What is Social Media?

Social Media (SM) has lately developed a lot of buzz for anyone looking either to promote something (often themselves) or to stay current on the latest news trends. The questions most often asked are: “What is Social Media”, “Where is Social Media”, and “How to use social media for Marketing”.

What is Social Media?

In a nutshell, social media is any media form that displays itself to an open public – AND – encourages interaction between the host and all observers. The key here is public participation and interaction. Any media that is a “dead end” in terms of interaction, such as newspapers, traditional websites, magazines and banner advertisements are not social because they lack this “shared conversation” format.

Businesses also refer to social media as user or consumer generated content (UGC or CGC) because, while the business may start the interaction, the value of it is what the users contribute, providing an idea with social proof. According to Wikipedia, “Social proof, also known as informational social influence, is a psychological phenomenon that occurs in ambiguous social situations when people are unable to determine the appropriate mode of behavior. Making the assumption that surrounding people possess more knowledge about the situation, they will deem the behavior of others as appropriate or better informed.” In english, that means that we’re more likely to try something we’re unsure about if we’ve seen our peers give it good reviews.

Where is Social Media?

There are a variety of social media outlets available today. Nearly all of them are internet and web based. The most common at the moment are Facebook and Twitter, which easily control the vast majority of social media throughput today. Facebook and Googlenow get almost an equal number of page hits (people visiting them) per day. Twitter, with its fast paced, almost frenzied posting of small bites (140 characters) of information, is an ideal social media to find out “whats going on right now”. However, because of its pace, its less ideal for finding out “what happened yesterday” which is Facebook’s forte. Because of this balance, these two social medias have remained locked head to head, with neither able to replace the other.

Two other big players in social media are LinkedIn, which is often considered the SM of choice for the business professional and affluent individual, and blogging. LinkedIn recently opened their technology to allow it to interface with user made tools, and with that we can expect to see a surge of traffic there in the very near future. Personal and Business blogging is another form of social media. These blogs often act as hubs, allowing for longer more sophisticated posts with graphics and video, that can then be cross-posted on other social media centers. Blogs present a very important roll in social media as long as the host works to facilitate commenting, feedback and social interaction. Any blog with comments disabled or not set up to make the experience easy is no better than a traditional website (ie: it’s not social media). Use of a professional hosted blog (such as WordPress.org) produces far more likelihood of gaining search engine ranking than any of the available free blogs (blogger.com, wordpress.com, etc). This is because free accounts are far more likely to generate spam and thus you get “bonus points” so to speak, in terms of search engine ranking, for use of a professional blog.

In addition to those big four “heavy hitters” in the social media arena, there are countless less talked about (and often less utilized) avenues: Myspace, Photobucket (now with commenting!), Flikr, Youtube, hi5, FriendFeed, Ebay & Amazon Forums, Orkut, any forum board, and to a slightly different degree any social bookmarking site (Delicious, Digg, Stumbleupon, Reddit, etc). Simply put, there is social media everywhere you turn on the web today!

How to use Social Media for Marketing?

One of the biggest things to remember in Social Media is that your are talking WITH your participants, not TO your audience. The goal of social media is to encourage interaction, dialog and relationship building. Just as walking up to a stranger of trying to cold-sell them on your product would have very dismal results, attempting to sell folks using social media is a no-no if a relationship hasn’t been built first.

Another important piece of the puzzle is to make sure that your media can easily be accessed in a variety of forms. This most applies to bloggers and means having an RSS feed, having a lightweight theme for mobile users, having a professional template so text does not overrun graphics when viewed on a small screen, having strong contrast between backgrounds and text colors, etc. With RSS (real simple syndication) making up a large percentage of blog views, and mobile users (which often have trouble loading a full website due to phone limitations) making up another significant chunk, it pays to make your blog accessible.

Your community of people dialoging with you in social media is NOT your list. They did not sign up for anything other than the right to comment and are best not hard-sold to. That sounds at first like a put-off reason to avoid social media, but in fact the opposite is true. What you now have is a user base that is paying attention to and hopefully trusts you, that you can now suggest (gently!) view a squeeze page (a website designed to get their attention and provide a call to action to sign up for something you have to offer). Often the best squeeze pages for a free item that provides REAL value, so they feel like they get something from sharing with you. Once you have developed the relationship, provided them something of value, and captured their name and email, you now have a warm contacts list.

