Kathy Hokunson

My 5 Favorite Management Tips for Twitter

Thursday, February 25th, 2010

I am often asked – “How can you possibly have time to tweet and keep up with Linkedin and everything else out there? Don’t you have a job to do??”

First of all, engaging with social media is a big part of my job. It has provided me both professional and personal returns in a very large way. (Check out my post on My Social Media ROI).

But having said that, yes it is hard to keep all those balls in the air and be as productive as possible. Here are the tools that help me manage my social media life without spending all day “being social”.

1) News sources: I like igoogle for staying ahead of information and having fresh interesting content to share. I have found that utilizing an igoogle homepage with my favorite news sources and industry blog right at my fingertips makes it more productive to quickly scan and read things that grab my attention.

2) Twitter & your community: I like Hootsuite. I have tried possibly every twitter tool available. I was a fan of tweetdeck, but finally switched over to Hootsuite because of the delayed tweet feature. I like to consistently interact with my community so having the ability to queue up tweets for the day allows me to focus more on my work and checkin with Twitter only periodically. I don’t like to follow people who send too many tweets at once, which I find helps me keep the more relevant communications at the top. With the delayed tweet feature you can post several thoughts, but space them out so you aren’t burying people with your info all at once.

3) Research and monitoring: Again, Hootsuite is great for this. I create search columns for terms relevant to clients and prospects I am working with. I also have search columns established for clients and their brands – One of the ways to stay ahead of their online reputation.

4) Measuring engagement: I like bit.ly’s URL shortener with its easy click tracking, but not sure it is better than any of the others. I like having a bit.ly account so I can monitor click activity for information I share. It helps to know what people find valuable and interesting and what didn’t engage people.

5) Building a quality community: To help me add valuable twitterers to my community I refernce Hubspots Grader page quite a bit. You can research top twitters by location. It helps to make sure I am engaging with people in my area that are relevant to my goals and objectives with social media.

There are a TON of great tools out there, and everyone has one that matches their goals, objectives, and personal style.

I would love to hear about all the tools you are using to manage your online presence and why you like them! I may even be inclined to switch .

Posted in Social Media, Twitter | No Comments »

Watching a Social Media “Case Study” Unfold . . .

Saturday, February 20th, 2010

My husband is a very “green” guy. He is a landscape designer with a passion for what’s native and natural. He is a creative soul and is an excellent writer. In early 2009 he started blogging about his passion – plants, garden design, organics, natives etc.. He also started using social media as a way to learn and engage with people who had a similar passion. Quickly he developed a group of like-minded friends and bloggers from across the country, and across the globe, through Twitter, facebook and Linkedin. As his social media community grew, so did traffic to his website and blog.

This past December another garden blogger, Susan Morrison , asked Scott, Susan Cohan and Rebecca Sweet to join her in a bloglink titled “Do Garden Designers Practice What They Preach?“. They idea was they would all write their own blog post on the subject, link to the other three bloggers, publish at the on the same day and time and promote it through social media – Twitter, facebook and Linkedin. That week Scott’s blog had the highest amount of traffic and comments he had ever seen on his blog – 204 visits and 16 comments. Prior to this the weekly average was 86 visitors. Additionally, the traffic continued beyond that week and since then his blog has continued to see improved traffic and positioning, which he has supported with increasing the regularity of his postings.

They decided to do a second bloglink but this time they had 13 garden design bloggers from across the country discussing regional diversity in garden design. Again, another high for Scott’s blog, 322 visitors and 36 comments.

They all enjoyed the experience immensely and decided to organize a group of designers and bloggers to bloglink every month. Topics were chosen, a schedule was established and The Garden Designers Roundtable was born. A facebook fan page was created and in under 48 hours they had over 500 fans and today, two weeks after the fan page was launched, they have over 700 fans. WOW – the power of community is amazing!

It was exciting to watch this grass roots social media experience evolve. It surprises me that people still consider the use of social media as a toy or play thing. The potential it offers for growing businesses and establishing industry authority is significant. What are YOU waiting for??

I would love to hear about other exciting social media success stories – please share them with us here.

Posted in Social Media | 1 Comment »

My Social Media ROI – The Top 10 List

Monday, December 7th, 2009

When I start discussing work with my friends and family and they discover what I do, the conversation always turns to social media and people start to challenge me. I get questions like: “You spend time on Twitter? Really? Why?” and “Isn’t it a complete waste of time?” or “How do you know it’s worth it?” When I start to explain why I am fully engaged with Social Media and what has occurred because of it, they really start to listen. So I decided to share my ROI; what I consider to be the top 10 things that have happened to me as a result of twitter.

1) People. Friendships and business connections. Through Tweetups or Tweetcrawls (where local twitter people gather together to network, IRL) I have met some awesome people, incredible professionals, and gained a strong respect for the community of peers I interact with.

2) New Places. Through my husband’s (@ScottHokunson) Horticulture twitter community we went on a Tweetup to the Innisfree Gardens in Millbrook, NY. It was a beautiful place and I met incredibly talented horticulture and garden people.

3) Business. Business opportunities have been referred to me by people I met through twitter and Tweetups. Yes BUSINESS OPPORTUNITIES!!

4) Education. Keeping ahead of my industry. By engaging with those I follow and following those who lead this industry, I have been lead to information and resources that otherwise may have never fallen in my lap. It has helped me to be a stronger and better professional for my clients.

5) Resources. I have developed resources to which I can refer my clients when what they need is outside of my scope of services.

6) Promotion. The ability to effectively promote my events and drive traffic to them. We have had better attended seminars and webinars because of our use of Social Media.

7) Growth. 10 months ago Site-Seeker, Inc. was a company that was completely unknown in the Connecticut / Massachusetts market – no revenue and no clients. We are now a known competitor with a strong reputation, a significant account base, and solid revenue and we utilized social media to help introduce ourselves here.

8) Community Service. Fundraising has been undertaken on a whole new level. Suzi Craig and Lisa Davenport put together a significant fundraiser for Operation Home for the Holidays in under three weeks. With the participation and support of local celebrities – Ann Nyberg & Damon Scott and the twitter community, their one day event raised 12,000 to help bring home CT National Guard troops for this coming holiday break. It was thrilling to be a part of such an incredible event and to be of service to our community.

9) Services. I was in need of a new head shot and avatar. Thanks to Seshu and my interaction with him on twitter, I finally had that done. It was an awesome experience to work with such a professional photographer and it has added a new level of professionalism to my social media profiles and my events pages for our seminars and webinars. (By the way, if you need a good photographer check out @picseshu !)

10) People. Okay I know this is a repeat but you always start and finish with the best. Truly the best part of social media is the people you meet and interact with, and the caliber of these people is top notch – and yes you really do interact both in cyperspace and IRL (in real life).

When people challenge me about the time I am “wasting” on social media, it is easy to show them how it is one of the best uses of time today to promote your company and your brand, to develop authority and become a trusted name in your industry. To me, the ROI is easy to measure.

So, what is on your top 10 social media list?

Tags: Connecticut, CT, Hartford, New England, Social Media, Social Media for Business, Social Media for Manufacturing, Social Media ROI, Twitter, Twitter for Business, Twitter ROI
Posted in B2B, Social Media, Twitter | 25 Comments »