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Twitter’s New Recommendation Engine: Like It?

Wednesday, September 1st, 2010

By Jan Carroza

I’ve seen some folks around Twitter complain about the nuisance of seeing the new recommendations it has started to make. Personally, I rather like it. What’s more, it’s actually given a big bounce to some of our Twitter accounts.

If you haven’t noticed it yet, Twitter provides a block of two suggestions on your Twitter Home page:

I can click on mikewhitmore to see what his conversations are like and if I would be interested in having a conversation with him. It turns out that we share an interest in Social Media Club’s Breakfast meetings in Seattle and he’s very engaged with his followers.

When I click on View All, I see these recommendations. I’m not likely to follow Bill Gates expecting to engage in a conversation with him. I might be interested in following his conversations to see what might be educational or entertaining. The fact that Twitter suggests Gates who is not likely to follow me back or want to talk with me might be the reason many aren’t happy with this new feature. Understandably. It also takes up key real estate above features you might use a lot like Lists (where I do put online magazines that I follow, for instance).

One feature I do like is to see who among my contacts follows this person which may well carry a lot of weight with me.

What it doesn’t do, unfortunately, is show me who might already be in one of my lists, a method I use to follow more than the 10% above my number of followers that I am allowed.

Lists also let me build channels of discussions, like members of the #SMBSea Social Media Club Breakfast group with 59 of my favorites: http://twitter.com/#/list/Social_Dynamics/smbseattle.

I’ve noticed a unusual bounce of new followers for some Twitter accounts and since all other variables are the same, I have to assume that followers of our followers are responding to Twitter recommending us based on our followers having influence. This is a great thing! I’m even discovering well-known companies and organizations that have been hard to search for in Twitter because of the restrictive nature of the 15 character Twitter handle.

Previously you had to go to a different site like Mr Tweet (currently unavailable due to this new Twitter feature and relaunching in September). Other methods to find interesting people to follow, like peering into your favorites list of followers, while worthwhile, are very time-consuming. All in all, it’s one quick way to find new people who can enhance your life, educate, share and help you.

Tags: Mr. Tweet, Seattle Social Media Club, Social Media Breakfast, Twitter followers, Twitter recommendations
Posted in Social Media and Social Networking, Technical, Technology, Twitter | No Comments »

Auto Blogging Through Content Generator Tools

Thursday, August 26th, 2010

Are your blog posts being picked up and re-posted on sites that have little or nothing to do with your company or service? This could be the work of auto blogging software, “clipping” services and/or plug-ins.

As an example, let’s say you blog about technology; specifically apple products. These tools search blog posts for keywords you selected and add it to your website seamlessly.

What are the benefits?

Fresh content

Low cost

More visitors

Save time

What are the risks?

Poorly written content

Content that does not match your values or message

Overwhelming amount of content – some of the products or services mention 10,000 pages.

Too many voices creating a lack of continuity

If you decide to use auto blogging methods, give some thought to:

What is on your website and blog becomes your voice and your message.

Automated means just that, automated. No proofing for spelling and grammar errors.

Make sure you agree with the content, specifically the premise, conclusions and recommendations.

Fresh content may not attract the right visitors.

You should read each and every post word by word and decide whether it stays or goes.

Some of these services offer free demos and that would be a good place to start. In looking at 3 different services, several were a flat rate one-time-only cost and one was a monthly fee. The prices for the services I found offering the flat rate varied from $67.00 to $165.00.

Blogging on a regular basis can become tiresome and downright tedious at times. Other times you may have bloggers block. When I am at this point, I go out and see what others in my area of interest are writing about. I learn, I laugh, I fume, I learn more. That is the part of blogging that I want to do personally.

Next up, discussion from the blog writer’s perspective regarding being auto-blogged.

CMP.ly/0

I have not received any compensation for writing this content and I have no material connection to the brands, topics and/or products that are mentioned herein.

