There’s a scene at the beginning of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory where an entire warehouse of women unwrap box after box of candy bars in search of a Golden Ticket. After weeks of searching, the factory owner’s bratty daughter – Veruca Salt – finally gets her wish (“But I want a ticket nooowwww, Daddy!”) when an assembly line worker hits the jackpot and uncovers a winning ticket.

Many organizations approach social media in a similar fashion.

“The more followers we have, the more reach our brand has. And the more reach we have, the more likely someone is to see our tweet and buy our stuff!”

Sure, quantity eventually breeds quality (eventually … maybe), but it also breeds a LOT of waste (that’s a lot of uneaten chocolate for a single ticket).

And waste in the business world means higher costs and lost revenue in the form of missed opportunities.

I joined Twitter in October of 2008. Over the past three and a half years, I have sent over 11,000 tweets and amassed 6,200 followers. Can I let you in on a secret?

Most of my list is garbage.

Back in the day, obtaining followers was my only goal. I used a series of automated techniques and services to magically add followers based on topic or location. As my following grew, I watched the amount of spam rise while the number of valuable interactions decreased.

But alas — quantity did breed some quality. I have made many incredible connections online, both locally and nationally. It is through these connections that Twitter continues to be a source of valuable information and interaction for me on a daily basis.

(Flash forward three and a half years…)

Today, I am launching a new service and our Twitter account has exactly … 198 followers.

“What?! Your service supposedly helps small businesses use social media and you have under 200 followers? What are you, a scam artist?”

Crazy, right? But what if I told you that 25.68% of the traffic to our site is coming from non-follower interactions on Twitter and that those visitors stay on the site for an average of 5 minutes and 34 seconds?

“I’m still skeptical, but keep talking.”

At ChatterJet, we take the opposite approach as most companies when it comes to social media, focusing not on acquiring new followers in bulk and hoping a small fraction of those people “convert,” but on monitoring and interacting with a very targeted list of new potential leads each day.

Just because someone isn’t a follower doesn’t mean you can’t/shouldn’t reach out to them.

Eliminate Waste and Increase Conversions with Social Media

1. Find Your Audience
Yes, thinking like your customer takes some time and brain power. But spending that time to identify potential venues to connect with them makes it possible to monitor specific opportunities to engage with them. Keywords and hashtags are a great place to start. Simple searches on Twitter can key you into conversations taking place within your industry, and local searches (near:90210) can help you locate people nearby.

2. Tailor Your Message
The amount of information people share publicly online creates a massive opportunity for businesses smart enough to listen and match a response to their call for help.

When you see people talking about the things you are monitoring, be a resource and offer immediate and tailored solutions to your customers’ (or potential customers’) needs. The more specific you can be, the more likely they are to take action.

3. Be Actionable
“Engagement” evangelists on social media will tout the importance of being sincere and/or genuine online (which I agree with). But that doesn’t mean your outreach can’t include something actionable for your intended audience.

Aim to be a resource AND be direct in how you can help solve their problem. When you provide advice or a solution, include a link. Make the barrier to entry as low as possible; the more hurdles someone has to jump, the less likely they are to convert.

4. Track Your Efforts
Once you’ve crafted a message that you think will work, test your hypothesis and track the results. At ChatterJet, we run all of our inbound campaigns through two tools: bit.ly and Google’s URL Builder.

• At the top of the conversion funnel, bit.ly allows us to track the number of times we have sent a link and how many times that link has been clicked on. Some simple math allows us to determine our click-through rate for a given campaign. Next we use…
• Google’s URL Builder to identify a campaign’s effectiveness in our web traffic reports. By tracking our lead sources, we can see how visitors are finding our site and benchmark one source against another to compare things like bounce rate, average time on site, and conversions (downloads, subscriptions, etc.).

By thinking about our target customer and using a handful of free tools, we can more easily evaluate our marketing efforts and eliminate waste. But without building in a feedback loop and analyzing the results, it’s impossible to know what tactics are working — let alone justifying the ROI of social media.

What are you doing to track your efforts online? And what tactics/platforms have been the most successful for you?

Like it or not, Facebook isn’t afraid to make big changes. And with their announcements yesterday, they’re going to be making some very big changes to business pages, as well as a number of other tools for marketers using the site.

