Social Networking Policy considerations

By Mikal Belicroft

For as long as I’ve been writing about the National Labor Relations Board and social-media use policies, I’ve been advising businesses to ensure that their policies and guidelines for employees are reviewed and vetted by legal counsel. That’s because the NLRB hasn’t been a bit shy in ruling that a number of employers have violated the National Labor Relations Act when setting such policies. The problem was that the board hasn’t exactly been forthcoming in providing specific guidance with respect to what it wants to see in such policies and guidelines in the first place.

That all changed recently when the agency -- which is responsible for, among other things, investigating and remedying unfair labor practices -- issued a 27-page memo (PDF) on the topic. In it, the board reviewed social-media policies from several businesses that it claims run the risk of infringing on employees’ free speech and labor rights, then offered guidance for businesses going forward.

Among the recommendations to businesses when creating and distributing social media policies for employees are the following six points:


1. Know and follow the rules: All of your employees should be urged to read your social media policies and guidelines, and you should make it perfectly clear what is considered inappropriate, being assured that such acts will not be tolerated.

2. Be respectful: The board suggests that your policy explicitly state that employees should be “fair and courteous to fellow associates, customers, members, suppliers or people who work on behalf of the employer.”

3. Be honest and accurate: This includes never posting information or rumors that are known to be false.

4. Post only appropriate and respectful content: Specifically, maintain the confidentiality of company trade secrets and private or confidential information; express only personal opinions; don’t represent yourself as a company spokesperson without permission.

5. Use of social media at work: Don’t use company equipment for personal messaging unless it is work related.

6. Media contacts: Don’t speak to the press without checking with the company’s human-resources department or function beforehand.

The NLRB acknowledges in the memo that more fine-tuning of social media policies and guidelines on the part of employers will be necessary in the future. For example, warning employees about releasing confidential materials online might sound reasonable, but such action might prohibit those very same employees from discussing and disclosing information regarding their own conditions of employment, which the board considers a "protected concerted activity."

Should You Add a Blog to Your Site?

By: John Crenshaw

One of the first things small business owners find out about when researching SEO are blogs. One of the most common questions we get is, “should I add a blog to my site?”

Blogs have gained a reputation as having the potential to boost your SEO rankings, but it’s important to understand what a blog does and why it helps, as well as when it wouldn’t help.
What is a blog, exactly?

A blog is nothing more than a collection of articles, generally appearing on a website in reverse chronological order — meaning the newest posts show up first. The key phrase there is “nothing more than a collection of articles.” That’s right, a blog is not some magical thing that will score you all kinds of love from Google; it’s nothing more than a collection of articles.

What that means is, if you really wanted to, you could create your own mock bog just by publishing articles as standard html pages on your website, then publishing another page with links to all those articles. In it’s most basic form, that’s really all a blog is.
So why does everyone say blogging helps SEO?

The simple answer is that SEO is a complicated subject. Because it’s complicated, two things end up happening:
Companies selling SEO services say “Blogs help SEO,” because it’s a thousand times easier than explaining why blogs help SEO, or that some blogging platforms will actually hurt your SEO, or that the same can be accomplished in Dreamweaver or another web publishing platform (albeit not as efficiently). When it comes to selling, keeping it simple helps.

Companies who take the blogging plunge tend to notice their traffic increases. Because SEO is a complicated subject, the easiest explanation is that the blog did it. Then, when you talk to employees in those companies, they tell you how much of an impact blogging made on their business…and the legend grows.

So…Will a Blog Help with SEO or Not?

Yes and no. It’s not the blog itself that will help with SEO. Remember, a blog is nothing more than a collection of articles. What tends to help with SEO are all the secondary things a blog does for you that you might not even be thinking about. A well-designed blog facilitates SEO best practices, by accomplishing the following:
If you have a blog, you should be publishing on it. Anytime you add text-rich pages to your website, you’re giving Google more content to index. More content means your website will show up for more searches. You’re casting a wider net, which tends to catch more prospects.

Most bloggers use WordPress. When setup properly, WordPress does a lot of stuff behind the scenes that is good for SEO. Now, don’t think I’m suggesting WordPress will always help your SEO behind the scenes. WordPress can very easily be setup in such a way that it won’t do you much good at all, and that’s entirely up to the author of your theme…or your designer/developer if you had a WordPress theme custom made.

However, even a perfectly setup WordPress theme won’t do you any good if you don’t follow some SEO best practices. Thankfully, WordPress makes it easier for you to follow these best practices. And we know the easier something is, the more likely we are to do it. Some of the tasks WordPress can simplify are:

Adjusting meta tags (title, description, keywords)

Linking to other pages on your site directly

Linking blog posts together using tags, categories, and archives

Proper formatting (heading tags, bold and italicized text, etc)

SEO-friendly URLs (WordPress calls these “Permalinks”)

In addition to these, WordPress has a huge list of plugins that can add functionality to do just about anything else you could want

What to consider before you add a blog to your site

Now it’s time for a reality check. I’ve shown that just adding a blog to your site is not going to magically get you more business. However, undertaken properly, blogging can significantly enhance your visibility online. In addition to showing up for more searches, enhanced visibility means you’ll be seen more as an authority in your industry and it will help you build your contact network with potential clients, business and advertising partners, and even “old media” contacts like newspaper and television reporters.
I’ve seen blogging do amazing things for small and large companies alike. I’ve also seen a lot of businesses fail to reap any benefits from blogging at all. Here are some important things to consider before you decide to start a blog:
Who will be responsible for getting blog posts published? Someone in your organization has to be committed to keeping the blog updated. This same person doesn’t have to be the one writing the blog posts…you could have anyone handle that, or you could even outsource that entirely. But one person in your organization needs to be responsible for getting posts published on time. That person should have the authority to “motivate” people to get the job done. This will be your blog editor and the responsibility for publishing blog posts rests entirely on his or her shoulders.

When will blog posts be published? You should set a posting schedule of once or twice per week and be consistent about it. The more consistent you are, the better off you’ll be. I’d recommend setting a day and time when posts will be published and not missing those publication deadlines. Treat your blog like a newspaper…no matter what it takes, get something published on time.

Who will train your people? Do yourself a favor and get some basic SEO training for your people. If funds are tight, you could just have the blog editor trained on basic SEO. If you’re able, train your writers too. There are plenty of SEO companies out there that can help you with this, including us. Just a couple hours of training will make a world of difference.

Which blogging platform will you use? I can’t think of any reason to use anything besides WordPress. It’s just so much farther along than any other blogging platform and it’s so widely used that if you need to expand it’s functionality in some way, there’s probably already a plugin out there that will do it for you.

Who will design your blog? When I say “design,” I mean design, develop, program…all of the above. If you decide to use one of the thousands of free WordPress themes, make sure it was created with SEO in mind. If you have a custom theme developed, make sure the developer is familiar with maximizing the SEO benefit of WordPress. Don’t skimp on this…if you can’t afford to pay $1500 or more for a custom WordPress theme, use a free one. You can always have a custom theme designed later, but if you skimp on a cheap custom theme, you’ll be stuck with something that may not help your SEO like it should.

How will you come up with post ideas? Most people find it incredibly challenging to come up with something to write about once or twice a week. If you’re one of those people, I’m here to tell you to stop over thinking it. Your blog posts don’t have to be mind-blowing insights into your industry. Sure, if you can throw in some amazing content occasionally, it’ll help tremendously, but on the whole, remember you’re writing a blog, not a New York Times best seller. It’s far more important that you publish consistently. As you continue to blog, you’ll get better at it, you’ll come up with better post ideas, and you’ll see what your readers like to read about and what they don’t like so much. Still need some help? Here’s a quick and dirty step-by-step:

Publish posts on Mondays and Fridays at 7am.

Write those posts a week in advance and use WordPress’ post scheduling feature to have them automatically published on the right day/time

Schedule a brief Wednesday morning brainstorming session with your blogging crew (30 minutes max.)

Tell everyone to have 3 post ideas ready for the Wed. morning meeting each week

In the meeting, everyone shares their post ideas

Pick the top 2 and assign a writer or outsource it

Publish

Repeat

Conclusion

If you’re reading this post, I assume you’re either considering blogging or are already doing it. Good for you! Just remember, that a little bit of preparation and understanding of the process can go a long way to ensure you reap the maximum benefit. Obviously, blogging isn’t a magical cure-all for your SEO woes, but done properly, blogging can have a significant impact on your bottom line. Now get out there and start writing!

Consumers today more likely to be influenced by Twitter, Blogs

By Gillian Shaw, Vancouver Sun

VANCOUVER - Nobodies are the new somebodies.

