You’ve played with Twitter and perhaps gotten past the “Emperor’s New Clothes” feeling that there’s a lot of Buzz about nothing.
You have gotten past that, haven’t you?
Let’s chat
Today’s Getting Started lesson is going to “resemble” a conversation . . .
However, since I’m the only one in the room, I’ll have to make up your part, i.e., the questions.
That gives me an edge — especially if I select only questions I can answer 🙂
Our Conversation Begins:
“Describe Twitter & what it does”
Twitter has often been described as “Micromedia’ or “Microblogging.” As a user, you are provided with a tiny notepad — think IM on your computer and text message on your cell phone.
What Twitter DOES: (a) forces the writer to be concise, but (b) allows messages about an unlimited number of topics for an unlimited number of uses.
What you DO: (a) decide Who is worth “listening” to, i.e., following AS WELL AS (b) choose what you broadcast according to Why you have chosen to use this online tool.
Find out if your customers, and prospective customers are on Twitter: (1) Follow them; (2) Hope they follow you back; (3) In the meantime, engage them in conversations by using the @name function [after you have read their tweet]; (4) Offer VALUE with your own tweets — give them a reason to click on your website link.
Build a closer community feeling with your customers?
See answers (1) – (3) above, but this is your new (4) Your tweets should show that you are listening by offering sincerity and solutions — inspire trust and offer value from the relationship.
Establish or change your organization’s reputation?
This requires LOTS and LOTS of “communication auditing,” i.e. listening. TIPS: (a) Go to search.twitter.com and begin by simply putting your company name in the search box. You will see a REAL-TIME [i.e. as it is happening] stream of the Tweets that mention your name; (b) Click on the icon; read the person’s tweets; follow him or her; and monitor their tweets.
LATER you will want to engage them in Twitter conversations. This is where the “community-building” will offer an opportunity to spread good will and good words.
Find out what your competitors are up to?
Again, search.twitter.com for mentions of those “others” in the marketplace.
Know how to find and hire the best employees?
Of course, LinkedIn [Step THREE] will be your best source to act on this objective. However, you can tweet your job opportunities and then check our responders by their other online presences — as well as their personal tweet streams.
Discover trends as they are happening?
Here are some Twitter-related websites to check out the Trend Landscape:
Here is where you can shine — and promote that “lustre”: Blog about your expertise, start a Squidoo lens, answer a question on Linkedin. Whatever you do, tell the Twitterverse with a teaser and a link in your Tweet.
Monitor the marketplace to see what people are saying about you, your products, and/or your industry?
Search.twitter.com ONCE AGAIN: Put in who and what and see what’s being discussed — and the tone of the discussion. Whom/what do people like, and what don’t they?
Learn how to be a better, more efficient, effective business person?
Love this one. Find smart people to follow; then click on the links they suggest; find time to read the information. [Bookmarking won’t be enough. Do you ever get back to those bookmarks?]
“And now, I want to know . . .”
Ooooops, time is up for today’s session. But don’t you have some homework to do? And, besides, you can always add those questions to the comments, and we can look at them next time.
Q: How many times have I heard people praising the opportunities on Ning.com?
A: Countless times — at least a dozen any way, and three times last week:
During a phone conversation with a fellow social media evangelist
During the #smbookclub discussion I moderated
During the SM ROI panel discussion sponsored by Women in Consulting [for which I took videos now on YouTube@sharisax]
The Time for Ning was NOW
And it was quite easy . . . and more importantly for lots of us . . . did not take much time.
So what is Ning and why did I create my presence there?
Ning is a tool/platform that allows you to set up YOUR OWN Social Network — with what appears to me to have different capabilities and ease-of-use than, say, a Facebook Fanpage. To my mind, it is more personable . . . and, well, less Facebook-y . . . which means more of you, and what you want.
While my Ning site is far from “complete,” what it does have now is a FORUM I set up so that “newbies” can ask me [and my interns] questions about HOW TO GET STARTED WITH SOCIAL MEDIA — the question that plagues so many small business people [mostly Baby Boomers] who are gradually “seeing the light” but don’t have a clue where to begin.
There are a lot of people like me “out there” who do want to help. The people I’m meeting are invited to ask me their questions on the Ning forum.
If you are reading this post, of course, sign in to the Ning forum and ask away.