We’ll focus on the business page updates for now … trust me, these updates alone will keep you busy for a while. Here are a few of the biggest changes coming to your page:

Cover Photo

The most visible change to the page is the cover photo. (AdAge has a nice roundup of what some big brands are doing with their pages.)

The cover image for brand pages is the same size as for individual profiles: 850 pixels wide by 315 pixels tall. Facebook has a few restrictions on what you can include in your cover image — you can’t use the cover image for “promotions, coupons, or advertisements,” and you shouldn’t use the image as a call to action (you can’t even ask visitors to like your page).

A word of caution here: Facebook is notorious for compressing images, which can really screw with the beautiful cover photo you’ve created. Once you have your image ready, go to your page’s photo albums and add the image through the uploader there. Make sure you select “High Quality” to keep Facebook from squashing your photo too much.

No More Default Landing Tab

If you previously used a custom tab to create a “Like-gate” for your page, this feature will be going away. All of your existing custom tabs will still be there as apps (and each app still has its own unique URL), but you can’t make visitors view a tab before they get to the rest of the content anymore. (Custom apps have a new size, too … you might want to revisit those images you’ve created specifically for the previous 520px format.)

You can move the apps around to highlight the custom content you want visitors to see, and you can edit the thumbnail image for any custom app to draw more attention to it. You can see here that we’ve created a simple “Get to know 30 Lines” image for the app that used to be our default landing tab.

You’ll also be able to “pin” unique posts to the top of your page to give those posts higher visibility when someone visits your page.

Private Messaging

With the new look, any visitors to your page will be able to send you a direct private message. The button appears directly below the cover photo.

Page administrators will have the option to disable this feature, although I hope you don’t. I think this could be a great way for marketers to hear directly from their audience.

Central Admin Panel

The new Admin Panel is a fantastic resource. As soon as you visit any page you admin, you’ll see a central dashboard that shows who is interacting with your content, the most recent likes to your page, key Insights and any direct Messages you’ve received. This is also where you’ll access all of the basic page management features, as well as a new section called “Build Your Audience,” where you can share your page and create ads to promote your content (and man, do the new ad options look slick!).

Map Your Photos

I absolutely love the photo map feature on personal timelines, and I think it could be a huge opportunity for brick and mortar businesses if they bring this to business pages. Any photo or video can be pinned to a specific location on a map. For now, there’s no option to display all of the photos on a map like you can do on your personal timeline. I hope they introduce this feature for business pages, as it would be a fantastic way to spotlight photos, especially if your business has multiple locations.

Beside the geographic map, you can also pin your photos to specific dates. This could be a very cool way to visualize your company history and key milestones. The New York Times already has items pinned back to the 1850s! Take the time to go through your timeline and add the key dates you might want your visitors to see.

Page administrators can already view any of their pages in “preview” mode. You can choose to publish them in the new layout at any time, but Facebook will automatically change pages to the new layout on March 30.

We’ll be providing more insights and tips about the new Facebook business pages as we explore them deeper and start to better understand the new features. What are the features that you’re most excited (or disappointed) to see?

More Resources on the New Facebook Pages:

• Introducing New Facebook Pages
• Facebook Marketing Guides to Success
• Learn About Facebook Pages
• 5 Things Page Administrators Need to Know About Facebook Timeline for Brands
• Facebook Brand Timelines: 6 Big Changes Every Marketer Needs to Understand
• Facebook Page Timeline: How To Make It Work for Your Business (Part 1)

Like what you’re reading? Give us a like on Facebook to get more updates about Facebook and other digital marketing tools.

In case you haven’t heard, Pinterest is HOT.

And it’s not alone.

Mobile photo-sharing site Instagram is also growing like crazy, and I’ll bet you’re seeing a lot more photo sharing in your newsfeeds on Facebook and Google+, too.

It makes sense.

Photos can communicate a lot more information with just a glance, and quick skimming of information is the name of the game today … for much of your audience, that’s all the time they’re going to give you to get their attention.

Now let’s say you’re writing for your company or personal blog. You’re watching these trends develop, and you want to leverage the new trend in photo sharing to drive more traffic and attention to your site. Good idea.

How Pinterest Works

Pinterest is a digital pinboard. It’s a place where people save their favorite things — places they want to visit, creative ideas for their dream home, recipes they want to try and a whole lot more. It’s a newer, more attractive take on the social bookmarking trend that Delicious started way back when.

