Posts Tagged ‘Social Tools’

Find Out Who Unfollowed Your Business on Twitter

Thursday, October 20th, 2011

Are you interested in finding out who stopped following your business on Twitter? If so, there’s an online tool to help you with that. Who.unfollowed.me offers a free service which allows you to see who unfollowed you on Twitter. Businesses who use Twitter to engage with customers and prospects should always be aware who’s following them and who isn’t. If someone unfollows your business it’s probably for a reason. Before who.unfollowed.me came out with their service, finding out who stopped following you on Twitter was a tedious process. Other services make you wait for an email or direct message. Who.unfollowed.me allows you to manually check who unfollowed you whenever you want.

Why Do I Need to Know Who Unfollowed Me on Twitter?

Find out who unfollowed you on TwitterKnowing who unfollowed your small business on Twitter is important, but knowing why they unfollowed you is even more critical. Obviously you can’t find out the why without knowing the who. By using who.unfollowed.me you can get a list of all of the Twitter users who recently unfollowed you (hopefully it’s a short list). You can then begin to reach out to each of them via a reply tweet to explain that you noticed that they unfollowed you and you wanted to make sure you improved your Twitter presence, so you’d like to know why they made their decision.

Learning what you may have done to cause people to stop following you can help you evolve your Twitter strategy, so that you avoid losing Twitter followers in the future. One nice benefit that we’ve noticed when following this Twitter communication strategy is that many of your old followers will respond with “I didn’t realize I stopped following you” or “There must have been a mix up, I didn’t mean to unfollow you”, which leads to them beginning to follow you again! Whether they start following you again or not, it’s important to understand the reason behind why those who meant to stop following you did so. This will only help your Twitter strategy become more effective in the future.

How Do I See Who Unfollowed Me on Twitter?

It’s very easy to use who.unfollowed.me – Here are the steps you need to take to see who unfollowed your business on Twitter:

  1. who stopped following me on twitterNavigate to who.unfollowed.me
  2. Enter your Twitter login information where it says, “Sign in with Twitter”
  3. Once you’re signed in you will see an orange bar on the right side entitled, “who unfollowed me lite”, click the bar below entitled, “check unfollowers”
  4. The first time you do this the system cache’s your Twitter followers. This only occurs once. Stop back later (in a day or 2) and repeat the process. Who.unfollowed.me will then compare your current follower list to their cached list to determine who stopped following you on Twitter.

Finding out who unfollowed your business on Twitter is definitely important, but finding out why they unfollowed your business on Twitter is critical. Who.unfollowed.me helps you find out who, then it’s up to you to find out why. Be sure to take the time to contact your old followers so that you can make better use of Twitter in the future.

EveryBlock Spreads Your Small Business Yelp Reviews through Your City

Monday, March 1st, 2010

EveryBlock is a new online tool that allows you to track and discuss what’s new in your neighborhood. EveryBlock answers one simple question, “What’s happening in my neighborhood?” The New York Times calls EveryBlock, “One of the most ambitious hyperlocal sites”. Residents who live in and around 15 major U.S. cities can find out information about crime, news coverage, neighbor announcements, real estate transactions and more. The biggest benefit for small business owners is that EveryBlock is connected to Yelp.

Yelp is a great online tool for small business owners. We’ve written about it a few times here on this blog. The first step you must take is to learn how to claim your small business on Yelp. Yelp allows customers to rate their experience with your business, as well as, leave customer feedback for other potential customers of your business.

Normally, the only time someone would see those reviews is if they found your small business profile on Yelp. Positive Yelp reviews are a great way to drive new customers to your small business. Now, through EveryBlock, your Yelp reviews are being pushed out via email to EveryBlock subscribers with a zip code within a certain radius of your business.

