Gabba Gabba Hey: all things social

Found on Facebook....

2012-02-05T15:02:00.000-08:00

...and it explains so much!

Why Startups Need to Blog (and what to talk about …)

2011-03-28T18:58:00.000-07:00

by Mark Suster
(reposted from Techcrunch)

Blogs. We all read them to get a sense of what is going on in the world, peeling back layers of the old world in which media was too scripted.

By definition, if you are reading this you read blogs. But should you actually write one if you’re a startup, an industry figure (lawyer, banker) or VC? Absolutely.

This is a post to help you figure out why you should write and what you should talk about.

1.WhyIf you care about accessing customers, reaching an audience, communicating your vision, influencing people in your industry, marketing your services or just plain engaging in a dialog with others in your industry a blog is a great way to achieve this.

People often ask me why I started blogging. It really started simply enough. I was meeting regularly with entrepreneurs and offering (for better or for worse) advice on how to run a startup and how to raise venture capital from my experience in doing so at two companies. I was having the same conversations over-and-over again (JFDI, Don’t Roll Out the Red Carpet when Employees are on the Way Out the Door, Don’t Drink Your Own Kool Aid, etc) and I figured I might as well just write them up and make them available for future people who might be interested. I never really expected a big audience or ever thought about it.

I had been reading Brad Feld’s blog & Fred Wilson’s blog for a couple of years and found them very helpful to my thinking so I honestly just thought I was giving back to the community.

The results have been both unexpected and astounding. Within 2 years I was getting 400,000 views / month and had been voted the 2nd most respected VC in the country by an independent survey of entrepreneurs, The Funded and sentiment analysis. I know that I have not yet earned these kudos based on investment returns (although my partners have. GRP Partners last fund is the single best performing VC fund in the US (prequin data) for its vintage year). But it speaks volumes to what people want from our industry:

transparency
accessibility
authenticity
thought leadership
advice

I’ll bet your customers, business partners or suppliers would love similar.

2. What

I often get the question from people, “I’d like to blog, but I don’t really know what to talk about?” Or “I’m a new entrepreneur, why would I offer advice on how to run a startup?”

You wouldn’t. You shouldn’t.

Not only would it be less authentic but if you’re a startup it’s not immediately clear that other startup CEOs are your target market. They’re mine because I’m a VC. I care about having a steady stream of talented startup people who want to raise money thinking that they should talk to me in addition to the top others whom they’re targeting.

Whom do you want to target? Who are your customers, partners or suppliers?

My suggestion is to blog about your industry. Think Mint.com. In their early days they had an enormously effective blog on the topic of personal financial management. They created a reason for their customers to aggregate on their site on a regular basis. They became both a thought leader in the space as well as a beautifully designed product. They created inbound link juice on topics that drove more traffic to their site. Type “personal financial management” into Google. Mint.com is the second result. Smart.

Think Magento. They are an open-source & SaaS provider of eCommerce solutions. They are the fastest growing player in the world in this space. They achieved all of this before they raised even a penny of venture capital. eCommerce is an enormously competitive search term. Yet type it into Google and the third result (behind the Wikipedia entry and ecommerce.com) is Magento. Magic. They did it by creating a blog, discussion board and hub for eCommerce advice and information.

So you developed a product for the mommy community? Blog on that topic. Do you have an application that helps mobile developers build HTML5 apps? You know your blog topic. Do you have sales productivity software? Obvious. Check out SalesCrunch posts. Blog to your community. Be a thought leader. Don’t blog to your friend (that might be a separate Tumblog or something) but blog to your community.

If you’re going to pump out regular content that is meaningful, you obviously need to blog about a topic in which you’re knowledgeable, thoughtful and passionate. If you’re not all three of these things in your industry then I guess you’ve got a broader problem. Honestly.

So my biggest recommendation of “what” to blog is a series of articles that will be helpful to your community. If you’re a lawyer, blog on a topic that would be helpful to potential customers. Show that you’re a thought leader. Scott Edward Walker does an excellent job at this. It’s the only reason I know who he is. I had seen his blog & his Tweets and then was interested to meet him IRL.

Do a brainstorming session and create a list of 40-50 topics that interest you. Write out the topic and maybe even the blog title. Keep the list electronically. .

Struggling to come up with enough topics? Take one topic and break it up into 10 bite-sized articles. It’s probably better that way anyways. I wanted to write about the top 10 attributes of an entrepreneur. I wrote it all in one sitting and then broke it up into 10 separate posts. It kept me busy for 3 weeks! Each one ended up taking on a life of its own as the comments flowed in for post 1 I had more thoughts to add to post 2 and so on.

3. Where
You need a blog. Duh. If you’re a company and if hanging it off of your company website makes sense for the link traffic – go for it. If you’re head of marketing at a company and keeping a more generalized blog (in addition to your company blog) so that you can influence brands & agencies – it can be separate.

I chose for my blog to be independent of my firm, GRP Partners. The reason is that I wanted to be free to say what I was thinking independently of my partners. My views don’t always represent theirs and vice-versa even though we’re pretty like-minded (we’ve worked together for 10+ years). I chose a title that represented a brand that I wanted to emphasize – Both Sides of the Table. I chose it because I thought it would represent who I am – mostly an entrepreneur but somebody with investment chops. I wanted to differentiate.

So. People keep asking me, “why would you write on TechCrunch?” I guess I would have thought it was obvious. Apparently not. People say, “aren’t you driving traffic away from your own blog?”

Facts:

I don’t really care about total page views or uniques other than as a measure of whether I’m improving. I don’t sell ads.
I DO care about “share of mind,” which means that I want fish in the pond where the people whom I want to speak with hang out. I know a certain number hit my blog. But I’m not so arrogant (or successful) as to think they come all the time. So I take my show on the road. If I can write about a topic for which I’m passionate about and double or triple the number of people who read it – that’s gold dust. That’s why I never stopped anybody from taking my feed and republishing.
As it happens, since I began writing at TechCrunch my viewership has continued to go up, not down. I always publish on my own blog the day after it runs on TC. I want the historical post there. A large number of readers on my site get it from Feedburner or newsletter feed.
I also get a lot of inbound links from writing here. I try to make any inbound links to my blog authentic to the story. But each story has driven 1,000′s of views.
The majority of my traffic still comes from Twitter. TC posts = more Twitter followers = more conversion when I do write on my own blog = more Feedburner / newsletter subs = more traffic. It’s an ecosystem. Simple.

So once you have a blog, a voice and a small following – don’t be shy about writing some guest posts for target blogs. Remember – for you that’s likely not TC – it’s the place your community hangs out.

4. How
Be authentic. Don’t try to sound too smart or too funny. Just be yourself. People will see who you are in your words. If you try to make everything too perfect you’ll never hit publish. If you try to sound too intelligent you’ll likely be boring as shit. Most blogs are. I hate reading blow hards who try to sound like they’re smarter than the rest of us. Be open and transparent. Get inside your reader’s minds. Try to think about what they would want to know from you. In fact, ask them!

Don’t be offensive – it’s never worth it to offend great masses of people. But that doesn’t mean sitting on the fence. I have a point of view and I’m sure sometimes it rankles. But I try to be respectful about it. Sitting on the fence on all issues is also pretty boring. And don’t blog drunk. Or at least don’t hit publish ;-) Mostly, have fun. If you can’t do that you won’t last very long.

How do I get started? First, you’ll need a platform. I use WordPress. Some people swear by SquareSpace. There are the new tools like Tumblr and Posterous. I’ve played with both and they’re pretty cool. They’re more light weight and easier to use. Importantly, they’re more social. It’s much easier to build an audience in social blogging platforms the way you do in Twitter or Facebook.

Then you need to decide whether to use the “hosted” version or the “installed” version. At least that’s true in WordPress. The advantage of the hosted version is that it’s easier to get started. The disadvantage is that you can’t install a lot of additional tools that use Javascript. I started with the hosted version and then migrated to an installed version so I could use Google Analytics and some other products.

You then need a URL. It’s true you can be something like msuster.typepad.com but that’s kind of lame so I wouldn’t recommend it. Just get a real URL. I think it’s important to think about what image you want to portray when you pick your URL name. It doesn’t need to be short. You’re not trying to build a consumer website. My website is a pretty long URL but people manage to find it. Much of my traffic is through referring websites and/or social media. Some search. What are YOU trying to convey? What will be your unique positioning? Don’t just write a carbon copy of what somebody else is doing. That’s boring.

So I wrote a post, now what? Don’t blow your load on your first post. Slice it up enough to do many posts. I think most blogs are between 600-1000 words / post. Once you’re written a few posts don’t try to make the flood gates open at once. Slowly build your audience. Make it organic. If you write good content and consistently you’ll build an audience over time.

The number one thing that kills 95% of blogs is that they do 5 or 6 posts in rapid succession and then peter out. It’s lame to go to a blog where this happens. And then 8 months later they do the obligatory post saying, “OK, I’m going to be more committed to blogging now!” and then another 4 months go by. If you’re really not going to write that often at least don’t put dates on your posts.

But if you write good stuff, but in an effort and keep going – it’s a marathon – you will see results over time.

How do I build an audience? If you build it, will they come? No. A blog post is just like a product. First it needs to be good. And then you need to market it. It doesn’t just happen. You should be subtle about how you market it, but market it nonetheless. If you’re too squeamish to ask for help in promoting it or to do so yourself then you’ll never build an audience (you’ll also likely not make it as an entrepreneur. Sorry. But that’s true.)

The obvious starting point is to email a few friends and let them know you have a new blog. Don’t be overbearing – just an email saying, “wanted to let you know about my new blog.” I also recommend you put a link to it under your email signature (in a color other than black). You also should have it be what your Twitter bio links to.

Every time I write a post I send it out on Twitter. I try to send out the Twitter link when more people are online. Over time I’ve found out that I get better clicks at 8.30-9.30am Mon-Fri so that’s when I Tweet a lot of my stuff. I’ll frequently send two Tweets – East Coast & West Coast. If you want to know why I’ve outlined it here. Not everybody sees the first one. Social media is ephemeral.

Because I’ve built my Twitter following slowly but steadily and authentically over time I get very high click-through rates (and thus a high Klout score – currently 74). I get about 4% CTR (click-through rate) on every Tweet in the AM) and it’s actually higher because if I assume only 33% of my followers on online the CTR is closer to 12%. Interestingly if I had sent one Tweet at 5.30am (to get East Coast time) and another at 8.30am I get 4% CTR both times. So it’s hard to argue you shouldn’t Tweet twice if you have a geographically distributed following.

How do I know my stats? I use awe.sm (disclosure, I’m an investor) which is the best tool I know of for tracking: each individual share behavior (it creates unique URLs for each Tweet) plus it also separates out Tweets from Facebook shares, from “Retweets” that come from somebody clicking on my blog, etc. It also tracks who Tweeted the link so you will know who your most influential social followers are.

Make sure your blog has Tweetmeme or similar to make it easier for readers to Retweet. Also, make sure to sign up with Feedburner. That way people who want to get your blog by RSS and/or email can do so. Make sure your blog also has a Follow Me on Twitter button so people who find you can easily follow you.

5. When
People often ask how I blog so much and don’t think they can do it themselves. If you write about something for which you’re both knowledgeable and passionate I’ll bet you can pump out more than you think.

I usually blog at 10pm or on airplane flights. I never blog at work. Like you, I don’t have the time. I have board meetings, company pitches, internal partner meetings, etc. Hell, I often can’t even get to email during the day. So it comes out of TV time, which means I’m not missing anything. Occasionally if I really want to blog and I have a date or too much work I just set my alarm for 5.30am. Yup. It’s not that hard if you make a commitment to it.

What would it mean to you and your business if you could: increase your inbound traffic, enhance your company & personal brand, meet new influential people who suddenly know who you are. If you want these things they are available to you for the cost of some time & effort.

If you plan out what you want to write about in advance (create topics then to headings to structure your article. You’ll notice on this one I started with mine … Why, What, Where, How and then I later added When & What Next) then it’s really about writing. Structure helps enormously. If you need some help with the creative process read this.

I write for about 45 minutes to an hour in the first pass. I usually then re-read, edit, spell check and add links. This usually takes another 20-30 minutes. I then always add an image. I think this is a nice touch. Just staring at text is a bit boring and I find that the image can add humor and/or drive people in.

