Ahead, warp factor 6!!

Remember the days of playing Pac Man on your Commodore 64? Sigh. Those were simpler times. Yes, I had a pager longer then was deemed cool and I was admittedly one of the last of my friends to join Facebook. That said, like many people today, I’m trying to keep abreast of what is going on in the world of technology to stay competitive in the workforce. I have jumped on the preverbal technological bandwagon, hee, haw! I’m stumbling my way through a complicated web of technology that is constantly in a state of flux. I want to take you on my ongoing journey and would love to hear feedback on your adventures in using technology!! Be brave, my fellow tech-warriors!! Ahead, warp factor 6!!

10 Awesome July Tweets From People I Follow

Close your eyes and imagine a world where you can instantly view the most informative / inspiring tweets from a Twitter account in your field of interest—social media—on a monthly basis. Okay, now open your eyes and imagine no more…!!!

Thank you to the tweeps I follow for gracing me with some of the best tweets on this thing we call Twitter. You’re my greatest source of information about social media and you mean way more to me than the vast majority of my Facebook friends! Here are your most awesome tweets:

1.Getting to 10 million users: Google+, Facebook, Twitter [graph] http://is.gd/b3EhFU @GuyKawasaki You only need to take a 2-second look at this graph to understand how quickly Google Plus is moving up the ranks.

2. Uncover Best Online Practices For Segments of Small Business Sector Read more: http://bit.ly/oAUouU @loritaylor. Who doesn’t love the word ‘best’ combined with ‘practices’. Best practices = drool. Small businesses and non-profits can participate in a survey that highlights how other businesses in their sector have made online marketing work.

3. Can Google+ Beat Twitter and Facebook as a Tool For Journalists?: http://tnw.co/qjGwK5 @SocialMedia411.

4. How to Not Annoy Your Twitter Followers http://tribr.it/8cbcw via @pushingsocial. Stan writes about how BufferApp is an effective tool for spacing out your tweets throughout the day.

5. What are social media mega-trends http://bit.ly/kttsEU @markwschaefer. I have watched the full 46 minutes of this video. Due diligence baby. Thought leaders—Jay Baer, Glen Gilmore, Jennifer Kane and Mark Schaefer—speak about significant social media trends.

6.  Refynr + @BufferApp = Flawless social media productivity. http://j.mp/pLBgA5 @refynr. Refynr is a tool that filters out the noise in your twittersteam to quickly access tweets that matter to you the most. This service compliments what BufferApp offers.

7. Maximize Social Media Traffic to Your Blog http://feedly.com/k/oJa3La @garrett_moon. There are some great takeaways here for avid bloggers.

8. Why the Intern Shouldn’t Run Your Social Media Campaign: Your intern has more Twitter followers than you do. Tha… http://bit.ly/pTc7z3 @BrennerMichael. Job boards are flooded with requests for unpaid internships in social media, but are you asking / expecting too much and what effect can this have on your brand. This article doesn’t discount the value of social media interns, but makes a case for why the intern should not have the sole responsibility / burden of executing a social media campaign.

9. Popularity and Reciprocity are the Enemies of Connectivity http://j.mp/n2hy4Z (why Twitter may have jumped the shark) @JayBaer. The link leads to a video, starring Jay Baer. What you get is a unique look at why Google Plus will be successful.

10. The next five social media trends and their impact on marketing http://t.co/HOSp5Pp New post on influence, filtering, content generation, + @edwardboches. In the process of identifying trends, this article points at some websites to explore—tools to prepare you for the next step forward in the evolution of social media marketing.

Thank you for introducing me to hundreds of different valuable blog posts / articles.

What are some kick $@% tweets from those you follow? I love hearing from my readers! I’m hoping and wishing…

Photo credit: von @wuestenigel

Who Invented the Social Media Guru?

Do you call yourself a social media ninja, guru or rockstar? Are you looking to hire a social media… well, fill in the blank with another grandiose title or ill-suited fictional character of choice. Are self-proclaimed titles such as these professional? No. You usually don’t hear about human resource mavericks or accountant kings.

What might seem harmless enough can be fertile grounds for losing credibility in the social media scene. Listen up, professionals are mocking you. Don’t believe me. Just search for “Social Media Guru” in YouTube and you will find videos such as I’m a Social Media Guru  and The Social Media Guru.

Where does that leave you? You could call yourself a social media expert; however, I caution you to use this title sparingly. Firstly, a negative association exists with this title. The second and third points to my argument are well articulated by Christopher Penn, professor of social media marketing, by stating that what entails a social media expert is not agreed upon and social media has not been around long enough to assert such a label. Read the editorial note to access a great article about who should be considered a social media expert. Thank you Stan!!

