5 Biggest Twitter Marketing Blunders of 2012

Social media marketing can be hard to master. When done right, it can strengthen your brand value and ideally even your bottom line. When done wrong, it can alienate consumers and thrash your reputation.

Here's a look at five of the worst corporate mistakes over Twitter this year, and what other business owners can learn from them: 

January 18: McDonald's hashtag gone wrong. McDonald's (@McDonald's) created the #McDstories hashtag on Twitter to inspire customers to share personal stories about their favorite McDonald's moments. What McDonald's didn't bargain for was that customers would share both good and bad stories. And share they did -- everything from allegedly crunching on fingernail clippings in Big Macs to getting food poisoning. The fast food mammoth yanked the #McDstories campaign only two hours after launching it, but a quick search on Twitter shows that the hijacked hashtag still goes on strong.

Lesson: You can't control what consumers will say using your hashtag, and they can be hijacked by negative comments that can never be taken back.

January 27: Snickers gets caught paying for celebrity tweets. Marketers from Snickers' U.K. branch (@SnickersUK) were hungry for retweets when they hired British model and reality TV start Jordon (aka Katie Price) to tweet about topics she likely would never normally tweet about, including Eurozone debt and China's gross domestic product. Jordan followed up her rash of out-of-character tweets with a message about feeling like herself again thanks to Snickers. The stunt left many of Jordan's followers reeling for thinking her Twitter account had been hacked.

Lesson: Pranking consumers in clever ways can draw attention to your brand, but usually not the right kind.

February 5: Toyota Camry drives away potential drivers. The Japanese car giant created nine Twitter accounts to get the word out about the new Camry during the Super Bowl. Toyota (@Toyota) then tweeted -- in this case, spammed -- unsolicited messages about a Camry giveaway contest to anyone using a Super Bowl-related hashtag. The ensuing consumer backlash prompted Toyota to close all its "The Camry Effect" promotional Twitter accounts and issue an apology.

Lesson: Impersonal mass marketing tweets can alienate customers. Stick to unique, personalized messages that engage consumers one-on-one.

October 3: KitchenAid cooks up a half-baked political tweet. On this day, KitchenAid's Twitter feed (@KitchenAidUSA) wasn't about cooking with the company's famous kitchen appliances. It was about politics. After Barack Obama mentioned his late grandmother during a presidential debate earlier that evening, the person running KitchenAid's Twitter feed tweeted an insensitive comment about her and his campaign. The individual responsible for the inappropriate tweet was relieved of his duties and the company was forced to clean up the mess.

Lesson: Your social media manager should adopt a tone that reflects your company's image and keep his or her personal (and political) opinions out of your social media marketing.

October 29: Retailers' Hurricane Sandy sale slip-ups. During the storm, Urban Outfitters (@UrbanOutfitters) tweeted: "This storm blows (but free shipping doesn't)! Today only...bit.ly/S8fADV #frankenstorm #ALLSOGGY" An email promoting the sale included an image of Frankenstein with the word "Frankenstorm" on it. American Apparel, The Gap and Sears got in on the Sandy storm sale action on Facebook and Twitter, too. Angry reactions to these inappropriate sales still continue on Twitter.

Lesson: Attempting to make money on and exploit others' suffering in times of crisis can cause serious backlash. Just don't do it.

Reference : http://www.entrepreneur.com

12 Most Wrong Things To Do On LinkedIn

What is LinkedIn? It is a social media platform used for professional networking. It is also currently the largest professional networking community in existence, with more than 100 million users in more than 200 countries worldwide.

I wish people had a better understanding of the term “professional networking.” LinkedIn is not MySpace, Orkut, Facebook or Twitter, and it never will be. It is simply a place where you establish professional connections. I know most of you will laugh out loud reading these twelve “most important things not to do” on LinkedIn, as I do whenever I encounter them. Humor aside, though, I think it is time to clearly shout out loud to those who are doing these things on a regular basis. Here are some of the things that I have witnessed during my five years of professional networking on LinkedIn.