6. What Next?
Then there’s comments. You HAVE TO respond to comments. Do yourself a favor and install Disqus. It makes a huge difference in driving a comment community. If you want the details on why I covered it here.

First, it’s the most fun part of blogging. It’s addicting like Twitter. It’s where you exchange ideas with other people. It’s where your community gets to know you. It’s where you build loyalty and relationships. I have met many people in person who were first commenters on my blog. I find it frustrating if I leave comments on somebody’s blog and they never respond. If somebody found your blog and took the time to comment then they’re like a customer who should be cherished. Responses to them are like customer retention. It’s also where you’ll learn. People will tell you when you’re full of shit.

Appendix: Traffic Hacks:

Commenting on other blogs – you need to comment on other people’s blogs. First, it is a place where your comment will often link back to your blog where it can drive traffic. Occasionally, and not overtly, and only if relevant you can provide a comment with a link back to an article in your blog. Don’t do this often, don’t be blatant and make sure it’s relevant.
Linking to other blogs – For example, many people know that I love VentureHacks because it’s a great resource for entrepreneurs and I think that Babak Nivi is a star. Notice I’ve linked to his website. If he tracks his blog (which I’m sure he does) he’ll see this link. If he has a Google Alert on his name (everyone does) then he’ll also get that. Don’t be over the top gushing and creepy. Be subtle. Don’t overtly tell everyone you link to, “I linked to you, check out my article!” Assume that over time if you write compelling content they’ll eventually check you out.
Covering relevant people in your blog in an authentic way – If your blog covers topics in your industry it’s likely that you’ll be able to write about some people and companies that you want to be aware of your blog. Don’t Tweet @ them telling them you covered them. Don’t email them saying you covered them. Just talk about their company. If you write good articles over time and do this often enough people will notice.
Tweet support - What I did in the early days was to enlist Tweet support. I would occasionally ask people that I was close with to retweet my posts. I tried to mix it up in order to not ask the same people often. I would send out emails with the Tweet text already written so that they just had to cut-and-paste. As my blog started getting authentic traffic I stopped asking for this help very often.
Guest authoring – Once you have a bit of credibility as a writer a great strategy to drive traffic is to write guest posts for relevant bloggers in your sphere of influence. If you run BakeSpace and blog about food why not contact some of the local food blogs and see whether you could submit guest articles. Most people are delighted to have the free content. In return all you ask for are links back to your blog and to your Twitter account. Slowly and surely these will add users, of which some will come back on a regular basis.

HOW TO Build Influence in Social Media

2010-12-08T10:31:00.000-08:00

by Rick Bakas
reposted from Bakas Media

One of the best perks of my job is getting to speak at conferences all over the country (and soon the world) about social media and how it applies to business—more specifically how it applies to the wine and food industry. Over the past two years I’ve been able to speak at conferences like TWTRCON DC, #140conf in LA, SMASH in SF, TWTRCON SF, Unified in Sacramento and various other social media events. My shtick usually has to do with branding, or “social branding”.

Each time I go to one of these, I come away thinking the same thing—out of all the important strategies to focus on in social media, building influence might be #1. The social media conferences are a great place to hear the latest case studies from thought leaders, and they’re a great place to hob nob with new friends in the lobby. Moreover, social media conferences are a good place to determine who is building influence online and offline.

It’s Not About Followers

When I sit down to coach someone on social media, we don’t talk about how to use Twitter or how to set up a Facebook page, we talk about how to position their brand (personal or corporate) for online synergy. I’m not as concerned with which tools someone uses, I just want them to use the social tools they feel comfortable with to build influence. We begin to translate influence to ROI over time.

Number of followers have very little to do with influence. A better barometer is klout.com and your klout score. Klout uses granular data from your online interactions to determine how engaged your online audience is. The more engaged your audience, the more of their attention you can capture. That’s really what building influence is about…it’s not just social currency, it’s attention currency. Klout will help you determine where your brand is strong and where it needs attention. The whole of your Klout score is a sum of the parts of ALL the things you do on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube (coming soon). Your Klout score starts at zero and goes up from there, it’s not like grades in school. The higher the score, the more you are able to capture attention. And in the world of social media, attention span comes at a premium. Where attention goes, money follows.

The Importance of Reach

In my book, Quick Bites, I have a chapter about building influence using this formula:

Getting back to the idea of number of followers. While it’s true the number isn’t important, it is important to know your reach. Klout tells you your ‘true reach’ or the size of your engaged audience. The reach is multiplied by a mix of brand positioning, subject expertise and trust. Since my background is brand management from eight years at NIKE, I fully geek out on getting a brand positioned correctly. I’m amazed at how many personal and corporate brands I see online that aren’t positioned correctly because they use different avatars on different social sites. The question people ask me the most is, “what’s the most important tip in Quick Bites?” Answer: be consistent. For brands online, be consistent with the image you use for the avatar. An avatar is your online “logo”. Use the same one everywhere like a NIKE swoosh.

Expertise comes through online conversation. I suggest a brand “own” five subjects or less. For me, everyone knows I’m going to talk online about wine, food, bacon or social media geekery. There’s a level of expectation. Because my audience knows what I’m going to talk about, and I do it they trust me. I’ve delivered what was expected. A brand can be defined as a promise to deliver. Trust is earned through consistently delivering on what’s anticipated, that’s why quality content is king.

In the wine industry, patience is part of the business. Waiting for grapes to grow on the vine, then age in the barrel can take years before the product is actually enjoyed. When the bottle is opened, the vintage might be from 15 year ago, but when the wine delivers on the promise and expectation, that’s a quality brand experience. Patience is also part of the online business. It takes time for the influence formula to show results, but consistent application of that formula over time will help a brand grow their online influence.

3 Flavors of Social Media Execution in a B2B Corporate Environment

2010-11-30T15:15:00.000-08:00

by Marc Hausman

re-posted from Social Media Today

Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Foursquare, Digg, Reddit…I love them all. Yet, their value has been overstated.

These social networks are merely another channel to address the market, in many ways comparable to traditional forms of communication such direct mail, trade shows and events.

Now consider Web 2.0 offerings like BeFunky, PixxMe, Go!animate and Apture. While they’re certainly cool, they are merely tools designed to dress up staid content.

It is encouraging that the adoption of social media in corporate environments has marched on at an accelerating pace. However, executive buy-in and budget commitment has been dampened by the curious fascination that social practitioners have with online communities and tools, rather than the strategies and applications necessary to produce a measurable ROI.

During the past four years, Strategic Communications Group (Strategic) has designed, executed and evaluated nearly 40 social media campaigns for the world’s largest, fastest growing and most successful technology companies. Our clients have included global brands such as Microsoft, Cisco Systems, EMC, Sun Microsystems, British Telecom, NeuStar, Monster and BearingPoint, as well as emerging vendors like Merchant Link, Cimcor, ePok and govWin.

While the practice and influence of social media can be applied across the organization, our experience teaches us there are primarily three high-value viable applications of social in a B2B environment.

Social Media for Public Relations
It’s no secret there has been a sustained shift in influence from traditional sources of credibility like trade publishers, market research firms and conferences to the conversations and debate that define social networks. However, interest from and coverage by journalists and analysts still delivers much-needed awareness and third-party validation.

Plus, bloggers and social media power users now flex their influence with daily commentary, staking claim to their place in the public relations landscape.

Participation in online communities can deliver a direct channel to these high-value influencers, helping PR professionals cultivate relationships, present story ideas and participate in the news gathering process.

The practice and importance of public relations remains constant. Social now overshadows the phone and Email as the preferred means of communication.

Social Media for Corporate Positioning
Canvas corporate sites on the Web and it’s apparent that most marketing departments are getting hip to audience demand for a Facebook fan page, LinkedIn profile and Twitter feed. In fact, in some instances a company’s presence in an online community can eclipse the relevance of its own corporate Web site.

A defined strategy and appropriate benchmarks for success in areas such as market awareness and positioning are a must for an organization to experience a positive return from this corporate-driven social presence.

Equally important, corporations have begun to recognize that a lack of participation in popular online communities can be damaging. Key audiences such as customers, partners and investors may stand perplexed and, in some instances, question the viability of an organization that fails to sport a Facebook logo on its Web site.

Social Media for Sales
Referred to at Strategic as the “last mile,” the ability to appropriately tap into online communities for lead generation, cultivation of prospect relationships and deal capture delivers the most meaningful ROI in a B2B environment.

Consider that a social network is merely a collection of individuals who have organized around a shared theme or topic of interest. Participants in this community also self-identify, sharing with other members information about their professional responsibilities and areas of interest.

Plus, everyone in a social environment leaves a digital footprint -- who they follow, the discussions they participate in and the comments they provide. All of this intelligence informs the astute marketer about what this individual deems important.

By publishing thought leadership content that enhances the value of participation for community members, a corporation can attract a loyal and engaged following. It’s then a matter of presenting opportunities for those followers to choose to strike up a more intimate conversation.

When integrated with a socially-trained sales team, these conversations can be assessed, vetted and evaluated for their business potential.

The end result: social media becomes a driver of high-value sales activity and opportunity. The awareness, credibility and search engine optimization (SEO) resulting from participation in social networks becomes merely an unintended benefit.

How to Become a Foursquare Power User

2010-10-27T10:48:00.000-07:00

Reposted from Mashable
from Waggener Edstrom Worldwide's Digital Influencers Series

When Foursquare was starting up a little more than a year and a half ago, only a handful of people were checking in. It was pretty easy to hold down a healthy number of mayorships just by being one of the few people using the game. Today, it’s a different story.

Foursquare registered its four millionth member this past week. As the network has grown in popularity, it has evolved from a location-based game to a social media staple that has shown potential in civic engagement, education, and non-profits. It has also become much harder to beat out the competition for coveted mayorships and badge counts.

When IBM employee Eric Andersen took over the mayorship of a popular Boston ice cream shop, for instance, he had to stop in two to three times every week for ice cream or spiced butterscotch lattes (a Boston Globe reporter dubbed the not-so-painful battle the bloodless revolution). The mayor who ousted him checks in about 35 times every 60 days.

“One way to think of it is, for nearly every venue, whether it be a bar, a coffee shop, a laundromat, or a park, there is probably someone who owns a smartphone who is there almost daily,” Andersen says. “So as Foursquare adoption increases, mayorship battles will heat up as regular patrons of every location suddenly begin to adopt their new virtual status.”

When you find yourself in such a battle — or just want to get the most out of playing the game — you can rely on these five tips from Foursquare’s most accomplished players.

1. Make Foursquare a Habit

“I don’t know if I really have a strategy, but playing Foursquare has definitely changed my habits,” says Chris Preiss, who has checked into Foursquare more than 5,800 times, the third-most times of anyone on Foursquare according to Osnapz.com. “If I am in a mayorship battle, I will frequent that place a little more often. Or if there is a location that I know will help me earn a badge, I will go there.”

Adding Foursquare to your habits is a common theme among Foursquare champions. It seems obvious, but most people still don’t naturally check in when they arrive somewhere. Remembering to do so is a huge advantage, especially if you have a job like Preiss’s. His company provides CO2 to bars and restaurants, so he’s often in new places that he might not otherwise even know about.

2. Pick a Strategy

Gathering mayorships, badges, and checkins requires different and often conflicting strategies.
“In the past, many badges had clearly defined rules, and you could check venues’ tags to determine if a checkin there would help towards the badge,” explains Andersen, who currently has the second most number of checkins on Foursquare. “Now, most of the newer badges can’t easily be obtained by a concrete set of checkins. There are some sites like aboutfoursquare.com that can help guide you though – but these strategies typically involve checking in to new and different places, whereas something like [becoming] mayor involves going to the same place every day.”

In order to truly excel in a Foursquare power user category, it can be beneficial to define your strategy. Chris Radzinski decided to focus his efforts on badges.

“I am not a fan of going for mayorships — if you notice my account does not have many,” he says. “In terms of Foursquare, getting badges doesn’t really affect any other user specifically. But if I went around and had a thousand mayorships, some users would be irritated and would actually be affected.”

Radzinski is currently the Foursquare record holder with 131 badges. Those who wish to focus on badges, he says, should focus on the limited time badges first.

“Unlike mayorships, which can be taken, not everyone can say they have certain badges after they are inactive,” he says.