Tags: auto blogging, auto blogging software, blog content, Blogging
Posted in Articles, Social Media and Social Networking, Twitter | No Comments »

How is your company using social media?

Monday, August 23rd, 2010

By Karen Miller

Like most people, when I saw the Wheat Thins TV ad where they delivered a year’s worth of Wheat Thins to a consumer, I was amused and intrigued by what they were doing. Of course, I went to their website, Facebook page and Twitter to see what was happening. And, they were listening to their fans and communicating with them!

Over and over it has been said that social media is all about communicating. Companies like Wheat Thins are using social media to their advantage. They are giving out coupons on Facebook, delivering Wheat Thins to those on Twitter and making product announcements on both. But this is only one example of a company using social media to their advantage.

Staples, Chase, Pepsi all have some interesting campaigns using social media that involve interaction with their consumers. The Pepsi Refresh campaign has used social media to donate millions of dollars to local and national charities. Instead of advertising on the Super Bowl this year, they are using social media sites to give away those advertising dollars to the charities. They are gaining product recognition and building brand loyalty as well as being “socially responsible.”

Chase did a similar campaign for Community Giving and Staples engages their consumers by asking questions, talking about donating to schools, showing sale items, etc. The key is engaging and communicating. Make sure you are doing both with your social media but most importantly take time to listen to your consumers.

How is your company using social media to their advantage? And what companies do you think are uniquely using social media?

Tags: advertising, Chase, Facebook, Nabisco, Pepsi, social media, Staples, Super Bowl, Twitter, Wheat Thins
Posted in Articles, Blogging, Facebook, LinkedIn, Social Media and Social Networking, Twitter | No Comments »

Social Media Coverage of Texas Rangers Auction – Live Blogs and Tweets

Tuesday, August 10th, 2010

By Sharon Hill

Starting at 9:30 on August 4^th, I peek in to see the news on the Texas Rangers Baseball Auction. In case you are not a baseball fan, this is the first major league baseball team to be auctioned since 1933. We are talking about a $500,000,000+ auction!

Watching the Live Blog from a Courtroom in Fort Worth at CBS11’ site. Technology is provided by CoveritLive.

Plenty of up-to-the-minute tweets too. Yahoo’s twitter updates provide a great feed of the current tweets:

CBS11 has a live blog which allows for comments and polls. Funniest comment from Let’s the Games Begin: “Will they sing the National Anthem before the proceedings begin? After that, will someone in the courtroom please yell out “PLAY BALL!”

Another one talks about making a bobblehead of the judge. (Bobbleheads are considered to be prized possessions by many.)

At 4PM CBS11 posted: CBS 11 News: 7600 readers total today. 3000 active right now. Woo-Hoo!

CBS 11 Newsroom: @EFW, we’re feeling the same things a lot of you are– anxious, a little tense, excited, and tired. But running this blog has been a blast all day long. We live for this breaking news stuff, but talking to all of you like this adds another dimension to it. It’s cool! And we will use this system a lot more often in the future.

The next morning it was announced that The Nolan Ryan/Chuck Greenburg Group won the bid and now own the Texas Rangers.

Well after midnight, Mark Cuban (Dallas Mavericks Owner who conceded) tweeted to his social networking followers the following tip of the cap to Greenberg, Ryan and fans in the Dallas-Fort Worth area: “Congrats Chuck and Nolan. Go Rangers!”

Isn’t technology fun?

@social_dynamics

Tags: live blog, live blogging, major league baseball, Tweeting, Twitter
Posted in Blogging, Social Media and Social Networking, Technology, Twitter | No Comments »

Hitting the Follow 2000 Twitter Wall

Monday, July 19th, 2010

By Jan Carroza

Twitter lets you follow up to 2000 members until you hit a wall of sorts. Many Twitter users are unaware of this policy until they reach this point. At this point you can only follow 10% more than the number than follow you. When you follow the 2000^th person, you’ll get a message about these limits and you won’t be able to follow any more until you get more followers or reduce the number you follow.

