Choosing Social Networking Sites Carefully

Everyone knows how big social networking is for business owners these days.  Social networking was originally intended to make it easier to maintain personal relationships, but businesses have made social networking a priority as well.  Premier sites have made it possible for businesses to grow their contact lists, manage their relationships and created the concepts of viral marketing.

Businesses of all sizes have taken part in social networking to promote their business in ways that they could never have dreamed of fifteen years ago.  Executives from all Fortune 500 companies promote their business on LinkedIn and companies with no marketing budget have the opportunity to make themselves front page news all over the country.

In order to make the most of social networking, businesses must learn to manage their social networking resources carefully.  It requires an investment of time and sometimes money just like anything else.  If a company wishes to benefit from social networking they must manage these resources carefully.

One of the mistakes that entrepreneurs often make is choosing the wrong social networks to invest in.  They end up spreading themselves too thin rather than focusing on the most appropriate sites.

Facebook is still the most popular social networking site and it’s free.  However, entrepreneurs must be careful not to make the mistake many others make investing all their time there.  Currently Facebook users are made up predominantly of people aged 25-54, with another 25% being 18-24.

In recent years more emphasis has been placed on business networking through Facebook.  Nevertheless, it is not as effective for professional networking as sites like LinkedIn, and Twitter is just as good a platform for many viral marketing programs.

A number of new sites other than LinkedIn have been created for business networking.  Some of the more popular sites include Xing and Ryze.  Xing is a great platform but it is difficult to get much of it without paying for the premium services.  Ryze is a good social network for new entrepreneurs, but it is not as popular as it was when it was first introduced.

These sites still can be worth joining even for users who aren’t interested in paying for premium memberships.   However, if they have a hard time finding and connecting with other users with the free plan, they should be careful before they invest a substantial amount of time and energy using them.

Businesses especially need to be concerned about the number of paid business networking sites that are almost completely inactive.  They exist only to continue scraping membership fees, mostly from new clients who don’t know what (or how little) they are actually getting from the services.  I won’t name any of the sites I have joined here, but I have run into a number of them.

The best rule of thumb is to focus on either the most popular networking sites or those that are most specifically targeted to a niche audience.  New businesses must always keep in mind that benefits from social networking only come with hard work.  They must approach social networking just like any other business strategy and look for the best return on their investment.

About the Author: Kalen Smith is the founder of Engineer-a-Business, a provider of business-to-business services and informational products for developing technology businesses. Read more about Kalen here.

How to Not Be a Twidiot - 4 Twitter Personas to Avoid

Do you have a Twitter account for your business?  If you said yes, good for you!  Twitter is an outstanding tool to connect with customers, drive traffic to your site, meet colleagues and industry experts, and much more.  In fact, when used properly, you can get more mileage out of Twitter than many paid marketing methods.  It’s that “when used properly” part that too often trips people up.  The only thing more surprising than the number of businesses not taking full advantage of this fantastic - FREE - tool, is the number of businesses doing it completely wrong.  Some businesses just need a little tweaking to perfect their Twitter efforts and really make them pay off.  And that makes sense.  Twitter isn’t something we’re born knowing how to master, and there is somewhat of a science/art to really getting it right.  On the other hand, some people are just Twidiots.  And while we’re sure none of our readers fall into this category, below is a rundown of four Twitter personas to avoid if you want your Twitter account to do you any good at all.

The Unfocused Aggregator
There are people who have made a living by being aggregators.  These are the accounts like @mashable and @Alltop who simply find articles, blog posts and interesting stuff out on the web and post it on their Twitter feed.  There isn’t necessarily a common theme or focus, and there doesn’t have to be - it’s what we expect from them - it’s their job.  On the other hand, there are Twitter users who claim to be consultants, bloggers, or “experts” in a particular area, and all they do is re-tweet other people’s stuff - with no particular focus.  A tweet of an article on saving the whales will be followed by a link to a recipe for ice cream and another tweet about making money in affiliate programs.  While it’s important to “mix it up” a bit and sometimes re-tweet relevant content, if you have a business, you ought to have something to say beyond just re-broadcasting other people’s stuff.

The Ghost
Perhaps the most perplexing persona out there is the ghost.  What’s amazing is that some of these accounts with no bio and few or no tweets at all have thousands of followers.  An argument against the auto-followback perhaps.

The Deadbeat
You’re busy.  We know that.  But if you’re going to have a Twitter account at all, you might want to tweet something out more often than every few months.  Twitter works when you work it.  The great thing is that with tools like HootSuite, Ping.fm, and CoTweet, you can automate a certain amount of the process, so you don’t get stuck for hours a day making it work.  In fact, an hour or so per week is all it really has to take, so there really is no excuse for not capitalizing on Twitter’s potential.

