pool, should read and learn. From Beth Kanter's excellent blog.

Enterprise Micro Sharing Tools Comparison

Enterprise Micro Sharing Tools Comparison 11032008

Publish at Scribd or explore others: School Work Research twitter status

25 Small Business Twitter Tips - Small Business and Social Media

Great list/post on Kyle Lacy's blog, entitled "25 Small Business Twitter Tips"
http://tinyurl.com/cbb4cx

It's pretty simple stuff...all stuff that any small business should be considering these days as social media awareness becomes as "must-have" as a business card. At a minimum, small business should be AWARE of potential uses for social media to improve their bottom line and efficiency, so they can make a conscious decision as to how (or if) to engage in the evolving world of social media.

Commercial Real Estate Values and B2B Social Media

1. I am an avid fan/follower of Stocktwits. It's a demonically clever service built on top of the Twitter platform. I get incredible insight and information on markets, economics  and politics every day there.

A favorite topic not too long ago in that community was real estate...the housing market has collapsed, what was next. Commercial real estate of course. Malls all over are emptying out (customers and tenants), as the economic contraction takes its toll on spending/consumption/jobs.

What are the malls doing to help themselves?

2. There has been a lot of blogging/twittering etc., lately, about how Small Business can use social media to help with their marketing and their bottom line. Well, what about the businesses that rely on small business as their customers?

The above two points make me wonder what use are marketing directors at malls making  of social media. Does your local mall have a social Media strategy? Maybe they do...I am just unable to find evidence of it where I am.

At a minimum...when I walk in the mall, and there is a HUGE sign that say something like "Welcome to this Mall, where it's super fun, etc!"  maybe that giant sign should have big black letters against a white background that says "twitter.com/thisMall". Right now, that sign is just wasted space.

And sales info could go out once a day to their twitter followers...maybe they pick one store a day to have a loss-leader type sale.

And furthermore...maybe the Mall ought to be providing seminars for their tenants....the "rising tide lifts all boats" approach....though I see that some tenants in the malls are using facebook, etc....surely there is more they could do, and for many shop owners this would all be brand new and useful information.

And. What other businesses rely on small businesses (in aggregate) for their business? Banks, credit unions, etc.?

Well...what is your local Community Credit Union's social media strategy? (Again, maybe they have a comprehensive one...I can't tell.)

Could they provide information (or a quick seminar) about some tools and strategies to their small business accounts? If nothing else, it would show that they are thinking hard about how to help their accounts with added value and attention.

Umpqua Bank is famous locally for their innovations in retail banking. They even have their own (I think) social network called Local Spaces. But...I believe that it's proprietary and closed? (see their response in the comments below).

And. What other institutions/organizations have small biz in the aggregate that they rely on?

Churches?  Business and trade associations? (i do note lots of how-to workshops in this sector)  City governments?

At any rate...the churn in tenants in shopping malls here is obvious...it I were in charge of keeping those store fronts occupied, I wouldn't dismiss the low cost/potential high value of using social media to generate a little bit of community, foot traffic, interest and good will among tenants and....value added for would-be tenants.