The reason for this rule is to prevent abuse. Twitter tries to reduce “churn.” So many are concerned about people who “game” the system to gain as many followers as they can and then dropping followers. We address issues of following policy in a couple of our previous blogs (What’s Your Following Policy?).

Management of the 10% becomes a bit of a nuisance if your general policy is to follow nearly everyone who follows you. That 10% gets chewed up pretty fast when so many services you might use like web clients (BackUpMyTweets, Twibes, Hootsuite) ask that you follow them, but they don’t return the favor. That’s true of many terrific resources such as news and trade publications, as well as celebrities and personalities. I really don’t mind that sources like @Mashable, @Techcrunch, @MarketingSherpa won’t follow me back, but it creates a need for workarounds (see Who Will You Follow?). I’m grateful to have the Twitter list function to let me be able to organize some of these non-followers.

The upshot is that periodically I have to prune those that I follow or spending time organizing them into lists. Either FriendorFollow or Tweepler will help you determine who doesn’t follow you easily so you can decide how to manage those you follow.

This situation creates a yo-yo functionality because you can get stopped repeatedly from following. It’s like have a car that’s running in fits and starts. You’ll think you’ve cleaned it up and then you can’t follow again. I really hate not being able to follow folks back when I want to, especially when they look real interesting. I also hate not being to add new interesting people I have discovered or who have been recommended to me. So I either invest more time in unfollowing folks I may really hate to lose in my stream or adding them to lists which are limited to 20 before I invest more time in more workarounds.

Here’s what Twitter tells you about this policy: “Every account can follow 2,000 users total. Once you’ve followed 2,000 users, there are limits to the number of additional users you can follow. This number is different for each account and is based on your ratio of followers to following; this ratio is not published. Follow limits cannot be lifted by Twitter and everyone is subject to follow limits, even high profile and API accounts (read more at: http://support.twitter.com/articles/66885-i-can-t-follow-people-follow-limits).”

Caution: “Please note, however, that regularly following and unfollowing lots of accounts is a violation of the Twitter Rules and can result in account suspension.”

In general, it’s a good idea to always keep your following ratio 10% or less of those that you follow. If you’ve done a lot of exploring to reach 2000 that you follow, but your content and engagement have only gotten you a few hundred followers, you are going to have to do a lot of unfollowing and/or waiting until you get many more followers. Planning ahead should prevent the inconvenience and the grief.

@social_dynamics

Tags: 2000 Twitter following rule, BackUpMyTweets, FriendorFollow, Hootsuite, MarketingSherpa, Mashable, Techcrunch, Tweepler, Twibes
Posted in Articles, How To, Technical, Twitter | No Comments »

Beyond the Big 4 – Flickr Digg Delicious

Thursday, June 17th, 2010

By the Social Media Dynamics Team

What Flickr, Digg and Delicious can do for your business

After you’ve developed your routine on the Big 4 social media programs of Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and blogs, moving beyond to Flickr, Digg and Delicious offers important benefits:

Increased web presence
Increased search engine optimization, backlinks, Google “juice”
Increased community, relationships, new audiences
Sources of creative ideas

Flickr, Digg and Delicious each offer all of these benefits. In general, every link to your site and every additional web presence you create increases the opportunity for greater returns in new audience and higher site rankings.

Each offers you a Profile section to share information publicly about your business, website, events, charities, teams and locations.

Each offers community and group participation to develop and engage in relationships with members. Be sure to “lurk” in all sites to get comfortable with what is said. Monitor conversations. Then join in and leave comments, being sure to leave your contact information in the signature you leave on your post. Let the listening you do suggest new ideas for what more you can provide your audience in terms of education, reputation management, information and entertainment.

