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Four Responses to Social Media Teetotalers

Wednesday, February 24th, 2010

As a social media professional and ghost blogger, I’m naturally excited about it and what it can do for people. The relationships it can grow, the business it can create. Social media is interesting, and something I enjoy doing.

So I get a little frustrated when people hit me with “I don’t do social media,” bragging about it, like those morally superior people who sneer, “I don’t watch television.”

Maybe I don’t have a good attitude about it, but I do keep my thoughts to myself, as I explain to people why they’re missing out if they’re not at least one on network. I usually trot out at least one of four major arguments as to why they should be on it.

It’s where the leaders in your industry are: In fact, this is how they got to become leaders. They found a public forum to espouse their viewpoints, and expressed them to as many people as they could. And if you want to become one of those leaders, you need to be on here. For some people, like Gary Vaynerchuk and Chris Brogan, they have launched their entire career thanks to social media.
You’ll find information about your industry: Some of the early adopters in any industry have been the trade media. They’re looking for a way to grow readership, maintain their expertise and credibility, and continue to grow and move with the times. I was surprised to see that a publishing group in one of my old careers, Watt Agriculture (poultry and livestock publishing) had gone digital. They publish their magazine online, they blog, and they even have a Ning-based social network.
Your friends and colleagues are on it: Our work culture has become one of collaboration and cooperation. We no longer operate in silos. If you want to find new projects to work on with business partners, you can find them on social media. I can think of at least three different business opportunities and five different speaking engagements I’ve gotten because of social media.
Your competitors are already on it: If they’re not, they will be. Your customers are on social media, and they’re talking to whoever is on there. And right now, it’s your competitors. They’re working to be the leaders in your industry, and your customers are listening to them. So while you’re still cold calling and attending that one big trade show every year, your competitors are talking every day through their blogs, Twitter feeds, and on LinkedIn.

Photo: Johnny_Appleseed1774

About the Author: Erik Deckers
Erik is the VP of Operations & Creative Services for Pro Blog Service. He has been blogging for more than nine years (even before it was called blogging), and has been a published writer for more than 20 years. He has written humor newspaper columns, business articles, stage plays, radio theatre plays, and is currently working on a novel. He helped write Twitter Marketing for Dummies, and frequently speaks on blogging and social media.

Tags: facebook, Social Media, social media marketing, twitter
Posted in Facebook, Networking, Social Media, Social Networks, Twitter | No Comments »

I’m Underwhelmed by Google Buzz

Friday, February 12th, 2010

Google released their new “social network,” Buzz, to much fanfare this week.

People watched the live broadcast and tweeted about it excitedly. The unfortunate few who hadn’t received their Buzz account were asking, “what is it? What is it?” The Silicon Alley Insider giggled that Buzz was going to be a Twitter killer. Jason McCabe Calcanis breathlessly declared that Facebook’s traffic would drop by half because of the buzz.

The best I can give it is a “meh.”

I’m sorry, I really am. I like Google. I like their products. I use Blogspot for my personal blog. I use Gmail for my email interface, including Pro Blog Service emails. We use Google Docs for work flow and client document sharing. So I really wanted this to work.

But I haven’t been impressed by Google Buzz. It has become one more thing in my Inbox to nag at me. At least with Facebook and Twitter, I can ignore the feed for a while, and I don’t have to worry about whether I missed anything.

Buzz, on the other hand, has a spot in my Google inbox, where I get to see how many different posts, articles, and statement about “I’m just trying to figure out Buzz,” along with every “me too. What does it do?” comment. The count just sits there, staring at me plaintively, until I clear out the Buzz inbox. And since there’s no “Mark all as read” button, I have to scroll down just to “read” them to get rid of them.

(Note: I’ve found that if I hit CMD-Down and go to the end of the page and then CMD-Up, it clears everything out.)

I’ve got accounts on FriendFeed, Plaxo, and other life streaming social networks, and I haven’t looked at any of them in months. I haven’t touched FriendFeed since the week I opened the account. Why? Because I don’t need to have all of the Twitter and Facebook information of all my friends aggregated into one place. If I want to see what someone is doing on Twitter and Facebook, I just go to those networks. I don’t need to go to a 3rd place to do it.