1. Don’t lie in your profile

I think this should be self-explanatory, as we live in the 21st century, and things (and data) are easy to check. Be truthful about your name, title, employment and achievements. I clearly recall a young professional who was trying so hard to get a job that every time he applied for it, he changed his title. Over a period of one year, he was a buyer, a buying director, a merchandising director and finally managing director, at which point I lost track of the many “achievements” he had accomplished at the age of 21. I personally know this individual, and I can tell you that he is still working as a shop assistant.

2. Don’t ask or endorse people you don’t know

I am amazed every time I get an endorsement request from a person that I have never talked to or worked with. As well, there are plenty of groups on LinkedIn that are similar to Twitter Follow for Follow (on LinkedIn, this is called Recommendation for Recommendation). I have to wonder who would jeopardize their own credibility by recommending a person they have never met or worked with. Don’t get me wrong — I do recommend people. But before I recommend someone, I definitely make sure I can stand behind my words. This can be achieved simply by engaging in groups, Twitter chats, meetups or other forms of professional networking.

3. Don’t buy or sell your contacts

In the last few weeks I have gotten a few emails from my first connections on LinkedIn offering me the chance to buy “quality” contacts to expand my network. Prices offered were anywhere from $50 to $70 for 1,000 contacts. Here is my input on selling or buying a contacts list: Don’t! You can get all the contacts you want free in open net-worker groups on LinkedIn if you really want the title “most connected.” As well, you might get an “IDK” (“I Don’t Know” this person) response from a person that you try connect to if that person is not an open net-worker  and if you get too many IDK replies, your account can be suspended by LinkedIn. Remember, the quality of your connections is more important than the quantity, just like you want to have quality followers on Twitter rather than a large number of followers who aren't meaningful to you. If you are a seller of contact lists, I strongly recommend that you put this in your profile headline, as I am positive any future employer would be more than happy to know that you like to sell data, and would guess you would be happy to sell their customers data info as well.

4. Don’t ask your connection to set up a job interview for you

It is close to impossible to get this done, especially for people who have had zero interaction with their connection. I might be willing to connect you with the hiring manager in the company that you are interested in, but I can’t set up an interview for you. If this was easy to achieve, believe me, I would have a new job every month. As I am not a recruiter, don’t ask me or your other connections whether we think you are a good fit for a job. This gives the impression that you aren't willing to take the time to check out the job requirements yourself. The proper way to initiate a request to one of your connections is to explain in the request why you chose to ask that particular person for a connection.

5. Don’t ask questions that might legally implicate you

The Q&A section on LinkedIn is not a place to ask questions that could legally implicate you. Here is an example of this that gave me a really good laugh:
Q: “I am divorcing my wife, and I own a C-class corporation. Would you tell me how to hide the corporation so that I don’t have to give that bi%&*h half of it?”
First, if your wife is a direct connection of yours, she will see your question. Second, LinkedIn pages are indexed by Google, which means that whatever you ask will stay on Google forever, exposing your plan to commit fraud.

6. Don’t ask to “date” someone; LinkedIn is not a Match.com

LinkedIn is a professional networking community. While I am flattered when I receive an e-mail that starts with “hey sexy” or “hey gorgeous, would you grab a drink with me,” I would only respond to a request like this on shaadi.com or matchfinder.com. I don’t build my career under the sheets, and neither should you — at least not on LinkedIn!

7. Don’t criticize your employer in groups

LinkedIn is not a place to criticize or publish bad reviews about your current employer. I know how angry you can be, as we have all had bad days in the office, but problems such as this should be sorted out offline, not online where everything stays forever. Stating in the first line that you need to stay anonymous will not help you, since your profile is tagged next to the comment and includes your full name and picture.