They have become the key influencers and companies must remember that when they are trying to win people over to their ideas, products and services.

That’s the advice from Guy Kawasaki, managing director of Garage Technology Ventures who, as one of the employees behind Apple’s marketing of the Macintosh, pioneered evangelism back in 1984, turning consumers into avid advocates for the brand.

Kawasaki, who was in Vancouver last week for the Internet Marketing conference, shared his formula for “changing hearts, minds and actions.”

It all boils down to one word: “enchantment.”

“If you can change people’s hearts, minds and actions, you can change the world,” said Kawasaki, a venture capitalist, a columnist with Entrepreneur Magazine and author of nine books on marketing and entrepreneurship.

While old-school marketing saw companies seeking to enchant those they figured had the power to influence, social media has made that practice obsolete. “I think marketing is completely reversed,” Kawasaki said.

It used to be that companies sought favourable reviews from influential publications like Fortune and The Wall Street Journal, but today’s consumers are more likely to be influenced by blogs or by the Twitter users they follow.

“The new way is that nobodies are the new somebodies,” said Kawasaki.

Instead of top-down delivery, marketing happens from the bottom up, he said. “Someone you’ve never heard of embraces your product, they love the product and they spread the word. You never know which mommy blogger is going to make your product successful.”

Enchantment is more than a smile and scintillating conversation. Here are some more of Kawasaki’s tips on becoming enchanting:

1. Always default to a yes attitude. Kawasaki attributes this bit of advice to Vancouver’s Darcy Rezac, author of Work the Pond! Use the Power of Positive Networking.

2. You can’t enchant people if you’re not trustworthy. And if you want people to trust you, you have to trust them. Companies like Zappos, with its paid shipping return policy, are examples of how it can pay off to trust customers. Be a mensch, someone who can be trusted, who is honourable and has a world perspective. Think Nelson Mandela if you’re looking for an example.

3. Deliver a product or service that meets the enchantment test: Is it DICEE? Deep, intelligent, complete, empowering and elegant.

“It is easy to enchant people with something that is great; it’s hard to enchant people with something that is crap,” said Kawasaki, who points to Google as one company that meets that DICEE test.

4. Conduct a pre-mortem before you launch. Gather your team together and say, ‘Let’s assume our product failed and come up with the reasons why it failed.’ When you’re creating something, it’s very difficult to poke holes in it; this exercise is aimed at identifying the shortcomings without having the team at odds with one another.

5. Sell your dream. The iPhone is really $188 worth of parts and AT&T (at least in the U.S.) but Apple sells the dream, the smart phone that changes your life.

6. Follow the 10-20-30 formula in presentations. That’s 10 slides, 20 minutes talking and a 30-point font.

7. Rules of e-mail: Have a great subject line and a message that is no longer than five sentences and includes what you want, what your cause is, who you are, why the recipient should help you and what the next step is.

8. Use Twitter, the greatest marketing tool ever created, according to Kawasaki. Have a good avatar, no red eyes or out-of-focus photos; remember your profile is in a sense your resume, so make it good and when you tweet, provide interesting links.

How not to use Twitter for Business

It is important to learn how to use Twitter to promote your business without annoying your followers with bad twitter etiquette.

Here are some of easiest ways to annoy your followers:

1. Post Spammy Tweets.
If you don’t know what spamming on Twitter is and don’t know a single spammer, then you are probably one of them. If you are, it is important that you change the way that you tweet. Do not post something that claims to be about a popular topic just to send them somewhere else. People will feel tricked and be annoyed at you.
Post relevant and helpful information that keeps followers coming back for more. Make your followers really want to read your next tweet.

2. Follow Anyone and Everyone
You should only be following those whose thoughts and tweets actually interest you, post good information and/or are relevant to your brand.
Do not use auto-follow programs. They are not considered ethical since you are really only using them to increase your number of followers. Take the time to look through those who follow you and those tweeting about topics in your niche to determine whether someone is worthy of your follow.

3. Post Tweets Which Have No Relevance to Those who Follow You
If you have a shoe company and generally post about the shoe business, brands and new products...don’t tweet about things like cookie recipes or Justin Bieber (unless, of course, he is actually wearing the shoes!)
If you represent an online business about safely products, don’t promote web hosting.

It is simply not relevant and annoys your followers! Keep every post relevant to the people who follow you. Learn how to use Twitter to pass along information that is important to them and they will pass it on to others.

4. Post Automated Tweets That Are Out of Date.
Do not post about summer sales in the fall. Do not talk about Christmas gift ideas in March. While there is a place for automatic posting, make sure each and every tweet is relevant and valuable to anyone who might read it. Otherwise, this is just another form of spamming.

5. Discuss What You Are Doing Every Minute.
Tweet 1: I just got out of my bed.

Tweet 2: Have to go brush my teeth.

Tweet 3: Need to take a shower.

Tweet 4: Out of the shower now. Time for breakfast.

Tweet 5: Cereal or bagel?

Tweet 6: Cream cheese or butter?

Tweet 7: Better hurry…still need to get dressed
Trust us...they Don’t Care! Don’t bore followers with your details!


6. Ignore Everyone Who Reaches Out to You.
If you’re not going to be social with anyone else on Twitter, then you might as well not use it at all. The whole point of social media is to be social!
It does not take that much time each day to check mentions that you have had (like @BizSocialNet in their tweet), retweets and direct messages from others. Thank people for mentions and retweets.
If someone tweets you in their #FollowFriday (or #FF) list, thank them for that too. You may want to even return the favor on the next Friday!

7. Sell, sell, sell.
If all your tweets lead to a sales pitch, people will get sick of them really fast. People want information...not a constant sales pitch.
Make almost all of your tweets helpful and informative without a hard-sell agenda. Then if you do happen to tweet a sale or offer once in a while...the followers will welcome the information instead of running the other way.

8. Rarely Tweet.
If you only update your profile and tweet once every six months, people will probably unfollow you. If you are not tweeting regularly, what’s the point?


Not sure if you are using twitter to it's full advantage? Best to read up and harness the power of Twitter before it causes harm to your brand.

Cool ideas for your Face Book Page

Now how ingenious is this! Great ideas for spicing up your Face Book page...

Twitter for Business: A quick Twitter guide and glossary for business users

By Jason Hiner

For a service that is remarkably simple, Twitter is often difficult for new users to understand and to quickly turn into something useful. In fact, the simplicity of Twitter can actually be a barrier in the beginning, because there’s not much to help a new user get started.

So in order to assist business users and IT professionals in getting up to speed on Twitter, I’ve put together this quick collection of 10 core Twitter concepts that you need to understand in order to turn Twitter into a powerful 140-character communications tool.

Who to follow

The first thing you need to figure out is who to follow. This, more than anything else, will determine how useful Twitter becomes for you. For business users, I’d recommend following many of the colleagues you work with on a regular basis. While some of them may post useless ramblings, you’re also likely to pick up project updates, inside perspectives, and subtle red flags that you would not have seen otherwise.

Of course, what makes Twitter most powerful for business users is following experts and thought leaders in your field and industry. For tech workers, I’ve put together a directory of techies who are active on Twitter. I’d also recommend finding thought leaders in your specific industry. Directories like Twellow can help. But the best method is to find a few industry experts, then look at their profile pages to see who they follow. You’re very likely to find other industry experts.
Learn More » Never be afraid to follow new people. Give them a try. However, if they post useless stuff, simply unfollow them. You should regularly unfollow people who simply don’t provide much value. This is part of the regular rhythm of Twitter because Twitter makes it very easy to follow and unfollow new people. In fact, after a couple years on Twitter, I’ve now got a few people whom I’ve followed and unfollowed several times.

What’s a tweet?

The word “tweet” is a Twitter term used as both a noun and a verb. As a verb, it used to talk about a user posting something on Twitter. For example, “She tweeted that she was flying to a business meeting in Seattle with Microsoft.” When used as a noun, it refers to an individual Twitter post. For example, “He posted a tweet last week that included a link to screenshots of Mac OS X Snow Leopard.”

What’s a retweet (RT)?

The “retweet” (often shortened to “RT”) is something that was not originally designed by the Twitter team, but Twitter users invented in order to re-post something really interesting from another Twitter user. For example, if another tech journalist (e.g. Harry McCracken) posted breaking tech news on Twitter, I might quickly take Harry’s post and re-post it like this: “RT @harrymccracken Google announces it is launching its own private space program.”

The reason I would post something like this is because not all of the people who follow me follow Harry, and I find it important and interesting enough to share with as many people as possible. It’s the social networking version of word-of-mouth.

