Social Networking | Professional Blog Service

Are You a Pioneer or a Settler?

Friday, January 29th, 2010

Are you a pioneer or a settler? Do you blaze trails, follow them while they’re still rough, or wait until there’s a nicely paved road?

Being a settler is easy. You just tread down the same old path everyone else has, making sure it’s safe. But being a pioneer is tough. You’re the first to pass this way, you’re not sure if you’re heading in the right direction, and some days you’d swear you’re going the wrong way. But the rewards are well worth it.

So how do you pioneer your new niche? How do you become a leader in your field, especially when there is no niche, or the people in it are not connected? In this case, it’s actually easier to be the pioneer, rather than to be one of many. By the time the settlers are finally getting involved, there’s a traffic jam on the road the pioneers have paved. But by this time, you’ll be way ahead of the pack.

Becoming a Pioneer

Here are a few tools and techniques you can use to establish yourself as an expert in your chosen field. Before you start, make sure you have identified your niche, know who the players are, and actually have some content on your blog or website.

Find your flock. Use NearbyTweets.com, Twitterment.com, and Twitter Search to locate them and start following them. Avoid those “get 2,000 followers per day” spam programs, and earn your followers the honest way.
Talk to strangers. Read and comment on the blogs of other people in your industry. If there aren’t any, find logical allies to your industry. If you manufacture marbles, and you’re the only marble manufacturing blog out there, find marble collectors and marble players. Leave comments on their blogs and respond when they leave comments on yours. Not only do you build up some link juice, you create relationships with potential customers.
Share knowledge. If you find articles that would be of interest to your audience, share it with them on Twitter and your blog. Write commentary about the articles on the blog, and share those as well. If you can become a source of knowledge, people will look to you for answers.
Consider video. Gary Vaynerchuk of WineLibrary.tv and the author of Crush It, has built a social media footprint like an elephant’s by using video to sell and promote wine. Do video posts of you sitting at your desk, pontificating about industry goings-on. Publish excerpts of you speaking at conferences and events (this is also useful if you’re trying to build a speaking career).
Build your contact list. As you meet new people, keep your contacts organized in Gmail. If you use Outlook, sync it up with Gmail and keep that list fresh. Gmail is the go-to contact list by every social networking tool out there. Want to find friends on Twitter, LinkedIn, or YouTube? They’ll import your Gmail contact list with no problem.

These are just a very few steps to get yourself started finding your niche. I haven’t even touched on LinkedIn or creating an industry-related social network yourself. But these are enough steps to get you started.

What other tools and steps do you recommend? Leave a comment, and we’ll try to feature it in a future blog post.

Photo: Wikimedia Commons

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: Gmail, Social Media, social networking, twitter, youtube
Posted in All Posts, Networking, Social Media, Social Networks, Tools, Twitter | 3 Comments »

Why Are There So Few Trend Setters in Social Media?

Tuesday, January 19th, 2010

I noticed an interesting trend, and I’m ashamed to say I’m part of it.

There are very few trend setters in social media. Very few pioneers. We’re mostly settlers.

We all try to be as cutting edge as we can, but we’re sometimes at the mercy of what everyone else is talking about. We pay close attention to luminaries like Chris Brogan, Jason Falls, Jeremiah Owyang, and Gary Vaynerchuk. We wait to see what they’re talking about, and we talk about that. And we all hold up their discarded sandals, like that great scene from Monty Python’s Life of Brian.

I do it too. I see an interesting article on Jason’s blog, and decide I’ll comment on that. Or I’ll see something Doug Karr wrote in the Marketing Technology blog, and piggyback off that. But it’s rare that I write about issues that those guys didn’t write about first.

I’ve done it a few times — crisis communication, entre-commuting, or getting spanked by the Canadian Council of PR Firms — but I’ve also jumped solidly on the bandwagon, pushing women and children out of the way so I could get a comfy seat.

