It Only Takes One: Creating the Social Spark

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Consider these recent events in social media:

1) Former Tonight Show host, in an attempt to kill time during his forced exile from television, starts a Twitter account which quickly amasses more than half a million followers. For reasons not entirely clear, he chooses to follow one person at random, turning a 19-year-old Michigan woman into an instant celebrity.

2) A fan of actress Betty White, determined to see the TV legend host Saturday Night Live, sets up a Facebook fan page to generate support. About three months and nearly half a million fans later, it’s reported Betty will host the show in May.

3) Film critic and prolific tweeter Roger Ebert points followers to a blog article on The Feminista Files about dressing Oscar nominee Gabourey Sidibe for the ceremony, resulting in a significant increase of readers for author Erica Kennedy, whose blog received a further boost with mentions on high-profile sites Salon.com and The Frisky.

You as a social media marketer may think: what are the chances some celebrity is going to follow your Facebook or Twitter, or else share your content and spark a viral spike in unique views. It would be nice to be singled out in this manner, thereby allowing you to take advantage of growing interest in your blog or social profile – while in time the mass numbers may drop off as the Warholian fifteen minutes tick away, there remains the opportunity to maintain a higher readership than you had before you were discovered.

Of course, nobody will discover you, famous or otherwise, unless you give people something to find. The one advantage to building an archive of blog articles and commentary, Twitter data, and even Facebook status updates is that once they are set free, they remain cached in search. It’s very possible a blog you may consider old news will pop up on somebody’s radar, prompting them to share via Digg, Delicious or a host of other services. The more information is shared daily via social media, the longer it retains relevance. You may think a topic is expired, but it’s always new to somebody.

How do you ignite the spark to get that one retweet or dig? It’s a challenge to pinpoint the magic formula, but ultimately it boils down to A) writing what people want to read, and B) writing it often. You may find it will take many strikes of the match to set one aflame, but if you refuse to lift the flap first and get started, know it will never happen.

Kathryn Lively is a social media specialist assisting clients with social media optimization and travel social media services. Clients include Gainesville hotels, European hotels, and Virginia web design firms.

Google Acquires Aardvark Social Search

Mashable has confirmed that it’s been a busy week for Google (when is it not?). This week they not only have launched their Google Buzz social platform, but also acquired Aardvark, a social search engine that allows users to ask questions, which are answered via various social profiles like Facebook and Twitter (Read all about it). While details are not forthcoming, particularly as to whether Aardvark’s original concept will change under Google’s watch, it does present one more step toward Google’s attempted domination of the social media world.

We’ll have more to say on this acquisition and how it can affect the way you do business through social networking very soon.

Facebook Turns 6 – You’ve Come A Long Way, Baby

I’ve never had the opportunity to say this, so I’m going to bask in this moment.

Back in MY day, Facebook was very different than it is now. Only college students were allowed, and the news feed was non-existent.  We didn’t use Facebook to figure out a company’s business hours, talk with our favorite aunt in Vegas or live feeds.  Back when it was www.THEfacebook.com, there was no Farmville, no Mafia Wars, dopplegangers or status updates. The utility of Facebook was brilliantly simple – if you didn’t go to class to take notes, send your friend a message (writing on the wall was kind of weird at the time).

Then came the groups, the photo tagging, and the complicated relationships.

Here’s what a profile page looked like when I first started Facebook in 2004:

Ah, blissfully simple. Nice, clean boxes. Then, everyone freaked out when “The mini feed” came rearing it’s ugly head. As if the addition of the status wasn’t too creepy feeling, Facebook wanted to chronicle every thing you did on the site.

If we only knew! The mini-feed has now split into a news feed AND live feed, your wall is the most prominent feature, and we are inidated with pay-per-click ads on the right side of the page that are targeted toward everything we put into our personal information in our profile.

Mark Zuckerburg had no idea his small Web project would turn into a revolution for marketing and advertising. With over 350 million users, Facebook has become part of almost everyone’s lives, whether they want it to or not. For businesses, if you do not have a presence on Facebook, you are behind your competitors. For students, Facebook is a way to not only keep up with class notes and party spots, but an outlet to talk outside the school walls. For families, it’s never been easier to stay close when you are spread apart.

Am I pleased with the progression of Facebook? Sure. Why not? I’m a big believer in “Facebook is what you make it.” If you love Farmville and taking quizzes, wonderful. If you love connecting with other professionals, fabulous. If you are a helicopter mom (please stop what you are doing), Facebook is good for you.

