It should hardly need repeating at this point: When you post stuff to the Internet, people will see it, and quite possibly use it in ways that you don’t intend. And yet, either people keep finding new ways to make the same mistakes, or other people keep finding ways to use that information. Two recent cases in point: * Project ‘Gaydar’: This Boston Globe article looks at some MIT researchers who analyzed Facebook friending patterns and figured out that they could pretty accurately predict which men were gay, even if they didn’t list it in their profile. They did this by looking at the subjects’ Facebook friends; apparently, gay men have more gay male friends than straight men, so by looking at someone’s followers and plugging them into a computer model, they could infer who was gay. (It didn’t work as well with bisexuals and lesbians.) The reason it works is that people with similar interests tend to cluster. Call it birds of a feather flocking together, or guilt by association. Either way, it shows another way that indirect information — in this case, the company you keep — can be used to reveal more information about you than you might have intended, especially when that ... read more >>
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Being creative and transparent is only half the story when it comes to social media marketing. In order to develop and execute a truly successful social media campaign, you simply must be able to monitor your results. At the end of the day, your boss (if you work as marketing director at a company for example) will probably be more impressed by cold hard numbers than how cool your Twitter or Facebook profile looks. Here are five must have tools for any social media marketing arsenal - The best tools for your social media monitoring toolbox
1. Social Listening - I'm a huge fan of two products that facilitate social media listening. They are Spiral16 and Radian6. While both tools have their strengths and weaknesses, you really can't go wrong with either of them. 
Caption: Spiral16 Spark Visualization of Connected Conversations
Spiral16 is a tremendous tool for visualizing conversations that are occuring out on the web and on social networks in particular. Whether it is a blog, message board post, picture or even a video, Spiral will help uncover those conversations and rank them by influence and sentiment. Radian6 is another great tool we use for social listening. If ... read more >>
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The One Big Thing you really do need to know about this week is Facebook’s forthcoming feature, real-time activity feed search. The feature will allow users to search in real time the activity feeds of the people in their network as well as anyone person or page that has set their feed to be publicly available. Inside Facebook points out: - Updates from your friends come before updates from everyone.
- All updates contain rich content in-line, from videos to music to thumbnails of shared links.
Visit Inside Facebook’s post to see some screenshots of what this will look like. As I said in my previous post, this will be a vast improvement over Facebook’s current search and will give us at least some capability for monitoring buzz. Right now, the only tool we have to do that is Facebook Lexicon, which is pretty useless except as a crude sentiment measurement tool. With Lexicon you can only see the volume of chatter for a given keyword. With the new activity feed search, we’ll be able to discover conversations and find where they are taking place. And that leads to engagement. And that is what we strategic online communicators call A Very Good Thing.I know I already wrote ... read more >>
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Whether it’s your business or your personal brand, people always connect with people on a personal level. It’s all about engaging in a dynamic relationship. Brands are not logos or commercials, they are the perception and emotion of people built on trust and credibility.  A successful brand cultivates extensive user experience and encourages interaction that creates meaningful dialogues. In order to foster strong relationships you must be trusted. And to earn trust, you need to allow others to become aware of you. This concept also applies to the art of social networking, particularly with the shift from face-to-face communication to more online communication.
There are literally thousands of social media websites on the internet with hundreds more popping up every week. The strategy is to focus on the ones that suit your niche. Setup a blog I recommend setting up a blog if you don’t already have a website. Even if you have a website such as your company or product website, incorporating a blog will enhance your online presence because blogs are typically search engine friendly, and they allow for rapid content indexing on the internet. You ... read more >>
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Last week, I wrote a blog post called “6 Reasons You Shouldn’t Brand Yourself as a Social Media Expert” and it quickly became the most popular post I’ve ever written on this blog (since October, 2006), with over 400 retweets and almost 60 comments. There were a feel people who disagreed with my statements and those that gave me credit for my observations. I wrote the post because I’m perceived as a social media expert at my day job and I believe that title will evolve over the coming years, as we are all pulled into this brave new world and our positions become ubiquitous.