One final tip: Don’t come in and try to bend the social media to fit your non-social media advertisement campaigns. Give it the funding and the respect it deserves. Learn that particular SM formats nuances and quirks and abide by them. You want to fit in, not stick out like a sore thumb. Each and every social media site has a different culture, respecting it is one of the fastest ways to gain audience acceptance.

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Find Out When That Hot Twitter ID Becomes Available to Grab! (Free tool Does the work so you don’t have to!)

Learn When That Hot Twitter ID 

You've Been Waiting For Becomes 
Available to Grab!

In my case, while @kim was taken by someone actually using it (good for her!), other derivatives of my name or brand name were all being “squatted”. Either they were intentionally being held by someone to keep them out of play – or – they had been registered by someone that rapidly got bored with twitter. Either way, they were not in use and yet were not available!

Twitter has a policy of freeing up unused accounts after approximately 9 months of no activity. However, keeping track of these accounts and “babysitting” them until they come free can be a royal pain in the ass!

So, it was a pleasant surprise this morning to get an email from TweetClaims.comwhich is a free service I signed up for a couple months ago.

Twitter claim is a super simple signup, and they do a once-daily (free account) check on up to 10 twitter IDs you wish to be notified of when they become available. As soon as the ID is seen as not existing (meaning you could register it), they send you a brief email.

That’s all there is to it! Sign up at Tweet Claims for free, and wait to get your email!

In case you haven’t heard, I moved from @Ask_KimC to @Ask_Kim … and would like to move once more to @AskKim but that may be a while off.

Great tool, go check it out and let it babysit those squatted accounts so you don’t have too!

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Facebook Fan Pages vs Facebook Groups

Are you maximizing your Facebook exposure? I recently realized that I wasn't!

I saw countless businesses with pages and posts and profiles and groups and gaggles, and I didn't have a clue where to start!

First, I’m going to share my thoughts and summary on the two types. Then  I want to share three high-quality blog posts that I found on other sites, which I thought did a awesome job clarifying things for me. Hopefully these will help you make smart choices to maximize your time.

Both Facebook Fan Page’s and Facebook Group’s are a great way to increase your exposure on Facebook. Both allow you a type of community format and interaction with your members/fans. Both can be used to syndicate content. However, even with all of those similarities, there are some substantial differences.

Rishabh Agarwal is a fan of

Blogging Syndication Alliance (Tribe Syndication)

Facebook Fan Page

This box links to a “Facebook fan page” (ie: business page) I created to enable individuals seeking to share syndication to find me and find each other. I welcome all of you to come share your value posts with the community, and help syndicate other members there. Feel free to contact fans of the community if you are looking for a tribe to work with!

Pros:

1. Customizable URLs (after you reach 25 fans go to http://facebook.com/username )
2. Search Engine Indexed (increases your search engine exposure, and responds to SEO keywords)
3. Visitor Statistics
4. Related Event Creation & Invitation
5. Extra Facebook Applications run on Pages just as on Profiles.
6. Ability to import your blog feed, to help support a page activity.
7. Best for connecting a fanbase to a source of information.
8. Publicly visible, so users don’t need to be logged in to find them.

Cons:

1. No ability to Direct Message (email) each fan individually, all emails go out as a “blast” to all fans at once via Updates.
2. Generally considered the more high-maintenance of the two choices.
3. Facebook users are still less familiar with pages, and often less likely to interact with them than with groups.

Need Technical Help? Check This Out!

Ask & Answer Questions Here!

Facebook Group

This box links to a “Facebook group” I created to allow members to ask technical questions about WordPress, Facebook & Twitter. Its a great place for members to help each other! Come help others while getting your questions answered too!

Pros:

1. Can Email/Direct Message each member individually, direct to their inbox.
2. Generally considered easier to set up and manage.
3. Better structure for encouraging member-to-member interaction
4. Best for allowing a member base to interact and develop a community without leaving Facebook.