Preiss is less targeted. “For the most part, I just check in where I am and let the chips fall where they may,” he says. “Earning a badge unexpectedly can be more fun than working for one.”

3. Know the Rules and Decide What is Cheating

All checkins are not created equal. If you’re planning on being competitive, it’s important to know the rules.
“Many don’t realize that only checkins in the last 60 days count towards mayorship, or that only one checkin a day counts towards mayorship,” Andersen says. “Multiple checkins a day to a place aren’t necessarily mistakes, but someone might be doing it thinking it will help them become mayor more quickly.”

There are, of course, ways to bend the rules. You can check in on the mobile Foursquare website without actually being in a location, you can check in to a location as you pass it without ever actually going to it, and you can decide not to “share with friends” in order to unabashedly check in multiple times per visit to one location.

“I don’t really see the value in doing this more than a few times a day,” Andersen says about checking in off the grid. “You lose nearly all of Foursquare’s social benefits when you aren’t actually sharing anything with friends other than the fact that you’re accumulating points.”

Some people also consider employees who check in to their own business’s Foursquare page to be cheating.
But, as Preiss points out, “There aren’t really rules to the game, so cheating is kind of a touchy thing.”
Preiss says he considers checking in to places that he hasn’t actually visited to be cheating. He doesn’t do it, but, he says, “Foursquare hasn’t done anything to end this practice, so if they don’t have a problem with it, why should I?”

Foursquare has, in fact, made an attempt to stop rewarding armchair mayors. It continues to permit people to check in wherever they are, but, as Foursquare puts it, “We’re never going to NOT let you check-in –- you can checkin wherever you want, whenever you want — the idea is simply to not award points, mayorships, badges or venue specials if it looks like you didn’t really earn them.”

Before you get competitive, it’s good to set some boundaries for what you will count as fair play. Foursquare pride isn’t as much fun when accompanied by cheater guilt.

4. Use Twitter

Radzinski says Twitter gives him a competitive edge. “Following the right people is crucial because many of the badges are only valid for a few days if it is event based, and the news hits Twitter faster than anything,” he says.

These are some online resources the power users we interviewed recommended:

@aboutfoursquare: “Lots of updates on new badges and brands that are part of Foursquare,” says Preiss.
@4squareTips: Great for tips, how-tos, and swarm alerts
@mattersofgrey: General Internet news, but often reports on Foursquare. Great for badge lists.
@foursquare: Get Foursquare news directly from Foursquare
@getOsnapz: The Twitter feed of social media leader board site Osnapz.com.
@4squarebadges: Outlines the best strategies for earning specific badges.
@foursquarehelp: Get a guaranteed response to every Foursquare support issue.
Andersen keeps a Twitter list of “Foursquare gurus” that collectively span anything you would want to know about the platform.

5. Stay Social

Foursquare is intended to be a game. It can get competitive, but it should still be fun. Even the power users say the most important parts of the game are the social aspects.

“As a social person who works in a very social industry, it’s nice for friends to be able to see where and what is going on,” says Radzinski, who works as a general manager at a Cleveland Heights restaurant. “I can’t even tell you how many times someone has stopped at a place I am or texted to see how long I am staying at a bar or restaurant because they saw me checked in. The badges are just icing on the cake.”

Preiss says that the badges he’s most proud of are not those that were hardest to win, but those that remind him of good times. One of them he won at a friend’s birthday party while visiting New York. Another is the Jet Setter Badge, which he is proud of because it shows his passion for traveling.

What are your tips for becoming a Foursquare power user? Add them in the comments below.

How Much Are Social Media Shares Worth?

2010-10-15T10:11:00.000-07:00

by Jennifer Van Grove

reposted from Mashable

Popular event ticketing site Eventbrite used its in-house social analytics tools to study the effects Facebook shares, tweets and other social sharing behaviors have on ticket purchases.

Looking at data from the past 12 weeks in aggregate, Evenbrite found that each social media share equates to $1.78 in ticket sales, with Facebook shares proving to be the most lucrative. As such, Eventbrite believes social commerce — or transactions driven through sharing on social platforms — to be the next big trend in online commerce.

Eventbrite’s data is especially telling; here’s the breakdown: one share on Facebook equals $2.52, a share on Twitter equals $0.43, a share on LinkedIn equals $0.90, and a share through e-mail equals $2.34 in sales. The easy takeaway is that Facebook shares are almost six times more effective than tweets and three times more rewarding than LinkedIn shares.

The report also details, “For Eventbrite, Facebook is now the #1 referring site for traffic to the company’s site, surpassing Google. Each Facebook share drives 11 visits back to Eventbrite.com.”

Eventbrite’s data and social commerce findings are, of course, by all means singular to its ticket-selling business and recognized brand name. For most businesses, individual shares will not convert to as high of sales.

Still, Web services with online commerce components could learn a thing or two from the startup’s social integrations — Eventbrite excels at making it ridiculously simple for event organizers and RSVP’d guests to share events via Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or e-mail.

The Most Influential Consumers Online are on Twitter

2010-09-24T22:05:00.000-07:00

By Brian Solis
Reposted from @briansolis

Twitter is a human seismograph and it represents a transformative channel where everyday people possess the ability to affect actions. The cloud of collective consciousness that houses our thoughts, experiences, and conversations is also a data trove for experts to measure and mine serendipitous and organized behavior and events.

Twitter is less of a social network in its design and operation and more of a series of interconnected social nicheworks. It brings together disparately connected personalities linked through friendship, admiration, education, and context. Here individuals align around people they know, would like to know, and bound by the topics, themes, and connections that attract them. This highly contextualized network, or as Twitter refers to it, an Interest Graph, offers individuals an organized, indexible, and searchable stream where they express sentiment, share observations and information, and also directly and indirectly communicate with one another.

For marketers, Twitter represents so much more than a real-time focus group. While the activity of its users is available for interpretation and analysis, the information contained in certain tweets published by notable individuals possess the capacity to influence agendas and resulting activities. And even in aggregate, everyday users define the direction of the stream and ultimately impact the subjects of their conversations.
Any organization impacted by outside activity must dedicate focus and resources to monitoring and analyzing activity, the extent to which it shapes perception today, and how to share and steer activity to benefit stakeholders online and in the real world.

A recent study by ExactTarget and CoTweet surveyed 1,500 consumers to identify top motivations for following brands on Twitter. As a result, we can glean insight into the expectations of elusive and prized consumers when interacting with brands online.

The ExactTarget and CoTweet study reveals an important part of the social ecosystem that demonstrates why businesses need to consider not just a 360 approach, but a socialized approach. Of the consumers surveyed, 72% publish blog posts at least monthly, 70% comment on blogs, and 61% write at least one product review monthly. The social consumer is vocal and they’re connected. Considering now that audiences are shifting from content consumers to curators and creators, our market is now defined by audiences with audiences with audiences. Individuals maintain active and expanding social graphs and as they grow, the network effect only escalates.

In April 2010, Performics and ROI Research found that 33% of Twitter users share opinions about companies or products at least once per week. More so, 32% make recommendations while 30% seek guidance and direction.

Wait. What?
- 33% talk brands 1x per week
- 32% make recommendations
- 30% seed advice

Among other interesting stats, 20% of consumers follow a brand in order to interact with the company, which is much greater than those who subscribe to email newsletters or those who “like” brands on Facebook in order to remain connected. In fact, nine out of the ten stated that the most common reasons to follow a brand on Twitter involved the ability to obtain direct information from a company.

In other studies, upwards of 80% of Twitter users stated that for those deserving brands, following equated to referrals. Of those who followed brands, 51% did so because they were an existing customer and 44% expected discounts or promotions.

One of the more interesting data points to emerge was that men were more than twice as likely than women to follow brands on Twitter, 29% compared to 13%. This stat requires deeper analysis as it, on the surface, rivals two primary research pillars in my current work, 1) More women than men account for the overall Twitter population and 2) Women, in aggregate, are more influential than men on Twitter.

If you were to take one thing away from this research, it’s this…Twitter users are the most influential social consumers online today. This revelation is constant across many published research reports. Not only are they influential, they put their money where their Tweet is.

While money doesn’t grow on trees, it does however, grow on Tweets.

The original post can be found here.

The Seven Deadly Sins of Social Media

2010-09-16T12:00:00.000-07:00

By: Scott Stratten

reposted from Fast Company

In this excerpt from his new book UnMarketing: Stop Marketing. Start Engaging. author Scott Stratten shows the profane acts users of Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn commit. How many are you guilty of?

Social Media is so new that most people are making it up as they go,1 but most people seem to make the same mistakes. Or dare I say sins. . . . We look at the biggest players online for business--Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn--but the same concepts can be applied to any social media site.

Greed

Greed is quite a popular sin. Twitter by default is a self-centered tool. It's about us. But it's 100 times better if used as a conversational tool versus a dictation. I see people using Twitter as a glorified RSS feed for their blog or an ad-puker. So absent of personality, I wonder why they even try. Yes, they are in business, but if they believe that business is built on relationships, they need to make building them their business.

This sin holds a special place for the people who only retweet compliments about themselves. I was talking to a colleague of mine and she was asking how I have built such a large amount of followers. I mentioned that I get retweeted a lot and I retweet others. Her reply was "I retweet others all the time!" When I checked out her page, the only time she ever retweeted anyone was if it was a compliment about her or a #FollowFriday2 mention with her in it. You may as well tweet while looking in a mirror telling yourself you're good enough, you're smart enough, and gosh darn it, people like you.

Facebook is in a world of its own. Posting on someone's wall with a seven-line signature, mass-inviting people to every event (even if the event is local and the person is not even in the same country), to tagging people in articles that they are not even mentioned in just to get them to read it. There is a special vein in my forehead that you can clearly see when these things occur.

Someone didn't become your friend on Facebook to give you business or to allow you to use his or her wall as a billboard. Even the term "friend" means a relationship, and you are not building one when you invite me to your Multi-Level Marketing (MLM) event in San Diego and I live in Toronto. Instead, use Facebook to engage, and to comment on people's posts and status updates and to share links with them that they may like, not ones you have written to promote yourself but ones you have found that may help them.

LinkedIn falls under the same issues that Facebook does. The group's function has so much great potential because the site is fully business-oriented, yet the majority of the groups and posts that I have seen during my research were either outright spam or drive-by articles. Drive-by articles are those that are posted in multiple groups and sites, which are mostly a thinly veiled pitch for the author's services. Some gurus also teach this method, but you will notice that the original authors are never around when someone has a follow-up question. I hope that the LinkedIn discussion groups become just that, groups that have great discussion.

Gluttony

Get followers fast!!!! Most people on Twitter have seen tweets like this or thought of using a site that helps kick-start things for you. Seems innocent, right? Let's just have a look-see at this logic. Imagine a guy just followed you. Makes you feel all warm and fuzzy that a new person is along for the Twitter journey with you, makes up for your lack of popularity in high school, and the day is getting better. Then you go to his profile and you see a bunch of tweets that say:

"I have found a way to get thousands of followers fast and automated!! Go to this site!"

How does that make you feel now? Still warm and fuzzy? Still getting tingles? Didn't think so. When you tweet out "follower system" tweets it says one thing: You're in it for the numbers. I'll bet the 3 cents I still have after my latest trip to Vegas that one of the next tweets will be about an "amazing business." Everything you tweet is an extension of your biz and your brand. If you want to scream about "getting thousands of followers," be my guest, but the funniest part about the above tweet? The actual guy has 149 followers. Seriously.

On Facebook, gluttony takes a different turn for me. While actually writing this book a service provider that I am "friends" with sent me an invite to a Facebook event called "Freedom from the Fat Trap!!!" Really? One of two things happened here. She either sent the invitation, which wasn't even for her own event, to her entire friend list or specifically chose to invite me to the event. I am going to go ahead and guess that it is the former and that I also do not have to tell you how badly somebody could take this. It is about as bad as inviting somebody to an event called "You're Ugly and Here Is How You Can Look a Little Less Ugly." Remember that everything you do impacts your business image, including inviting people to fat camp.