The Self-Centered Seller
Want to appear obnoxious and really turn off your followers?  Take on the persona of the self-centered seller.  Like a cheesy, pushy salesman at a networking event, this Twitter amateur only talks about himself and is only interested in pushing whatever he has to sell on whoever happens to be listening.  These people absolutely do not understand what Twitter is all about.  With no interest in building relationships or adding substance to the conversation, their Twitter feeds are broken records of “Click my link and buy my stuff” over and over and over.  It’s not only unprofessional and obnoxious, but it doesn’t work, so it’s pointless.

There are a few other personas that don’t work well on Twitter, but these are some of the most common.  What really works is having the desire to connect and build relationships.  If that’s in your mind while creating your Twitter persona, you can’t go wrong.  What has worked - or not worked - for you?  Share with everyone in the comments!

Did You Celebrate National Entrepreneurs’ Day This Year?

The answer of course is, no.  Because there is no National Entrepreneurs’ Day.  We have a day to recognize the importance of mothers, fathers, grandparents, and even love (Valentine’s Day), but currently there is no day set aside to honor the contributions entrepreneurs have made in our society. Now a couple of creative young entrepreneurs are out to change that.  David Hauser and Siamak Taghaddos, founders of Grasshopper Group, have created a movement to get President Barack Obama to declare March 20^th, 2011 as the first National Entrepreneurs’ Day, and they’re using a medium close to the President’s heart to do it - the Internet.  Their site, EntrepreneursDay.org, taps into the power of Twitter to spread the word and reach their goal of 1,000,000 “signatures.”

So what’s this movement all about?  According to the organizers, it’s about what we entrepreneurs have always known: Entrepreneurs are the true drivers of the economy and the ones who will take the doom and gloom we hear from so called economic “experts” every day on the news and turn it around.  We’re the ones who either don’t pay any attention to the media and others claiming everything is so, so terrible, or hear them out then do our thing anyway.  From building and leasing real estate and engaging professional firms to buying materials and supplies, and of course adding jobs, entrepreneurs collectively keep our economy driving forward.  Siamak Taghaddos says, “Entrepreneurs are America’s real ‘bailout’,” and he’s absolutely right.

So should we have a day recognizing entrepreneurs?  Of course we should.  Other countries acknowledge the contributions of entrepreneurs with their own Entrepreneur Days.  Even China does so!  It seems strange that the most entrepreneurial country in the world doesn’t do the same.  After all, the entrepreneurial spirit is what made the U.S. possible.  Our founding fathers were full of entrepreneurial qualities, like the need to be independent, an ability to think outside the box, and a will to buck the system.  Let’s give that spirit its due and get behind the push for National Entrepreneurs’ Day.

At the time of this writing, only a couple of days after its launch, the site has just over 1,000 supporters, and it’s growing fast.  Some of the more prominent supporters are Pat Condon, founder of Rackspace, Noah Everett, founder of TwitPic, 37Signals founder and author, Jason Fried, and Dharmesh Shah, the founder of HubSpot.  Of course the list is huge, but that’s a few.  Now it’s your turn.  Head over to EntrepreneursDay.org and join the cause.  It’s a quick and painless signup with your Twitter account, and you just might get some recognition too.  And you’ll know you were part of history next March, when you hear people saying, “Happy Entrepreneurs’ Day!”

“Promoted Tweets” Twitter Ads a Game Changer? Oh Yeah

As you might have heard, Twitter has finally initiated a revenue model.  Earlier this week, they rolled out “Promoted Tweets”, their new advertising program.  What does this mean for Twitter and their millions of loyal users?  To some extent, it probably means a shift in the atmosphere on Twitter, but they’re taking some interesting steps to ensure it doesn’t shake things up too much.

The Promoted Tweets Program

For now, Twitter’s new advertising program only displays promoted tweets when users search for keywords that advertisers have purchased to link to their ads.  The sponsored posts show at the top spot in the search results, just as with any sponsored search engine results.

In time, Twitter plans to show promoted tweets in the stream of posts, based on their relevancy to a particular user.  Yes, that means you’ll see sponsored posts even from companies you’re not following, and yes, that is significant.  If it’s done right, and few doubt that Twitter will do it right, this could be an overall positive thing, even though it’s certainly a change in what we’re used to seeing on the site.

An indication that they will in fact make this change a positive can be found in the way they’ll decide which ads you see.  When ads are posted, Twitter plans to measure what they call “resonance,” which takes into account nine factors, including the number of people who saw the post, the number of people who replied to it or passed it on to their followers, and the number of people who clicked on links.  If a post doesn’t reach a certain resonance score, Twitter will no longer show it as a promoted post. That means the company will not have to pay for it, and users won’t see ads they don’t find useful.

