So you’ve done everything right. You’ve created your perfect Twitter profile, found an awesome picture to represent who you are, and are engaging with people like crazy. Now you you’re beginning to have a following, but are they seeing your tweets? Not everyone is as interactive and engaging as you, or lives on the internet.


How can you maximize the potential reach of your tweets? The answer: proper timing of tweets. You’ve heard it in the business world your whole life, “timing is everything,” and it applies to your tweets as well. While it may seem like most Twitter activity is going on all day during business hours, that’s just the activity of who you follow, not who is following you. In order to get your tweets seen, you need to tweet when your followers are on, otherwise they’ll just get lost in the massive Twitter feed on your followers page.


Here are a few tips on how to accomplish the perfectly timed Tweet:

1. Research your audience. Is your following a bunch of computer engineers writing code until 4am? If so, it’s probably not best to tweet in the morning when they’re sleeping. Or is your following a typical business person doing the nine to five grind every day? In this case, your best time to tweet may be before nine, and after five.




2. Use available social media tools. There are hundreds of tools out there to help you find out who your audience is. For timing, there’s one in particular that helps you optimize the timing of your tweets named Timely. This application grabs data from your last tweets, and from your following, to calculate the best times for you to tweet so they have the highest impact. You can sign up for the application (it’s free) or you can simply type in your twitter name on their website for a quick list of higher impact tweets. Signing up for the service gives Timely more data to calculate more effective times for you to tweet.




3. Scheduling tweets. Now that you’ve researched your audience, and have the science of Timely backing your tweets, it’s time to schedule some tweets. If a high impact time for you to be tweeting is at 3am, you’re not going to want to wake up every night at 3am to send out a tweet. You can schedule your tweets in the Timely app mentioned above, or you can use many other services such as Tweetdeck or Hootsuite to schedule your tweets. Scheduling your tweets will let you write out all your tweets at the beginning of the day, save you time, and ensure they’ll be sent with maximum impact.

Of course you should always keep engaging and contributing valuable content to the Twitterverse on a regular basis. Using these tips are just a few more marketing weapons for you to optimize your efforts of having your message seen across Twitter, which will in turn generate a larger following.


- Spencer Tucci

Hi, my name is Lorenzo Dickerson. I’m a Social Media Marketing Director here at SocialGrow, and the real live person behind SocialGrow’s Facebook page. Have you had a chance to check out SocialGrow’s Facebook Page? Not yet? Well, here are five great reasons to check us out. If you find what we’re doing interesting, please Like our page.



1. The Latest on Social Media and Social Networking



The SocialGrow Facebook Page is chock full of great information for people interested in social media and social networking. Hear about the latest trends, breaking news and funny stories on topics you care about, including building your social networks, how to effectively network online and off, the best social networks, online contact management and technology.



2. Connect with Like-Minded People and the Members of the SocialGrow Team



Social networkers just like you visit the SocialGrow Facebook page to connect and discuss social media and marketing topics. Once you Like our Facebook page, you’ll benefit from meaningful discussions with the SocialGrow Team, as well as with other social media aficionados like yourself. Ask us questions about how to use our web application, the best way to build your social network, how to engage our consulting team or just stop by to read the latest posts. We want to meet you — your ideas and opinions are important to us.



3. ALL the Popular Kids are Already There


We’ve been adding content like crazy, and our audience is responding. Our Facebook Page now has more than 400 members and more than 40,000 post views. Our page has received an overwhelming 300% increase in new likes, and a 9,000% increase in post feedback in the past four months. Don’t miss out on this valuable mix of the best social media and social networking insight and ideas.



4. Updates on Cutting-Edge SocialGrow Products and Services



Of course, we will keep you up-to-date on SocialGrow’s products and services. We know that managing your social networks can be a drag, so we’ve built our social networking contact management system to be the easiest way to turn your real world relationships into social network connections. Our application automates the process of inviting the people you know to connect with you on your choice of social networks, like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. We want you to spend more time talking with the people in your social networks than you do managing them!