Cons:

1. No Customizeable URLs
2. No Search Engine Exposure
3. No Visitor Statistics
4. No Related Event Creation & Invitation
5. No ability to support external stream/rss input, all activity must be generated in the group.
6. No access to any of the widely used Facebook applications that many use for social functions, opt-ins, etc.
7. Not publicly visible, users must be logged in to search for them.
8. Many consider the wording to be vague as to whether business advertising can occur on them without violating the TOS (terms of service)

Suggested Reading:

1. Facebook Group vs Facebook Fan Page: What’s Better?

2. Facebook Fan Pages vs. Group Pages

3. Facebook groups vs. Facebook pages

Conclusion

For me, a Facebook Fan page, with its SEO/search-centric style and permissions for full business operations, was ideal for my Syndication functions and my personal page on Facebook. This helps me build my web presence.

The support community, which has no reason to be searchable from outside Facebook, is logically best served by a Facebook Group. However, generally speaking, due to the lack of SEO options, the lack of applications (which I depend on for good time management) and the lack of access to the fan’s wall, I have moved all of my Groups to Pages.

For my current uses, I personally have no use of a group. I consider them stalled/dead in development. That does not mean that they are not useful to someone that wishes to ignore the spam they encourage others to post on the wall (since it will not go down members news feeds) and utilize the email feature similar to an auto-responder blast.

How have you implemented Facebook Groups and Pages for your business or organization? What challenges have you had? When you leave your comments, feel free to include a link to your Page or Group to share with the community here!

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Caps Off To Internet Social Memes

Definition of a Meme (pronounced /ˈmiːm/, rhyming with “cream”):

Meme a cultural unit (an idea or value or pattern of behavior) that is passed from one person to another by non-genetic means (as by imitation)

Meme is a philosophical unit of a packet of information. It is the unit of cultural ideas, symbols or practices, which can be transmitted from one mind to another through writing, speech, gestures, rituals or other imitable phenomena.

Internet meme is a phrase used to describe a catchphrase or concept that spreads quickly from person to person via the Internet, much like a… inside joke.

Why You Should Care About Memes

Memes are the often unspoken rules of behavior expected in a certain situation, environment, time or place. Because they are mostly unspoken, and because they are enforced by peer pressure, they can be extremely difficult to grasp at first glance. What do these memes then do that serves us? They define “insiders” as separate from “outsiders”. They tell us who is new here and comfortable and fluent in the language and environment and who is standing out like a sore thumb. They tell us who belongs to our tribe and who yet doesn’t.

To give an example of a environment with memes, lets pretend I invite you to a 5 star hotel holiday “black tie” corporate gala. Now assuming you’re from a country with behaviors similar to mine, you INSTANTLY know a variety of things. You not only know that it will require formal dress, but that you must “dress to impress”. You not only know that there will be dining, but that you best not forget which spoon, fork, knife belongs to which portion of the meal. You not only know there will likely be music of some sort, but you can mentally rule out a number of types of music. You not only know you need to use your manners, but that the manners and mannerisms required are highly different than those used daily among your friends. Look at everything you knew about this event just by understanding the memes!

In the above example, either you learned these memes by being raised around them, by researching them, by having a caring friend warn you about them before hand, or by having a deeply embarrassing previous experience where you violated them by simply not being aware! If you’re in the last group, you suddenly understand not only how subtle these nuances are, but how important being warned about them before hand can be!

Okay, So How Does A Black Tie Event Affect The Social Media Environment?

Remember earlier how we defined a meme as being capable of existing anywhere that has a unique culture? Well the internet is one such place! While you may think of it as a simple extension of your offline activities, you’re very presence here makes you participating in a sub-culture, a tribe, with its own rules…. memes!

Like we also discussed before, the “rules” can be fuzzy, blurry, hard to understand why they exist, and almost impossible to find defined anywhere! Sometimes you will find these defined under etiquette, but even these lists are rarely complete.