Terms such as social media marketer and community manager have entered the stage, perhaps to legitimize the position and tone down larger than life job titles; however, these titles mean different things to different people, i.e., day-to-day tasks versus overall strategic decisions.

Many social media gurus have thrown out big words such as engagement and transparency and without sufficient experience and knowledge have left companies bitter because they were once caught up in the fairytale about a social media utopia, where zero investments could result in a flood of revenue only to wake up sober and dehydrated, left licking their wounds as they realize effective social media activities are not free and wonder what they have accomplished through their social media efforts.

Here’s my stance. Social media doesn’t exist in a vacuum. There are certain basic activities such as a company blog that all employees can participate in with a day’s worth of training and a solid policy / procedures manual. The heavy lifting in social media should be left to marketers that use traditional marketing methods where appropriate in addition to online activities or at the very least have a social media person that works in tandem with the marketing department. Social media is only one part of a fully-integrated marketing communications strategy. When this is done incorrectly, social media efforts can actually hurt your brand / company. For example, offline media and online media can result in different brand associations and confuse consumers.

An angry Mark Shaeffer wrote How to save your butt when the social media bubble bursts. Sift through the emotionally charged language to uncover a gem of an argument, that social media needs to be measured to rationalize its existence, Marketing 101. This is becoming increasingly important as companies invest more of their time and other resources towards social media activities. There are a wide range of tools that measure the effectiveness of social media efforts. For example, perhaps you are using social media to improve brand awareness. A survey can be conducted before and after the campaign to measure its level of success. You might find Social Mention useful in tracking customer sentiment and the list goes on and on.

As a side note, the world of social media is in a constant state of flux, so regardless of what people in social media call themselves, at a bare minimum they should follow Mashable, TechCrunch and Social Media Examiner to maximize the potential of their efforts.

In summary, don’t embarass yourself and hurt your credibility by calling yourself a social media rock star. Recognize that companies are disenfranchised because of unrealistic expectations and employees that do not provide value to their company through their social media efforts. So now what? Social media efforts must be measured to rationalize their existence. Social media marketing is one piece of a fully-integrated marketing communications strategy. Let marketers that have experience in the social media sphere do the heavy lifting. Regardless of what you call yourself, you need to constantly be learning and experimenting.

Editor’s note: the questions remains, how do you spot someone is credible in social media and can help your company. Stan does a  good job of it here: http://pushingsocial.com/how-to-spot-a-social-media-expert. Enjoy!

What is your option about how terms such as social media guru has come about? Who should be responsible for social media activities?

Photo credit: Agent-X-Comics

Guest Blogger: My Lonely Year In The Blogosphere

My guest blogger Suzanne Rico who used to be the morning news anchor for KCBS-TV in Los Angeles, made a life-changing decision with her family and in the words of this talented writer of Walking Papers, she and her husband are “now 21st century nomads on a quest to discover what should come next – for our kids, our marriage, our finances and our sanity”.

I quit Botox cold turkey on a smoggy Friday morning last year after I suddenly lost my job as KCBS-TV’s morning news anchor in Los Angeles. Feeling both liberated and scared (and in the mood to make rash decisions), my husband and I rented out our house, sold our cars and traded a comfortable city life for a low budget, long-term trip around the world with our two little boys. I opened a WordPress account to blog about what I hoped would be a “Motorcycle Diaries For Middle-Aged People With Kids” kind of journey. If I write it, I figured–and write it well–readers would come.

Nine months later, practically the only one who reads my “Walking Papers” blog with any regularity is my mother. When I posted My Argentine Angels Drives A Compact Car about rushing my five-year old son to an emergency room on Christmas Day, she commented “superb!”  And when I wrote Natural Born, Stuffed Animal Like Killers about nearly getting flattened by an angry hippopotamus, she complimented my “wicked wit”, but if I’m so fabulous and funny, where is everybody?

Perhaps my blog is lost in cyber space because I am a social media moron. I don’t promote “Walking Paper”. I don’t post everyday. I don’t Twitter it, Reddit, or Digg it. To me, the difference between a pingback and a trackback is as confusing as the old “chicken or the egg” conundrum. I’m even a Facebook virgin, fearing this potential time suck after watching my former co-anchor invest hours each day promoting his blog. I know this resistance to social media is like driving Fred Flintstone’s stone-age car on a modern day freeway; it might be unique, but it will never get you anywhere.

One night in Peru’s Valley Of The Incas, a thick mist creating ghosts at the windows of our small pension, I did try to educate myself. WordPress suggested “tags” so I read up and then chose words like “travel, adventure, mommy blog, parenting, and unemployment”. My readership spiked–by a few and recently, I stumbled upon StumbleUpon, and took the time to upload my posts, but so far, I’m the only one who has stumbled upon them. I clicked the little “like” icon on each one, feeling both embarrassed and hopeful, as if I were trying to win a high school popularity contest.

