All Posts, Social Media
For those of you who question the validity of Twitter in business, I’m here to tell you to stop. Twitter, much like other mediums of social media, can affect your bottom line if you know how to use it. There is no one tactic to fit all, I can admit that, but that’s because each business is different and unique in its own way. Now lets talk about the numbers. You’ve seen some Twitter users with hundreds if not thousands of followers. From people you’ve never heard of to celebrities you have. However I’d like to expose a misconception in what novice people view in these numbers.
Follow for Follow: Now I haven’t been on Twitter since its original launch, but I have been around for a few years to see the evolution in its use. One of the things that annoy me and my team the most is people who follow only to get a follow in return. Oh they’re relentless too. I’ve even received followers that un-followed me months ago that tried to follow again to see if this time I’d bite. If I wasn’t in business to pay attention to who I follow and who follows our brand online they totally would have gotten me. So this thought that you must follow someone just because they’re following you is rubbish.
Follow Your Interests: I stopped short of saying “follow your heart” because that could easily lead you to trouble online. If you’re into woodworking, do a Twitter search for the keyword “woodworking” and see what pops up. Aside from the Tweets look at who said what and how long ago. See if you can jump into the conversation by @ replying. If the conversation or dialogs are of interest to you, go ahead and hit that follow button. Again, don’t hit it with the intent of getting a follow in return. Hit it because you value what that person has to say about that subject.
Thousands of Follows: Yea this is all too common these days. Check the screenshot below. How can you have 3,800+ follows and following 3,800+ and you’ve only tweeted 36 times? No website listed, No real name, No location. Clearly you bought all of those follows, and more than likely have a bot scrounging the net to follow people automatically. Don’t believe the hype people. When you come across these types of profiles just leave them be. Chances are they’ll latch on for a few days and drop off when their program notices you haven’t followed back.
Celebrities: They have big numbers because of the obvious. However they also have influence. The influence is what I strive to teach our clients to regard as important. If some pro-basketball player like Dwayne Wade said he was going to be at a Miami local night club, there would be a huge buzz around Twitter because of all the people who follow him. They’d RT that message and relay it to their followers by the hundreds or thousands just because of who he is and how highly they regard what he says. So be your own rock-star or celebrity in your local market.
Understanding social influence is what will keep social media in check. If we all went with the mentality of follow one and follow all, our timelines would be saturated with crap and Twitter wouldn’t be as fun anymore. I also think that’s what makes it great because you actually choose your level of noise.
There are sites out there where you can actually see some true numbers about Twitter handles if you really want to investigate the influence of a user. Sites like Twitter Grader, Peer Index, SocialBro, and Klout do just that. What you want to focus on in your own tweets, is the engagement. For a business, you can’t just run out there promoting your products and sales all day and expect orders to flood your site (unless you’re selling $2.00 Jordan sneakers). But seriously, find people who are talking about your industry or products and talk with them. Answer some questions they may have regarding their needs. Be a positive influence. Through the courtship, you’ll establish a relationship. Offer more information by answering a question and insert a link to your website or blog post that talks more about your answer. Being a great source for answers or information is where the true value is. That’s what gets you more followers and RT (re-tweets).
Have any other real tips about Twitter, please share with us in the comments below.
Social Media
If you haven’t heard by now, Google is making a shift toward a more transparent user experience with their applications. Much like how Facebook has cookies that keep an eye on where you go on the internet, Google is looking to read and capture your online data too. I shouldn’t say it like they haven’t been already, more like Google is being a bit more open about how they’re going to use your user data across their applications and online experience.
Lets start off with what exactly Google says about the information it collects from your system:
Cookies – When you visit Google, we send one or more cookies to your computer or other device. We use cookies to improve the quality of our service, including for storing user preferences, improving search results and ad selection, and tracking user trends, such as how people search. Google also uses cookies in its advertising services to help advertisers and publishers serve and manage ads across the web and on Google services.
