It is even more important to express yourself well in social media. What you write can spread like wildfire.  And there’s no way you can erase what you’ve written on the net.

How do you learn to write good texts? Hemingway said: Real seriousness in regard to writing is one of two absolute necessities. The other, unfortunately, is talent. OK, Hemingway did win the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1954 but is perhaps a bit extreme in what he says.

A simpler and more positive answer is that you learn to write by writing, writing and writing again. Whatever – a letter to a local newspaper, a letter to a good friend or a poem. But of course it helps to get knowledge and inspiration from somewhere.

Here are some book tips from our copywriters at the agency. Read and enjoy being seduced by what King, Strunk & White, Hemingway, Crompton and Öhlin say about the art of writing good texts.

Steven King, On writing: A Memoir of the Craft

William Strunk Jr. & E. B. White, The Elements of Style

Ernest Hemingway, Monologue to the Maestro: A High Seas Letter

Alastair Crompton, The Craft of Copywriting

Fuck Logic, Per Robert Öhlin

More and more people are turning to social media to find relevant business information. Research studies on how we use social media professionally are now also starting to turn up.

One such study is the 2009 B2B Social Media Benchmarking Study, at business.com. This study was carried out among 2393 North American professionals within B2B. This is to date the largest study of its kind.

Among the participants 69.1 per cent prefer to attend webinars or listen to podcasts. 62.2 per cent visits sites and forums that feature user ratings and reviews for business products. Almost as many, 62.1 per cent, visit company or product profile pages on social media sites.

Many also choose to visit company blogs (55.1 per cent), conduct searches on social media sites (54.5 per cent) and participate in online business communities or forums (51.1 per cent).

Eight out of ten b2b buyers find their suppliers instead of the other way around. This is the conclusion of a 2009 report from MarketingSherpa – an American research firm specializing in finding out what works, and what doesn’t work, in marketing.

Which is exactly why you should ask yourself the following questions: How easy/hard is it for prospects to find my company and my offering? What happens when they google my company name? Or services, products, business areas and key words that I want to be associated with?

But don’t stop there. What other ways are there for prospects – who might never have heard of me – to find out about me? As we continue to develop the way we search for information and form our opinions, social media is becoming increasingly important. In a recent poll 94% of business bloggers reported seeing measurable SEO benefits from blogging.

Which makes sense. An interesting blog increases traffic, which generates a higher search engine ranking. In addition, the content – even if it is niched – is broader than an informative corporate website. A blog features current events and more specialised subjects. The tone of voice, and thereby the language, is freer. All of this makes a blog ideal for long tail searches.

But even more importantly, a blog – and all other social media – enables dialog. Others can comment on your content and link to it. And you can post clever comments in already established and relevant forums creating an interest in your offering. Suddenly there’s a buzz. Word-of-mouth, digital style, makes you more visible and your offer easier for prospects to find. Spread the word

As online marketing rapidly develops, new expressions – acronyms in particular – appear. Some never to be heard again, others are here to stay. These are a few to keep in mind:

SMO = Social Media Optimization

CGM = Consumer Generated Media

SEM = Search Engine Marketing

SEO = Search Engine Optimization

SERP = Search Engine Results Page

CTR = Click Through Rate

PFI = Pay For Inclusion

PPC = Pay Per Click

PR = Page Rank

RT = ReTweet

UV = Unique Visitor

In consumer advertising an attention-grabbing film on YouTube may be enough for a breakthrough. You watch a funny film about say ice cream, and then you buy a tub next time you are out shopping just to try it. If you like the ice cream everything’s OK. If it’s not that good, just go back to your favourite sort next time.

But purchasing decisions within business-to-business are a bit more serious. It can take weeks, months, sometimes years from the point when a buyer checks out the market landscape to the time he or she is ready to sign a contract. Listening to a client’s needs is crucial to success. The better you listen, the better your chance of putting together a winning proposal.

Which brings us to the crux of the matter: Don’t just think about social media as a way to spread your message. Use them to hear what your customers want to buy. Follow the debate in blogs and forums. There you can find out more than your customers will ever tell you in a sales meeting.

Difficult to know where your customers are? Try Google Blog Search, BlogPulse and Twitter Search.

If you then want to take part in the debate – that’s another ball game. Apart from the usual question of resources it can be wise to leave the source of information untouched and make other online investments instead. Why not buy sponsored links for the key words you’ve just found out that your customers use?

