Just like the song says, you gotta have friends. Friends are there to help seed your Farmville gardens and help destroy the forces of evil in your Mafia Wars. Friends are there to retweet the URL of that “not safe for work” Lady Gaga video you managed to sneak peek while the boss wasn’t looking, and you can always count on them to “like” your Facebook status every time you come up with a whimsically snarky comment about which Real Housewife of Boise is sporting fake…well, let’s say enhancements. In this age of social media, everybody has the potential to be your friend, even people you don’t know and may never meet in your lifetime.

So comes the dilemma as you approach your social marketing strategy: do you grow your Twitter or Facebook page following naturally, hoping that people you do know will recommend you and your business to others, or do you embark on the aggressive vaccum cleaner process of sucking in every profile in sight? If numbers are the only thing that concern you, there are ways to amass plenty of warm bodies. People sell services that strictly invite Facebook “friends” and mass follow Twitter users that automatically refollow. For as little as fifty bucks you could have the ears and eyes of thousands of people, but are they really paying attention?

Consider for a moment the pros and cons of the guerrilla invite. We’ve discussed this topic before, but it’s one worth revisiting as ideas on social networking change. If you don’t switch gears as you promote, it means you haven’t grown in your strategy, and it’s good to weigh all options. With the blind follow of Twitter users, for example, you could match your follow count to your followed by as many as six figures if you wish. If those followers boast the same volume, there is the likelihood your tweets are lost in a sea of other updates, but one can also argue that by following a good number of re-follows there is the possibility your message will be seen by people who wouldn’t otherwise follow you naturally. You had to find them first, then they become interested.

Same goes with Facebook and even LinkedIn. With the latter, there are groups solely designed to connect “open networkers,” people who will connect to you regardless of your industry. As a writer and social marketer, it might benefit me to network with as many people as possible because ultimately every industry will need marketing help, right? Gaining more connections increases my chances of finding work. However, for the niche business you might not benefit as much, unless one connection happens to know of somebody interested in what you do.

Where Facebook is concerned, triggers are in place to reign in your mass friending activities. Unless you know one of those magical loopholes to gain five thousand friends in one fell swoop, you might be better off approaching people slowly. To be certain, there are accounts created strictly to sell and spam, which won’t do you much good when you try to sell. However, in a sea of kelp you’re bound to catch a few fish.

So, how do you approach networking? Is it better to throw everything you have against the wall and see what sticks? Do you take out a thinner brush and draw out a more thoughtful plan? Look at what you’ve done to start, and if it hasn’t worked you might consider bolder measures. Experiment with different lighters to see what sparks the fire in your campaigns.

Kathryn Lively is a social media specialist assisting clients with social media writing and local PPC campaigns. Clients include Gainesville bed and breakfasts, European hotel search engines, global trade forums, and Virginia Beach web design firms.

Ten years ago, I worked at a bookstore in Athens, Georgia which had a rather large hobby shelf nestled in between the biographies and the photography coffee books. Here one found those blue cardboard folders for holding dimes and statehood quarters, and photo albums for baseball cards. This particular time, however, the must-have fad among kids was the pog. Pog were essentially flat cardboard discs bearing different images and such – sort of like trading cards, kids collected and traded them by the thousands. Now, pogs had been around for decades in different incarnations (mainly as bottle caps of certain fruit drinks), but in the 90s they were all over the damn place, and by the century’s turn they had disappeared. How many attics and closets are storing plastic tubes of these little buggers, who can say?

This morning I received in my e-mail a notice from The Huffington Post that they are now awarding nifty new badges to frequent commentators and networking registrants. The rules are simple: if you blog and tweet HuffPo links enough, you get a nice little sticker next to your profile. The idea behind badges for social portal members isn’t new, either. Glue and Foursquare, two rapidly growing networks for product and information sharing, have similar award systems in place. It’s not uncommon for me these days to check Twitter and see somebody I’m following post that they’ve earned the “Underwater Basket Weaving” or “Goo-Goo for Lady Gaga” badge on whatever network. Basically it appears pogs have resurfaced in a sense – on cannot trade them online, but I imagine if you give a network a few weeks they’ll figure out how to do just that.

Why do sites give out shiny happy “stickers”? If one chooses to apply the Pavlovian principle to the Internet, it’s because we crave rewards. We sign up for credit cards to spend thousands of dollars to earn enough points to buy a CD, and we collect grocery swipe cards to save fifty cents on products we wouldn’t normally buy, but because they’re sale it’s okay – we’re saving money! Never mind that we’d save even more if we didn’t buy the prune juice we’re not going to drink anyway.