More importantly, now we have the ability to use Facebook (and all of social media, really) for good. News breaks faster than ever and awareness can be given to important causes and charities. Millions of people united to help those in Haiti stricken by disaster by donating food, money and time.

So happy birthday, Facebook. I’m excited to see how far you’ve come, and where you’ll go from here. If you had it posted on a profile, you’d have 350 million notifications. Lucky you.

Jessica Swink is a freelance writer specializing in articles about Search Engine Optimization and Facebook Marketing.

Social Media and the Image You Convey, or Would You Buy a Used Car from a Guy With a Goofy Profile Picture?

With regards to surfing Facebook, it’s been a very telling week. Several days ago, a friend vented to me about one profile he monitors specifically because it belongs to a friend of his teenage daughter. The girl had posted rather raunchy photos (including shots of  underage drinking and smoking) to an album not marked as private. “Anybody can see this,” he groused, though he admitted he was grateful to see no compromising pictures of his child.

More recently my husband, who shuns any and all social networking, asked me to look up a few Facebook profiles for him. He is on a panel conducting interviews to fill a vacancy at his school, and wanted to see if any information provided on the accounts matched what he received in the applications. It happens, in nearly every field of business and entertainment. I know publishers and editors who perform Google searches on prospective authors who have submitted work – not so much to see if they actively promote online, but if they do or say anything that could potentially damage their own reputations if they were to sign them.

If you think somebody isn’t looking at your Facebook profile, or reading your tweets and not forming an opinion about you, think again. According to a recent Microsoft study, twenty-five percent of HR managers reject job candidates based upon information found online, particular social profiles. So if you’re thinking about posting that video of your antics from your friend’s bachelor party at Hooter’s, and you happen to be up for tenure at your university, you may want to think twice.

Business and the Social Media Image: Who Represents You Online?

These days, it doesn’t seem uncommon for a major company to have a policy on their employees’ involvement in sites like Facebook and MySpace. Even off the clock, you may be seen as a representative of your work, and as such may be expected to project a professional image. This doesn’t mean, of course, that businesses are watching their workers 24/7, but thanks to Google Alerts and similar watchdog applications, managers can monitor what is being said about their companies, and ultimately these updates can click through to something they feel should be handled swiftly, and perhaps with disciplinary action.

For the business using Facebook, Twitter, and other social profiles to market products and services, it’s important to ensure that your activity online is handled in the manner you conduct your business, and provide the face you want customers to see – be it casual, professional, humorous or compassionate.

Does this mean you can’t play Farmville anymore? Not necessarily, but if you do have criticism to share about your company or competitors, you may wish to exercise caution when you post status updates. If you’re set on sharing photos of your wild weekend in Vegas, strongly consider utilizing privacy options on the social network and avoid tagging friends online if you feel the shots are a bit compromising. You don’t want to put a friend at risk, either.

If your company has a fan page on Facebook, make employees aware of feedback policies – designate one or two employees to speak on behalf of the business via the network to avoid confusion. It’s easier, of course, to set up that person as admin to ensure fans will know the company responds in a timely manner.

Social networks are all about socializing – they are meant to inspire fun and creativity. So long as your company and employees know the difference between light-hearted behavior and immaturity, you can enjoy a good presence online.

Kathryn Lively is a social media expert assisting clients with social media writing and travel social media services. Clients include Gainesville hotels and Virginia Beach web design companies.

Claim Your Name, Even If You Never Plan to Use It

A client learned a valuable lesson today with regards to preserving himself as a brand. While he achieved success in two businesses and thought ahead to obtain a number of domain names pertinent to his business, he never bothered to register his own name as a URL. One might not consider this a bad business move, especially when you consider how strongly he promoted the brands that defined his work. Only when he agreed to attend a conference in order to sell himself as a trustworthy business partner did he realize the importance of owning his name.

The problem arose, however, when it was discovered that somebody – a person in his line of work who anticipated his eventual need for the URL – registered it himself. Rather than transfer the domain in good faith, he decided to hold it for ransom – not for an inflated price, but to force the namesake’s hand in another matter. Whether or not this act violates the Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act is up for the experts to decide, but from this experience comes an important lesson in protecting all of your online interests. Business owners who focus on ensuring a specific brand name is secured through domain listings and social media vanity tags may lose sight of their own personal branding, and in turn suffer the consequences.

