Planning the worksheet

A coworker provided me with a basic Excel spreadsheet listing the post titles (with embedded URLs) and blogger name. To craft the Twitter updates, I decided I needed several elements: topic, post author & blog, post title, and post link. As part of my regular Twitter regiment for this account, I use the event’s hashtag and categorize almost all tweets with a topic notated by brackets. For example, “[Registration] #HPDiscover registration is now open www.url.com.” For the purposes of this content, I decided to combine the hashtag and topic by using “[#HPDiscover Coverage]“.

Constructing the worksheet

I decided that I needed a spreadsheet that would allow me to combine several columns into a final tweet that matches the HootSuite bulk upload template. I started with a spreadsheet with the following columns: date, time, topic, author, post title, and URL. But to reach that ultimate goal of matching the HootSuite template (which requires only time stamp, tweet content, and URL), I needed to concatenate some of that content to build the final tweet. I added several more columns: time stamp, final tweet content, and character count. To help me visualize how each element would combine, I color-coded the columns that would build the final tweet to make the final copy/paste simpler. You can see in this screen shot what my columns look like:

The red columns are the ones that I will keep as the final text for the scheduler upload. Here’s a rundown on each column and its formatting:

• Date: manually entered date following the HootSuite requirement of DD/MM/YYYY.
• Time: manually entered times following the HootSuite requirement of HH:MM (remember to use the 24 hour, or military, time format!).
• Date stamp: combines Date and Time columns into one. The Excel formula I used was:

=A2&" "&B2

• Topic: the text I decided to use was [#HPDiscover Coverage].
• Author: Twitter ID (since we are using Twitter, after all) and blog name for author. For this column, I created a list that included each blogger’s Twitter ID and the name of their blog. With over 140 entries, I hoped being able to select the blogger’s name from a list would save some time and effort (as well as eliminate typos). To do this, I created an additional worksheet in the Excel file, then used the Data Validation feature to create a dropdown list that displays whenever I select a cell in the column.
• Title: the same text the blogger used to title their post.
• Final Text: uses the Excel concatenation formula to combine Topic, Author, and Title into the final tweet. Since my Author column lists the Twitter ID, and you can’t begin an Excel cell with the @ symbol without confusing the auto-formula feature, I used this to add the @ symbol so my final tweet would generate a mention for the blogger. Here’s what this cell’s formula looks like:

=D2&" @"&E2&": "&F2

• Char count: uses an Excel formula to display the character count of the final tweet. I added this to help avoid troubleshooting the upload in HootSuite later. You’ll also see a red-shaded cell in the Char count column in the above screen shot: I used Excel’s conditional formatting feature to flag tweets that would likely be too long. That way I know immediately if I need to make manual adjustments to how the final tweet builds based on the previous columns’ inputs. I flagged counts over 110—allowing 18 characters for the shortened URL, plus a few pad characters to make retweets easier. I found instructions for the conditional formatting on this web page. The character count formula is simple:

=LEN(G2)

• URL: no special formula, just the long URL that HootSuite will automatically shorten for me.

Completing the CSV upload

1. Create a new Excel file.
2. Select entire worksheet and set cell format to Text.
   This is important! Doing this prevents Excel from applying any autoformatting to the time stamp, which would seriously confuse HootSuite.
3. Copy the entire original worksheet, then paste the values into this new Excel file.
   This is easy to do: select Paste Special and Values as the option. This is important! You don’t want any formulas or formatting to stick around or HootSuite will get confused.
4. Delete the columns you don’t need for the final CSV upload.
   In this case, I deleted Date, Time, Topic, Author, Title, and Char count. That leaves Time Stamp, Final Text, and URL—again, these are the only columns that the HootSuite uploader understands.
5. Delete the header row.
   This is important! HootSuite won’t recognize the header row.
6. Create separate worksheets if you have more than 50 rows.
   This is important! HootSuite uploader only allows 50 items to be scheduled at once. Save each spreadsheet as a separate CSV file and upload them each.
7. Save as CSV.

