June | 2010 | Jamie Ginsberg Social Media Strategist

Archive | June, 2010

Finding Niche People To Follow On Twitter

by jginsberg on June 29, 2010 in Best Practices, Twitter

I have been thinking about and working with Twitter a lot lately. A core competence you will need as you expand your social media presence on Twitter is the art of finding the right niche people to follow for you or your organization. Where do you start?

Try searching a few hash tags. These are ways people identify subjects they are referencing. If you have a local business in Cleveland you might search #Cleveland or #HappyinCle – this is a great way to find people associating themselves with Cleveland. Click on people’s names and if they appear to be in your niche, Follow them.

Next look for some Lists. These are fantastic tools that people have self-selected other people onto. Whatever your niche is, there are 50 Lists waiting for you. You can follow the List (so you remember it) and then select Following. Look at all of the accounts being followed. If you have found a good List there will be somewhere between 100 – 500 people on this list for you to follow. You are safe following 300 people in a day, anymore than that could get your account disabled for spambot like behavior. When you find someone interesting, check out the Lists they have been put on. This is a trail you can work on at any time.

Why do all of this dirty work? Following people in the niche you care about will get you followers in that area. How many? That depends on you. Build up your following at a reasonable pace and be patient – remember you will be capped at following 2001 people until you have 1,850 people following you back (Hi carpal tunnel syndrome, I have missed you). Deleting people not following you back is an unfortunate reality you will have to do until you have a massive number of followers. If you Re-Tweet the people you follow and interact with them, you increase the odds they will follow you back. Authentic interaction and conversation is critical to your success. Now that you have the basics on how to build up a following on Twitter, what are you going to do with it?

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Finding your second degree network

by jginsberg on June 24, 2010 in Best Practices, FaceBook, LinkedIn, Twitter

The art of effective social and professional networking, is getting out of your first degree network and into your second degree network. In plain English, what we are talking about are referrals from trusted sources. As you build out your Fan Page or your LinkedIn presence, think about this. You must have a strong first degree network. These are your friends, family, ex-coworkers, people in your community. These are NOT the people you sell to, this is your first degree network. Tapping into your second degree network opens up a whole new world of business opportunity.

Currently, I have 738 people in my first degree network on LinkedIn. This is a lot of people for me, but it pales in comparison to my second degree network with over 120,000 people in it. This translates to roughly 162 as the average number of connections my connections have on LinkedIn. We have blown past the magical number of 150 connections. That second degree network is where the highest growth and potential value is. Lately, this has been in my head, “if you don’t ask, you will never know.” Ask for the introduction, tell your network you want to meet people who may be interested in your services, product, company. Take the next step, introduce people in your network to each other, build bridges between people who should know each other.

If you build out a Fan Page on FaceBook using your personal network, you will find somewhere between 100 and 1,000 people who Like your page. If you tap into your second degree network your potential grows ten-fold. How do you do that? Work, work, work. Each of us has a different stopping point. Unlock that stopping point and “the future is wideeeee open.” Here are a few easy ways to tap into your second degree network:

1) eat lunch with people out;

2) create a habit that is inherently social and stick with it (think coffee, exercise class, whatever);

3) connect with people you meet and/or are introduced to – you will get to know them better;

4) participate in the conversation going on – whether it is the weather, your local sports team, politics or what is for lunch today; and

5) Be creative.

**Your second degree network is a pot of gold. Build out your connections and you will find a vibrant rainbow that will lead you to the gold. Find your second degree network.

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Support Your Company’s Social Media Initiative

by jginsberg on June 22, 2010 in Best Practices, FaceBook, LinkedIn, Twitter

It is strange to me, that employees will log in to FaceBook at work, text their friends making plans for later, take smoke breaks and socialize outside – But when it comes to supporting their company online, they are not willing to help. Hear me loud and clear folks, everyone must pitch in to keep your company growing, especially you.

Have you Re-Tweeted something your company posted?

Have you shared your company Fan Page on FaceBook at least two different ways (Suggest To Friends and Share)?

If you are not on Twitter have you asked if you can include the company Twitter account on your LinkedIn profile?

Will you gripe and complain when your company can’t pay you a bonus this year or even afford a raise?

Have an impact on the future of your company, Support your company’s social media initiative!

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Social Gaming – Why you should be playing Farmville

by jginsberg on June 16, 2010 in Best Practices, FaceBook

I have been thinking about the value of social gaming for the last few months, trying to put into words why social gaming is so critical to your participation in effective social networking. I have become accustomed to responding to the question “Do you Golf?” with “No, but I FaceBook…” Yes, I am joking, but underlying this is the truth, I love FaceBook and am happy to connect with people I meet on FaceBook and get to know them better. In fact, if we don’t connect on FaceBook I may never get to know you better.