Social stickers are fun. They are incentive to declare us as authorities on major networks, and in turn encourage people to follow our profiles and promote our websites. With Glue, for example, I can browse the books I’ve written on Amazon.com and add them to my list, thereby promoting myself as an active Glue user and an author, and supplement my authority by adding books I’ve edited as well. If I’m active enough on the site, which is connected to my Twitter account, an alert is release whenever I earn a new sticker, and Glue users following will see that and perhaps follow my profile with the hope that I’ll like their stuff. By this logic, the happy shiny stickers can benefit your social marketing.

Now let’s say you haven’t written any books or have any products to sell – what good are all these stickers and all this time spent on social crack sites? One can argue that any time spent socializing on the Internet is networking. Part of bringing news of your services to people involves finding people you may interest. With Glue and Foursquare and similar sites, you have the opportunity to search people by their likes and dislikes, and from there build a trust that just might transfer traffic to your websites.

Will stickers and badges go the way of the pog? It’s possible. The way the Internet and social media advances, surely something new will come along that users Must. Have. Now. In the meantime, though, they sure are cute, aren’t they?

Kathryn Lively is a social media specialist assisting clients with social media optimization and travel social media services. She has helped a number of companies increase their traffic through social media writing and Virginia web design.

In our culture, it isn’t unusual for what a story or event one might normally perceive as local interest touch the consciousness and hearts of people nationwide. When a young child in a rural community goes missing, the nation seems to hold its collective breath, waiting for the end result of the search. When a young woman is denied admission to a military academy based on her gender, we debate the legality and morality of the case. We may never meet these people, but in some cases we may accept that we share a common bond and therefore feel it necessary to share our opinions.

Recently, a young woman in Fulton, Mississipi made national headlines when her school’s administrators denied permission for her to wear a tuxedo and escort her female date to the senior prom. Feeling discriminated, the student took legal action, which resulted in the prom’s cancellation. What began as an event of limited local interest quickly ballooned into a matter of national concern over gay/lesbian. This student, who wanted nothing more than to enjoy her prom, turned literally overnight into an activist or a troublemaker – depending on which viewpoint you read.

In the time of Rosa Parks, there was no Internet to publicize the conflicts that gave rise to the powerful civil rights movement, yet through word of mouth and a willingness to participate among the greater community one saw Parks’ simple refusal to give up her bus seat blossom into a series of stirring protests and events that made discrimination against race illegal in this country. With the example before us now, we can witness first hand how social media has effected how the nation feels about various issues.

The Social Media Backlash

Subsequent stories of Constance McMillan’s situation continue to reach audiences far beyond the Mississippi borders. The Huffington Post shares photos ripped from students’ social pages of an alternative prom thrown attended by her classmates while Constance was directed elsewhere to a “fake” event. Twitter searches for the name of the high school in question lead to many condemnations of the school’s alleged treatment of McMillan, and if one pulls up the school on Google Maps, there are more than 40 one-star reviews, all set by people responding to this issue.

Probably the most damning evidence that social media could cause problems for people involved in this controversy comes from a stream of comments in a blog that exposes pictures of the secret prom. Building on reactions from at least two of McMillian’s classmates (who defended the school’s actions), other commentators proceeded to expose the students’ names and Facebook and Flickr links with the prediction that anybody tied to this high school and the shunning of McMillan is basically doomed.

While the social profiles in question on this thread have since been made private or deleted, it’s possible that many could have been subjected to screen shots and posted elsewhere, as pictures of the prom were leaked over the Internet. Whether or not any of McMillan’s classmates will suffer discrimination or hardship themselves in the job market because of this is uncertain. The fact remains, however, that even the simple act of posting a photo, a link, or an opinion on a social site presents the opportunity for receiving mass praise, or major backlash.

Has social media ruined the lives of anyone involved in this issue? It’s difficult to say now, though on the outset it appears public opinion of the school’s administration isn’t very positive. Sympathy for McMillan’s plight and subsequent treatment arguably outweighs support of the school’s decision – McMillan has appeared on national television and received support from various celebrities, though one might conclude she is suffering a bit of backlash herself, as certain comments suggest she is milking the sympathy for attention. Either way, McMillan stands to benefit from the social buzz – she’s been offered generous amounts of scholarship money and is hailed as a role model for gay and lesbian youth. Meanwhile, one will wonder if anybody else attached to this high school encounters obstacles in life based on their connection, complicit or otherwise.