If you’ve followed these steps, especially the ones with bold red warnings, you should be all set.

Some additional tips

• Check your Publisher after every upload attempt. When I tried uploading my CSV files from this worksheet tonight, the HootSuite servers were acting up. I kept getting 500 errors (internal server errors), so I’d try to upload again. Unbeknownst to me, some of the items scheduled each time I attempted an upload. Instead of recognizing those repeated uploads as a conflict, HootSuite appeared to just barrel through and schedule them anyway. Even though it appeared from the uploader that nothing had been accepted.
• Choose your times wisely.  There are several tools that will analyze your Twitter stream and determine when you receive the most retweets. Ostensibly, this tells you the best time to post your content. I chose to use TweetWhen, a service provided by HubSpot. TweetWhen was produced in conjunction with the Science of Timing research done by Dan Zarrella. If you haven’t seen his research, you should!
• Add a Calendar Control for even easier date selection. This only works on Windows, so I didn’t bother to include it in my file. But it would add an elegant means of selecting your dates. You’d need to ensure your Developer toolbar is activated, then follow these Calendar Control instructions.

Please let me know if any of this was confusing—I’ll try to answer questions or fix any broken instructions. Would it be helpful if I uploaded my Excel file for you to download?

Update: 5 July

I get intermittent Internal Server errors using my CSV file that I generate in this manner. HootSuite support gives me what by now seems to be their automated response: “it means that the .csv you are using isn’t encoded properly. It needs to be saved in UTF-8 encoding. We recommend using a basic text editor like TextEdit or Notepad to save your file. This will also better allow you to check the formatting of your document.” Well, sorry, I still say boo to that. If I wanted to spend my day editing documents in Text Edit or Notepad, I probably wouldn’t be so keen on batch uploading—that’s trading one crappy user experience for another, IMHO.

SO! I discovered that I can use my process outlined above on Windows with Office 2007 without error. However, when I attempt it on Mac with Office:mac 2011 I get the server errors. What makes me not buy into the standard HootSuite support response is that when I encounter the server errors, some of my updates post but some don’t. If it was as simple as a file encoding error, you’d think the whole thing would fail. I’m stumped.

• Leonardo Teleanu: Freelancer – Logo & Brand Identity Designer — So far I think it’s my favorite profile. The design is so perfect for a brand identity designer.
• Gavin Weeks: Entrepreneur • Creative Virtuoso • TW Steel Enthusiast — Weeks’ profile was the first (and only in my surfing so far) to make use of basic HTML within the description.
• Ryan Deeds: Technology Leveraged Humanist — I love the photo in this profile with the “who are you?” question. It reaches out and grabs you. And it’s a great visual message of Deeds’ professional ethos.
• Julie Hunter: atlanta based portraiture photographer — The simplicity of this profile is great. Personally, I’m drawn to the short, active phrases (perhaps that’s my “simpler is always better” tech writing background). And rather than being a passive bio, Hunter invites your engagement with the “Let’s chat” entry.
• James Buckhouse — Buckhouse’s profile is a story, and the text and the photo tell the same story. Consistency is just as powerful as a superhero.
• John Valentine: Startup Guy — Valentine’s personality, as an individual and a professional, shines through his photo and bio.
• Ofir Cohen: 3D Artist ,Graphic Designer , Cookie Lover — Another simple yet striking profile.

