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Rule #1 of Twitter use – be helpful – right? Does that make sense to you? Absolutely. Can you screw up your implementation of Rule #1 and ruin your Twitter presence? Absolutely. By the way, this rule applies to all forms of social media.

Let’s look at the idea of sharing in the context of two questions:

• What to share
• How to share

Automated social media – efficiency versus effectiveness

You can automate parts of your social media presence. ReTweet buttons are a simple example: two clicks and you’ve Tweeted a useful link instead of typing it all out. You can even set up automated Tweets, similar to E-Mail autoresponders. Similar examples apply to other social media tools.

But here’s the important question: Why automate?

There’s two ways to answer this question. One answer would address the methods used (efficiency). The other answer delves into the more important question: what’s your objective? What do you hope to achieve? What do you want your audience to do? This reply delves into effectiveness: Will automation help you achieve your goals?

When being helpful looks like spamming

Recently, Naomi Dunford of Ittybiz (http://ittybiz.com/what-should-i-tweet-about/) seemed to declare war on “useful” Tweets and called for a return (or resurgence) of informal Twitter chat, even designating a hashtag for this purpose. A closer read of the post reveals the following key idea: You’re not being helpful if you’re just presenting a guise of being helpful and creating a continual barrage of links.

Worse still, if all you’re doing is generating “helpful” output, you’re losing a big opportunity.

We’ve all seen these accounts, the ones that just post titles and links. The worst offenders only link to themselves. Actually, the worst offenders lie about what they’re linking to, but we don’t need to go there.

Since your blog posts and articles really should be helpful, pumping them out in an automated stream helps your followers by extension. But when it looks obvious that it’s a machine at work, not a human being, it cheapens the gift by excluding the humanity.

Too much of this and it’s indistinguishable from spam.

When being conversational looks like spamming

On the other hand, if your social media output is purely social, you’ve need to be mindful of how this activity builds your business. A number of celebrities or successful entrepreneurs churn out “personal” and “social” content with a minimum of links. Some look like they are just musing out loud or talking to themselves.

Granted, they may have less free time than working stiffs like you and me. But they don’t look like they’re doing one of the most important things: listening. They’re just broadcasting, which is darn close to spamming.

The automation mindset obscures the need to listen

Automation is great. It allows you to focus your time and attention on other things. However, when information is being sprayed from the proverbial firehose, listening becomes even more critical. People used to come directly to you with letters, phone calls and formal meetings and you had the ability to respond or deflect. Now they talk to each other instead or they just complain to audiences, not to you.

If you delegate one thing, sometimes it’s easy to delegate a related activity.

I know that’s the MBA way, but you really need to think about delegating this activity. You are the best listener and engager. You’re the one who should care.

The solution: balance the automation with the personal touch

But you’re still limited by the same number of hours per day. Automation may be a key component of the way that you communicate with the world. It may be delivering valuable results to you. If you want to automate Tweets to your blog posts, that’s fine. But mix it up. Respond to feedback, both on your blog and in Twitter. Carve out some time to look for relevant conversations.

If you feel comfortable doing so, try:

• using your Twitter accounts to just “hang out” and being social
• acknowledge people (customers, suppliers, potential customers, remarkable people)
• strike up a new conversation
• experiment

Just don’t be the guy or gal who gets a machine to talk into the wind. After awhile, too much “helpful” and too little listening just makes your voice blend into the cacophony we all live in today. And that’s when you surrender the permission you earned to be listened to.

As Jason says, the comments section is yours.

Editor’s Note: Mark Dykeman of ThoughtWrestling and Broadcasting Brain is one of 12 new authors coming to Social Media Explorer. We’ll explain more on Monday.

IMAGE: Megaphone by Kimba Howard on Flickr.

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There’s a really good reason people love apps, and in particular applications from brands. They are often streamlined and simple versions of a company’s website or serve a specific purpose. There’s no annoying copy in marketing speak, no flash banners slowing down the page load, no pop-ups and, often, no confusion on where to go to get what you want. Why? Because mobile or tablet/iPad apps are supposed to be simple, serve 1-2 purposes and get out of the way.

Which is precisely what most users want from a corporate website.