5. Me!


I have big plans for our Facebook page. I want to grow it into the premier meeting place for you to discuss your social networking and social media needs, complementing our blog, Twitter stream and other social media platforms. I will introduce you to our industry’s top thought leaders to share their ideas about contact and customer relationship management trends. You can expect discussions on hot news topics, company updates, and most importantly, to have your questions answered by the global experts in social networking.



Like us on Facebook, and experience everything SocialGrow has to offer for yourself!






LORENZO’S EZ TWEET: Share this blog post now with your Twitter followers by clicking here.




How much time a day do you spend listening?

How do you monitor, in real-time, what is being said about you, your company, and your products and services?

How do you find out about new, exciting ideas in your industry?



One great option is to create a social media listening post – a collection of RSS subscriptions sent to your feed reader program or e-mail. Creating your own listening post is one of the most effective ways to tap into the firehose of valuable, online information. Listening is the most important component of successful social media strategies, but is often the least used.



The benefits of a using a listening post are significant:

• It automates the task of monitoring online conversations and information

• It saves time by allowing you to focus on analyzing and using information rather than searching for it.

• It allows you to quickly connect and engage with people in your targeted audiences, including: key industry influencers, content creators, and critics of your products.



Four Easy Steps to Creating Your Own Social Media Listening Post



EZ TWEET: Share this blog post now with your Twitter followers by clicking here.



1. Content

Finding good content starts with determining the best keywords to use for your listening post. Start with your name. If you have a common one, you will have to use additional keywords to make the search unique. Add in business terms, your company, competitors, industry, products, and services. Use Google AdWords to find additional keywords. For example, SocialGrow’s listening post keywords include “social crm software”, “web contact management application”, and “social media marketing”.



2. Monitoring

Now that you have decided on the most relevant keywords, you need to create your RSS feeds. Google Alerts is a good first option. Enter in your keyword phrases and choose the option to deliver your content through feeds or email. Twitter Search can be valuable source for getting real-time content, just scroll down to RSS icon on the right side.



3. Tools

While there are a number of RSS feed readers, Google Reader is one of the best. If you chose feed delivery in Google Alerts, your feeds will already be populated in Google Reader. Start by reading the content from the feeds and keep only those feeds that you find valuable. Use Google Wildcards to refine your searches.



4. Process

You may find it useful to categorize your feeds into different folders within your feed reader. You can name your folders by subject, or even day of the week, so you can organize your listening. If you want to share important content that you discover, tag these posts to create a new feed, to which others in your organization can subscribe. After a couple of weeks, you will be able to determine the best process to monitor and share your feeds.



Listening posts are truly for everyone, whether you’re just casually interested in something, or already a subject matter expert. Without the luxury of an in-house research team, it is virtually impossible to manually monitor all the online content and conversations that impact your business. If you don’t already have one, a listening post will quickly become the single most powerful tool in your social media arsenal.



Please share the processes and tools you use to listen for your business with us in our comments section below. We look forward to learning which tools you use to listen!



My friends all know this of course. It’s not like it’s something you can hide really, especially when you help people to grow their social networks and to make better use of social media.



I received an e-mail this week from my friend Tim out in Phoenix. Wave “Hi” Tim, you’re about to be internet-famous. Tim and I went to B-school together, and he is in the process of closing down an e-commerce website. Knowing many of you have similar questions about social media, I asked Tim if he’d let me share my response back to him with you by blogging it. He said “yes” by the way. I always knew he wanted to be internet-famous.



Ken,



-Tim



Hey Tim,



You will no doubt be thrilled to hear that you do *not* have to relocate your family from sunny Phoenix to rural Montana. Most people have now heard the buzz about social media, and many have tried it for themselves, but are not (yet!) seeing the results they want.



Results are the right place to start. As a form of communications, the first question to ask — if you are using social media for anything other than entertainment — is “What do I want to achieve?” Take the time to identify what it is, specifically, that you want to achieve. Increase your revenues? Reduce your costs? Get new customers? Find a date for your sister’s wedding?