Unfortunately, this is a rather centralized industry. We only have a few tools we use with any regularity — Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google — and so we all talk about how we use them, and the great things we’ve learned, or the trends coming our way.

I want to stop doing that. I want to be that one guy in the crowd who says, “Hold up the sandal!”

I can’t say I won’t keep doing following the pioneers, but I’m going to make a conscious effort to do it less. That’s one reason I didn’t post anything on the blog for a couple of weeks. (Yeah, yeah, that’s the reason.)

So it may mean I post fewer times per week on the blog. It may mean shorter posts, and fewer how-to posts. But we’re going to try to make our own path as much as possible, even if it runs adjacent to someone else’s. We’re just going to quit following the well-worn path that some people have meandered down.

Tags: Chris Brogan, Douglas Karr, Jason Falls, Social Media, social networking
Posted in Business Blogging, Communication, Opinion, Social Media, Social Networks | 3 Comments »

Be an Entre-Commuter With Just a Latte and a Laptop

Tuesday, January 5th, 2010

I’m the mayor of my office and my church.

At least that’s what Foursquare tells me. I’ve checked in enough times at both places that I’ve been declared the mayor.

Foursquare is a location-based social networking site that lets you tell people where you are via Twitter and Facebook.

Think: 50% friend-finder, 30% social city guide, 20% nightlife game. We wanted to build something that not only helps you keep up with your friends, but exposes you to new things in and challenges you to explore cities in different ways.

You check in at different places around a city, give tips and recommendations, and in general get to know your city better.

I’ve been using FourSquare a lot lately, especially after I got my new Droid phone a few weeks ago.

I’m starting to earn the reputation for being out and about all the time. I check in everywhere I go: the office, the coffee shop, the library, the grocery store. I’m not out any more than usual. I’m just telling people about it.

But it’s become a whole lot easier now for me to be out and about too, thanks to my laptop and the proliferation of free wifi around the city. I’ve become a real entre-commuter.

(Entre-commuter: entrepreneurial commuter who works out of a coffee shop, cafe, restaurant, library, or any other place with free wifi. Term coined by Erik Deckers and Paul Lorinczi to justify why they don’t sit in the office all day, every day.)

We came up with the term entre-commuter for those people who own their own business and have the ability to do it anywhere. They can do it from home, the local library, or their local coffee shop. We happen to favor Hubbard & Cravens in Broad Ripple, although I’ll travel just about anywhere around Central Indiana for good coffee.

The great thing about being an entre-commuter is that you get to network with other people, and collaborate with them on occasion. I can’t tell you the number of people I’ve met with, helped, provided connections for, and done business with, just because we both happened to be out at the same time in the same place. And meeting some of the same people in the same place several times has blossomed my network beyond the typical Chamber and other networking events.

Where do entre-commuters gather?

I prefer to patronize local coffee shops and restaurants, although I’ll hit the occasional chain once in a while. We need to support our local establishments more than the chains — the chains don’t support our local economies. The locals do.

Is there entre-commuters etiquette?

There are a few rules for entre-commuters. They’re fairly common sense, but I still see people violate them from time to time.

Don’t camp out. They have to turn tables during peak times. If you’re sitting with a computer and a bottled water over lunch, they’re losing money on you.
Only occupy tables during low times. Don’t take up a 4-top all by yourself if you can help it, and don’t be afraid to share a table with a stranger either.
Buy something. Spend money, and more than just a little. Don’t buy a $2 coffee and then sit for 8 hours.
Be respectful. This is someone else’s business, not your office. Don’t treat it like it’s your place. You’re a guest.
Keep your voices down. Other people are there too, so don’t have loud conversations. You’re not at the club, you’re at a quiet little shop.

Entre-commuters just need to be somewhere we can find free wifi and good coffee. Somewhere we can connect online and offline. Find your local shops and spend some time there. See if you can create some business, as well as giving the local shops some business as well.

