It’s pretty easy to use. You search for an interest whether it’s skiing or knitting or Star Trek and join the community. Then you interact with like-minded people. If there isn’t a community, you can create one in less than ten minutes.

So you know what to do if you like Star Trek but Google+ Communities is also a great place to grow your brand. You can set up a community based on your products and invite your brand ambassadors to interact with you, your brand and your product.

Don’t just create a community for your company. If people like something about your business like a service or a product, build the community around that. You want to get people posting, chatting and uploading pictures.

As Christina DesMarais of INC pointed out, Google+ communities offers private or public memberships, the ability to plan events with community members and participates can create their own topics or threads. You can also assign moderators.

One of the really promising things for brands is the ability to use the Hangout feature in Google+ Communities. A brand or moderators can have weekly or monthly chats. You can check out Hangout Help, which yes, is a Google+ community.

It’s a place to share content about your brand and your products to people who want to hear more about them. You can learn more about the new Communities with this video:

It’s been a busy week on the Small Business and Sysomos blogs.

Tannette Johnson-Elie took a look at how mentors can help small business entrepreneurs while Kelli Korducki wondered how companies can establish a corporate dress code.

Bad names happen all the time but a kids’ store named after an overblown, overwrought book about imprisonment and death? If you’re of a certain demographic, you may have read Flowers in the Attic. Angelica Moreno shows us why you really need to do some market research.

Entrepreneur and Dragons’ Den Arlene Dickinson launched Arlene Dickinson Enterprises this week for entrepreneurs.

On the Sysomos blog, Sheldon Levine looks at baseball’s 2012 World Series. If you’re not into sports but love politics, take a look at who won the three presidential debates and what Canadians think of the US elections (a lot).

Plus there’s all the great content on this blog. Like we said, it’s been a busy week!

Is Google+ worth your time?

It’s a question many brands and individuals have probably been asking since the service was launched in July, 2011 after more than a year of work behind the scenes.

On the surface, it seems that Google+ has been a huge success with more than 100 million “active” investors among the 400 million people who have signed up for the service, which lets people share information and communicate with friends and business colleagues.

Even so, there seems to be ambivalence about Google+, which Google describes as a  “social layer” that sits on top of its other services – as opposed to a social network.

Although there are some good features, particularly “Hangouts”, which makes it easy to have video group discussions, there is the sense many brands or people have joined Google+ because they believe they must have a presence, even though they might not use the service much, if at all.

Aside the digital “real estate” play, Google+ has been regarded as a must-do because it was thought Google favored content had been shared a lot within Google+. Google’s search chief, Amit Singhal, recently said, however, Google is no longer prioritizing Google+ results.

If better search results are not a major reason for using Google+, it raises the question about why brands or individuals would want to use it at a time when they are allocating a lot of time and resources to rival services such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

The answer, although arguably not definitive, is that Google+ is worth some of your time, if only to stay abreast of how the service evolves and how it might be used to drive corporate and personal brands.

In some respects, Google+ is still work in progress as Google tries to figure out how to position it within the ultra-competitive social media landscape.

One path being pursued by Google is integrating Google+ into its other services such as Gmail and YouTube. This could be an interesting opportunity for brands and people who rely on these services to provide a seamless experience for themselves and their customers.

Another approach to Google+ is experimenting with its features. As a new and, in some ways, different platform than Facebook, there could be opportunties to use Google+ in new and different ways to drive communications, marketing and sales. Some companies, for examples, may see “Hangouts” as a “killer app” to drive collaboration and teambuilding.

It is left to be seen if Google+ will become a larger and more vibrant place but unlike the now defunct Google Wave, for example, it would be fair to say that Google+ will be sticking around for a while.

It means ignoring Google+ or dismissing it as irrelevant would be a mistake even if its usefulness and utility are still unclear for now.

Last week, we talked about getting your visual elements of branding off the ground. This week, I’m going to help you find your brand’s voice, and develop your ‘Tone and Manner’ document.

What is a Brand’s Voice?

Your brand voice is not just a list of “words you don’t say” or canned responses, it’s the way your brand communicates directly with customers. It’s a natural extension of your brand promise and your brand’s visual style.

Have a look at the Facebook Posts of Skittles vs. those of Starbucks. They are very different, but stay true to the general style of how they approach their customers.

Just like each person has a different personality and speaking pattern depending on location, education and vocation, (did you know that whether you call carbonated beverages “soda” or “pop” depends on your geographic location as a child?) so should your brand.