That’s what Google Buzz is, a life streamer. It aggregates every short question, Buzz post, tweet, status update, LinkedIn comment, Flickr and Picasa photo, and YouTube video any of my contacts have posted.

In short, Buzz isn’t going to kill Twitter or Facebook. It’s going to kill my productivity if I keep using it. And so rather than try to keep up with the firehose that it has become (and I’ve only got 70 people in my stream), I’m going to ignore it until someone shows me what I can do with Buzz that I can’t do with Tweetdeck and its ability to create lists and columns.

Tags: Buzz, facebook, Google, life stream, twitter
Posted in Communication, News, Opinion | 3 Comments »

Five Essential Tools Any Crisis Communication Pro Needs

Monday, January 4th, 2010

Social media is becoming more and more important to an organization’s response to a crisis. While my own crisis communication experience is with public health emergencies, like pan flu epidemics and the threat of anthrax attacks, other crisis comm pros are dealing with reputation management, negative publicity, liability lawsuits, product recalls, etc.

Thanks to social media tools, there is no reason a crisis communication pro shouldn’t have these tools in his or her toolbox, ready to respond to an emergency within minutes, rather than hours, or even days.

Whether you’re a government agency dealing with a massive emergency, or a famous athlete caught with his pants down, you need to be able to respond quickly and truthfully. You need to get ahead of the speculators and talking heads whose grinding of the rumor mill can do more harm than the actual truth.

Many organizations, especially government agencies, are still using old-school media to get their news out. The problem is they’re trying to reach a newspaper audience with timely news, but it’s changed in the last 30 minutes. Or they’re trying to reach the TV news by 3:00 p.m. for a 5:00 broadcast, while most people are still in their cars. And in many cases, broadcast media only spends seconds on your story, and the newspapers are only devoting a few precious inches to your side of the story.

With social media, you can bypass the media filters, reach the greatest number of people, and in many cases, get the news out before the mainstream media. This is especially useful if you have time-sensitive information, like medication dispensing points, product recalls, hours of operation, etc.

I’m not saying you should ignore the mainstream media (MSM), or quit using the old methods. Rather, consider adding social media to your arsenal.

Blog: A blog is a great way to publish an entire news story. In many cases, the MSM will use your blog as a source. If you’ve done most of the legwork for them, they’re more inclined to use the information you provided. I had one newspaper in Indiana that would reprint my press releases verbatim, I thought about changing my name to “Staff Wire Report” just so I could get the credit.

Strategy: Appoint a blog writer you trust, and give him or her carte blanche in reporting the latest news.

Twitter: Twitter lets you reach people quickly and easily. Create lists of important people who will need to hear your news: journalists, fans, customers, vendors, etc. Don’t just use Twitter for barfing out news though. You can use Twitter to talk with people and establish relationships. If people like you, they’re likely to want to hear your news, making you a trusted news source.

Strategy: Have conversations, provide information, correct misinformation, and answer questions.

Facebook fan page: If you’re a B2C company, nonprofit, or government agency, you need a fan page. If you’re B2B, the debate still rages on. People get their news from different sources, and they get their social media from different tools. So you need to match their information-gathering habits. Since Facebook boasts over 350 million world-wide users, a lot of people are getting their news here.

Strategy: Run your blog and Twitter feeds through your fan page. Follow the conversations people are having on the page, and participate in them.

Analytics: You need to measure your results and see what works. If nothing else, put Google Analytics on your blog, and set up some Google News Alerts. They only updates every 24 hours (Google News can email stories as they appear), but it’s free, and ideal if you’re not trying to monitor events in real time. StatCounter.com is free and up-to-the-minute, although it will only record 500 hits in a day (you can upgrade to the paid version if you need it). We use Yahoo Analytics (paid subscription), because it has real-time updates, and we can graph everything out. To see what people are saying in the social media stream, try something like Radian6 or ScoutLabs.

Strategy: Adopt at least one analytics package, and use it to monitor the success of your social media strategy. Compare it to your traditional methods, and see which tools are bringing you the best results. Plow more time and energy into the successful ones, and see if it’s possible to roll the less-successful ones into your new strategies.