The reason this is important is that it keeps advertisers accountable.  They have to come up with ads that are interesting, compelling, and, most importantly, relevant to your needs.  If they’re not adding to the conversation in a meaningful way, their ads won’t just be ineffective, they’ll be pulled altogether.  This is even better than the existing stream of garbage some amateur marketers are sending through the stream now.

Reactions

If you do a search for “sponsored tweets” or “promoted tweets” on Twitter, you’ll find a wide range of reactions to this newly announced program.  Here are a few that are representative of the overall feelings out there:

• @jaymeslangrehr If Twitter wants to make $, why not just slap in contextual ads like Facebook & call it a day instead of selling sponsored tweets?
• @andrewspong: To me, ‘promoted tweets’ are the antithesis of open convos
• @vagabonn I don’t mind promoted tweets actually. Sometimes they might be relevant and so far they don’t seem too obnoxious. Twitter’s gotta make $$$
• @cmsexpo Sponsored Tweets = Twitter finally gets their business model, and we get marketed to bloody hell.
• @LukasC hurrah! Promoted Tweets should increase in visibility over time. Just getting started.
• @marcinators Curious about the launch of Promoted Tweets - wary of effects on our tweeting experience
• @JadedSkeptic Sponsored tweets. A bold progressive idea.
• @rymccoleman I think promoted tweets are an interesting idea, but the promoted tweet shouldn’t stay at the top of the search when you refresh.

A few reactions were very strong, saying that if Twitter moves forward with their promoted tweets plan, people will jump ship and say good bye to Twitter forever.  The question is, how long did people expect the company to continue without generating revenue?  And without charging users for an account, how else should a revenue model play out?  The suggestion that ads should just be placed alongside the stream, as on Facebook, isn’t much different.  The ads are on your page, and whether they’re on the side or integrated into your stream, you have the option of reading or ignoring them.  The preferable part about having them as part of your stream, again, is that this model measures an ad’s relevance, which is good for marketers and consumers.

Bottom line is that the model has been rolled out, and it’s likely here to stay.  As information is made available about pricing and other specifics, we’ll see if the program is for everyone or just the big players, but it’s likely that there will be some sort of opportunity for everyone.  Twitter has proven to be a sensible company to date, and they’re liable to remain such.

A Charity Raises Money for Haiti Through Text Message Campaign

We were all shocked and saddened to hear of the events in Haiti. This poor country never seems to catch a break. In hurricane season it always seem to get a hit from a major cyclone and this can lead to plenty of damage, destruction caused by flooding and an awful number of casualties and deaths. However, even some of the worst cyclones will pale into insignificance when compared with the damage that we are seeing from this magnitude 7.0 earthquake.

As the drama is unfolding, we are coming to the awful realization that this is likely to be one of the worst natural disasters in living memory. We dread to look at the news on a daily basis and to see just how many people are left homeless with nowhere to go, just wandering around with a few possessions, that they were able to salvage to comfort them. Still worse, of course, is the growing death toll. This is likely to be a terrible testament to the wrath of mother nature and as the numbers grow and events unfold, we will be left to wonder how such natural events can happen in a faithful world.

Thankfully, the human race is very philanthropic. We naturally want to look after our neighbor in crisis and somehow this horror seems that much more real to us, as this island nation is very close to the United States, after all.

As with any major event taking place these days, news of disaster spread very quickly through social media, with reports emerging from the region through Twitter posts and other messages. Our upgraded ability to communicate can have a positive effect through all this carnage as well. A number of text messaging campaigns have emerged, through which you can pledge a certain amount of money by just sending a simple text message. This is a really easy way of contributing and showing that we all care and is a whole lot easier than the traditional method of seeking out a website and working out for yourself how to contribute.

We look at our new communication tools, our all-encompassing smart phones and our ability to socially engage with each other and imagine many ways that our “new world” can enhance our lives. Now we can see an additional use, a way to reach out to those who are very much less fortunate than we are, at their time of need.

The Red Cross has already raised more than $8 million as of Friday morning, January 15th for this essential cause. Donations may be made, a $10 value at a time, through a simple texting effort. The donation is added to your phone bill. The Red Cross is also adding $1 million from its international response fund to this ever-growing pile of money that will surely help to make a difference as that country begins the long, long road to getting back on its feet. It’s amazing to hear that the amount raised so far for this initiative is more than double the entire amount raised throughout 2009 via this method - and all within just a few days.

If you want to help, text “HAITI” to 90999 and give a $10 donation to the Red Cross.

Here are some other alternatives as well:

Text “YELE” to 501501 to donate $5 to the Yele Haiti foundation.
Text “HAITI” to 20222 to donate $10 to the Clinton Foundation Haiti Relief Fund.
Text “HAITI” to 85944 to donate $10 to the International Medical Corps.
Text “HAITI” to 25383 to donate $5 to the International Rescue Committee.

Adam Toren

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