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Social Media Time Machine

September 22, 2011 By 1 Comment
A TV dinner with Salisbury steak and macaroni ...

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Social media is the time machine everyone is seeking

I thought I would take a break from writing about business blogging and social media to explore some of the fun things available to us today.

Recently a team of Chinese scientists published a paper stating that time travel is not possible. The premise of the paper is time travel can not happen because a single photon can’t travel faster than the speed of light. Ok fine, but they are wrong!

See, if you want to travel back in time, it is real simple today. (What you talking about Willis?!)

Here is how it works. Let’s say I want to go back to 1974 and relive a day. It’s simple really:

  1. Go to this website and find a setlist of 1974 Top 100 songs.
  1. Go to Spotify or iTunes and create a playlist of the 1974 Top 100 songs
  2. Drive around town in an old Camero SS and play your music

Get home from work and want to read the news?

This website has an archive of all the newspapers in the United States.

Go to the grocery store and buy your Swanson TV dinner of Salisbury Steak. Pull up your TV tray and catch a 1974 evening news report.

Yes, on Youtube, you can find old broadcasts of news for any year.

If you want to watch your favorite sitcom from 1974, turn on Netflix, Hulu or Youtube and chances are, you will find your favorite 1974 sitcom or police drama to relive the magic of 1974 television.

So with all due respect, I say the Chinese scientist are wrong. With the many social media tools available today, time travel is not only here today, it is here to stay.

Paul is the President of Professional Blog Service. PBS works with clients making strategic investments into business blogging, social media and search engine optimization.

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B2B Social Media and when it happens

May 11, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Answer: If you want to see B2B Social Media in action, make sure you get online every Sunday after 5:00 PM.

Every Sunday, your business blogging investment supports your participation in B2B social media and B2C Social media activity. Facebook participation is at the highest. Users are on Twitter getting caught up on the latest trends. Or, users are getting caught up on their favorite forum or interest.

If your Sunday evenings starts with “www,” you may have had more company than you think.

Last Sunday evening, I was online learning about how many other people were online. Nope, it wasn’t because my favorite team was out of the playoffs or because a bad storm was keeping me in doors…or even because I’m the CEO of a professional blog service company. Whether I’m clicking my way through business or catching up with friends on LinkedIn, internet use has become a regular part of my life. And I’m not alone.

That’s what I learned last Sunday evening while I was online. The UK’s Ofcom—or Office of Communication—just announced that more people are surfing the web on Sundays from 5-6pm than at any other time. According to Ofcom’s research, the weekdays’ greatest web traffic comes between 9pm and 10pm, but there’s even a surge of internet use after 3pm, when most kids get out of school.

When I stopped to think about it, this online traffic report isn’t really that surprising. Thinking about my daily “to do list,” it’s impressive how many tasks I accomplish through the Internet. Many of us go online to quickly check off those necessary items, like managing bank accounts, renewing library books, and checking the weather forecast. But we also open a web browser to read the news, share photos, update profiles on social networks, and even watch television and listen to music. And the list of tasks keeps expanding…

Reading about all my fellow web users doesn’t make me feel crowded, rather, I feel like part of an audience. With so many of us online—and so many of us online so often—businesses that want to spread the word about their services need to be where the people are. These days, the people are online…everyday…usually multiple times.

The most successful businesses have their ears tuned in to the sound of all those mice clicks and fingers strokes. They’re using the internet to meet that wide audience using the internet…and not just on Sunday evenings.

 

Paul is the President of Professional Blog Service. PBS works with clients making strategic investments into business blogging, social media and search engine optimization.

 

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B2B Social Media needs Blog Writing

March 9, 2011 By Leave a Comment
Infographic on how Social Media are being used...