I read five questions (cries for help?) in your e-mail Tim. I will address each of them in order:



1. Why is social media important?

Social media is important — and I am defining “important” here as an effective strategy for individuals and organizations to achieve their objectives — because it makes it fast, easy, and [in most cases] FREE for you to create and share content.



For example, with traditional (”paid”) media, you purchase print, website, radio, TV, and/or billboard space, and then you pay someone else to articulate the value of your particular product/service in a compelling way to catch peoples’ attention — all in the hopes of persuading people to buy. With social (”earned”) media, you are no longer in direct sales (”BUY MY STUFF!”) mode. Instead, you are engaging your target audience by freely sharing the value of your expertise with people who are interested in it. And yes, along the way, you are letting it be known that your products and services are available for purchase. Earned media is not a magic cure-all, but an effective addition, and booster, to your existing marketing mix of paid and owned media.



2. What is the value of Twitter?

One of the values of Twitter is that it is a powerful lead generator. Each and every 140-character SEO-rich tweet is indexed by Google in almost real-time, getting you and your content on the first page of Google’s search results.



3. What is the value of Fousquare?

One of the values of Foursquare is that it enables you connect more frequently with your network live and in-person. When I worked for Realogy, our building had a central staircase between the first and second floors that everyone used. Arguably, more business was done on that staircase than in the rest of the building combined, because it facilitated people running into each other. Likewise, Foursquare exponentially increases the opportunities for you to “run into” the people you know.



4. What is the value of Facebook?

One of the values of Facebook is that it enables you to reconnect with people from your different schools, companies, and organizations. The personal and professional possibilities multiply when you are able to more easily stay in touch with the people you know.



5. What is the value of LinkedIn?

One of the values of LinkedIn is the ability to identify and connect with people you want to reach through “friends of friends”. Because of its near ubiquity among business professionals, it also enables real-time access to first-hand information about your customers, suppliers, employers, and employees.



You’re already following me on Twitter (http://twitter.com/socialgrow), connected with me on Foursquare (http://foursquare.com/user/kenherron), have friended me on Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/kenherron.fb), and connected with me on LinkedIn (http://www.linkedin.com/in/kenherron). So what is it that YOU want to achieve with social media?



-Ken



SocialGrow Blog Readers: Do *you* have social media advice that you would like to share with Tim? Please feel free to include your recommendations in the comments section below, both on the importance of social media, and how he should be using Twitter, Foursquare, Facebook, and LinkedIn.



At the March Web Innovators Group meeting here in Boston, it really hit me how our engaging people on social networks, by sharing what we know and what we are doing in social media, has had an incredibly positive impact for SocialGrow’s brand awareness and recognition in the real-world.



I felt like everyone at the event had seen Jennie White’s “5 Startups Who Are Killing it on Twitter” article she had published earlier that day, so immediately recognized SocialGrow on my nametag and knew who I was. I can’t say I’ve ever experienced that before at an event. Everyone wanted to know more about our software application, and how we’re using Twitter to reach out to potential users. We all know how much easier it is to talk about your company, your brand, and your products with someone when they have read something about you online. Especially with a product that does something which hasn’t been done before, social media gives you real-time feedback to help you explain the unique value of your product in a way that traditional advertising cannot.



Jennie’s article was not our first online recognition, however, we’ve also been named one of MassHighTech’s “5 Startups You Should Follow”, and Microsoft’s global BizSpark Startup of the Day. SocialGrow’s participation in Microsoft’s BizSpark Startup program, has further enabled us to connect and engage with our potential users online.



So how can a tech startup, and for that matter, ANY new company use social networks and online social media marketing “introduce” themselves to their target customers and help those customers to understand their brand’s unique value?



1. Hire a great CMO, who is both strategic and hands-on. You need someone who deeply understands not just marketing in general, but social media marketing in particular. SocialGrow’s CMO Ken Herron started engaging potential users online months before we launched our Alpha release, and has steadily worked his way up Kent Huffman’s Systemic Marketing’s “Top CMOs on Twitter” list.