Here’s a question for starters: Just how do external links help pump your Google Juice?
My Performance Social Media partner Les Ross has been hounding me for months to begin Squidoo-ing . . . yet another link to drive traffic to my blog.
And yesterday was the perfect day, especially since Squidoo founder Seth Godin announced his own new Squidoo launch Brands in Public. You can read on his blog post about how companies can now aggregate everything being said about their brands in one place WHERE they can comment right alongside.
I do want my readers to check out my own Squidoo site, but I just got it started . . . and that is the key: JUST GET STARTED.
BTW, Good luck to my brother Chuck, who is going to start a Facebook fanpage for his Temple in Hawaii. He told me he was going to follow my advice and learn a new social media platform/tool every week.
Every day we hear of “new” or “new-to-us” social media tools and platforms. How is a person, or a company, to choose what to use?
The Top Three: Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter are “no-brainers,” i.e. you really do need to sign up and start experimenting and/or incorporate your participation into your daily routine.
But what about the rest of the dozens and dozens and dozens [100’s] of sites?
We ask this question a lot in PR class, so the students worked in teams to examine 15 online sites: Google Reader, Zemanta, Flickr, Technorati, Squidoo, Ezine Articles, Del.ici.ous, Stumbleupon, Friendfeed, Digg, RSS, BlipTV, Hub Pages, Truveo, and Vimeo.
After brief team reports, the class as a whole voted on one of three options; (a) They would definitely check out the site for personal use; (b) They “might” check it out; or (c) They had NO intention of seeking out more details about the site.
The most popular platform by far was Flickr, followed by Delicious and RSS, with Technorati and Google Reader also scoring high in the (a) option. The lowest scoring sites included Ezine Articles, Truveo, and Vimeo.
Below [in the order seen by the students] is a brief description of each site, with a student comment, and the reported “scores”:
Google Reader:Helps you follow all your favorite sites by managing RSS feeds on one page. Free and easy to use: “Google Reader is a great site with sharing capabilities. You can subscribe to blogs and other sites on a regular basis, which reduces search time considerably” – Jason Khorge.
Class vote on Google Reader: (a) 13 will definitely check it out. (b) 31 said they may check it out; (c) 4 voted against.
Zemanta:This free Firefox add-on download that offers related web content — both text and visuals — that can help bloggers link and use valuable online information. “Zemanta is a great assistant for bloggers because it is easy to use, cuts down research time and enables content producers to enrich their publications with just a few clicks.” — Alisa Guan “I’m interested in checking out Zemanta to help me upgrade my blog. The suggested articles could help me give a more informed and useful opinion.” — Angelica Maduell
Class vote on Zemanta: (a) 14; (b) 24; (c) 13
Flickr: Online photo management and sharing web community. “”In my eyes, Flickr has garnered a lot of attention from reputable photographers and amateurs alike. It’s definitely a haven for people who want to share their passion for picture-taking and connecting with others of similar interests.” — Sarah Awang Razali “I personally thing that Flickr is really useful because of the quality of content provided on it. There are personal pages and professional pages, and all users are equally respected within the community. A lot of the photos are also the basis for much online content. They say, ‘a picture is worth a thousand words,’ so thousands of pictures must be worth a lifetime of endless content.: — Frank Lin
Class vote on Flickr: (a) 31; (b) 18; (c) 2
Technorati: Top rated blog search engine that indexes more than 1.5 million blog posts in real time. “I’m always looking for new blogs to follow and I think Technorati can really help me enlarge my collection.” — Petya Somleva
Class vote on Technorati: (a) 17; (b) 15; (c) 18
Squidoo:Content publishing on steroids: Free community website that allows users to publish pages [lenses] on line in a wide range of topics, virtually anythinhereg a person is passionate about. “Squidoo appealed to me the most, and I believe it has the greatest opportunity to grow. Providing such a diverse collection of material means it can reach a wide variety of interests.” — Liz Looney “I like the free Squidoo community website where content you’re interested in is easy to find. It is easy to use, simple to post comments, and you can earn money for charity.” — Brandon Wong
Class vote on Squidoo: (a) 13; (b) 31; (c) 4
Ezine Articles: Publishing site for original articles including tips, strategies, techniques, analysis, and case studies. Great for sending links back to a website. Sadly, no students chose to write an opinion about this site.
