My thoughts on social media?

Music in the background – Black Eyed Peas – Talking about your generation

Building an online community, product development, joint ventures or affiliate programs are not something you can easily implement for immediate results. This is the same principle around social media sites. It should not take longer than 6 months to get your word out, then another 6 months to really integrate and communicate with the readers. Social media, sorry to say, is a long term operational activity for your marketing.

Top sites to get more traffic via the internet?

Traffic - not referring to cars…but people accessing your site, your information via the online channel – the blessed Internet. Anyone can access it, the only difference is which browser they chose to use.

Get more traffic and plan it into YOUR schedule, so that there is a time when you must do it, remember to do it and your online community expect it!

1. Just like you go fishing (or hubby) get your bait together and link it all up!

Use Digg, Reddit, del.icio.us or StumbleUpon. This is by the far the easiest and most powerful way to get traffic to your site during the weekends.

Social news sites usually get less news during the weekend, and it is likely that your bait will be more successful during this time!

2. Publish During the Weekend. Publishing during the weekend will get you some traffic, especially if you have many feed subscribers as some of them will visit your site to read the full article or comments. Smaller sites can also benefit as new content will bring in a small amount of long tail search traffic.
   

Set future publish dates on your post during the weekend so you don’t have to sit down in front of the computer to write. Asking a question is sometimes the quickest way to put out an extra blog post.

3. Biggest one to mention, and the least used is COMMENT on other BLOGS.
1. Why? When you reply to a blog, leave your web site subtly, or enable other bloggers to investigate YOU
2. Promote your understanding and view points, invoking curiosity!
3. Some good blog sites: Blogcatalog or MyBloglog, orble, blogger – all you need to do is search keywords about the subject you want to ‘make comment on’

4. Adwords- sign up to Google AdWords – free and you may even get paid for it too!

5. Try Blog Traffic Exchanges. Blog traffic exchanges the tools which allow you to obtain traffic by visiting other blogs. They are more useful for newer blogs and as they require more time and effort on your part, I suggest using them strategically to find new blogs within your niche as well.

The downside of all of these methods (with the exception of paid advertising) is the time-investment. Do you really want to spend time in front of the computer on the weekend? The amount of time needed for these tasks will vary and perhaps it would be better to alternate them each weekend to lessen the workload.

Another way to deal with this would be to get someone to help promote your site(s) grow much faster.

If you have the time and interest, try implementing some of the tactics listed in this article. I’ll love to hear if it helps you to get more visitors this weekend.

Of course, contact me and I can give you a selection of social media management packages to choose from (from $75)!

5 Social Media Secrets for 2010

Social media took a wild ride in 2009. The mainstream press fell in love with Twitter, Facebook grew aggressively and a new wave of companies starting taking social media seriously as a business tool. Below are 10 secrets to staying on top of it all in 2010

1. Pay Attention to the Metrics
You can't manage what you can't measure. Chief Marketing Officers are going to pay more attention to metrics and tie in social media more directly to overall business goals, not just web-related goals. When starting up new project agree on what the metrics should be and what goals are appropriate.

2. Scale Good Habits
As you grow, make sure you match your structure, policy and guidelines to your organization size. What works with 2 people won't work with 20 people. All in all your structure should encourage good habits. Your entire team should be motivated to respond quickly, post consistently and talk like a human. Speaking of policies and rules...

3. Have Rules, But Trust People
As your social media strategy matures, you'll add in more rules and guidelines. However, you can't have a rule for every situation. You need to trust your team. Lead by example, don't manage with rulebook.

4. Creativity & Personality Trump Big Budget
Social media is definitely one of those areas in life where more money doesn't always win. Two of the most powerful ingredients in social media are creativity and personality. They are the key to having a viral message and to being a trusted resource. They are also essential to discovering useful strategies and tactics. You can't be afraid to try something new or go against the grain.

5. Listen Listen Listen
Don't focus so much on you and your message. Put that farther down on your To Do List. Focus first on your customers. Hear what they are saying, see what they're up to. Once you've been able to connect, and figure them out, then see how you can help.

Social media is online content created by people using highly accessible and scalable publishing technologies. At its most basic sense, social media is a shift in how people discover, read and share news, information and content. It's a fusion of sociology and technology, transforming monologues (one too many) into dialogues (many to many) and is the democratization of information, transforming people from content readers into publishers. Social media has become extremely popular because it allows people to connect in the online world to form relationships for personal, political and business use. Businesses also refer to social media as user-generated content (UGC) or consumer-generated media (CGM).

Social media are distinct from industrial media, such as newspapers, television, and film. While social media are relatively inexpensive and accessible tools that enable anyone (even private individuals) to publish or access information, industrial media generally require significant resources to publish information. Examples of industrial media issues include a printing press or a government-granted spectrum license.

"Industrial media" are commonly referred to as "traditional", "broadcast" or "mass" media.