By the way, Twitter recently announced that it is officially adopting retweeting, with plans to streamline the process for users, integrate retweeting into Twitter.com, and build the new retweeting functionality into its API.


Replies and mentions

A “reply” on Twitter is when you directly respond to a post from another user. For example, Sascha Seagan (a PC Magazine editor) recently tweeted, “I’m back from vacation. What I learned: Yes, AT&T coverage is much better outside NYC.” I replied, “@saschasegan In Midwest, AT&T network is infinitely better than NY or SF, but still not as reliable or widespread as Verizon.”

As you can see, you start a reply with the @ symbol and then add the person’s Twitter username. The Twitter.com home page makes it easy to reply to a tweet by simply mousing over it and then clicking the reply arrow. It automatically populates @username in the posting field and then you fill in the rest. Twitter client software (see below) also makes it easy to reply to a tweet.

Similar to a reply is a “mention.” This is where you mention a person’s name and since that person is on Twitter, you identify the person by using the their @username. For example, I might tweet something like, “While I was in New York today I had lunch with @ldignan to discuss our coverage plans for Windows 7 on ZDNet and TechRepublic.”

Also notice that every instance of an @username is turned into a clickable link that will take you to that user’s Twitter profile, where you can then choose to start following the person. Plus, on the Twitter home page you’ll see your @username on the right column of the screen. When you click this, you’ll see all of the replies to your tweets and mentions of your username. This is useful because there may be times when people you don’t follow mention or reply to you and this allows you to catch it.

Direct messages

There may also be times when you want to reply to someone one on Twitter, but you don’t want everyone else to see the message or you just don’t think it would be useful for everyone else to see. In that case, you can send a “direct message.”

To do this from Twitter.com, go to the person’s Twitter profile page and then go to the right column under Actions and the click the “message” link. However, keep in mind that you can only send direct messages to people who follow you. This prevents the direct message feature from being used by spammers.

I’ve also found that the direct message feature can work almost like an instant message to get someone’s attention, if the person is a regular Twitter user. It can often be a quicker way to message someone than e-mail, but less intrusive than a text message or instant message.

#Hashtags

Another Twitter convention that users developed without the input of the Twitter staff is hashtags. Hashtags are essentially keywords. For example, #techrepublic is a hashtag. When people post links to TechRepublic articles, they often identify them by adding the #techrepublic hashtag at the end of the tweet. Other popular tech hashtags include #windows7 and #iphone, for example.

Doing a Twitter search on a hashtag allows you to see all of the Twitter conservations that are happening around a specific topic. It can also be a good way to find people who regularly talk about a specific topic and then follow them.

One thing to remember about hashtags is that they are not case sensitive. So, #techrepublic is the same as #TechRepublic or #TECHREPUBLIC.


Posting links

Some of the most popular things to post on Twitter are links to articles, blog posts, video clips, etc. Some of the most valuable people to follow are the ones who post the best links, and that means not just the big stories that everyone is tweeting but also the really good stories that are under the radar.

The problem is that Twitter posts are limited to 140 characters and most article URLs are 50 characters or more. That doesn’t leave much space to post the title of the article or any brief thoughts about it. As a result, most people use URL shorteners such as TinyURL when posting links on Twitter. My favorite URL shortener is Bit.ly, because it allows you to shorten URLs to about 20 characters and it gives you some basic analytics on all of your Twitter links.

Desktop clients

Most habitual Twitter users don’t spend much time on Twitter.com. Instead, they migrate most of their Twitter use to desktop clients while they are working from their desk and smartphone clients when they’re on the go.
The most widely used desktop Twitter client is Tweetdeck, although Seismic and Twirl are also popular. Tweetdeck is an Adobe Air application that runs on Windows, Mac, and Linux. It provides a columnized view of Twitter with columns for your main feed, your mentions, your direct messages, any #hashtag searches, and more.

One of the best parts of Tweetdeck is its ability to create groups. For example, I have groups for “Tech Journalists” and “CBS Interactive” (my work colleagues) so that I can view them in separate columns. Another nice feature of Tweetdeck is that it automatically refreshes, so you can just leave it open and let it do its thing in real-time.

For those who prefer to stick with Twitter in the Web browser, Twitter.com is still not your only means of accessing the service. Tweetvisor is a powerful browser-based Twitter client that puts a lot more Twitter functionality at your fingertips than the standard Twitter homepage. There are also a variety of Firefox plugins that can ramp up the experience of Twitter in the browser, including PowerTwitter, TwitterFox, and TwitBin.


Mobile clients

You know you’re getting addicted to Twitter when you start looking into how to use it from your smartphone. I know plenty of techies who use their smartphone as their primary method of accessing Twitter and the desktop is really secondary.

While you can use Twitter via SMS, I wouldn’t recommend it unless you have an unlimited SMS plan. Plus, the Twitter mobile apps typically provide a much better experience by making it easier to reply, retweet, send a direct message, etc. Here’s a breakdown of some of the top Twitter clients on each of the big smartphone platforms:
•iPhone: Tweetie, Twitterific, Birdfeed, Tweetdeck, Twitterfon

•BlackBerry: UberTwitter, Twibble, TwitterBerry, TinyTwitter

•Windows Mobile: Twikini, PockeTwit, TinyTwitter, Twobile

•Palm Pre: Tweed, Spaz,

•Android: Twidroid, Twit2Go, CuTewit, TwitterRide

•Nokia Symbian: Gravity, Twittix,

Posting photos

Another interesting (and occasionally even useful) thing to post on Twitter are photos taken from your smartphone. This can be especially useful when you’re at trade conferences and industry events and you want to report on items of interest.

The most popular tool for posting photos on Twitter is Twitpic because you can use it from any cellphone with a camera. You simply take the photo with your phone and then email it to your customized Twitpic email address and you type your Twitter message in the subject line of the email. The challenge with this is that there’s no character count in the subject line of an email so you have to be careful to not make your message too long. If it’s over 140 characters it will simply get truncated.

Flickr has also come up a service that is virtually identical to Twitpic called Flickr2Twitter. So if you already have an active Flickr account, it makes sense to use Flickr rather than Twitpic because then all of your mobile photos get added to your album, rather than creating a separate album on Twitpic.

100 Geeks to follow on Twitter

By Nicole Bremer Nash
Keep up with the latest geek news and happenings by following Stan Lee, Felicia Day, Stephen Fry, Cory Doctorow, Neil Gaiman, and other people, organizations, and companies on Twitter.

We’re adding to Jay Garmon’s (@jaygarmon) list of 50 ubergeeks worth following on Twitter and his post of 30 more geeks to follow to create this roundup of more than 100 geeky people, organizations, and companies to follow on Twitter. Numbers 1-24 are my suggestions, and 25-100 are Jay’s recommendations (which include his captions, some of which have been updated). We also list TechRepublic writers and editors that you might want to keep up with on Twitter.

1. Keep up with serious science geek Stephen Hawking (@StephenHawking).

2. Stan Lee (@therealstanlee). The legend.

3. Neal deGrasse Tyson (@neiltyson) the astrophysicist, author of The Pluto Files, NOVA scienceNOW host, and Director of the Hayden Planetarium.

4. Jake von Slatt (@vonslatt) is the proprietor of The Steampunk Workshop. He was featured in our TechRepublic gallery, Steampunk: A way of life for some designers.

5. Jeff Potter (@cookingforgeeks) is the author of Cooking for Geeks.

6. Patton Oswalt (@pattonoswalt) is a comic and actor who is also a self-professed geek. The title of his book Zombie Spaceship Wasteland kind of gives that away.

7. John Graham-Cumming (@jgrahamc), author of The Geek Atlas.

8. Gabe (@cwgabriel) from Penny Arcade tweets geek on a regular basis.

9. Jane McGonigal (@avantgame) is a game designer whom we featured in the TechRepublic blog Building a best-case scenario future through video gaming.

10. The CERN feed (@cern) has the latest updates about the LHC.

11. Know what the heavens have in store by following NASA (@NASA).

12. Douglas H. Wheelock (@Astro_Wheels) is a NASA astronaut.

13. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (@AsteroidWatch) tweets about the things whirling through space.

14. NPR’s Wait Wait,.. Don’t Tell Me! host Peter Sagal (@petersagal) is one hilarious geek guy.

15. John Moe (@johnmoe) of NPR’s Marketplace Tech Report tweets.

16. Science Friday (@scifri) tweets for science geeks.

17. Think Geek (@thinkgeek) has an interesting feed.

18. Official_PAX (@Official_PAX) is a good feed to follow if you want to be sure you get PAX badges before they sell out.