Sloth

Twitter is a conversation. It's truly what I love about it. But imagine having a conversation in person with someone where that person takes an hour to reply to you, face-to-face. How awkward would that be: "Hey, how's business?" and they blankly stare off for an hour, then reply "Good thanks!" That's how it feels if someone takes a week to reply to a tweet. I once had someone who took 79 days to reply to a question that I asked her on Twitter. Seventy-nine days! If it takes you longer to reply than it would to walk over a handwritten reply to my home, you're doing it wrong. I know, not everyone is a tweetaholic like me, and not everyone can devote a good chunk of their day to Twitter. So if you have a limited amount of resources or time, let's say five hours a week, it's better to spend 45 minutes a day for the entire week, than five hours once a week. Consistency breeds familiarity, which creates relationships.

Here we can combine Facebook and LinkedIn; if you are not going to be responsive on either site then you probably shouldn't have a presence. There is a difference between being present and having a presence. You need to be active and responsive to people's requests, whether that is accepting people as contacts on LinkedIn or as friends on Facebook. I was guilty of this last year on LinkedIn when I recently went back to ramp things up and realized I had connection requests from eight months ago. How do you think it made those people feel?

Envy

Ya, I'm kind of a big deal on Twitter in my own mind, which at the end of the day means nothing to the majority of the world, but every day I get DMs3 asking me to change my picture to add a "cause" or tweet about this or that. I'm all for causes, I'm a big charity guy, but mostly I'm a fan of choice. Meaning it's your choice to support anything you want but every once in a while people try to get others, through guilt, to change their avatar. When everyone changed their Twitter profile pictures to a shade of green to support some cause I got asked daily why I hadn't changed mine yet. My answer to them? It's none of your damn business why. My lack of participation in your cause does not infer lack of support, just like changing my avatar does not make me a better person by default. Same goes for people who think you should be obligated to follow them back if they follow you. Things on Twitter, just like most things in life, are choices. We should follow people based on interest, not out of courtesy.

Same goes for causes and groups on Facebook. You will see a popular cause of the month go around with plenty of invitations that you will usually ignore. Recently I had the pleasure of choosing to not join a cause just to be reinvited back multiple times by the same person. I admire their dedication, but despise their persistence that has turned to annoyance.

One of LinkedIn's greatest functions is the endorsement, where people can give testimonials about your skills at a particular job. The system allows you to request endorsements from anyone in your contact list. This is okay if they actually worked with you or were customers; however, I frequently am requested to give endorsements for people who I barely know anything about; or they write in the request "if you endorse me then I will endorse you." Which negates the very point of the system.

Wrath

One of the worst things about social media is the reactionary nature of it. Especially on Twitter, most of us don't think before tweeting and for the most part it's okay because most tweets are harmless, boring, and innocent by nature. But once in a while we react or lash out above our better judgment. It takes a thousand tweets to build a reputation and one to change it all. Twitter feels intimate sometimes, like you're on an episode of Friends, having a conversation with a few, except there are thousands "lurking" around. It's like having a harem of stalkers, without the creepiness.4

Being the object of someone's wrath is also common. For a full explanation on how to deal with trolls check out the section about them later in the book. But in a nutshell: Don't feed them. They aren't owed a reply, your time, or your emotions. You're better than that.

Wrath can be even worse when it is cloaked in the disguise of being helpful. This is usually done by the spelling freaks or grammar police. I admit that I do not always proofread what I tweet--I barely proofread a blog post and then usually only after I have posted it. Posting on my public comments and implying that I am a moron because I spelled something wrong isn't in anybody's best interest. It makes me feel stupid and it makes you look bad. I was taught back in my human resource days that there was one rule: Praise in public and reprimand in private. So I would say praise in public and assist in private. If I asked for help or feedback in a public forum, then fire away, but if the spell check is unsolicited, drop me a note privately. It is actually appreciated and makes you look even better. But beware of those who ask for feedback in public as well--they are usually looking for praise.

Lust

Social media sites are filled with humans. And when you throw a bunch of humans into an environment, a few things are sure to be present: 20 percent of people will have bad breath, 30 percent will wonder how their hair looks, 60 percent like peanut butter and cheese sandwiches but are scared to say something (or maybe I'm the only one), and 100 percent will have hormones. 5 It happens. We can pretend they don't exist, but they're always there. It's one of the reasons to have a flattering picture as part of your social media profile; it catches the eye. The problem is when people turn creepy or obnoxious (and by people I mean guys). I'm truly blessed to know many incredible women on Twitter who are not only brilliant in business but attractive as well. The stories they tell me about direct messages or replies they get from some men make me shake my head. Seriously, folks, I'm not sure what book told you the line "Your lips look tasty" works, but it makes me picture Silence of the Lambs, and not for the cool stuff. Every tweet, every DM, represents your company, and more specifically you as a person.

It is even worse on Facebook, where the laid-back attitude can make you look even worse. People post pictures of their vacations on the beach only to have them ruined by some guy making a comment that totally ruins the entire thing. And I repeat that you are always marketing your business--every comment, every post, is an extension of your brand.

Pride

You know what? Screw it. I have no problem with your being proud of something. I mean true pride. Something you accomplished, your kids, whatever. Scream it from the top of the mountains, good for you. Just do it in moderation. Don't just talk about yourself, spread pride of others, too. Retweet, comment, and share their accomplishments. One sin out of seven ain't so bad.

HOW TO: Get the Most Out of Your Business Facebook Page

2010-08-30T18:41:00.000-07:00

by Susan Payton
Reposted from Mashable

So you paid attention to what everyone is saying and you created a Facebook Page for your business. You’ve got your press release links, photos and videos…but no one seems to care. What are you supposed to do now?

You’re on the right track, so congratulate yourself. A lot of small business owners don’t even bother to create a page — they’re simply not “on” Facebook.

But it’s all about where your customers and future customers hang out. And with people spending more than 700 billion minutes per month on this social networking site, it seems pretty apparent that your business needs to be hanging out there too.

Let’s review your Page. Go ahead, pull it up. Your Facebook Page should contain all or most of these:

Links to your blog posts
Links to related articles (whether they’re yours or not)
Videos
Photos
Discussions

This type of content is key in getting people to “Like” your page, and contributes to its overall success. And how do we define success? By getting people to interact and leave comments on your Facebook Page, as well as travel from the page to your company’s website and, of course, buying your product.

Facebook Pages Need Attention

If you neglect your Facebook Pages, they will die. If you use Facebook, you’ve probably stumbled upon a company’s page with no conversations going on and no recent posts. I’m guessing you didn’t click “Like” on that page. An unattended Facebook Page leaves a negative impression of the company — don’t let yours fall by the wayside.

The more you pay attention to your Page, the more positive results you’ll see. Cathy Nguyen, President of LeatherandBags.com, has seen great results from her Facebook Page, but admits she could do more.

“Although I have a Facebook Page, I’m not utilizing it to its fullest potential because of time. I try to update when I can and should probably try to engage more often,” said Nguyen. “Utilizing Twitter, blogs and e-mails has worked, but then again, I’m not doing it frequently.”

People are used to passive marketing. In the old days, you could pay a magazine or billboard company to create an ad for you. Then you sat back and waited for sales to hopefully pour in. But those days are gone. Whether it’s you or someone else at your company, you need to dedicate someone to social media strategy.

Creating a Facebook Strategy

Maybe we put the cart before the horse in creating the Page without a clear-cut plan. That’s OK. Let’s develop a plan together. First, decide why you want a Facebook Page. Is it because everyone else is doing it? Or because you understand the value in connecting with customers who spend time socializing on Facebook?

Write down five goals for your Facebook Page. They might be:

Create awareness of our brand on Facebook
Get 10,000 “Likes” by year-end
Have at least 5 comments or shared items each week
Make Facebook one of the top 3 referrers of traffic to our site
Get 2,000 entries to our Facebook contest

Once you have these goals, break down the tasks required to achieve them. If you want 10,000 people to click “Like” on your page, you’re going to have to expand your contacts through your profile. Post your page link on Twitter, your blog, your e-mail and everywhere else. If you want interaction, you need to post insightful and thought-provoking questions and comments. Decide how regularly you need to post (I suggest at least 3 days a week).

Now determine who will handle these tasks. It might be one person or several. If it’s you, post the tasks to your calendar so you don’t forget to do them. In time, updating your Page will become second nature.

Ginger Anderson, who handles the Facebook Page for Scripps Health in San Diego says that when she started handling the page, all it did was push health news. Now the Page offers a mix of news, useful articles and videos that frequently get comments and questions from the 900 plus San Diegans who follow the brand.

“Our intention is to build relationships within the San Diego community (specifically with current patients and employees) and position Scripps as a trusted leader in healthcare,” said Anderson. “We receive the most comments on the posts that are general and applicable to a wider audience as opposed to disease-specific. We try to balance serious health news with fun, general health and wellness related content along with stuff about San Diego life (again, making sure it’s not always about us).”

Practical Tips

Just updating your Page won’t make it fabulous — that will take a little work from you. Here are a few tips to make your page more searchable and appealing.

Title: Some say the title is the most important part, so make sure your title is descriptive of your business and unique on Facebook.

FBML: Facebook Markup Language helps you create a custom landing page for your Facebook presence. If you want to promote a special event or direct attention to a particular product, this is a great way to do it. Don’t run screaming when I say that this code can make your page better. It’s not complicated, but if you don’t want to deal with it, hire someone to help.

Photos and Videos: Don’t underestimate the power of photos and videos. Even if you don’t sell products, you can still add photos to spice up your page. If you’re a dog groomer, take “Before and After” photos of those precious pet makeovers. A realtor can add photos of the houses on the market. A services firm can post pictures from the office to help visitors feel more connected to the staff.

For videos, why not shoot a tutorial on getting the most out of your products? An office tour? There are applications you can install within Facebook that will let you pull photos from places like Flickr. This can save you the trouble of uploading them in two places.

Questions: The jury’s still out on Facebook Questions, a recent addition to the site. But by asking questions through your Page, you can start discussions that will spread beyond just the people who follow your business.

Once you’ve put together your strategy and have worked on it a bit, give it three months. Then analyze your results and decide: Is Facebook helping your business?

HOW TO: Get the Most Out of Offline Networking Events

2010-06-14T20:29:00.000-07:00

by Mollie Vandor
Reposted from Mashable

If you work on the Web, chances are a good chunk of your day is devoted to developing relationships online. You talk to people on Twitter, follow them on Foursquare, share photos with them on Facebook, swap music on MySpace and let them know what you’re working on via LinkedIn. Of course, contrary to the stereotype, that doesn’t mean we techies spend every day in keyboard-covered caves.

In fact, from conferences to networking events, there are plenty of opportunities to turn those online connections into real world relationships. The web can actually make maintaining all those real world relationships even easier, especially if you know how to optimize your networking – both online and offline. Luckily for the would-be social media social butterfly, there are a few simple tips that can help you do just that.

Make The Most Of Meet & Greets

First of all, you have to find the right events. Join Meetup groups around your interests, do a targeted ticket search on Eventbrite, use the Mashable events calendar to find conferences and panels in your part of the world, or join a niche networking group like Social Media Club, Girls in Tech, Women in Technology International or 140 Character Conference.

Once you’re actually at an event, focus on putting a face to your name – your username, that is. Since a lot of people will probably know you solely by your avatar and handle, they may not immediately put two and two together when they meet you in real life. The simple solution to this is to make sure you keep your business cards up to date with your most recent usernames. Make sure you also include those usernames on the nametags you wear at networking events.

It’s also good to make plans with the people you want to meet before the event actually arrives. Doing so will avoid you standing in line while the person you want to talk to is mobbed by other would-be networkers. If you approach them in advance, and make plans to meet, you’ll feel much better about cutting through the crowds to find them. Plus, you’ll save yourself precious minutes of intro-time and be able to jump straight into conversation.

If you want people to come to you, then don’t be shy. Tell your followers, friends and fans where you’re going to be and what you’re going to be wearing. When you get to an event, scope out a particular corner or table and send your location out as a status update. Don’t just check-in on your favorite location-based sharing service, use it to find other people that are at a particular event, and to contact them while you’re there. That way, the people that follow you on the web will be able to find you out in the world, which can be valuable when you want to be found.

Follow Up

Whether you leave every event buried under buckets of business cards, or you have one great conversation and make a single, solid connection, there’s no reason not to follow up afterwards. How do you follow up without coming across as a social media stalker?

