media

Social networks: we’ve all heard of them, and most of us are at least familiar with the basic principles of all the major ones—Facebook is the biggest, YouTube is the place to watch videos, Flickr is for pictures, and Twitter is, well, Twitter. But enough about the basics! We’ve compiled a list of fun social media trivia that’s sure to make you the most popular guy or gal at your next party. Or help you answer a Final Jeopardy question. Or at least make you say “hmm.”

2,330,000,000 – Number of results Google returns for the search term “blog.” The top result is Blogger.com, a Google-owned blogging service.
4,920,093 – Number of people that follow @aplusk (aka: Ashton Kutcher), Twitter’s most popular user.
750,000 – Number of people who joined the group “Students against Facebook News Feed (Official Petition to Facebook)” when the news feed was introduced in 2005. Twitter, which was introduced in 2006, is a relatively close approximation and simplified version of the Facebook news feed. It currently boasts over 105,000,000 users.
50,237 – Number of times the most popular story on social news site Digg.com has been dugg. The story, entitled “Digg This: 09-f9-11-02-9d-74-e3-5b-d8-41-56-c5-63-56-88-c0,” featured a string of code that could decrypt HD DVD format DRM. It was removed after Digg received a cease and desist notice.
11,091 – Number of results Flickr returns for the search term “platypus.”
2003 – Year Friendster, the site that defined social networking as we know it today, was launched. Friendster is still active today. Approximately 90% of its traffic comes from Asia and it continues to work on expanding its Asian presence.
1998 – Year LiveJournal, the granddaddy of all blogging platforms, was introduced.
130 – Average number of Friends a Facebook user has.
37 – Percentage of users who update Twitter using their mobile phones.
4:3 – Ratio of funny children videos to funny cat videos on YouTube. (Funny children may dominate YouTube, but the most dugg video of all time was, you guessed it, a cat video.)
0 – Number of followers many Twitter users had on May 10, 2010. After discovering a bug that allowed users to force other users to follow them without their consent, Twitter admins reset many account holders’ follower counts to zero while they resolved the issue.

Blogs are absolutely soaring in popularity these days. It seems like everyone from our airlines to our hairdressers are publishing something online. But why? What makes blogs such an important social media tool that Marriott and Coke have decided to adopt them? And more importantly, what separates a good blog from a not-so-good one?

The first thing every social media person should know before diving into the blogosphere is what a blog is and what a blog isn’t. Technically what a blog is is a website that people update semi-regularly with news, information, commentary, or just general day-to-day details. Blogs can either be professional or personal, and both types have their own unique set of guidelines. As far a business bloggers are concerned, a proper blog is—

A Whole Slew of Pages that Search Engines can Index
Any blog platform worth its salt will give each of your posts its own unique URL, which means that every entry you post will be a page that Google can index. If you’re a chef and restaurant proprietor, odds are that you didn’t devote a main page of your site to your love affair with Wusthof knives. However, if you write a post about why you love your Wusthof Le Cordon Bleu sandwich knife for slicing cucumbers, searchers could potentially find your restaurant by way of Googling  a combination of Wusthof + knife + cucumber + sandwich (trust me, stranger search combos have been Googled).

A Place Where You Answer Frequently Asked Questions
If you hear a question a lot, why not post a thorough answer on your blog? You should answer the customer queries immediately, of course, but you could also direct them to your blog if the answer is particularly long or complicated. And chances are, if many people are asking you, many more are asking Google, and wouldn’t it be nice if a few of those Googlers happened upon your company’s blog and used your services?

A Place Where You Demonstrate Your Expertise
When potential customers visit your website, they want to know that your company is the best one for the job. If your blog is full of well-written, informative posts, customers will know immediately that the people behind your business are capable and competent.  

Updated Regularly
I’m not saying you have to update your blog every day, but if there are month-long gaps between posts, old readers will lose interest and you won’t accumulate any news one. A loved blog is an effective blog, so try to keep your update schedule consistent.

Now for what a proper blog is not—

A Billboard
Entries about why your creamed corn/seared tuna/artichoke dip is the best and/or better than the creamed corn/seared tuna/artichoke dip down the street aren’t going to be all that useful. Sure, you can post an occasional announcement or promote a product, but by and large blogs aren’t really intended to be hubs for blatant advertising. If you want to post about the 22nd Annual Half-Price Oyster Week at your restaurant, consider doing so in an interesting way (perhaps you could post about how Oyster Week grew into the tradition that it is today or about which wines go best with fried and raw oysters).