A laptop and wifi network card: I know, this one seems so painfully obvious, it’s ridiculous to even include it. But you’d be amazed at the number of organizations still running on desktops, or laptops without wifi. It’s great to be able to visit any location with free wifi, and logging in — I’m sitting at a Subway restaurant as I’m writing this — but what if you’re in an emergency and you’re in an area without wifi. What do you do if you’re responding to a local emergency, and the fastest Internet connection in town is the dial-up credit card machine at the gas station?

Strategy: Bug your boss until you get a laptop and wifi card (Verizon has the MiFi, a mobile wifi hotspot you carry), and then learn how to use it; these other four tools are useless if you’re ever caught without a laptop and wifi. Use the mobile setup until it’s second nature. If you’re ever caught out during an emergency, you don’t have to pull out the manual just to figure out how to use the wifi card.

There are more tools available than you could ever hope to master, most of them supporting one of these five basics, but these are the ones you can build an entire crisis communication plan around. If you can figure these out, you’ll be miles ahead of those organizations and agencies who are still trying to figure out the fastest way to fax a one-page press release to 500 different newspapers in less than six hours.

Photo: Fire Monkey Fish

Tags: Crisis Communication, facebook, Social Media, twitter
Posted in Business Blogging, Communication, Crisis Communication, Public Health, Social Media, Tools, Twitter | 2 Comments »

Do Small Businesses Need a Social Media Person in Marketing?

Tuesday, December 22nd, 2009

A reporter posted a question to an email list I belong to, about whether small businesses need a specific social media expert on their marketing team. I replied that I thought a small business did not need an expert. Rather, they just need to appoint someone on their marketing team whose job it is to participate in social media, but that person can learn the ropes about the different tools they would use. (They will need other knowledge. More on that in a minute.)

Although people have become more and more specialized over the years, at least in the marketing world, social media and the Internet are turning us back into generalists.

You don’t need a special videographer, script writer, and editor to create a corporate video, you only need a Flip camera, a YouTube account, and some creativity to get your videos out to your customers. You don’t need a PR specialist to send out press releases to the local media, you need someone who is already connected to them on Twitter and LinkedIn to connect with them personally. (Yes, I’m oversimplifying a bit, but you get my point.)

And you don’t need someone who has logged thousands of hours on Twitter or Facebook, has written a book, or is a top-notch computer programmer (although they’re all very nice).

You do need:

someone who has the time to do it on a regular, consistent basis. This is not something to do just once in a while, but needs to be done a couple hours per day.
someone the company trusts enough to speak for its brand publicly. This is typically not an intern.
someone who understands message creation and social psychology. It’s not the knowledge of the tools that is important, but the knowledge of how to create a solid message and how that message will affect a chosen group. Again, this is typically not an intern.
management buy-in and their understanding that this is not just jacking around on “Facespace or whatever you young people call it.” They need to be committed to this venture, just like they have every other marketing campaign you’ve done.

We’ve reached the point that social media is no longer a fad. It has incredible usage rates that show that it’s here to stay. The tools may change over the years, but this connectedness among us is not going anywhere for a long while. And because these things are so easy, anyone can do it. The challenge is finding someone who actually knows how to harness the power, and has the time to do it.

Business will serve themselves well by either hiring someone who does social media marketing as part of their responsibilities, or contracting out to someone on a part-time basis to do the work. But either way, they need to jump on this bandwagon before they’re left at the side of the road with the people still running their IBM PS/2s wondering when all this talk about the Internet is going to die down.

Tags: facebook, linkedin, small business, Social Media, social networking, twitter
Posted in Communication, Networking, Social Media, Social Networks, Twitter | 3 Comments »

Six Social Media Predictions for 2010

Wednesday, December 9th, 2009

Social media has already grown by leaps and bounds. At last count, Facebook had 350 million users. Twitter has grown by more than 1,444 percent year-over-year by June 2009.

If 2009 was any indication of social media’s success, 2010 is going to bring about some new changes and the way things are done. Social media growth won’t happen by your parents joining Facebook (if they haven’t already). It will happen because the business world is starting to see the light, and companies will start flocking to it in droves.

