A constant stream of information is flowing across your screen. Some of it looks useful. Most of it looks like something you’d overhear at a restaurant.

And none of it seems like it would help your business.

I’m not one who believes that Twitter is the right tool for every business. But in the right situation, with the correct plan, and with solid execution, it can be a powerful method of communicating with current and prospective customers.

The Outsource Resource is hosting a workshop on Twitter for Beginners on February 11th. The workshop will be hands on, focusing on how to leverage Twitter to have a material impact on your business.

The instructor, Chris Anderson, is an avid user of Twitter for business purposes. He’s very experienced in explaining digital media to small business owners, and in educating them in its proper usage. He’s also a witty speaker, so the workshop is bound to be both entertaining and useful.

The seating in this workshop is very limited, so it’s sure to sell out. Signup soon!

Action #1: Find Hoover’s D&B landing page used as the example in the “Lessons Learned from Five Internet Marketing Experts”

One of the five panelists in this session, Peter Poulin, Executive Vice President of Marketing at Hoover’s Inc. shared with the audience the various iterations of their strategy as they tested design elements, layouts and calls to action on their site. One interesting discovery was that there was a higher conversion rate when they used an image of a blonde woman versus a brunette. It was easy to tell that this stirred up some debate at the various tables because it received a lot of buzz on Twitter. It certainly gives new meaning to “blondes have more fun.”

I intend to find the example landing page he used during his presentation to see the design they ultimately settled on. If I can get a copy of the presentation, that would be a bonus!

Action #2: Download Brian Masey’s presentation “Killing Brad Pitt: Why Buyers Fail to Take Action on Your Web site”

Brian Masey with Conversion Sciences, delivered one of my favorite presentations of the day focusing on the various personas that come to your site. He categorized four different types of buyers:

• Competitive (highly logical but quick to make decisions) – respond well to Ratings, Guarantees, Newness, Brand, Appeal to Others
• Methodical (also highly logical but take time to make decisions) – respond to Case Studies, Process, Samples, Standards, Competing Solutions
• Spontaneous (highly emotional and quick to make decisions) – respond to Color, Ease-of-use, Size, Price, Return Policy, Delivery, Discounts
• Humanist (also highly emotional but take time to make decisions) – respond to Testimonials, Credibility, Company, Reviews, Trustworthiness

A copy of his presentation can be found on Slideshare and I will spend more time gleaning information from it.

Action #3: Another action for us from Brian Masey’s ‘Killing Brad Pitt’ presentation is to incorporate additional calls to action on our site. Here are some examples he gave:

• Add to cart
• Checkout
• Subscribe
• Trial signup
• Sample request
• Contact form
• Download
• Tell a friend
• Read an article
• View the video

I’d like to incorporate four to five of these appropriately throughout our site.

Action #4: Implement landing pages for our events and partner pages.

At the end of their presentations, a handful of the speakers provided links to a specific landing page on their sits. I actually viewed every single one of them and I think I even signed up for anything and everything on their sites, which made me instantly aware of the effectiveness of these pages. This is exactly what I want visitors to our site to do. What a valuable lesson. Check out a couple of examples:

• Brian Massey’s (Conversion Scientist) landing page for Innotech attendees
• Giovanni Gallucci’s (Social Media Ninja) landing page for his speaker evaluation

We’ve already started in this and we’re launching personalized landing pages for key partners this week.

Action #5: Devote 15 minutes, 3 times a day to social media such as Twitter, FaceBook and LinkedIn and use the tools to streamline and automate what I can.

From his presentation “Top 10 Extreme Social Media Promotion Hacks”, Giovanni Gallucci the, ‘Social Media Ninja’ suggested not 10 but 40 social media tips including using the following tools to streamline your social media activities:

• Twitterfeed
• Tweetadder
• Ping.fm
• Twitter Mutality (Google it)

Although we have Twitter and Facebook pages, I am formalizing social media activities as part of my daily schedule and marketing routine.

For EXTRA CREDIT and a chance to be inspired to build social media policies for our company, download and review Intel’s Social Media Guidelines.

Bryan G. Rhoads, Sr. Digital Strategist, Intel Social Media Center of Excellence delivered “Tying it all together: integrating your business and brand into social conversations” about his experience being part of the team that developed, and continues to develop, a social media strategy at Intel. The Social Media Center they created is remarkable but with me being a trainer, I was most excited about the educational programs they built to provide “Digital IQ” training for their employees. Very impressive.

Overall, this was a day well spent at Innotech’s eMarketing Summit. There was a great deal of valuable and actionable information presented, which made it clearer than ever that you should have your website working for you. It is absolutely critical that it not only provide information, it should be optimized to draw traffic, capture information and when possible bring customers or clients into the sales process. Then it makes sense to use social media to extend the reach and capabilities of the site.

Looking forward to next year and of course, seeing the results of what I learned from last week.