Some common memes you’ve probably encountered if you’ve participated on Twitter for any length of time:

• Its considered polite (read: expected by many) to say thank you to those that RT (retweet) your posts or mention you by @name
• Be yourself. It’s 110% okay to be YOU on twitter. It’s expected that you be human.
• Its considered spamming to only share your own broadcasting and not RT others or dialog with your followers
• Its considered polite (read: expected by many) to RT (retweet) other’s value content if they RT yours
• However, you don’t have to reply to every single one, if someone RTs you multiple times, one may suffice. (I personally have such a high RT rate that I thank those that RT my professional stuff regularly and do not usually thank those that RT my quotes (these however are often the same people, so it works out about the same.) 
• Its considered rude to exceed the 9:1 ratio of 9 pieces of value content to 1 that might even halfway look like you might possibly profit from it
• It’s considered polite (read: expected by many) to follow-back anyone that follows you and is giving value. You do not need to feel guilty for unfollowing someone or not following them however, just understand that they will likely not remain following you. 
• Use a complete bio and picture. Make it a picture of yourself if at all possible unless that account is only for your personally held company’s tweeting. Don’t change pics too regularly, we are visual creatures!
• Use caution with humor and sarcasm, remember that your reader has very very limited context clues and things are easy to mis-read, suggest using #humor or #sarcasm where applicable.
• It’s considered rude to send auto-DMs (direct messages) regularly. Same goes for sending your game or quiz results.
• It’s acceptable (and recommended) to block users you don’t want following you (spammers mostly)
• If a tweet is worth sharing, but too long from being shared a lot, its acceptable to drop the intermediary sources if needed, as long as you retain the original source of the tweet and hopefully your direct contacts name. 
• It’s considered polite to be transparent about who you work for, who you represent and which of your links are affiliate links (also required by law)
• It’s also considered rude to include a business link or sales link in your “thanks for following” auto-DM. If you want to  link, link them to connect with you at your Facebook account.
• Its considered polite to include the source of your tweet, including if you use TwitterFeed to attach the (via @name) to the post manually
• It’s helpful if you make your @replies include a lot of detail (turn “yes” into “yes I enjoyed the Avatar movie”) so that your other followers can jump into the conversation if they like!
• It’s considered rude to make personal 1:1 plans, arrangements, extended personal dialogs using @reply, take that to DM (direct message) using “d persons-name your message here”
• Its considered polite to #FF or #FollowFriday people that are delivering consistent value and helping you by doing the same

However recently I’ve noticed that there is one more that’s a much more subtle nuance that sets people apart. It often happens as a new blogger is attempting to make their headlines stand out on their blogs by capitalizing them and forgetting that that headline goes straight to twitter via “TweetMeme”.

So what’s the problem? The problem is that in internet culture, “ALL CAPS” is considered both “SHOUTING” and “RUDE”.

THIS DOES SORT OF LOOK ANGRY DOESN’T IT??

What’s the impact? The impact is that for someone to even USE your “TweetMeme” button or “FB Share” button, if they have a fan/follower base they protect from mis-behavior, they have to decide if the post is worth their time to re-type the full title. So first you see a decline in original Tweets coming from your blog. Then, if it DOES get tweeted in that “ALL CAPS” form, even LESS will retweet it because of the need to strip the caps out.

But… but… but…

Yeah, some of you are probably sputtering about now, because I all-capped a few words above for emphasis. Use of one or two words, selectively, for emphasis is NOT the problem. THE PROBLEM IS WHEN YOU SHOUT LIKE THIS! In general we don’t talk OR type that way, and its such a subtle nuance that it tends to turn up in things we forget about, like blog titles. Occasionally I see it turn up on Facebook, but there it is MUCH rarer because Facebook people tend to be true friends and give that friendly nudge in the ribs to knock it off. Twitter people on the other hand tend to barely be followers and more likely to flat out ignore you than mention the issue.

Summary

I certainly wouldn’t call this caps issue a “big deal”, yet at the same time it is one of the many ways we demonstrate our comfort and fluency in the internet culture. Hopefully this tip gives you not only another way to fit in, but another way to get comfortable with the environment knowing that you ARE getting a grasp on the “hidden rules”.

I’d love to hear your thoughts and experiences on what social media memes you’ve experienced! Perhaps you can provide other pointers that people may have missed! I certainly did not cover all of them here and I would love to hear what you have to share. Be sure to read each others comments and reply to them if you find them interesting. If you found this post of value perhaps you can share it with others so they too can learn!