These are our social media predictions for 2010.

Business blogging will grow. (Oh sure, way to go out on a limb there, Nostradamus.) While this may seem obvious to some, it’s not as obvious to the corporations themselves. Blogging has become more accepted as a part of a marketer’s toolbox. But it’s not just limited to the entrepreneur or small businessperson. Corporations are starting to use blogging as a form of corporate communication. Ford Motor Company already uses a blog for their media center, the CDC uses a blog as a way to communicate public health issues to the media and general public. This is only going to grow more as time goes by.

Social media will lose its virginity next year. More and more people will begin to make money through social media, despite the protestations and gnashing of teeth by the social media purists. We’re seeing it already, as spammers and MLMers are using Twitter to sell their ebooks, nutritional supplements, and online marketing plans. However, people like Kyle Lacy, Jason Falls, and Chris Brogan are helping companies figure out how to actually make money with social media. And as more people adopt a “meh” attitude about the whole “selling on social media” controversy, and it becomes more seamless and less interruptive, the trend will only grow.

Social media will become more accepted in big corporations. This one will be a harder sell in the halls of large corporations, but some of the more forward-thinking corporations are going to jump on the social media bandwagon sooner rather than later. I’ve spoken with a banker who’s looking into Twitter, and there are several lawyers who are looking at the micro-blogging platform as a way to increase their name recognition in their chosen area of specialty. And when a cable giant like Comcast can find success on Twitter with @ComcastCares, you know the other corporations can’t be far behind.

Android will eat iPhone’s lunch. We’ve been discussing this one around the office quite a bit. Rumors are swirling that the iPhone may come to Verizon in Q3 2010. This may be too little, too late, since a lot of people are buying the Android because it’s available on their favorite network. But even if people hold off buying a new iPhone until it’s available in the fall, the Android will still see their enemy crushed before them, and hear the lamentations of the women.

The same thing will happen like it did in the ’80s when the IBM PC and PC clones swamped Apple and took the high-end business market away from them. Or when Windows overpowered Apple’s Macintosh in the business world in the ’90s. Apple has the manufacturing capacity to fulfill AT&T users’ needs now, but if they offer the iPhone to Verizon, Sprint, T-Mobile, and any of the international carriers, they’re going to have problems filling orders. On the other hand, LG, Samsung, Sony, Motorola, HTC, and Hunwai (China) are all the licensed Android manufacturers. Their combined manufacturing might is more than enough to meet the demands of the Android users.

Mobile will become more important. David Armano of Harvard Business Publishing talked about his Six Social Media Trends for 2010, and said that mobile will become especially important as more corporations start enforcing social media policies at work. The social media break will become more prevalent, as people totter off to the bathroom with their iPhones and Droids to send a quick note to their Twitter followers or update their Facebook status. The ramifications for bloggers is that your posts should be shorter, easier to read, and your blog software should have a mobile version plugin. (Hat tip to my good friend Lorraine Ball for this one.)

SMS will become obsolete. As users continue to buy smart phones and phones that have email, Twitter, chatting, and other communication features, the desirability to pay your cell phone carrier $.04 to send a message will become less attractive. Since Twitter is free, how long will it be before restaurants, movies, sports teams, and other entertainment venues start offering DM clubs to members? They’re already doing it with text services, so can Twitter and other micro-blogging programs be far behind?

So what do you think? What are your predictions for 2010? Leave a comment and let’s see what others are thinking.

Tags: Android, Apple, blogging, business blogging, facebook, iPhone, Social Media, twitter
Posted in Business Blogging, Communication, Social Media, Social Networks, Tools, Twitter | 5 Comments »

Five Ways Nonprofits Can Use Social Media to Improve Fundraising, Membership

Thursday, December 3rd, 2009

Yesterday, I talked about why nonprofits needed to use social media in 2010. And I promised to talk about the strategies nonprofits can use to grow membership and fundraising dollars.

To get started, create a Gmail account and import all the email addresses of your members to it. Keep this one private, and don’t use it. Not because there are any problems, but because you don’t want your members to get confused when they get emails from a Gmail account with your name on it.