Information you provide – When you sign up for a Google Account, we ask you for personal information. We may combine the information you submit under your account with information from other Google services or third parties in order to provide you with a better experience and to improve the quality of our services. For certain services, we may give you the opportunity to opt out of combining such information. You can use the Google Dashboard to learn more about the information associated with your Account. If you are using Google services in conjunction with your Google Apps Account, Google provides such services in conjunction with or on behalf of your domain administrator. Your administrator will have access to your account information including your email. Consult your domain administrator’s privacy policy for more information.
What’s going to happen is Google is going to be a lot smarter in targeting you with ads that are way more relevant based on your browsing and search history. For example: Sending an email to a friend about some outfits you saw at H&M that were on sale will get you ads not just from H&M but other clothing companies. Or if you’re on another website (while technically still logged in to Google) and browsing some topics on politics, or web design, etc, Google will track that and show those ads to you while you’re in Gmail, Google Plus, Search, and any other place they decide to stick ads.
The privacy risk is that Google is getting to be that “all-knowing” platform. Knowing how many hours a day you spend online, what you shop for, what you type or email to friends and clients, what websites you visit most frequently. It’s like a marketers dream to have all this relevant information on a consumer. Though they may not be giving your full government name, it’s going to seem pretty personal as you start to take notice.
So what can you do? For starters disable cookies on your browsers. Your first line of defense is there. Though some websites will actually stop you from using their site when they notice your cookies are disabled. If that becomes too much of a hassle, consider using a separate browser whenever you’re using your Google applications. Then you’re general search and browsing history will be limited to separate browsers. Another tactic is to have your browser clean out your history and cookies after every session. These may all seem cumbersome and time-consuming and Google is betting on that and general lack of vigilance. The choice is yours.
All Posts, Social Media
Search the Internet about social media, and you’ll find a host of results on how to use it, what mediums are out there, making money with it, and how to use it best. You’ve read all about Twitter, than Twitter makes updates and you don’t know where to begin. Same thing with Facebook. You hear all about how many millions of users are using it, yet you can’t seem to get your Fanpage past 50 fans. Let me tell you, they’re ever changing sometimes week to week, so if you’re not understanding them now, it could be harder to find the relevance to your bottom line.
Before I get into the return on your investment with social media, I’d like to first talk about the various mediums and some basic effectiveness. If you think that all it takes to be successful in social media is just a few minutes a day with thoughtful posts of inspirational quotes mixed with posts about your website, sales, and products; you’re seriously mistaken. Don’t get into social media with the intent on trying to sell. You’ll quickly become frustrated with the lack of interactions and see it as a one way conversation.
Twitter is great for short conversations throughout the day. You can jump in any active conversation, trending topic, or subject. Its real-time so the chances of hearing back from someone minutes after your replies are quite high.
Facebook Fan Pages are best with fewer posts each day. Another words, you may come up with a great post about a subject, then concentrate on following up with your fans as they post comments to your original post.
Linked In has so many avenues to engage with people, you can literally spend hours on that site and forego any actual productivity. From answering questions, to posting in groups, to connecting with old colleagues or new prospective clients; there’s plenty to keep you busy.
YouTube can almost be seen as one directional since you are mostly posting videos. However that’s just the beginning. Once posted, you’ll have the opportunity to follow along with the viewers feedback via the comments below your video. So post a great instructional video and you’re likely to get comments and questions for more information or encouraging words to post more videos.