As you may already know, when you find something online you want to save, you can add it to one of your pinboards by “pinning” the page you’re viewing. Pinterest then goes to work — it searches for large images that it can grab and display on your board for everyone to see. Each pin then links back to the original page you saved.

If you want to make your awesome content as easy as possible to share on the top ten social network, this is where you need to step in and help Pinterest a bit.

Memorialize Your Sound Bites with Visuals

So we know that Pinterest looks for large images on the page. Easy enough .. that just means we need good images. The problem is, not every business or blog easily lends itself to incredibly powerful images.

Now, you may already use pictures in your posts that you find on Flickr or on stock photo sites. Maybe you take your own photos or grab screenshots.

But I’m guessing there are a lot of times when you have a point you want to make that doesn’t necessarily lend itself to those stock images or cropped screenshots.

This is where I want to introduce you to Tweegram. (Or for a more irreverent look, let me suggest the Meme Generator.)

Tweegram is an app that allows you to write out a thought (135 characters, or almost the length of a tweet), add a few visual effects, then share it as an image to Instagram, Twitter, Facebook or email.

It turns out the images are large enough and formatted correctly to work well with Pinterest. So here’s what you can do:

• Compose your blog post as you normally would.
• Fire up Tweegram on your phone.
• Type out your most important sound bite or key takeaway.
• Add some effects, then email it to yourself.
• Grab the image from your email and insert as an image in your post.

You’ll get something like this:

You can resize it to fit your needs for your post, but you’ll want to make sure it’s a pretty good size image (in terms of dimensions, not file size). Now you’ll have a great-looking image that instantly communicates your key point in a very visual way. Ideal for Pinterest.

One More Thing

Like seemingly every other social network in your browser history, Pinterest provides a button you can put on your site. The “Pin It” button can be placed on any or all of the pages on your site. You can even customize it to steer Pinterest to the image you’d prefer it to grab.

Here’s what the “Pin It” button looks like:

Go ahead … try it.

You can get the code to add the “Pin It” button to your site here. (You’ll find “Follow Me” buttons there, too.)

Photo sharing is as hot as ever, and there are no signs that it’s going to slow down anytime soon. (I know far too many people who describe Pinterest as “addictive.”) If Pinterest is a place where your audience is spending some of their valuable time, then you might want to consider using Tweegram to visually convey your most important ideas on your site.

What else are you doing to make sure your content is easy to share on sites like Pinterest? Have you tried Tweegram? Leave your ideas in the comments.

This is a guest post written by Jonathan Saar. Jonathan is a Socius dude from Canada who still says things like eh and aboot. Jonathan is the VP of Marketing for multifamily educational solutions provider, The Training Factor.

I love WordPress plugins. I love testing them. I love their functionality and I love what they do for my blogs. However, many times when I am visiting a blog site I get a little disappointed. There are no robust share options. I press the Tweet button and I have to manually add the title or who to credit for on the post. Yes, there are constant hiccups that I see on blog sites and even on my own sites that need to be constantly addressed. Let me tell you my story.

The other day my Google+ button disappeared off of my GetSocial sidebar. I gave it a couple of days and then my OCD kicked in and I could not take it anymore. I run two blog sites. Both have the Genesis theme but two different child themes. My one site it was fine but on the other it would not work. In order to try and sort out the problem I had to backtrack a bit. First it took me disabling all of my social plugins to ascertain what the problem was. Maybe there was a conflict … who knows? I re-enabled my GetSocial plugin because it is my favorite. Next step refresh my site and bingo, the +1 button is back. Enable a couple other plugins and boom, no problem. I re-enabled Shareaholic and bang … the +1 button is gone. So there it is — I found the problem. Bye bye, Shareaholic … so sorry.

Some people get a little testy about sharing your own material, but to me it is a must. You as the blog administrator need to know how your site is working! If you are going to spend all that time on awesome content make sure you make it easy for us to share it to the world. Don’t be a plug about your plugins. Test them often. Make sure you either have a mental or physical note on updates you have done or plugins you have added so that if you do have an issue you can trace back your steps and solve the problem.

Another Lesson Learned

The other lesson I learned was analyzing which sharing plugins people actually use as they’re reading the content on my sites. At first I said to myself “Oh no! No more Shareaholic?” But then I dug into how my readers were sharing my content and it was not through that plugin. So why have it? It turns out it was just more clutter at the bottom of the post. My readers seem to engage with my sidebar sharing plugin. Hooray! A little research and now I am empowered to make a decision.