Join Facebook and start a Facebook Fan Page for your organization. Import your members into your Facebook account — this is what the Gmail account is for — and friend the ones who are on there. Encourage them to communicate with you and each other on the Fan Page. Ask your members to recommend the Fan Page to their friends. Participate in conversations with your members and fans.

Set up a Twitter account, and encourage members to start “following” you. They’ll receive your updates (tweets), and be able to keep up with what you’re doing. Participate in Twitter conversations with your members, and follow people who talk about the same issues. Use things like Twitter search or NearbyTweets.com to find people in your area talking about your organization’s key issues.

Start a blog and write about the issues that are important to you. Don’t give up your print newsletter, but use your blog to communicate with members in between your monthly or quarterly mailings. Write about other organizations in your field, like a similar nonprofit in another town. For example, if you run a food bank, write about the great things a food bank in another state is doing.

Use LinkedIn to establish your personal brand. Your personal brand is just as important as your organization’s. By getting to know people outside your organization, you may find different opportunities to be out in your community. This helps you meet people who could be likely donors, find other opportunities where your organization could be a beneficiary of a community event, or even find possible members and volunteers among your new network.

Automate some of your content feeds. You could do this all by hand, but this will save you several minutes a day. Use the Network Blogs feature on Facebook to feed your posts to the Fan Page. Use Twitterfeed.com to automatically feed your blog posts to your Twitter stream. Don’t turn your feeds into automated bots (robots), but use automation to lighten your load a bit.

There are more ways than these five that you can use social media to your advantage. But these are the five that can get you started. If you have any ideas or suggestions, let us hear from you. Leave us a comment, and if we get enough, we’ll use them in a future post.

Tags: facebook, linkedin, nonprofits, Social Media, twitter
Posted in Communication, Lead Generation, Networking, Social Media, Social Networks, Twitter | No Comments »

36% of Under-35s Have Tweeted or ‘Status-Updated’ Their Sex Lives

Monday, October 26th, 2009

Are you under 35? After sex, have you ever raced to your laptop or grabbed your iPhone and tweeted “SCOOOORE!” (or yelled “FIFTY!”)?

You’re not alone. According to a study from Retrevo.com, the consumer electronics review site, 36 percent of you Millennials have not only tweeted or given status updates after sex, they were updates that you’d just had sex.

Look, I’m all for honesty and transparency online, but that doesn’t mean you have to tell us everything.

What’s surprising about the findings is the post-coital communications broke down by age group:

40-somethings called their friends.
People over 60 wrote thank you notes

Okay, none of that was true. But the whole post-coital tweeting thing still is.

Maybe I’m an old prude, but I really don’t want to hear about people’s sex lives. I’m still trying to fathom why people would want to tweet that they’re walking the dog, are going shopping, or had a bagel for breakfast.

We’re not sure if people are actually tweeting more about their sex lives, or they were always this open and honest, and now Twitter has enabled them to do it more efficiently. That is, Twitter has turned your social network into one giant locker room.

This is also why reputation management is important. You need to make sure that the information you’re putting out there is appropriate for public consumption. There are three very good reasons why you need to make sure you’re not tweeting inappropriate stuff.

Your tweets are now searchable on Google and Bing in real time.
Your Facebook page will show up on Google search results. Or you could be like one lucky guy I found, whose photo on “My friends are getting married, I’m just getting drunk” was at the very top of the search results. Results a possible employer might find.
Your mom is on Facebook and Twitter, and is reading what you say. Reading “He just left. I hope he calls me. I forgot his name.” is probably not one of her prouder moments.

(Special thanks to my friend, Lalita Amos, for the heads up. And then laughing with me as we cracked several bad jokes about this.)

Tags: facebook, Social Media, social networking, twitter
Posted in Social Media, Social Networks, Twitter | No Comments »

Most Corporations Block Social Media

Tuesday, October 13th, 2009

When I worked in crisis communications at the Indiana State Department of Health, I was blocked from a number of sites that I actually needed for my job, and had to get special permission to be able to see. Once, when the State Health Commissioner had made a video that was put on YouTube, everyone in the department was blocked from ever seeing it.