Saving Your Life with Social Media

Once you post an embarrassing picture, a snide remark, or something equally damning to your reputation, it’s out there. You might think you can turn back time and erase the evidence, but web archive retrieval or a visitor with a quickness for the print screen button can come back to haunt you in the long. People will debate whether or not high school students posting prom pictures is a bad thing, but given the context of this story the motives could be interpreted in a certain way.

Are the students who attended this alternative party where McMillan was allegedly excluded mocking the young girl, or did they just want to share memories? This may not be the best example of how social media usage can come back to burn you, but given the publicity of these events it does illustrate the power of a social network’s reach. If somehow your business page espouses an unpopular policy or replies in a negative manner to customer feedback, it could be detrimental to your reputation. If your personal profiles are connected to your business presence, it’s advised to tread carefully so that one doesn’t harm the other.

In short:

• Keep as much controversy off your pages. Some hot-button issues (religion, politics, etc.) can’t always be resolved in your favor. If the purpose of your page doesn’t involve touchy subjects, do your best to keep your focus on your brand and cater to your following.
• Avoid confrontation. There are people who live to goad you in hopes of encouraging a blow-up. Always keep your cool online, even if you use the same profile name over multiple profiles. It doesn’t take much for somebody to Google you and make your life hell.
• Hire trustworthy admins. If you’re unable to manage your social presence, make certain the people in charge can be trusted with promoting your image online. Don’t let one hothead remark posted as a knee-jerk reaction spiral into a PR nightmare.

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.

In everybody’s life, there is that one person to whom everybody went for advice – anything from solving a difficult crossword puzzle clue to seeking help with setting up a retirement account. Maybe in your case, this person was a parent or grandparent, or one of those know-it-all friends who didn’t specialize in any particular trivia, but knew what you need by way of experience or absorption through media and observation.

These days, you might see people continue to turn to these sages, but in the online world – where people need specifics on improving sales and marketing and other outlooks – people prefer trusted brands for advice. Or else, somebody is apt to blurt out a question on Twitter with an appropriate hashtag and hope somebody catches it. Depending on your business, it’s probable you qualify as an expert in your field, and if you’re willing to invest the time in assisting others with questions and problems you’ll find your generosity goes a long way. Despite the proliferation of funny videos and snarky comments on news wires, people still do remember kind acts. The question you answer today could turn in a genuine lead sometime down the road.

That said, if you find the traffic isn’t necessarily booming at your website, blog, or social media profile to accommodate regular Q&A sessions, you may wish to extend your reach and find the questions not yet resolved. With the rise in social sites that guide people toward the best wines, recommended movies and music, and restaurants and local businesses, it stands to reason help sites would follow, and three in particular provide experts with added opportunity for exposure.

Yahoo! Answers

One of, if not the, oldest Q&A forums online, Yahoo! Answers is accessible through your Yahoo! account and allows users to ask questions on basically any topic. Here one will find everything from serious queries about PHP coding to more whimsical observations (“Why do emo bands suck so much?”) As you participate in Yahoo! Answers you’ll have a page that charts your activity and lets you add contacts. You can add a short bio and include your URL for reference.

Google Knol

While not an interactive Q&A site like Answers, Knol may prove a significant tool in your marketing if you invest the time in building your topics. As Knol is a term meaning “unit of knowledge,” this site serve as a type of wiki where contributors publish articles on a variety of topics. Your profile page allows you a bio and link and an RSS feed of your activity, which can be implemented elsewhere on the web.

Aardvark

Aardvark is a recent acquisition of Google, billed as a real time forum for people seeking assistance of any type. With Aardvark you can connect your Facebook account or your GTalk and have questions in the subjects of your choosing delivered to you. Your profile allows one URL for promotion. Because Google has purchased this social site, it’s not yet determined what will change in the near future.

Qhub

Short for “question hub,” Qhub.com allows users to set up their own forum site. Users can register to ask and contribute answers, and one can also customize headers and create form widgets to place on other sites and blogs to draw in traffic. Qhub presents a good opportunity for smaller businesses or individuals seeking a message board type solution that doesn’t require much coding.

However you decide to seek and resolve queries, what’s important is making yourself available. By building your reputation as an expert you can increase not only your authority but your visibility.

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.

