Ayloo is the World’s First Conversation Network

Today I had the pleasure of interviewing Shaun Swanson, who is a member of the Ayloo team. Post interview, I wrote: “Well, it’s official. You’ve completely have my respect and admiration. This interview will be one for the memory books. Very impressive!”.

Shaun expressed his desire to establish separate voices for his Ayloo team saying “I think allowing for us to have our own individual opinions, separate from Ayloo’s, also cushions us in a necessary way – separates us from the politics a bit – which allows us to be very open with our ideas and beliefs, so that we can effectively communicate them to our users and the blogging community giving us the necessary feedback we need to remain relevant to our users. That’s a pretty Important thing for Ayloo, I think: communicating and listening to our users and peers. And that’s something that I think is missing from current social networks. But I’m sure we’ll get to all that below.”

So let’s get started finally, eh?

Q:  Can you briefly explain what Ayloo is and why people should join?

A: Most succinctly, I would state that Ayloo is a ‘conversation network.’ Since we’re kind of coining that term, though, I’d better go into more detail so people don’t just shrug and walk away!

Ayloo is a place to have meaningful conversation with the people you know and the communities you care about. This is the one-sentence spiel we’ve been toting around a lot lately, and it’s quite loaded so I’ll spend this question really breaking it down. The justification for why I believe this sentence is true will be addressed in the following question (as, really, our focus on conversation is what separates us from current social networks and makes us unique).

What do we mean by ‘meaningful?’ Well, I think I can speak for a lot of current social network users when I say that it can be difficult sometimes to find an interaction where people are really digging deep into a subject. Being from a technical background myself, I can recall a lot of times when I’d post a status update on Facebook that would start a technical discussion I was enjoying… and it would be pretty much quelled by the third or fourth comment.

I’m not saying that every interaction on Facebook (or any other social network) should be technical, or ‘deep,’ but I do think it’s difficult to have those interactions when you want to using current networks. So I would claim Ayloo is a place (for reasons specified in question 2’s response) where these kinds of deeper interactions can occur… and they can occur as often as you’d like!

Now why ‘people you know,’ and why mention ‘communities?’ Well, we are going for a Facebook-like social graph, in the sense that we would like people to mostly connect with their friends, family, co-workers, etc. Actually, that’s only partially true. From what I’ve seen with our beta community, people mostly connect initially with people they know, but when they start to join in on the communities on Ayloo (which I’ll discuss in a second), they end up getting to know many people they didn’t originally.

So maybe I should refine my previous statement to say that only initially is your graph Facebook-like. But no matter what it evolves into, I believe you can always argue that your contacts are people you ‘know,’ either in real life or through interacting on Ayloo. And we give you the means to interact with self-defined groups of your contacts on your own terms via our ‘contact lists’ feature.

Ayloo hosts local communities, called ‘streams,’ which are connected through our social graph. They are ‘local’ as defined with respect to you (not necessarily geographically). This local nature is Important for what we’re trying to construct with Ayloo – no matter how big Ayloo gets, you’ll mostly join streams that your contacts are in. So at any given moment, you have defined with respect to yourself a social graph of relationships with people in your life and the communities they form online.

A good example of the non-geographic nature of this ‘locality’ is a public stream called ‘World news.’ It’s made up of people who are in each others’ contact lists – so they know each other – but they’re from the U.S., Sweden, etc. And that really allows for the inclusion of many different perspectives in a conversation, which is quite valuable (and is actually something we’re pursuing further through some of our marketing efforts).

Q: How does Ayloo compare to Google+ and Facebook? What makes Ayloo unique?

A: The main difference between Ayloo and other networks is that, rather than focusing on connecting as many users and content as quickly as possible for brief interactions, we aim to improve the quality of the interactions (conversations) on our network through support of relationships formed, interests shared, and communities built between our users.

I’d like to state right off the bat that I don’t think we’re in direct competition with Google+, Facebook, or Twitter (In fact, we just integrated Twitter into our site in a pretty big way just recently). The goals of our ‘competitors’ are way different from our own. Their style of social networking provides a steady stream of content in a certain way, and it’s not necessarily a bad thing… it’s simply not what we’re aiming for.

People are going to use current social networks to stay in touch through status updates and to share content quickly and briefly with their friends for the foreseeable future. We just want to put our service out there for when people want to talk more substantially and consistently about topics they’re passionate about.

Now here’s the part where I justify everything I’ve claimed above! Ready?