You’ve already decided on the basic brand attributes if you read part one of this series. In our example, the brand attributes for our upscale dog groomer were:

•Fashion-forward

•Upmarket

•Aspirational

•Trendsetting

There are plenty of reference materials for this type of writing: fashion magazines. If you’re unsure, have a look at brands similar to what you want yours to be and try to make note of special language, phrases, jargon, or quirks to their writing. This will form the framework of what you’re going to put together.

In our dog groomer example, there are options. You can stick with a very “fashion editorial” sound, or you could go with a cheekier “fashionista” sound.

Fashion Editorial:

“Diva Mutts: go beyond canine style”

vs. Fashionista: 

“Diva Mutts: where glam pooches get fabulous”

The difference just between these two slogans is noticeable. This is where you’ll have to try a few things to see what fits.

Know Your Media

While the core voice is important to maintain, keep in mind that there will be differences in tone required for different media. Some general guidelines:

Social Media: make it more conversational, but keep it brief. You need to bite-size your language.

Email: You need a great subject line, header, short body copy and a call-to-action. You have some freedom in the way you leverage these pieces, but any e-mails you send out in a marketing capacity need these three things. Keep it less conversational than your social media approach.

Print: This is your best bet as print tends to allow for the most space, so you have the opportunity to go further. Keep it under 200 words for maximum effectiveness.

Putting it into action

When writing, it’s important to keep in mind that the only way you’ll know what works is by trying it out. You should practise writing, getting input from people who you respect. If you’ve planned the rest of your brand pieces correctly and put the time into thinking the brand through, writing out your idea should be easier – not easy but easier. Make sure you put yourself in the position of the customer, and assume no prior knowledge.

Now that we’ve taken you through the three basics of building a brand, you should have a solid, professional foundation as you build your business.

Karen Geier is the Co-Founder of Shyndyg.com. Previously she was a digital marketing executive, most recently with Ogilvy. Karen previously headed up Social Media strategy for Canadian start up Kobo, and has consulted for start ups, and fortune 500 companies.

Angelica Moreno, who has managed the well-known household brands Becel, Hellmann’s and Sensodyne, takes us through the 4Ps of marketing – the first in a series looking at how to correctly market your product.

Karen Geier, the co-founder of Shyndyg.com and  a digital marketing executive, walks us through the steps to establishing your brand’s identity.

To do this we are launching our new Marketwire Resonate platform in the next few weeks.  Our platform will align the business intelligence extracted from the social web with the ability for our audiences to connect with all their audiences.

At Marketwire we have worked hard over the past 29 years to build a reputation for our company, to stand for all the good things we want our clients, prospects, partners and employees to think of when they hear the name “Marketwire.”   They know that Marketwire is recognized for the innovative offerings and tremendous client service that we have delivered over the years, but as with all markets, technology is changing how we communicate. The world of social media is transforming the way people access, consume and interact with information and each other.

So today we are introducing our new brand identity. This new identity represents a refreshing of our brand.  We want to ensure our brand is identified with social media communications, and speaks to a marketing communications audience as well as our traditional public relations and investor relations customers.   Our service is Beyond Words in every respect and we will be working to develop our brand presence that matches our movement beyond traditional communications, beyond just social media communications and is actually recognized as the leading authority in bridging these two worlds of communication.

We would like you to join us on this journey.

Jeff and Mark gave business bloggers a host of great ideas to improve their blogging success at our recent webinar: “The Changing World of Business Blogging: How to Make Your Blog Pay Off in 2012.” Registrants also received our new 30-page social media white paper “7 Expert Perspectives on Using Social Media to Move the Business Needle in 2012.” (Get your complimentary copy by clicking on the icon above.)

Here are ten tips to help you better your business blogging:

Blog Tip #1: Consider why someone would want to read your blog.   Before blogging another word, remind yourself of your organization’s unique perspective. Why should someone add your blog to his or her reading habits? Think about what that “someone” might be interested in talking about today. Competition for online attention is fierce; make sure your blog has unique appeal.

Blog Tip #2: Don’t forget to have fun.  Your blog should be more fun than your website. Create content with a personable voice. Consider including images, videos, polls and contests. Invite user submissions. And don’t take yourself too seriously. Let your personality show through.

Blog Tip #3: Turn your blog into a social-sharing content hub.  Push great blog content beyond your corporate site to social sharing sites such as Pinterest, Twitter, YouTube, Google+, Facebook and LinkedIn. Today’s successful blogs are not standalone entities but are part of the social media spectrum.