It’s one thing to have an active social network account with scores of fans and followers, and another to regularly provide information and incentives to keep people interested. Unless you monitor your profiles for feedback and follow up on concerns and questions, however, you will soon discover these online hubs become stale and provide nothing more than another source for inbound linking. Management of social networking page is not unlike tending a garden – your attentiveness and care fosters growth, and like the bees that collect pollen to spread to corners you may not notice people will assist in your account’s popularity if they feel it’s worth promoting.

It goes without saying, then, that you (or whomever is in charge of your social marketing) remains on top of monitoring your accounts. The longer it appears your pages and statuses are neglected, the worse it looks for your company, and it may allow competitors or spammers to overtake your space. Follow-up on feedback, and follow through on social promotions. Here are just a few ways to achieve this level of dependability.

Respond/Reply: If somebody posts a question on your Facebook wall, answer it. If somebody plugs your Twitter account during a #followfriday spree, acknowledge it, and thank YouTube members who compliment your videos. Even if a fan makes a general comment, or promotes something unrelated to your company on the fan wall (it will happen, but do not chide the poster and risk alienation), don’t let the opportunity pass without at the very least clicking the “like” button. Make your social presence conversational, and monitored the comment threads created.

Give Users Alternatives: Are you set up on UrbanSpoon, ePinions, or Yelp, or a relative review network? Take a moment to mine good reviews and brag about them on Twitter and Facebook. The promotion you give helps others know you’re found elsewhere and may encourage them to click through and add their own experiences.

Reward Good Mojo: If you notice a day or week where fan participation is quite active, show them you’re listening. Offer a contest or deep discount, a freebie related to your business. When you’ve hit a point that people will check out your social profiles because they want to, and not necessarily because they’re looking for incentive, giving them a nice surprise is one way to foster that good feeling.

If you promise customers and clients the moon via social media, don’t wait until the evening hours to make good. Nurturing your presence is a job meant for any hour of the day, nothing is simpler than clicking a response window to say thanks.

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.

When utilizing social networks to promote your products and services, it’s good to know that through general sites like Facebook and Twitter you have the ability to grow a following and interact with people willing to opt in to your updates. These all-encompassing media sites attract a variety of demographics and act as a strong catch-all for your business. You may find through your fan page, too, that you can determine if women more often than men are active in feedback, or if the majority of fans come from a specific area – perhaps not necessarily where you are based. If you believe these are the only social platforms at your disposal for fostering trust among potential customers and clients, however, you could be selling yourself short.

As developers fine tune social media to offer Internet users more options for their specific interests, we’ll see a rise in usage of niche portals. Already Yelp.com, a search and review site for local restaurants and other businesses, claims 10 million unique visits a month. You can bet it’s a popular place for browsing recommendations, and the site’s accompanying smart phone apps makes it all the easier to access. Depending on your business, you might not think it’s worth your time to establish a profile on such a site. Yet, when you consider the traffic generated there, you have to ask yourself, why not?

On the Internet, a profile is a profile – an opportunity to promote. As I am a professional writer, one might expect me to limit my online activity to places where I’m most apt to promote my work. It’s true I spend quite a bit of time blogging and on Twitter, posting links to those blogs. However, I also like to twist the old adage of all work and no play to integrate my personal interests into outside-the-box marketing. I dine out often, so I use Yelp to record reviews and get opinions on new spots from other users. On my Yelp profile, I have my URLs listed so anybody passing through knows where else to find me. So far, 120 people have come by since I launched the profile – there’s 120 potential click-throughs. Because I also depend on name recognition in search, the profile is likely to come up in search – not as high as official sites, I hope, but the link will be there to displace something unrelated that gets in the way.

If you have interests outside of work, taking advantage of specialized networks like Yelp for dining, Goodreads for reading, WAYN for travel, and even Blip.fm for music may benefit you in a number of ways. For one, many of these niche networks integrate with each other, allowing you to create a more rounded profile of yourself. People will see that you are an actual human being rather than an automaton design to spout business updates. Also, you have the space on your profiles to advertise what you do. Visitors with profiles elsewhere, who otherwise might not have found you on Twitter and Facebook, may just click through from a minor network to follow you deeper. The trust you build across different networks can spread beyond the Internet, so never rule out personal networking for the purpose of growing your business.

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.

