Cary Sherburne: Hi, Cary Sherburne, Senior Editor at WhatTheyThink.com and we’re back with Rick Littrell of Magiccomm, Chief Marketing Officer.

Rick Littrell: Yes.

Cary Sherburne: And Rick, I know that you’re pretty active in social media but there’s some tools that are available to help people better manage their social media channels. Can you talk a little bit about how you use those tools like TweetDeck and HootSuite?

Rick Littrell: TweetDeck and HootSuite are the two I use. They’re free. I mean there’s HootSuite just came up with an upgraded version. It allows you to do more accounts and it has some other features in it. It allows me, what I like about it, it allows me to scan like for keywords, certain people. I mean TweetDeck is really good with that. I can set a Geo fence around so everybody within a certain geography around my business who’s tweeting. And then I follow probably a dozen, what different people are saying. Then I have some keywords being looked at. Then I have anybody talking about Magiccomm or Rick Littrell comes up. And then you have the normal string.

Cary Sherburne: And the other thing you can do with TweetDeck is you can set it up to link into your Facebook and LinkedIn.

Rick Littrell: Yes.

Cary Sherburne: So there’s a kind of an argument about, I mean you can be lazy; I’m sort of lazy so when I tweet something it automatically the same thing goes to Facebook and LinkedIn. It’s kind of lazy. But

Rick Littrell: No it’s not. It’s efficient.

Cary Sherburne: It’s not? It’s efficient.

Rick Littrell: It’s efficient. I prefer

Cary Sherburne: I feel so much better.

Rick Littrell: No because I mean I have the same thing with HootSuite. I can do a circle. I can go start in Twitter, connects into LinkedIn, runs into Facebook. Okay, one tweet, it goes to all spots. Sometimes depending if I just want it on LinkedIn because I talk to different profiles, okay, I’ll do it just in LinkedIn.

Cary Sherburne: Or just Facebook.

Rick Littrell: Or just Facebook. So I’ll sit there and pick, one my audience, what I think do they care is probably the bigger consideration, and then I’ll do the circle because these tools, going and putting the same thing every place else maybe, maybe not, and I’ll do it sometimes. I’m not going to say I don’t. Or I’ll reword it a little bit in one environment as opposed to another just depending on, because LinkedIn with my background obviously I’m connected to a lot in the print industry. And then marketing and then I’m moving into technology and healthcare. So I’m trying to connect where, not withstanding my monster ego. I mean they don’t know who I am from Adam, and I’m using my position with AMA Marketing, American Marketing Association, to try and expand in other markets. So it’s how do you use that. It’s a powerful tool. I mean its part PR, its part marketing, and then you get the engagement.

Cary Sherburne: Yeah, and working through these interfaces, I mean the only reason I ever go directly to the Twitter site is periodically I go in there because you get all these people following you, especially if you start tweeting a hash tag and then there’s also some other people following that hash tag that aren’t following you and then I get five or six new followers. So I always go through periodically and check who the followers are because you get some that you want to block. You just don’t want them there you know. It’s like I don’t have anything to do with this particular, you know – well, we won’t go there.

Rick Littrell: Right, right, right, right, right.

Cary Sherburne: Right, but I think you have to do some of that kind of maintenance and you have to go right to the Twitter site to do that.

Rick Littrell: I tell you it was amazing. One time I mean I think we talked, I’m a poker player online. That’s my mental relaxation. And it’s kind of my exercise. Shows you how sad my life is, but it’s like one time I said “getting ready to play poker”. I must have got 20 requests to connect and follow. And I’m going “what?” I didn’t even use a hash tag. I was just making a comment, “Okay, I’m tired of working. I’m going to go play poker”. And then I realized the power in what you said, a certain hash tag or a certain word, if it’s in there, integrative marketing. Okay, if you want to do that, all of sudden they’ll show up. A printer using wide format, okay, “I just produce a beautiful wide format print for a customer; large customer”. People searching for that will be able to say “uh oh, I’ve got to keep track of that”. Now you add the power of Google AdWords or LinkedIn campaign to it. I mean you can come in, it goes to the multi-touch; the cross-media play. So you kind of use all those integrated to prefer people to come in together.

Cary Sherburne: You know at WhatTheyThink, we use the new verb that we use: FaceTweetLink.

Rick Littrell: FaceTweet; I love it.

Cary Sherburne: Because we just blast email like when we have a hot story especially ones I write.

Rick Littrell: Of course, which are all hot.

Cary Sherburne: Yeah, gets blasted out you know to Facebook and LinkedIn and Twitter. I don’t know what tool they use. I think they use TweetDeck. I’m not sure. But we FaceTweetLink it and everybody gets to see it.

Rick Littrell: Okay, question. Now are they tracking what kind of traffic from those various platforms percentage wise is driving them to? Have you all tracked that?

Cary Sherburne: I’m sure they are. I don’t get into that. I should but I’m sure they’re doing that.

Rick Littrell: Right. You got your people dealing with that.

Cary Sherburne: I got my people dealing with that.

Rick Littrell: Okay.

Cary Sherburne: I *** the data.

Rick Littrell: Because that gets into it’s like one of the campaigns.

Cary Sherburne: Then you understand which things you should be doing and.

Rick Littrell: Right.

Cary Sherburne: You know. Great.

Rick Littrell: All right.

Cary Sherburne: Nice talking to you.