Everybody has a name, and more than likely there are other people in the world with the same name as yours. It’s probable for the man called John Smith, and possible for somebody with a more obscure surname. When authors come to us for advice on pseudonyms, we strongly recommend using Google for a potential non de plume to make sure it isn’t already known (or infamous) – it’s also not a bad idea to Google yourself once in a while to see what’s being written.

Given your online visibility, is it important to register your name as a domain, even if you have no use for it in business? It is definitely recommended. You can register the URL without feeling obligated to apply it to a site. Once you do, it’s yours for a year, or for however long you initially buy it. Redirect it to your company profile page, create an HTML placeholder for it, just have that ownership so nobody else will.

As your company grows, so will interest in your business and the people behind it. While success creates opportunity for you, it’s wise to think ahead before somebody unrelated sees value in things like domain names. Don’t be caught like our client.

Kathryn Lively is a social media specialist assisting clients with social media writing and travel social media services. Clients include Gainesville hotels and Virginia web design companies.

The Impact of Viral Facebooking: What We Can Learn From Bra Colors

Perhaps, if you checked the statuses of Facebook friends over the weekend, you saw them, too. Multitudes of women, posting a single color beside their avatars. Black, white, peach, red, lavender, pink…every color of the rainbow. It seemed some female friends were in on the joke, judging from their comments. If you’re a man, no doubt the movement confused you. An eventual missive in my inbox spilled the goods: the oft-forwarded form message asked women to post their bra color in their status to raise awareness for breast cancer.

A nifty idea, and one that truly proved the power of viral marketing. The Facebook bra flap has since gone on to attract the attention of national wires and morning talk shows. Whether the stunt has actually helped raise funds for breast cancer research is debatable, but one thing is clear: if you come up with a compelling idea and convince just a few people to play along, chances are you could spread your brand quickly throughout the country.

Can You Beat the Bra?

With different applications on social media sites like MySpace and Facebook vying for users’ attentions, you as a social media marketer may wonder if you can compel thousands of people to spread your gospel. One thing to know about viral marketing is that what you promote must be interesting enough to grab one person, much less a thousand. Plant the seed, and the rest follows, but that seed must be potent.

How do you make a viral campaign in Facebook, or even Twitter, work? First and foremost, if you wish to attract mass attention to a specific cause or item, you want to be certain what you plan doesn’t overtly advertise something. The Facebook Bra fad worked because it introduced some mystery (why are all these women posting colors?) and because its ultimate goal was to raise awareness about something to which all women, regardless of age, race, and creed, could relate – the risk of breast cancer. If you are running social media for a non profit organization, for example, applying a creative method for getting the word out about your cause can prove beneficial.

If you run a business and are trying to sell a product? It’s possible you may up end dead in the water quickly if you approach hundreds of Facebook friends and fans imploring them to plug your products. Where’s the fun in that? However, if you encourage a viral campaign related to your business but doesn’t outwardly sell anything, you have the opportunity to market yourself internally. Each mail you send to would-be participants should contain your main URL. For every message forwarded to another friend that is kept whole, your site is exposed to more and more people. This is where the true “virus” takes root.

How quickly can a campaign spread. There’s no telling how well, or how poorly, you’ll do. If you bomb out the starting gate the first time, don’t feel discouraged. Sometimes you’ll need to try an assortment of tricks before something hits. The more you fire up your inventive side, the more likely you can harness social media for your benefit.

Social Media Backlash Shouldn’t Prevent You From Profile Upkeep

In an age where wives are finding out via Facebook that their husbands are leaving them, a business owner might take pause when considering a social media marketing strategy. It seems lately Twitter, too, is used more as a harbinger for bad news and celebrity gossip (just plug in a search for Tiger Woods and sit back for the fireworks), and one wouldn’t be surprised to guess if a business owner wants to curb social online interaction in favor of less sensationalized promotion. Is that a wise move, however?

The recent news implying that Facebook usage, among utilization of other networks, is responsible for global marital breakdown is fascinating, yet it is hardly an innovation. If a marriage has floundered before Internet use became a factor, one can’t necessarily place the blame on social media. While sites like MySpace, Bebo, Facebook and others allow old friends (and consequently old flames) to reconnect, it’s also a helpful communication tool for families. Fathers keep track of their children’s activities, married couples share photos and videos with friends, and often talk to one another. It may not be the ideal situation, and may fast be replacing the night dinner around the table, but social media can work as well in strengthening familial bonds rather than severing them. Anyone using a social network to expedite divorce could easily do the same with anything else – an obsession with sports or other activities, long hours at work, and so forth.