The company faced with marketing to a young demographic may find social media optimization a challenge, given that despite the impression of technological savvy among teenagers, If your products and services skew toward teenagers and young adults, you might ask yourself if it’s worth it to have that Twitter account or Facebook page if you aren’t certain the people who should patronize you find the right material.social networks are not where the kids are. According to Quantcast, teenagers 13-17 populate the following percentages of over social media usage:

• Digg – 11%
• Facebook – 22%
• MySpace – 16%
• Twitter – 13%
• Yelp – 5%
• YouTube – 15%

On the outset, the numbers appear distressing, and if your marketing and writing has leaned heavily toward these networks you might wonder if the efforts on your part are wasted.

Not exactly. One thing to remember about building content on certain networks is that search engines do pick up on the keywords. Even if a particular Web user doesn’t patronize Twitter or Facebook, if he/she is searching for your product, there is still the chance of a click-through to a tweet or status update if the key phrases show in results. Another thing to remember, too, is that as teenagers mature, and if your company changes focus, you can adapt your social media strategy to introduce new trends and continuously market to new audiences.

For now, though, where is that important teen audience? Here is a brief rundown of the more popular hangouts:

Bebo.com (39%) – This social network, according to Quantcast, is the most used in the 13-17 demographic. Similar to MySpace and the like, Bebo allows for integration with YouTube and instant messaging – which is popular with the age group.

WhateverLife.com (49%) – One look at this flashy community site and there’s no mistaking for whom it’s designed. Registered users can read entertainment news and keep online journals, access design layouts, and connect with other users via message boards.

Whether you feel either site is useful in your marketing to cater to this important audience is for you to discern, just remember in the fast-changing world of SEO and social media, there are no guarantees that these percentages will remain the same in five years. Keep the content fresh for search, and entice your readership.

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.

While the statistics provided here should not necessarily be discerned as the norm or the recommended rate of sharing data, it is interesting to note how larger companies handle their social presence. Ultimately, it’s up to you to decide how to present yourself online, and it will take time and experimentation to find the proper balance.

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.

As long as marketing exists, so word of mouth will remain the most proven method for promoting products and services. With social networks, the odds of good buzz are amplified through tweets, Yelp reviews, Digg clicks, and even the simplest of social status updates. If you want people to talk about your business, you know your presence online has to give them something for discussion. Yet with the structure of some networks – some of which allow for message board style conversation – and the ability for companies to set up their own social hubs independent of major networks, there comes the question of how to approach your social activity. Do you maintain the lines of information and keep personal op/ed at a distance, using Twitter and Facebook for link sharing, or do you foster a full-blown community and give visitors a new place to call home?

It’s been said that the majority of Twitter users, for example, can be classified into two groups: the “me-formers” and the “informers.” Me-formers talk about themselves: what they watch, what they eat, what they listen to, and keep the focus on their own activity. A me-former interesting enough to attract a following beyond immediate friends and family can prove valuable for a marketer looking to nurture word of mouth. The Informer, by contrast, acts as a news wire, constantly tweeting links to other sites with news on anything relevant and timely. You might see the Informer’s timeline feature information on where to send donations for earthquake relief, or link to celebrity obits, or retweet breaking news from official media accounts. Why would anybody follow an impersonal Informer? If that person is prolific, it may beat following fifty different accounts when one does all the work.

As you build your online networks, it’s important to determine how to present yourself to a potential following. The nature of business may make this decision easier, whether you choose for your profiles to serve as a means of simply relaying sales information or events, or if you would prefer to engage others in conversation and obtain feedback for products and services. If the latter, there is the possibility MySpace, Facebook, or Twitter may not sustain what you wish to accomplish. It would seem logical to encourage greater participation through a message board, and free software is plentiful for that purpose, but a forum can limit how members wish to express themselves. For better control of the way you business socializes, you may wish to pursue customized networking.

Depending on your budget, there are options suited to the pricing you wish to pay. Ning.com is perhaps one of the better known DIY social networks, which allows you to set up your own page to your specifications. You can input RSS feeds and your YouTube Channel, and users can join your Ning channel while also setting up their own profile pages and moving elsewhere through Ning sites. Ning can be useful for those who wish to collect their minor social presences in one place for visitors to access, and discuss.

The developer-minded business may wish also to explore more advanced options in this realm. Social network development sites like KickApps and SocialGo offer paid solutions in this realm, which permit integration of other social sites. One advantage to the custom network is that you can actively track opt-in members and encourage the level of interaction you desire. While Facebook fan pages offer similar benefits of fan interaction through wall posts and photo sharing, that your page is but one of thousands on the network may dilute fan interaction due to the amount of competition for attention you face. With Ning and others, though there are other sites connected to Ning, the focus tends to remain on your site.