A Will/Business Proposal/Other Official Document
A blog is a pretty informal thing, so have fun when you’re writing it! Use contractions and colloquialisms when they’re appropriate. Joke with the reader. Just remember that the voice behind your blog is the voice of your company, so keep it professional and keep it consistent with your company’s image.

Remember that above all else, good blogs are the ones that people find interesting and valuable. If people like what you’re saying, they’ll come back for more, and there’s a pretty good chance that if something you write is especially useful or fresh, it will get passed around, which could translate into more exposure for your business and potentially more money in your pocket.

“What’s the difference between a Facebook Group and a Facebook Page?” When we’re talking social media marketing, this question is practically inevitable, and it’s almost always followed by “Why would I choose one over the other?” and/or “Do I need both?” These are all perfectly sensible inquiries, as anyone who’s seen examples of both knows that they’re almost identical:

(Click to enlarge.)

So, “What’s the difference?”
The Tabs: By default, Groups and Pages have the exact same tabs: Wall, Info, Photos, Videos, Events, and Discussion. Page owners, however, can take it a step farther by adding Notes, third-party, and custom tabs (as Diet Coke has done in our example) if they want to communicate with fans in a different way.

The Administrator: Both Groups and Pages have admins who update the tabs and monitor the activity of members and fans. When a Group administrator posts something to the Group’s wall, the post is labeled with the administrator’s name (EX: Sarah Norman I love Diet Coke!). When a Page administrator posts something to the Page’s wall, on the other hand, the post is labeled with the Page’s name (EX: Diet Coke Beware of Mentos!).

The Control: When you create a Group, you have the power to customize how members can interact within it. If you don’t want Group members to post pictures, videos, or comments on the wall, you can check the Admin Only boxes. Pages don’t give you the power to limit interaction, which means once someone’s a fan of the Page, they can pretty much do whatever they want.

The Updates: When an administrator posts something new within a Group, the only people who see it are the people who visit the Group. Some perspective: I’ve been a member of the same 16 Groups for about four years. I haven’t checked a single one of them in about three and a half. When administrators post something to a Page, every single fan sees it on his or her news feed (home page) almost immediately. More perspective: When I logged into Facebook this morning, the first thing I saw on my news feed was an April Fool’s Day prank from RecipeZaar.

The Point: Groups are to Pages as NESs are to Wiis—great in their time, but more or less obsolete now that the other, more functional model is available. When Facebook began, Groups were places people could go to discuss their interests with like-minded Facebook users. Then and now, people started Groups, other people joined, discussed the Group topic for a few days, and then more or less forgot about it. Pages are essentially Groups 2.0—not only can like-minded fans discuss the Page topic with each other, they can also receive updates about it from the Page administrator.
 
“Why would I choose one over the other?”
Social media marketing is all about maintaining open communication between a brand and its customers. The best way to facilitate that communication is by letting your customers know you want to talk to them, which means putting your name on a message and getting it in front of their faces. The second best way to facilitate communication is by making all sorts of communication channels available to your customers, which means adding appropriate new tabs and encouraging customers to interact with the brand. With this in mind, the question really becomes “why in the world would anyone choose a Group over a Page?”

“Do I need both?”
While it certainly wouldn’t hurt to have both, it really wouldn’t help much either: everything Groups can do, Pages can do better. You should hang on to a Group if you already have one, but save the updates for you Page so more people will see them.

In late 2006, rumors swirled that Google was thinking about purchasing Facebook for a cool $2.6 bil (or maybe less, depending on how willing you were to believe the hype). In the end, Facebook decided to remain independent (a move that seems to have worked to their advantage so far) leaving Google social network-less. Of course, Google is never, ever willing to be outdone, so a few weeks ago the search giant rolled out its very own social network—Buzz.

Buzz is part of Gmail, which Google (rightly) claims has always been a social network waiting to happen. Buzz allows users to create profiles and update their statuses just like its social network competitors, but it’s also sort of like an RSS feed on crack: Users can link any number of social media accounts that they already have (including Flickr, Blogger, Twitter, Google Reader, and YouTube accounts) to their Buzz account so that when they update these networks, the updates automatically appear to their friends on Buzz as well.

Google believes that by promoting Buzz on the Gmail platform, they are giving it distinct advantages over social network numero uno, Facebook. For one thing, users don’t have to search for new friends—Buzz recognizes who's friends with whom via users' Gmail contacts and connects them automatically. Google also boasts that by integrating Buzz into Gmail, users will be able to track Buzz alerts and respond to them without having to follow links and log in to an outside site.
 