Blog Tip #4: Make sure your blog is easy to find.  Search engines need to know who you are, so keep your blog tied to your company’s website. You are not myblog.blogster.com or myblog.com. You are either mycompany.com/blog or blog.mycompany.com. And make sure that it’s easy to navigate between your blog and your home page.

Blog Tip #5: Spark a conversation.  A good post results in dialog. Make sure that you always give readers something worth responding to and include a “call to respond” at the end of the post. And incorporate comment fields. Reader comments inspire content ideas, get people involved and nurture relationships. They’re often what turns interested readers into customers and strengthens existing customer relationships.

Blog Tip #6: Attend to looks and accuracy, but matchy-matchy… not so much.  Go out of your way to make your blog readable and well-designed. Don’t use walls of copy; break it up into bite-sized chunks instead. Use graphics, charts and photos and don’t forget comment design. Ensure correct grammar and spelling – errors lower your credibility. Finally, reflect your company’s branding, but try not to match your website too perfectly. 

Blog Tip #7: Keep the idea fountain flowing.  Nothing’s more of a turn-off than a blog that hasn’t been updated for months. You lose readers and miss out on search engines’ ongoing quest for fresh content. For ideas, monitor what’s being discussed on social networks and subscribe to content aggregators. Another idea: solicit ideas from people representing all functional areas and levels of your organization.

Blog Tip #8: Put on your thinking cap – titles matter. Often blog post titles are after-thoughts. But you should give them at least as much thought as you do your post. The main reason is SEO. Search engines index keywords, so your title should reflect your blog’s content. In addition, a captivating blog post title captures the spotlight, shows your personality and gets people involved.

Blog Tip #9: Give your internal processes a tune-up.  Is your organization able to consistently publish on-target content? Find out what frequency means to your audiences and determine how their needs change over time. Create an editorial calendar that spells out what and how often you should publish, who writes the posts, who edits and approves them, who answers comments and who monitors posts for out-of-date content.

Blog Tip #10: Toot your own horn.  You devote a lot of time and effort to creating interesting posts, but if no one reads them, your work is for nothing. Social media offers many options for spreading the word. Depending on your audience you may choose Facebook, LinkedIn, Reddit (for more technical types) or Pinterest (if your content is image-based). Emailed newsletters are also an effective way to alert folks to blog posts of interest.

Related posts:

• 3 ways to get started with content marketing
• How to use earned media to boost your brand
• Ask the Expert: 5 great tips on how to create content and conversations, courtesy of Rebecca Lieb

You can watch the full video by clicking here, or on the embedded video below:

Read our Sysomos case studies and discover how we help some of the world’s leading brands, from The Canadian Red Cross to BBC.com, use social media monitoring and analytics to strengthen their brands, build better relationships with their customers and drive revenue.

Here are highlights from some recent Sysomos case studies:

BBC.com Assesses New Market Acceptance. BBC.com is an enormously popular and important news portal for audiences around the world. ComScore calls it the largest international news website of its kind in Asia. So when BBC.com decided to delve deeper into local issues and launch an Asia edition, it used Sysomos MAP and Heartbeat to assess market acceptance. Challenges included the need to filter out non-relevant BBC.com chatter and monitor that buzz in multiple countries in multiple languages. Sysomos feedback offered BBC.com the reassurance it needed that its new Asia edition launch did, in fact, meet with success. BBC.com continues to use MAP and Heartbeat to evaluate long-term success and guide development efforts. 

Valtech Captures Untapped Business Leads. We learned that Valtech, an international digital agency, set up a Sysomos monitoring lab in its Copenhagen location to capture and analyze conversations impacting its clients’ businesses. Powered by Sysomos Heartbeat, this wall-mounted, six-screen “rapid response center” is staffed by a team of social media analysts, content creators and community managers. According to Valtech, it’s the ideal base to focus on opportunities to sell, support, engage and create content in an environment dedicated 100% to extracting the value out of social media. So when a potential customer tweets “Can anyone recommend…?,” Valtech’s clients don’t miss the opportunity and can convert it to concrete business value.