Photo: Nina Turns 40 blog

Tags: coffee shops, entre-commuter, Indianapolis, social networking
Posted in Communication, Networking, Social Media, Social Networks | No Comments »

A Year in Review

Friday, January 1st, 2010

Professional Blog Service started a year ago out of Indy Associates to assist companies in generating content they need for most of their Internet marketing activity.

While at Indy Associates, we always recommended blogging as a good Search Engine Optimization (SEO) strategy. With the popularity of social media sites like Linkedin, Facebook and micro-blogging service Twitter, the strategy has become even more important. The challenge for most of our customers was the blog content generation. Most companies do not have trained content writers that are able to develop conversational blog content, while writing for the search engines. Most important, many of clients have great ideas with no time to share them.

So, what have we learned in 2009?

Most companies still do not have the resources, or the time to write their own content.

2009 saw the unemployment rate hit 10% in November. It was reported that many companies laid off many in their workforce leaving those left behind with more work to do and little time to get it done. The last thing on anyone’s mind is getting blog content written, even though everyone agrees that marketing is still important in a down economy.

Blogging and Social Media continue to evolve from AOL of the 90s to Facebook, Linkedin, and Twitter heading into a new decade.

“Two-thirds of the world’s Internet population visit social networking or blogging sites, accounting for almost 10% of all Internet time, according to a Nielsen report published in March of this year, “Global Faces and Networked Places.” These numbers keep rising as the year progresses. By 2012, IBM predicts that globally, a quarter of the global population will be using social media in some form.

Results still matter to most companies.

Learning how to play in social media is one thing. Getting people to interact with you is another. Your clients may or may not interact with you through social media. The challenge for all companies is finding out which ones they should engage. You may be able to sell like Dell, or respond to customer complaints like Southwest Airlines and Jet Blue Airlines have done. (Note to my former colleagues at American Airlines – take note!). Either way, Social Media and Blogging is measurable in some way depending on the strategic approach you take with it.

There are great tools like Yahoo Analytics (shameless plug as we are a Yahoo Analytics consultant). Radian6 and Scoutlabs can track who’s talking about you, and help you decide whether to act on the positive or negative media being generated.

We predict that 2010 will be the year of results with blogging and social media. In a nutshell, you are doing it to build your marketing list, or to generate interest in your products or services. To succeed, you will need:

An understanding of how your market uses blogging and social media, if at all
A plan to participate
Execution and commitment to the plan
Measurement of the results over the course of the year, not a month

If you can learn how to do it before your competition, you win. It will take them 12 months just to figure out what you have done.

Happy New Year from Professional Blog Service

About the Author: Paul Lorinczi
Paul Lorinczi is the President of Professional Blog Service. The goal of the company is the help clients use Blogging and Social Media to expand their business online through planning, execution, and measurement.

Tags: blogging, business blogging, Social Media, Social Media Analytics, social networking, social networks
Posted in Blog ROI, Business Blogging, Business Blogging Content, Research Desk, Social Media, Social Media Analytics | No 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 »

Five Reasons Why Nonprofits Need Social Media in 2010

Wednesday, December 2nd, 2009

As widespread as social media is, there are still a lot of organizations who are avoiding it, including nonprofits.

Those organizations are missing an important tool in their fundraising toolbox. Most nonprofits have their reasons for not using it, like “our members don’t use it,” “we don’t have the time,” or “it’s too hard.”

Except, they do, you will, and it’s not.

How important is it? Watch the video at the bottom of the screen to see what’s happening with social media these days. And it’s only going to get bigger. Here are five reasons you need to start using social media as part of your fundraising efforts in 2010.

Your current members are using social media. According to Facebook, their fastest growing demographic is 35 and over. Erik Qualman, author of Socialnomics, says it’s actually females, age 55 – 65. would wager a large majority of your members, donors, and volunteers fit in either group.

Your future members are using social media. How are you going to attract new members by sending a mailing to your existing mailing list? You’re not. You need to go where the people are, and they’re on places like Facebook and other social networking sites. If you want to notify potential new members about what you’re doing, this is one of the best ways to reach them. Watch the video below for an idea of how big this has gotten.