• Put the face behind the brand: The first change I made was shifting the point of view of the content. It was then I noticed the first uptick in engagement on our Twitter account (which spurred me to experiment with the other changes that follow). I added my name to the bio, shifted from “we” to “I” when it made sense, and tried to keep my individual voice as much as possible.
• Don’t follow everyone who follows you: I chose to be choosy on follow-backs. My audience was IT professionals, hardware and software managers, and tech industry followers. Real estate agents, performers, students, and especially spammers aren’t part of my audience, so I have no desire to project them onto my followers in any way. I drew more lines in the sand about who I followed. I did not follow back if the user protected their tweets, had not updated their avatar, or didn’t have an obvious connection to the industry (as shown in their bio or timeline). Invaluable tool for the job: Friend or Follow to easily find who you might need to follow
• Be judicious in volume: In most cases, I tried to keep the account posts down to a manageable frequency. Of course that spiked during the event, but even though that during-event spike seems obvious and expected, that’s when the account lost the most followers. So for my audience, at least, 2-3 times daily seems to be the sweet spot. Invaluable tool for the job: Qwitter to monitor the rate of followers who leave you
• Recognize your followers: Reply to everything that’s not just a rhetorical question (and even some of those) or that you can reasonably address. As you can imagine, even though I was working on an enterprise event, I got a lot of tweets about laptops and printers. Not my purview but I still tried to make sure they were pointed in the right direction. Thank retweets and mentions with a shout-out or Follow Friday. I also made sure that if I was out of the office, I had a backup in place who could do this for me. Invaluable tool for the job: Saved search in your tool of choice (search mentions and hashtags) and paper.li

I’ve been working with this event team for two years now and have been extremely lucky that there’s very little hesitance to keep all of our social channels open. Frankly, I see no point in highlighting or promoting any social channel if you’re not going to display it without filter. First, that goes against the very nature of social media—filters remove that social aspect. Second, because of that implicit social aspect, any filter will likely be noticed and publicly called out, often to the detriment of the filtering party.

Even beyond those two pragmatic reasons, I advocate open channels for the principle of it. If you’re not going to embrace your social community, why bother? I’d much rather facilitate open social sharing and watch a few zingers come through, than close off a digital conversation that is inherently open.

I believe letting that conversation take its natural course benefits consumers and brands alike. Consumers are able to freely share opinions and ask questions without feeling fettered by risk averse or metric-minded brand managers. This is particularly important in industries where consumers feel ignored or easily disenfranchised. As an event planner, I appreciate this open conversation for the gems of insight that come from uninhibited access and contribution to the community stream of consciousness.

So how do you put this principle in action? First, you must appreciate the heartburn this will likely cause your executives, and therefore your self. Set the expectation up front that you (and the entire community) might see snark, sarcasm, outright condemnation, and even cussing. After more than two years working on social media for events, I can tell you to definitely expect snark and sarcasm, and most likely off-color humor. You will also likely take some potshots—every company and product has its lovers and haters. Some of those potshots you’ll want to respond to, some you won’t. But overall, my experience has been mostly positive.

Then, decide where your comfort zone and support are. We embed Twitter streams on our web sites, encourage photo sharing, and commenting on our Facebook page. But I also make sure that someone is on site to monitor and contribute to each of those channels. I want my brand/event represented in the stream, but I also want to monitor it for any flare-ups or required followup. Just because it’s open doesn’t mean I don’t keep my eye on it!

Finally, be sure to report the conversations back to your stakeholders. I like to provide daily snapshot reports that show volume as well as general sentiment. Show the good and the bad—provide your stakeholders with the fruit of the open conversation. If you have a product launch at the event, share the launch-related buzz with that product team. At events, you’ll inevitably see feedback on the event itself, so be sure to pass that on to the event planners. Use the content of that open conversation to influence improvement and growth in your programs.

I invite you to listen to Mia Dand’s (follow her blog and on Twitter) presentation on our Center of Expertise so you can see how we’ve grown to become an integral part of the Enterprise division. Without a doubt, because the social landscape evolves so quickly, we still have growing to do, but in this 25 minute video you’ll see how a small team of six dedicated personnel can help grow and influence a contingent of over 500* social media contributors for a brand.

*Mia mentioned 300-odd SoMe contributors, but that has since grown to well over 500.