To maximize your social media presence, determine first how you intend to use your online networks, and build accordingly. Custom social networks may work if you wish to raise awareness of your products and services through active discussion.

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.

I hadn’t intended to write yet another article weighing the pros and cons of tying all social networks together to distribute the same information to different channels, but after reading MediaBistro’s article on the why it’s better not to update networks via auto-feeds, I realize this is still a topic that needs to be addressed. If you are serious about social marketing, you have the Twitter feed, the Facebook fan page, and probably now the Google Buzz attached to your GMail. A click of the mouse will integrate each with the others, plus you can add all three RSS feeds into your FriendFeed account for added exposure.

As the Media Bistro article intimates, however, somebody who keeps track of you via all social outlets may tire of seeing the same information everywhere he goes. Of course, one must consider that one’s Twitter readership may sorely outnumber the Facebook, or vice versa, and therefore an important tidbit shared in one place could be missed by the larger audience.

Are auto-feeds worth the risk of losing readership, especially if one estimates a person willing to track all of your social profiles is apt to patronize your business? Do you risk less conversion, or even neglect of a particular profile, if you pull the system apart?

Adding Variety to Your Social Marketing

It’s said in advertising that a consumer usually sees a product or service 5-7 times before making a decision to buy. So it is with eCommerce, where people bounce off and on a site for days while they discern if the company is worth their spending dollar. As I peruse Twitter, I find it’s not uncommon to see the same tweets recycled by certain account every several days. In theory it is probably a good practice, as I find the Twitter clients I use don’t necessarily catch every post added to my follow feed. When marketing to especially busy people, too, it never hurts to send reminders.

If you are concerned about alienating current and potential fans, there are methods to market that can help retain your sanity without forcing you to log into every single profile you own to make updates. As you map out your strategy, you have the opportunity to present the variety multi-account followers crave without skimping on information that needs to be widely broadcast.

Limit what social networks are connected: rather than link your Twitter to everything, choose what feeds into it. If you want to emphasize your presence on Facebook more, connect those two and leave your blog/RSS free. For times you want to really promote a blog post, do occasional manual Twitter udpates.

Make use of widgets: Rather than blast the same information to all networks, create a home base for visitors to check all of your profiles. Set up your blog sidebar with various widgets for Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, etc. As you attract readers, you can keep them on longer with the different information you provide there.

Use different profiles to emphasize different aspects of your business: For the multi-faceted company, experiment by assigning different branches of the business their own social network. Build a focus that attracts visitors and gradually promote your other interests through occasional cross-promotion.

Connecting all of your profiles provides ease of use, but only you can determine its effectiveness. Don’t be afraid to unlink chains on occasion to test analytics, and watch activity across the board to see what visitors prefer.

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.

If you follow Mashable on Google Buzz, you’ve already seen the note on the recent flap with restaurant chain Denny’s and Twitter. Due to a printing, or perhaps marketing, error, Denny’s dine-in menus nationwide have the incorrect Twitter address printed on them. Where the eatery chain currently manages two official accounts at DennysAllNightr and DennysGrandSlam, the Twitter account listed (@Dennys) belongs to somebody in Taiwan. While the account had been dormant for several months, its owner has recently started tweeting again, and the powers that be at Denny’s are hoping to claim the account from Twitter rather than spend the money to have thousands of menus reprinted.

Reading the train of comments in Mashable’s Buzz thread on this topic, one might wonder if it will cost more for Denny’s to get the prized Twitter handle. “He (@Dennys) should be able to sell it,” comments one follower, while others joke about the restaurant trading the account for free breakfast for life (for the record, Taiwan has no Denny’s locations; the closest this guy will have to travel is New Zealand for free pancakes).

This brings up an interesting point, and an inevitability a business may have to face with regards to social media. In years past people have debated over the purchasing of specific domain names and the legality and ethics of claiming a trademarked name – you might recall the row caused a decade ago when Archie Comics threatened to sue the parents of a young girl named Veronica, the subject of a site at  www.veronica.org. The suit was later dropped, and the site no longer exists. These days, “cybersquatting” is defined as the act of intentionally purchasing a domain name with a trademarked name in order to capitalize on its sale. While Veronica’s parents hadn’t set out to extort money (it’s said they didn’t realize Archie Comics had trademarked the name), this legislation has arguably discouraged mass spends on URLs.