A well-written e-newsletter that is sent out periodically creates a positive impression of your business. It helps your customers understand your offering and makes them more inclined to buy from you. But, what happens when you post the same content as a blog?

For a start, it instantly becomes interactive and you can get direct feedback from your readers. Your content also becomes searchable and you can reach other readers than your e-newsletter recipients. Other bloggers and digital media can link to you, generating more traffic leading to to greater searchability, which leads to… well, you get the picture. You can also get followers by pushing out updates through Twitter, Bloggy or RSS.

But why choose just one channel when you can choose both. Combine your blog with an e-newsletter. Select posts from your blog that are relevant to your target audience and compile them in an e-newsletter that you send to your subscribers (that, of course, will link to your blog). So, don’t scrap your e-newsletter, redo it.

Suddenly it’s just there. And it went so fast. A whole new universe. Even if most of us missed the initial Big Bang, none of us can have missed the enormous expansion – an expansion that is still accelerating.

We’re talking, of course, about the new social media universe that’s starting to change, well, just about everything. Six years ago there was no MySpace, YouTube or Facebook. Today they are sought out by 250 million unique visitors every month. More video was uploaded to YouTube in the last two months than if three of the biggest networks in the US had been airing new content 24/7 since 1948.

You can find further examples of how fast this exciting new reality is developing on YouTube (of course) in a short presentation from The Economist together with XPLANE: Did you know. Version 4.

Another thing that’s apparent in this brave new world – apart from the sheer speed – is that when a phenomenon gets big, then it gets BIG. So it’s not so strange that many bloggers, experts and media gurus are trying to grasp, understand and explain what this new reality means – and eventually how it can be mastered.

At the same time as we are rushing into the future, we are inundated with advice and tips on how we can quickly find the best and smartest route forward. Despite the fact we can only guess how the new map really looks.

So it’s quite liberating to find one piece of advice that sticks out when you surf from one social media philosopher to the next: Think long term. Don’t be a speed freak. Take your time to establish and develop a relationship with customers and users that is relevant and that you can all live with long into the future. Remember, this is only the beginning.

PS This just in. Facebook alone has just reached 350 million users …

A friend sent me this link the other day. It’s a simple little website for a simple little idea:
The Fun Theory.

The theory is this: Changing people’s behaviour is easy if you make it fun.

From that small seed, they’ve developed several short films showing people enjoying themselves while making a small difference to the world. We’ve got musical stairs, the world’s deepest litterbin and an arcade machine that recycles at the same time. Take a look and enjoy.

And you probably won’t see it immediately but you’ll eventually notice a logo on the right hand side and in the last seconds of each film. This site is very discreetly brought to us by Volkswagen (and their ad agency DDB Stockholm). There is certainly no heavy sell going on here – you have to click on the logo before you’ll even see a car – VW are just choosing to associate their brand with entertaining content. Content that also has a social point. Perhaps content that’s a little bit like … oh I don’t know … a sporty, environmentally sexy Golf?

Well, there’s no harm in that. Just like the way the site makes use of its visitors and their willing participation. Shortly there will be new content as visitors start putting forward their own ideas. And in the meantime everyone (me included) is spreading the word, sending links to friends or putting the films on YouTube where they are creating a real buzz with millions of viewings.

Why are we doing VW’s job for them? Because it’s fun :)

Social media are all the rage right now. A qualified guess is that many marketing managers are now busy trying to integrate social media into their new marketing plans. The difficulty, as with everything new, is to know what to do and how to get good results.

An important first step is to differentiate between strategy and tactics. Strategy first. Ultimately, social media are controlled by what people think about your company. The more that like it, the greater the probability that you will be helped along by positive opinions. It is therefore essential that you have the basics in place, such as core values and a brand platform.

No direction, no result.

The tactics. There are a myriad of channels within social media. The art is to find the few channels that touch your target group. But don’t make it more difficult than it is. Try googling some topical subjects in your business. Set up an account on LinkedIn for example, and invite some business acquaintances to join your network. And best of all: Ask a couple of customers how they search for information online. They will be glad to help.

You won’t reach all your existing and potential customers straight away via social media. But the Internet is a huge network of links. In time you’ll find more and more customers out there. The sooner you start, the better Remember the old rule of thumb for positioning. If you’re the first one out, you’re first in the customer’s mind. Neil Armstrong, anyone?