My understanding is that golf is a social game ideal for playing with people you want to do business with. Why? You learn how people play the game, whether they are always shooting the long ball to try and get the hole in 1 or whether they play too safe and never see thru the trees instead of around the trees. Social games enable you to play against your friends, FaceBook has become the ideal platform for playing against your friends.

Zynga is the leader of the pack in the world of social gaming. Hundreds of millions of people are playing Mafia Wars, Farmville, Yoville, Treasure Isle, Frontierville, Texas Hold’em and Petville. The games are engaging and fun, better yet, they never end. Can playing games be good for your business? When you are playing with your community on FaceBook, you are essentially playing golf. Your farm becomes a reflection of how you do business. Developing your Farm may be more important than you know. When you land business with someone you enjoy Farming with, who will be laughing at you then?

The above said, I play Bejeweled Blitz on FaceBook. I love seeing the scores of my friends on FaceBook and truth be told, several of my friends have raised up a notch in my book with their impressive scores (no, that is not pathetic). Do I post my scores in news feed on FaceBook, flaunting my scores? No. Do I hide your updates from Farmville? Yes. I get too much information in my newsfeed (even though I very effectively use Lists in FaceBook). I don’t have enough time to read all of your Petville updates, maybe you should consider not posting all of your updates to everyone on FaceBook? You have to remember that what you post in your newsfeed can become pollution and be annoying to your friends, family and business connections.

I was sitting at my favorite bakery, On The Rise Artisan Breads, meeting with a couple of local political consultants when someone sitting near us asked “did you say you are on Farmville?” I watched as two strangers met, talked Farmville and connected on FaceBook so they could cropshare or coop or simply Farm together. My ears perked up as one of them said “I hope you post updates, I hate when people don’t post updates.” I laughed to myself enjoying how different we are, appreciating that strangers can meet each other and connect on FaceBook using Zynga and their social games. I’m still going to hide the updates from your games, but it is up to you to decide whether it is appropriate to post your Treasure Isle update at 10 am on Wednesday morning (could be if you work nights!!!). Stay Social, Start Gaming More!

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FaceBook “Like” Button

by jginsberg on June 10, 2010 in Best Practices, FaceBook

I have been watching the “Like” button roll out over the last few weeks, reading about how FaceBook is trying to take over the web or that they should use an open standard. Do you care? Probably not.

What should you care about? FaceBook has made it reasonably easy to get your site into their social graph and facilitate sharing of information from your website onto FaceBook.

Step 1

http://developers.facebook.com/setup

Step 2

Burst into tears when you see a bunch of Code spit at you. Then, suck it up and copy and paste it into your site. I cleaned out some of the junk I didn’t need and decided to put the Like Button on the top right. Basically, I added a Text Box into the Widget for WordPress and pasted the code in.

Step 3

Like your Page and see if it works. Feeling bold after this simple 3 step process? Head over to the HyperArts blog and get way too much information. You can also go to your Fan Page and under Edit, Create a Like Box/Button and use that to promote on FaceBook.

**I feel like a post this important should be somewhat minimal, so you don’t lose the message. It is now easier than ever to bring web content into FaceBook. You can also find out how much your website is being shared on FaceBook’s open graph, clearly that deserves a unique post. Have you added a Like button to your site?

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YouTube – The World is Watching

by jginsberg on June 1, 2010 in Best Practices, Video

I have been thinking about YouTube a lot lately. Why? Two Billion videos a day are being watched on YouTube. This is amazing for a site that has only been around since February 2005. I have become fond of saying “You can own your own media broadcasting station on YouTube.” That doesn’t really do YouTube justice. It is far more powerful than that. Not only can you upload your videos for mass distribution, people can watch them on their phones, homes and even in coffee shops. Mass media TV hasn’t gotten there yet. It is also amazingly easy to share your videos. How easy? As Israel battles an activist group trying to end the embargo in the Gaza strip, the government directs people to YouTube to see their version of the situation. What? Yes! An international diplomacy issue is being settled on YouTube, right now.

Check out the video distributed by the Israeli Government over You Tube HERE. As governments start using social media effectively, we can see these truly fit into classical tools for dissemination of information such as newspapers, radio and television. Even more importantly, social media enables you to share the news and information relevant to you. You can do that also – get your own YouTube channel. Take the time to fill in your profile and include your keywords. Unlike FaceBook, search on YouTube is powered by Google (parent/owner). Translate that to means earch actually works on YouTube and if you put in your keywords appropriately on both your videos and your channel you will be found easily by any of the 2 billion people tuning in each day who are interested in your material.

What else should you be doing? Build up your subscribers. These are people who will be notified when you post new content to your YouTube channel. Share your videos on FaceBook, YouTube makes it easy. Attach your Twitter account to You Tube so your YouTube activity is broadcast automatically on YouTube. This is the only painful step. You MUST have a Gmail account to attach your Twitter account. It is the only crappy process I have ever encountered with Google products, but it is powerful enough that it is worth the effort. Own your own media broadcasting station, get active on YouTube today.

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