Vickie S. Evans is a former New York personal assistant turned applications instructor with twelve years of classroom training experience and six years experience working as a professional assistant. She is a Microsoft Certified Trainer and holds two additional certifications as a Microsoft Office Specialist Master Instructor (Office 2003) and Microsoft Certified Application Specialist (Office 2007). Through her company RedCape, Vickie and her staff provide superhero professionals with just-in-time, desk side technology coaching and solutions through virtual collaboration.

All opinions expressed in guest blog postings are those of the specific post’s author, and may or may not reflect those of Brian Combs or ionadas local.

A Client of ionadas local is looking for a Social Media Specialist. This is a part-time position expected to require approximately ten hours per week, although additional hours are likely needed the first few weeks. This position is ideal for a current student looking for real-world experience in using social media commercially. It also might be of interest to a college graduate looking to break into the social media industry.

The Client is a producer and marketer of premium tequilas that is in the midst of a rollout to the U.S. market. The job is located in Austin, Texas. The Client is not interested in telecommuters at this time.

Initial screenings for the position will be provided by ionadas local staff. Final interviews and the hiring decision will be made by the Client. Training in the proper use of social media for commercial purposes will be provided to the one hired.

To apply for this position, please send your resume via email to info@ionadas.com with the Subject Line “Social Media Specialist, August 2009”. No calls please.

The job description is as follows:

Social Media Specialist

Do you tweet and use Facebook all day, everyday? Is building social community so influential to your life that you just can’t stop? Do you understand why blogging and feeds are important? This job seeks a highly a motivated individual with experience and fanatical passion for blogging, micro-blogging and community participation as well as leadership.

The Social Media Specialist is focused on implementing, managing and expanding the Client’s Social Media Strategy and advocating Client’s Products to external communities. He or she will identify influential opportunities and engage regularly with the Client’s audiences online. This person will work with the Client’s Marketing Assistant to ensure that all Web 2.0 communications match the Client’s established tone, philosophy and strategy. He or she will monitor discussions across a number of blogs, forums and Web 2.0 sites, engaging as the Client’s public representative when appropriate.

Roles and Responsibilities

• Coordinate social media outreach and viral campaigns to promote Client messages that increase awareness and/or drive traffic to the Client’s site.
• Establish and cultivate positive relationships with key/targeted bloggers.
• Develop and manage pages on popular consumer social networking sites as specified in the social media strategy; such as Facebook, Twitter, etc.
• Engage in regular participation within the Client’s customer community, including the review of blogs, forums, wikis and other communities.
• Track and monitor the success of online initiatives (i.e. impressions, reach, influence and other metrics) and provide regular reports to the Client’s marketing team.
• Educate staff on the implementation and use of new technologies.
• Promote and evangelize social media activities internally.
• Serve as the eyes and ears of the Client’s brand as if his or her own reputation depended upon it.

Skills and Qualifications

• Strong familiarity and efficiency with Twitter, Facebook, and other such social media outlets.
• Upper classman or graduate. Business, communications, or liberal arts majors/degrees preferred.
• At least twenty-one years of age.
• Knowledge of/experience in the distilled spirits industry is desired.
• Fluency in both English and Spanish is a plus.
• Flexible communication skills. Strong editorial writer.
• Able to present needs and plans internally and has a distinct, personable voice for external engagement.
• Eagerness to exceed objectives and take on more responsibility than may be issued.
• Outstanding organizational skills and the ability to handle multiple projects simultaneously while meeting tight deadlines.
• Proven ability to manage negative situations toward positive outcomes.
• Willingness to experiment and ability to deal with uncertainty.
• Professional attitude and demeanor.

Now there is another reason to avoid this practice: it is actionable legally. The State of New York has a secured a $300,000 settlement with Lifestyle Lift. The employees of the cosmetics company were actively posting positive reviews of the company and attacking those who criticized Lifestyle Lift.

From the release:

Internal emails discovered by Attorney General Cuomo’s investigation show that Lifestyle Lift employees were given specific instructions to engage in this illegal activity. One e-mail to employees said: “Friday is going to be a slow day – I need you to devote the day to doing more postings on the web as a satisfied client.” Another internal email directed a Lifestyle Lift employee to “Put your wig and skirt on and tell them about the great experience you had.”

In addition to the fine, Lifestyle Lift employees are restricted from posing as consumers on the Internet. And the company is not allowed to promote Lifestyle Lift online without “clearly and conspicuously disclosing that they are responsible for the content.”

In the long run, what will likely hurt the most is the impact of the negative publicity on Lifestyle Lift’s brand. Anyone looking into the company will quickly find out about this malfeasance. As of this writing, the Attorney General press release is already 7th on Google for [lifestyle lift], and is likely to continue to climb.

Hat Tip to Understanding Google Maps & Local Search.

What do you do now?

First of all, take a deep breath. All indications are that the quantity of reviews is much more important to the Google Maps algorithm than the quality of those reviews. Oddly enough, that negative review might actually help your rankings.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t help with the click through rate of those rankings. The negative review reflects badly on your company, especially if it is one of a handful of reviews (or worse, the only review).

Don’t give into the dark side and write a positive review of yourself (or ask your employees to do so). People really can sniff those things out without much effort, and it makes your company look all the worse.