Still, with 400 million users, Facebook is without a doubt the top social media dog, and it doesn't seem poised to budge. But social network and media sites are certainly not immortal—before Facebook came along, MySpace was king, and now it’s virtually dead (well, at least as far as people over the age of 16 are concerned). The trouble with MySpace was that it felt incredibly juvenile—users decorated their profiles with sporty and sparkly princess themes, added music that assaulted profile visitors, and “totally wunted u 2 luk @ there pics from SpRiNg BrEaK”! Facebook toppled MySpace because it was cleaner, offered only a single, standardized layout, and promised users increased privacy (it was open only to college students once upon a time, you know).

For all the bells and whistles and apps and Pages that it has added since its inception, Facebook continues to feel like a social network that’s adult and “with it.”  And Facebook users, in spite of their moaning about the endless (and senseless) redesigns, constantly changing privacy settings, and annoying calls to “Join my mafia!” and “Help me raise my barn!” are largely pretty content with Facebook—their friends, their pictures, their videos, and their wall posts are all there, after all. Buzz might catch on among a few Gmail users (in an “I’m here so I’ll give it a try” sort of way) but unless Buzz offers a feature that Facebook absolutely cannot duplicate (and we know from the Twitter-like “live feed” that Facebook will try) it’s hard to believe that the Facebook Empire would actually lose a significant number of its users to the new kid in the Google-verse.

On June 13, 2009, Facebook began allowing its users to claim usernames (also known as “vanity URLs”) so that they could direct friends to their profiles more easily (instead of www.facebook.com/people/Joe-Blow/4815162342, profile URLs could now be www.facebook.com/joeblow). On most other social networking sites, vanity URLs are the default (Twitter users, for example, would be aghast if they suddenly had to tell people to follow them @/people/Joe-Blow/4815162342) but before June 13, Facebook users could only direct friends to find them by looking them up.

These usernames were made available for Pages too, but there was a catch: Only the Pages that could boast 1,000+ fans were eligible. That number eventually jumped down to 100, and now Facebook says all Pages with at least 25 fans are eligible. Once you’ve reached that magic number, all you have to do to claim your username is:

• Visit http://www.facebook.com/username/.
  *You may be prompted to enter a cell phone number so Facebook can verify your account via text message.
• Click on “Set a Username for your Pages.”
  
• Select your Page from the dropdown and name away.
  *Usernames must be at least 5 characters long and can only be changed one time after they are set, so choose wisely!

So what’s the big fuss over usernames? Aren’t Pages assigned the same long URLs as profiles? Couldn’t you just use that to tell people about your Page? Well, yes and sort of. If you want to use the long URL to create text and  links, no one will know the difference. But what if you want to put your Facebook address on your business card (and you should want to)? The cumbersome /pages/My-Biz/001100101 is certainly less user-friendly than /MyBiz. What if you are talking to a friend about your business and you want to inform him about your Facebook Page? Would you rather try to remember to email him the URL the next time you are at your computer, or just say, “You should check out our Facebook Page at facebook.com/MyBiz!”? What if you're sponsoring a bake sale or a half-marathon team? Rather than packaging your cakes and your runners in boxes and t-shirts marked with your name and an easy-to-miss Facebook logo, you can instead send them out sporting the easy-to-remember Facebook.com/MyBiz URL. Simply put, a Facebook Page with a vanity URL is easier to advertise than a Facebook Page without.

If you’ve reached the magic fan number, take a few seconds today to claim your username before someone else takes the one you want. It might not be the secret to instant Facebook superstardom, but it’ll definitely make it easier for you to promote, promote, promote.

One of the biggest arguments for encouraging businesses to invest in social media marketing is that they’ll be able to monitor what customers are saying about their brand, guide the conversations, address issues that arise, and generally be more in-tune with how their brand is perceived. Regardless of whether or not you currently use social media to market your business, there’s a pretty good chance that you’ve been touched by a company’s social media monitoring efforts. Well, provided you were one of the over 100 million people who tuned in to the Super Bowl on Sunday to watch the ads as well as the game, that is.

The ad in question wafted onto the TV screen during the third quarter, it lasted a warm and fuzzy minute, and then it faded to black. The ad was from Google, but it wasn’t hawking Google Chrome or Google Android or Google ISP or any of the other new products and services that keep cropping up in the Google-verse. Nope, the ad featured the most basic Google service of all—its search engine:



The ad (called “Parisian Love”) was certainly a hit—a number of outlets have reported that it was one of the most talked-about ads of Super Bowl XLIV —but it also left many people scratching their heads. Google never advertises on TV, why would they spend $6 million to start now? Does Google feel threatened by Bing? Who hasn’t heard of Google search? (To be fair, though, everyone’s heard of Budweiser too, yet we still see their Clydesdales prance through every single Super Bowl.) 