Our network empowers users to take control of their identity online, and offers the proper context or interactions so you can feel comfortable and speak your mind. Through the streams that form on Ayloo, people with similar interests gather to discuss topics they’re passionate about. So, through proper context, control, and the ability to find relevant and interesting content, we foster more meaningful conversation.

Let’s go into them in more detail (I hope I’m not boring you to death!).

Context: We are the only network out there right now that gives you complete context for every interaction on the site. Facebook’s new privacy push allows you to see who your friends have shared with (i.e. Friends of Friends) but not the people specifically. Google+ does better in allowing you to see specific people who were shared with, but they cut off the number after about 23 or something.

Context on our site is central and we believe the communication we have on Ayloo is better because people feel comfortable and can be themselves (or whatever version of themselves) around others. This seems natural, and leads to less broad-casting and self-branding and more genuine interaction.

Content and Control: Facebook’s new privacy features have improved the ability of their users to control who they send content to (as we’ve dubbed ‘user output control’), which is basically what Google+ pioneered with circles and what we’ve had on our site in the form of contact lists. Neither network currently has good ‘user input control,’ however – where you can really control what content is coming at you.

We feel there’s an abundance of (often) irrelevant content hitting your eyes every day on traditional social networks and in order to fix this we’ve focused our site around the aforementioned online communities where people can join and find the content that interests them at any given moment. And on top of input and output control, we are also heavily feedback-focused.

We believe our users should have control of the direction of the site itself. Instead of making them feel like our customers, we really want to treat our users as peers — and we believe Ayloo should constantly evolve to keep up with their desires for the network.

To really seal the deal, we also provide the means to evolve conversation organically. Our ‘Sprouts’ feature keeps conversation fresh and gives users the opportunity to explore interesting directions within a conversation that they may have overlooked otherwise.

Q: What are the main selling points of Ayloo?

A: Since I’ve already covered a lot of the selling points, I’ll interpret this question to mean ‘Who would be interested in Ayloo?’

Of the tools available on the internet today, two of our stream types most closely resemble traditional blogs and forums. To the best of my knowledge, no one before us has combined them together with a social graph, however, which I believe actually enhances all three components.

We’ve already covered how adding streams to a social graph benefits the users in terms of input control and content discovery. Ayloo will also appeal strongly to bloggers who have had trouble in the past establishing a steady audience and to forum-goers who wish they could easily integrate people they know into discussions they’re passionate about.

Q: In the “Working With Us” section on your website, it explains how Ayloo can be used for business. Do you have an example of how a business can benefit from using Ayloo and where you envision this going in the future?

A: First and foremost, I want to make it clear that our users always come first in any decisions we’ll make. As a company, Ayloo doesn’t condone the act of gathering our users’ information to sell to third parties. We are currently exploring monetization options that will keep our users’ privacy secure and will actually add a lot of value to their experience.

In my opinion, ads aren’t tremendously effective. We’re getting immune to them. And even if data doesn’t back me up on that, I’d still argue that they lead to pretty weak branding and hardly ever add value to the user’s experience.

Our first step will likely be to move ads out of your personal space online. Private streams and feeds for contact list posts will be completely ad-free. Ads will likely show up in Ayloo’s public streams, but the power will be in the users’ hands – they get to choose what brands to feature for their community based on aesthetics, brand-loyalty, interactions brands may have with these (often) interest-based communities, etc.

But we don’t want to stick with ads forever. We have bigger plans, but we’re not yet ready to reveal much. What we can say is that we’re hoping to give brands the tools they need to create unique social experiences for those public streams that choose to enhance their communities with an interested brand’s presence. Vague enough for you? Haha.

This dedicated branding channel on Ayloo is not yet established, but we will allow interested parties to sign up for a brand invitation during the sign-up process. We’ll be releasing more information concerning these efforts in the near future.

Thanks for the interview!

3 Things We Can Learn From the Google+ Suggested User List Fiasco

By Corina Mackay

The growing community on Google+ has recently been up in arms about Google’s creation of a suggested user list. The list is presented to new users during the sign-up process, encouraging them to ‘supercharge’ their stream by following celebrities and influential users chosen by the Google team. The controversy over the selection of users and Robert Scoble’s public request to be removed from the list brought up three important points for me, which I think we can all
learn from.

1. Values are important
Scoble’s decision to be removed from the suggested users list shows his determination to make choices based on what’s important to him, rather than what other people think. When developing your personal or business brand online, be clear about what your values, standards and goals are, and stick to them. Not only will people respect you, but you’ll attract like-minded people who will help you expand your network. In short, be yourself, and make choices you can live with.