Being currently unemployed, I have no real excuse for being a social media moron, but between planes, trains, buses and rental cars–between dodging a terrorist scare in Turkey and nearly having a fist-fight with my husband at The End Of The World–I barely have time to upload one post a week, much less learn the tools to promote them. I am mystified at what qualifies as a good blog; one day, while reading Freshly Pressed, I clicked on a blog about writing only to find the post was a link to a famous author’s writing tips—something that probably took five seconds to upload. This feels like cheating to me. I’m no Sylvia Plath or Heather B. Armstrong, but I work hard on writing stories that only family and friends read.

So here are my questions for the experts—bloggers who have been sharing their message longer and more successfully than I: is there space in the blogosphere for someone who is not passionate about social media? If you write it well, but don’t promote it, will people ever come? Is content still king or do clicks rule?  Or do both? I freely admit that I don’t really understand what defines a good blogger (but I do understand why The Honey Badger gets five million views), and only blame myself that Walking Papers is about as popular a destination as Siberia in February.

On a sweaty afternoon in Brazil, both kids finally sleeping after coming down with a mysterious illness we prayed was not Dengue Fever, I expressed my frustrations to my husband Ethan; my blog, I complained, is like the tree that makes no sound when it falls in the forest because no one is around to hear it.

“Maybe you should just scrap blogging altogether and get really proficient at playing “Plants Vs. Zombies,” he suggested. “Then your oldest son will think you are even more of a goddess than he already does.”  Ethan is trying to help me temper my life-long need for achievement and external approval—not an easy task when your ego was formed in front of a television camera and though I knew this was a gentle reminder that my blog should be a pleasure and not a pain in the ass, quitting didn’t sound like such a bad idea. It would be a relief to stop checking my dismal stats—and worrying that the reason people don’t read “Walking Papers” is not because I’m a social media moron, but because I just don’t write it that well. I appreciate any feedback you can provide.

Image: cbenjasuwan / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Related articles

• The Importance of Guest Blogging (ariherzog.com)
• Travel guest bloggers invited. (blogavenues.blogspot.com)
• How to Be Successful with a New Blog (ronmedlin.com)
• 7 Habits of Professional Bloggers (problogger.net)

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

Is Your Relationship Strong Enough To Withstand Facebook?

Courtesy of my talented guest blogger Jennn Fusion

Divorce lawyers report that social networking sites like Facebook are largely to blame for the tremendous spike in divorce rates and extra-marital affairs in recent years. Facebook was cited in 1 out of 5 divorce filings, one lawyer told the UK Telegraph. Similarly, Mark Keenan of Divorce-Online.com reports 20 percent of all divorce petitions contain references to Facebook. “The most common reason seemed to be people having inappropriate sexual chats with people they were not supposed to,” he told the Wall Street Journal.

Long gone are the days when suspicious spouses need to hire private eyes to track, spy and dig up evidence of infidelity. Nowadays, you just spend a few hours combing through wall posts, pictures, new friends and comments. If you’re really wily, you can decode your husband or wife’s password and read inbox messages too. The American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers went so far as to say 81% of their cases over the last five years involved social networking “evidence” of cheating.

It’s unfair to blame social networking sites for divorces because, as a Facebook spokesperson put it, “Facebook doesn’t cause divorces, people do.” Yet, it’s easy to see how the transparency inherent in social media can get people in rocky relationships in big trouble. In one case, “My marriage is over,” wailed a spouse in her Facebook status,” prompting other friends and family members to reach out to her (completely unaware) husband with concern. In another case, a woman going through a custody battle claimed to be sober, when dated pictures of her drinking at parties clearly showed otherwise. A divorced man claimed he had no money to make his alimony payments – yet his ex-wife discovered pictures of a new BMW posted on his Facebook page. A married man left the fact that he was married with children off his Facebook profile, while he emailed old flames from college – a big faux pas in his wife’s eyes, who later hacked his account and messaged these potential threats to her marriage.

As TIME Magazine put it, the number of divorce lawyer clients turned social networkers has resulted in “the kind of semipublic laundry-airing that can turn aggrieved spouses into enraged ones and friends into embarrassed spectators.”

Do you have any stories where Facebook has effected someone relationship?

10 Awesome Tweets From My Followers in March

Wish you could have someone sift through brilliant tweets related to social media on Twitter without having to lift your finger? Look no further my friend. My fingers just got a good work out.

Congrats to my followers and thank you for your great tweets. Keep them coming!