So I hope my message is clear. When it comes to plugins and add-ons for your site — especially sharing ones — do not settle. Test them out from a functionality level and from an aesthetics level. Test them often and make sure they work. A blog takes consistent maintenance. Think of it in the same respect as you clean your desk. If you don’t pay attention pretty soon you have this aura of chaos that inhibits your productivity. The same principle applies to maintenance of your blog site. Keep it clean. Keep it orderly. By doing this you will keep your audience happy and you will receive the greatest return on your content.

If you have any tips on how you keep plugins and other site add-ons in order, please feel free to share them below. I would absolutely love your feedback!

Photo credit: jakematesdesign on Flickr

Last week, Google make a fairly techy-sounding announcement. If you’re like me, you saw it, but didn’t pay a lot of attention. As I re-read the announcement today and some corresponding blog posts, the light went on. I get it now. The new “authorship” authority impacts what we do every day as PR people.

Let’s take a step back. Here’s an excerpt from Google’s announcement:

Today we’re beginning to support authorship markup — a way to connect authors with their content on the web. We are experimenting with using this data to help people find content from great authors in our search results.

…

We know that great content comes from great authors, and we’re looking closely at ways this markup could help us highlight authors and rank search results.

In other words, it sounds like Google will now consider who authored a piece of content when determining relevancy and search rankings. What does this have to do with PR? According to Steve Rubel, it’s all about validation:

Businesses that activate thought leaders across the media cloverleaf will be primed to stand out more in search. In the future you must publish to stand out.

In PR, we’ve always known that there’s value in being seen as a thought-leader in the industry. The direct impact can be another one of those tricky things to measure, but contributing bylines to key industry trade publications, speaking at high-profile conferences, and blogging can boost a public relations effort. PR 2.0 already includes blogger outreach and creating content to share on various networks and sites. Now, Google is saying that authoring content across the web can also strengthen search rankings. Previously, SEO in PR may have meant focusing on PageRank, fine-tuning anchor text keywords or collecting inbound links. Now, PR plays a much larger role in SEO by helping to establish “authorship authority.”

6 Ideas to Help PR Leverage Google’s “Authorship”

• Guest blog. Guest blogging comes with many benefits, including opportunities to connect with new audiences and sharing expertise to establish credibility, generating inbound links, etc. But, now guest blogging, more specifically, the opportunity to associate yourself with being an “author” in Google’s eyes, becomes even more important.
• Write op-eds for “traditional” media’s websites. Sarah Evans recently wrote an opinion piece for CNN.com about online privacy — a perfect example of how to get “author” credit via traditional media. Local newspapers, magazines and trade publications could be appropriate outlets to consider for these kind of author opportunities.
• Become a regular contributor. PR blog Waxing Unlyrical features a regular lineup of contributors. Seek opportunities like this to regularly produce content for existing bloggers.
• Join a group blog. Some blogs, like PR Breakfast Club, are true collaborative blogs, written by a group of authors. Seek opportunities to join a group blog that connects with your target audience.
• Think more seriously about YouTube. As a Google property, all YouTube videos have been updated with this new author language. Are you publishing YouTube videos? Knowing that these pages have implemented the “author” coding, how can you be more strategic about creating content for YouTube?
• Create an “author” page on your own blog. Every time you write a post on your own blog, that’s an opportunity to create an “author” link. Create an “About the Author” page on your own blog that adheres to these new Google recommendations.

It’s worth noting that all sites won’t automatically incorporate this “author” HTML language. The aforementioned five ideas are solid tactical recommendations, but you get “bonus points” in search rankings for taking implementing tactics to sites that are implementing the author markup.

Certainly, this is a technical topic. (My brain hurts a little after reading up on this topic!) In PR, we don’t need to understand all the HTML coding details, but we should know what to look for and where to turn if you have questions or need help. It is our job to understand how our PR efforts can support SEO … further proof that the “silo” mentality (ie., I do this. You do that.) just doesn’t work anymore.

What do you think about this modification to Google’s algorithm? Is it something you’ll think about when looking for online opportunities for clients/brands? What other ideas do you have to help PR people influence search rankings?

How do I leave a comment on my brand’s Facebook Page as myself, not as the Page?

I’ve been getting this question a bit more often lately, so I figured it might be easiest just to share it here.