I like to start on Twitter – it’s a completely open forum, so people tend to be more welcoming when it comes to making connections with folks they might not know so well. Use services like Twiangulate to find connections you have in common, or to see if your new contact might have other connections you’d like to communicate with. Similarly, you can use a person’s Twitter lists to see what their interests are, and who else is in their network. By the same token, try making some Twitter lists yourself. It could come in handy when someone new is researching you.

LinkedIn, and other professional networking sites like Xing and Jigsaw, are also a natural fit for following up with a new friend you met while networking. Unlike social networks like MySpace and Facebook, where everyone has different policies about the balance of personal and professional contacts they want to maintain, these sites are purely professional. Use services like LinkedIn’s Shared Connections to see who you may have in common with the new person you’ve just met networking, or who that person might know that you’d also like to connect with.

Of course, there is nothing better than a good, old-fashioned thank you email. Just make sure you keep it short and sweet, and remember to include where you met and a quick tidbit of what you talked about.

Stay Organized

Speaking of entering your contacts, if you’re out and about in the offline world, you’re bound to collect boatloads of contact information.

You could always bypass the business card entirely by using a service like Bump on your Android() or iPhone, which allows you to literally send your contact info to another mobile device by touching them together. You can also set up a more traditional vCard that you can exchange via email. And, there are plenty of apps you can use to manage these virtual business cards from your mobile device, so you’ll never have to actually exchange paper cards again – which is better for the environment, and probably better for your organizational sanity too.

If you’re set on standard paper cards, you can also invest in a card scanner – either a traditional external machine or a mobile app, depending on which one will better fit into your lifestyle. Or you could use a card scanning service like CloudContacts.

Once you’ve got your contacts scanned and saved, keep them with you at all times with services like Google Sync for iPhone or Always in Sync for Android. Both systems will let you automatically sync your Google contacts with your mobile device, meaning you can manage your contacts in the Google cloud for free and take them with you wherever you go.

Twitter Reveals 11 New Facts on its Traffic and Usage

2010-04-23T15:10:00.000-07:00

By Jeff Bullas

reposted from jeffbullas's blog

Twitter has kept its traffic and usage statistics close to its chest for quite a while now much to many peoples frustration.

The fact that it didn’t release many twitter facts, figures and statistics led quite a few commentators to debate that Twitter was in fact starting to stumble and its demise was near.

The figures released at at the “Chirp” conference have in fact revealed an astonishing level of continuing growth that will have many pundits putting away the obituary preparatory notes in the bottom draw.

I use a twitter tool (bit.ly) that enables me to measure what percentage of tweeters are clicking on twitter links from my blog from each country and what I have found happening is that subscribers from countries outside of the USA were starting to really get on board the Twitter train and and this has only happened in the last few months. In February (only 2 months ago) the USA was generating well over 50% of the the clicks, today in mid April the number from the United States has dropped to only 38%. This indicates that the rest of the world is starting to Tweet. So the official figures revealed in the last couple of days have indeed confirmed that this is indeed the case.

The other fact I find elevated beyond expectation is the total number of users at 105 million, 12 months ago that number was 8 million.. that is a growth rate of over 1300% . The other number that stands out is the 180 million unique visitors a month. So here are some numbers for those of you that have a facts and figures fetish.

1.Twitter has 105,779,710 registered users

2.300,000 new users sign up per day

3.Approximately 60% of them are coming from outside the U.S

4.Twitter receives 180 million unique visitors per month

5.75% of Twitter traffic comes from third-party applications

6.60% of all tweets come from third-party apps

7.Since the new Blackberry application was launched, it has accounted for 7 to 8% of new sign

8.There are 600 million search queries on Twitter per day

9.There are over 100,000 Twitter applications

10.Twitter gets 3 billion requests a day through its API

11.37% of active Twitter users use their phone to tweet

The other statistic to watch is the use of Twitter on mobile which comes in at a headline rate of 37%, which is a trend that all marketers should keep in mind as they develop strategies for reaching out to to clients on the Web, don’t dismiss the mobile market .. it is getting serious.

So do these facts and figures surprise you?

How to Create A Killer Company Blog

2010-03-18T13:40:00.000-07:00

by Kristin Dziadul
reposted from Social Media Today

Are you blogging but not sure why? Not seeing business impact from creating blog posts? Wondering how and why to blog for your company?

With a few quick yet critical fixes, you can turn your not-so-hot blog into a killer blog that will generate tons of traffic.

First, some considerations:
1. Decide on a two-column or a three-column layout. Two-column layouts are the best and most functional since they are clean and easily organized. With three columns, it can easily get cluttered with information overload. However, if organized right, it can be highly effective (Dell does a good job of this.)

2. Decide how many bloggers you will appoint for your company. The more bloggers there are, the less time each has to spend writing, you can have an eclectic set of posts, and the voice of the company can be spelled out from various people, not just a singular blogger.

3. Decide if you are comfortable editing the blog’s template, or if you need to involve the IT department of your company in the blog management.

4. Decide if you want to host the blog on your own website or on a separate site. Either way is fine; this is more of a personal choice of what platform you feel most comfortable using.

5. Ensure that your company has the appropriate amount of time and staff to make an effective blog. Blogging does involve a good amount of time and creativity, so ensure you have those readily available before starting.

6. Consider employing brand evangelists from outside of your company to blog for you. Coach them on your blog’s tools and the style of your blog posts, and have them write from an outsider’s viewpoint to vary the opinions and give more credibility by having evangelists support the brand.

7. Set up comment moderations on your blog and put the commenting policy on the site so readers know how their comments will be managed.

Now onto the blog details:
1. Create captivating, eye-catching titles. Making some of your blog posts ‘guides to doing something’, using numbers (1-10), or even putting an interesting fact in the title will capture attention quickly.

2. Unique, interesting pictures or videos: Once someone clicks on your blog link, a creative picture or video will immediately capture the reader’s attention and invite them to find out the story behind the picture. For example, a past post of mine “A Guide to Getting Seen Online Using SEO” has a picture of a large eye. Readers may wonder what the eye has to do with the post, and read on.

3. Incredible content. If you can create value to customers, write about new information, captivate them with your writing style, and be seen as an expert in your field, you can almost guarantee your blog will become popular and revisited. The only reason a person will share or come back to your site is if they find great value in reading what you have to say, so ensure you are proving readers with relevant and very informative posts.

4. Blog on a consistent basis so readers come to expect your posts. If they subscribe to you on their RSS and hardly see any new posts from you, they will likely unsubscribe. However, if you give them a reason to come back (one being consistent posts) they will be more likely to visit and read.

5. Keep your blog focused on a particular niche industry or topic so users know what to come to your blog for. If you write about random topics not focused around anything in particular, they may not know when or why to go to your blog. However, if you focus on ‘how-to guides’, industry trends, or on particular product markets, people will know exactly why they should read your blog.

6. Don’t just sell your product/service/brand in all your posts. Instead, focus on valuable information that the customers and prospects could use when making a purchase decision (i.e. if selling security software, blog about issues or advancements in the software industry, or top fraud schemes to watch out for).

7. Invite comments and comment back. By leaving your posts open-ended, unfinished, or with a question at the end, readers are encouraged to process your information and comment. If you receive a negative comment, don’t just delete it. In fact, deleting it may be one of the worst things you can do. Instead, take the time to address the issue in the appropriate manner; this will leave a positive impression on others. Also, when commenting back to comments, address the person by their name (if they post with their name), as this adds for personalization.

8. Make it easily accessible to subscribe via an RSS feed.

9. Optimize your SEO.

10. Promote on social media sites in a friendly way. This will allow friends, fans, and followers to read about what you are thinking and doing, and they can converse with you on social sites about it. They may even share your links on social media, which is a huge plus. Keep track of your blog’s analytics to see where the most visits to your site are coming from to determine which areas to focus on.

Takeaways:
Search engines love blogs, so you should not have a problem getting your blog seen. However, even though it may be highly searchable, you still need to create incredible content, blog on a consistent basis, and make it interesting and captivating to keep readers coming back.

How to Promote Your Business on Flickr

2009-12-03T18:55:00.000-08:00

by Rohit Bhargava
reposted from Open Forum

Flickr offers one of the largest image archives and communities online and one that is often not targeted because most small businesses aren't yet good at creating the one thing they need to have credibility in Flickr ... high quality non-marketing images.

This is a big deal because Flickr is not just a community of photos, it is a community where high quality photography is appreciated. Sure, people use Flickr to share their point and shoot photos with family, but the power users of Flickr and the communities that you would care about as a marketer are usually looking at very high quality images.

So before you try to use any of the techniques in this insiders guide, you need to make sure your photographs are actually good enough to bother. Assuming they are, here are a few tips for how you might use Flickr for marketing

Share quality photos – As mentioned above, the most important tip when it comes to Flickr is to actually share good photography. This doesn’t mean going out and getting a professional photographer. Those images are great for your website, but Flickr works best when you share more authentic “real life” photos. To take great ones, you may want to upgrade your point and shoot to a real Digital SLR camera with a high quality lens. With photography, the quality of your camera can often be the only change you need to make to dramatically improve your photos.

Go Pro - Getting a Flickr "Pro" account is like the green fees in golf. Of course, you can upload up to 200 images for free and have an account without paying, but you don't get the "pro" icon next to your name and your account doesn't have the same authority for members of the community. If you are going to use Flickr to do any marketing, put up the 25 bucks and get yourself a pro account. (PS - I'm not getting any commission from anyone for telling you that!)

Create collection homepages - Flickr photos are arranged into sets and collections. Sets are like photo galleries or albums, and collections group various photo albums together. As you organize your photos, think about how to make each set about a certain them, and then group them together into collections. Once you have a collection homepage, this can be the public URL that you send people to. This way, you could use the same URL even while you add new galleries to the collection each day.

Think thumbnails - Sets, collections and individual images are represented by thumbnails. These are the visual elements that need to engage someone before they are inspired to click and delve further into your account. When you take and crop your photos, paying attention to how the thumbnails look matters. More importantly, whenever you create a new set the thumbnail is set by the first image. Make sure you change it to the one that offers the most compelling reason to click and see the rest of the set.

Tag properly - Tagging sometimes seems like the online equivalent of going to the dentist, you know you should do it but always manage to put it off in place of doing something else first. On Flickr, tags are a big reason that people can find images and tagging yours properly is a necessary step. Use the right descriptive keywords, but also check and see what people are already searching for and see if any of those tags may apply to your images. Aside from direct links, many of your image views on Flickr will likely come from people searching for these tags.

Share real time - One of the most powerful benefits of Flickr is that when you are at an event or something current that people are likely to care about in a particular timeframe, speed of getting photos online matters. If you have a blog, configure it to work with Flickr. If you are using a computer, use the Flickr Uploadr tool to get your images online faster. The closer to your event you can get your photos up, the more likely it is that people will use them to refer to, share with others and drive traffic to.

Join and contribute to groups - No matter what you are taking pictures of, chances are there is a Flickr group with others who are already sharing photos of it. People who are active in Flickr groups tend to also be some of Flickr's most active (and often influential) members. As a result, joining groups not only lets you be part of a greater community and conversation on a certain theme, it can often give you a direct connection to Flickr users who really matter. Remember, what you post into a group must be relevant and on topic or else you risk alienating yourself and your brand.

Actively promote and approve reuse - Lots of services, bloggers and media are now using Flickr images to power their own stories and media. Once you start getting your imagery noticed, you will likely start to receive invitations for permission to reuse your photos. This means your photos are gaining traction. Try to approve the requests quickly and encourage more people to use your images ... and credit you properly for them, of course.

Enable stats - Flickr has a great tool which allows you to get deeper metrics on your photos. With these stats, you can see which ones of your photos proved to be the most popular or shared from person to person, and also what sites are driving people to your photo collections.

Keep going – Once you start using Flickr to promote your business, the toughest thing can be to keep uploading good content. Doing this means that you need to treat almost every event as a chance to create more images for your gallery, from participating in conferences to everyday life. If you start to use Flickr for marketing, your ongoing challenge will be to avoid having one big spike and then no more activity.

What Can Businesses Do On Facebook?

2009-11-18T11:29:00.000-08:00

by Barbara Wayman

reposted with permission

“Technology is dominated by two types of people: those who understand what they do not manage, and those who manage what they do not understand.” --Putt’s Law

It’s here: the new age of social media. By now you probably know that you can use Facebook to reconnect with old friends from high school, post photos and catch up on what your friends are doing, but did you know there are a lot of business goals you can accomplish on Facebook as well?