Flickr is image and video hosting website, web services suite, and online community owned by Yahoo! Popular as a website for users to share personal photographs, Flickr is widely used by bloggers to host images used in blogs and social media. As of October 2009, it claims to host more than 4 billion images.[1]

Posting images of new products, locations, community activities, and industry events helps a business get better ranking due to Google’s affinity for indexing images and video. Join Flickr groups to engage like-minded visitors and share images. All images help: logos, photos, headshots, product and store shots, portfolio graphics and stills and video from events. The benefits can include the viral nature of your new audience sharing your images with others, increasing your prospects and community.

Look for images that you might like to get permission to use in your blog posts and the like. Note copyrights and give attribution where required. Make sure to “tag” images with great keywords and captions to make them easy to be found with search terms.

Digg is a social news website, letting people vote stories up or down, called digging and burying, respectively. The website traffic ranked 100th by Alexa.com as of April 2, 2010.

Digg likes postings of recent news including articles, fresh news events and new products and services, helping to gain short-term traffic surges while stories are current. Again the viral nature of sharing comes into play in terms of getting in front of more and more new audience members. You begin to see the value and importance of strong content and creative that’s interesting and compelling enough to share.

Delicious is a social bookmarking web service for storing, sharing, and discovering web bookmarks that is owned by Yahoo. By the end of 2008, the service claimed more than 5.3 million users and 180 million unique URLs bookmarked URLs.

I’ve seen suggestions to submit every page of your site to Delicious. Certainly submit articles, site sections, and blog posts that you think offer great content value. Take advantage to develop your Profile, add photos and even a blog if you like. Explore the applications available to see what might be helpful.

Yahoo’s ownership of both Flickr and Delicious certainly helps get pages indexed faster. The intertwining of these services with your Yahoo and My Yahoo account increases the exposure of graphics, profile and contacts.

Many of these services let you tie back to your Twitter, Facebook, blog and other social media activities to share in their venues. So share away, develop new audiences, explore and benefit from your expanding social media universe.

[1] Source for all definitions: Wikipedia

Advice to Small Business on Social Media – Part 2

Thursday, May 13th, 2010

By Jan Carroza

Where do businesses do all this Social Media connecting?

Cookie crumbs should be left wherever your users are talking plus wherever you hope to find them. Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook are a good starting point. Each offers a different audience. Twitter is for news and great for customer service. LinkedIn is for business networking. Facebook Fan Pages have become special places to give fans and customers discounts, special offers and a sense of a preferred status. Google and Yahoo offer Profile placement and there will be continual jockeying for position by offering more services. More networks will pop up or be gobbled up. Staying tuned to your prospects conversations will guide you to additional opportunities.

Other ANCHORS:

LinkedIn: Consider this part of the preparatory part that makes the first nice impression. Work on your LinkedIn Profile to tell your story in the first person. Be personable. This is not your father’s resume. Make yourself approachable to other members who would look to you for information based on the expertise you display. I share this advice a lot: Building out your LinkedIn Profile.

Next: ask for a Recommendation of your services by at least one person. Over time, try to get a 360 review from folks who have worked for you, those that you have worked for, colleagues, vendors and other members of your organizations.

Build a LinkedIn Company Profile and MOST IMPORTANTLY, put terms in Specialties that prospects would search on to find your services. Here are some guidelines: Building out your Company LinkedIN Profile. With a recommendation and keywords in Specialties on the Company Profile, you now become a Service Provider and can be discovered by millions.

Facebook Fan Page: 6.8% of all business Internet traffic goes to Facebook. Business can no longer ignore the impact and should take advantage to find their fan base where they interact. As the #2 site in traffic rank, Facebook gives a boost in search results to any business.

