Do you ever wish you had a personal assistant that could research and answer the multitude of questions you face each day? Now you can – without spending a penny. If you’ll invest a small of amount of time and thoughtfulness building your Twitter profile and network, it can do this for you.

Curious? Here are some examples:

Last Saturday, local attorney Ralph Perez posted a tweet asking for suggestions on colleges to take his daughter to visit this summer.

In just a few minutes, he had several replies.

The same day, Michael Hyatt, CEO of Thomas Nelson Publishers, posted this question:

And here’s a sampling of the replies he received:

And you can even take your research one step further and learn from other people’s questions. Let’s say you see another user post a question asking for book recommendations. By searching for @ replies, you can see how other users replied to the question.

We’ll try a live example.

Above is a message I posted this morning as I was writing this post. You can go to search.twitter.com and enter @kkinnison to see all of the replies from my post. (Don’t forget the @ symbol. It’s how you designate a reply on Twitter.)

Have you ever used Twitter to crowd-source an answer to a question? Comment below and tell us about it.

Social Media Policies

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- How to decide if you need a loose, strict or middle-ground policy

Human Resources & Social Media

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- How to perform informal background checks on candidates

Social Media as Productivity Propeller

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- Social media for efficient internal communications

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So I asked how many of them had attended a Chamber breakfast recently. Most said they had. I asked how a relationship with a new contact usually began. “With general conversation,” they said. Like the fabulous new restaurant they tried for dinner last night. Or how beautiful the weather is. Or how they both have teenage daughters. Seemingly random things that build the foundation for relationships. Hmmm. Sound familiar?

Then I asked if they would love to be able to walk into that breakfast and know exactly which ten people were likely to be interested in their services. “Of course,” they agreed.

“Welcome to Twitter,” I said.

This lunchtime exchange was very similar to most conversations I’ve had with tenured professionals or business owners. They’ve heard about the buzz surrounding Twitter, but know very little about its usefulness – particularly for business. So we thought we’d offer a weekly series on the opportunities Twitter presents. We won’t deluge you with a mile-long list, but we will share one simple concept or feature each week.

My all-time favorite: the advanced search.

Are you a hairdresser looking for new clients? Or a furniture store looking to sell mattresses? Or a jewelry store?

What if you could know exactly which people in your area are complaining about their hair? Or that they can’t sleep? Or looking for a gift for their wife’s birthday?

You can.

Start by entering some of the key words related to the problem you’re trying to solve. Then enter your zip code in the “Near this place” field and adjust the radius distance to your liking.  Then just click search.

It may take a few experiments to find a combination of words that generates the pool of tweets you’re looking for.  But once you figure out an effective search, you can subscribe to the feed for your search – meaning that any tweets matching that search criteria will be automatically delivered to your reader as they happen. You now have a steady stream of potential customers alerting you to their presence each day.

Some businesses take an indirect approach and follow those potential customers, chatting about general topics to build a relationship. Others take a more direct approach and reply with a tweet referencing their solution – and maybe even a discount or special offer. Again, experimentation may be needed to determine which approach generates the best results.

But where else can you identify the specific people that have a need for the solution you offer? All in real-time and at no cost. That’s a powerful marketing tool if I’ve ever seen one.

It seems everyone these days is starting a fan page – which is great! Social media, and Facebook itself, is democratic marketing. Everyone has an opportunity.

Unfortunately, people don’t realize what kind of power you have with Facebook – that power can be used to engage fans, or turn them off. And having the same fan page suggested to you over and over again, despite your attempts to ignore it, is going to turn potential fans off.

How do you stand out amidst fan page suggestion mania?

Here’s the method we employ for growing fan pages.

We send a blanket page suggestion to all our friends at once (actually, I usually target using friend lists, but that’s a whole other ball of wax).

Then, about twice a week for a few weeks, I share it on my wall with a little something about why I think people should add the page.

We don’t resend the page suggestion unless a) a substantial amount of time has passed (months), b) we’ve added a substantial number of new friends (100), or c) there have been major new developments on the page.

If you’re looking to increase the number of fans you have, then it’s best to do that using the fans who have already added the page. Post a share request on the fan page wall that reads something like, “Hey, if you like what you see here, then do us a favor and help spread the word. Simply click on the page, then click on Suggest Page to Friends. We appreciate it!” Then it spreads organically and you get more reach than you would from just your own network.

We hope that helps! Remember, with great power comes great responsibility. Always be thinking about the golden rule: Facebook unto others as you would like them to Facebook unto you.

Neovia Solutions is a digital business solutions company, specializing in social media marketing strategy. For more information on our services, visit our site here.

We love the Starbucks fan page. Firing on all cylinders!

We challenged our Facebook fans to ask us the social media question they’d been holding back, and a couple of our favorite conference participants responded with this: “What are the top five elements of a successful fan page?”

Being a fan of the immediate nature of social media, I wanted to respond immediately, but I realized that this would take a little more than an off-the-cuff response of Facebook applications and tools. And I didn’t want to refer our fans to the library of articles written about this either. So, here’s what we think the most important elements of a successful Facebook fan page are.