8. Don’t publish profile pictures of your “wealth” when looking for a job

Choice of your profile picture should reflect your professionalism. Pictures of you in a new Bentley, Mercedes or on a yacht will not help you when you scream out in your profile headline that you desperately need a new job. This kind of picture might give hiring managers the wrong impression. A clear head shot will work perfectly. And as much as we all would like our picture to be perfect and appealing, I need to say that we should all button up our shirts when taking a profile picture for LinkedIn. Chest hair or cleavage doesn't belong on a professional networking site.

9. Don’t create a group if you have no intention of moderating it

Creating a group and then not replying to members’ questions and requests will leave a negative impression, especially if your job title is social media strategist or community manager. If you are not able or don’t have time to interact with a group, don’t open one, and save yourself from getting a bad reputation on LinkedIn.

10. Don’t send the “419 scam” emails

This is an old scam that has gone on for many years. While we all understand how difficult it would be to lose your wallet in the back seat of a taxi, wouldn't it be a better idea to first contact your family before seeking financial help from your network? This scam has now started on LinkedIn, and I hope LinkedIn will do something about it.

11. Don’t ask for contact information of others in my network

If professionals want their email addresses or phone numbers to be public knowledge, they will put these in their profiles, and many do so. You can check individuals’ profiles. You also may use the so-called “Introduction Request,” and many net-workers would be glad to pass your request on to the person you are interested in. That person can then decide if they want to follow up on your request. But it is not my right to give contact information of others out, as I would not be happy if someone gave mine out without asking me first.

12. Don’t copy your resume from other profiles

Or, if you really need to, be sure you change all the achievements, job titles and company names. You might encounter someone who knows the person that you copied the resume from. I don’t mind you looking at my resume and getting some inspiration from it, but make sure that, at a minimum, you correct at least the name of the company that you work for. And before copying anything, familiarize yourself with copyright law.

How to plan your Social Media?

Few professionals were sitting at their desks in 2004, eyeing the empty slots in their calendars and wishing that somebody would just invent a new way of communicating to fill those long and lonely minutes. People's calendars were already full.

Social media demanded attention. It had to be put into the rotation, but that doesn't mean we took something else off our calendars to accommodate it. Instead we just added it to the marketing teams' tasks, challenging them to figure it out until they could make a business case for hiring full-time social media staffers.

Flash forward a decade, and any organization with serious social media ambitions has those full-time staffers. They've expanded teams and reassigned resources by eliminating now-deprecated communications channels. (Paper newsletter, anyone?)

For individuals however, it's harder to expand and reassign resources. What are the rest of us taking off our plates to make room for the time we spend on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook? Not much.

If social media is worth doing, than it's worth making time for. Anyone who's spending more than an hour a week on Twitter, LinkedIn or Facebook has presumably made at least a subconscious calculation of the benefits of participating (or better still, an explicit set of goals for what they expect to accomplish with the time invested in social media usage).

But all too many of us decide that social media is worth doing without deciding what is worth giving up for it. And unless you're one of the miraculous few who does have plenty of empty space on your dance card, you must give something up in order to make time for social networking.

How do you decide what to eliminate? You can prioritize what to keep and what to retire by answering these questions:

What am I learning from social media? If you use social media as a news gathering, training or learning resource, ask which of your prior news tracking or learning activities can be retired. If you're now reading 10 blog posts a week on professional best practices, maybe you don't need to attend that annual training workshop anymore.

Who am I meeting through social media? One of the great rewards of Twitter, LinkedIn and other professionally rich networks is the discovery of new colleagues or the deepening of professional conversations and ties. If you're consistently expanding your professional network through the time you spend online, consider scaling back the number of face-to-face networking events you attend in order to build out your rolodex (and why don't you retire the rolodex while you're at it).

Who am I reaching through social media? Blogs, Slideshare, YouTube videos: social media provides an extensive array of opportunities for sharing your ideas and building your reputation. That may allow you to reduce the other kinds of reputation-builders that formerly filled your schedule. You may still get value from presenting to an audience of a thousand, but are you better off speaking pro bono to a room of 25 people, or writing a blog post that will be read by 250?