First, being able to switch how you use Facebook is a handy feature that has been available to Page admins for several months now. Previously, anytime an admin of a page left a status update or a comment on the page, the comment would look like it came from the brand, not from the person. (For example, if left a comment on the 30 Lines page, it would always appear to come from 30 Lines, not from my personal profile. I’d often sign posts with my initials to let people know it was really me.)

Well, this is fine, but I had a number of clients who wanted more personal interaction with their audience. In some cases, a couple staff members would purposely be left off as admins to be able to comment on the page as themselves. In other cases, some people would remove themselves as an admin of the page, make the comment as themselves, then get added back as an admin — repeating this anytime they wanted to comment from their personal profile. An annoying, tedious process … but really the only option available if you wanted to add that personal touch.

Well, Facebook fixed this. You have to update your settings to be able to do it, but it’s actually pretty easy to do. Here’s how:

Update your settings

Head over to your page settings (Click on “Edit Page” in the top right corner), then select the very first option in the left menu, called “Your Settings.” It should look like this:

Uncheck the top checkbox. It will say something like “Always comment and post on your page as My Awesome Page even when using Facebook as {your name here}.” Make sure to save your changes.

BAM.

That’s it. You’re done.

Well … sort of.

Switching Between Personal Profile and Page

Once you’ve changed this setting, you’ll *always* comment on the page from your personal profile, unless you make the switch to use Facebook as your page. Now when you visit your page, you’ll see an admin panel in the top right that looks like this:

If you want a status update or comment on the page (or other pages on Facebook — see Admins Can “Use Facebook as Page”) to come from the brand, you need to click the link to “Use Facebook as My Awesome Page.” If you don’t make this switch first, any comments on the page will come from your personal profile, and they likely won’t end up in the newsfeed of many of your subscribers. Make the switch, then share your update or comment. (I’d recommend a big Post-It plastered to your screen reminding you to switch until it becomes habit.)

NOTE: This change doesn’t affect how you use third-party tools like Hootsuite, Tweetdeck or Postling. If you have authorized these tools to post to your page, the updates you share will come from the brand without the need to switch how you’re using Facebook.

OK, now you’re done. You’ll be able to share updates with all of your subscribers by posting as the page, and you’ll be able to get into more personal conversations by posting and commenting as yourself. The end result will look something like this (post from the page, comment left by me):

So now that you can do this, does it change the way you use your brand’s page? Have you seen any good examples of companies that have been able to “get more personal” with their audience?

Gary V.

Few people in the world are as recognizable by their first name and last initial as Gary Vaynerchuk. For anyone who’s been active online over the past few years, the name alone is enough to spark hours of conversation about wine, technology, social media, or the New York Jets.

On April 25, I had the opportunity to meet Gary Vaynerchuk (best-selling author, creator of WineLibraryTV.com and DailyGrape.com, founder of Vayner Media) and see him speak about his latest book — The Thank You Economy (Get it on Amazon. ) — in an intimate setting at the Barnes and Noble book store on Ohio State University’s campus with approximately 40 others.

As far as speakers go, Gary sits atop the totem pole of online celebrities, serving as keynote at prestigious events such as Le Web in Paris, Web2.0 in NYC, Big Omaha in Nebraska, and most recently at SXSW 2011 in Austin, Texas.

And yet, on a quiet Monday night in Columbus, Ohio, Gary proved, on a certain level, he is a normal person just like the rest of us…

• Gary showed up to the talk 25 minutes late due to a scheduling error, apologizing profusely and admitting to sitting in his hotel room watching ESPN prior to the appearance to kill time.
• He misses his family while he’s on the road, mentioning his daughter Misha and his wife multiple times throughout the talk.
• He identifies both of his parents (both immigrants from Belarus) as his biggest role models growing up for instilling the values of honesty and hard work in him at an early age.

So how could such a down to earth guy grow into a wildly successful celebrity, both online and off? Here are three hypotheses:

1. PASSION
   I can’t remember exactly how I heard of Gary (it was around the release of his first book, Crush It), but the first time I saw his video blog, I was hooked. In front of the camera, he is an excellent story-teller and over the past four years has transformed the stodgy and out-dated world of wine into a fun topic that is accessible to the masses. His enthusiasm is refreshing, and his excitement for life is contagious.So it was nice to see that excitement amplified in person (it’s no wonder LA-based talent agency CAA – the same firm that represents Oprah Winfrey, Tom Cruise, David Beckham, and Julia Roberts – was willing to take him on as a client). Gary spoke about brands, social media, caring about your customers, word of mouth, and life in general for over an hour with as much energy and passion as a kid talking about their first trip to Disney World.
2. VISION
   During the Q&A portion of his chat, I asked Gary the following question: 

   “After 1,000 web episodes on WineLibraryTV, you made the decision conscious decision to transfer your audience over to the more mobile-friendly platform of DailyGrape. Aside from mobile, what other technologies or trends do you see emerging over the next five years, and which are you most excited about?”