Philadelphia businesses on EveryBlock

Here’s how EveryBlock works…The image above was taken from an email I receive daily from EveryBlock. I signed up with the zip code 19127, which is Manayunk, PA – Philadelphia. Each day I receive an EveryBlock email and within that email are new Yelp reviews from businesses located in and around Manayunk. The email image above shows 2 new business reviews, one for Chinese Tai Chi Center and another for Green Leaf. These businesses were recently rated as 5 stars and 4 stars respectively on Yelp. EveryBlock syncs with Yelp to collect all new business reviews within the area of 19127 and then pushes those reviews out to all EveryBlock subscribers for that geographic region. This means your small business is getting in front of highly qualified prospective customers, as they live in and around your area. Pretty cool, huh?

Currently, the following 15 cities are listed on EveryBlock. As the site grows, so too will the number of cities.

  • Atlanta
  • Boston
  • Charlotte
  • Chicago
  • Dallas
  • Detroit
  • Houston
  • Los Angeles
  • Miami
  • New York
  • Philadelphia
  • San Francisco
  • San Jose
  • Seattle
  • Washington, DC

Manayunk Restaurants EveryBlock YelpThe key takeaway from this post should be that you need to start using Yelp to promote your small business because not only will Yelp users see your Yelp business listing (and hopefully positive customer reviews/ratings), but so too will local EveryBlock subscribers. Basically, for no money at all, you can attract new prospects to your business from two different online tools, Yelp & EveryBlock.

EveryBlock even has an iPhone application to allow consumers to connect while on the go. This means that your Yelp reviews are getting in front of very qualified prospective customers, as they are hanging out around your community. This is really powerful stuff if used properly. Be sure that you’re using Yelp to promote your small business and that customers are writing reviews on your Yelp profile. This way those reviews will be aggregated on EveryBlock and sent out to subscribers within your geographic area.

Facebook & Twitter Alter the Emergency Procedures at Your Small Business

Monday, February 8th, 2010

Online social tools like Twitter, Facebook, and Yelp are drastically changing how business gets done. Period. With that said, I’d like to take a look at one aspect of business that’s really benefiting from the increased use of online social tools. Emergency Procedures. Does your business have Emergency Procedures in place? For example, if you conduct business in and around BucksMont, PA where we were just hit with a foot of snow or more this past weekend, do you have a procedure in place to let employees know if your store will be open, closed, or opened late? Now how about this, do you have an Emergency Procedure in place for letting customers know?

Social Tools Help with Emergency ProceduresDo you remember using that Emergency Call List when your business was going to have to stay closed on a normal working day? You know, with each new employee you bring on, and for every old employee who leaves, you update that list, print it out, and make sure everyone knows the procedure. Usually it starts at the top with the owner or manager deciding if their store will open on a day where weather or other emergency factors come into play. Once the decision is made, the owner calls the next person in line, then that person is in charge of calling the next person, and so on.

Perhaps your business still operates this way? You know what the worst part is, what if you cannot get in touch with the person you’re supposed to call? Do you leave a message? Do you call back a bunch of times OR perhaps call the next person in line? Either way, it’s anxious moments knowing that if you don’t get through, other people may not receive the emergency information before they leave for work. Well, those days are over…

Now, through tools like Twitter and Facebook, small business owners can write a new procedure. That procedure is as follows: “In the event of an emergency where you feel there is the possibility that our store will close (ie. bad weather), please check our Facebook fan page before coming to work. Someone from the organization will make the decision and post it to Facebook prior to the start of the day.”

Here’s an example of one of the Facebook Fan page messages I saw on Saturday February 6, 2010 due to the winter storm that hit the Philadelphia, PA area:“Tranquility LIFE Spa & Hair Design, LLC is CLOSED today because of all the Lovely SNOW!” Say goodbye to those employee call lists. Small business owners are now able to post one message on Facebook and Twitter and simply instruct all employees to check those social media profiles on days when they feel their could be a closing situation.

As you can see business owners are naturally migrating to these tools as a way to communicate with employees. Online social tools are making it easier for businesses to communicate with employees during emergency situations, but they have also opened up a totally new procedure that many business owners should be taking advantage of: Communicating your situation to customers.