19. Maker Faire NC (@makerfaireNC) focuses on the upcoming NC Maker Faire, but frequently offers interesting links to science geekiness.

20. Hacker News YC (@HackerNewsYC) offers lots of links and other information of geek interest.

21. Check out Geek Girl Camp (@GeekGirlCamp) for some geek girlness.

22. Sweet on Geeks (@SweetonGeeks) helps geeks get some “wookie nookie”.

23. Jeri Ryan (@JeriLRyan) from Star Trek is still a geek favorite.

24. Seth Green (@sethgreen) of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Robot Chicken, and Family Guy fame.

25. Wil Wheaton (@wilw) - Don’t call him Wesley Crusher, because he’s so much more awesome than that.

26. Felicia Day (@feliciaday) - Vi from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Creator of The Guild. Gaming goddess. She is also now on a six-part web series for Dragon Age (@dragonage).

27. Scott Kurtz (@pvponline) - Writer/artist of the Web comic PvP.

28. Tobias Buckell (@tobiasbuckell) - Caribbean-born sci-fi writer exiled to Ohio.

29. Mary Robinette Kowal (@MaryRobinette) - Puppeteer, voice-actress, and sci-fi writer.

30. Warren Ellis (@warrenellis) - Profane and ingenious writer of comics, books, TV, and video games.

31. Phil Plait (@BadAstronomer) - Evangelizing astronomer, educator, and movie science geek.

32. LeVar Burton (@levarburton) - Actor/educator of Reading Rainbow, Roots, ST: TNG. Technophile.

33. Jon Favreau (@jon_favreau) - Comedic actor. Director of Elf, Iron Man, Iron Man 2, and now Cowboys & Aliens.

34. Stephen Fry (@stephenfry) - Sublimely funny British actor, author, and comic.

35. Agent M (@Agent_M) - Insider blogger for Marvel Comics.

36. Chris Hardwick (@nerdist) - Musician, comic, actor, and Attack of the Show dude.

37. FragDolls (@FragDolls) - Hot babes who play video games for a living.

38. John Cleese (@JohnCleese) - Monty Pythonite and so much more.

39. John Scalzi (@scalzi) - Snarktacular science-fiction writer and blogger.

40. Valerie D’Orazio (@ohsuperheroine) - Writer/blogger/activist for women in comics.

41. Lore Sjöberg (@loresjoberg) - Wired magazine’s animator/artist/comic-in-residence.

42. John Hodgman (@hodgman) - Deadpan nerd-comic, actor, and Daily Show correspondent.

43. Greg Grunberg (@greggrunberg) - Web fanatic who plays Parkman on Heroes.

44. Brent Spiner (@BrentSpiner) - Faux-curmudgeon comic who once played Data on ST:TNG.

45. Neil Gaiman (@neilhimself) - Writer of fantasy comics and prose that get made into major movies.

46. Penn Jillette (@pennjillette) - The vocal half of comic/magic/activist duo Penn & Teller.

47. David Hewlett (@dhewlett) - More than just the guy who played Rodney McKay on Stargate: Atlantis.

48. Martin Sargent (@martinsargent) - Manchild super-nerd from various tech TV shows.

49. Olivia Munn (@oliviamunn) - The hottie actress and former cohost of Attack of the Show.

50. Scott Beale (@laughingsquid) - Geek-blogger supreme from LaughingSquid.com.

51. Major Nelson (@majornelson) - Yes, Xbox fanboys, that Major Nelson.

52. Brea Grant (@breagrant) - Music-lover, actress, and geek known as Daphne from Heroes.

53. Jeph Jacques (@jephjacques) - Writer/artist behind the Web comic Questionable Content.

54. Cory Doctorow (@doctorow) - Co-founder of BoingBoing, copyfighter, sci-fi writer, etc.

55. Robert Bowling (@fourzerotwo) - Gaming blogger and employee at Infinity Ward.

56. Eddie Izzard (@eddieizzard) - Crossdressing super-nerd British comedian.

57. Amber Benson (@amber_benson) - Tara from Buffy turned writer/actress/geek.

58. John Joseph Adams (@johnjosephadams) - Leading editor and reviewer of sci-fi and fantasy.

59. Cherie Priest (@cmpriest) - Southern gothic fantasy/horror author exiled to Seattle.

60. Lar deSouza (@lartist) - Artist for Web comics Looking For Group and Least I Could Do.

61. MC Frontalot (@mc_frontalot) - Nerdcore rap star.

62. John Denardo (@sfsignal) - Blogger-in-chief at SFSignal.com.

63. David Willis (@Shortpacked) - Writer/artist for the toy-collector Web comic Shortpacked.

64. R. Stevens (@rstevens) - Writer/artist for the pixelated hipster-geek comic Diesel Sweeties.
65. Dave Zatz (@davezatz) - Consumer technology reviewer and insider.

66. Jonathan Coulton (@jonathancoulton) - Nerd-pop recording artist.

67. Rich Johnston (@richjohnston) - Comic book industry’s most notorious rumor-monger.

68. Brian Michael Bendis (@BRIANMBENDIS) - Writer of comic books, notably Ultimate Spider-man.

69. Jay Lake (@jay_lake) - Writer/editor/blogger of science fiction books.

70. Rob Corddry (@robcorddry) - Ascerbic nerd comic and actor.

71. Kevin Smith (@ThatKevinSmith) - Geekish writer/director/actor who gave us Clerks and Dogma.

72. Paul and Storm (@paulandstorm) - Comedic musician duo with a nerdy flair who participate in w00tstock.

73. Bill Amend (@billamend) - Creator of the comic strip Foxtrot.

74. Charlie Jane Anders (@charliejane) - Sci-fi blogger, author, and magazine editor.

75. Kevin J. Anderson (@TheKJA) - Sci-fi author famous for Dune and Star Wars tie-ins.

76. Elizabeth Bear (@matociquala) - Accomplished writer of sci-fi/fantasy short stories.

77. Jamais Cascio (@cascio) - Highly respected futurist and techno-cultural commentator.

78. Bill Corbett (@BillCorbett) - The voice and mind behind Crow T. Robot from MST3K.

79. Danielle Corsetto (@dcorsetto) - Writer/artist of the Web comic Girls With Slingshots.

80. Andy Diggle (@andydiggle) - British writer/editor of comic books.

81. Chris Eliopoulos (@chriseliopoulos) - Creator of the Web comic Misery Loves Sherman.

82. Matt Fraction (@mattfraction) - Indie comic book creator gone mainstream.

83. Irene Gallo (@IreneGallo) - Art Director for Tor.

84. Meredith Gran (@granulac) - Writer/artist for the Web comic Octopus Pie.

85. Jonathan Hickman (@JHickman) - Mindbending indie comics creator.

86. Grant Imahara (@grantimahara) - Grant from MythBusters.

87. Paul Levinson (@PaulLev) - Communications researcher, professor, and sci-fi novelist.

88. Robert “Bobby Lew” Llewelyn (@bobbyllew) - Kryten from Red Dwarf.

89. Rich Lovatt (@richl1) - Comics blogger and creator of the Web comic Mecha-Simian.

90. Kevin Murphy (@kwmurphy) - Human voice/writer behind Tom Servo from MST3K.

91. Theresa Nielsen Hayden (@tnielsenhayden) - Sci-fi editor and comments admin for BoingBoing.

92. Patrick Nielsen Hayden (@pnh) - Senior Editor at Tor.

93. Chris Pramas (@Pramas) - The man at Green Ronin Games.

94. Terry Pratchett (@terryandrob) - Yes, boys and girls, that Terry Pratchett.

95. Joe Quesada (@JoeQuesada) - Chief Creative Officer at Marvel Comics.

96. Michael A. Stackpole (@MikeStackpole) - Sci-fi novelist known for his Star Wars and Battletech tie-ins.

97. Kris Straub (@krisstraub) - Writer and artist of the Web comics Starslip and chainsawsuit.

98. Ben Templesmith (@Templesmith) - Stylish and profane artist for various horror/noir comics.

99. Rainn Wilson (@rainnwilson) - Dwight from The Office, only moreso, ’cause he’s real.

100. Weird Al Yankovic (@alyankovic) - Dude, seriously, you don’t know Weird Al?

Don't forget to add us to you list @IndigoOceans!

The BEST reason to use Twitter: Improve your search engine ranking

Google merges social with search results, excludes Facebook

The search engine this week announced that social search results will no longer linger at the bottom of the results page. Now they will be slipped in among other listings. But don't expect to see your friends' Facebook 'Likes' appear any time soon.

by Helen Leggatt

Social Search was debuted in 2009 and, in a nutshell, finds posts and activity from friends and displays them as search results when logged in to a Google account.