Class vote on Ezine: (a) 2; (b) 14; (c) 27
Del.ici.ous:A social bookmarking service that allows uses to save websites online, share them with other people, and see what other people are bookmarking. “You can build a mountain of information before ever adding a single bookmark. You find Del.ici.ous users who have saved articles you enjoy reading. Add their names to your network and with a single click, you can save all their bookmarks. That was amazing to me.” — Sarah Awang Razali
Stumbleupon:An Internet community that allows users to find, share, and rate favorite websites. “I was really impressed by Stumbleupon, particularly when someone said it was ‘a good site to waste a lot of time on the Internet.’ That being said lightly, it did strike me as the kind of site you could go on and be entertained by by topical content. I could see this website becoming part of my daily routine.” — Anna Rahnvonih
Class vote on Stumbleupon: (a) 5; (b) 20; (c) 16
Friendfeed: This microblogging site offers users a stream of updates which, unlike Twitter but similar to Facebook, allows comments and conversations to attach to updates. “With the decreasing popularity of MySpace and the growth of Twitter and Facebook, I think Friendfeed may just be the next best platform, using features from all three of these social networking sites.” — Sheena Diaz “I like the added Friendfeed feature of receiving feedback underneath your post.” — Ashley Dordan
Class vote on Friendfeed: (a) 12; (b) 27; (c) 5
Digg: A user-driven sharing site that is divided into categories for easy search. It also allows you to connect with Facebook and Twitter to share sites. “I am considering Digg because it filters news and other topics by what is important to other people.” — Caroll Vongsouthi
Class vote on Digg: (a) 6; (b) 35; (c) 7
RSS:Stands for “Really Simple syndication” and simplifies the process of getting information. It is a data format used for supplying frequently updated content. “RSS feeds allow you to easily get the latest information that you are interested in and they build Google Juice for shared sites.” — Bo Zhang
Class vote on RSS: (a) 22; (b) 21; (c) 3
BlipTV:Website for video distribution intended for anyone who wants to create a webshow to share with the world. “This site offers free hosting in any video format and tells you who is looking at your page and how they found you. I will definitely check it out.” — Ashley Hall “It’s interesting that you can find sponsors and earn revenue.: — Diedre Moseley
Class vote on BlipTV: (a) 10; (b) 28; (c) 4
Hub Pages:Website is designed for sharing advertising revenue for high quality, user-generated content. Members create individual pages on narrow topics based on the users interest. Not as popular with students as Squidoo.
Class vote on Hub Pages: (a) 3; (b) 25; (c) 18
Truveo: Video search engine that allows users to embed videos through a third party site like YouTube. It has a rating feature, and you can save favorites. “Truveo has many ways to search, e.g., by categories like business or comedy, by TV stations, by name of show. You need to become a member if you want to rate videos and add them to your favorites.” — McKenzie Hanson
Vimeo: Video file sharing and uploading site specifically for noncommercial content.Caters to a high-end artistic crowd. “Users can share or embed. Other options include title, byline, and portrait of the video listing beofre it starts playing. Videos can be enhanced with site tools.” — Riciaig Panlaqui
Class vote on Truveo & Vimeo: (a) 11; (b) 11; (c) 23
Student comments after the two-day experience:
I’ll be honest, I’m not a blogger. I don’t use Twitter and at times I don’t understand all the hype about these forms of social media. However, after seeing these presentations, there is no doubt in my mind the importance of these new media platforms. It’s plain and simple — if you want to spread the word, you MUST use these forms of social media. — Liz Looney
It was interesting to see how social media has exploded in recent years. Seeing all the sites — big and small — showed how each has its unique features. A lot of people do not realize that a small not very well known site today might in fact be the most popular six months from now. Anyone starting to use social media for business needs to check out many of these sites. — Eddie Neyman
From these presentations, I learned a lot of useful tools that will come in handy when I start looking for a job. Some of my favorites were the ones that help you find related articles on certain topics. Too often, I have the hardest time finding good information. — McKensie Hanson
With all the information presented, I feel like I’m already falling behind in the online social media world. To really be able to participate in all the social media sites, I will have to invest an outrageous amount of time. I plan to get involved by signing up for a handful of sites that I can keep up with. This was a great opportunity to learn that many sites can bring news and articles I like, rather than for me always having to search. — Caroll Vongsouthi