The Denny’s situation may give rise to a new breed of squatters, as people claim Twitter handles and Facebook vanity URLs of known brands. Could “social-squatting” become a new term and a new headache for companies to deal with? When somebody registers for a Twitter account, who ultimately has the right to decide if the owner should part with the name – the owner or Twitter? Can or should one be able to sell the rights to a Twitter handle?

When one considers the ease of which one can apply for a Twitter account, the ability to claim a trademarked name can happen in seconds. Presently, Twitter offers no alert system for refusing applicants who pick trademarks for their user names. Looking at my desk, I have products by Blue Diamond almonds, Revolution Tea, and Splenda. Checking @BlueDiamond reveals that handle is not being used, @splenda is taken, as is @revolutiontea, but apparently not by the company. Right here two companies are unable to tweet through their brands.

What does this mean for the small business integrating social media into marketing? For one, it’s important to lay claim to your brands in these networks before somebody else does. Especially if you have a recognizable name, people will search for you online, and with blended results Twitter account and other networks will show, so have your bases covered. If somebody has beaten you to the punch, it’s up to you to decide how badly you want your name, and hope the current owner isn’t wondering about the size of your wallet.

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.

The decision to hire a firm specializing in social media marketing, over handling your network profiles in-house, can prove beneficial depending on your budget and available manpower. While you are apt to promote your products and services through traditional means (print, radio/TV, and even pay per click models), social media engagement requires a level of communication that doesn’t always come naturally.

Some who are just learning their way around Twitter and Facebook may not feel comfortable taking on the challenge of attracting fans and followers, and as one hires an agency to handle print and broadcast campaigns, it’s natural to hand over social networking to a firm that better understands how it works. That said, you want to be certain the agency you hire is the best one to represent you and your brand.

If you choose to outsource people to monitor and update your network profiles, don’t hand them the keys to all the castle’s minor forts and assume all is well. For every post, tweet, and video upload made, visitors see only you, not the firm working in the background. Take the time to study your profiles as any visitor would view them, and put your firm to the test.

Facing Negative Feedback: Watch your Facebook fan page closely. Are fans allowed to post to the wall, and add photos and reviews? Has your agency restricted fan participation in any way? Do they delete negative remarks rather than leave them up for you to address?

If you plan a Facebook page for your brand, it’s vital to establish the page within your company first before handing the reins over to an SMO firm. When you set up the page, you are listed as the primary admin, meaning you have the ability to add and remove administrators and cancel the page altogether. Do not give this control to somebody outside your company, and as your Facebook presence grows be sure to monitor how your agents react to posts and represent you in updates they share.

Test Response Time: One aspect of social media businesses and others with products/service to promote find valuable is the ability to offer real-time commentary. With most social networks, response time is key in keeping readers updated and interested. As you monitor your brand name in social search, you might find Twitter users especially address you with an “@” reply. Note the timestamp of each missive sent to your account, then track how quickly your agency responds. Do questions, comments, and complaints go ignored? Is that fact noticed by other social users?

As quickly as people can access their accounts – laptops, smart phones, etc. – the manner in which your SMO agency should respond must reflect a timely presence. Otherwise, visitors are likely to accept your social networks as another means of distributing press releases.

Socializing Outside the Box: Thanks to RSS capability, one can integrate social profiles into a number of places. A good SMO agency is always abreast of new developments in social media. You need to ask yourself: how proactive is my agency in getting my brand out there? Are they looking into new networks for possible integration, or are they wasting time signing you up for things you don’t really need? When it comes to analytics, is your agency more concerned about cramming as many bodies into a box as possible rather than concentrating on an audience that is actually interested in your services? It’s easy to get thousands of Twitter followers, if you track down people who auto-follow just for the purpose of being seen, but if you want to maintain genuine interest it’s better to grow an audience naturally. A reputable SMO firm will know this.

As you invest the time in building your social presence, spend some of it watching those who tweet and post on your behalf. The face you present to the world is one that can be shared easily and quickly now, make it a good one.

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.

The challenge in making social networks like Twitter and Facebook useful in your marketing strategy is finding the audience you need for them to remain effective. One might wonder why it’s necessary to devote time tweeting links and information to a handful of followers, when their main website pulls in a healthy amount of traffic through organic or paid search. While it’s difficult to argue with hard numbers, you must also consider this: how much revenue is generated from the search traffic as opposed to referrals from social networks?