A little empathy and tact goes a long way: Let’s face it. The customer is not always right. More appropriately, the saying should be “the customer is always convinced they’re right.” You can’t tell them they’re not right without escalating the problem. Changing conviction is an onerous and often unattainable task. Retailers spend oodles of energy deflecting that conviction into something productive. In today’s world of instant social fame (or infamy), one customer’s disenchantment soon becomes a company’s heartburn. All too often, this right-vs.-wrong battle takes place because a customer was initially made to feel like their situation was misunderstood or unimportant. That misstep happens as soon as the customer voices their displeasure, so you’ve got to address that customer head on with as much empathy and tact as possible. Show them you hear them and that you’re willing to do all that’s in your power to help them.

Customers focus on the negative unless you give them something positive: I think this is a largely human trait—we tend to talk more about the bad than the good. It’s easier to be critical than constructive. Knowing that tendency, I want to provide customers with a really great experience so that’s what they think about when they consider revisiting my store. This doesn’t just apply to your products or your service, this applies to the way you conduct yourself online. Do you respond to customers who mention you? Do you provide helpful information that’s easy to find? Do you take customer privacy seriously? Make as many aspects of your online and social interactions work really well so your followers keep following.

Presentation and perception matters: When you go to a high-end department store, the staff are all well dressed, the floors are clean, and the merchandise is tidy. Why? Because all of that reflects on the company. The same goes for your social presence—it is a reflection of you and the company you represent.  Brand your social channels and ensure they’re all connected.  Make sure your content is relevant, accurate, and error-free.

Offer help, let them choose to accept it: The pushy salesmen are universally avoided on show floors. No one likes to be shadowed by a hovering clerk when you’ve already expressed your desire to browse on your own. The beauty of social networks for consumers is that consumers control the volume and filters. Make yourself available to them, but don’t force your content, connections, or assistance down their throats.

Courtesy and recognition seal the deal: My most loyal customers were the ones I recognized on sight or even over the phone. I knew their habits and preferences and could tailor their experience with that in mind. More importantly, I could genuinely tell them I looked forward to seeing them again. We humans are fundamentally social yet egocentric creatures. Show your followers that you know them and appreciate them.

Have you learned lessons from previous jobs that shape your social media marketing?

Bulk scheduler basics

After you’ve logged in to your HootSuite dashboard, click in the “Compose message” box, then on the calendar “Schedule Message” icon. This pops up the scheduler window, which has a “Schedule in Bulk” button. Click there to pull up the bulk scheduler. Basically, you upload a CSV file with a time stamp, message, and URL, which the HootSuite servers then parse to create your pending posts.

Scheduler frustrations

Ater visiting HootSuite’s help portal, I discovered that I wasn’t the only one having problems. Most issues seem to be rooted in users’ tool-of-choice (usually Microsoft Excel) for creating CSV files. I read the whole bleepin’ thread and still couldn’t get my CSV file to upload properly.

One user suggestion was to use Google Docs spreadsheets to create the CSV file. I tried that but still got an error that my date strings weren’t correct.

Multiple HootSuite support personnel posts suggested that people should use plain text editors to ensure proper  markup in the CSV file. Sorry folks, but wrong answer. If I wanted to take the time to edit a CSV file with up to 50 entries, checking to make sure each column has commas, etc., I wouldn’t be bothering with this. Without the ability to edit in spreadsheet format, the feature loses a significant aspect of its convenience. Then again, maybe most people are more patient them I am.

My final solution

I have now gotten this to work properly on three consecutive uploads, so hopefully it will work for you. If you plan to use a spreadsheet program like Excel, here’s what I do.

1. Start with a fresh spreadsheet. Do not use the sample CSV file that HootSuite provides if you plan to use a spreadsheet program like Excel. Excel does some sort of auto-formatting (which I have yet to figure out how to disable) that makes the CSV-XLS-CSV formatting unpredictable.
2. Format cells as General Text. Do not use auto-formatting for your time stamp column. This also seems to cause unpredictability in the XLS-CSV conversion. Some users suggested using the Date format in Excel, but I could not get a consistent result doing that.
3. Save two versions of your spreadsheet. Work with your content in a document saved as an Excel spreadsheet (XLS or XLSX) until you’re ready to upload. Then save it as CSV.
4. Don’t pre-shorten your URL’s. Some of the URL’s I pre-shortened worked, some didn’t. So I’ve just decided to enter the full URL in my spreadsheet.
5. Create separate spreadsheets for each network. You have to select the network you want to post to when you upload your CSV file. Don’t try to create tabs in one spreadsheet for each network as this will mess up your CSV export (CSV files don’t support tabs).