It’s cheaper than direct mail. I used to sell direct mail, and I can tell you that while it’s a great, effective way to target your ideal donors, it still costs money. There’s printing, assembly, and postage, and the fancier everything is, the higher the cost. On the other hand, social media has a much bigger, easier, and less expensive reach for a fraction of the cost. You can reach more people more often than you can with direct mail.

You can communicate frequently. In fact, it’s encouraged. There are a lot of things going on in your office that your members want to know about, whether it’s the latest legislation that affects your constituency, the grant you were just awarded, and the envelope stuffing party you’re holding. If you’re communicating only through a newsletter, you’re missing a lot of opportunities to talk to your fans.

Errors are easily fixed. How many times have you printed the annual fundraising letter and found a mistake? It doesn’t matter with a blog post. If you make a typo or mistake, you can always fix it. Even after it’s published, you can easily go back and fix an error. If it’s an important error, just send out notices to your blog readers through your usual social media channels.

Next time, we’ll talk about how nonprofits can start using social media.

Tags: nonprofits, Social Media, social media marketing, social networking
Posted in Communication, Lead Generation, Networking, Social Media, Social Networks | 3 Comments »

Social Media & Internet Creating Communities, Reducing Isolationism

Tuesday, November 17th, 2009

I was an early adopter of AOL. In the 832,000s. They hadn’t even cracked a million by that time.

And as the Internet grew more popular, people started worrying that this was destroying communities, increasing isolationism, and making it too easy to shut ourselves off from the outside world.

I was talking with my friend Lalita Amos one day about this idea, and she pointed out that it wasn’t the Internet that destroyed communities, it was television. If anything, the Internet has restored community.

Think about it: Back before the days of TV and radio, you had to rely on everybody else to survive. It took a village just to get through a year, let alone raise a child. You were close to your neighbors, family lived nearby, and you took care of each other.

Then radio and TV came along, and people started spending more time inside. Pretty soon, we were in our houses being entertained.

“Our shared experiences were what we saw on TV,” Lalita said. “It wasn’t what we did together, it was what we all saw on TV and talked about the next day.”

As we got more channels, and as technology advanced, people had more things to watch, with fewer things we held in common.

Now, thanks to things like Facebook, Twitter, and specialized sites like Smaller Indiana, we’re getting connected in ways we never could. We can find people we have odd things in common with. People who like independent coffee shops. People who write radio theatre plays. People who collect marbles. There’s a community for everyone just based on your interests alone.

Or there are mini-communities within geographic communities. I belong to a community of networkers, a community of social media professionals, and a community of Indianapolis Colts fans.

In fact, I met Lalita Amos strictly because of Smaller Indiana and Twitter, two online communities. We never would have met if it hadn’t been for those online communities.

And what do we talk about when we get together? Our shared communities, not television. Thanks to social media, we’re no longer sharing what we watched passively; we’re actively doing things, creating content, sharing ideas, and talking about that.

To all the naysayers who think the Internet is destroying our communities, look again. Sign up for a Facebook account and see if you can find people you went to high school with, used to work with, or have something in common with. Create the community you want, rather than being stuck with the ones you live with.

Tags: community, Social Media, social networking, social networks
Posted in Networking, Social Media, Social Networks | No Comments »

How Small Newspapers Can Use Social Media to Grow Readership

Friday, November 13th, 2009

Originaly published at the DeckersMarketing.com blog.

I’m not going to repeat the same sad-but-scary stories of how newspapers around the country are folding up like, well, newspapers. No stories about the Seattle Post-Intelligencer going online-only, the Rocky Mountain News, the San Francisco Chronicle. No stories about how Gannett is hemorrhaging all over the place, and their only response is to cut the one thing that brings people to their newspaper: local news reporting, and get their local information from an out-of-town national source.

I don’t have to tell you any of this, because if you’re in the newspaper business – and God bless you for it – you know all of this.

