Reflections on Social Media at the end of the "bin Laden Era"

Gary Nickerson, my husband and colleague, offered his acute observations on the relevance of social media in the aftermath of Osama bin Laden's death on his blog yesterday. As an addicted Twitter user and follower myself, I found it to be dead on (pardon the pun). And, for those of you venturing into the social media world, I think you'll find it useful. Check it out:

"May 3, 2011 - In the sixties, we used to say the the "Revolution will not be televised." Of course, that was wrong, as shown especially by recent events. However, the fact is that television has lagged in its coverage of all of those events. If you wanted to keep up to date, you had to follow what was going on from the source via FaceBook and Twitter. Often, these events were more reliably reported on those sources than on television news, simply because they were done on the spot. So, what does this have to do with bin Laden?

Well, it turns out that the first news about bin Laden's death came from an an unknown source in the White House. He or she tweeted about it half an hour before the President was scheduled to speak and a few hours before he actually did speak. From there the news spread virally, as we in the Internet world say, and was shortly fodder for TV and radio coverage. I saw it on FaceBook before I heard it announced on CNN.

The point is that if you want to be able to keep up with the actual news, you need to follow Internet sources. This is true even when it comes to regular International  reporting. For example, Al Jazeera, which has no cable outlets but is available on the web, was a better and earlier source of good reporting on the Middle East before CNN International and the networks for quite a while. They simply initially had more and more experienced reporters in place!
But to really keep up, especially with unofficial sources, the raw Internet is still best.  "We are all Khaled Said" on FaceBook was the voice of the Egyptian revolution. Libya Ahurra broadcast live from Benghazzi during the uprising in Libya and gave much better and more reliable news that all the regular news sources that were themselves relying on "official" sources.

The lesson of all this is that if you are not plugged into Internet sources, you are likely to be getting yesterday's news even on TV and radio. Yes, the revolution will be televised, but by then it will be old news.

The message is that you can keep up."

Check out Gary's other writings here.

Adventures with Blogging 101 - Part 2

As I mentioned in a previous blog post, I recently took a webinar on blogging for business with Social Media Magic. It was taught by Dave Barnhart. It was great. I learned things I wish I hadn't and other things I'm glad I did. My previous post was about things didn't want to hear about... ('cause they mean more work for me!)

And now I thought I'd mention some of the cool things I was happy to discover. Here are some:

1. Blog posts can be short and sweet. Its actually good to have long and short blog posts - so posting weekly or even twice weekly doesn't have to be a burden (phew!)
   
2. What to blog about? This was especially helpful in terms of building a brand. There are four topics Dave suggested you blog about;
   

• Aspects of your business you're passionate about (I've done virtually no blogging on that - oops!)
• Industry trends (I think I've done a fair amount of blogging on that...)
• Behind the scenes of your business (one might consider this blog post in that category.)
• And personal stuff. He recommends between 5-15% of your posts fall into this category (I've done many blog posts related to my passion for social activism - not sure if that counts as personal...) And it seems from what Dave's saying, I could mention something about my love of animals and the many rescue efforts we've engaged in (for instance, last year we drove 6 injured pigeons three hours upstate to a sanctuary, after having nursed one pigeon back to health for a year. - I know.)

I'm also a fine artist and painter when the spirit moves me. Did I mention my pet portrait website? (No. I thought that would be confusing. Now I may choose to mention it within the context of sharing something "personal".) Sneaky huh?

It had been my strategy, up until now, simply to experiment with blogging; find out how much time it takes, see if I enjoy it and determine if I'm really willing to commit to it. Learning about advanced tactics and strategy at this juncture is perfect timing. I followed what he was talking about easily because it wasn't theoretical, I had already been blogging.

My next step then, as a business, is to articulate a revised strategy based on what I've learned and go forward from there.

All and all it was a great webinar. Those are some of the highlights. I hope it helps you as you think about blogging for your situation.

Adventures with Blogging 101 - Part 1

I was talking with a women the other day about possibly re-designing her website.  She spoke about being overwhelmed by all the technology that comes with being on the internet as a business. I could only empathize. I do this for a living, and I find the amount of information there is to process and learn about an ongoing challenge. And in other ways, I'm completely excited by it all. The possibilities are really quite amazing. I have a bit of a love hate relationship with it all.

Today I took a webinar on blogging for business with Social Media Magic. It was taught by Dave Barnhart. It was great overall. I learned things I wish I hadn't and other things I'm glad I did. Here's what I didn't want to hear... (Did I mention I have a love hate relationship?)

1. The minimum one should blog is once a week. Posting twice a week is even better. And anything beyond that is "prolific". I've been blogging sporadically about twice a month. And why, you may ask must you blog more? The frequency of posts makes your blog more likely to be found by Google. And that's a good thing.
2. Blogger is not the best platform to be blogging on. (shhhhh - don't tell blogger!) Wordpress.org and Typepad are preferred. Well I already knew that, now I know why. They both have trackback features and technorati tags and blogger doesn't. Those are fancy things that help you track and gauge your efforts. Sort of important wouldn't you agree?