Say you were able to track fifty people coming in from search, all of whom stayed on your site for a few minutes to browse before jumping off without clicking through to a conversion. Now think about the ten or so people following your Twitter or Facebook page. If just four of them came to your site via a tweet or social post and went on to contact you or buy something, one can argue the social media is more effective. Four conversions among a small following could be far better than zero leads in a larger crowd elsewhere, and though it’s certain you have no plans to cast aside traditional SEO and PPC efforts in favor of courting this social minority, such a case study will undoubtedly encourage you to take your social marketing to another level.

Making the Breakthrough: Sorting Wheat From Chaff

The established business or organization with an existing opt-in mailing list or blog following may have it easy when it comes to encouraging the masses to move over to Twitter or Facebook. The more options you provide for obtaining information, the stronger your online presence grows. The start-up, however, may encounter roadblocks. What have you to offer anybody in terms of relevant, twittered news, and why should anybody become your fan on Facebook? Why does anybody need to add you to their already bulging list of auto-buys?

Incentive: Think of something you can offer strictly to those who obtain updates via social media. You could offer free samples or deep discounts to visitors who join, and regularly provide unique information not made available on site or in newsletters.

Interaction: With Facebook in particular, fans have the opportunity to share photos and wall conversations about your products, services, and events. One Southern US department of tourism, for example, holds monthly photo contests among its followers and encourages the participation.

Personalization: Because social media encourages real-time interaction, social users may be more inclined to follow a profile if they believe they will receive support in a timely fashion. All you need to do is provide it. Engage people through social networks, and you may find you attract genuine followers rather than SPAM accounts – as people respond via Twitter, their friends will see the replies, and Facebook users will see the notifications on their friends’ feeds. Increased participation makes for good viral promotion.

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.

In reading blogs by and interview transcripts with editors and literary agents, one thing I’ve learned about the submission process is that your immediate impression can truly affect the way somebody approaches your query, sometimes even before it’s read. These days, editors and publishers eschew physical mail, preferring to accept novels and non-fiction via e-mail attachments. If you are serious about pursuing a career in, say, penning volumes of academic criticism or political history, you may wish to think twice about sending it from an e-mail handle like “mewanttwinkies”.

The beauty of signing up for e-mail, Twitter, and even social networks like MySpace and Facebook is that you have the opportunity to sign off under a name different from yours. Some of us may not be pleased with being named for a dead uncle or a long-lost high school BFF, but in the Internet world you can create your own personality through your chosen handle. Depending on your industry, you can incorporate your line of work into your nicknames (VirginiaRoofer, InjuryLawyer, etc.), giving visitors a better idea of who you are and what to expect if your handle is found in search.

However, talking with other professionals about social media handles has brought up more than once the question of which names to use to promote products and services. If your brand is not as recognizable as that of a national fast food chain or global insurance or banking corporation, is it more valuable to use the brand name in vanity URLs and handles for Google Buzz and elsewhere, or should one maintain a personal profile and integrate your company’s PR with a more “human” touch?

One example where the face of the CEO is put before the company on social media is growing digital publisher/distribution hub Smashwords. Where Smashwords does have a Twitter account under its own name, it is largely inactive, and visitors are encouraged to follow the company’s founder, Mark Coker. Through his personal account, Coker hypes new innovations at Smashwords while also providing commentary and updates on the publishing industry as they relate to eBooks, digital rights management, and other topics. In a way, one can argue Coker has set himself up as a brand, close enough to Smashwords to build the company, yet far enough away to establish himself independently as an expert in the field. That Coker keeps the inactive @Smashwords account up, with a prominent note to join him at @MarkCoker, connects himself with the brand, while also keeping Smashwords visible in Twitter search.

Now, let’s say you have an established Twitter account, a good number of followers, and an informative feed worthy of archive. Perhaps, you feel, you’ve initially chosen the wrong handle for your network profile’s purpose, and wish to change. If you do so, you won’t lose the followers you have, but the handle switch will require you to edit inbound links to your account, and if others have you listed they will need to do the same. You run the risk, too, of alienating present followers who might not be aware of the switch and wonder how they came to follow this “strange” account.

On the other hand, if you choose to change your Twitter handle to something more relevant to your work you might find followers sign up to read your feed at a greater pace than before because they recognize the brand you now display.

If you are serious about integrating social into your marketing strategy, it’s wise to decide on user names before signing on to anything. The less changes you need to make in your campaigns mean less headaches down the road.

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.