1. When a Groupon Promotion Went Wrong http://t.co/jHQYpIM Learn how to broker your Groupon deal as a merchant! @juanxi

2. Don’t be a conversation killer, keep chatting! http://ow.ly/4igEt #SocialMedia @trevorellestad

3. With no TV, hundreds of people in Japan gathered in Apple stores to watch news on USTREAM & use Twitter, Facebook, email. http://j.mp/icRHio @shawngriffiths

4. Official Webtrends Company Blog – Why Most Brands Are Inadvertently Wasting Money on #Facebook http://t.co/mrgA5wi @Herve_Marketing

5. 10 Tips to Grow Your Twitter Following http://bit.ly/dPGTMR @oneDivineSPIRIT

6. Facebook Launches Updated Comment Platform to Socialize Blogs http://t.co/8Tk045L @AllegrasTweets

7. Good article on the new TV & social media trend known as Social TV that’s popular w/youth. Execs take notice! http://reut.rs/fbpE6e @RodHarlan

8. New blog post: 10 Blogging Apps for the iPad http://bit.ly/dZZJbV #Apple #iPad @BlazingMinds

9. For me it’s an interactive news network=> Twitter isn’t very social: study | Econsultancy http://ht.ly/4o1yi #sobcon #engage365 @heidithorne

10. #Facebook movie credits? Meet your new media company – http://ow.ly/4a7O1 @sderksen

Thank you for introducing me to hundreds of different valuable links / articles.

Visit 10 Awesome Tweets from My Followers in January and 10 Awesome Tweets from My Followers in February to read more Twitter jems.

What are some brilliant tweets have your followers tweeted this month? I absolutely love hearing from my readers. Please leave a message and I promise I will get back to you.

Photo credit: Porter Novelli Global

Your MyBeak Social Media Forum

http://www.flickr.com/photos/65819195@N00/4619477638/

Welcome to the spanking new forum / blog post  for social media enthusiasts. The goal of this forum is to foster community, engage others and benefit from our collective knowledge on social media. In essence it’s what happens whenever a reader comments / adds value to a post. This specific forum / post aims to getting people talking about front of mind issues = whatever is on your mind about the world of social media from questions to suggestions.

Perhaps you want to discuss:

- how your company should budget for social media

- what you should  measure to determine the success of your social media efforts

- what core tools are essential for you to effectively managing your social networks

- how you can overcome social media obstacles

- how location-based applications can help your small business

The list goes on and on down some never-ending rabbit whole. If a topic is on your mind, lets address it now and get you forging forward to maximizing the benefits to your company that are made possible by social media.

Grab your beverage of choice and cosy up to your computer. What’s on your mind? Spread the word through tweeting, StumbleUp or shouting loudly in a crowded room. The more people that visit the forum, the more we all benefit from our collective knowledge.

When Social Media and Work Collide

Courtesy of my talented guest blogger Jenn Burton

Social media has broken down barriers and given outsiders an inside look into other people’s lives. You can see your old classmates’ wedding photos. You can read a note from a nurse at your doctor’s office. You can see pictures of your boss’s 50th birthday party. You can see which pages your client “Liked” this week. It’s so invasive, isn’t it? Yet, we love it. We can’t help ourselves.

A site like Facebook so easily becomes a sort of journal – a place where we can vet any of our thoughts, opinions, experiences, photos and videos to see what others think. Generally only our closest friends write back, so it can be easy to forget just how many professional contacts and “lurkers” are watching what you write. It’s easy to forget that, even when you’re not at work, you’re still being judged by your work standards. This is the problem that a number of professionals are facing as their employers get hip to social networking.

For example…

On April 9th, 2010, four staff members at St. Mary Medical Center in Long Beach, California took photos of a 60-year-old, nearly-decapitated stabbing victim and posted them on Facebook. He died shortly after the photo was taken. This incident was a gross violation of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), which protects patients’ privacy.

Individuals working in the healthcare industry are now allowed to discuss a patient by name or physical description. It is certainly not permissible to post any confidential pictures or videos related to their work. They cannot give medical advice via social networks. And while they cannot go to jail or be fined up to $25,000 for complaining about their jobs, healthcare workers should be mindful of who might be watching what they write or they may wind up unemployed.

According to the Chicago Tribune, the Detroit Police Department is also concerned about how the expansion of social media’s popularity among officers might affect their business. One officer was demoted to desk duty when it was discovered he had posted a photo of a sword-wielding suspect on his social media site.

Police departments are quickly making official policies to deal with activities that may reflect poorly on their squads. For instance, the Albuquerque Police Department prohibits officers from showing uniforms, patrol cars, badges or anything that identifies them as police officers on their personal social media sites. This ruling came after an officer who shot and killed a perpetrator listed his occupation as “human waste disposal” on Facebook. Officers were told they should assume that anything they post on their personal pages should be seen as a direct reflection on the police department and that violators can and will be fired if they do not heed this warning.

What do you think? Do employers have a right to dictate what can and can’t be posted on personal Facebook pages? Have you seen any questionable material posted by a so-called “professional” recently?