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How To: Change Your Twitter Name Without Losing Followers

Step 1: Change Your UserName

Go to Twitter (login) -> Settings (upper right). Click Settings and in the page that opens, in the USERNAME field, type in your desired new name. Twitter will give you feedback about the “taken” or “available” status of your desired name.

(In my case, I couldn’t get exactly what I wanted, but @Ask_KimC is pretty close!)

All follower’s are automagically updated to be following your new twitter name! How cool is that?

However…. You knew there was a gottcha, didn’t ya?

Step 2: Any client that you use to connect to Twitter with (in my case, I depend on and affiliate for 3: Hootsuite (client), Tweetspinner (management), Socialoomph (free keyword tracking and auto-DM)), needs to be logged into and have its login credentials changed.

In Hootsuite this means go into Settings -> Social Networks -> Edit (for the account you changed) -> Change and save. In Tweetspinner, log in, and in the upper right near your twitter name, under it, select “update (your) user/pass”. For SocialOomph which lacks a full edit feature, I simply deleted that old account and registered and authenticated the new one. Piece of cake.

(Also be sure to update any place you may have the old address in use such as social media buttons, cute profile buttons, listed on your facebook account, listed on your linkedin profile, etc.)

Step 3: Re-Register Your Old Twitter Name

The last thing you want is someone grabbing your old twitter name and pretending to be you. Two notes however: (1) This will require a seperate email address and (2) It can be a bit after changing your accounts name, before twitter will allow you to re-register the name, so don’t panic! (Which of course, I did, learning this the hard way!) Put a single tweet on it that says to join you at your new username, and put the same information in the accounts bio box.

Step 4: Breathe A Satisfied Sigh Of Satisfaction!

That’s all there is too it! With this method you wont lose any of your precious followers! Majority of the work is auto-updated on Twitter’s side, which is incredibly convenient! Always nice when companies make it so easy!

That’s all folks! Like it? Love it? Got Questions? Be sure to share it and drop me some feedback! I’d love to hear how it goes!

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What To Do If Your Twitter Account Is Hacked

Suddenly the phone rings and your best friend asks you why there is crazy stuff on your twitter account….

You get an email from a business partner asking when you started partnering with company XYZ to post their advertisements…

You’re twitter followers drop by 1000 in one day …

You start seeing things on your twitter wall with your name on them that you didn’t (and never would have!) wrote….

Steps To Take When Your Twitter Account is Hacked

Step 1: Don’t panic.

Seriously, I know your heart is racing and your stomach hurts when your twitter account is hacked, but generally this is an easy fix. Also assuming you’ve built a good relationship with your followers, they will understand and be on YOUR side!

Step 2:  Change Your Twitter Password

Assuming you are able to log into the account (if you can not, see below). Log in. In the upper right navigation area you have a “Settings” link. Click it. Now in the upper middle click the link the the “Password” section. If you cannot remember your password, you go to the password reset area, to have your password sent to the e-mail on your twitter account profile. once you have logged in successfully, it’s time to change your password to a secure password. A strong password is one that uses a combination of upper and lowercase letters and numbers special characters and is longer than eight characters in length. Preferably it does not include any word you may look up in the dictionary. Also, be sure not to use any password you have ever used before.

Step 3: Remove Software Connection Rights

Well this may sound tricky is actually made very straightforward by twitter. While still logged in and understanding near where you found the “Password” tab/link, there is a tab labeled “Connections”. here you find a variety of applications you have given permission to access and work with your twitter account. Many of these are very useful and you won’t want to remove all of them. However, go through this list and identify any that you don’t recognize. Underneath the application name you will find a small link that says “revoke access”.

Software bugs do happen, and if a trusted application begins posting unwanted messages it does not always indicate hacking has occurred. Sometimes software does go awry however, and need it’s permission removed until the bug is fixed.

Step 4: Update Your Password In Any Twitter Client or Softwar You Use

Any trusted application or widget that you use to access twitter, or display twitter streams, likely has a safe copy of your password. It is important to change your password in these utilities so they do not repeatedly tried to connect and cause your account to become temporarily locked.

