Recently I’ve been evangelising to anyone who’ll listen on the benefits of using social media in your marketing plan, but I was never really that convinced about the role of Facebook in enabling a brand to truly connect with its audience. Now that’s all changed and it’s because of IKEA.

Sure, the little ads that appear in the right hand column of your Facebook profile (and always seem to be targeting me with tooth whitening services or vitamin supplements) can be very efficient at reaching the right market for a product. I’ve even succumbed to their insistent messaging and got my tooth whitening sesh booked with the dentist this Friday! But until today I hadn’t seen anything in promotional terms that really took me by storm.

Now that’s all history. This gem came to me via Twitter. The tweet in question came from Maisa Dabus, a lady who works in PR and marketing in Sweden and she always seems to find interesting stuff, so when I read this I followed the link and I thoroughly recommend that you do the same:

IKEA’s brilliant Facebook campaign – How did I miss this? So creative! http://post.ly/DOhh

If you’re not inspired by what IKEA has done on Facebook using only its available features, you need to go and talk to some teenagers -they’ll explain to you how people use Facebook and how clever this is.

Right now I’m letting this fine viral marketing example bubble at the back of my mind while I tinker about with my invite to Google Wave and try to work out just what can be done with it before I get left behind.

I’ve been evangelising for so long to clients about the benefits of using LinkedIn and Twitter for business that one of them asked me to present a tutorial on the subject at his quarterly team meeting last week. Judging by the audience reaction it was very well received so I’m sharing my notes on it here and may win a few more converts to the Social Media cause.

LinkedIn 

Uses – recruitment, credentials check, source of useful advice, get access/intro, find target customers, build awareness, promote events. Results are measurable and trackable. 

Complete your profile – aim for 100%, include a picture 

Summary and experience – include prior jobs – this gives searchability, displays your roles and talent 

Recommendations – ask people to recommend you, but not too many or it’s not believable 

Public profile – change it from a number to your name – e.g. http://www.linkedin.com/in/christinegupta

 Websites listed – in EDIT choose ‘other’ and enter description or title of your blog or website

Status – update it regularly and it will elicit direct responses to what you say you’re working on

Groups – join a few to give more of an idea of who you are, your business focus. This can add credibility – terrific mining source for new customers, partners, employees, beta testers.

Questions and Answers – Qs can yield good results e.g. finding Amiando online ticketing saved a client £1100, also good for general marketing advice. Answers can help build your profile and don’t forget to rate other people’s.

Paid account – gives you 15 introductions a month, 3 in-mails (these are like getting a courier delivery – you’re more likely to open them), OpenLink service, get featured in searches

Apps can be added to profiles to promote events, offers, news, services, products – events, buzz, Slideshare

Company profile – use it as a shop window, area of influence

Twitter – useful links

100 Twitter tools

5 top Twitter presentations

How to Twitter like a pro

Uses – promote events/news e.g. new web site or feature, attract web traffic, find useful contacts, complain

Twitter clients let you better exploit/organise Twitter your way – TweetDeck, Twhirl, Tweetie for iPhone

Profile – make sure you include good info, link to blog, customise it with background photo

Retweet -  use RT to spread messages wider and always thank anyone who retweets one of your messages 

Links – shorten them via www.tiny.cc and provide a description so that people know what they’re linking to 

Tweet Burner – use it to see how many people follow your links

Use # tags – reach new followers in certain areas by inserting # in front of terms e.g. #cloud computing. That way your message shows up in their Twitter alerts.

Search – use it to find new people to follow or if there’s a interest in a particular topic that you should be watching out for

A few days ago Ash and I did something we hardly ever do. We talked to the press – about OUR business – as we felt this was a good time for our own positive business story while cuing up more of them about our clients.

What made it a good story is that our turnover has doubled in the last year and it’s still growing. Not bad for a two person partnership in a recession. So you may be wondering how we managed that … 

We can’t claim that it’s all come about through good planning, but our decision to become more focused on particular technologies has certainly played a major part.