2. No social network is free from politics
Google+ is not the first social network to implement a suggested user list. As Scoble pointed out, Twitter and Instagram did the same thing some time ago. Whether it’s choosing a suggested user list or implementing new features, any social network will draw controversy and politics when it rolls out changes. Remember Facebook’s privacy issues? Google’s privacy problems with Buzz? Getting involved in these dramas for the sake of it
will only diminish the quality of your content and conversations. Using controversy to generate conversations and discuss new ideas, however, will keep your content relevant and your followers engaged.

3. Content will always win out. As Craig Kanalley pointed out, the list is not all-encompassing. Many users were not included, despite having large, engaged followings, or being known to create great content. So long as you’re not using social media to win a popularity contest, this is encouraging, because it shows that growing a list of engaged followers who respect your ideas and contribute to your conversations is related to the quality of content you create, and the discussions you spark.

My conclusion?Find your niche. Create great content. Connect with others who do the same, and develop a community through conversation, sharing and collaboration. And don’t bother with the popularity game.

Photo credit: By Róséttá
Corina is a freelance social media manager and writer.
Follow her on Twitter @corinamackay or
add her to your circles on Google+.

How to Nurture Your Twitter Community

“I nod to a passing stranger, and the stranger nods back, and two human beings go off, feeling a little less anonymous.” —Robert Brault

This feature film stars Robert. He captures the potential for human beings to connect in a paradoxical world, where we have increasingly broad ways to connect with our fellow men and women, yet many of us feel disconnected in the online world. We yearn for ways to engage with our tweeple, bloggers and customers.

Freeze frame, in comes @letsconnect. She is following 4,500 people, with 3,550 following her. She wonders who to create a dialogue with and how to shed the veil of anonymity.

Cut to a scene starring @socialmediautopia, our protagonist. He carefully selects those people who form the background of his Twitter community. Flowers are pollinated and birds chirp incessantly. Welcome to the land of retweets, @ mentions, plus ones and blog comments.

Who you choose to nurture will vary from person-to-person depending on your product / service and goals, whether personal or professional. I give extra attention to my fellow Triberrs and people I interact with on Third Tribe Marketing and retweet at least one of a batch of my new follower’s tweets.

Next scene, @cynic. He is our antagonist. He wonders who has enough time to fly around Twitter sprinkling fairy dust on their tweeple when corporate strategies need to be developed and two year old Mary has needs her diaper changed.

How will this story end? Will followers trip over each other, trying to unfollow aggressive sellers that push out guerrilla sales tactics right before their horse has left his gate? Whoa horsey. Create value for your Twitter community. Some days “value” will translate into a 30-second investment, other days 20 minutes will be spent sharing the love. The point is that there are options.

Lets toss out the no brainers right from the get go, so we can broaden your knowledge and flex your higher brain functions.

1. Retweet, retweet, retweet. You expand your followers reach and give their post your personal stamp of approval.

2. Thank people who follow you and retweet their tweets. There are different school of thought considering Twitter etiquette here. How responsive have you been to said tweets? Get a feel for what works for you. You are letting your new followers know that they are on your radar.

Okay, lets kick things up a notch.

3. Use Klout to +K someone in their area of expertise. You’re allowed five +K’s per day, so choose them wisely. It only takes a second and improve their Klout score. For example, you could type @socialmouths in the search box and +K Francisco for his social media prowess.

4. Let others know why you are following certain key folk. This may inspire others to follow said folk, thus broadening his or her reach. For example, “I follow @lorirtaylor for her entertaining, quality and informed tweets. She is a thought leader in social media and could be your secret weapon.” Done.

5. Let others know something specific you have learned from them. Again, this promotes your tweeple and gives their voice a larger audience. Such a declaration can take this form: “Awesome post about relationship marketing: URL from @monmorong.

6. If they have a blog, take time to comment on their blog. Don’t shy away from promoting your product if it helps others meet their needs.

7. Share their blog posts / website(s). If you only have time to use one social bookmarking site, choose StumbleUpon. This will likely bring the most amount of traffic to their site. I also use Digg and Reddit on occasion. Promote the blog article on Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+ and other social media tools / sites, such as BizSugar where appropriate.

8. Think outside the box. I run a monthly “10 Awesome Tweets From My Followers in [insert month]” and more recently, “10 Awesome Tweets From People I Follow in [insert month]” on my blog. This results in a win-win situation. Your blog gets lots of traffic and tweeple get recognition / greater bang for their tweet bucks, meaning access to a larger audience. Use Refynr to sift through tweets using keywords, which will save you loads of time.