Step 5: Breath A Sign of Relief!

You are done! You may wish to go to the profile tab in the upper navigation of your twitter account and read through the posted tweets and delete those that are spam. On your profile page, when you hover over a specific tweet, you will find a delete icon becomes visible near the right hand edge of the tweet box. Having your twitter account hacked is stressful, but with your new secure password and by avoiding dangerous connections with application you do not recognize, you will be able to stay safe and generally prevent this in the future. Some people also suggest sending a brief e-mail to twitter support (support@twitter.com) to let them know that you were hacked but have regained access to your account.

What If I Still Can’t Log Into My Account My Twitter Was Hacked?

Step 1: Request A Password Reset

Ideally you want to try to reset your password on your twitter account yourself, usingthe twitter password reset tool. If you have multiple e-mail accounts, you may need to check them all to find out which you had registered to your twitter account.

Step 2: Contact Support

Contacting support (support@twitter.com)for this purpose can only be done with the e-mail account created your twitter account from or currently have registered to that account. Even though the account may be yours they will not give you access to your twitter account from any email that is not currently in their file. (This is for your protection!) Here is an easy-to-use form they suggest you use.

Be sure to include in your request:

• Your username
• any e-mail addresses you think might be associated with your account
• the last date you have access to your account
• the phone number associated with the account (if your verified your phone number).

Having your twitter account hack can be incredibly stressful and scary thing. Hopefully these steps help you regain access to your twitter account after you’ve been hacked and also help you prevented in the future! You can find some really great tips on how to stay safe on twitter by checking out Twitters Safe Tweeting Guidelines.

If these tips helped you I hope you’ll share them with others! A Tweet, Digg or Facebook Share helps others find this information and I really appreciate it! I hope you’ll leave a comment and share your experience with Twitter with me! 

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#Blogchat – A Blogger's Hidden Twitter Resource!

If like me, your new new to twitter, it may seem strange to you to discover that beneath the surface of what appears like waves of disconnected comments, there is “threads” that act like a “old-fashioned” chat room! I had heard rumor of this exotic creature but it wasn’t until tonight that I stumbled into being able to observe it first hand!

All of this centers around hashtags, those #words, which can be used to join seemingly disjointed comments. I’m uncertain how using this as a chat room works in the traditional twitter browser page, but I did find two methods where it works very easily.

In either Hootsuite or Tweetdeck (these are twitter utilities, see their links for more information), you can create columns and filter for words, phrases, lists etc. Well the magic happens when you filter a column for a hashtag. In Hootsuite this is (+) add tab (optional) -> (+ add column) -> then “Keyword Tracking” tab ->type #blogchat in the text box -> Click Add -> Click Create Column. (Now, if a hashtag isn’t currently active, i.e. no ones using it at the moment, you may not have anything show up for a while.) You want these kinds of infrequently used columns on a tab that doesn’t update too often, or you will run out of “API” (communication) cycles too often. When the chat is active you can always manually refresh the column more often.

Another, must more “chat room” approach is to go to TweetChat and put the hashtag in question in the # box. In our case, that takes us to:http://tweetchat.com/room/blogchat Suddenly you have what for all intents and purposes resembles a traditional chat room.

Just remember though, that in both cases, any reply you make, you must manually type #blogchat (or your particular hashtag) into the message.

One note is that sometimes, when used during a live event, for question & answer etc, these threads are known as “backchannels”. A twitter backchannel is nothing more than a hashtag discussion thread that happens at the same time a live presentation or webinar (web-based seminar/lecture) is going on. When the live presentation is absent, its just a chat!

So what is this hidden resource for bloggers? Well Every Sunday night, at 8pm CST, there is a #blogchat chat hosted by @MarkCollier for bloggers to exchange ideas. One Sunday a night its open-mic, the others are generally kept on a related topic. Even open mic was pretty much on topic although a lot of related more brief topic. It was definitely a fun crowd!

If you enjoy an active exchange of ideas with like-minded people, I highly suggest you check out #blogchat or a variety of other chats relevant to your interests! What are your favorite twitter channels and favorite twitter channel chat secrets? Let me know!

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