In fact, I can pin it all down to my first visit to First Tuesday away back in 2000. I was amazed by the spirit of collaboration and sharing that prevailed between IT entrepreneurs, vendors and VCs – proper networking was bringing positive results, giving good karma definitely paid off. We were introduced to a whole world of new technologies – knowledge management and rich internet applications were the first for us. Since then we’ve developed our technology networks at every opportunity and now Cloud Computing is the hot topic – with me organising CloudCamp and helping clients to bring new cloud platforms to market.

2000 was when we also got our introduction to electric cars – I drove the Ford Think electric car for over a year – and that opened our eyes to the future for the auto industry. We’ve been evangelising for electric cars and sustainable transport ever since and that has also given us valuable connections in the world of sustainable technologies.

Our focus now is not just on sustainable, but on disruptive technologies too – that includes anything that shakes up the current business model, like cloud computing, LED lighting and micro-generation of energy. You can see that reflected in our updated client list. Most of our current clients produce services or products that address the growing needs of today’s business world – saving energy, cutting costs and CO2 emissions, improving performance, managing credit. Working on all of these has made it an incredibly busy year, but very rewarding with our networks for each technology starting to overlap and cross-pollenate each other.

These days when I’m introduced to a new contact my refreshed elevator pitch gets them hooked immediately.

“So what does the Gupta Partnership do?”

“We’re marketing and PR specialists in sustainable and disruptive technologies.” And we’re loving it!

I’ve just found out that I’m ranked 61 out of 415 Twitterers in the Edinburgh area. Ash is languishing at 146. Top in our area is Ewan McIntosh with 2762 followers compared to my humble 80-odd, as that’s the stat that counts.

For a social networking fan like me, 61 out of 415 is not exactly a terrific ranking, but even at this modest level Twitter has been able to produce results for me. In my online persona of Mrsboogie I’ve been able to start dialogue with some bloggers and industry figures who would otherwise be far too high-falutin’ for a marketing hunter-gatherer like me. I’ve also managed to get myself onto a list of ‘people to follow on Twitter’ if you’re interested in the topic of Cloud Computing and that’s quite some achievement for a self-confessed non-geek. Admittedly it’s not the gateway to everything, but it means that any time I tweet about something cloud-related, it’s picked up by a group of the very people I want to reach. So even if my followers presently number but a mere 80+, that’s a good core group to be able to contact instantly and I’ll put in some work on growing that group when I start organising CloudCamp Scotland for 25 March this year. In fact, I’ll report on the growth of my followers by the time that event comes round.

Having explained how Twitter works for me, I’m amazed by the figures in this US marketing study which finds that 37% of small businesses don’t use social networking, so they’re not even using Facebook or LinkedIn or any of the other online communities. But as a friend of mine observed, “I wouldn’t blame the actual companies that are not aware of it. How can you if you are in retail or manufacturing and busy to keep your business afloat against the slowdown of the economy and the threat of China?” Fair point.

Encouragingly 25% say that they plan to use it more for online marketing, a higher percentage than for any other online marketing format. When most businesses are short of money it makes so much sense to leverage these free global services, especially when you can measure the effects so quickly and instantly establish dialogue with the people who are interested in what you have to say.

If you want to see Twitter in action, follow Mrsboogie and I’ll show you how to make it work for your business.

I am unashamedly reproducing this item from bnet. If ever you needed convincing about the efficacy of online social networks this is the piece to do it (and it reminds me how useful some of bnet’s newsletters can turn out to be).

When Nick Kellet got in touch with a former co-worker through LinkedIn, he was interested to hear that she was teaching Chinese to the inventors of the board game Cranium to help them work with their factory in China. Kellet had recently left his job to publish a board game of his own, called GiftTRAP. His friend arranged an introduction to the factory owners in Shanghai, and soon Kellet had a manufacturer for his game. Next he turned to photo-sharing site Flickr and found images from more than 500 different photographers that he could legally use for his game. Once GiftTRAP had been produced, Kellet used social networks to find buyers at Wal-Mart and Toys “R” Us. “It’s not easy to get into those places,” he says. “You get stonewalled at reception.” Then he plugged into BoardGameGeek to connect with influential players in the tabletop-gaming community and get his product into the hands of reviewers. The long hours online paid off. Games Magazine declared GiftTRAP the best party game of 2008; it has been translated into eight languages and is now in its third print run. Kellet isn’t done with social networking, either — he’s just developed a Facebook application that lets people play his game online.