A couple of years ago, everyone wanted to build desktop widgets. The thought was to take the core functionality of a website and make it easily accessible from one’s computer desktop. For Nationwide Insurance, for instance, it might have been a widget that helped you search for a car insurance quote by model and make. It probably didn’t do anything else, but that’s okay. It was a desktop widget.

The problem with desktop widgets was simply that tech people called them “widgets.” Mainstream consumers don’t know what a widget is. From 2006-2008, “What is a widget,” was in the top three or four questions I answered in every client meeting.

Now that Apple has made mobile and now tablet apps all the rage, what do we really have? We have a streamlined, narrowly purposed function-driven subset of your corporate website in an application that resides … on your device’s desktop. It’s a desktop widget for a smart phone or tablet, only we call it an app. Nationwide’s app — Cartopia — allows you to easily comparison shop for cars and find appropriate insurance afterward. It’s a neat app. And, to my knowledge, contains no pictures of company executives. (Thank goodness!)

Want to make your website kick-ass? Build it like you’d build an app. Think of the 1-2-or-3 things your main audience wants from your website, or cool stuff you can give them. Then just deliver that. And while you’re at it, build a little app-like icon that can reside on any desktop that takes people right to your website. Give them a mobile app that can live on any device … even a PC.

You think I’m crazy? Wait until you see the iMac Touch. (Which wasn’t rumored to be what Apple announces Wednesday, so we’ll probably have to wait.) What do you think will populate the desktops of Apple’s next big idea? Apps. Why not take them to everyone’s desktop now and beat Apple to the punch?

Don’t worry. Mr. Jobs has already conditioned the masses. As long as you don’t call it a, “widget,” it’ll work.

Related articles by Zemanta and Jason Falls

• How to Create an Enterprise App Deluge (gigaom.com)
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It was great bumping into John Uhri of Red Bit Blue Bit at Blog Indiana, this year. John does a really cool thing – rather than writing typical notes during discussions, he draws creative informational graphics (an infographic).

So, here’s a great infographic of Corporate Blogging for Dummies he did after reading through the book (click to download the full size)!

Thanks John! It’s great to see a visualization like this since it definitely compares to what we had hoped the key topics and information would be for anyone starting a corporate blog!

This post was written by Douglas Karr

Douglas Karr is the founder of The Marketing Technology Blog. Doug is President and CEO of DK New Media, an online marketing company specializing in social media, blogging and search engine optimization. Their clients include Webtrends, ChaCha and many more. Douglas is also the author of Corporate Blogging for Dummies. Follow him on Twitter @douglaskarr.

Corporate Blogging for Dummies is now available on Amazon and in book stores. Check out our new site, Corporate Blogging Tips, to find out what events that we'll be speaking at.

Got an event? Let us know that as well - we're looking forward to going on tour later this year.

Don't forget to follow @corpblogging on Twitter or become a Fan on Facebook!

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I think Facebook could set a record in the amount of newsworthy material it produces in a week. The most recent news is Facebook launching of analytics tools. After reading about this on Fast Company I’ve decided that it’s a great addition to Facebook’s world domination. Kidding aside it’s a cool feature that will show who “likes” what without sharing personal information.

The tool shares data based mostly on demographics similar to Foursquare’s analytic business tool, which for most is old news. Both features allows companies to gauge who their main audiences are in terms of gender, age, location and language. Instead of wasting time on extensive research these charts will show who and where your target audience is. Although the new and improved Analytics for Websites, Applications and Pages are mostly targeted to app developers, content owners and publishers the people representing these brands can greatly benefit. I also recommend clicking the link above for some more step-by-step instructions to implement the new tools.

Here are 5 reasons why you WILL benefit:

1. Time Saver. Time is money and this feature is easy to read and use. Therefore is you know who, based on demographics, “likes” your product then that’s where you invest your time.
2. Capitalize on Content. For instance, if your brand has a FanPage you can look at how many users commented on posts to capitalize on what they find to be most interesting. Basically you can begin to give your audiences what they want. Also if you are an administrator of a Facebook Page you can now see analytics for referral traffic and stream stories in the Insights dashboard (read link above), as well as tab views for your Page.
3. Document. Document? Yes, you can now easily collect data with the new visualization tools. These will enhance you ability to view full screen, print and save graphs, which in turn will allow you to save and conduct quantifiable research.
4. Know Your Audience. The new features only show demographics of users, which is all you need to know about your audience or potential audience. The insights dashboard breaks it down for all domain administrators.Ê A couple examples offered for admins are a breakdown of contributions from users to active user count, demographics on authorized users and active users, and the number of times permissions are prompted and granted.
5. Websites, Applications, and Pages. You can use these tools on all three channels. There is no excuse to not use these new features.