I hope these tips help! Please let me know if you found other tricks to help the process along.

Feature wishlist

There are two big things I’m hoping HootSuite will improve in the scheduling feature. Okay, three. First, the CSV parsing is very picky, so any way they can make that more forgiving will surely reduce the number of tickets they have to open. Beyond that, the biggies are:

• Create a shortcut to access the bulk scheduler. Give me a menu option or button on the homescreen so I don’t have to click through the message composer to get to the feature.
• Provide support for multiple networks in one CSV. A column to designate which network to post to would be super convenient. Please!

Even after two years, “ROI” is still the primary concern I hear and read from execs and marketing managers. The angst that’s surfacing wants to taunt those managers and demand to know why they want Return in a space where Investment is still scarce. Sure, the Powers That Be might throw a few people at social media to see what they could accomplish on a shoestring budget. But aside from a few notable and high-profile companies, I don’t see businesses, on a wide scale and especially in the B2B space, truly investing in social media.

Successful investment requires

• Upper management, including IT, displays tangible support of social media: Budget decisions and business objectives begin at the top. Without executive buy-in from the top-down, social media projects will remain last-minute additions that are forced to tin-cup for resources. And money speaks loudest, whether it’s headcount, equipment, or service providers. Lip service only goes so far.
• Headcount is allocated, educated, and developed in-house: A company’s brand is reflected in its people. Yes, sometimes you need to bring in fresh ideas to shake things up, but don’t you want your most public interactions driven by someone who knows your company inside and out? Knowledge is one of a organization’s most treasured (and oft overlooked) jewels—cultivate it and show it off! When you find someone that is knowledgeable, passionate, and motivated, put them in a place where their light will really shine. This requires flexible organization planning, another of those corporate details that seems to get hidden away during tough economic times.
• Social media participation reaches all ranks of an organization: Social media is, well, social. Sure, you need dedicated people setting the course and providing the foundation, but social media should be embraced throughout an organization. Again, make the most of your organizational knowledge and empower employees at all ranks to represent your brand.
• Marketing services become both shared and dedicated: To make that organization-wide spread feasible, you’ll need both shared and dedicated resources. Invest in talent for foundational elements that can be shared by all business teams. But those shared resources won’t always have the business-specific expertise or exposure need by some teams, so consider dedicated resources in those teams, too. You could think of it as corporate functional teams bolstered by business unit subject experts.

So when you’re thinking about building your business plans and justifications for next year, be sure to include the Investment that’s required to give you a Return. You can’t get out what you don’t put in.

• problogger New at ProBlogger: 30 Valuable Lessons Learned Using Social Media  http://goo.gl/fb/ViZz
• brett 16 Social Media Guidelines Used by Real Companies http://bit.ly/7WXHId (via @econsultancy)
• tacanderson House: Blog Marketing Missed Opportunity http://post.ly/TLqr
• WomenWhoTech Tweetlytics: Monitor Your Organization’s Impact on Twitter http://bit.ly/8YXDWO
• Mike_Stelzner NEW STUDY: How obsessed are you with Social Media? Check out these stats and see where you rank: http://bit.ly/diuRLP
• brett Facebook Starts Sending Page Admins Weekly Stat Reports - http://bit.ly/dmd82o (via @adamostrow @mashable)
• TrendTracker 3 Social Media Myths by @AnneDGallaher http://bit.ly/bzwnqi RT @TheSocialCMO
• copyblogger Creative Doing Beats Creative Thinking -http://bit.ly/avLNVB