Here are my top four things businesses can do on Facebook:

1. Prospect for clients – People can be searched and segmented by narrow topic areas on social media, making it efficient to prospect for clients who may already have an interest in your product or service. Because in social media people opt in to join your group or become a fan of your company, you also have the benefit of a more motivated, interested audience than you might have in the offline world.

2. Listen to what people are saying/thinking about your company, industry and brand – You can use that information to develop new products and services that will appeal to your customers or to refine the products and services you currently have.

3. Develop better customer relations – By engaging more frequently with your customers in a way they enjoy and prefer, you strengthen the bonds between you.

4. Build your credibility and expertise – By being visible and active on social media, you increase the likelihood that when people think of your industry they think of you first.

Notice one thing I didn’t say was SELL, SELL, SELL. Social media has the potential to reach a huge potential market, but that doesn’t mean you immediately should sell to everyone in your network. That can be a real turn off and lead to people disconnecting from you online because it is so self-serving.

It’s like if you went to a party or networking event and you met some new people. You wouldn’t immediately whip out your product and ask them to buy it, right? Instead you might chat with them to get a better idea of their areas of interest and their needs, and if there seemed to be an overlap with what you were offering, you might give them your card and suggest they visit your company. It’s the same thing online. You need to build the relationships before people want to buy from you.

Facebook is great for building the know, like and trust factor that is so important for long-term success. Because since social media is so new there are people out there pushing their products in a very aggressive way, and it might make you think that’s an appropriate strategy. It’s not.

That doesn’t mean social media won’t help you sell your services, you just need to think of it with a longer timeline and in a more subtle way, compared to, “Okay I’ve set up my Facebook page so now I expect to see a 20% boost in sales this month.”

Facebook can be an important marketing tool for businesses when it is used effectively with reasonable goals.

Barbara Wayman, president of BlueTree Media, LLC, publishes The Stand Out Newsletter, an award-winning ezine for people who want to know how to leverage the power of marketing and public relations. Get your free subscription today at www.bluetreemedia.com /ezine.html

©2009 Barbara Wayman, BlueTree Media, LLC

For more information there was also a great story in The New York Times last week on this same exact topic!

7 Ways to Get More Out of LinkedIn

2009-11-09T16:42:00.000-08:00

by Sharlyn Lauby

reposted from Mashable

LinkedIn, which recently reached the 50 million user milestone, has long been considered the social networking site for professionals. If you’re in business, it is basically expected that you have a profile there.

But with the more mainstream platforms like Twitter and Facebook being used for business purposes, some professionals are neglecting their LinkedIn profiles. While LinkedIn is certainly not as dynamic as other social media sites, it still provides a lot of value — if you use it correctly. So whether you’re new to LinkedIn or a veteran, here are some of the things you should consider incorporating into your LinkedIn strategy.

1. Include a Photo Avatar
Some media reports claim that because organizations can use any criteria they want to make hiring decisions, photo avatars provide companies with information they may not have otherwise known about you based on a resume alone and could actually hurt you more than help. But, not including a photo with a social networking profile flies in the face of conventional wisdom when your goal is to build relationships and community.

Eric B. Meyer, an associate in the labor and employment group of Dilworth Paxson LLP, reminds us that when using a professional networking site such as LinkedIn, “don’t give a potential employer an easy excuse to remove you from consideration. Use a professional headshot and scrap the picture of you doing a keg-stand"

He adds that, “an employer may not discriminate when selecting one job applicant over another. For example, an employer may not base a hiring decision on such things as race, religion, gender, and national origin. Although actually proving an employer made a discriminatory hiring decision may be difficult.” Businesses who engage in hiring discrimination are the exception, not the rule. Just remember, by using an avatar, you will be providing information about yourself a prospective employer may not have otherwise obtained on its own.

2. Build Your Network of Connections
While we might be inclined to say quality is better than quantity, it could be possible that the number of connections you have says something about you. Greg Koutsis, corporate and international channel recruiter for Aplicor LLC, says, “if someone has 20-50+ connections then I know they probably check LinkedIn at least once a week. If someone has 1-19 then I realize they probably either haven’t begun to pop the hood and look inside or gotten past the initial threshold of their friends, family and past colleagues. They might be a great prospect for me to reach out to but this might not be the best use of my time. This combined with the profile they have listed lets me realize quickly if I am wasting my time with someone who has no interest or trust in LinkedIn.”
So you might say to yourself, if small numbers in the connection department signal you’re a novice, do large numbers mean you’ll connect with just about anyone? Koutsis says not necessarily. “I do not believe there’s a maximum number of connections that makes someone look like they will just connect with anyone. LinkedIn only shows 500 then adds the + sign after the 500 so you never really do know how many more than 500 connections someone has until you connect with them.”

3. Use Status Updates to Your Advantage
Once you complete your profile, there aren’t a lot of places to make regular updates in LinkedIn. The one space where you can keep your connections informed is the status updates section.

Lori Burke, director of human resources at Neighborhood America, explains that updates are not only an interesting read, but very valuable. “I’ve found new networking groups I may not have thought about [via status updates]. Additionally, it allows me to learn what others are involved with or in, who they may be connected to, etc. In total, it widens the scope of knowledge for me.”

4. Seek Meaningful Recommendations
A terrific feature of LinkedIn is the ability to provide recommendations. This is a place for your connections to comment about your work. Recommendations can be thought of as beefed up thank you cards. Instead of telling one person how you feel, you’re telling the world that person does good work.
It’s important to get good solid recommendations and Meyer offers some thoughts on how to do that. First, “think about who knows you best. It could be a co-worker or manager. It could also be a client or customer for whom you just did an incredible job on a huge project. If you seek a recommendation from a client or customer, be polite and remember to thank the person who gives you the recommendation.”

Then, “If you are going to seek a recommendation from a co-worker or manager, keep a few things in mind. Many employers have written policies against giving out anything other than neutral job references to current and former employees. These policies generally focus on giving recommendations, as opposed to seeking them. Still, as a courtesy to the person in your company from whom you seek a recommendation, just be sensitive to your company’s neutral reference policy.”

5. Optimize Your Profile
Your LinkedIn profile should not just be an online version of your resume, optimizing for search engines is key. The format of your LinkedIn profile might depend on whether you are currently employed and whether or not you are seeking new opportunities, says Koutsis. “If you are looking for a new position then you might want your profile to look more like a resume, but maybe not so much if I am currently employed.”
Burke doesn’t mind if the full content of the resume is on the profile as it can be helpful when searching for candidates. However, it is a bonus “when I find networkers who have added more content than you might find in a resume, such as a link to their portfolio.”

When filling out your profile, you should think about your goals for the type of networking you hope to get done. Also, since LinkedIn has the ability to search any word in the content, both Burke and Koutsis suggest listing all relevant keywords at the bottom of your profile if you want to be found easier.

6. Use Groups to Expand Your Reach
Groups are a beneficial networking tool and a great way to expand your network. Koutsis says that he doesn’t look at what groups a person belongs to when he’s searching for candidates but he does find potential resources using the groups function.

However, Meyer reminds us it’s possible to be viewed in a negative light based upon group membership. “For some time now, many employers are going beyond simply running a criminal background check in order to vet job applicants. Employers may be Googling candidates, checking out their public postings on Facebook, reviewing tweets on Twitter, and scrutinizing LinkedIn profiles. In a down economy — as in any economy, really — employers want to fill job openings with the best possible candidates.”

Today’s rule of thumb should be that anything you post in an online profile may as well be listed on your resume or bio. If you belong to a LinkedIn group that is inconsistent with the business image you wish to portray, then that could be a challenge for you. Meyer shared with me the example of belonging to a group called “The Deer Hunters” while applying for a position with an animal rights group (let’s just say, good luck with that).

7. Consider Whether to Link Your Profiles
Burke believes that accounts should be kept separate. “I believe that this strategy allows me to keep my professional personae separate from my personal. Case in point was the one time I posted a social media article to both applications. My Facebook family and friends found the information of little value to them and I believe the same may be true in reverse. However, I will post general information about me (i.e., speaking engagements) with both networks. In essence, it depends on the content,” she says.

On the other hand, Lance Haun, vice president of outreach at MeritBuilder, explains that LinkedIn is “a snapshot of your life at the time you updated your profile so including Twitter, Facebook, or a blog helps to add living context to your profile.” With the lines between work and life being blurred, posting something business related at 1:00 PM and a picture of a cat at 1:00 AM helps “bring the picture of a person together completely.”

In the end, Koutsis asks, “if people see no reason after viewing your profile to connect with you, then why did you reach out to them in the first place?” The most important thing we can do is create a complete and compelling profile. Because the bottom line is the value proposition you propose when you try to connect with someone on LinkedIn.

5 Ways To Use Twitter's New List Feature For Marketers

2009-11-01T10:52:00.000-08:00

By Rohit Bhargava
reposted from Influential Marketing Blog

There is no denying that Twitter has had a huge impact on how marketers are thinking about using social media tools for marketing. One thing that is most interesting about it, however, is how the site has managed to avoid overcomplicating itself with more features. Twitter is simple, and it just works. Of course the one overused word that has been used recently to describe Twitter is that it is a "firehose" of information, shooting out at a speed and volume that has threatened to make it unusable for many people. So when I had a chance to try out Twitter's new Lists feature (which I had been looking forward to seeing for some time), I was not only surprised, but also excited about what this will mean for all of us who use the site. Here are just a few reasons why I think lists may revolutionize how you use Twitter.
1.You can segment your firehose. The #1 criticism of Twitter is that if you follow thousands of people and see all their tweets appearing in one interface, it's tough to manage. Searches in third party tools like Hootsuite or Tweetdeck have made this more manageable, but those usually only work based on keywords, which is inefficient. What if I wanted to just see all the tweets from my colleagues at Ogilvy? That was tough to do. Now with lists, I can create my own group of colleagues and just reference that.

2.Offers a more meaningful metric of influence. You'll notice if you have a Twitter account that in the spot where it used to just list the number of tweets you have done, it now shows how frequently you are "listed." This is a new metric of influence that sits somewhere between followers and retweets - but one that indicates how frequently other Twitter users who are creating their own lists are including you on their list. In short order, I imagine that number (along with retweets) will become more influential than having hundreds of thousands of robot followers when it comes to measuring influence on Twitter.

3.Allows you to easily follow a trusted group of individuals. One of the biggest issues I have had in the past with Twitter is that it is difficult to follow a group of users all at once. Of course, you used to be able to use services like Tweepml to do this, but that was incomplete and the lists were often anonymously posted and so the data may not be as trustworthy. Now with Twitter Lists, you can create a list of all the attendees at a particular conference, for example, and with one click anyone can follow them.

4.Lets any user of Twitter segment who they actually read. Up until now, the greatest compliment you could give someone who you follow and read on Twitter was to retweet something they posted. Now with Twitter Lists, you can add them to a list and not only make your own experience of reading content on Twitter better (see #1 on this list), but you can also send a subtle reminder to the person you are following that unlike the other thousands of accounts you might follow, their's is one you actually pay attention to.

5.Gives brands an opportunity to aggregate multiple accounts. Many brands have multiple accounts - for example hotel brands that have a master account and then separate accounts for separate regional properties. This phenomenon was becoming more widespread, but now with Twitter Lists, brands can aggregate all their accounts together in a list - and best of all, if each Twitter account does this, the lists will show up on the sidebar linking anyone who sees one branded account to all the others.

Clearly, I'm excited about what Twitter Lists has to offer for marketers. What do you think - is this a big deal for marketers or for anyone else?
PS - Follow me on Twitter at @rohitbhargava

STUDY: 80% of Twitter Users Are All About Me

2009-09-29T19:57:00.000-07:00

by Jennifer Van Grove (re-posted from Mashable)

Rutgers University Professors Mor Naaman and Jeffrey Boase set out to analyze the content and characteristics of social media activity. They dubbed communications systems like Facebook and Twitter, “social awareness streams,” and then took to examining user behavior.

After dissecting over 3,000 tweets from more than 350 Twitter users’ status updates the professors concluded that 80% of users are “meformers,” or “Me Now” status updaters.