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B2B Social Media needs Blog Writing

If you are trying to run a  B2B social media campaign, it requires a good dose of blog writing. Content is king on Google. If you are not providing customers, prospects or colleagues with some authority in your market, you could get lost.  The center of any good campaign is the blog writing that goes with it. Any successful B2B social media campaign depends on it. Let’s take a look at what you need to consider:

Look at any Search Engine Optimization (SEO) course or checklist… you’ll find content freshness to be a key line item.

Read almost any social media plan… you’ll see that you have to have content to feed that huge network of friends, contacts and buddies you are creating.

Brush up on a few blogging how-to’s… you’ll find it’s all about content.

So, if content is so important, why do business people invest so little time in creating it?

Since starting Professional Blog Service, I’ve learned a little bit about why business people struggle with content:

Writing just isn’t urgent enough. Most business people are stuck in a reactive mode (much to Stephen Covey’s chagrin) where they deal with the most urgent task right now. Writing content is important, but it isn’t urgent.

Business people look at writing as something anyone can do well. My friends in the copywriting, legal and journalism professions know this isn’t so. Good writing isn’t easy to find. It takes time. And usually the person who has the time isn’t the one that can write the article.

typingContent creation isn’t fun. It’s fun to create campaigns, videos, and diagrams but writing content just is not most people’s idea of fun. It’s homework. It’s not sexy. But now more than ever it is critical to your marketing’s success.

Paul is the President of Professional Blog Service. PBS works with clients making strategic investments into business blogging, social media and search engine optimization.

 

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Are you using Linkedin effectively in your Social Media campaign?

March 5, 2011 By Leave a Comment

SN reviews

Is Linkedin a part of your social media marketing campaign?

One of the best social media marketing tools out there is Linkedin. It is a little tricky to learn how to use, but once you do, you can make connections and built a reputation online with like minded people and prospects. With Linkedin, you will find the people you need to connect with are there. Before you do, consider some of these ideas on how to best participate:

Don’t: Use Your Work or Primary Home Email as Your Public Email
Get a Gmail, Yahoo or Hotmail account, unless you really like spam with your email. LinkedIn provides some protection to your email address, but it does give your email to first degree connections and the owners of groups you join.

Do Understand How LinkedIn Search Works
LinkedIn has millions of users.  LinkedIn’s search system is critical because it is what helps you find people and what powers the “people you may know” tool. The search tool is limited to:

  • First level connections – your friends.
  • Second level connections – your friend’s friends.
  • Third level connections – your friend’s friends friends.
  • People in groups with you
  • A random sample of the rest of the database – and you do not get to see names.

In short: the more connections you have, the easier is to find people you are not connected to.

Do Have a Strategy
Quantity over Quality
The idea here is to connect with as many people as possible so you have access to as many LinkedIn users as possible. This generally means accepting connections from anyone who wants to connect with you.  If you are a marketer, serial networker or recruiter, then the quantity should trump quality.

Quality over Quantity
If you don’t need max our your visibility of LinkedIn’s database, then the best way to use LinkedIn is to focus on quality. Connect with people that you know or who have a reason (beyond being a prospect) to know you.  If you do purue quality, you should connect with a few “superconnectors” (people with thousands of connections) to gain access to more people in LinkedIn’s database.  It will be very hard to find people you know if you only can see 23,000 people compared to 453,000 people.

Do: Join groups
Groups allow you to find people with simmilar interest quickly.  Joining in discussion is a great way to meet new people.

Don’t Spam Groups
On LinkedIn there are two kinds of spam: blatant self promoting advertisements and blatant attempts to get more connections.  Take a minute to look at a discussion group before your post a message and make sure the group has posts like the one you want to make.

Do: State that you are open to connections if you are.
If you want to grow your network quickly, tell people that you are an “open networker,” or even become a LION (LinkedIn Open Networker).

Don’t break Outlook with your fabulous name.
LinkedIn allows people to download their freinds and their friend’s email addresses.  If you make a fancy name like “>>>Bob “The NetworkGuru” Smith<<<” it will make a first impression.  But the second impression will be that you can’t be found in outlook because your first name doesn’t start with “>” it starts with “B.”