The reason I'm unhappy to learn these things is it means more work for me, like writing more blog posts, and moving over to WordPress. As a small business owner, more work is never good news. Sigh...

There were also things I learned that I was happy to discover. However, to find out what they were, you'll have to come back and visit my blog next time. (This is part of my strategy to start posting once or twice a week. See how it works??)

To be continued....

Crazy fun with Social Media - FaceBook for business?? Really?

This post is about using FaceBook (FB) for business. It's more about logistics than strategy. I thought I'd share some of my decision making process/experimentation here because I know other multi-talented business owners are also grappling with questions of how to manage online identities and how to use FB for business.

I've just set up two business "pages" for my businesses. I did that because I decided I really want to use FB mostly for keeping in touch with friends and family. Now when business contacts ask to be my friend on FB, I can say, "please become a "fan" of my business, I'm using FB for staying in touch with friends and family".

However, I may live to regret my choice! Keeping up with two profiles will be twice the work. I'm also an artist with a separate website for my pet portraits - so now three times the work. You see the problem!

First of all, FB was designed for you to stay in touch with friends and family. That is how FB wants you to use their service. If you solicit business directly, this will probably cause you to violate FB's terms of use, and they may well delete your profile - no questions asked, no warnings given. So keep that in mind. That being said, there are some recommended best practices about how to use FB for business. (In fact, let me give a shout out to Social Media Magic University (SMMU) and Jennifer Shaheen who teach this stuff).

Now, some people want to use FB exclusively for business. That means they use it for business networking. Their profile is more professionally focused. They aren't soliciting business directly as much as they are building relationships, demonstrating expertise and sharing information of value. For those who don't want to use facebook for keeping up with friends and family, the choice is pretty easy.

The issue that many people face howerver is - what if I want to do both - keep up with family, and also connect around business?? Like myself. Well here are some of our choices:

1. Use a single profile to represent yourself and your business. Intermingle business, family and friends and just determine in advance how you want to balance both and post to your wall with that in mind. You can use the privacy settings to help control what is seen on your wall and by whom. This option is recommended by many experts simply because managing a number of different profiles - one for personal and one for business can be hard to keep up with.
2. The next option is to use your personal profile for friends and family and set up a FB "page" to represent your business. Here are both of my pages for examples Carol Hillson Creative on FB and Carol's Pet Portraits on FB. To set up a business "page" click on the "advertising" link at the very bottom of the page, and then click on the "pages" link at the top of that page. (They don't make it easy!) This approach is actually what FB wants you to do with business. A "page" is a lot like a personal profile, except you invite "fans" rather than "friends" and it has analytics to help you measure the impact of your posts and or marketing efforts.
3. You can also start a group for your business - however, groups are meant more for facilitating discussions and there are no analytics. 

I'll keep you posted if I think I made the right choice. The jury is certainly out for now.

To be continued...

The dark (and bright) side to Social Media...

I met with a colleague the other day and we talked about Social Media Marketing (SMM). It is on everyone's minds these days. It promises great opportunity and also some peril. I'll give an example of each and suggest some tools I found that might help you manage some of the risk.

Here is an example of the opportunity:

Universal Orlando Resorts was launching a new Harry Potter theme park. They had an unlimited budget for getting the word out. But instead of spending tens of thousands of dollars on conventional marketing, the person heading the team invited 7 of the most popular bloggers to a private webcast at midnight and told them the news. Within 24 hours 350 million people knew about the theme park launch.
source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RP4mwdMtlEM

Moral of the story:

1. Clearly, it helps to have the world's most famous wizard at your disposal!
2. SMM has a crazy powerful exponential factor that can work for large and small companies alike and save you a bundle.
3. SMM is built on word of mouth, which is so much more trusted and therefore powerful than "paid" advertising.

But as I said, there are some perils (and a few horror stories too!) Here's an example of one of the perils:

The colleague I visited told me a story about a well known construction company in NYC that had a fine reputation among the general public for years. Though among other construction professionals, their work was not known for being of the highest quality. This company was early in their industry to embrace SMM, and perhaps it was a bit easier back then to manage and even remove negative publicity if and when it did surface. So their reputation, among the general public, remained intact. Well, as SMM has grown since then, it's become harder to manipulate reviews posted online. Apparently, not too long ago, a few negative posts from the general public began to surface about this company. Today they are facing an avalanche of bad posts and their reputation is getting slammed.

Moral of the story:

1. Most important – provide quality products and services!
2. Deal with complaints proactively
3. Make sure part of your ongoing SMM strategy includes the ability to monitor and manage your reputation online

And as I promised, here are some tools to help you do that.