You have several choices of the kind of page. Choosing Local Business will let you provide hours and parking and is somewhat limited. Brand, product or organization lets you give more of a profile of your business. Community and Group pages are generally Stage 3 efforts

Create a Facebook Page

Twitter: Super for building a base to direct to Facebook or a blog or shopping cart. Twitter is used to manage reputations and customer service issues. Steady, regular communication, again with just a few minutes a day, will build relationships and convert to sales. You can build a presence in just minutes. Include a bio and image with link to website or blog. Search on topics related to your industry and “lurk” or “listen” to conversations. As appropriate, reply. Retweet others to caption the attention of other visitors. It’s the content of your conversations that will attract followers.

I would add a 6^th Strategy to Mari’s list. Continue to learn. You’ll find others whose posts you like. Ask them questions. You’ll need some tools to manage this process. Those tend to be selected as a personal preference. Services that make it easy to schedule posts, shorten URLs will save you time. There are lots of choices and just a search away.

My last advice to encourage businesses to just get started. However small, make that first step. And then another. Just keeping leaving crumbs all over with great information and point them back in your direction. Enjoy the process. It’s rewarding in so many ways!

@social_dynamics

Tags: Facebook Fan Page, LinkedIn Company Profile, Mari Smith, social media for business, social media objectives, social media strategy, Twitter
Posted in Articles, Blogging, Facebook, How To, LinkedIn, Local business, Social Media and Social Networking, Twitter | No Comments »

Advice to Small Business on Social Media – Part 1

Monday, May 10th, 2010

By Jan Carroza

Small businesses can take advantage of the exciting interaction that social media can offer while overcoming the concern of time constraints, misconceptions and the sense of overwhelm that cause inertia. Tackle social media in 3 stages with 6 great strategies.

Manage Your Expectations

Be patient. My advice to any business is not to expect tons of sales right out the gate. Social media is about building relationships of trust which lead to actions. While I have seen tremendous reaction in just hours, in general businesses should think of each communication as another cookie crumb with the possibility of being found by someone who will follow your trail. Each communication gives a business an opportunity to ENGAGE. I can’t stress this enough. Eventually, each business can have benchmarks tracking results to know that x number of communications yielded y in sales.

A lot has been written about businesses pitching soliloquies. Companies, agencies and PR firms have been dropping the ball here. Social media is about INTERACTION. Businesses must make a CONNECTION. That means starting a conversation or reacting to one. That’s why social media marketing might take more time than traditional advertising.

Don’t be overwhelmed with what you don’t know. Even the experts don’t know everything. We are all trying to run as fast as we can to keep up with new opportunities and new technologies.

Don’t be afraid this will consume your time. Can you spare 10 or 30 minutes a day? That’s enough to get you started. If you like the results, you’ll find more time if you want to.

Plan for three Stages to your experience.

Stage 1) Preparatory–
Set your Objectives. To make those cookies, you have to have a kitchen where you can pull out and measure the ingredients and an oven to bake them in. You need to prepare the places where you want actions to take place: the website, a blog, social media and networking places, and the like. Sign up, observe and participate on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. Learn from the mistakes others make in formatting, links and typos.

Stage 2) Mix a Small Batch-
While you are getting familiar on this learning curve, just take small bites so you can increase your chances of some early results from your time invested. Choose 3-5 venues to start with. You’ll look back at how much you learned in a short time. Be patient.

Stage 3) Expand the Kitchen-
Add more venues. Answer questions on LinkedIn. Learn about Bookmarking to share and repeat your communications and continue to drop more crumbs in more places.

I love @MariSmith’s 5 strategies:

1)   Objective
2)   Design
3)   Content
4)   Promotion
5)   Engagement

Start by outlining your Objectives for doing social media. What are you trying to do? Get new prospects, sales, donations, information and/or managing a reputation. Keep these in mind so you don’t stray too far. Your goals will drive your strategies and choices you make in terms of places you develop your presence and in what priorities. You want to make the biggest impact for the least amount of effort. For instance, if you have products that you can show with images or video, then YouTube would be one of the early channels to add and post. There are lots of places to put video. So you don’t get overwhelmed, you start with a large one and add others in Stage 3. Same goes for images. You might start with Flickr to begin with and add more later.