2. Freely and generously share your expertise in your blog posts, Twitter streams, Facebook Fan pages, comments on others peoples’ blog posts, and MeetUp groups. Don’t forget to take advantage of any PR opportunities you see at Peter Shankman’s HARO.



3. Share your content so as to maximize its SEO and potential for virality, by being sure to include keywords which will help people to find what you’ve written. Required reading for all of us how to increase the effectiveness of our inbound marketing efforts are: HubSpot, David Meerman Scott, and Dan Zarrella.



4. Share “link love” with the people who you believe to be the best in your field (as I did in tip number 3 above), and they may share it back with you through their tweets and posts.



5. Continually create and share quality content. On Twitter, post at least 3 times a day, and on your blog, post at least once a week.



6. Actively participate in in-person networking events, proactively seeking out and introducing yourself to the other participants. At the last LaunchCamp Boston event, I made it a point to seek out Jeff Cutler, Joselin Mane, and Jason Evanish. Don’t be afraid to sit in the front row, as I did in Scott Kirsner and Wade Roush’s session on PR.



7. Hire a great designer to visualize your brand’s identity. SocialGrow’s logo was designed to communicate the concept of healthy, positive growth, and we use it everywhere so people will instantly know when it’s us talking.



8. Finally, pay it forward. All new companies need help. If you can help a fellow startup with introductions, feedback, or simply being a good beta tester to help them to improve their product, then do it. You will not only make new friends, but learn things which will help your business along the way. Then when you need help yourself, and you will, you’ll have these people in your network. We all want to be successful!



Learn more about SocialGrow, and our milestones to date on our Crunchbase profile.



How have YOU used online social networking to increase your company’s brand awareness? I look forward to your comments!



Azure will also have the ability to increase, on demand, the processing power during peak times. This will enable the SocialGrow web and mobile phone software application to be fast, *really* fast, no matter how many members are online.



Finally, Azure will offer us the ability to dynamically increase the storage space we need to scale the application to accommodate new users.



Microsoft’s Windows Azure platform will enable us to deliver a reliable, fast, and scalable application that SocialGrow’s members around the world can depend on to grow their online social networks.



- Charbel (CTO)

Boston’s Largest Network of Technology Investors, named after the city’s historic public meeting grounds, CommonAngels is a group of 75 leading private investors and several dozen limited partners in two co-investment funds. They have rich expertise in over 58 specific sectors and finance the region’s most innovative high-tech ventures with a focus on capital efficiency: Series A rounds of $500K-$5M with total capital less than $20M.



- Marsh (President)

Let us know which logos you love, which logos you hate, and which logos just make you scratch your head.



99designs is a disruptive startup which connects passionate designers from around the globe with savvy clients who need design projects completed in a timely fashion without the usual risk or cost associated with professional design.



Read what the media  has to say about about them.



- Ken (CMO)

In advance of the launch of our new company’s website, and, as you can see, in advance of our even having a logo, welcome to the SocialGrow™ company blog!



SocialGrow™ helps individuals and organizations around the world realize the benefits of social networks.



SocialGrow’s flagship product, the SocialGrow™ Web and Mobile Phone Software Application, enables people of all technical levels to quickly and easily grow their professional and/or personal online social networks. The SocialGrow™ Web and Mobile Phone Software Application also enables both small and large social networks around the world to rapidly grow their memberships.



SocialGrow’s Consulting division, SocialGrow™ Consulting, researches, analyzes, and makes recommendations on social networking strategies.



SocialGrow’s Professional Services division, SocialGrow™ Professional Services, manages social networks.



SocialGrow’s vision is to realize the human side of what our technology enables — new connections between people that might not have otherwise happened. Finding a new job after a year of unemployment. Finding the love of your life after a break-up that left you thinking you’d never meet anyone. Finding a huge customer when you didn’t know whether your business would survive. Each new connection truly has the potential to be life-changing. Our application enables growth, not just the number of people one has in their multiple online networks, but the value received from the richness of having a large, diverse network.



SocialGrow™ was founded in 2009 by industry veterans Marsh Sutherland, Ken Herron, and Charbel Elkhoury.