The Canadian Red Cross Matches Donors with Those in Need. The Canadian Red Cross is a great example of a non-profit organization that uses Sysomos Heartbeat to further its objectives, which are to give help and get help – and to empower people to be helped or to help the Canadian Red Cross. These objectives were highlighted during last year’s earthquake in Japan. By 9:00 a.m. on that tragic day, the Canadian Red Cross’ social media channels were inundated with inquiries and offers of help. Heartbeat revealed that in the first two weeks after the earthquake hit, people tweeted about the Canadian Red Cross nearly 7,000 times and its text to donate was shared on Twitter nearly 10,000 times, generating 22.3 million impressions.

MEA Digital Builds Share of Voice. MEA Digital, a US-based digital agency, recently used Sysomos Heartbeat to build a larger, more engaged social media fan base for one of its clients, and in the process, take share of voice away from larger, more well-known industry competitors. It embarked on a social media campaign targeting ad industry thought leaders and frequent contributors in the space. Heartbeat gave the agency the ability to quickly identify and engage with influencers buzzing about its client’s product, increasing the viral nature of shared content. The three-month campaign generated over 2.1M earned media impressions. Share of voice increased from 9% to 27%, and negative sentiment declined from 11% to 4%.

Check out all of our Sysomos case studies. You might glean some new ideas for using social media monitoring to boost your own success.

Related posts: 

• The secrets to successful B2B social media
• 5 ways B2B companies can benefit by listening to social media conversations
• 10 leading socially engaged nonprofits

Begin High in the Funnel and Get Everyone on Board

Jonathan emphasizes looking high in the sales funnel for people who are just beginning to search. They’re usually not ready to buy but are simply putting out feelers such as “Does anyone have a recommendation…?” or “Looking for…” The key is to be there to respond before our competitors do and develop the conversation into a relationship.

Of course, that’s easy to say but more difficult to accomplish, especially for a large organization. Plus, B2B decisions are not made on a whim; they take time to close and tend to be complex. So the right people need to be involved: a social media strategist, community manager and analyst backed by subject matter experts, sales folks and others, right on up to the CEO if need  be. And everyone must work together via a workflow and monitoring platform like Sysomos Heartbeat that filters conversations throughout the organization so they land on the right desk. Finally, individuals need to be trained how to engage and report.

Go for the Gold

Is this worth our time and resources? The answer is a resounding “yes.” Take a look at the payoffs. Jonathan cites a “58 character, 15 minute deal.” Someone looking for a phone system tweeted “ShoreTel or Avaya?” In less than 15 minutes, someone from Avaya saw it and figured out what to say to the person who tweeted. Thirteen days later that initial tweet resulted in a $250,000 sale for Avaya. Although business deals typically involve more time than 13 days, this case illustrates the power of a simple tweet and how being there at the right time and knowing how to handle the conversation makes all the difference.

So what to say to a C-suite that may be reluctant to put resources into social media? Jonathan says to “show them the money.” Use examples of B2B opportunities on Twitter, leads generated, meetings booked, pipeline value and partner acquisitions along with softer metrics such as influencer recommendations and negatives turned into positives.

Tips from the Trenches

B2B community manager Sheldon offers a host of practical tips on finding and nurturing conversations. He advises us to be on the lookout for ubiquitous keywords like “which” or “what” or “looking,” promising that these nondescript words can yield amazing results.  Also, he says to look for people talking about our competitors – especially in negative terms. When we come across a conversation that looks promising, he says to not be afraid to jump in when it makes sense. But he cautions us to never use a hard-sell approach, instead focusing on the issues under discussion and offering our opinion (e.g., “hey, have you tried our product?”).  Never push to make a sale.

Sheldon also reiterates the importance of social media relationship-building, likening it to a dinner meeting or a round of golf. It’s a great way to build trust with people on their terms – not necessarily discussing business but talking about what they are interested in. He recommends letting others in our organization know what we’re discussing, since the community manager may have a completely different conversation going on than that of a sales person or subject matter expert. He says to be sure to take notes and pass them on to others so they can foster the relationship (e.g., “I see you ran a marathon last weekend”).

Finally, after the sale, Sheldon strongly advises keeping the relationship alive. Our product is now a big part of the person’s life, so checking in periodically keeps us top of mind. Customers who had a great experience with us and our organization are our best advocates and will share that good will with others.

NOTE:  Shown above is Valtech’s six-screen listening lab powered by Sysomos Heartbeat. A multi-disciplinary team of social media analysts, content creators and community managers monitors and measures the opportunities that social media conversations present on behalf of the agency’s clients.  Be sure to read Valtech’s case study and learn how the team actively operationalizes social media across its international operations to more effectively capture business opportunities.  Click to read all Sysomos case studies.