But I’ve said for the past year that while the big city newspapers are going under, the smaller newspapers are in a better position to be able to weather the storm. The smaller newspapers I know, especially the weeklies, are not even messing with national news, because the dailies and TV news have it sewn up. Their advertisers are local merchants who don’t have to choose from a plethora of advertising outlets. There’s one game in town, and the newspaper is it.

That’s not to say everything is sunshine and roses for the small newspaper. But, like I said, they’re in a better position to come out of this alive.

One thing that’s going to help them succeed is to start participating in social media. You’ve heard the term before. The mainstream media is talking about Twitter, you know people who are on Facebook, and you’ve finally learned that a blog is not what a blumberjack gets when he chops down a btree.

I’m sure your first reaction is going to be, “But most of our readers are over 50, and they don’t use the Internet.” That’s true, they are and they don’t. But what about your readers who are under 50, and are online? Or better yet, what about the teenagers and 20-somethings who are online and aren’t your readers? Where do you think they’re getting the news from? The New York Times online, The Associated Press online, and of course, your closest metropolitan daily newspaper (at least while they’re still around). Why shouldn’t you try to go to the place where they’re getting their news too?

Because they’re going to be 30, 40, and 50 one day. And if you’re not providing them online news now, you won’t be around to play catch up later.

So how can you, the small newspaper editor, use social media to stay afloat, and possibly even grow?

If you look at the social media landscape, you’ll be overwhelmed with choices and terminology. I’ll try to explain a few of the basics, and you can go from there.

1) Put your newspaper online. Most dailies have a website, and some of the weeklies do. If you don’t, find a way to get it up there. You already lay the paper out on the computer, so it’s no extra work to paste the same article in an online window and hit the Publish button.

HOW:You can turn your paper into a blog (there are some great WordPress templates that lend themselves to newspapers, or you can get one of the newspaper-website software packages, like TownNews.com. (The Greenfield Reporter in Greenfield, IN uses them. Full disclosure: they publish my Laughing Stalk humor column in four of their satellite newspapers.)

BENEFIT:Here’s the great thing: an online newspaper can be another source of revenue for you. Advertisers who are appearing in your print edition may be interested in paying a little more to also appear in your online edition. Businesses that might not be able to afford an ad in your paper may be interested in the lower ad rates of the online version. You can track the performance of their online ads, and use those figures to show how effective they are, and charge the appropriate rates.

2. Join Twitter and use it. Twitter is a micro-blog (as compared to a regular blog), because you only have 140 characters to convey an entire message. That message can be straight text, or it can be a link to a website, blog post, or a headline and link to a story on your website. If you’re on it, you can follow me at @edeckers.

I follow several Twitter feeds from national and local news sources, including the New York Times, NPR, WTHR (Indianapolis’ NBC affiliate), and Toronto’s Globe and Mail (hey, I like to feel sophisticated). While I tend to ignore most of the tweeted (a Twitter message is a tweet) articles, there are times one of the headlines catches my eye, and I click on it. There’s also @BreakingNewsOn, which has tweeted news stories before the mainstream media even showed up.

HOW: This one is simple, go to Twitter.com and sign up. Use your paper’s name (set up a separate one for your personal use). Download TweetDeck and Twitter Local. You’ll send and receive Tweets on your TweetDeck application, but you can search for local Twitter users through TwitterLocal.

As you follow your local people, they’ll follow you in return (it’s an unwritten rule). Then, just feed your news headlines and links to them as they come up (you can even automate this process at TwitterFeed).

BENEFIT: People will come to rely on you as a source for news. They’ll retweet (forward) your articles to your friends, and you’ll start attracting readers from outside your fair city or town. I’ve had visitors to my blog from as far away as England and Australia just because of Twitter.

3. Join a social network. This one is a little tougher. There are thousands of social networks out there, so the question is which one should you join. Again, you want to stay local. Does your chamber of commerce have one? Or a local social organization? Maybe there is not even one in your community. That’s great! You get to be the one to start it.