Return on Investment. Well this is a hot button that seems to change often. At first I used to say that there was no money in social media. Whatever efforts you put in, you wouldn’t find the same in profits. I’m starting to change my stance on that because I’ve learned that you can’t use social media to sell. At least not blatantly. What I mean is, think of it as a networking meeting. You can’t just walk into a room full of people screaming to the top of your lungs about the sales and services you provide. Instead you walk in and court each person you make eye contact with. You meet people and ask who they are, what they do, where they’re from; then engage in light conversation. Maybe they sound interested (follow) in what you do, but not enough to be compelled to purchase something from you on the spot. However what you say about your industry and brand intrigues them to keep you in mind (comment/@reply) to tell other people about. You leave them with a great impression (post) and move on to meet someone else. The more people you meet, they more impressions you make. With the increase in impressions, the more traffic your website and business phone starts to get. You then start to become an authority on a subject matter. When that happens more people start to pay attention to what you say and post. And now because you’re respected, when you do offer a special or a sale (not often) they share your offer with others or purchase some for themselves. You couple all of that with analytics to gauge where you were most influential each day of the month and you replicate your best efforts the following month. All while keeping track of your lead performance, site traffic, and other metrics.
I know this sounds like a lot; and to be honest it’s all of this and more. Sure anyone can do this. Not everyone will be as effective or as diligent so choose your mediums and efforts wisely. The worse thing you can do is start and abruptly stop.
Have some other tips on social media and how to bank more for your buck? Please share in the comments below.
All Posts, Social Media
Over this past weekend, many of my Facebook friends (on my personal Facebook side) started posting or copying and pasting a message about how Facebook was going to be charging a fee to use their services. When I first saw the message I thought someone was joking. Then I saw it again from someone else, then again. Here’s the message:
“FACEBOOK JUST RELEASED THEIR PRICE GRID FOR MEMBERSHIP. $9.99 PER MONTH FOR GOLD MEMBER SERVICES, $6.99 PER MONTH FOR SILVER MEMBER SERVICES, $3.99 PER MONTH FOR BRONZE MEMBER SERVICES, FREE IF YOU COPY AND PASTE THIS MESSAGE BEFORE MIDNIGHT TONIGHT. WHEN YOU SIGN ON TOMORROW MORNING YOU WILL BE PROMPTED FOR PAYMENT INFO…IT IS OFFICIAL IT WAS EVEN ON THE NEWS. FACEBOOK WILL START CHARGING DUE TO THE NEW PROFILE CHANGES. IF YOU COPY THIS ON YOUR WALL YOUR ICON WILL TURN BLUE AND FACEBOOK WILL BE FREE FOR YOU. PLEASE PASS THIS MESSAGE ON IF NOT YOUR ACCOUNT WILL BE DELETED IF YOU DO NOT PAY”
One of the first tip offs was how it was the same exact message and all in CAPS. I mean really? People still do that these days? Remember way back in American Online chat rooms when you’d get blasted for “yelling” when you typed? And what news station really reported this? I know there isn’t much fact checking these days, but don’t you think that if in fact Facebook was planning to incorporate a new fee, there would be several emails and probably a press conference for it? Now I watched the boring F8 Conference 2011, and with all the new apps coming down the pipes with Open Graph, a new user fee would have been discussed. There’s plenty of other concerns with user privacy to be up in arms about for now.
Being the largest social network on the planet, they’re already generating plenty of money from ads and data mining before they’d incorporate standard user fees. The number one goal of Facebook is to get and keep you using the site as much and as often as possible. The more traffic, the more ad viability, the more game play, and the more search.
Now I wouldn’t rule out any premium apps that may come down the pipes sooner or later though. A lot of current games will allow you to play for free, but there are “in-app purchases” you can make. I would see a slow introduction to premium apps that carry some type of subscription fee to use. For example, if you wanted to listen to XM Satellite stations while in Facebook, you can if you either already have a stand alone subscription, or you can easily create a new account within Facebook with your existing credentials and say a PayPal account or your actual credit card information. None of this is true right now, but this is an example of what could happen.
Let me know your thoughts on all of this in the comments below. Even if you were one of the users that pasted that message into your status update, I’d like to know what really compelled you to do so.
All Posts, Social Media
So its been a little over a week now that I’ve been in and playing with Google+ (Google Plus). At first glance it has a good few visual concepts that are both familiar and appreciating at the same time. Like any other Google product, it is fresh and new, and takes very little effort to learn. However why should you get involved?
