January | 2010 | Jamie Ginsberg Social Media Strategist

Archive | January, 2010

Twitter – how local business should be using Lists and Hashtags

by jginsberg on January 26, 2010 in Random

The most useful features for your local business on Twitter are Lists and Hashtags. Why? Because they help you connect with people in your area. Try searching on Twitter for hashtags like #cleveland or #NYC and look at how many people pop up from those cities talking about what is happening in those cities. You can click thru on their names and see if they are located in your area, find new people to follow and show your support for them by re-tweeting interesting posts by these people. Drill down to specifics like #Cavs or #Browns or even #Buckeyes and you will find more people from your area talking about the latest and greatest rumors or score updates, again a great way to network with people you share a common passion with. You can make up your own Hash Tags or simply use common Hash Tags out there in the wild. Either way, start using them!

How should you be using Lists? Create a list for your local area, look thru your followers and add them to this List. Yeah this takes time and brings on Carpal Tunnel. Your List become really useful for filtering thru all of the noise and finding out what the people in your network are talking about quickly. If you are feeling aggressive you can add people you are only following to Lists as well and increase the odds of them following you back. You can make a List for whatever your niche is, you don’t have to limit them to location. As you look for followers, check Lists by relevant people and find Lists that work for you. Look thru the people they are following on the List and find new relevant people to follow. This is a great way to fish for followers in your very own niche specific local pond.

Oh yeah, check out the new location based topic trending, it is kind of interesting. Cleveland is not on the map yet, but it was interesting to look at a few cities and see what people are talking about there. Start playing with search, hashtags and lists on Twitter – You will find these to be very valuable tools in your social media utility belt.

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FaceBook Statistics are thru the Roof!

by jginsberg on January 21, 2010 in Best Practices, FaceBook

After going to sleep way to early last night, I found myself awake at 3 am. What do you do when you are bored at 3 am? I decided to look at FaceBook Statistics. Why? Because I kept thinking the last time I looked there were 250 million active users loading 1 billion photos per month, the newer 350 million number has been out for a few months. I wonder how many photos are getting uploaded now?

The new number is 2.5 billion photos per month! Holy Cow, Batman! Can we simply call FaceBook a Photo Sharing website? This is ridiculous! I am guessing FaceBook is now well over 20 billion photos on the site (the last number I recall was 15 billion). Notably missing is an update to the amount of videos being uploaded monthly. The last update was 10 million videos with an average running time of a minute. This number may be too small for FaceBook to brag about; however, the potential for video in FaceBook has never been greater.

Increasingly FaceBook is a source of entertainment and social interaction, as proven by the numbers. The ability to watch live video shows and comment with your friends will bring a whole new dimension to FaceBook. CNN experimented with this during the presidential inauguration a year ago on FaceBook. It rocked. You Tube did their Live show, then the Live U2 show from the Rose Bowl. O.k, it wasn’t FaceBook and I had nobody online to chat with at 2 am (damn west coast shows), but that really rocked. If I was Conan O’Brien, I’d take my show to FaceBook and leave the networks behind. FaceBook is NOW, are you participating?

As reported by FaceBook:

More than 350 million active users
50% of our active users log on to Facebook in any given day
More than 35 million users update their status each day
More than 55 million status updates posted each day
More than 2.5 billion photos uploaded to the site each month
More than 3.5 billion pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photo albums, etc.) shared each week
More than 3.5 million events created each month
More than 1.6 million active Pages on Facebook
More than 700,000 local businesses have active Pages on Facebook
Pages have created more than 5.3 billion fans

Average user has 130 friends on the site
Average user sends 8 friend requests per month
Average user spends more than 55 minutes per day on Facebook
Average user clicks the Like button on 9 pieces of content each month
Average user writes 25 comments on Facebook content each month
Average user becomes a fan of 2 Pages each month
Average user is invited to 3 events per month
Average user is a member of 12 groups

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Twitter Karma Limited by Twitter – Bummer

by jginsberg on January 18, 2010 in Best Practices

Logging into my favorite Twitter tool this morning, Twitter Karma, I was disappointed to discover I could no longer bulk unfollow people. There is a notice from Dossy saying Twitter made them remove this functionality as it is in violation of their automation rules. Unfortunately, this was the best tool I have used for getting rid of people on Twitter who do not follow you back. This tool was very effective at reducing your dead weight (people you follow who do not follow you back) and enabling you to follow more people.