This apparently is not uncommon at all. According to a survey of 1,400 CIOs of companies with 100+ employees, 54% of them completely block employees from using social networking sites at work.

Why? Because, depending on how you look at it, most corporations don’t believe employees should enjoy themselves at work or a lot of employees will abuse that access and waste boatloads of time at work.

I think it’s a combination of both.

According to the survey, which was done by Robert Half Techonology, only 10% of those surveyed let employees use social networks with no restrictions. The remaining 36% have some sort of restriction, like only allowing it to be used for business purposes. The actual results are as follows:

Prohibited completely – 54%
Permitted for business purposes only – 19%
Permitted for limited personal use – 16%
Permitted for any type of personal use – 10%

I remember a discussion I had with a friend about whether his large corporate employer would start using social media as a company.

“No, because we don’t want the secretaries updating their Facebook pages all day,” was his response.

“But it’s more than that,” I said. “It’s the marketing department trying to reach your customers and end users. It’s promoting your product in the places where the people actually are, not in newspapers and cable TV advertising in every city in America.”

“Yeah, but the secretaries will update their Facebook pages all day,” he said again.

Ah, the old “if we let one person do it, we have to let everyone else do it” excuse. I hate that excuse.

I understand that you’re going to have people who are going to abuse their privileges, but they thought the same thing about giving employees phones, email, and computers years ago. While some people will screw it up for everyone, you can deal with those people.

Social media is becoming more and more prevalent, and regardless of what your company does/sells/produces, your customers are already on there. If you’re a government agency, your citizens are using social media for communication. If you’re a nonprofit, your donors and volunteers oare on social media.

So why aren’t you?

Sure, your secretaries may update their Facebook pages, but deal with that situation when it arises. Don’t screw up a good marketing tool for your sales and marketing people because you have staffers with work-life boundary issues.

Try some of these solutions instead:

Give your marketing people access to launch any social media marketing or communication. Monitor the results and the time they spend on it. If you see abuse, shut it back down.
Anyone who handles emergency response should have immediate access to social networking tools and permission to use them as they see fit. Believe it or not, “playing” on Facebook and Twitter is actually useful when it comes to establishing credibility and building up followers and/or journalists. (On the other hand, playing Pirate Clan or Castle Age for hours does not constitute any kind of credibility building. Crisis communicators, don’t screw this one up here!)
Let your customer service have access to Twitter and show them how to use it. Frank Eliason — @ComcastCares — shook up the customer service and Twitter worlds when he dragged Comcast into the 21st century by creating a Twitter account for the beleaguered cable company. Read Twitter Marketing for Dummies on how to use Twitter for customer service. (Full disclosure/complete bragging: Even though my name is not on the cover, I co-wrote this book. It’s a long story for another blog post.)
Let several of your trusted employees use social media and use it to answer marketing and customer service issues on the different social networks, forums, etc. People are already talking about you online. Let some of your employees respond, answer questions, handle problems, thank, and maybe even defend your company online.

Tags: facebook, Social Media, social networks, twitter
Posted in Social Media, Social Networks, Tools, Twitter | No Comments »

New Report Reveals Surprising Findings About Hoosier Social Media Usage

Wednesday, September 2nd, 2009

LinkingIndiana.com recently conducted a survey of social media usage among Hoosiers, and found some rather surprising results.

For those of us who work in the social media realm, it sometimes seems like everyone is using social media. We’re often surprised to find people who aren’t on any kind of social network or don’t read blogs, and I’ve wondered if they have ever upgraded to an electric typewriter. But there are still a lot of people who aren’t on it, although thanks to programs like Facebook and Twitter, that number is shrinking greatly.

The number one finding? Social media is now mainstream with Hoosier businesspeople. It’s not a flash in the pan, or a passing fad (like some people called the Internet 15 years ago). Rather, it’s a real way to do business.

According to the survey of more than 300 respondents, we know the following about our social media habits in the Hoosier state.