One characteristic shared by both social media and industrial media is the capability to reach small or large audiences; for example, either a blog post or a television show may reach zero people or millions of people.

The properties that help describe the differences between social media and industrial media depend on the study. Some of these properties are:

1. Reach - both industrial and social media technologies provide scale and enable anyone to reach a global audience.

2. Accessibility - the means of production for industrial media are typically owned privately or by government; social media tools are generally available to anyone at little or no cost.

3. Usability - industrial media production typically requires specialized skills and training. Most social media does not, or in some cases reinvents skills, so anyone can operate the means of production.

4. Recency - the time lag between communications produced by industrial media can be long (days, weeks, or even months) compared to social media (which can be capable of virtually instantaneous responses; only the participants determine any delay in response). As industrial media is currently adopting social media tools, this feature may well not be distinctive anymore in some time.

5. Permanence - industrial media once created cannot be altered (once a magazine article is printed and distributed changes cannot be made to that same article) whereas social media can be altered almost instantaneously by comments or editing.

Community media is an interesting hybrid. Though community-owned, some community radios, TV and newspapers are run by professionals and some by amateurs. They use both social and industrial media frameworks.

Next week I would like to talk about Social Equity in collaboration and social networking

Chat soon

SWN

Threats/Risks

There is a requirement to recognise factors that potentially impose a threat or risk during the trial and implementation of a blog/wiki. The most apparent risk surrounds key business issues.

The following areas highlight issues surrounding the business, changes in technology, internal capability, skill sets and changes in organisational structures:

Recognition of key business issues:
• Human resource requirements
• Training requirement encouraging knowledge exchange and collaboration across organisation silos
• Development and implementation of an innovative Information & Communications Technology (ICT) change management program that supports ongoing, sustainable adoption and integration of new technologies and processes
• Requirement for the development of an organisation-wide Mandate for Collaboration

Changes in technology:
• Not significant. There is minimal technology change involved for a wiki and blog, with exception to additional capabilities, error fixes etc.
• Relative differences in speed of access to the information which is directly related to the technological challenges and contingencies already in place for the business.

Internal capabilities:
• Information cohesion. This includes how information is used, it is exchanged, its interpretation, feedback (lags), and degree of integration required into other platforms
• Unevenly distributed information. Failure to collaborate with all members within groups. Surrounding this includes possible misunderstandings, offensive behaviour and harassment, formation of online impressions with no supportive direct communicative feedback generally used in conventional face to face or verbal contact communication
• Differences in salience of information. Missing body language clues and with an assumption of knowledge and expertise

Skillsets:
Training of future collaborators on tool implemented
• Ongoing training and coaching on benefits associated to use of blog/wiki
• Provision of continuous guidance for all collaborators in new method of work approach

Workplace documents that need to be created:

• Change management plan
• Training Plan
• Rules of Use of Computing & Communications Facilities
• Copyright Policy
• Collaboration Policy

To overcome the barrier of communication i would really suggest implementing some kind of instant messenger,similair to windows - so people know when others are there, rather than waiting for a response and over analysing in the collaborative workplace!!

Have you implemented a strategy in your workplace? How did you measure it? I have come up with measuring its success through participation levels, how much content is used and uploaded, feedback from its users and decisions that are based off collaborative workspaces...

Sources of information

http://lgwebnetwork.org/

www.une.edu.au/policies

http://www.futuremelbourne.com.au/wiki/view/FMPlan

http://switchedonmedia.com.au/2009/social-media/australian-social-media-statistics-2-million-more/

Motivational tweeters are in the twit space giving value to their followers… but that plan can backfire if you’re not careful.

The problem motivational Tweeters face is coming off as fake, preachy, saccharin, syrupy, or just plain one-dimensional.

When you communicate that you’re a REAL person, that’s when you start making connections that create incredible impact on Twitter and beyond.

Havent got a twitter account yet? www.twitter.com - sign up its quick and easy!


5 Tips for Motivational Tweeting

1. Make sure your Tweets are not ALL motivational quotes. First it appears as if you are not really on Twitter or you are faking it somehow. Do mix it up with real time replies.

2. Be creative and show you are personable! (a joke, a smile, or some wit) can be just as motivating as a platitude on goal setting/achieving. Be creative in how you inspire others.

3. You can’t FORCE everyone to be happy. I’ve actually witnessed “positive” people berate others for Tweeting about life’s ups and down. Instead of forcing someone into happiness, how about brightening up their day through other means? That human connection can be way more powerful than another Tony Robbins quote!

4. Recognition is motivating too! Retweet other tweets you have found to be of interest – pushing it out and pulling you back in

5. Lead by example. There are some people I see on Twitter who have such great dispositions, I can’t help but feel good reading their Tweets. They’re not one-dimensional computer bits either. Just real people appreciating the present moment that Twitter has us focused on, sharing that present moment with the rest of us.
What are your tips for being a force of positivity on the web? (Think outside of the motivational quote box.)

