As you’d expect from an savvy social media monitoring organization like Radian6, their homepage has all the social bookmarking icons that have become de riguer for any website in this space.

However, they have something interesting going on over on the right hand side of the current homepage layout:

Well, it’s not unusual for companies to play up their customer testimonials to help build trust for visiting prospects. However if you click through on one of the testimonials, you are taken to a page listing all the props they have received on Twitter:

What a fascinating approach! Talk about portraying trust. These obviously aren’t testimonials extracted under duress by a demanding marketing team five years ago. Just real people providing unsolicited tributes and recommendations. If you so desire you can even click on their profiles and go through and see who they are. Oh, and look at the timestamps: praise flows on a daily basis.

Could this work for you? If you have a lively customer base on Twitter, and products they are all singing about, why not highlight this on your website?

Setting up Twitter customer testimonials

The first step is to favorite all those positive posts. Radian6 has done that here:

The next step is to take the RSS feed from this page and build a page on your site that displays this in a tidy Twitter format. If you are non-technical, ask your IT team to knock something up or look into modules that can do this for you. If you have a site built in PHP, you can try adapting this script from Lylo.

And that is pretty much it.

I’d suggest this as a great example of how social media can supplement a web marketing strategy. Any other examples? Let me know…

Those far-reaching tentacles of Shel and Neville over at the FIR Podcast picked up an informative new document from the Social Media Group titled ‘Social Media RFP Template’.  As more and more agencies from across the marketing spectrum (and in particular SEO and PR) now offer social media services, how do you separate the wheat from the chaff?

Apart from dealing with the obvious stuff you’d cover with any agency engagement, such as agency background and their past experience in this area, the RFP also covers the following areas:

• Integration of social media across marketing/communications functions
• Social media channels employed
• Reputation management and social media monitoring
• Establishing social media profiles
• Influencer outreach
• Crisis management
• Social media training
• Compliance with legal requirements
• Metrics and measurement

I’d say this list is equally valid if you are in the situation of having to prepare a job description for a social media manager or associated role.

Download the report

SMG also run the hugely popular Social Media Today blog aggregator. If you write in this space, you should definitely hook up your blog!

Subtitle: How The Art of Storytelling Matches Up With the Business of Marketing

Stories have been around since the beginning of communication, and there’s a reason: it’s a form of communication that beats all others when it comes to delivering a memorable, motivating, and meaningful message.

This is another session that deals with the popular (and someone thorny) issue of how to handle visitors once they get to your site. In addition, this session also covered how to attract more people through inclusion in Google News (the most popular online news service).

Moderator:
Rebecca Lieb, Contributing Editor, ClickZ

Speakers:
Gary Stein, Director of Strategy, Ammo Marketing
Sally Falkow, President, Expansion Plus Inc.
Larry Lawfer, Founder/President, YourStorys.com

Gary:

People listen to a story and act inefficiently, however there is no denying that stories shape behavior. The best brand marketing builds a story around your brand – it doesn’t just pump out brand messages. (I’m thinking of the story around how Krishna Bharat built Google News after wanting balanced news accounts following the September 11New York bombings).

Apparently, there are only five stories that can be told:

Origin: where did we come from?
Purpose: why are we here? / Vision: where are we going?
Education: teach the crowd, show them something
Ethics: walk the walk
Connection: eg. CEO reaching out to disgruntled blogger

Sally:

In every business there is a story. If you don’t tell it, others will tell your story for you. (I’m not sure this is always such a good thing, given there are always two sides to every tale).

You need to monitor onlline conversations and know what people are saying about you. Listen for the story. It can come from employees, customers, suppliers – anyone within your business’s ecosystem.
But beware: insincerity or fake stories will backfire. You can use tools like BrandsEye or Radian 6 to monitor online reputation.

All creative should be tied to the story and you can amplify the story online.

Spreading the word
Optimized press releases with images will show up in results (news and web now we have more universal search). Multimedia is a useful aid in transmitting your story.

Sally gives the example of Intercontinental Hotels, who have produced low-fi videos talking to most concierges across the road. Concierges have lots of stories and these unscripted videos were produced for around $4k per video.

Think of blogs: these are often picked up by search. As with age-old PR, you have to be consistent. Make sure you carry the story across all channels. However, regardless of the story, product performance and service is the final word. If these are in place, then you can work out your story and let others tell it for you.

Larry:

Starts off presentation with this adage:
Advertising: you say you’re a good date
PR: your mother says you’re a good date
Engagement marketing: your date says you’re a good date

So, how do we move towards engagement marketing?

Words and pictures are a great way to build a story.

The basic rule is to be real:

• Be authentic
• Invite involvement
• Listen, respond, repeat