Google alerts - lots of people use this and its pretty simple, straight forward and free. You can enter a phrase for it to search, and when the phrase shows up in Google, you get an alert in your email. However, I tested it and it failed to track a twitter post in real time, so I decided looked at some other tools. However, there is a great article here that helps you determine which keywords you might want to track. The principles apply whichever tool you choose to use.

http://steprep.myfrontsteps.com - I LOVE this tool! What I love about it it's free, easy to use and very robust - you can REALLY manage your reputation, not just monitor it. I also love how I found it – I didn't! It found me. I tweeted about some of the other reputation management tools I had looked at, and StepRep tweeted me and invited me to check them out. Now that's SMM at its best! I investigated and I'm really happy I did. It's a GREAT tool. Go and see for yourself!

http://www.trackur.com - they have range of price points that's quite reasonable for small businesses and nonprofits. Using them is pretty simple and they have a 60 second tutorial. Also they rate the posts on the internet (about your company) as good, bad and neutral. This helps you see at a glance if there's anything to deal with.

http://www.buzzaround.us - this is a very cool, easy to use tool. Not a lot of bells and whistles, but you can add it to your tool bar and see who's talking about you very easily. And its free. Always nice!

So don't be afraid of SMM (its too late for that anyway - it is already here!) Do some research, take it in small steps and learn what you can to be prepared. Then go and have fun!

Twitter comes with instructions

My toothpaste still comes with instructions:

"for best results squeeze the tube from the bottom and flatten as you go up"

One of my great annoyances with new technology (sometimes a tad more complicated than a tube of tooth paste) is how few new gizmos seem to have any instructions at all!

Well, apparently that is a marketing niche opportunity for many. If you don't yet know how to work with twitter... guess what, someone has come up with some instructions. http://mashable.com/guidebook/twitter/

And if you already "drank the koolaid" but still feel like a newbie - here's how to customize your twitter background http://mashable.com/2009/05/23/twitter-backgrounds/

As with all products...

"For best results, read and use sparingly.
Warning: Social Media can be highly addictive!"

Is Facebook using YOUR photos in other people's ADs?

Facebook has agreed to let 3rd party advertisers use your posted photos without your explicit permission. If you want to avoid this, click on SETTINGS (located on top of page in blue bar, next to logout); select PRIVACY SETTINGS; select NEWS FEED and WALL; select the TAB that reads Facebook Ads. There will be a drop down box; Select NO ONE!

This tip came to me via several different people - it has the viral vibe! Thanks Internet!

So you're thinking of starting a blog....

Part One: Why?

I'm in the same boat. I'm part of a networking group of about 30 people. And this Thanksgiving I received, you guessed it, about 29 emails wishing me a happy Thanksgiving. I thought to myself, this is what we're all told "we must do"; keep in touch with prospects and clients. So we email, send newsletters, and start blogs. Now I'm VERY mindful of how much stuff is out there, too much information if you ask me. Do I really want to contribute to the clutter?? NO.

So then what do I do? Sure I can design but what do I have to say?? What do I have that's worth saying? Who would benefit from hearing it? These are the questions I have to answer before I'm willing to publicize a blog. I can write privately for a while and work out the kinks and no one will be the wiser! The notion of "if you build it they will come" doesn't often work in business, websites or blogs. That's my opinion. Its more likely "if you build it, create a solid marketing strategy and follow through implementing your strategy over time, being sure to keep up with the latest technology and search engine optimization techniques etc..., they will come, eventually."

I could see a win/win situation though. I don't actually enjoy writing all that much - being a visual person and all. And yet, writing and speaking about my business gives me an opportunity to get better at articulating what I do, why it matters, and how it can help people. It also positions me as an expert in my field. We've all heard this advice, right? And it seems pretty sound actually. And if I can discover, with words, the value of what I offer, I'd be delighted to share it. That's the other side of win/win - there will be people out there who will benefit from my expertise. That's an educated guess, based on how much information I depend on accessing on a daily basis. Lots. So its really a matter of discerning what I offer that is of value, and who exactly values it. And of course, articulating it to those particular people in a way that contributes to them.

So my strategy is this: a practice pre-blog

1. I'll write a blog every week (if I can remember that I'm starting one).
   
2. I'll publish it, but won't publicize it until I feel comfortable with what I'm writing.
3. In that time, I'll expect to have answered those questions I asked above: What do I have that's worth saying? Who would benefit from hearing it?
   
4. Meanwhile, I'll have some practice writing about what business on a weekly basis. I'm guessing I'll get better at it...
   
5. Then I'll start my real blog, delete old posts that don't seem relevant or professionally meaningful and target my audience - namely people who will benefit from hearing my experience about design, advertising and how it can help inspire social change.

So this is step one. Publish a blog post that no one will comment on, that I won't publicize until I'm comfortable with the content and feel confident its a contribution and not more clutter.