Until now, those social search results have been displayed separately to the main results. This has now changed with the recent announcement that the search engine will merge searchers' social media contacts' activities directly into search results.

Except Facebook activity - not surprisingly the search engine hasn't spent too much time on integration with this network, even if it is the world's largest and most-used.

According to Mashable's Ben Parr, "One thing this update doesn't include is Facebook "Like" data, a prominent feature of Microsoft Bing. Unlike Google, Bing has access to instant personalization and the user data behind Facebook's walled garden. As one of Google's archenemies, it's unlikely the search giant gave much serious thought to deep Facebook integration, instead choosing Quora, Flickr and Twitter as its inaugural integrations."

Some speculate that the move takes Google a step further towards a long-anticipated social network product all of its very own. VentureBeat's Anthony Ha believes "some recent upgrades to Google products suggest that the company is advancing with its social plans and may be laying the groundwork for the big launch."

Some pages may get a boost as the social search element can change a page's ranking based on the strength of connection to another individual, making a page rank higher than it would if social search was turned off.

With the emphasis consumers place on recommendations from friends and family, and social interaction, this move will certainly enhance the search experience and incorporate channels they value highly.

The 10 biggest LinkedIn annoyances

By Tim Heard


As useful as LinkedIn can be for promoting your career or business and connecting with other professionals, users have voiced some major peeves. Tim Heard rounded up the top complaints.

Back in January, I was engaged in some urgent matters via LinkedIn, only to have the site go down. Like many, I hopped onto Twitter and began to inquire what was up, as if anyone on Twitter would know. I guess maybe it was some comfort to know it wasn’t just me who couldn’t connect. It was everyone.

As I browsed through various disgruntled tweets, I noticed many rumors that LinkedIn was likely to go public soon. On one hand, I thought that perhaps this infusion of cash might lead to more stability and fewer error messages about unavailable functions. On the other hand, by my reckoning, the current owners of LinkedIn have wallpapered their homes with currency and have swimming pools full of hundred dollar bills. In fact, while Facebook remains free, yet still worth an estimated $60 billion, LinkedIn has cleverly figured out ways to entice members to pay — and pay and pay and pay — for memberships, ads, and various services.

The recruiter in me who knows a thing or two about information technology understands how occasionally systems get overloaded. But the consumer in me who sees LinkedIn coming up with more overt ways to bring in revenue than the “social network” has trouble getting his mind around how the site doesn’t have enough redundant servers and databases to make the process a bit more satisfying (or at least less distracting) to those of us who are addicted to it like Facebook couch potatoes are to Farmville.

As my thoughts grew darker, I decided to vent my frustrations a bit. So I posed this question to roughly 90 million of my closest friends: What are your LinkedIn pet peeves? Here are the top 10, culled from user responses, with my own input mixed in.

Note: This article is also available as a PDF download.

1: LinkedIn LIONs

I can’t fathom that anyone would not know what a LinkedIn LION is, but in case some individuals have managed to live in blissful ignorance, a LION is a Linked In Open Networker. LIONs are people who will connect to anyone and accept requests to connect from anyone.

To most, this sounds fairly innocuous. At face value, it is. Many users are even told by well-intentioned friends and colleagues that if they want to grow their networks, they should become LIONs. (I was, and I briefly went over to the dark side when I first joined LinkedIn.)

What you are not told is that many (not all) LIONs believe that once they have your email address, they automatically have your permission to start sending you their marketing newsletters. Many others (especially those at the top of the chains) have figured out that they can generate revenue by selling contact lists.

If we set aside these behaviors as anomalies, there still exists a mentality within the LION subculture of taking rather than giving anything back. Whereas the LinkedIn motto is “Relationships matter,” in the eyes of a typical LION, numbers trump relationships. The goal is to accumulate as many contacts as you can through any means possible.

LinkedIn LIONS are notorious for joining groups and then posting an introduction that goes something like this, “Hello. I’m ___. I really wish that I could get to know all of you, but I’m limited to joining 50 groups and therefore have to drop out of this group. I’d love to get to know you though and will accept invitations to connect from anyone who sends one.” I have been the owner of a few groups and have usually been vigilant about allowing LIONs in, but I’ve had a few members make such a post after corresponding with me to get approved and promising that they wouldn’t.

The other somewhat humorous fact about LIONs is that they take umbrage at being able to invite only 3,000 individuals to connect to them. So the ones who have reached that limit will send emails saying, “I’d like to connect to you, but I’ve run out of invitations and mean old LinkedIn won’t let me have more. Will you invite me to connect to you? Here’s a link you can use to connect to me.”

2: Facebook

One could reasonably ask, “How in the world can Facebook be a description of a LinkedIn problem?” The answer is simple. The Facebook culture, where anyone who sends you an invitation to connect is your “friend,” is so pervasive that it has spilled over into LinkedIn. Keep in mind that LinkedIn is supposed to be a business-oriented networking Web site — a place where you make business contacts and interact in ways that are designed to expand your business network, grow your business, and help others do the same.

The challenge is that people join LinkedIn who have previously known nothing but Facebook (or worse, the old MySpace), and they start “friending” every contact who interests them. No use of introductions. Not even a message like, “Hey, I saw your profile and I’m interested in connecting because…” The recipient gets an invitation from someone on the other side of the world that says, “Kheng would like to connect with you and indicates that you are a friend.” Then there are messages like the one supposedly from a student attending the University of Exeter, who was trying to accumulate as many contacts as she could as a part of a class project (implying that some professor believes that spamming people around the globe is a helpful way to grow your business contacts). I made the mistake of accepting one such friend request last year and within a week, I was overwhelmed by dozens of additional requests, none of whom would reply to messages asking for a bit of information about themselves.

It doesn’t matter if you have ten thousand direct contacts on LinkedIn. If none of them knows who you are, or worse, if they look at you as an irritating spammer, all your efforts at building a network have been counterproductive. Ari Herzog, a social media communication specialist from Boston, pointed out in a recent discussion online, “The old saying…,’It’s not what you know, it’s who you know,’ is wrong today. The new saying is, ‘It’s not who you know, it’s who knows you.’ You may be connected to hundreds of people on LinkedIn, but unless they know you — and not just your name — they’ll never help you. Ditto elsewhere.”

Whether you’re a Web marketing genius, a misguided student from England, a veteran recruiter, or a job seeker, one good contact who knows you reasonably well and is willing to take some action on your behalf is worth more than 1,000 online “friends” who don’t know you from Adam. If you take nothing else away from this, remember that the first contact you make with someone is your opportunity to make a meaningful first impression — or no first impression at all. A relatively modest effort on your part can yield positive results in the long run.

3: Spammers

There are several ways you can contact someone via LinkedIn. First, you can send a message through a mutual contact. This is called an introduction request. It can be time consuming, and sometimes the message doesn’t get through, especially if your contact must send a message to his or her contact, who then must send a message to the end recipient. On the other hand, it can be very useful, especially if you send the request through someone who knows you, thinks highly of you, and says nice things about you in the process. Introductions, when successful, are much better than cold calls or direct messages because someone is vouching for you as a part of the process.

The second way is sending InMails. InMails are purchased, but they allow you to contact someone directly with whom you otherwise would have to use an introduction or whom you wouldn’t be able to contact at all. Since LinkedIn members pay to use InMails, they generally don’t use them for spammy purposes. They use them because they have a specific (usually business-related) reason, and contacting the person quickly is important.

Finally, there are group-related messages. LinkedIn allows members to join up to 50 groups. These groups may be related to professional interests, specific affiliations, industries, companies, schools, and so on. One benefit of joining groups is that in most cases, members can send messages directly to other group members without having to request an introduction or spend an InMail.

Here’s the catch. Spammers have gotten wise to this. So a company will set up a profile for some low-level marketing flunky who sends out messages to every member of the group, inviting them to join a newly created group or to check out the company Web site or espousing the virtues of the product they are offering. Thankfully, after much pleading by members, LinkedIn finally created an option to flag messages as spam. While it doesn’t eliminate spammers, it should help LinkedIn shut them down more quickly.

4: Scammers

Scammers are close cousins to spammers. Sometimes they are more sophisticated. Usually they aren’t. They range from barristers representing estates and needing help moving huge sums of currency out of the country to people asking for help in purchasing specific pieces of property near you. Probably the most difficult to pin down are those who pose as representatives of charitable organizations, often complete with Web sites. The sad fact is that you have to assume that anyone who’s asking for money is a scammer unless you have an extremely reliable contact in that person’s location who can verify their claims. As someone who once gave serious thought to establishing a nonprofit, I feel for the good-hearted people who get painted with the same brush. But in this case, it seems reasonably safe to assume that the bad eggs far outnumber the good ones.