This post was written by Kyle Lacy

Kyle Lacy is founder and CEO of Brandswag, a social media training and strategy company. He recently authored two books, Twitter Marketing for Dummies (Nov 2009) and Branding Yourself (Dec 2010) and is a highly sought after speaker. He writes regularly at his blog on KyleLacy.com and you can find him chatting daily on Facebook / Twitter

Corporate Blogging for Dummies is now available on Amazon and in book stores. Check out our new site, Corporate Blogging Tips, to find out what events that we'll be speaking at.

Got an event? Let us know that as well - we're looking forward to going on tour later this year.

Don't forget to follow @corpblogging on Twitter or become a Fan on Facebook!

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Attorney David Castor, an attorney firm specializing in startups and SaaS businesses, emailed me over the weekend with the news that the FTC has settled with its first victim of new disclosure laws.

As part of the proposed settlement (PDF), PR firm Reverb Communications and owner Tracie Snitker must remove any iTunes reviews that were written by Reverb employees posing as ordinary customers and who failed to disclose a relationship between Reverb and its game developer clients. The agreement also bars Reverb and Snitker from posting further reviews on iTunes that pretend to be from independent consumers or that neglect to disclose any connection between the company and its clients, according to the FTC.

This is pretty scary stuff. In two decades, I’m not sure that I’ve worked with or for a marketing or PR firm that DID NOT go out of its way to promote its clients goods and services. I continue to promote my clients whenever and wherever I can – not because I wish to deceive the public, but because I believe in what they’ve accomplished. I try to disclose my actions each time – but I’m sure that I miss the mark plenty.

This could change everything. As your company wishes to deploy comment strategies, linking strategies, promotions, etc… it appears all of it could be a criminal act if it’s accomplished within the United States and doesn’t disclose a connection between the company and clients.

• Will Nascar drivers have to announce their sponsors in every interview because they’re wearing a hat or drinking a soda? Will they have to put a disclosure below each bumper sticker?
• Will Political Action Committees (PACs) have to announce on every comment on every site that they’re part of an organization with a paid relationship with the politician? How about when they send thousands of members to go answer polls online?
• If I mention a client in a presentation or speech as an example that’s not related to our relationship, do I now need to disclose they are a client?
• What about fans and follower counts? I don’t have a means of disclosing how many people follow me or how many people I follow because they’re clients or I’m a client. Isn’t that number swaying public opinion and used for marketing?
• I just wrote a blogging book where I utilized many of my clients and vendors (including Alerding Castor) as examples in the book. Am I going to get fined because I didn’t disclose that we may have, or once had, a business relationship?
• Will product evangelists at conferences need to wear a badge or hat that states that they’re going to talk about their clients, products or services?
• Sometimes I target companies and write about them, or introduce myself for the opportunity of building a business relationship in the future. Do I now need to disclose when I’m buying them a coffee or shaking their hand that I am doing it because I’m hoping to get their business?
• Will celebrity voice-overs and appearances in commercials now need to end with them telling you that they are a paid endorser of the product or service?

I understand that the law is attempting to thwart deceitful practices, but the problem is that my entire online persona, my twitter account, my Facebook statuses, my websites, and my writing are ALL based on relationships I’ve had with businesses. My company’s income is based on how well my clients are marketed. I am a paid advocate for them – twenty-four hours a day and seven days a week. I’m not trying to deceive anyone… but I am trying to increase authority, awareness, and evangelize on behalf of my clients. Who else am I going to talk about?!

You might as well put the cuffs on me now and throw away the key.

Or I could move to Canada and keep doing what I’m doing. There’s the loophole folks… move your deceitful practices offshore.