BucksMont Businesses Use Twitter During Winter StormsBefore the advent of using online social tools for business, there was really no way of communicating to customers that a store would be closed for the day. Granted, on days like the Philadelphia area had on Saturday, many people aren’t going out shopping in the first place. With that said, what if you’re a doctor’s office or another type of business where customers have an appointment setup on a day that’s in question? Well, you’d have to pay someone to answer the phone and unless you have a redirect system in place, that individual would probably have to go into the office. Obviously, that’s dangerous during bad weather days. Now, all of that has changed due to more and more businesses using online social tools to communicate with customers. A big key to this is also the comfort which customers have in using those same tools to communicate with businesses.

Now, on a bad weather day, businesses can tweet to their followers that the store will be closed or that there will be a delayed open. Businesses can send a Facebook message to fans informing them of the situation. Before a customer gets in his or her car to head out to your business, he or she is now checking your small business Facebook Fan Page or Twitter account to ensure you’re going to be there. If you’re not open and the customer finds out while at her computer, she’s thankful you saved her the trip. If you don’t post a message on your online social tools and a customer travels to your store, only to find out you’re closed, well then, she’s not going to be happy.

Here’s a message that went out to Master P’s World Class Tae Kwon Do Facebook Group yesterday:

Subject: No classes today – Saturday Feb 6

Hi Everyone,

Just spoke with Master P and he asked me to let you know that we won’t be able to have classes today due to the snow storm. We don’t want to be contributing to the additional cars on the road which make it difficult to clear, not to mention everyone’s safety.

Enjoy your Saturday afternoon in the snow. We will see you Monday when classes resume.

-Ryan

And another that went out over Twitter. This one is from the Best Buy in Pottstown, PA:

GOOD MORNING FACEBOOK! At this time we are probably looking at an 11:00am or 12:00pm opening. http://bit.ly/bYGHDO

And just to round things off, here’s a message I put up on the Catalyst Marketers Facebook Fan Page and Catalyst Marketers Twitter account the other day. This was not due to the winter storm 2010, but the same principles apply. I learned that our host provider had a server down and guess what? That server hosts CatalystMarketers.com. In real-time, I was able to inform all of our Facebook fans and Twitter followers that our site was down. I was then able to immediately inform them when it went back up. This way, they were not left wondering what’s going on with the site and when it would be back up.

Facebook wall post (server down – 9:48am): Our host has a server down and our site is running on it. CatalystMarketers.com will be back up shortly – fingers crossed

Facebook wall post (server back up – 10:32am): CatalystMarketers.com is back up. Sorry for the inconvenience.

As you can see, online social tools are changing the way small businesses operate during emergency situations. These tools have allowed for easier communication with employees, as well as, created a communication system for customers. Are you using online social tools during emergency procedures?

Photo Marketing Meets Twitter To Offer Big Savings at FOREVER 21

Thursday, February 4th, 2010

I was on TweetDeck today when this tweet came through from @KelleyRenee: How am I not following @Forever21_tweet yet? 10% off $40+ online, now thru 2/6! http://twitpic.com/117uf0.

Now, I’m not really in the market for anything from FOREVER 21, but I usually check these things out for the marketing aspect of it. I always like to see what others are doing with their online efforts.

FOREVER 21 is using Twitpic to promote a new Valentine’s Day 2010 special savings opportunity. Twitpic is a Twitter application. It’s a free online tool which allows you share photos on Twitter. Users can upload a photo from their phone OR computer and then customize a message to accompany the picture. You then submit the entry and it gets tweeted to your Twitter account.

Photo Marketing for your small business

Small businesses can learn from FOREVER 21′s new promotion. You can have a designer create you a promotional image (costs should be less than $50 if you create the copy) and then you can use tools like Twitpic to share your promotion with the world. You can run the same promotion without the photo, but imagery really appeals to the growing masses of Right Brain Thinkers. Just ask Dan Pink.