The only auto-following behavior Twitter allows is auto-follow-back (following a user after they have followed you). Automated un-following is also not permitted. If you find yourself frequently needing to un-follow large numbers of users, you might consider reviewing your criteria for following them. Please review our Follow Rules and Best Practices for a detailed discussion of following recommendations. Twitter Rules. I do not believe Dossy violated Twitters Guidelines. Quite the opposite he enabled a manual bulk unfollowing system. There is nothing automatic in his process. Part of your criteria for Twitter should be the person you follow must follow you back, otherwise you are simple experiencing a one way conversation. Twitter, go after the bad guys and spammers, Dossy did not enable spamming or the ever so annoying auto DM, for the most part he built a very useful tool that enables you to quickly and easily manage your Twitter account.

In a perfect world (or at least community) we would all follow each other. I have seen this work with varying degree of effectiveness on some micro-communities I am a member of. There is a real world issue here I am still working thru, are you initiating contact? Do you contact your friends and network and check-in with them/make plans. It has become so easy to run thru life seeing people randomly or once a year, work and kids keep us so busy we become lazy with everything else. Find different ways to make plans, coffee before work, breakfast, lunch, drinks after work, a ballgame, meeting of mutual interest, workout at the gym. These are all easy ways to extend your social life. You don’t have to bulk unfollow the real world friends you have that do not make an effort to make plans; be a leader and make plans with them. Stay Social.

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Advertising on FaceBook – Grow Your Fan Page

by jginsberg on January 13, 2010 in Best Practices, FaceBook

Do you want to grow your FaceBook Fan Page? How about advertising on FaceBook? I suggest going with a Pay-Per Click that leads to your Fan Page.Why? Because your Ad will be seen by a lot more people, you will get hundreds of thousands of impressions. You want people to click thru and become a Fan, they can even select “Become a Fan” right on your ad with a single click. So what? Once they are a Fan you can easily reach them with your messaging and expand your relationship. You can create the incentives to get them to your website, location or simply picking up the phone when you call. You want as many fans as possible!

The going rate appears to be .45-.50 cents to advertise to people within 25 miles of Cleveland. How many people are there on FaceBook within 25 miles of Cleveland? According to FaceBook 596,760! Of which, 335,180 are women, 18 and older. Looking to reach women 30 and over, you have 203,600 potential fans! Within 50 miles of Cleveland we have 800,00 people on FaceBook. Are these your potential customers? Business has never been more social…

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Status updates – Keep your voice authentic to your network

by jginsberg on January 10, 2010 in Best Practices, FaceBook, LinkedIn

Recently I have been thinking about status updates. When should they be automatic and when is it inappropriate? Basically, as long as you keep the voice of your status update authentic to each network you are updating, then be efficient and update multiple networks at once.

Should you be posting #jamierocks on LinkedIn or FaceBook? No! That is not authentic, to those communities. Keep the Twitter lingo on Twitter. Have I made this mistake? Yes. As I look at how the Twitter and LinkedIn integration has gone, I rate Tweets in LinkedIn status updates as generally a fail. I like knowing your Twitter handles and following you, but the extra noise degrades the already weak LinkedIn newsfeed.

Find the balance and update your networks in your voice as is appropriate on each network. I suggest updating LinkedIn every 2-4 weeks. Twitter, as often as you can (daily?). Facebook daily, at the least check in daily and like or comment (I check into FaceBook every few hours). Depending on how many networks you update, you may need to automate the process. If it is only a handful, take the time and engage with each community. Keep your voice authentic to your network.

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Pictures – the best way to increase your foot print!

by jginsberg on January 7, 2010 in Best Practices, FaceBook, LinkedIn

Looking at a friend’s profile today on LinkedIN, I was surprised to see she did not have a profile picture. Pictures are the key to growing your presence online, networking effectively and growing your revenue! On LinkedIN this is easy, pick a decent profile picture that shows your eyes and communicates just enough of who you are. There are enough suits on LinkedIN already, find a picture that keeps you looking like the professional you are and encourages people to do business with you. Being memorable is difficult, but rewarding. If you have a great headshot, use it. You want people to recognize you and pictures are the key.