This post was written by Douglas Karr

Douglas Karr is the founder of The Marketing Technology Blog. Doug is President and CEO of DK New Media, an online marketing company specializing in social media, blogging and search engine optimization. Their clients include Webtrends, ChaCha and many more. Douglas is also the author of Corporate Blogging for Dummies. Follow him on Twitter @douglaskarr.

Corporate Blogging for Dummies is now available on Amazon and in book stores. Check out our new site, Corporate Blogging Tips, to find out what events that we'll be speaking at.

Got an event? Let us know that as well - we're looking forward to going on tour later this year.

Don't forget to follow @corpblogging on Twitter or become a Fan on Facebook!

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There’s a 96-inch long white board in my office. It is where I collect my thoughts for specific projects as I’m writing, planning or producing them. It is currently full of lists and reminders for a client’s digital marketing and social media strategic plan. I go through notes from client meetings, make lists of potential strategics or tactics, throw broad concepts and ideas up, enumerate client concerns, brand values and relevant research and then I study the board for a while.

As I was doing so last night I realized a picture of the board might be helpful for those of you out there working on strategic plans for your organization. No, we don’t all think or process information similarly, but when I see how someone else does it, I always get an idea or two. So here’s my board:

For obvious reasons, I made the image small and even blurred some of the words, but look at what you can read:

When I see the image, the first few things that pop off for me are these words:

• Goals
• Target
• Business Goal
• Primary Concerns
• SEO
• Insights
• Core Values
• Content
• Needs

No, you can’t read all those because of the resolution of the image, but those are the items that pop off the board to me. There are other ideas and concepts there, tucked away in the greens and oranges and blues. (No, there’s no system to my color coding other than to separate ideas from one another.) But the important things I think about have little to do with blogs or Facebooks or even monitoring solutions. I’m focused on the task at hand: what are the client’s goals, who are they talking to, what do they want to say and what does success look like for them?

Whether or not analysts, social media bloggers or even my friends on Twitter think my client work is innovative or pioneering or even good at all matters not. The only person whose opinion does is the client. This is what I focus on when I’m writing strategic plans or thinking about overall strategies for the people I work with as a digital marketing consultant.

What about you? What do you focus on? How do you think and process? Do share. We’ll all be better for it.

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This week, I’ve been reading Failure: The Secret to Success by friend Robby Slaughter. Robby has put together a great guide on failing successfully so that you can learn and grow from your failure. I can’t do the book justice – there are incredible anecdotes from some of the greatest leaders in industry.

However, I would like to share some of the failure quotes from the book to inspire you:

The knowledge gained from failures is often instrumental in achieving subsequent successes. In the simplest terms, failure is the ultimate teacher. David Garvin

I’ve missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. Twenty-six times, I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed. Michael Jordan

Failure underscores the need to take chances. The cliche is right: If you take no risks, there will be no rewards. And if you are taking risks, almost by definition, you are going to fail at some point. Jeff Wuorio

I have not failed 10,000 times. I have successfully found 10,000 ways that will not work. Thomas Edison

No one who cannot rejoice in the discovery of his own mistakes deserves to be called a scholar. Donald Foster

Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently. Henry Ford

An expert is a person who has made all the mistakes that can be made in a very narrow field. Neils Bohr

We can only make fantastic advances in technology through many failures. Takeo Fukui

Those who succeed tend to be the ones who allow themselves to fail. Chris Brogan and Julien Smith

Rule #1: you have to learn to fail, to win. David Sandler

Here’s a fantastic video from Honda with the same name, discussing Honda’s failures throughout the years.

Order a copy of Failure: The Secret to Success and be sure to check out Robby’s ongoing posts on his blogFailure.

This post was written by Douglas Karr

Douglas Karr is the founder of The Marketing Technology Blog. Doug is President and CEO of DK New Media, an online marketing company specializing in social media, blogging and search engine optimization. Their clients include Webtrends, ChaCha and many more. Douglas is also the author of Corporate Blogging for Dummies. Follow him on Twitter @douglaskarr.

Corporate Blogging for Dummies is now available on Amazon and in book stores. Check out our new site, Corporate Blogging Tips, to find out what events that we'll be speaking at.