It has a goal – and it accomplishes it.
What ultimately determines whether or not a Facebook fan page (or any other social media effort, for that matter) is successful is whether or not it accomplishes what you want it to. That assumes, of course, that you had a goal when you created it. Too often we see businesses with a Facebook “presence” by having a fan page, but they aren’t really sure why they have it. “Everybody else has one” seems to be the answer. They know they need to be participating in social media, but they aren’t sure why.

So, what is the goal of your fan page? Do you want to bring in more foot traffic to your store front? Do you want more visitors to your website? Do you want to simply get more people to know that you exist? Your goal will determine how you use your fan page.

If you’re trying to increase brand awareness, then you need a lot of fans and a lot of content. If you’re trying to bring in more foot traffic to a physical location, you need to show lots of pictures of your products and push out information about specials and sales. If you want more website traffic, you need to include links to your site and entice people to click.

These are oversimplified and of the most basic strategies, but you get the idea: have a goal, build your fan page around that goal. Don’t waste your time with social media; use it to build your business.

It combines automation and interaction.
There are lots of great applications out there that will let you post to your fan page automatically, without ever stepping a digital foot onto Facebook. Lots of our clients love this. No one wants to post a blog, then go to Facebook and post it there, then go to Twitter and post it there, then… etc. We preach efficiency as a company – as small business owners ourselves we know how important time is.

At the same time, nothing gets my goat more than posting something on a fan page and getting absolutely no response from the administrator or business owner, etc. Facebook, Twitter, or any other social media effort is defined to the end user as a social place – a place where they expect (and demand) interaction from the business, organization or brand. That’s why they are on your fan page in the first place. Never forget that.

It’s not a dead end.
Your Facebook fan page might very well be your only “website.” And that’s fine. Major brands are beginning to go out on a limb and make social sites their corporate websites. But it cannot be the end. What’s the point if the fan (i.e., potential customer) doesn’t move on to your store front, the phone, an email, or your website?

Remember your goal: Based on your goal in having the fan page, what is the next step you want the fan to take? Be sure to provide the information for taking that step prominently. Make sure the info tab is completely filled out. Post maps, directions, phone numbers, and website information. Kendra and I include our personal cell phone numbers. We want your call.

It has personality.
The fun of social media is getting to show that your organization, business, or brand has a human side. No one wants to read ad copy. No one wants to read lifeless, monotone sentences. Think about where you are: Your fan page updates are smack in the middle of someone’s news feed. You’re sandwiched between the photos of someone’s nieces and an event invitation to a holiday party. And you think some ad copy is going to win you their notice?

Our clients sometimes have problems with this. They are used to writing that way. They don’t know where to start. We tell them to get a cup of coffee, grab an understanding (and patient) friend, and talk to them. Or at least imagine that’s what you’re doing. Now, write that down. Your fans don’t want to hear your sales pitch, nor do they need it to purchase. In social media, the conversation is the sell.

It’s consistent.
You’ve probably heard the phrase “content is king.” Well, in this day and age in social media, I’m of the mind that consistency is king. In traditional advertising, it’s called frequency. In branding, it’s called top of mind awareness. In social media, it’s consistency. And it is so critical to social media success, that we won’t take a client who can’t commit to consistency. Because we know it can’t succeed.

Consistency trains your fans to expect certain things from you: a blog post three times a week, a Facebook posting every morning at 9 a.m. when they’re getting to work, a daily special tweeted at that critical lunch decision hour. And if you stop, they’ll be angry. Or worse – they’ll forget about you.

Consistency breeds loyalty, and loyalty breeds true fans. There’s not an app for that.

Mashable has written the preeminent article on what makes a fan page successful. We urge you to check it out.

1. Limit the email notifications you receive.

Twitter and Facebook default to sending you an email every time any event occurs in their systems. Examples include new followers, direct messages, comments, posts on your wall, etc. If you’d like, you can turn most of these off. In Twitter, you can do this by going to Settings, Notices. You can uncheck the boxes to receive emails.  In Facebook, you can go to the Settings menu, then Notifications and pick from the various options available.  If you don’t want to turn these off completely, you can at least filter the emails so that they skip the Inbox and go straight to email folders that you can check later.

2. Use groups.

As your list of friends and followers continues to grow, it can be tough to keep up with these relationships. One way to do this is by grouping your contacts. In Facebook, you can start this under your Friends menu. You’ll see an option to Create a New List. (For example, you could create a list for high school friends and assign all of those type contacts to that list.) For Twitter, you’ll need to use another service to do this. I’ll profile your options in the paragraph below. Once you’ve set these up, you can review the postings from each group separately, taking advantage of having them sorted by relevance.

3.  Use software tools for Twitter.

There are literally hundreds of tools available to complement Twitter, and we’ve tested many of them.  For day-to-day interaction on Twitter, we use HootSuite when a web-based interface is preferred. It allows you to set up multiple accounts, shorten urls, and set up groups – all without installing any software on your computer. If you prefer to use installed software, Tweetdeck and Seesmic are the favorites. Both of these are also adding Facebook interaction as well, and are well worth a look if you use the same computer most of the time.  You can also use applications for your mobile phone. One favorite is Twittelator, and other enjoy Tweetie and Twitterberry. These allow you to see @replies and direct messages easily, search, and reply or retweet with fewer keystrokes.