"Parisian Love" wasn’t actually intended to attract the Super Bowl audience to the search engine that made Google famous and still brings in nearly all of its revenue. In fact, the ad wasn’t originally intended to air during the Super Bowl at all. It was created by Google’s creative team and posted to Google’s YouTube channel almost three months ago as one in a series of promotional “Search Stories” videos. The purpose of these videos is not to promote a Google service, but rather to contribute to Google’s “don’t be evil” image. 

According to Google CEO Eric Schmidt , “Our goal was simply to create a series of short online videos about our products and our users, and how they interact. But we liked this video so much, and it's had such a positive reaction on YouTube, that we decided to share it with a wider audience,” said Schmidt. In other words, Google’s monitoring efforts directly influenced their Super Bowl presence. Google could have chosen to remain off-air, they could have put that $6 million toward something else, but when you already know your ad’s a winner (a luxury most other Super Bowl advertisers don’t have. Ahem, Taco Bell.) heck, what’s $6 mil?

And judging by "Parisian Love"’s reported popularity, I think I can safely speak for much of the Super Bowl audience when I say that when that familiar search bar popped up on our TV screens, we put down our buffalo wings and our tasty beverages, we watched, we smiled, and when the “Search On” tag line popped up we sighed, “Well gee wiz, Google! That was an unexpected treat! I wonder if I have any new e-mail.” If you’re already sure that your ad is going to illicit nearly 100 million responses like that, well, what’s $6 mil indeed!     

So, you’ve joined some social media sites and you’ve cobbled together a pretty nice collection of followers. Now the question is, “What the heck are you gonna do with them?” You can’t spam them with self-promotion because they’ll leave. You can’t ignore them because you won’t see any return on your initial social media investments. What you can do—nay, what you should do, is talk to them. After all, the ability to interact with customers, to personalize your company, and to seem like an approachable expert forms the basis of social media’s appeal.

Not sure what to talk about? Not to fear--we’ve come up with six examples of ways you can engage with your social media audience. (For consistency’s sake, we’re assuming that “you” are a fictional florist called Brenda’s Blooms in our examples.)

• Call fans to action with your status updates. EX: When the weather’s nice, post an update to Twitter, Facebook, or your blog encouraging your followers to take pictures of flowers they find during the day and post them to your wall. You could also set up a Flickr Group where your followers could post flower pictures as often as they like. Be sure to comment on as many entries as possible and ask your followers to share the project with their friends so more people can contribute to your virtual bouquet.

• Ask fans questions and solicit their opinions. EX: Ask people which blooms they associate with the season. Come up with a few new arrangements for Valentine’s Day/Mother’s Day/birthdays and ask your followers to vote on their favorite design. Find out what everyone’s favorite scent is.

• Continue a conversation that someone else has started. EX: If one of your fans compliments the centerpieces that you designed for her friend’s wedding, thank her, mention an enjoyable exchange that you had with the bride, keep the conversation going by asking a question if you can (“Mrs. Bride said she was having trouble deciding on a honeymoon destination. Did she opt for Bermuda or Niagara Falls?”)

• Update about something unrelated to your business. EX: If you couldn’t live without your Keurig coffee pot, go ahead and tweet about it. Seriously! A few of your followers might feel the same way and suddenly you’ve made a connection on a whole different level. The general rule is that up to 20% of your updates can be more personal than professional.

• Start conversations with others in your industry. EX: Comment on well-known blogs and related YouTube videos, and then share them with your followers if you think they’d find the information useful. If you’re following Francine’s Flowers on Twitter and you like one of her tweets, respond with an @FrancinesFlowers tweet of your own.
   
• Seek out conversations using a social listening service like Technorati or Radian6. EX: Is “Brenda’s Blooms” or “boutonniere” a trending topic on Twitter or in the blogosphere? If so, you might want to add your two cents. Just make sure what you say is valuable (if girls are all a-Twitter about whether or not they should buy boutonnieres for their prom dates, your tweet could read, “Boutonnieres look very sharp when coordinated w/ tuxes and suits & are inexpensive when made with just 1 rose.”)
   

Remember that your followers are logged in to the networks because they want to interact, and they chose to follow you because they want to connect. Oblige them before they start collecting dust!