9. Add tweeple to your Circles. This says ‘your important to me’. Enough said.

10. Offer to give something they value. For example, you can ask your tweeple to tweet you key links that they want to promote (do you have any you want me to promote?). Offer early access to invite-only sites, such as Google+. Btw, if you need an invite to join Google+, give me a shout at llwalker@gmail.com.

How do you nurture you Twitter community?

Worst Social Media Marketer of The Year Award

Meet Jim. He works for Badhire Pharmaceuticals.

Full disclosure upfront: Jim is a figment of my imagination. He is also a near perfect example of what not to do as a social media marketer. Perhaps you’ve met Jim. He may even be sitting a few cubicles down from you. He is your company’s Chief Social Media Ninja Guru Super Hero Rock Star.

Jim believes that he has just won an award for his stellar social media marketing prowess (you’re in on the joke) and has been asked to talk about social media best practices for the benefit of his audience —that’s you!

Here is an extract from his speech:

“The best way to deal with negative Facebook and Twitter comments is to delete the ones you catch as soon as possible. If your schedule is too busy to monitor social media feedback, just ignoring criticisms will suffice. Ignorance is bliss, so deny any mistakes your company makes. Use malicious software to access and exploit private information. Another great way to invade customer’s privacy is via non-targeted spam marketing. If a customer tries to interact with you, anger is an appropriate response. If a customer keeps nagging you, dropping the F-bomb should get your point across. The recipe for getting on the first page of Google is simple: use hidden text or links, cross-link sites to inflate its perceived value, use keyword stuffing, excessive outbound links and duplicate content. Pretend to be a customer and endorse your own products and services to effectively build brand loyalty. Some of you are numbers people, so lets talk about the best way to allocate your budget: 50% should be spent on buying Facebook fans and the remaining 50% on getting false testimonials, and remember talk is cheap, so over promise and under deliver.”

—Jim Blackhat, Chief Social Media Ninja Guru Super Hero Rock Star

Photo credit: Hubspot

Help Jim out by suggesting some additional social media marketing activities.

Is CherryCard The Answer to Gaining Customer Loyalty?

Okay, here is the scenario: you walk into your favourite restaurant, get seated, order a killer entree—I recommend the smoke sable fish with peashoots. Alright, I veered of track. I’m back. The bill comes to the table and is accompanied by a red card courtesy of a relationship between your restaurant and CharityCard. The card states that you have earned $0.25 to give to the charities of your choice.

In summary, you collect CherryCards at your business of choice, cash in your CherryCards online, and donate money to the cause of your choice.

Now on to the business side of things, two things are happening here: (1) You are creating goodwill / customer loyalty, and (2) your customer feels a sort of warm cozy feeling knowing that they have contributed money to a charity they’re excited about. Can you part with $0.25 per transaction? What about $0.10? How will this effect your brand image?

There is a 21st solution to giving that has the potential to give this program sticking powers beyond the obvious reasons. Well, it relates to a relationship between the virtual and social media worlds. You can sign-in with Facebook and engage your friends on the website. There is a modest gaming component—when you compete against your friends—that makes donating  fun.

What potential could a program like this have relating to giving in the future? Will the benefits of goodwill and customers loyalty outweigh the costs involved in doles out a fixed amount of change per transaction? Has anyone given this site a whirl? Any thoughts?

3 Tools That Will Revolutionize the Way You Tweet

Twitter is hardly an oasis of perfection, hence the burgeoning bounty of tools designed to improve your Twitter experience. It’s hard to write this without sounding a bit dramatic, but the following tools may change the way you tweet… forever… meaning at least for a few months before some genius one-ups the effectiveness of these tools:

• Refynr acts as a filter for your twitterstream so you can target tweets that only contain the keywords you’re interested in reading about, such as ‘social media’ or ‘google plus’ or ‘catnip’. You get the idea. This helps you break through the noise and save time finding the tweets that matter to you the most. What next?
• Tweriod delivers that optimal times for you to tweet, that is times that increase the likelihood of reaching your followers. You can have upto 5,000 followers data analysed for free that will let you know that best times to tweet on Mondays and weekends. Fork out a few bucks to analyze 10,ooo or 15,000 followers with results that deliver an analysis for seven days of the week.
• BufferApp lets you schedule tweets in advance, spread out over time. Sounds a bit like Hootsuite? Look a bit closer. You can use BufferApp to easily top up or bank your tweets to create a steady supply of tweets 24/7.