HOW: Go to Ning.com and start one for your community. Advertise it in your paper and on Twitter. Get people involved in the community and with each other. Post some of your stories on the network, and get people to contribute their own. Now you’re not only a source for news, you’re helping to build your community.

BENEFIT: I’ve been involved in an Indiana-based network called Smaller Indiana>/a>, a social network for people who live and work in Indiana. It has resulted in some great opportunities for its members (I landed my job as a blog manager because of Smaller Indiana), and people have formed some profitable business relationships and fulfilling personal relationships because of it. We have become a voice for social, business, political, and environmental change in our community. Now imagine what it would be like in your community if you were responsible for creating that. What would that mean for your newspaper?

The best news of all of this? With one exception (TownNews.com), this is all free. You can get a blog for free at WordPress.com, join Twitter for free, and create a social network for free.

The only thing it takes is time and know-how. Since you’re already busy putting out a paper, and you probably don’t have the technical knowledge to jump into this with both feet, you have a couple of choices. Build it slowly and learn as you go along, or hire someone to set it up and teach you how to do it.

If you take the build it option, start with a free blog at WordPress.com, and set up a Twitter account. Publish your top story and an editorial on your blog, and promote it through Twitter.

If you have the money, hire a social media and blogging expert to get it all started for you. You’ll spend a few thousand dollars in the beginning, but if you manage this right, it will pay for itself for years afterward.

Last year, Wired Magazine editor Kevin Kelly said in a speech that the Internet as we know it is only 5,000 days old (5,300 by now). 5,000 days ago, we didn’t have maps, TV, news, photos, records, government forms, or entire libraries online. Now we do. Now people get their information this way.

What will the next 5,000 days bring? Or the next 1,000? Or even the next 10? What new technology will let people get news and information? And what will this do to you and your newspaper? Will you be a part of the next 5,000 days? Or will you be the thing the teenagers in your town learn about during their unit on local history?

Tags: media, newspapers, Social Media, social networking, twitter
Posted in Business Blogging, Social Media, Social Networks, Tools, Twitter | 3 Comments »

How Corporations Can Use Twitter to Improve Customer Service

Tuesday, November 3rd, 2009

This post was originally published on the DeckersMarketing.com blog.

Twitter has become such a phenomenon, it’s almost easier to list people who are not on Twitter.

1) My kids
2) The Amish

(I take that back, now even the Amish are on Twitter. I’m still not letting my kids on it though.)

I’ve been getting ready for a Confluence Northnetwork event this week, where I’m on a blog panel discussion on the use of Twitter for corporations.

While Twitter is becoming popular among individual users, big companies are still a little slow to jump on the Twitter bandwagon (Twandwagon?), and so may be missing an important way to communicate with its customers.

DirecTV is using Twitter as a way to communicate with its followers about outages, issues, and specials they’re running. They’re communicating directly with customers about billing and technical issues, and are even following other people’s discussions to see what problems people might be having.

Dell Computer has actually managed to make over $1 million in sales just by promoting specials and sales they were running. They promote themselves through DellSmallBiz , Direct2Dell, and Dell’s cloud computing.. Now, $1 million may not seem like a big deal to big corporations, but when’s the last time you made a million bucks letting one of your marketing interns screw around on the Internet?

Best Buy is almost stalkerish in their social media efforts. My friend Patric Welch – Mr. Noobie – recently posted a story on his blog about how Best Buy broke his son’s heart on Valentine’s Day. A few hours later, Jason from Best Buy responded in the comments about how he was sorry Patric had this difficulty, and to use this reference number to call us and we’ll fix it. Pretty cool, and I responded to Jason’s comment with just that sentiment. A few hours later, I received a Tweet from someone else at Best Buy talking about how they are big practitioners of social media, including Twitter.Think about it: A woman from Best Buy Tweeted me after reading my post on someone else’s blog. Eery, but cool. Mostly cool.