I received a few emails, that will remain anonymous, of individuals who frown at the term “expert.” I, on the other hand, think that it’s one of the most important aspects of personal branding. In fact, if you aren’t an expert, your perceived value diminishes, you won’t get as many opportunities and it will be hard to position yourself for success. Your biggest challenge The title of this post may sound scary, especially to those who don’t feel they are experts in their fields quite yet. Your biggest challenge in life: Finding your passion and connecting it to your expertise, while ... read more >>
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How well do you know Facebook? Do you know it well enough to regard it as a learning and productivity tool? I remember writing an article on Facebook being able to improve productivity sometime back when most employers where scared of the income that might be lost if employees kept up with the Facebook trend. Here’s a list of 100 outstanding Facebook applications. Thanks to my friends at Select Courses who took time to put this list together. Not just bluffing; see a preview of some apps. Social Connections Make connections with others who can help you through thes apps. - FriendFeed: Use FriendFeed as a convenient and time saving way to keep up with all of your friends’ online activities.
- Professional Profile: Use Professional Profile for business networking on Facebook.
- SocialCalendar: Get your social life together and share it with your friends using this calendar.
- CampusBuddy Courses: With CampusBuddy, you can connect with other students on your campus.
Documents & Sharing Use Facebook for documents, and even share them with the help of these apps. - Zoho: Use Zoho in your Facebook profile, and you can use it to create and edit documents, spreadsheets, ...
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In last week’s blog post about crafting a successful Facebook fan page (or public profile, as they’re now officially called), I promised a post on five pages that get it done. They aren’t the top five pages on Facebook (Coke comes in at #1, followed by Pringles at #2), but they use a variety of approaches, content and tools to perfectly target their markets. From smallest number of fans to largest: Zappos Zappos Facebook fan page 16,000 fans Zappos has an impressive social media campaign spearheaded by their CEO (who is on Twitter @zappos) and their Facebook page is no exception. The page has amateur video shot around the Zappos office and interactive photo galleries where fans are encouraged to submit captions. From blog posts to musical videos sung by staff, the page has everything - except shoes. You see, Zappos is in the shoe-selling business. They also...
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 Are you a new business wondering how to build a presence on the web in less than 24 hours, at no cost and without having to be a technical guru? In this article you will discover 7 tips for getting started with a Facebook Page for your business to help you start building your brand online.
Each month I have the privilege to meet with hundreds of new start ups through the speaking, workshops and mentoring sessions I lead, facilitate or participate in. One of the most common questions I get asked is how to get started with developing a presence on the web that is a low cost for the new business entrepreneur to set up and something that does not take several weeks or even months to implement. Putting aside a full interactive online and offline digital marketing strategy which is what I develop with my private clients, one of the platforms that has been working really well for a number of my mentoring clients is developing a presence on Facebook. I am not talking about a personal profile on Facebook, but a Facebook page to represent your business. I certainly don’t recommend that your only presence on the web as a new business is Facebook – I would prefer you to own your own real estate.... read more >>
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 If you are using Facebook to promote your busines, then you MUST be using a fan page, right? Well, as you know, searching through all of those applications to add to your page can be laborious.
Welcome Involver! Involver is a one stop shop for basic fan page applications and best of all…it’s FREE! You can simply and easily add a feed from your blog, your Twitter stream or any other rss. You can add your slides, a Youtube feed, white paper….all kinds of good stuff. Along with FREE….it’s also simple to use! 
    
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With apologies to Mr. Lennon (and to one of my favorite tunes of all time): Imagine there's no Facebook,
It's easy if you try,
Imagine all the Tweeple,
Living Tweetless lives.
I love Twitter and Facebook--more than I ought--but I worry there's too much focus in media and within business on these two Social Media venues. In a world of diverse and interesting Social Media, there seems to be an obsession with how to use Twitter and Facebook rather than an understanding of how Twitter and Facebook are part of a larger and evolving Social Media landscape.
In the past month, Google News has cataloged 52,363 articles mentioning Twitter and 61,574 referencing Facebook. By way of comparison, Digg, the leading social bookmarking site, is cited 2,283 times and GetSatisfaction, an interesting Web 2.0 tool for crowdsourcing and customer service, is mentioned just 60 times.
I'm not criticizing the focus on Twitter and Facebook; they've earned all the attention received. In just one year Twitter saw a 1,400 percent increase in unique visitors and Facebook's active users grew 150%. Add to that the demographics of these sites are skewing older--the number of Facebook users over 35 doubled in just 60 days... read more >>
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