5: Answer trolls

One nice LinkedIn feature is the ability to post questions about a variety of subjects and get reasonably good answers quickly from subject matter experts. Keep in mind that you get what you pay for. If you’re having serious legal troubles, you probably don’t want to turn to LinkedIn’s free answers for help unless you’re just asking about how to find a good lawyer. On the other hand, you can get a lot of helpful replies on subjects ranging from how to use LinkedIn to technical issues to … well, to just about anything.

Some people are naturally inclined to be helpful. But others seem to be using LinkedIn for self-promotion and/or self-fulfillment. It generally isn’t hard to figure out over time. If someone seems to consistently post answers that point back to things they have done, products they sell, or books they have written, that might be a clue.

I have been a member of LinkedIn since around the middle of 2004 — about a year after the site launched. In that time, I have answered 183 questions. Twenty-one of those were listed as “best answers” and 44 were listed as “good answers.” (I thought they were all good.) I think that’s a lot of answers.

To put that in perspective, one user has posted 421 answers this week. Another user, who has posted 250 answers this week, has posted 445 “best answers” just on the subject of how to use LinkedIn. The top answer guru of all time on LinkedIn has responded to more than 35,000 questions to date. Just by eyeballing his profile, it looks like he has provided a shade more than 400 best answers. The #2 all-time responder has provided almost 25,000 answers and (again just a guesstimate) maybe 100 best answers.

These folks don’t get me as hot and bothered as LIONs, spammers, and scammers, but they do really irritate some members. I have seen answer discussions degenerate into flame wars between people posting answers. I think the main source of irritation for many is just the blatant self-promotion that some display. But if enough of their answers are so helpful that they are getting credit for having the best answers, I’m not going to lose sleep over them. My advice would be that if two answers seem equally good to you and one comes from someone who already has credit for 300 best answers, give the credit to the other person.

6: Lack of meaningful competition

Technically, this isn’t an issue with LinkedIn. But it has led LinkedIn to be a bit complacent at times.

Plaxo is probably the closest thing to a competitor. It started out as an online contact management tool. Unfortunately, I think the founders lacked a clear sense of what they wanted the site to be when it grew up. For a time, Plaxo was generating a lot of spam, which caused the brand to be damaged goods in the eyes of many individuals. It has made significant improvements, but even though it has been around since 2002, it is effectively a late entry into this market. Other sites like Xing and Ryze also have a lot of catching up to do.

7: Profit-mongering bean counters

I totally get that the good folks at LinkedIn deserve to make a reasonable return off what is really a darn good product. But having said that, they seem to have lost all sense of connection with their customers.

Take, for example, the following solicitation I received from LinkedIn. I currently utilize a Business Plus account. Based on the amount I spend, from LinkedIn’s perspective, it is a small business account, and LinkedIn would like to see me spending more per month. Recently, it informed me that if I were seeking a new job, I should consider upgrading to a premium account. For a mere $499.95 per month (called a Pro account), I could have a job-seeker badge on my profile, contact more people by introduction, and have access to Lindsey Pollak’s webinar “Job Seeking on LinkedIn.”

Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m sure it’s a terrific webinar. But someone please tell me, what job seeker has $6,000 per year in expendable income to devote to a job search? Assuming I found myself out of a job and for some reason not hamstrung by mortgage payments, groceries, medical expenses, kids’ braces, and so on, I can think of a lot of things I’d likely spend $6k on before forking it over to LinkedIn. Not only is it hard to conceive of a typical job seeker having that much extra money to spend on a job search, it is hard to conceive of the average job seeker being unwise enough to part with their hard-earned currency for the sake of viewing Ms. Pollak’s webinar.

It’s this disconnect, not understanding that both job seekers and businesses at all levels are just barely getting by, that pokes at me like a stick in the eye when I get various emails from LinkedIn announcing that services previously offered for free now must be purchased. Keep in mind that I am describing fee structures for individual memberships. On top of this revenue stream, LinkedIn is making money running ads that are paid for by LinkedIn members for services and products, as well as job postings paid for by search firms and employers. They also offer apps, such as reading lists that connect back to Amazon.com, which are bound to be revenue-generating to some degree.

Does LinkedIn have every right to do these things? Absolutely. However, the way it goes about its business seems to have the unintended result of creating disgruntled rumblings among the LinkedIn citizenry. And as we have seen in the news of late, you don’t want your citizenry to be disgruntled.

8: Bugs, glitches, downtime, etc.

I think what mystifies me the most is that a company that is clearly bringing in a nice steady revenue stream and isn’t offering a complicated online product (such as online multiplayer gaming) is regularly completely down or notifying me that I can’t read my messages right now and should check back later.

Yes, 90 million-plus registered users is a lot of people. At any given time though, a third of them are asleep. And a significant percentage of them created an account one day and never came back. I don’t recall having ever been online and having Facebook go down, and its members are sharing videos, large folders of photos, and doing live chat 24/7 — all 500 million of them.

You all are the tech experts. Are my expectations unreasonable?

9: Group members moving other members’ posts or ignoring posting guidelines

This is a tricky one. On one hand, group owners or moderators for the most part are hard working professionals who can’t devote all their time to enforcing group rules. I have actually given up ownership of a group simply because I was spread too thin and felt that I wasn’t doing justice to the group or its members.

As a recruiter, I get irked at other recruiters who ignore posting guidelines and post jobs in the general discussion section. And yes, I have flagged some as jobs. But I’m honestly bothered that members can police one another in this respect. Invariably, when I post a link to an article I have written here on TechRepublic, someone comes along and moves it to the jobs section because it’s about job seekers, improving national employment numbers, or something else that’s remotely job-related. The right solution would be for LinkedIn to require groups to have a certain number of active moderators per 500 members (or some ratio that makes sense). I don’t believe that LinkedIn really cares all that much how groups are moderated though, so it is left up to the discretion of group owners.

10: Interface/usability Issues

I got a variety of suggestions from users regarding issues like not being able to track individual discussions in specific groups or responses to questions or comments posted by other members. Some users wished there were ways to block certain kinds of updates from contacts while still being able to see others. Finally, some members weren’t all that impressed with LinkedIn’s contact or messaging functionality. Clearly, if LinkedIn goes public in 2011 as is rumored, there will be a few things on which they can spend their influx of capital.

Sales and Marketing: Energizing Brand Advocates Delivers 10X ROI

According to a new report by Zuberance, companies that systematically identify and energize Brand Advocates are getting at least a 10X ROI in media and sales value, our analysis of Zuberance-powered advocacy programs shows. In other words, for every $1 a company invests in energizing Advocates, the company gets $10 in positive WOM impressions and sales. %is 10X “Return on Advocacy” is signifcantly higher than the return that marketers get from paid search campaigns on Google and other marketing approaches.

Why Energizing Advocates Delivers High ROI

There are several reasons why energizing Brand Advocates delivers at least a 10X ROI:

• Consumers trust WOM at least 5X more than advertising, paid search, email, and other marketing tools, numerous studies show. As a result, conversion rates for WOM marketing programs that energize Brand Advocates are substantially higher than for other marketing campaigns. Companies energizing their Brand Advocates using the Zuberance Advocate Platform are getting sales conversion rates as high as 6%. This is more than 5X higher than standard sales conversion rates for traditional marketing approaches.

• Unlike paid media, companies do not pay Advocates to spread positive WOM. Advocate Media is a form of earned media, i.e., media that a company earns when customers become the channel for market communications. As we point out in this white paper, there are costs associated with a structured program to energize Brand Advocates. However, these costs are low relative to the value that companies get from these efforts and the typical investments companies make in paid media.

• Energizing Brand Advocates has staying power. Clicks and leads are perishable. But Brand Advocates will gladly continue spreading positive Word of Mouth about their favorite brands and products for years. Apple, TiVo, Harley Davidson, and Four Seasons Hotels are examplesof brands with “Lifetime Advocates.” In addition, the media created by Brand Advocates remains on the social web indefnitely, providing brands with ongoing SEO and WOM value.

Energizing Brand Advocates enables marketers to create a highly cost-effective marketing channel — the “Advocate Channel” — that they can leverage continuously and in multiple ways to drive marketing results.