If you are a motivational Tweeter, how do you mix it up so you don’t sound like a trip down the greeting card aisle?

Tweet with us - search for sociallywired!

Pump it up with your profile pictures – best practise dimension speak

Here are a few basics:

Facebook Picture (Profile or Page)

Profile Picture: 200 pixels wide (100 dpi).
Height can vary substantially. Facebook will convert to a JPG and will shrink images wider than 200 pixels so your page looks best if you save as a JPEG and have an image exactly 200 pixels wide. Since the image spans two colour fields trying to match the background is pointless – in fact, it looks better if you use a third colour as the background, to add some contrast (the blue is #EDEFF4 and the white is standard #FFFFFF).

(Another good idea is to put a 1 pixel border around your photo using colour #D8DFEA. This matches the menu border colour – have a look at the Avid Reader page for an example.)

Facebook Thumbnail
You cannot upload a separate thumbnail image for Facebook, you must zoom into a 110×200 pixel area of your picture that looks good. Think about this when choosing your picture image.

Twitter Picture

Twitter picture: 73×73.
People are able to view a larger image by clicking on your face (or logo)- you may want to do a larger image – still keep dimensions around a variation of 73×73 (i.e. 146×146 or 219×219). Twitter accepts and does not convert a PNG, so use a PNG.

Twitter Background
Because the Twitter website is not fixed in position background image option on Twitter is a design nightmare. Avoid trying to make things line up perfectly on the right side of your profile – rather, put anything important on the left side or have a subtle tiled image. Important: make sure background image colour is the exact match of an HTML colour, and define the rest of the background with that HTML colour. If you do not apply this step the image will look appear as an invisible box.

YouTube Account Image

YouTube account image: 88×88 pixels
Scaling throughout the site at 60×60 (Make sure your image looks good at both) and upload in JPEG format (other formats are just converted to JPEG).

YouTube Channel Background
YouTube backgrounds that are not tiled are centred (and, thus, look ridiculous behind your channel info). If you do a background at all (a solid colour is good), make it something subtle that you can tile nicely. (Note: YouTube is rolling out new channel designs, so stay tuned)

LinkedIn

Profile: 80×80 pixel JPEG works best for the profile image
Company Page: 100×35 pixel JPEG (Other image formats are converted to JPEG automatically even if they are the correct dimensions.)

Flickr

Buddy icon: 48×48 pixel JPEG
Group icon: 48x48 pixel JPEG

Yes, you are able to measure the success of your social media. It has been said that it is not measureable, but there are some ways you can cross reference to validate the success of your social media campaign. All these measures may or may not be suitable to every social media campaign.

A few include:
Number of fans
Number of friends
Number of followers
Rate at which you get fans, friends and followers
Mainstream media mentions
Asset popularity (video/image views)
Like/Dislike
Embeds/Installs
Uploads
Downloads
Ration of embeds or favourting to views

Ratings
Social bookmarking
Subscriptions (RSS, Podcasts, Video Series)
Effective Click Per Minute
Page views

Increase in search due to social activity
Change in search engine rankings for the site linked through social media

Influence of consumers reached
Influence of publishers reached (Eg Blogs)
Influence of brands participating in social channels
Demographics of target audience engaged with social channels
Contest entries
Wiki Contributors

Customers assisted
Impact on online sales
Impact on offline sales
Discount redemption rate
Costs saved from not spending on traditional research
Volume of customers feedback generated

Savings generated by enabling customers to connect with eachother
Products sampled
Leads generated
Visits to store locator pages
Conversion change due to user ratings, reviews
Change in market share

Demographics of audience reached through social media
Social media habits/interests of target audience
Geography of participating consumers
Sentiment by volume of posts
Sentiment by volume of impressions
Languages spoken by participating consumers

Clicks
Percentage of traffic generated from earned media
Number of interactions
View-throughs
Polls taken/votes received
Brand association
Tags added
Responses to socially posted events
Attendance generated at in-person events
Employees reached (internal programs)
Job applications received

If you would like any additional information on the above mentioned measures of success, please contact us via reply post or admin@sociallywirednow.com

Good luck in the journey of social media marketing!!!

Twitter... it Can Improve your rankings...Twitter is more instant than email or web releases!

Did you Know?
There are now 350,000 publishers from the White House to CNN to John Cleese pumping out almost 600,000 feeds and generating around 5,500,000 clicks to your sites every day.

Google Analytics Integration
Twitterfeed now adds special 'UTM' tags to each post that it publishes. Google Analytics can read these tags and integrate the information into its reporting. You'll be able to understand how people clicking on your posts from Facebook differ from those clicking from Twitter and track the complete path of their visit to your site.

Check out Twitterfeed for your social networking www.twitterfeed.com