Meformers are “people who use the platform to post updates on their everyday activities, social lives, feelings, thoughts, and emotions.” The rest (20%) are informers who use the channels to share informational updates like links news articles.

The rest of the story and the study can be found here.

Guess Who's Posting On PR Breakfast Club?

2009-09-15T12:27:00.000-07:00

If you guessed me, you'd be right. My first post went up yesterday: PR TimeWarp: The Palace. Okay, so the title could be better but I'm just getting warmed up. What I am trying to do is examine the roots of Web 2.0 back from when the Web was just getting launched. There were many early seeds of social networking and interactivity in the initial launch of the Web and commercialization of the Internet. So, if you can come up with a better name for the series, feel free to comment or send me an email.

I am working on more pieces as we speak, so stay tuned.

The Overlooked Side of Social Media

2009-09-11T11:32:00.000-07:00

Most companies are embracing social media—but too many are wasting their efforts through sloppy management

By The Staff of the Corporate Executive Board

More than 70% of companies are already using social media; many are planning to increase their spending on social media across the coming years. Whether for learning from customers, building their brands or a range of other hoped-for outcomes, companies are clearly diving in.

Unfortunately, few have thought very hard about managing these initiatives. In a classic case or "ready, fire, aim," companies are committing resources to social media efforts with very little process behind them. The result? A hodgepodge of unrelated initiatives, wheels re-invented and resources wasted.

The Corporate Executive Board has found that the best companies recognize that social media are just another set of promising tools and as such are to be understood, mastered, and used efficiently. Importantly, they also recognize that how they manage their social media efforts depends on where they are in the journey from initial discovery to mainstream use. That journey has three stages:

• Discovery: At this stage, the organization is just finding out about the potential uses (and risks) of social media for its purposes and making initial forays. The goal: understanding ("could this work for us?"). Since few resources are necessary at this point, companies don't need heavy managerial oversight. But they do need downside protection. Clear, well-communicated policies on everything from information sharing to appropriate language is in order.

• Experimentation: As an organization does more with social media, the importance of learning efficiently becomes urgent. At this point, companies need tighter oversight and coordination of efforts. There are a number of ways to create that kind of transparency and sharing, ranging from steering committees to tiger teams" to social media czars. These bodies should develop and steward a learning agenda for the firm's efforts, using each initiative to deliberately increase the institutional knowledge of social media use.

Measurement standards also become more important at this stage. The best companies settle on a consistent set of measures for similar initiatives, using that data to test and learn over time. Metrics like track-backs, for example, can clarify better or worse social media vehicles for a given objective.

• Adoption: While few companies currently find themselves in this stage, those that do loosen their managerial posture, moving away from oversight toward support. Here, the role of any central or dedicated management body should be one of education, coaching and provision of expertise. Some firms are building centers of excellence, repositories of people and knowledge about using social media. Metrics should shift here too, tailored for assessing efficiency and effectiveness of specific initiatives.

The short story: Social media isn't a fad about to fade away; it's a good idea for your organization to learn how to use it to your advantage. The best companies will learn faster and get more out of social media by aggressively managing their efforts.

How To: Use Twitter Hashtags for Business

2009-09-04T08:55:00.000-07:00

by Josh Catone
Reprinted from Mashable

If you’ve used Twitter for more than a couple of hours, you’ve probably already seen a tweet or two containing a word with the hash symbol (”#”) attached to it. That’s what Twitter users call a “hashtag,” and at any given time at least one of them can usually be found among the trending topics on Twitter. But what exactly is a hashtag?

Hashtags are essentially a simple way to catalog and connect tweets about a specific topic. They make it easier for users to find additional tweets on a particular subject, while filtering out the incidental tweets that may just coincidentally contain the same keyword. Hashtags are also often used by conference and event organizers as a method of keeping all tweets about the event in a single stream, and they’ve even been used to coordinate updates during emergencies. In fact, hashtags were first popularized during the 2007 San Diego wildfire, when the tag #sandiegofires was used to identify tweets about the natural disaster.

You can create a hashtag simply by appending the hash symbol to a word, like this: #hashtag.

How to Utilize Existing Hashtags
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Because hashtags tend to spread so quickly and because Twitter users often search hashtags for content from people they aren’t following, using hashtags can be a great way to extend your reach on Twitter and connect with your current audience in a more meaningful way. There are a wide variety of already established hashtags — and new ones being created daily — that you can join. You need to be careful, however, that your use of hashtags is consistent with both your brand and the tag itself.

Unfortunately, as hashtags have become more popular, they’ve also become a vehicle for spam. You should never use a hashtag on a tweet unrelated to that tag, and you should never stuff your tweets with currently popular hashtags with the sole purpose of appearing in Twitter search results. Proper etiquette dictates that you should only use hashtags if your tweet is actually relevant to the tag’s associated meme or topic.

So which tags should you participate in? That depends wholly on your business and your purpose for using Twitter. For example, it’s probably a bad idea to participate in the #robotpickuplines hashtag if you own a health club and use your Twitter account to offer customer service to members. But if you own a record shop, you’ll more than likely want to join in the #musicmonday hashtag, in which people tweet about what music they’re listening to and suggest other musically-inclined users to follow every Monday. Or if you own a restaurant, why not tweet out your specials or
some recipes on #tastytuesday.

Use sites like Twubs, a hashtag directory, and What the Trend?, a wiki that attempts to explain what certain hashtags (and other Twitter trends) mean, to locate and identify hashtags that make sense for your business. Also, pay attention to tags being used by your followers and search for them on Twitter to see what sort of tweets are associated with those tags. If it makes sense for your business to jump on board, compose tweets that are on topic and compatible with that hashtag.

How to Start Your Own Hashtags
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While you certainly shouldn’t use hashtags to describe all of your tweets, they can be very helpful for small businesses as a way to track social media campaigns or create memes that help establish a sense of community and build your company’s mindshare among your core customers. The first step in creating a hashtag is deciding on the tag word itself. You should pick something memorable, easy to spell, and perhaps more importantly, as short as possible. Remember that Twitter gives everyone just 140 characters per tweet, so no one wants half of it to be taken up by an unwieldy hashtag.

Once you’ve figured out the tag itself, the next step is simple: start using it and promoting it. Make sure your tweets using the hashtag are worthwhile and add something of value to the conversation. Promote your tag or the social media campaign that uses the tag via other social media channels, such as your blog or email newsletter. Tweet out calls to action explaining your new tag at regular intervals (but don’t overdo it!). For example, let’s say you own a bookstore, and you’re running a Twitter contest to give out a gift card to your store. Your explanatory tweet might be something like, “What’s your favorite summer reading material? Tweet using #beachreads to win a $100 gift certificate to Al’s World of Books!”

How to Keep Track of Hashtags
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Of course, now that you have people using your new hashtag, you need to be able to keep on top of it so you can respond to participants. One of the easiest ways to track hashtags is by using Twitter Search. You can watch people using your hashtag (or any other tag you want to track) in real-time, and subscribe to an RSS feed of the results. Monitter and TweetGrid are two other good web-based dashboards for performing real-time Twitter searches of hashtags.

You can also use the built-in search functionality of popular desktop clients like Seesmic or TweetDeck, or set up alerts on business-oriented Twitter dashboards such as HootSuite or CoTweet.

2009-08-27T17:41:00.001-07:00

The Science Of ReTweets

View more presentations from Dan Zarrella.

What A Camp Counselor Can Teach You about Social Media

2009-08-25T11:28:00.000-07:00

by David Berkowitz
reposted from MediaPost's Social Media Insider Blog

One of the hardest jobs I ever had was working as a day camp counselor, spending eight summers straight at Beth El Summer Session in New Rochelle, NY. While it's been a few years since I wore a T-shirt and swimsuit to work every day, seeing all the kids home from camp swarming around Madison Square Park this week brought back a few memories. It also made me realize how relevant a lot of what I learned in that job is to what I'm doing now.

Here are some of the lessons I still carry with me. They should be especially relevant to social marketing practitioners today.

The rest of the story can be found here.

13 Things to Do on Twitter Besides Tweet

2009-08-21T12:07:00.000-07:00

Tired of delivering the typical stream of status updates on Twitter? Why not try some of the following ideas for other things you can do with the service?

Thanks to an open API and a philosophy of interconnectivity, Twitter’s vast array of third-party services has you covered on a number of alternative uses for the famed microblogging tool.

There is more information on each of the these and the complete article on Mashable.

1. Share Files
2. Exchange Business Cards
3. Share Music
4. Share Images
5. Share Videos
6. Raise Money
7. Lobby for Healthcare Reform
8. Screencast
9. Play Games
10. Social Bookmarking
11. Be Someone Else
12. Start a Petition
13. Find a Job.

Statistics Show Social Media Is Bigger Than You Think

2009-08-18T16:29:00.000-07:00

reposted from Socialnomics -- Social Media Blog

Here are some great stats. All the sources are listed on the Socialnomics site after the story posting.

1. By 2010 Gen Y will outnumber Baby Boomers….96% of them have joined a social network
2. Social Media has overtaken porn as the #1 activity on the Web
3. 1 out of 8 couples married in the U.S. last year met via social media
4. Years to Reach 50 millions Users: Radio (38 Years), TV (13 Years), Internet (4 Years), iPod (3 Years)…Facebook added 100 million users in less than 9 months…iPhone applications hit 1 billion in 9 months.
5. If Facebook were a country it would be the world’s 4th largest between the United States and Indonesia
6. Yet, some sources say China’s QZone is larger with over 300 million using their services (Facebook’s ban in China plays into this)
7. comScore indicates that Russia has the most engage social media audience with visitors spending 6.6 hours and viewing 1,307 pages per visitor per month – Vkontakte.ru is the #1 social network
8. 2009 US Department of Education study revealed that on average, online students out performed those receiving face-to-face instruction
9. 1 in 6 higher education students are enrolled in online curriculum
10. % of companies using LinkedIn as a primary tool to find employees….80%
11. The fastest growing segment on Facebook is 55-65 year-old females
12. Ashton Kutcher and Ellen Degeneres have more Twitter followers than the entire populations of Ireland, Norway and Panama
13. 80% of Twitter usage is on mobile devices…people update anywhere, anytime…imagine what that means for bad customer experiences?
14. Generation Y and Z consider e-mail passé…In 2009 Boston College stopped distributing e-mail addresses to incoming freshmen
15. What happens in Vegas stays on YouTube, Flickr, Twitter, Facebook…
16. The #2 largest search engine in the world is YouTube
17. Wikipedia has over 13 million articles…some studies show it’s more accurate than Encyclopedia Britannica…78% of these articles are non-English
18. There are over 200,000,000 Blogs
19. 54% = Number of bloggers who post content or tweet daily
20. Because of the speed in which social media enables communication, word of mouth now becomes world of mouth
21. If you were paid a $1 for every time an article was posted on Wikipedia you would earn $156.23 per hour
22. Facebook USERS translated the site from English to Spanish via a Wiki in less than 4 weeks and cost Facebook $0
23. 25% of search results for the World’s Top 20 largest brands are links to user-generated content
24. 34% of bloggers post opinions about products & brands
25. People care more about how their social graph ranks products and services than how Google ranks them
26. 78% of consumers trust peer recommendations
27. Only 14% trust advertisements
28. Only 18% of traditional TV campaigns generate a positive ROI
29. 90% of people that can TiVo ads do
30. Hulu has grown from 63 million total streams in April 2008 to 373 million in April 2009
31. 25% of Americans in the past month said they watched a short video…on their phone
32. According to Jeff Bezos 35% of book sales on Amazon are for the Kindle when available
33. 24 of the 25 largest newspapers are experiencing record declines in circulation because we no longer search for the news, the news finds us.
34. In the near future we will no longer search for products and services they will find us via social media
35. More than 1.5 million pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photos, etc.) are shared on Facebook…daily.
36. Successful companies in social media act more like Dale Carnegie and less like David Ogilvy Listening first, selling second
37. Successful companies in social media act more like party planners, aggregators, and content providers than traditional advertiser

The above statistics and “Social Media Revolution” video tell the story, social media isn’t a fad, it’s a fundamental shift in the way we communicate. Please feel free to share with any non-believers.