94% use social networks weekly.
77.6% use social networks daily.
Facebook and LinkedIn are used most often by 86.1% respondents.
Facebook is clearly used for personal activity.
Despite growth in social media use, Hoosier businesses are lagging in adopting social media:
Over half (52%) don’t have a blog.
Less than half polled (42%) think their employer is effectively using social media.

With these numbers, we can draw a few conclusions, which we will explore in future blog posts.

Social media is no longer the next big thing. It is the thing.
B2B marketers should consider launching marketing programs on Facebook. Sure, it’s primarily being used by people to keep up with family and friends, or to play Pirate Clan and SuperPoke people. But it’s still being used by businesspeople, students, retirees, home makers. People are using Facebook like crazy, and you can’t ignore it anymore.
Take care that your campaigns are done correctly, and aren’t just bludgeon-over-the-head ads. Facebook users don’t use the site for business, and won’t respond well to typical B2B engagement strategies. You can still reach them with fan pages and similar strategies; this is where the “social” in social networking becomes important.
Only 48% of business people have a blog, yet it’s the one piece of social media that has not changed in nearly 10 years. Blogging is still a great business solution. Search engines love it, forward thinking companies have embraced it, and your customers are reading them, including your competition’s.
While we love Twitter and Smaller Indiana (I got this job and company because of Smaller Indiana), they aren’t necessarily the best place to spend marketing dollars when you’re trying to reach a large audience. Smaller Indiana is a great niche network, and if you wanted to reach some of the state’s influencers, it’s the place to be. But if you’re trying to reach a wide audience, there are better options.

There are a lot more points to the report, and some that deserve their own post, rather than giving them short shrift here. We’ll explore the important points and discuss the implications for Hoosier businesspeople and the marketers who want to reach them.

Download a copy of the 2009 Indiana Business Social Media Use Survey Survey here.

About the Author: admin

Tags: facebook, Smaller Indiana, Social Media, twitter
Posted in Business Blogging, Social Media, Social Networks, Twitter | No Comments »

Don’t Miss The Point of Each Social Network

Monday, March 9th, 2009

There are three major types of social networks – business, personal and communication. Notice I didn’t say “marketing?” Some may combine aspects of all three (Twitter) while others are more singular (LinkedIn).

And even though you may call yourself a social media marketing guru, that doesn’t mean you can “market” your way across all three types in the same way. In fact, every network has a point or a purpose and if you’re missing it, then you’re missing out.

Business

Social networks that focus on business are your LinkedIn’s, your Biznik’s and all of those local listservs and forums that people participate in as part of their online business networking.

The purpose here is to do business, not to share pictures of your kitten or that fantastic dancing robot video you found on YouTube. It’s also not the place for relentless marketing. In other words, don’t spam people.

Personal

I would describe Facebook as an example of a personal network. Some people may use it for business networking, but that’s not the point of it or the purpose.

Instead, it’s private and most people create Facebook accounts as individuals, not businesses. Basically, it’s your space to be yourself, talk to your friends and family and share those kitten photos. If you’re using Facebook to bombard your “friends” with product announcements and sales pushes, you’re going to find yourself very friendless, very fast.

Communication

This is where it’s all about sharing what you know and your take on what you know and what other people you know know (have I lost you yet?). By definition, Twitter would fall into this category though the micro-blogging platform has evolved to embrace aspects of all three. Blogging would be another example.

Remember, the onus here is on the communication. So, if you don’t have anything valuable to share or you waste your audience’s screen time with pitches and spam, you’ll lose them quickly. Go ahead, make a post about your new product, but also share that interesting industry-specific article you read last week.

Social networks weren’t designed for marketing. They were designed for networking and each designed for a specific type of networking. Approaching all of them with the same marketing strategy is like trying to build a house with a Leatherman – sure, all of the tools are there, but that doesn’t mean it can be done.

About the Author: Mike Seidle
Mike Seidle is a leading internet and social media marketing consultant who specializes in developing campaigns that are measurable and get long term results. Mike has been helping companies get internet results since 1996.

Tags: biznik, facebook, linkedin, Social Media, social networks, youtube
Posted in Business Blogging, Opinion, Social Networks | No Comments »

Posts Tagged: facebook

Google released their new “social network,” Buzz, to much fanfare this week.

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