   “Smart refrigerators, wallets going extinct, and a phone app that monitors your entire life,” he responded.

   (Wow. How’s that for visionary?)

   Gary went on to explain the role of micro-content we are currently sharing through platforms like Twitter and Facebook, and how similar technologies will eventually be integrated into every aspect of our lives – including the kitchen.

   “Think about how powerful it would be,” he continued, “if your fridge could keep track of all the things you put into and take out of it. Eventually, it would know that you are,” looking down at the plastic bottle on the table, “an avid Aquafina drinker. And when you go shopping each week, you buy a new 24-pack of water that gets scanned into your fridge. Manufacturers could identify your habits, and run promotions to get you to buy more water… or offer you loyalty rewards for drinking so much.”

   (Whoa. And wallets?)

   “I’m not some crazy visionary,” he continued. “This stuff is already happening in Indonesia and Japan. People are storing their bank information on their phones and then swiping the phones to pay for things at the cash register. Soon enough, people won’t be carrying around wallets.”

   (Fair enough. And this “life app?”)

   “My brother (AJ, co-founder of Vayner Media) and I always talk about building an end-all app that stores everything about you and your life, right on your phone. I’m talking finances, diet, favorite places to shop, buying history, book and music preferences – EVERYTHING.

   So let’s say you type a goal into your phone to lose 20 pounds. The next day you go out for lunch and end up at an Arby’s, order food at the drive-through, and swipe your phone to pay at the window… and your phone denies the payment because you have a goal to lose 20 pounds, and all the calories you JUST ordered work against your goal!”

   The crowd chuckled, and then let out a collective sigh after realizing how far ahead of the game Gary is.

3. ACTION
   We all know “big picture” people – the dreamers, the idea guys, the visionaries of the world. Gary had this to say about them: 

   “The next time one of your friends or family members comes up to you and says, ‘Did you see that product?! That company stole my idea!’ – punch them in the face! I’m serious. Ideas are commodities, they are worthless; it’s the action that’s valuable.”

   And this single quote is what makes Gary more successful than 99.9% of people. Gary is a doer:

• Back when people were hypothesizing about how big the Internet could be, Gary was convincing his dad to move his brick-and-mortar wine operation online to take advantage of the upcoming paradigm shift. Today, WineLibrary.com is one of the largest online marketplaces for wine.
• Later realizing the power of online video, Gary started giving wine the ol’ “sniffy-sniff”, swish, and spit on camera, taping over 1,000 live episodes for his websites, WineLibraryTV and DailyGrape.com.
• An early adopter of Twitter, Gary has amassed over 875,000 followers on Twitter – not by watching, but by sending over 46,000 tweets (!), most of them interacting directly with his fans (see below).
  
• Gary then parlayed his online skills into a successful media company which charges top brands such as Caesar’s Entertainment, Pepsico, and the NHL thousands of dollars each month to manage their online presence.

Gary isn’t successful simply because he’s passionate, or because of his incredible vision. He is successful because he acts on his ideas.

What have you learned (or could you learn) from Gary?

How can you find your own way to redefine your industry?

Well, Google stepped further into more “social” search results this week by introducing their own version of the Facebook Like, a social sharing button dubbed +1. They describe +1 like this:

Click +1 to publicly give something your stamp of approval. Your +1′s can help friends, contacts, and others on the web find the best stuff when they search.

Take a look:

View the video on YouTube.

Here’s what your search results will look like if you see a result that has been +1′ed by one of your connections:

You can see that Mark has +1′ed his property, which is now reflected in my search results.

Google hasn’t rolled this feature out to everyone yet. If you don’t see the +1 button next to search results, you can head over to Google Experiments and request to join the +1 “experiment.” Once you’re “in,” you’ll see the button next to the title in search results (and next to AdWords, too … but that’s a topic for another day).