How am I replenished by social media? If you've made time for social media, it's probably because you actually enjoy it. So tune into the emotional impact of the time you spend on Facebook or Twitter, as compared to the other kinds of activities or interactions that formerly filled up your leisure hours. What's more relaxing: watching TV or catching up on Facebook news? What's more fun: going to a bar, or kibitzing on Twitter? What's more restorative: reading a blog post or reading a novel? Depending on your personal preferences, you may decide to shelve some of your less-satisfying hobbies in favor of some of your new social media activities.

One virtue of this kind of evaluation is that it not only allows you to evaluate which pre-Facebook activities are less valuable than social media, but also to notice where social media has crowded out professional or personal activities that offer more rewards than you get from spending that same hour on Twitter or LinkedIn. The key is to make these trade-offs conscious and explicit, rather than letting social media take over more rewarding activities, or letting it crowd out the remaining space in your life.

Because you are giving something up to make time for social media, even if what you're giving up is sleep or (rarer still) empty space. Indeed, that empty space may be what's most precious, because it's the margin that ensures that when the next must-do activity appears on the horizon, you don't go ten years without noticing you need to take something else off your plate.

Reference: hbr.org

Use of Poll for engagement of Visitors

The purpose of these posts was to help beginners learn how to create interactive and engaging websites. Adding Polls and surveys is another way to engage your audience. Polls also give you great deal of insight into your users. In this article, we will show you how to add polls on your blogger:

To get started, simply type in a poll question and up to 30 possible answers. You can then customize your poll with your own colors, font, and settings. When you're finished we'll provide you an HTML code to paste into your website, or you can share your poll with your friends on Facebook, on Twitter, via e-mail, and more.

We have embedded one poll only RIGHT HAND SIDE of this page. Would request you to take out sometime for us and participate in it.

QR Codes: Some Interesting Facts

1. QR codes don’t have to be black and white – As long as the contrast between light and dark areas is great enough for readers to detect, you can create branded QR codes to help promote your business.
2. QR code scanning grew 1200% during the last quarter in 2010.
3. The largest QR code on record was created by Audi, which measures a whopping 159 square meters (that’s 1711 square feet, for the non-metrically inclined).
4. The iPhone is the most popular scanning device for QR codes.
5. QR codes were first introduced in 1994 – The Japanese firm, Denso Wave Inc., first created QR codes for the sole purpose of tracking vehicle parts.
6. Two-thirds of all QR codes are scanned by women.
7. Print media accounts for only 1% of all scanned QR codes.
8. “Extreme Scanning” is when users excessively scan QR codes hundreds of times more than the average user – Contests appear to be the driving force behind this phenomenon.
9. Over one-fourth of all scanned QR codes were scanned by 35-44 year old consumers.
10. Excluding Japan, the United States has the highest QR code usage rate than any other country.

Fun Facts:

According to a survey by JumpScan.com, 52% of participants had seen or heard of QR codes. Of those who use social media, 57% of Facebook and Twitter users said they have scanned a QR code at least once in the past year and as many as 40% had done so five or more times in the past year. From July to December of 2010, there was a 1200% increase in the scanning of QR codes. The OS used most to scan QR codes is Apple (68%), followed by Android (26%) and Blackberry (4%). The world’s largest QR code was 159 square meters and created by Audi to celebrate 100 years of car manufacturing.

Clever Uses:

Starbucks is using QR code technology to make it possible for you to pay for your daily caffeine hit with their mobile iPhone app. It works like this: punch in your Starbucks card info, verify some details, and the iPhone app becomes the gift card. A secure QR code is generated for the barista to scan when it comes time to pay for your coffee. Starbucks is now taking iPhone app payments in over 1,000 Target stores nationwide.