Social networks in and of themselves are not evil. To be certain, people have abused their better qualities for nefarious purposes, but as such stories are few and far between this should not deter a businessman or company from refraining from their use. For every new item of a threat posted on a blog there are more detailing how people have used social media to find missing children, obtain help for needy families, or reunite siblings separated for years.

How can you keep a positive focus on marketing through social media? Always maintain a healthy attitude when you post items of interest. Not everything you share needs to be company related, and it’s good to engage friends and followers in conversations that highlight a brighter side to humanity. Does your company support a specific charity or non-profit? Find links and articles that showcase the good they do. If you’ve hosted an event recently, share pictures and video. Social media is about making your own news – so make it good.

Phone Apps Help Tourism Businesses Keep Travelers Informed

Taking Advantage of Twitter’s New Retweet Feature

While browsing through a Twitter feed, I caught sight of a mini conversation between two people trying to figure out how people they do not follow ended up in their feeds. For the time being, this is only a phenomenon that occurs when one reads directly from Twitter’s site – readers such as Echofon and Tweetdeck do not capture these particular posts. What is happening here is that when somebody you follow retweets a post made by somebody you don’t follow, Twitter adds the original post to your feed, with the avatar and profile link of the poster. The purpose, ostensibly, is to broaden a user’s awareness of like-minded Tweeters out there.

What does this mean for the business person who utilizes social media in his/her marketing plan? For one, every time one of your posts is retweeted, there is a chance somebody who doesn’t follow you will see your post, and perhaps be inspired to add you to a feed. Of course, this is based on the assumption that potential followers will use the Twitter site and not a special reader (or a reader that supports this function – as readers update this could become a reality), and that people will retweet your posts in the first place. In order to take advantage of this added exposure to your company, you must not only be social, but be interesting.

Recruitment of Retweeters

It’s not uncommon to see a request for followers to retweet a particular message, be it a sales notice or a call to action. Depending on the scope of your business, you can conduct Twitter-only discount codes for products and services, then request followers to spread the word. Adding incentive (i.e. choosing a random retweeter for a prize giveaway) may boost motivation.

Maintaining your Twitter account on a personal level, too, may encourage followers to spread your wisdom. If you were to constantly post repetitive information hustling people to your main site, you might find you lose more followers than you gain. Take care to nurture relationships with those already opted-in to your feed, and you can cultivate a larger following as you progress socially.

Kathryn Lively is a social media specialist assisting clients with social media optimization and travel social media services.

Social Media Helps Non-Profits Take Advantage of the Giving Season

While the holiday shopping season may emphasize the need to gift friends and loved ones with expensive gadgets and games, there always remains that part of the population who enjoys giving for the purpose of truly giving to the community. Donations to non-profits and charities – whether made in honor of a friend or as a supportive thank-you – are naturally sought at this time of year, with organizations offering various incentives in exchange for funds. Any non-profit not already soliciting donations via social media, however, is missing out on a great opportunity to raise funds and awareness for its cause.

Tweet, ReTweet, Repeat

Think of your organization and how it is structured. How many people follow your Twitter account, and how many people within your organization use the social network? Twitter works as a viral tool for parsing information and news. These days it doesn’t take much for a rumor to spread through thousands of posts, but Twitter isn’t just used for gossip. A thought-out campaign to have supporters post a URL to a landing page for donations could generate enough “re-tweeting” awareness among their followers and in turn bring new and lapsed donors to your door.

Give Your Organization a Face

Facebook is especially friendly toward specific causes. The aptly named Causes application allows users to set up a method for taking donations through Facebook. All you need to do is set up the application, encourage Facebook friends to join and donate, and a widget on your profile page will let visitors know how much is given to your organization. In addition, your organization is given a special Causes page to let visitors know your top earners, recruiters, and fundraisers.

Shine a Lens on Your Charity

The social network Squidoo, a page generator built on the foundation of adding specific modules to define your topics (including YouTube videos, Amazon links, and Twitter feeds), is an active supporter of non-profit organizations. Squidoo users who create new lenses have the option of donating royalties from ad click-throughs to the charities of their choice, and as a 501 (c)(3) you have the opportunity to apply for inclusion. If accepted, you can take advantage of Squidoo’s user-friendly lens building system to create pages on a variety of related topics. Promote the lenses through your other networks and encourage ad clicks to generate revenue.

Don’t let the holiday season pass without maximizing your exposure through social media. A well-executed plan can bring holiday spending toward your cause.