Social media marketing is without a doubt one of the most innovative new ways to put your business on the map. After all, can you think of a time in the history of your traditional advertising campaigns that someone “liked” a product announcement? Retweeted a promotional offer? Dugg your TV ad after they found it on YouTube? Probably not, and that’s because, unlike traditional marketing techniques that focus on talking at your customers, social media marketing techniques encourage you to talk with your customers. Of course, it’s pretty tough to have these conversations with a non-existent fan base. So if your social media pages are sitting alone at the lunch table, you might consider using some of the following tips to help them make some friends.

Announce Yourself

• Suggest the pages to friends and family first. Those closest to you would probably be more than happy to support your business. Many social media channels have “Share” and “Suggest” options; if yours doesn’t, a quick e-mail will do just as nicely.
• Let your employees know that your business is on social networks and ask them to suggest the pages to their friends and family as well.
• Send out an e-mail blast to your mailing list announcing your presence on social networks. You already know these customers want to hear from you, so why not tell them about other channels they can use to get the scoop?

Don’t Stop Promoting 

• Post button links to your social media sites prominently on your website so a new visitor who might not have heard of you can find your pages. These links will also direct visitors who want to learn more, leave feedback, or interact with you to the right place.
  *You can find all kinds of pre-made buttons simply by doing a Google image search for “YouTube button,” “Twitter button,” etc. 
• Tell everyone you correspond with about your social media presence by including those same buttons in every e-mail or snail mail you send out. 
• If you are spending money on offline advertising (newspapers, sponsorships, radio spots, direct-mailers) be sure to include references to your social media accounts within those ads, too.
• Advertise your page on Facebook with a Facebook Ad (if you're already a Facebook user, you've seen these on the right-hand side of your screen). You create the ad using Facebook’s advertising tool, you decide which Facebook users you want to target, and you set the budget for your Pay-Per-Click campaign.
• Run a give-away contest on your pages from time to time. Your gifts don’t have to be extravagant (consider a gift card or a coupon for a product or service). If you run the contest on Facebook, ask your fans to suggest your page to a friend or two and leave a comment with the friends’ names. Put your promoters’ names into a hat and draw a winner. If you run the contest on Twitter, ask your followers to retweet one of your messages (ie: “I just entered to win abc from @CompanyXYZ”) and make all re-tweeters eligible for the drawing.

The best thing you can do for your social media marketing efforts is spread the word! Once people know you’re there, your social stock is bound to increase. 
 

Google recently rolled out some highly-anticipated real-time features for its search engine that include Twitter and news and blog feeds that can (and often do) occupy the top spots on search results pages. Google says that the changes will give its search engine users access to the most up-to-the-minute news possible.  We say the changes will give social media-savvy business owners an even greater chance of being found online.

Google’s real-time search is meant to give Google users access to news as it breaks, even if the user wasn’t necessarily searching for news. Google gives the following example on its blog: “The big story [in the top position when we searched for GM] was about GM's stabilizing car sales, which shows under 'News results.' Nonetheless, thanks to our powerful real-time algorithms, the 'Latest results' feature surfaces another important story breaking just seconds before: GM's CEO stepped down.…” If the real-time search had been live when Michael Jackson died, Google users searching for his biography might have seen tweets about his death before the mainstream media had a chance to report it (I, for example, found out very early by reading statuses on Facebook).

Could some of this “real-time” news actually be just plain old gossip? It certainly could, yes, but that doesn’t stop it from occasionally receiving top billing, and there are some strategies that businesses can use to make themselves visible in that spot:
•    Tweet about trending topics. They are the ones that make it to the top of the search results page.
•    Update your business page’s Facebook status with subjects people want to know about. Facebook statuses are not yet part of Google real-time search, but they will be in the near future. When they are, their feed will probably behave much like Twitter’s.
•    Blog about interesting or useful information that people will want to share. The more popular a blog post is, the better chance it will have of showing up at the top of the results page.
•    Include keywords in blog titles, status updates, and social media descriptors whenever possible. That way, when people search for one of your keywords, the live feed will show them your blog (and, by extension, your business).

It’s important to note that Twitter feeds and blog posts are not always displayed in the prime top position (they usually only appear there when the searched term is a hot Twitter or current event topic). They are, however, always available in the “Show Options” menu, and there’s no telling where they’ll end up once Google has refined the real-time search algorithm. Google admits that there are quite a few wrinkles it needs to iron out of its upgraded system; however, the mere fact that Google is taking the steps to include social media so prominently in its search results points to the breadth of social media’s influence and to its mighty staying power.

*Google has released this video to demonstrate how its new real-time search functions.