What have your experiences been with these tools so far? What other tools will enhance the effectiveness / efficiency of how you tweet?

Social Media Engagement Done Right

At the start of the year, the Digital Buzz blog published the results of a survey looking at social media penetration and engagement. I found the following statistics to be incredibly relevant to the average business professional…

Facebook

• 51 percent of people who follow a brand on Facebook currently buy from that brand
• 41 percent of Facebook users login every single day
• 40 percent of all Facebook users follow at least one brand
• 30 percent of Facebook users login via mobile device
• 12 percent update their status on a daily basis

So what we see here is that less than half of Facebook users are engaging with brands at all. Perhaps the incentives to “follow” a brand need to be juicier. The average Facebook user is thinking, “Life is complicated! Why would I want to add another voice into the mix? Won’t it be like spam in my Facebook feed?” As a business owner, you need to consort with objective third party consultants to find out what holds value for current and prospective customers.

For example, YOU may think it’s “totally cool OMG!!!!!!” that your company is holding a sale on cargo shorts this weekend. On the other hand, your customers might be thinking, “So what? They have sales like that all the time.” Or you may be excited to announce that the brand has a new marketing manager. Ho hum, who cares? You need to find, not only topics that people will care about, but ways to elicit a response and show that your fan page is a lively community where people can interact with the brand. In other words: social media is a soft-sell. You can’t overdo it with self-aggrandizing or shameless promotion or people won’t want anything to do with you.

The other day, I saw a feed from the History Channel Facebook page that posted three compelling historic photos and posed the question, “Which decade had the biggest impact on American history?” Not surprisingly, this post was “liked” by over 5,000 people and solicited more than 400 comments. I was awestruck by their engagement, but when I perused the rest of the site, I could see why they had so many passionate fans. Their Facebook page was full of relevant information – not just promoting History Channel DVDs or shows, but promoting historical facts and stories. They had themed posts on “This Day In History,” “History in the Headlines,” “History Quizzes” and random historical facts with links to more information. Perhaps we can all learn something from the History Channel page about engagement.

Courtesy of guest blogger Jennfusion

Improve Reader Engagement with Social Media

Lets dive right in, shell we? Today, the buzzword engagement has received a great deal of attention, yet many people are not sure what they need to do to achieve this. This is where TodayPulse helps company’s achieve this beneficial investment in a time-effective manner.

1. What social networking sites are most likely to create an ongoing dialogue with customers?

I think Twitter works well for ongoing dialogue because it is the one that is the most like a real conversation. It’s real-time updating allows it to function like a chat with many additional social benefits. Facebook just doesn’t encourage this in my opinion. LinkedIn is better, but tends to function more like email, which is slow and not as good at conversation.

2. What are some hard-and-fast rules or best practices that encourage followers to interact with a company’s brand?
Be as human as possible. Companies tend to talk like companies – as if everything is coming directly from the PR department. Everything online is conversation. That is why we call them social networks. Businesses are not really social by nature, and it takes some work to understand what that means. One tip is to avoid a logo’d account whenever possible. People like to talk to humans, so be human. Small businesses do this well.

Another thing is to make sure that you are constantly reaching out. You can’t wait for the conversation to come to you. You have to put yourself into the middle of it. Twitter makes this easy and provides a low barrier to entry. Start talking to those followers rather than blasting them with sales messages. It will change everything.

3. Do the same rules applying enhancing customer engagement with Facebook fans?
The same basic principles apply, but it is a different world. Above all, you need to be providing you customers with valuable content on all platforms. This is especially important on Facebook where you can’t get away with what you can on Twitter. Facebook audiences are more fickle, but can have a great payoff when leveraged right.

4. What specific tools can be used to increase online costumers engagement?
Well, I would recommend Todaypulse  of course. Todaypulse is a social media marketing inbox that was built to help businesses and marketing teams be better at conversation and engagement. Not only does it allow you to be part of the conversation, it helps you find new ones that are related to your industry. It combines several powerful engagement tools like Twitter and Facebook search, blog alerts, news alerts and can even connects businesses directly with consumer questions on Q&A sites. It was really built to help generate conversation. Todaypulse users regularly find that they are more engaged and more active in social media when using Todaypulse.

About Garrett Moon: Garrett is the lead blogger and designer at Todaymade, a web design and social marketing company. He is also the author of the free Facebook Marketing for Business course and the co-creator of Todaypulse, a social media marketing inbox for social pros and business owners. Garrett co-host’s the Better at Marketing Podcast, an interview style show for social media leaders and online marketing game changers.