 

Paul is the President of Professional Blog Service. PBS works with clients making strategic investments into business blogging, social media and search engine optimization.

 

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Your social media campaign needs business blogging as its hub

March 4, 2011 By 2 Comments

chickenegg

Facebook is the social media network of choice today. Everyone wants to get into Facebook and hand over the keys to them. If Facebook one day made everyone angry and the new kid shows up, what happens to all the content you shared? This is why we usually recommend having a business blog.

“Social media networks come and go, but your business blog is forever.”

One question that gets asked a lot by new clients is “Should we start with a blog or should I start with building social media profiles?”

Some social media experts say this is a bad idea because a blog is worthless without a network to read it. They argue you’ll get more eyes by guest blogging on a bigger website. They’ll say that you need to develop relationships with “influentials” or “A-List” bloggers.

And they are right…

I do agree you need to work on building a social media network. I do agree you should guest blog. I can’t agree more that it takes a lot of time to get serious blog traffic.

That said, I disagree with putting off blogging [Read more...]

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Social Media and the impact it can have on your Online Reputation Management

February 24, 2011 By 2 Comments
Two Face - Character from Batman comic book

Social Media can be powerfully positive for you, or it can severely hurt your online reputation management.fark.com - social media and online reputation management

Yesterday was an interesting day here in Indianapolis. Jeff Cox, a Deputy Attorney General here in Indiana was challenged by the San Francisco based Mother Jones magazine about comments he made on Twitter. Mr. Cox had retweeted their report on the protests occurring in Wisconsin over bargaining rights for state employees adding “Use live ammunition.” Mother Jones headlined the article, “Indiana Official: Use Live Ammunition” against Wisconsin protesters.” The result was yesterday the Indiana Attorney General’s office fired him.

Mr. Cox’s response to his online persona, “It was satirical, I was only trying to make people think.” About what? Using live ammunition in a country known for its whacko’s shooting up schoolyards, postal offices and museums and congresswomen? Is this the new excuse for encouraging violence? “It was satirical, I was only trying to make people think.”

Nice try, but I am not buying it. I think those words came from his heart.

Here is the tweet from Mr. Cox:

Jeff Cox retweets Mother Jones report on Wisconsion

In the past, most people’s bad online behavior was confined to emails. Sometimes, it would get leaked to others and redistributed, but seldom did it go viral.

Mr. Cox unwittingly set himself up. Mother Jones is a well know magazine. Their article is a good one and they asked thoughtful questions that Mr. Cox did not answer.

I found the article through www.fark.com. By the afternoon, there were over 300 comments on the article in Fark. Which means, they generated a number of links to Mother Jones. My suspicions, the article is going to be up there for a long time. So, as employers do searches, they are going to find the article on the front page.

A month ago, there was a hockey Dad in Toronto, another lawyer who was called out for his legal brief for kicking a 12 year old girl off his son’s team. He was not the coach. it was a AAA hockey team in Ontario. He too got picked up by Fark.com. His brief went viral and not only did www.fark.com pick it up, but a whole bunch of other social media sites talked about the guy. Type in George Atis and see what you get.

The lesson, be careful what persona you project online. It could come back to haunt you. Just some ideas to consider:

  1. Don’t encourage others to kill people
  2. Don’t speak badly about your employer (If you want to keep your job)
  3. Don’t speak badly about your customers (I’ve seen it)
  4. Don’t talk about getting drunk the night before
  5. Don’t let friends post that picture of you passed out at the party or on the street
  6. Don’t use slander to talk about others. (But Paul – you always target the TSA. I do and have written to my elected officials about it).

As my other half reminds me, “If you can’t say it to a person’s face, then don’t say it online or in an email.”

Paul is the President of Professional Blog Service. PBS works with clients making strategic investments into business blogging, social media and search engine optimization.


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