There are a few things that you can do to make sure you’re getting the most out of this new feature to benefit your online marketing efforts:

Update Your Profile

Start here, because you need a public Google profile in order to use +1. Your profile is also one way Google learns about where else you are online (and who you’re connected to there), so make sure your profile info is up-to-date and that you’ve added links to all of the social profiles that you use on a regular basis. Take advantage and feed the machine as much information as possible.

Don’t have a profile yet? Get one here. (Here’s mine to give you an idea of what this looks like.)

Do Something Worth Talking About

I think this one should be a given, but I really can’t emphasize it enough. Social sharing is all about word-of-mouth. You need to do something so interesting, funny, unique, etc. that people will want to tell their friends. (Or you could just sing an incredibly bad teenage pop song.) Be worth talking about at the water cooler or over a beer, and some of that conversation is bound to happen online.

If you’re not doing this in the first place, why would anyone want to recommend you or your website?

Build a Strong Social Presence

There are lots of other reasons why social media can benefit your business, but your prospect’s online social circle is influencing the search results they see now more than ever. Expanding your networks on Facebook, Twitter and other social sites will increase your opportunities to start working your way into these “social” search results. Sharing links to resources besides your own website will help you build a broad, almost-ambient presence over time in your connections’ search results pages.

Get +1 for Your Website

Of course, it doesn’t make a lot of sense to make a recommendation for a web page before you’ve visited the page. I’d imagine the only people who will be clicking on the +1 button from the search results will be marketers and SEOs. (Um, guilty.) For everyone else, including the vast majority of your brand’s audience, they’re much more likely to make the recommendation once they get to your site.

That’s why Google soon will be rolling out the +1 button for websites. I’m sure it will be very similar to the Facebook Like, Tweet This and LinkedIn Share buttons … you’ll be able to place it on any page on your site. And yes, you will want to add this to your site. Make it as easy as possible for visitors to your site to share your content with their network.

It’s a bit odd that Google didn’t roll out this feature as part of their initial launch, but you can sign up to get notified when it does become available for your site here.

In any case, when Google makes a move like this, it’s worth watching. It’s clear that social networks will have a huge impact on search, and more importantly, how your brand’s online presence appears in search results. Keep pumping out great stuff, keep growing your network and make sure you’re giving Google as much information as possible about what you’re doing. Do that, and it’ll be +1 for you and your brand.

And while you’re here, why not click that “thumbs up” button below? I’d like that a lot.

All that said, Quora isn’t necessarily doing anything new (but they are doing one thing really well). Lots of people have questions about all kinds of things. They probably have questions about the subjects that you know best. That’s an opportunity for you and your organization.

Not everyone is on Quora yet, and they probably won’t be for a while. But there are plenty of other sites where you can find questions about your area of expertise. Here are a few places where you might want to look:

• Yahoo! Answers: The granddaddy of the category. Yahoo! Answers are open to anyone and indexed by the major search engines.
• LinkedIn Answers: Open to any LinkedIn member. Follow categories that interest you most, and get recognized for providing the best answer to a given question.
• LinkedIn Groups: Groups can be very targeted by industry or interest group, but they can tend to get self-promotional. Find the groups with proactive managers and get active in the discussions.
• Facebook Questions: A fairly new feature in Facebook (some people still don’t see this option in their status bar), the size of the userbase alone makes this one worth watching.
• Twitter: Twitter is full of people asking questions and pondering various subjects. Use the Advanced Search feature, plug in a keyword term related to your industry along with a question mark (one example I use is “wordpress help ?“) and see who you can assist. Plug the terms into your Twitter client of choice, or grab the RSS feed and check back a couple times a day.
• Local/Industry Networking Sites and Forums: If your business is focused on a specific region or industry, there’s a good chance there are already discussion boards and networking sites where people are seeking information. Be there to help. (And if such a site doesn’t exist for your industry yet, start one here.)
• Your Website or Blog: If you’re already blogging or getting a decent amount of traffic to your site, consider taking questions from readers and answering them in future posts or a dedicated area of your site. What better place to make sure that potential customers can find the answers they need?

That’s Just What I Needed!

The difference, and the advantage for Quora at the moment, is the quality of the experts answering questions and the answers being provided. You’ll quickly find that Yahoo! and even LinkedIn are full of spam, while Quora provides their community with tools to help vote the best answers to the top and suppress the self-promoters.