Perhaps given enough time you could come up with self-written reviews that would pass the “sniff” test, but wouldn’t that effort be better spent on getting legitimate reviews?

Instead, ask your customers to post reviews of your company to Google Maps (or one of the databases that feeds into it). If you’ve been taking care of them, many will be happy to do it.

Next, let’s go back to the negative review itself. Those that write negative reviews online tend to fit into one of three buckets:

1. Those with completely legitimate concerns.
2. Those with concerns you don’t completely agree with, but who aren’t entirely unreasonable.
3. Those who are emotionally unbalanced in some way.

For the first group, the response is simple: fix their bloody problem. If you can’t figure out who exactly the customer is, make sure the next guy doesn’t have the same problem.

If you can’t fix the problem, you probably deserve the negative review (and the additional ones you’re likely going to receive).

The third group is a bit harder. If the reviewer is truly unhinged, engaging with him or her isn’t likely to do you any good.

I’ve got one client who received what he believed was an unreasonable review on Google Maps. I looked at the other reviews this guy had written, and of some thirty reviews, only two were even vaguely positive. All the rest were brutally negative. This didn’t seem to be a healthy person. Attempting to engage wasn’t going to help in any way.

In these cases, the best thing to do is almost always to walk away. However, if the review is truly defaming, and you can determine who posted it, you might explore legal action.

Disclosure: I am not a lawyer. What little I know about the legal matters I got from watching Law & Order and John Grisham movies. Those who actually follow what I say without gaining advice from qualified legal counsel deserves what happens to them.

You’re unlikely to receive any help from Google with the negative review. The concept of common carrier means Google actually exposes itself to more liability if it censors such things.

On the other hand, you could take legal action with the reviewer himself. If the reviewer made false claims of fact (that can’t be ascribed to opinion) a defamation case could perhaps be made.

Be aware that this route is expensive, could result in additional negative publicity, and could fail outright. Even if you win, the best that is likely to happen is that the review is taken down. People who behave like this tend to be judgment proof.

You are probably better off just moving on to the next customer, and making sure you give them outstanding service.

Note: I put false reviews by competitors into this third bucket as well. While you could potentially take a legal course, proving that a competitor posted the review is likely to be tough. You’re better off ignoring it and working to make sure you have lots of positive reviews.

The middle group can be the hardest. While you don’t think their review was fair, it’s not without merit. First of all, attempt to look at the situation without emotion. You may learn that there is more merit than you initially think.

For instance, even a case of improper expectations boils down to a mistake by your company, if those expectations were not set properly.

If you can determine who the reviewer is, attempting to engage may be worthwhile. In many cases, simply allowing the complaint to be heard may do a lot to smooth things over. You also may learn how to serve your customers better.

What’s almost always the case is that engaging with the situation is better than ignoring it.

In summary, your best defense against a negative review is to have lots of legitimate positive reviews. But when that negative review comes, don’t be afraid to engage with the review and fix the problem.

In March of 1995, I joined a small computer manufacturer in Austin, Texas called Power Computing Corporation. Power Computing was the first licensee under Apple Computer’s new Mac OS licensing program. We made Mac clones.

My title was “Online Evangelist”. It was something of a catch-all job, with responsibilities for managing the website for the company, as well as for representing the company online. I monitored and engaged in conversations on web forums and Usenet, and was the gatekeeper of several of the public email aliases. It kept me busy, to say the least.

A few months later (don’t remember exactly how many), SDSU student Jeff Keller created PowerWatch, a consumer watchdog website. Either Jeff or someone he knew had had a problem with a purchase from Power Computing, and Jeff was going to make sure the world knew about it.

Anyone who has worked in computer hardware knows that problems with manufacturing happen. Sometimes you build a lemon. Sometimes the computer doesn’t get delivered on time. Or sometimes something is missing from the package. It happens to the best of companies. What’s important is how you react and how you fix the problem.

So, when PowerWatch came online, we could have tried to ignore the problem. We could have obfuscated. We could have done any number of things to try and cover the situation up.

Instead, Power Computing director of marketing Mike Rosenfelt and I decided to engage with PowerWatch.

I began to live on PowerWatch, visiting it three or four times a day. I answered pre- and post-sale questions. When I didn’t know the answer, I went and found out.

When people had a problem with their computer and/or order, I did everything I could to fix it. I received incredible backing and support from Rosenfelt and the executive team to get done what needed to be done. And it certainly help that Power Computing’s tech support and customer service teams had a great attitude about making things right for the customer. Many times, the fastest way to get something fixed was to go through PowerWatch.

Over time, we developed a huge base of fans that were willing to give us the benefit of the doubt when something went wrong. And we gained immeasurable data on what customers wanted from our computers.

This is what people today call social media marketing. Frankly, the idea isn’t that new, although the tools have gotten much better, and the percentage of the population online has certainly grown.

Social media marketing is about having a customer service mindset, and listening to your customers and prospects. It’s about engaging with customers when the the inevitable problems arise.

Then take what you learn and make your company better. That’s all there really is to it.