When is the Best Time to Tweet?

Scenario: it’s Sunday at 3pm and your in the mood to tweet. Fingers are crossed that lots of your Twitter followers are online and ready to receive your tweets with open arms, meaning a desire to retweet or send you an @ mention and whatever other goals your business / personal site requires. The point is if you’re unsure of whether your followers / key followers are online, aren’t you just shooting blindly at the Twitterverse hoping for a bite?

I used to use WhenToTweet.com to find out the best times to tweet depending on when most of my followers were using Twitter; however, I noticed that even though the number of people following me on Twitter was growing, my stats were not changing. I contacted the site owner and he told me that there is a cache on the result that is permanent, meaning that you will be always be served your old result.

I turned to the impressive forum at Third Tribe Marketing. Its member are made up of  social media professionals: the industry’s heavy hitters. Susan Giurleo pointed me in the direction of the most impressive article on the subject I’ve seen to-date called When is the best time to tweet? written by Christopher Spenn, USF social media marketing prof. If your goal is to get people to retweet yours tweets, Christopher gives you a recipe to find out when these key people are on Twitter. If your focus is on consumer engagement and conversions, he recommends using Google Analytics to answer this question. What if you don’t have people retweeting your tweets or you’re rightly concerned about excluding potential retweeters? Read on…

In comes StumbleUpon’s URL shorter su.pr. Is it worthwhile to abandon bit.ly and Hootsuite? Judge for yourself. Here are the facts: su.pr not only works to get you more traffic, it lets you know what the best times are for you to tweet, broken up by each day of the week. Not to shabby for a URL shortener. BTW, su.pr and Hootsuite let you pre-schedule your tweets, meaning you tweet when it’s convenient for you.

Editorial note: I’ve just discovered a tool called Tweriod that lets you know when your followers are using Twitter and what the best time to tweet is. The one drawback is that is takes 1 to 2 hours to get the search results. I think it’s worth the wait! What do you think?

Not ready to leave the comfort of your favourite URL shortener just yet. I searched the net high and low get you more answers. Although I found some sources that were divided on the subject, teetering on the brink of being labeled an over generalization on the subject is this: Monday’s are crap for tweeting, Tuesday to Friday’s between 10 to 2pm is golden (relevant if your tweeple are in the same time zone as you), Thursdays and Fridays are prime re-estate to get Twitter-happy, and avoid tweeting between 3 to 5 on weekends.

Time to pass the talking stick to you. What have you discovered about optimal tweet times? I love getting feedback from my readers and look forward to hearing from you!

Photo credit: ViteVu

Little Things Important to Social Media

Courtesy of my accomplished guest blogger Scott Spjut

Turns out, it’s all little things. Social media isn’t really about blitzes or viral marketing or big online campaigns, at least not for your average small business owner or blog. As much as we would love to have a huge marketing department to invest money and time into some elaborate, interactive social media campaign, it is not beneficial for all companies.

Instead, social media is about a consistent, dedicated approach. It’s about doing the little things, day in and day out, to provide value to your past, present, and potential customers and readers. While this approach may take a while and won’t usually bring with it huge spikes in traffic, it’s how you build a strong foundation and social loyalty.

People who see value in what you’re adding to the conversation will Like, follow, retweet, and otherwise share what you’re doing – and they are likely to do it consistently. Once they realize the contribution you’re making to their lives, they will not unlike, unfollow, or abandon you.

So with Twitter, Facebook, and other social networks, it’s important to do a little bit each and every day – and at different times each day (since you’ll hopefully have followers from around the world). It may be something related to your industry, and it may not be. It may be self-promotional and it may be about someone else. (Remember that anything too self-promotional or spammy is going to lose more people than it gains.) Regardless of what you’re presenting to your network, it should be something they can take value from.

The most popular websites on the Internet have built up a huge following by consistently providing what their readers want. The most successful online businesses have built up their brand by doing the little things each and every day. The most effective companies interact with the individual – by providing one-on-one customer service or answering each question in a timely manner – and don’t just focus on the masses.

Social media is about the little things. It may just take a few minutes each day to respond to a few posts or a few tweets, but it can make a huge difference to your followers, friends, and network.

Your goals don’t have to be small, but you need to do the little things in order to reach them.

Scott Spjut is a writer and editor who has been featured in various magazines, newspapers and websites – including Newsweek, the Washington Post, CBS News and the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Scott currently works with Professional Marketing International helping people change their lives.

Photo credit: Maria Reyes-McDavis