Whether Quora makes it or not, people will always be searching for useful answers. If you’re going to spend some time answering questions on any of these sites, here are a few things to keep in mind to make sure you stand out from the pack:

• Be a resource, not a sales clerk. People want answers, not sales pitches. If they reach out to you, you’ll get the opportunity to reel them in.
• Be clear and concise. We’re all busy. We don’t have time to sort through pages of manuals. Get to the point, and fast.
• Be a connector. Sometimes you don’t have the answer, but you know just the person who does. Rather than making something up, make the referral. Provide a link to reach the other expert.
• Look for ideas to incorporate into your own site. If you see a trend, leverage it. Write a blog post, add some content to your FAQ or record a quick video to address the question that keeps popping up.

The bottom line is that being helpful is be a great way to gain trust. And when people trust you, they’re more comfortable doing business with you. I can tell you from experience — helping people on LinkedIn and Twitter has led directly to several wonderful, long-term clients. Give it a try … you might be surprised at the results.

Have a question for me? Post it in the comments, reach me here, or ask me on Quora. I’ll be sure to answer as soon as I can.

More Resources:

• 9 Ways to Get More Out of Quora

Deals Come to Place Pages

Undoubtedly, the feature that will have the greatest impact on local businesses is Deals. Much like Specials on Foursquare, Deals will allow you to create some kind of special offer for anyone who “checks in” at your location through Facebook. There are four types of Deals that you can offer:

• Individual Deals
• Friendship Deals
• Loyalty Deals
• Charity Deals

Familiarize yourself with the different options, and start thinking about what type of Deal might work best for your business. Here are just a few quick examples of the possibilities:

• Individual Deals: Offer a discount that can be redeemed anytime, within a certain timeframe or maybe only on slower days. (Who’s doing it? American Eagle, H&M and Macy’s are all offering 20% off with every check-in.)
• Friendship Deals: Enhance the offer when friends check in together … that Happy Hour special could get even better if your customer checks in along with three of her friends. (Who’s doing it? TAO nightclub will add you and a friend to an upcoming guest list just for checking in.)
• Loyalty Deals: Give your customer a free drink with every eight check-ins. Here in Columbus, Stauf’s Coffee Roasters and Cup O Joe already have an offer similar this when you bring back your drink sleeve. Extending that offer online would share the brand with all of the customer’s friends every time they go back to re-caffeinate.
• Charity Deals: Make a donation to the VFW Foundation for everyone who checks in at your location on Veterans Day. Make an impact and drive traffic to your business at the same time. (Who’s doing it? Starbucks is donating $1 per guest to Conservation International.)

Every time a customer claims a Deal at your location, it will be published to their newsfeed for all of their friends to see. This is huge for your business, as it can only help spread the word about your special offers much faster — it’s not something that Foursquare is doing yet, and it tilts the location-based offers game in favor of Facebook immediately out of the gate.

How Do I Create a Deal?

Facebook has created a video tutorial to walk you through how to set up your Deal, as well as a Deals Guide for Businesses that you can download here. Keep in mind that you’ll only be able to create a Deal for your location if you’ve claimed your Place Page … so make sure you take care of that first.

Promoting Your Deal

No doubt, the geeks in the crowd (raising my hand) will be looking down at their phones in search of Deals, but most of your customers might not even know that Deals exist yet, so you have to let them know about it.

• First and foremost, tell your staff … they can start talking about your Deal with customers, and it will save a lot of confusion when that first taker flashes their mobile screen at the counter.
• Make a sign. You probably already have sign promoting your brand’s presence on Facebook (and maybe some asking customers to Like your Page). Adding a quick blurb (“BOGO After 3 Check-Ins”) may be all you need to get someone coming back for more.
• Mention your Deal occasionally on your Facebook Page, Twitter and wherever else you’re connecting with customers online. You don’t need to do this often (too much will get annoying), but it’s worth trying to see if what kind of response you get.
• Consider targeting some Facebook ads to promote your Place Page and your Deal. Even if it doesn’t compel your audience out of their seats at that very moment, hopefully it will serve as a reminder the next time they’re away from the computer.

And we’re just getting started. Deals are in beta, so you may not have access to this feature yet. In the meantime, make sure you’ve claimed your Place Page for your location. If you can create a Deal for your business, leave your experience in the comments … was it easy to create your Deal? Has anyone redeemed your offer yet? Have you seen other Deals in the wild that got your mind going?