A funny thing just happened to a journalist friend of mine, Nick Clayton – he got sacked from the Scotsman newspaper after working on its IT column for years. He’s been trying to sell his Edinburgh flat after living in Ibiza for the last four years and happened to blog about the fact that all but one of the estate agents he consulted advised him not to bother advertising his property through the Scotsman – better to stick to the web. In less than a day he’d been told that his journalistic services were no longer required – seems a bit unfair as he was only reporting the facts.

This event doesn’t sound funny in itself, but what happened then has been a surprise to Nick and many others. Living in Ibiza Nick relies on his online network to bring in work. He began to blog about his first sacking experience and is amazed at the amount of attention it has received, not only via the Guardian and other ‘mainstream’ media, but also through online social networks like Facebook and Twitter. The result is that his level of awareness as a blogger and journalist has risen enormously – and in case you’re wondering the vast majority of the audience are on his side. This will probably turn out to be a highly successful publicity campaign for Nick and he’s certainly learned how to leverage Web 2.0 connections to make the most of it.

If you’re a bit of a Web 2.0 virgin I urge you to embrace Facebook and Twitter – ask your kids, as it’s too long to explain here how to use them. At a recent business dinner I sat next to a market analyst who specialised in IT and hadn’t tried either of them – that’s like a hi-fi expert who hasn’t tried using an iPod. I think I managed to get him enthused enough to go online and have a go on Facebook. If he does he’ll see that tonight Ash is running a musical jam at Voodoo Rooms and he could bring along his guitar if he fancies joining in – he can even hear samples of Ash’s band … but maybe that’s just taking him too far in one step

It’s true, but I didn’t know it until last Friday when I heard the word for the first time. I was listening to an item on the Today programme, BBC Radio 4 about how 20-20 cricket has become such a huge success in India. It’s pulling massive audiences and they’re not just the usual suspects. The new cricket format is attracting whole families to come and watch the game and the correspondent put its success down to the fact that 20-20 cricket delivers so much ‘tamasha’.

Now there’s no direct translation of this word into English, so he memorably described it as ’something that involves loads of fun, fiesta, adventure’. What a concept! And why don’t we have a word for that in English? It sounds like just what you need at the end of a hard week. In fact, armed with the concept I went straight out next day and found plenty of tamasha at the Taste of Edinburgh festival – Ash and I had a great day of culinary adventure with live music and sunny socialising that lead to an impromptu cocktail bar safari (read posh pub crawl) with friends.

English has some notable gaps in the language in my experience. Take the German word ‘gemutlich’. It seems to mean cosy, welcoming, cheery – as you might describe a ginger-bread house-ish mountain bothy for skiers – but we just haven’t got anything to match it and fall back on lame terms like ‘nice’. The French have got ’sympathique’ and in Danish it’s ‘hoogeh’ (sounds like).

Then what do we say in English to match ‘bon appetit’ or ‘guten appetit’? ‘Enjoy your meal’ makes you sound like a trainee waiter.

It’s no wonder English has such a large vocabulary and it’s growing all the time. I’m all in favour of pulling in words where there’s a gap, particularly if they define something that can lift your spirits. And now that I know it’s got so much tamasha to offer, I can’t wait to see some 20-20 cricket!

There’s a great letter to the Independent about a kid having interminable hiccups at school during a maths lesson. They started about half an hour before the lesson and the teacher was becoming really exasperated at the poor kid. Eventually she put this proposition to him: “If you can hiccup three more times, I’ll let you off homework for the next month.” Apparently they stopped immediately – you can imagine how totally gutted that pupil was at his loss.