Value/ROI Analysis


The company will get at least a 10X ROI from by energizing Advocates, as measured by:

1. Media value (impressions) from online and online recommendations. We estimate that this media value is $1,500,000.

2. Sales value (clicks, leads, and sales) that result from these recommendations. At a 15% margin, we estimate that the company will generate $24 million in sales and $3 million in profits by energizing its Advocates.

Sales Value


In addition to media value, the company also is getting sales value by energizing its Brand Advocates.
These sales are generated as a result of:

1. Advocates posting positive recommendations online (ratings and reviews, testimonials, comments, etc.) plus onine recommendations

2. Advocates sharing promotional offers with their social networks
 
Other Benefits of Energizing Brand Advocates


In addition to the media and sales value of energizing Brand Advocates, this consumer electronics company will get other benefits from turning its highly satisfied customers into a marketing force:

• Higher page rankings in natural search results from Advocate-generated media

• Important insights about Brand Advocates and their social networks

• Valuable customer feedback that can be used to guide product/service development

• Deeper relationships and engagement with Brand Advocates, a company’s most valuable customers

Developing Brand Advocates takes time and dedicatation. It's like running a marathon - you don't run 42 km never having run before. You start building slowly until running becomes effortless.

Top 10 tools for Small Business

If you are a small business, here are the top 10 things to implement in 2011:
1. CRM: How can you possibly know who you are selling to without it?

2. Twitter: Will improve your search engine ranking and introduce you to people you never would have met ither wise.

3. Linked In: Because your best referrals and potential new customers are from people you already know.

4. Blog: Become a thought leader, industry guru, a go to source for potential customers. How fun is that! 

5. Sales Training: If you have new employees or old dogs, sales training will net you more sales or help you realize you need to replace your sales force.

6. Monthly Employee Reviews: How else will people know if they are doing a good job or why they were managed out?

7. Employee Recognition Awards: Because this is the easiest low cost - high value campaign that will drive the right behavior.

8. Vendor Costs Review: Telecom, Wireless, office supplies – whatever your major expenses are. You are likely spending too much money. It may be easier to save a $ than earn a $ some months.

9. Customer Communication Strategy: If you aren't talking to your customers, someone else likely is. Email Marketing (like Constant Contact), Twitter, Face Book and phone calls help you be in the right place at the right time when folks are ready to buy.

10. Make your office fun! Comfortable and homey. It should be conducive to working, building solid relationships with colleagues and keeping employees on task. Life can be a hamster wheel. At least decorate the cage, maybe even offer a Hamster in a ball!

Social Media for Business: What are people saying about your brand?

Have you googled your business lately? Try different search words combined with your company name like love or hate. You may be surprised!

The conversations taking place on social networks can build or erode your brand, your reputation, leads, sales and revenue. Outspoken and respected individuals can influence masses of friends and followers to change their opinions about you. They can trash you or defend you. You can soothe them, cultivate them and turn them into your strongest advocates; or not.

Take Trip Advisor as an example or Rogers. Google "I hate Rogers" and you will see an entire web site dedicated to irate customers. There are videos on You Tube and even an "I Hate Rogers" Face Book fan page!

I am interested in hearing about what's working, not working and why for your social media business strategy.

Drop me a comment!

Social Media for Business

Where Are Social Media Marketers Seeing the Most Success? It may surprise you, but the answer isn’t Facebook

Source: eMarket Daily

More companies in the Inc. 500 are using social media as part of their business and marketing strategies, and they are seeing success and viewing social media overall as more valuable. These firms, which include the fastest-growing private companies, have been using a mix of tactics, with Facebook as the most popular. According to a study released in January 2011 from the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth Center for Marketing Research, 71% of companies used Facebook in 2010, up from 61% in 2009. Twitter, at 59% in 2010, and blogging, at 50%, are also still high on the list.

If a company has used social media, it has most likely also seen success, the study found. Eighty-five percent of companies viewed Facebook as successful, a significant jump from 54% in 2009. Yet Facebook hasn’t matched message or bulletin boards, with 93% reporting it was a successful tactic. foursquare also saw a significant increase in usefulness; it wasn’t even measured in 2009, yet in 2010, 75% of companies reported it was a successful tactic.

As social media becomes more prevalent and valuable, the perception of it is changing. More companies view it as important, with 86% reporting social media technologies to be somewhat or very important to their business and marketing strategies in 2010, up from 79% in 2009. And growth is even stronger among those who consider it “very important.”

These fast-growing Inc. 500 companies see social media as increasingly important to their businesses because of the success they’ve seen, and marketers will continue to test various social networking sites to find the right mix for their company’s strategy.

Twitter for Business: 5 reasons Twitter makes sense for business -- and IT

OK - it's true. Scot Finney is my new favourite. Business owners ask me why Twitter. Scot sums it up concisely here.

Many IT shops consider employee use of social media a nuisance or time waster. And though LinkedIn and Facebook offer a measure of business value, it's not difficult to understand why.


Twitter might look like just another social media tool, but in truth, it's utterly different, with strong potential for business ROI. (See "Cashing In on Tweets.")

Technically, it offers little more than Facebook's status message, but the advantage comes not from the tool itself but from the community of people using it and the way they do so. Here's why Twitter is a much better social medium for IT professionals and other businesspeople:

1. It's got a real business use. More than any other social media site, Twitter is used by a great number of businesspeople, who are tweeting about professional topics. According to a comScore study, people aged 45 to 54 are 36% more likely than people in any other age group to use Twitter. You may be surprised to learn how many of your colleagues are tweeting -- and not just to report what they had for lunch. Meaningful discourse occurs on Twitter most every hour of every day.

2. It's OK to follow people you don't know. It's not cool on Facebook or LinkedIn to friend people you don't know at all. But Twitter is about information, and "following" people you don't know -- merely because of the interesting things they might say -- is the rule. Unless someone has invoked Twitter's "protect my tweets" setting (and very few do), you don't need permission to follow anyone. In order to spread your word, you need followers on Twitter. But you can still gain significant benefit along the way by listening.

3. Twitter delivers news, unique perspectives and stellar information. This is the key benefit, and it doesn't get talked about as much as it should. Like Digg and Slashdot, Twitter has a large content-recommendation culture. The tool is designed to do that with a built-in URL shortener. And with Twitter, the best content bubbles to the top. People tweet or retweet (forward someone else's tweet) only the most interesting things. Spend a couple of hours following smart people on Twitter, and you'll likely learn things you might not learn any other way. That makes it an excellent environment for following trends, gathering information, gauging buzz and researching topics of interest. You can also interact with people and pose questions to get discussions started.

4. You can mark your company or personal brand. Twitter can be used for many business or professional goals: building your personal or company brand, enhancing your business relationships, interacting with customers, doing market research or selling. Once you build up a large enough following, Twitter becomes a microblog. It's a powerful one-to-many tool that reaches a very influential, engaged audience.

5. There are no cliques or hurt feelings. You fully control the stream of tweets you see. Don't like someone's bald self-promotion? It's easy to "unfollow" someone, and it doesn't send them a message such as "Scot Finnie stopped following you and therefore clearly doesn't like you anymore."

A couple of tips for smart tweeting: Follow only people you're genuinely interested in. Following everyone may help you get followers, but it defeats half of the benefit of Twitter: reading the thoughts of the most insightful people.

With a tool like TweetDeck, you can create multiple groups consisting of the tweets of people who are generally focused on a specific topic. You can also follow hash tags -- or Twitter searches -- to see tweets on specific topics. I used Twitter for over a year before I tried TweetDeck. Once I did, the value of Twitter increased markedly for me right away. There are many other Twitter tools. To learn more, see "8 Free Twitter Clients for Better Tweeting."

Scot Finnie is Computerworld's editor in chief. You can catch him at twitter.com/sfinnie, or contact him at sfinnie@computerworld.com.

Social Media: Architects of the Social Web

Ever wonder about the geniuses behind the current social media empires? This is a great summary. A couple of things that strike me. One, could they not find a better picture of Joshua Schachter of Delicious? YIKES! The second is that Google seems to want to buy them as soon as they have traction. That is an ideal exit plan. Lastly, these are the revolutionaries of our time. They understand how to harness the human condition.

Enjoy.