Got an event? Let us know that as well - we're looking forward to going on tour later this year.

Don't forget to follow @corpblogging on Twitter or become a Fan on Facebook!

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Would you like to be a regular blogger at Social Media Explorer? I’m taking suggestions (not applicants … it’s not a job) and nominees for smart thinkers, status-quo challengers, tool reviewers and people who understand social media marketing better be about business or you’ll be flipping burgers soon. I want to share this platform with thought fire-starters.

We are smarter than me.

But I’m going to be picky. I want people who are committed to teaching social media, blogging regularly, sharing their experiences and thoughtful opinions, helping others understand not just how to use social media but what it means to be social. I don’t want guest posts from PR hacks or desperate start-up junkies hocking their product or service. I want people who have some experience, have an audience or following of their own, or can show tons of smarts otherwise and understand the responsibility and value of sharing a platform with some meagre credibility.

I’d love to have different perspectives … an agency person, an entrepreneur, a business owner, a wicked-smart business person who is a n00b to technology or social media. Perhaps even an analytics junkie, an email fiend, productivity enthusiast … even a gamer. Ideally, I’d love a lineup of 6-8 authors who can help keep the audience informed, entertained, but most certainly challenged with their thinking about social media, marketing, advertising, public relations and communications.

I am not going to stop blogging. This isn’t a cultural shift in Social Media Explorer or what it does. It’s an expansion of the resources to provide better content more frequently. It’s a call on my community to challenge the thinking: mine, yours and the echo chamber’s.

If you’re interested and meet the requirements (and don’t meet the bad ones) above, email me. Tell me why you’d like to write here, what you’d like to write about (think of it as your beat), what you think our readers will get out of your contributions and yeah, what you’ll get out of it, too. (If you need me to tell you why blogging here would be beneficial to you, then you probably won’t make the cut. Just sayin’.)

Understand that I may not pick you. I’m making room for a few, select folks. If the quality isn’t there, I owe it to this audience to not pick you. It’s not personal.

And you’re certainly welcome to not pick me, too. I’m only interested if you are.

Thanks for reading!

My inbox is a disaster. In all respect to my friends who teach inbox management, I don’t buy it… I know too many people, they all email me, and they all expect a response. Sometimes, as priorities determine my work, an innocent email from a friend or even a prospect may fall by the wayside. It’s not that I don’t think they’re important – it’s simply that I’m doing the best I can to keep up.

I’m busy unsubscribing from commercial emails all the time – and I’m constantly trying to remind myself where and when I met some of these folks. Sometimes prospects will renew a conversation that’s months old.

Today, thanks to the New Digg (I really do like it – follow me!), I found Rapportive. Rapportive allows you to put additional notes and information in the sidebar of Gmail or Google Apps, and already supplies a wealth of social information on the sender of the email. Here’s a recent email received from Flowtown founder, Ethan Bloch:

For Google Apps, you do have to enable single sign-on:

1. From Google Apps, click “Manage this domain”.
2. In the blue bar, click on “Advanced tools”.
3. Under “Authentication”, click “Federated Login using OpenID”.
4. Make sure the checkbox labelled “Allow users to sign in to third party websites using OpenID” is checked.
5. Click “Save changes”.

I have a similar tool in my email client, Postbox, but it doesn’t pick up nearly as much information (like the actual Twitter stream!) as Rapportive.

This post was written by Douglas Karr

Douglas Karr is the founder of The Marketing Technology Blog. Doug is President and CEO of DK New Media, an online marketing company specializing in social media, blogging and search engine optimization. Their clients include Webtrends, ChaCha and many more. Douglas is also the author of Corporate Blogging for Dummies. Follow him on Twitter @douglaskarr.

Corporate Blogging for Dummies is now available on Amazon and in book stores. Check out our new site, Corporate Blogging Tips, to find out what events that we'll be speaking at.

Got an event? Let us know that as well - we're looking forward to going on tour later this year.

Don't forget to follow @corpblogging on Twitter or become a Fan on Facebook!

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If you’re like me you had taken the time at some point in the past to set up report templates that run automatically. So if you are wondering where some of them have gone, read on! Google has updated their reports so the Account, Campaign, and Ad Group data is available through the Campaigns tab only. Yep, that is right…you have to make all new templates, but don’t fret, it’s not that bad.