FaceBook, welcome to the largest photo sharing website in the world! Start taking pictures and adding them to your personal page and Fan page if you are a business. Tagging people in pictures is the key to growth! Why, because when you tag someone it hits their news feed, anyone who is friends with them may potentially be exposed to your pictures, brand, fan page. If you have your personal privacy levels too strict this will not do much for you (I suggest friends of friends for pictures and videos), Fan pages do not have this issue. You can take pictures with most phones today and easily load them into FaceBook, if you don’t know how get a tutorial (there are lots of ways to do this). For as little as $100 you can get a shockingly respectable point and shoot from Nikon or Canon, upgrading the quality of your pictures and even taking video. If you really like taking pictures, DSLRs are amazingly inexpensive today. You too can play with the big boys.

Everywhere you go, snap pictures and start sharing. Just like you enjoy looking at other peoples’ pictures, others will enjoy looking at yours. If you have a Fan Page, make the leap….the more content you have that can be shared, the more people will see your page and engage with your brand. Start today…

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Going Mobile – From FaceBook to LinkedIn

by jginsberg on January 6, 2010 in Best Practices, FaceBook, LinkedIn

It is 2010, the year of the Mobile Web…are you ready for it? From a social media perspective, your phone can be a photo, video, audio, text gathering tool. I am a long time fan of Apple and use an iPhone daily to gather media and stay in touch with my networks. The FaceBook application on the iPhone is one of my favorite mobile applications, period. I use it all the time to check in, comment on a friend’s update, upload a video or picture and check my FaceBook email (I do not receive any notifications via email from FaceBook as I am a daily user). As reported today by MG Siegler (Go Blue!) on Tech Crunch, the iPhone app for FB just got a major upgrade letting you sync contacts from FaceBook directly into your contact address book. Besides pictures connected to contacts, this will make it even easier to communicate with your people. Using your phone to get your email is very 2003, updating your FB status and loading video and pictures fom your mobile phone is now officially standard in 2010!

Who is up for the most improved mobile app award? LinkedIN. Yes, they finally have evolved their application to be useful. A slick interface with relevant buttons, it is now easy to stay in touch with your LinkedIn network while on the road or traveling. The new application let’s you “reconnect” or find people you might be connected to, process invitations, update your status (of course), view updates, see who has recently updated their profile and most importantly view profiles(profiles are easy to view now and look great). The “recents” button is useful, saves you looking someone up again (even someone you are not connected to). What is missing? Questions and Answers. This is a little surprising since it is a great resource and very important part of LinkedIn. You also do not see Recommendations given or received on profiles. It is hard to give the LinkedIn App an “A+” without these features, especially as I think Recommendations are critical to the value added by LinkedIn as a social and professional networking tool. Still even with a “B+” – LinkedIN has earned the most improved mobile app award. If you do not have this App on your phone, you are not using LinkedIn enough.

I use Echofon to update my Twitter status, I rarely if ever use the mobile phone to read Tweets (too much information). Is Echofon the best? I doubt it, but it is free and it does not crash (also does a great job with handling pictures and links). I do experiment with other Twitter Apps occasionally, but have not been willing to pay for any. I do believe Seesmic will bring a great application to market this year, if you have blackberry or Android they already have a mobile application for you.

With all of the hype about the Apple Tablet (yes I want one) and the prevalence of net books, screen size is going up and it will be even easier to use the mobile web. Admob (recently purchased by Google) has released statistics all year showing mobile web usage sky rocketing, mainly due to the iPhone and iTouch (approximately 50% of all mobile web traffic). Based on my recent testing of the Motorola Droid, we are going to see even more growth. The Droid is a great mobile phone for people who refuse to have an account with ATT or hate Apple. Is it an iPhone, No! But it is a great substitute and will force Apple to continue to innovate (competition is great).

As you look to grow your business in 2010, evaluate how your employees are using the mobile web and include social and professional networking on the mobile web in your social media strategy. In 2010, the mobile web is alive and growing – how will you participate?

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