Susan Corcoran

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Architects of the Social Web (Not Named Mark Zuckerberg)


By Focus Editors

Every once in a while, a person or team of people come along and change the Internet forever. In the 1980s, it was Bill gates and Steve Jobs, in the early 2000s, it was Mark Zuckerberg and Tom Anderson, and today, it's the people people discussed below. These folks shaped the very fabric of the social web, and through their contributions, they have made the Internet a more exciting and connected place to be. Today we recognize these architects of the social web, their revolutionary creations, and what accomplishments helped them achieve the heights they've reached.
Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian of Reddit


The phenomenally popular social news website Reddit enables content publishers to share stories and interesting news items with fellow Internet techies, and have those stories rated by readers according to how exciting or interesting they are. The site was founded in 2005 by Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian, two young graduates of the University of Virginia. The company received its initial start-up funding from the popular incubation investment firm Y Combinator. Since its inception, the website has grown into a direct competitor of Kevin Rose's Digg, and recent reports indicate that it my have even overtaken the website in terms of page views.

Dennis Crowley of Foursquare

Foursquare is one of the fastest growing social networking applications according to Innova, and it isn't hard to see why. The service allows users to "check in" at different stores, restaurants, and locations, and earn discounts and special offers for doing so. Foursquare's founder Dennis Crowley is no stranger to the social networking world. In 2000, Crowley invented a mobile location-based service known as Dodgeball that was later sold to Google. In 2005, Crowley began work on a Foursquare, which has since grown into a 4 million user empire with no signs of slowing down.

Pete Cashmore of Mashable

Mashable is one of the Internet's most popular news websites for bleeding edge social media innovations and Web 2.0 news, serving over 10 million unique monthly readers. Mashable was founded by the ambitious and accomplished Pete Cashmore in 2005. According to Mashable's company biography, Cashmore was only 19 years old and living in a small Scottish town at time of founding. Since starting Mashable, Cashmore was featured as one of INC Magazine's 30 Under 30, Forbes' Top 25 Web Celebs, and the Huffington Posts' Top 10 Game Changers 2009.


Reid Hoffman of LinkedIn


LinkedIn took the concept of social networking from the realm of casual time-killing and turned it into a way to meet professionals in your field and associate with those you've worked with. With the professional class in mind, LinkedIn provides a people a way to make recommendations, professional introductions, and references for work past and present. Reid Hoffman left his position at PayPal to found LinkedIn and now serves as the Chief Executive Officer.

In addition to LinkedIn, Hoffman serves as a board member to Grassroots.com, JumpStart Technologies, SixApart, and Vendio. According to his professional bio, he has also served as an angel investor to popular social networking website Friendster.

Joshua Schachter of Delicious


In 2003, Joshua Schachter created Del.icio.us, the website that pioneered social bookmarking. This type of service enables people to share their bookmarked websites with the rest of the web, allowing users to discover new websites and keep their bookmarks in one place. Schachter is a graduate of Carnegie Mellon with a degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering. In addition to founding Delicious, Schachter is the creator of Memepool, a website that collects popular Internet memes and viral content and posts them all in a central location.


Garrett Camp of StumbleUpon

StumbleUpon is the world's largest Internet discovery service with over 10 million registered users and 45 million human-submitted webpages. The browser plug-in lets users specify their interests and press a button that takes them to interesting websites and videos submitted by other similar users. Garrett Camp has founded the service in 2001 and has after studying for his Master in Software Engineering at the University of Calgary. Camp was also distinguished by MIT as the recipient of their TR35 award.


Richard Jones of Audioscrobbler & Last.FM


Last.FM is a music discovery and sharing system that monitors the songs a user listens to and recommends new music based on its perception of the user's tastes. In addition, Last.FM posts your playlists to your profile to share your music tastes with friends and other users. Richard Jones innovated the method of scanning a library of songs and determining music taste as a computer science project for the University of Southampton School of Electronics and Computer Science in the UK.

This audio engine, which he later termed audioscrobbling, caught the interest of Felix Miller, Martin Stiksel, Michael Breidenbruecker and Thomas Willomitzer of Last.FM, and was soon incorporated into website as the main feature if the growing music community. In 2007, TechCrunch reported that Last.FM was acquired by CBS for $280 million.


Marc Brown, Steve Haldane, Kevin Woolery & Anthony Batt of Buzznet


Buzznet provides users with one place to share photos, videos, and small blog-like journal entries. Buzznet differentiates itself from other social networking communities by focusing primarily on shared interests and communities based around ideas and passions (such as art and photography). Founders Marc Brown, Steve Haldane, Kevin Woolery and Anthony Batt started Buzznet in 2005 with an initial investment from Anthem Venture Partners, and before the end of the year, their fast implementation caused several prominent newspapers to use the site for their relevant photographs.

By March of 2008, Mashable reports that Buzznet gained an additional $25 million in funding and achieved a place in the top 20 in the social networking industry.

Brilliant minds....

Social Media Stats: Demographics & Growth

We came across this blog by Danny Brown and it has an outstanding amount of Stats on Social Media. 52 to be exact! There are some very compelling reasons to adopt Social Media for business.


Facebook
1. The average Facebook user has 130 friends.

2. More than 25 billion pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photo albums, etc.) is shared each month.

3. Over 300,000 users helped translate the site through the translations application.

4. More than 150 million people engage with Facebook on external websites every month.

5. Two-thirds of comScore’s U.S. Top 100 websites and half of comScore’s Global Top 100 websites have integrated with Facebook.

6. There are more than 100 million active users currently accessing Facebook through their mobile devices.

7. People that access Facebook via mobile are twice as active than non-mobile users (think about that when designing your Facebook page).

8. The average Facebook user is connected to 60 pages, groups and events.

9. People spend over 500 billion minutes per month on Facebook.

10. There are more than 1 million entrepreneurs and developers from 180 countries on Facebook.
Statistics from Facebook press office.


Twitter

11. Twitter’s web platform only accounts for a quarter of its users – 75% use third-party apps.

12. Twitter gets more than 300,000 new users every day.

13. There are currently 110 million users of Twitter’s services.

14. Twitter receives 180 million unique visits each month.

15. There are more than 600 million searches on Twitter every day.

16. Twitter started as a simple SMS-text service.

17. Over 60% of Twitter use is outside the U.S.

18. There are more than 50,000 third-party apps for Twitter.

19. Twitter has donated access to all of its tweets to the Library of Congress for research and preservation.

20. More than a third of users access Twitter via their mobile phone.

Statistics from Twitter and the Chirp Conference.


LinkedIn

21. LinkedIn is the oldest of the four sites in this post, having been created on May 5 2003.

22. There are more than 70 million users worldwide.

23. Members of LinkedIn come from more than 200 countries from every continent.

24. LinkedIn is available in six native languages – English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish.

25. Oracle’s Chief Financial Officer, Jeff Epstein, was headhunted for the position via his LinkedIn profile.

26. 80% of companies use LinkedIn as a recruitment tool.

27. A new member joins LinkedIn every second.

28. LinkedIn receives almost 12 million unique visitors per day.

29. Executives from all Fortune 500 companies are on LinkedIn.

30. Recruiters account for 1-in-20 LinkedIn profiles.
Statistics from LinkedIn press centre and SysComm International.



YouTube

31. The very first video uploaded was called “Me at the Zoo”, on 23rd April 2005.

32. By June 2006, more than 65,000 videos were being uploaded every day.

33. YouTube receives more than 2 billion viewers per day.

34. Every minute, 24 hours of video is uploaded to YouTube.

35. The U.S. accounts for 70% of YouTube users.

36. Over half of YouTube’s users are under 20 years old.

37. You would need to live for around 1,000 years to watch all the videos currently on YouTube.

38. YouTube is available in 19 countries and 12 languages.

39. Music videos account for 20% of uploads.

40. YouTube uses the same amount of bandwidth as the entire Internet used in 2000.

Statistics from YouTube press centre.


Blogging
41. 77% of Internet users read blogs.

42. There are currently 133 million blogs listed on leading blog directory Technorati.

43. 60% of bloggers are between the ages 18-44.

44. One in five bloggers update their blogs daily.

45. Two thirds of bloggers are male.

46. Corporate blogging accounts for 14% of blogs.

47. 15% of bloggers spend 10 hours a week blogging.

48. More than half of all bloggers are married and/or parents.

49. More than 50% of bloggers have more than one blog.

50. Bloggers use an average of five different social sites to drive traffic to their blog.

Statistics from Technorati’s State of the Blogosphere 2009.


Bonus Facts

51. 90% of Internet users know at least one social network.

52. The average social user has 195 friends.

Statistics from Online Media Gazette.


Did you know...

The top 10 in-demand jobs in 2010 didn’t exist in 2004. Half of all workers have been with their current employer for less than five years. There are roughly one billion searches performed on Google every day — more than ten times the number just four years ago. It took radio 38 years to reach a total audience of 50 million people; it took the Internet just four years to reach that number, the iPod three years, and Facebook only two years. There will be more pages of unique information published this year than in the last 5,000 years combined.