That’s just a few immediate examples of how companies are using Twitter effectively. And there are dozens, if not hundreds, of small businesses, like Indianapolis-based MediaSauce, who are using the tool. MediaSauce has a private company feed that only the employees get access to. The Saucers get company updates from the feed, and can even respond if they follow with a private MediaSauce-only Twitter account.

What about you? Do you work for a company that uses Twitter? Know one that does? Know one that should? Let me hear from you.

Tags: customer service, Social Media, social networking, twitter
Posted in Lead Generation, Social Media, Social Networks, Twitter | 1 Comment »

5 People You Will Meet on Twitter

Thursday, October 29th, 2009

If you’re new to Twitter, you’ll run into several different types of people on the network. Some of them are worth following, some should be avoided, and some you’ll have to make up your mind about. Choose wisely and carefully, and you should have a useful, valuable, and enjoyable Twitter experience.

The “I Had a Bagel for Breakfast” Guy: These are the people most Twitter haters point to as their reason for, well, hating Twitter. And can you blame them?

@PayAttention2Me: Walking the dog. BRB
@PayAttention2Me: Have to visit the little Twitterer’s room.
@PayAttention2Me: Late for a meeting.
@PayAttention2Me: Gawd, this meeting is so BORRRING!

And that’s just before frigging lunchtime.

@PayAttention2Me: I tweet more boring shit before 9 am than most people do all day.

Recommendation: It’s up to you. Some people like this kind of thing.
The Internet Marketer: The bane of the Twitter existence. First they screwed up email with their magic pills, counterfeit watches, and deposed royalty from far-off countries with millions of dollars. Then they cluttered up the Internet with videos of naked people doing stuff naked people like to do. And now they’re on Twitter, offering to teach me how to make money online, find more Twitter followers, and then bug the crap out of those followers so I can make more money while I sleep.
“Tell your friends,” they say.

“No thanks, I’d like to keep them,” I say, and then hit the Block/Spam button. Then I DM @Spam (Twitter’s Spam reporting account) with their user name for good measure. Then I create little effigies and set fire to them.

To these people, I have one thing to say: We freaking hate you!!!

Nobody likes you, nobody is paying attention to you, nobody wants to follow you, except for the other 30,000 people in your “Sign up here and get 2,000 followers per day” network. And you people have created such an obnoxious echo chamber that none of you are paying the slightest bit of attention to the fact that you’re only talking to a bunch of other spammers, none of whom are going to sign up for your services. You are beneath my contempt.

Recommendation: Avoid them, block them, @Spam them.
The Thought Leader: These are people who are either trying to make a big name for themselves or have already done so. We often advise people trying to become thought leaders to use Twitter as part of their social media efforts. They try extra hard to add value to those they connect with, so they won’t pester you with a lot of pap. They’ll give you useful information and are someone worth paying attention to.
Recommendation: It’s up to you, but if they’re in your industry, follow them.
Quote Generators: All these people do is send out motivational quotes like you’ve just grabbed a handful of fortune cookies at a Zig Ziglar seminar. And I have to tell you, I’m not a fan. I don’t mind the occasional motivational quote to help me kickstart my day. Just not seven times a day, every day This isn’t that valuable. If I want to be bombarded by motivational platitudes, I’ll create a Tony Robbins playlist on Pandora.
Recommendation: Follow or don’t follow. There is no try.
Your Industry Colleagues and Community Members: These may be people you already know, people you only know by reputation, or people in your same field or industry. You want to be in contact with these people, because they can help you find solutions to problems, answer questions, and maybe even help you network your way to your next job. Use sites like Twitterment.com and NearbyTweets.com as a way to find the people you should connect with.
Recommendation: Follow. Without hesitation.

By the way, you should always follow your friends. You’re already friends with them on Facebook and LinkedIn. Now is not the time to start questioning whether they add value to your lives.

Tags: networking, social networking, twitter
Posted in Social Media, Social Networks, Twitter | 1 Comment »

Posts Tagged: social networking

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