Creating Account, Campaign and Ad Group Level Reports

So, first and foremost, to create a report from the Campaigns tab you need to click on the arrow in the tool bar below the navigation tabs. This will then give you your download options, and a chance to name your report. Remember that specific names will help you later, so try not to use the generic default names. You will also have the ability to choose a Segment (ie: network, certain time frame, click type, device) to help you filter the data.

It is important to note here that should you download a report upon logging in, the data included in the report will represent your default settings. This means that your date range will automatically be the last 30 days, and the campaigns or ad groups you see on the screen will be in the report. The date is certainly something to think about, because you cannot edit this field after the report is created without creating a similar report, and running it as a fresh template.

In order to filter your results, you will need to actually set and apply a filter, then download the report. The filter system is fairly straightforward, just remember that they follow AND logic, so the criteria that you set will need to apply for results to show up. For example, if you say Status = Eligible and Avg. Position is better than 3, only the items that match BOTH criteria will be included in your filter.

So once you’ve created your report, where do they go? On the left hand side of the screen you will see a list of all of you campaigns, and at the bottom there is a link called Control panel and library. Click on this link, and you will be taken to a list of all of the reports that you’ve created. Unlike the old reporting interface, you aren’t limited to seeing only the last 15 reports run (thank you Google!). You will quickly see that the more specific your naming conventions, the better, especially when you have three that say “Campaign report”, so as I said before, keep that in mind when creating a new report.

Editing Your Reports

The following fields can be edited from the control panel page:

1. Report Name – Simply type in a new name.
2. Format – You can choose from a variety of formats such as .csv, .pdf, and .xml.
3. Email – Depending on the report, different people may need to see the data, so you can choose to email just yourself, all account users, or no one at all.
4. Frequency – Each report is set by default to only run once. However, you can choose to run it daily, the first day of the month, or the same day of the week that you originally ran the report on (for example, a report I create today can be set to run every Wednesday).

Once your reports are created you can choose to run them immediately, or create a similar report. As stated earlier, should you want to set a custom time frame, you will need to create a similar report, change the date range from the original report, and run a new one.

Reports Available On The Campaigns Tab

Not all of the reports from the original reports tab are available yet on the campaigns tab. However, the following reports are already available, and just like before they will show you the following:

1. Account Reports – Summary of your entire account data to give you a high level idea of performance.
2. Ad Reports – Metrics relating to text, image, video, mobile, and local business ads.
3. Ad Group Reports – Data pertaining to your ad groups across every campaign.
4. Campaign Reports – Data pertaining to the campaigns in your account.
5. Keyword Reports – Data pertaining to the performance of all of the keywords across every campaign and ad group.
6. Placement Reports – Data pertaining to the performance of the display network (previously known as the content network).

Though the keyword, ad, and placement reports are available on the campaigns tab, they are also still available on the reports tab, but knowing that Google is moving toward reporting from the campaigns tab, I would recommend getting to know the new process to help alleviate future learning curve headaches.

The Dimensions Tab

The final part of creating new reports from the Campaigns tab is the dimensions tab. If it is not already showing in the interface when you log in, click on the down arrow directly to the right of the Ad Extensions tab, and you will see a check box next to the Dimensions Tab option. By checking that box, the Dimensions Tab will be added to your interface for future use.

So what is the dimensions tab for? It is used to help you create reports that require larger amounts of data. You may notice that if you set your time range back to far on the campaigns tab, and try to download a report, say on the day level, it will tell you that the report cannot be created. In order to resolve this issue, you need to create the report from the Dimensions tab.

From here you can create reports for various time periods such as Day of Week, Day, Week, Month, Quarter, Year, and Hour of Day. You can also edit the columns that you are included so you can extend or eliminate certain metrics to make the report as customized as you want.

All in all, the new reporting system should be helpful, and I hope that it will eventually streamline the process for gathering data for various reports, so hang in there, and keep trying different filters and segments!

Check out The Adventures of PPC Hero: Heroic Feats of Pay Per Click Management at http://www.ppchero.com/. Copyright © 2007-2010 Hanapin Marketing, LLC.