Prioritize your goals for using social media. Are you providing customer service? Finding new prospects? Managing your reputation? Rank these requirements.

Focus your social media efforts to achieve these goals. If you’re handling customer service, monitor Twitter and Facebook for comments about your company and your competitors. If you dedicate a few minutes a day to monitoring and replying, you will begin a significant step forward into the limelight. Look for questions to answer and other blogs where you can post interesting, informative comments. Your signature will direct interested parties back to you.

Start with just a few things. The ones that make the most sense for your Objectives. If you want to drive actions to a website, adding a blog to your website is the biggest single recommendation to generate new content to attract prospects and persuade visitors to buy. That should be an ANCHOR. Something you give great and frequent attention to. A blog post can be a daily or weekly event that is a short discussion meant to drive at least one strong point home. One post might take just 10 minutes to write.

Check back this week for:

Where do businesses do all this Social Media connecting?

@social_dynamics

Tags: Facebook Fan Page, LinkedIn Company Profile, Mari Smith, social media for business, social media objectives, social media strategy, Twitter
Posted in Articles, Blogging, Facebook, How To, Local business, Social Media and Social Networking, Twitter | No Comments »

Why Tweetup? What’s In It for Your Business?

Tuesday, April 13th, 2010

By Jan Carroza

A Tweetup is a meeting conducted from various locations as well as virtually. It’s a great way to get like-minded people together for social interaction that may or may not get to a physical location to participate.

For businesses, the opportunity to generate buzz for very little expense is a no-brainer. It can be fun, educational or both. Businesses can present products and services. Non-profits can organize support for their charity or cause. Trade and consumer press jump on the bandwagon, increasing the excitement and overall impact.

The wine industry in Washington State chose March as month to celebrate their wines and restaurants joined in. Organizing conversations with hashtags like #WAmerlot and #TasteWA let participants following conversations from any of a number of locations. Over 225 wineries were involved in Taste Washington. Josh Wade of Drinknectar.com (@nectarwine) got the ball rolling for the Tweetup by posting 80 Twitter addresses for wineries. Sean P. Sullivan (@wawinereport) used his Wawinereport.com blog to champion the cause along with 9 co-sponsors. @TasteWashington provided greater Twitter lists of 40 participating restaurants and 112 wineries . Seattle Magazine gave it press. Seattle Times showed up at one of the locations.

Tweetups take a little planning and coordination. You’ll want to identify leaders, co-sponsors or co-leaders who can draw or organize additional resources to get a snowball effect. Folks were notified and shared their information and whether they would attend at http://wamerlot.eventbrite.com. Those who RSVP now have left calling cards, so wineries who responded have basically left a calling card waiting to be found by a new prospective buyer or visitor. Instructions are given for Twitter hashtags like #WAmerlot that can be used to follow discussions during the event and to this day. Other social media, like Facebook Fan Pages, allow discussions at greater length than the 140 characters.

During the event, such as at Harbor Wine Shop on Bainbridge Island, participants could see the Twitter stream projected on a wall and react with comments about the wine they tasted at that time. Following the hashtag conversations allowed Twitter fans to follow from locations all over Washington State and from wherever they were in the country, thus including wine fans at great distance for a two-hour event and beyond. Participants share photos, video, and posts long after.

The conversations continued for hours and now days later (see at: http://search.twitter.com/search?q=%23wamerlot), giving wine consumers, wineries and wine shops everywhere the ability to share a common passion while promoting Washington wine businesses nationwide.

Quite the buzz for very little cost, a little organization and lots of impact. New friends, greater connectivity in the wine community, and quite likely, greater sales for the industry.

@social_dynamics

Tags: Facebook, hashtag, Tweetup, Twitter
Posted in Articles, Blogging, Facebook, Local business, Twitter | No Comments »

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Why Tweetup? What’s In It for Your Business?

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