The letter writer claims to have tried this method on various occasions at parties and it’s been successful every time. He reckons the key thing is to offer the sufferer something they want that’s unattainable. (If he was at parties where hiccups were prevalent the offers may have been quite interesting   His experience is that offers like world peace or an end to global hunger won’t do it, whereas the chance of sex, more beer or a housework-free week usually does the trick.

Fascinating discovery, but it just shows to me that you need to understand what drives your audience to make a successful offer. So what’s new …

The other night one of my deep suspicions was confirmed by the ‘father of advertising’ himself. In a biographical TV program David Ogilvy was talking about how great ideas for copy headlines often came to him while he was doing the garden or walking the dog – in fact, anywhere other than sitting in his office.

I’ve often experienced this myself with some of my most productive creative sessions occurring while driving on a long journey, ironing an unending stack of shirts or out on the golf course. The strapline or product name you’ve spent hours brainstorming just suddenly breezes right into your head like the answer to a crossword clue.

But that’s the way it is with your right brain, the creative and artistic, non-logical side. It doesn’t respond obligingly with creative solutions when you tackle it like you do Sudoku – methodically working through the options until you narrow them down to the logical and correct answer. Oh no, it sits there metaphorically drumming its fingers on the desk until you give the left brain something simple to do, like weeding or chopping up garlic or taking Fido out to do his stuff, THEN it zips into action. It’s as if it’s been dying to show off in front of its dopey sibling.

Of course this gives creatives the golden excuse to toddle down to the pub in order to come up with the next campaign theme, but now that I’m allowed a bit of creative slack myself I can see their point. I sigh with desperation when clients announce that the new product naming session will take place by brainstorm at nine in the morning in their stuffy meeting room that kills imagination as soon as you enter. It’s soooo much more productive if you put everyone in a completely new space, preferably one with plenty of distraction (a cross-Channel ferry works a treat), don’t start before at least eleven in the morning and if it’s late in the day feel free to pep things up with a tincture or two.

Creativity can’t be switched on and off. It needs to be invited in like a wild animal with little treats to tempt it and no sign of the noisy left brain to scare it away. According to one of the apps on Facebook I’m a left-brain type – scarily so, but I guess that comes with the territory of also being a Completer Finisher. Being right brained sounds so much more fun, but they need people like me to look after them

No wonder that old people are encouraged to play Sudoku to keep Alzheimer’s at bay rather than playing right-brained crosswords. It’s not a great outlook for your old age if you decide to cross the road now just because the idea sprang into your head from nowhere like a crossword solution.

BTW – it’s nearly 9.00pm, I’m sitting here with a glass of wine and I’m enjoying writing this. To do it in the morning would be torture and take twice as long.

MarketingSherpa has just published its ‘Marketing Wisdom for 2008′ and once again we’re happy to see that some of Ash’s ‘bons mots’ are included. He’s right in there at item 23 titled ‘Let yourself go’ and it’s all about social networking sites and how to use them to your business advantage.

“For some,” says Ash, “these sites are seen as a threat to the carefully preened and protected business persona or a potential risk to security. The reality is that if you are making waves in your particular field, the interested external observer can track you through Google and has already started to piece together a mental picture of the real you. The time is right to harness the communicative power of the social network sites like Facebook and Linked-In and unleash a real helping of the real you.

“The real you in the round is much more interesting than what we call in Scotland the ‘hudden doon’ business you – you know, the held back, constipated junior lawyer or immigration ober-fuehrer! When you make contact in business you are sized up in milliseconds by the sharp, savvy observer. Next you get to know each other as rounded people and often the colouration of your hobbies and life beyond work adds value to a relationship.

“I have played in rock bands since I was 14 and still do at 40 years on. I make no effort to hide it and last year the president of one of the largest US conglomerates flew my band down to Spain to play at his wedding. We have done much business since 1982! See, no harm done but much deep bonding made.”

Amen to that. Anyone out there looking for a band?