For starters it has a clean user experience (UX). It reminds me of the earlier days of Facebook before the left and right side panels were littered with ads and game notifications. There’s an easy but small navigation bar that has 4 icons for your jump menu that will take you to either your Home Stream, Photos, Profile (yours), Circles.
To the left is a Stream filter that enables you to either view all of your Streams, or just Streams from certain Circles. So no need to be mad that you missed out about your 3rd cousins new baby because she didn’t qualify as “top news” for your wall, you can simply click on your “Family ” stream and not miss out. This also helps keep the clutter out of your posts too.
- Home – This is where your streams will be. Similar to the Facebook wall. Not much different to the Facebook wall, but what I personally like is how you can make a post and have it limited to just your circles, or specific circles.
- Photos – Well this is simple; a place to upload photos from your computer. But the cool factor here is the collage of pictures from people your connected to that covers the page. Soon mobile devices other than current Droids.
- Profile – Here is where you can change/load your picture, details about yourself, location, alias, etc. You can also Chronologically view your posts, view all your photos and videos, and all the +1’s you’ve clicked on around the web.
- Circles – Here is where you see everyone your connected to. Those that you’re not you can easily send out an invite. Part of the invite process requires an email address (Gmail preferred) and what circle you want to place that person in.
One of the game changers to me is the Hangouts option. Multi-video chat with people in your circles is a nice feature. I haven’t tried it yet with more than one person. It’s been a bit tough getting everyone online at the same time and there’s still a limited amount of people able to get into the site. Speaking of that; since official launch the Google servers have been quite loaded with user’s trying to accept invites. So if you received an invite, keep trying. Though you have to sign in with your existing Google account.
I had to explain all of that to tell you my number 1 reason why you should give Google+ a try. The great separation of family, friends, and clients in a social media platform. Facebook is great and has groups and some rather difficult filtering options for sharing with certain people while blocking others. With Circles you can easily have your mom and aunts in a family circle and make posts about that client from hell and neither of your family or clients will see your outbursts (provided they’re all in their respective circles). So couple that with a sleek minimalist interface and you’ve got a good baseline to grow something compelling.
Well let me know what you think. And just for stopping by I’ve included a link to @graphicsfuel’s website for some neat Google+ icons. Yes they’re free so get ’em quick! 
All Posts, Social Media
If you’re like me, you’re probably on the go with your business all throughout the day. Checking emails off your phone, responding to social media, and occasionally stopping by the local coffee shop for lunch while using your laptop to work. It’s very convenient but also should be used with caution.
These public wifi areas are they’re own enemies just by being public. Anyone can join on the network, and every device on that network is susceptible to attacks, key loggers, and more. I’m not trying to say the end of the world is near and only use your devices on your home network (ironically most home networks are even less secured than public ones), but you should be aware of some potential issues. I’ll type another post about them another time.
For the many of you using Twitter, this is a great new option that will keep you within HTTPS (Secure Hypertext Transfer Protocol). If you look at the top of your browser in the address bar, you should see http:// and a secured site/page would show https://. Prior to today you could login to Twitter via secured site if you manually typed it in your address bar. This new update from Twitter allows you to stay in that secured state though as you navigate around the site and your personal settings. In contrast, Facebook is still working on this, but whenever switching from say your Fan page to your Personal page, you’d fall out of HTTPS to HTTP. If you’re not paying attention you may barely even notice this.
Here’s how you can quickly update your Twitter settings. Log into Twitter, and then hit the Settings link and at the bottom of the “Account” tab, you’ll see the new “Always use HTTPS” check box. Select it and hit save and you’re done.
It wouldn’t be a bad idea to just replace your current favorites or bookmarks to https://twitter.com on all your devices. Have you had any issues with public wifi and your sensative information? Let me know in the comments below.