A Marketer's Guide To Being Anti-Social Online

2009-08-14T10:07:00.000-07:00

posted by Rohit Bhargava (reprinted from Influential Marketing Blog, with permission)

Everyone wants you to be social. If you're a marketer, you have heard about a million times in recent weeks, months and years about the power and necessity of social media. Get a blog, get on Twitter, create a fan page ... every piece of advice seems to point towards being more social, more open and more transparent. Let's take a deep breath together. This post is not the kind of advice you'd expect to get from a "social media guy" like me. In fact, it's downright antisocial. To put it more accurately, it is about the right times to be anti-social.

This is a strange post when many brands are struggling right now to even find the right ways to be social online. Engaging with social media is an imperative for most brands (though the way you do it can and should vary greatly depending on your business and goals). There is plenty of good advice online for how to do this well, though. I like to think I have shared a decent amount of this type of advice here on this blog. But as marketers we also want to avoid the landmines. The situations or instances in social media that may be likely to blow up in our faces. Those are often the situations where being anti-social is the best strategy.

Here are a few situations and pieces of advice I have gathered on how to be anti-social online and help your brand succeed at the same time:

NEVER allow YouTube comments. I have had the opinion for some time now that allowing people to comment on your YouTube videos without moderating is an idiotic thing for a brand to do. Why? Because the vast majority of YouTube comments lack substance, include uninformed or somehow offensive remarks, and offer little context or real discussion. Instead, if you want to foster dialogue on your videos, create a video blog and embed the video into the blog. Then allow people to comment on the video in the blog. This will generally result in far higher quality comments, and less infantile useless banter.

DON'T friend/follow everyone. As a brand, the temptation is to friend and follow everyone who contacts you or requests to be your friend. Resist that temptation, and instead make it the job of someone on your team to actively monitor these requests and approve them based on criteria that you set. This criteria can be lax (not a robot account) to more specific to your industry or area of concentration. The effort will pay off, though, when it comes to using a particular social network as a marketing platform and tool for collaboration because you will only be talking to people who really matter.

MODERATE your profiles actively. What is written online is not written in stone, and as a brand you have the right to set the ground rules for your own profiles and sites online. What this requires is clearly posting your policy about what is ok and what is not ok for people to post and share in your environments. This doesn't mean to try and delete anything negative or critical ... but off topic or offensive comments or posts can and should be moderated. And in cases where people are posting incorrect or flawed information, you have a right and obligation to correct them (but allow their comment to be posted if it meets your criteria).

SEPARATE private content. There are legitimate reasons why you might want to share brand content among a small subset of users or internal users online. Just because content is online doesn't mean that everything needs to be open and public. If you feel you have a legitimate reason for sharing password protected private content, you should do it. And if it is extremely sensitive, make sure you take the right steps to protect it and prevent it from getting in the wrong hands.

PROMOTE yourself and your brand. Part of the benefit of using social media is that it does allow you an authentic place to share branded offers or promote your products and services. Unfortunately, some brands are advised that just because they are on social media they should never consider using it for marketing reasons. The fact is, if you are using social media in an authentic and not overly promotional way on a daily basis, you can earn the right to share marketing information at various points and not lose your audience. The real trick is to strike the right balance.

Rohit Bhargava is the force behind the Influential Marketing Blog and is the award winning author of Personality Not Included.

How Starbucks makes money from 3.8 million Facebook fans

2009-08-12T10:59:00.000-07:00

Posted by Melissa Allison (reprinted from seattletimes.com)

Starbucks passed Coca-Cola last month as the most popular brand on Facebook, according to InsideFacebook.com, and plans to leverage those and other digital relationships during this fall's national rollout of its instant coffee, Via, BrandWeek reports. (StarbucksGossip.com posts say the launch begins Sept. 1.)

Alexandra Wheeler, Starbucks' digital strategy director, tells BrandWeek that the chain relied heavily on digital channels to promote its Free Pastry Day last month. Nearly 600,000 people RSVP'd for that event on Facebook. "That was a digital and PR effort we would say is widely successful," Wheeler said. Almost a million people RSVP'd "yes" or "maybe" to its promotion last holiday season with Product (Red) to contribute 5 cents for every beverage purchased to the AIDS-fighting project.

"Facebook has been really great about it. They are thrilled with the success," she said. "They have lots of other brands. [Our success has them now asking,] 'How can we even do this? How can we repeat the success for them?' It speaks to the power of the Starbucks brand and how well it connects with our consumer in this space."

How to Archive Your Tweets

2009-08-11T15:48:00.000-07:00

Did you know that your tweets have an expiration date on them? While they never really disappear from your own Twitter stream, they become unsearchable in only a matter of days

ReadWriteWeb has the latest on how to archive those tweets.

Twitter Lessons from the British Government

2009-08-07T15:14:00.000-07:00

Template Twitter Strategy for Government Departments

Twitter Is Great But It's Still Not The Phone

2009-07-31T12:23:00.000-07:00

In case none of you know, I'm tracybb on Twitter. And for months, I have fruitlessly been applying to contests on Twitter. Most of these involve winning an iPhone and since I still have an old school phone, that prize sounds great to me. I tweet for moonfruit, or other silly things, in hopes of that elusive iPhone.

The other day, at the last possible second, I saw a posting on Facebook for a contest to be a TJ (Twitter Jockey) for the twiistup event. Tweet your reason why you should be the twitter jockey by 1 pm that day. It was about 10 at the time. Since the event was currently out of my budget (but I REALLY wanted to go), I decided to apply. Instead of being cutesy or trying to be funny, I just typed up a few reasons why I should be picked and sent it off.*

Previously, I would furiously check the sites to see if I'd won the prize. But this time, I promptly forgot. I don't seem to win these contests anyway. Oh, and I had my TweetDeck open all that day. But SOMEHOW, through all those annoying beeps on my TweetDeck, I missed the tweet that I had actually won! Me! It was me!

I check my many email boxes (yes, I have several, don't you?) all day long. I have Facebook open all day long. I have my phone at my side. But somehow, I missed it. When I get a direct message on Twitter, I get an email alert and it tells me the message. But when you just get an @ reply, there is no message. I don't really check my @ replies and the twitter user interface doesn't show them that easily either. So, I missed @socialmediaclub's tweet. Didn't even notice it on TweetDeck, as I have set up several filters of my own.

But, here's the rub. My Twitter profile has my URL on it. My site has all my contact information including my phone number, my email address, my Facebook page, even my business address. I could be contacted in a multitude of ways. Twitter was still not effective enough to reach me. I got the message a day too late, sort of like Morse code.

Ironically, I actually learned about the contest on Social Media Club's Facebook page. So, if they had contacted me that way, I'd have been a twittering fool. As I mentioned, I'm parked on Facebook all day and find that interface much easier to follow -- and they send me constant emails all day so I'm sure not miss one thing from my friends.

While people may mock the phone, it is still one of our best social media tools. It is instant messaging without the carpel tunnel. You not only get instant feedback but hearing a voice is more personal. If only I'd gotten a call.

* The winning tweet: @socialmediaclub: TJ me. Reasons: cute, concise, good writer, tech & social savvy, know the players (by name), local, and not shy. Please!
9:58 AM Jul 29th from TweetDeck

If you can't fight 'em

2009-07-03T13:39:00.000-07:00

If you can't fight 'em, join 'em. But where to start? PR has been evolving and changing with technology since there was such a thing. I'm sure press releases weren't always faxed before there was a fax machine!

I have been in the PR business for 15 years and when I began, most publicists were still using blast fax to get their releases out to reporters. Or, in some cases, even mailing them! I was an early adopter to the Internet, however, and from almost the inception of my career I have been working with Internet companies and using the Internet to publicize them. I worked for InterActive Agency in Los Angeles before anyone knew what "interactive" even meant. Those were the good old days when you could just get press about a company launching a Web site.

But times have changed. Now, you have to fight for every column inch you can get, cyber or otherwise. So it's important to keep up with all the newest tools. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, MySpace, how do you fit all these things into your PR plans and budgets? What role do bloggers play? Is Second Life significant? There are constantly new platforms emerging and others on the wane.

Well, now there is a way to keep up with them here. I hope to aggregate all the best content on social media right here on this site, along with basic tutorials on how to use the technologies (with a slant toward PR and marketing). I'm also going to post information on free or low cost webinars and real life seminars to teach social media practices. And just like the social media sites themselves, I hope that this blog will be constantly evolving and changing to keep up with the industry. One thing that will probably remain true is that social media marketing has become part of the fabric of public relations. So it's time to join the ranks!

Social Media Education

2009-02-17T17:27:00.001-08:00

Well, in case you haven't heard, social media is all the rave. What, you don't know anything about social media? What is social media? According to Wikipedia (which is in itself a form of social media), "Social media are primarily Internet- and mobile-based tools for sharing and discussing information among human beings....Businesses also refer to social media as user-generated content (UGC)...."

Wikipedia also cites social media software applications including blogs (like this one), microblogs (Twitter), social networks (Facebook and LinkedIn), photo sharing (Flickr).

So, for those of you that are unfamiliar with this new revolution, here is a crash course on some best practices. I have made a list of some of the best articles I have found on the subject (most of them are lists themselves). I hope you find it helpful too.

By the way, these are all from blogs.

Facebook rules, as I suspected

2008-12-18T09:20:00.000-08:00

Last week, on this same day, I attended the Digital Family Reunion in Los Angeles. It had been a long time since I had attended a networking event. And I was thinking about why that was. Then I realized...who needs networking events when I have Facebook and LinkedIn? It was sort of weird walking around and seeing some of my Facebook friends in person (a few of which I didn't really know before I friended them). I saw Ben Mendelson, the president of the Interactive Television Alliance (ITA), virtual "friend."

"Ben," I said, "You look just like your Facebook picture. Good to see you in the flesh."

As we talked, he told me that a lot of people who don't really know him, like myself, have tried to friend him.

"I'm not accepting any new friends -- not unless they are in the ITA. I have almost reached my limit."

Apparently in Facebook, one can only have 5,000 friends and he's up to 4,347 as of today. But, like the real world, true networking extends beyond your friends to your friends' friends and he and I have 48 mutual friends. He was very gracious at the event, however, and it was good meet him but was it really necessary?

In fact, I'm not really sure that I got that much out of the event except heartburn and a headache while trying to park. I loved catching up with two of my old bosses but I'm not sure that will help me get new business. It seems that I'm not alone in my opinion.

The Wall Street Journal recently posted an article about the death of tech conferences. It was mainly talking about big conferences. Apple is going to stop exhibiting at MacWorld...Comdex died. It's sort of sad as I always loved going to big conference for clients. It was fun and exciting and I'm the kind of person who talks loud enough and fast enough to get the media's attention.

But what really made me laugh was Nick Wingfield's closing line (BTW, also a "friend" of mine from Facebook), "If the economy keeps getting worse, maybe even those get-togethers [the smaller ones] will eventually be replaced by people friending each other on Facebook."

And that was exactly what I was thinking the other night at the Digital Family Reunion!

A Traditionalist at Heart

2008-12-16T20:41:00.000-08:00

As I had long suspected, traditional news sites dominate in page views, according to an article on MediaPost.com. The analysis is part of a broader study on news and political sites by Lauren Rich Fine, director of research for ContentNext Media--which also found that traditional properties still dominate online news, with the exception of a few breakthroughs like The Huffington Post and Slate.

What this means for PR is that continuing to pitch traditional outlets is still very relevant. Almost all print and broadcast news outlets have online presences so when you pitch it can result in a double hit. While pitching blogs can be hit or miss, pitching the traditional media is more consistent. Stuart Elliott is still an advertising columnist for the New York Times. I have been doing PR for 13 years and he's been there the whole time. I love it when that happens. Bloggers can come and go...as can the blogs they started but the Times has been around forever. There's even a font named after it. Can you say the same for a blog?

Blogging on and on

2008-12-15T16:39:00.000-08:00

Welcome....Apparently you're no one without a blog these days. Especially if you're in public relations like myself. All the agencies have a blogs and many freelancers do as well. Some of these PR blogs even seem to be trying to disguise themselves as actual media. Well, I know the difference. It's sort of a shame when we're forced to blog to seem up-to-date. So, it that spirit, here is my blog. Since I don't really think that I have that much to offer that's new, I hope to aggregate all sorts of great stories (mostly about PR and marketing) that I see around the 'net and then comment on them. I'm not sure if even that is new but I hope to bring my own unique view to the stories I find.