I use this free, open source graphics program to crop and resize images on this blog. Love it.
Author: Joanna Pineda
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People Want to Follow; Are You Ready to Lead?
I’ve been thinking about the terminology that we use to describe our relationships on various social networks. I “follow” people on Twitter and people “follow” me back. I have “friends” on Facebook. I am “linked” to people on LinkedIn. The “follow” relationship is the one I find most fascinating.When you “follow” someone, you:
- Accept them as a guide or leader
- Imitate or follow their example
- Watch their movement or progress
While I understand that my “followers” on Twitter probably don’t see me as a leader, there are certainly people on Twitter who I “follow” because I consider them thought leaders and I want to know what they’re reading and thinking. Think about it. We never say that we “follow” a Web site, company or newsletter, but we do say that we “follow” someone’s blog. I know I consider it a high compliment when someone tells me that they “follow” my blog.
In the book Tribes, marketing guru Seth Godin tells us it’s human nature to want to be part of a group that shares a common passion and recognizes the same leader; in other words, most of us want to be part of a tribe. Further, Seth believes that using the Web and social networking tools, everyone can now find or assemble a tribe and lead it.
So I say to each of you and your organizations: People want to follow, are you ready to lead?
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What We’ve Learned About the New Facebook Pages
The dust is finally settling on the Facebook pages for companies and organizations. The new pages were supposed to go live March 11, but the transition seemed to take a few weeks. Here’s what we’ve learned so far about the new Facebook pages:- Status updates (aka What’s on your mind?) are definitely posting to the organization’s Wall and showing up on fans’ streams. Fans can indicate if they like a post, they can comment, and they can share the update.
- Only native Facebook applications are showing up on fan’s streams. In the past, we brought in photos and videos from Flickr and YouTube via RSS. You can still do this today, but these updates do NOT show up in fan’s streams. For example, if you want your fans to know that you posted a new photo album, you have to use the native Facebook application.
- Sending an update to fans does NOT trigger an e-mail. Instead, these updates show up in fan’s Inboxes, in the Updates tab. These updates also exist in View Updates in the left navigation of the company pages, but only if you click More. It took us forever to figure this out and I’m convinced that nobody is reading our updates because they have no idea these updates exist.
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Getting Started with Twitter For Your Organization
Many clients ask me how to get started with social networking. Should they blog, be on Facebook or LinkedIn, or should they start tweeting? For many organizations, I recommend Twitter. The concept is simple: Twitter lets you broadcast short updates (140 characters or less) to the people who “follow” or subscribe to your updates. These updates are called “tweets.” Twitter is also called micro-blogging because people tweet about what they’re doing, thinking, eating, reading, yada, yada. So how do you get started?- First, you need to set-up an account on Twitter.com. Unlike Facebook or LinkedIn, you don’t connect your organization’s Twitter account to a personal account. And both people and organizations have equal status on Twitter. Not sure if you’re ready to start tweeting? I recommend setting up an account anyway so that somebody else doesn’t grab your name. And be sure to record the username and password on the account so that if the person in charge of tweeting for your company leaves or goes on vacation, someone else can do the tweeting.
- Next, you need to personalize your account. I recommend uploading a logo or image, and entering a short description of your organization plus your Web address. This is critical to helping others find your company, and to encouraging others to follow you. For example , I generally don’t follow people or organizations that don’t have a description or URL. You can also get fancy and customize your background image. Check out how Business Insider customized their Twitter account with images from their Web site and job fairs. I also like the backround image for Pocket.
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Creating a Content Strategy for your Web Site, Blog, Social Networks
In my last blog post, I referenced the content strategy that the marketing team at Matrix Group has developed to keep our Web site and social networking pages fresh and interesting. Several folks asked for more details on our content strategy, so here you go.Our communication/conversation strategy has several elements:
- Communication vehicles. We created an inventory of all the ways that we use to communicate with clients and prospects. Our inventory includes: the Web site, e-mail newsletter list, blog, Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, and e-mail discussion lists.
- Communication schedule. We have mapped out a schedule that delineates what we will post or send out every day, week, month, and quarter. For example, we strive to tweet every day, update our Facebook page twice a week, and post new blog entries twice a week.
- Content strategy. We believe that it’s important to NOT post the same stuff across all channels. For example, on the Matrix Group Twitter account, we tweet about association/non-profit news, how companies and organizations are using the Web and social networking in interesting ways, cool sites, Web standards, site and application launches, job openings, Matrix Group events, and fun stuff going on around the office. My personal Twitter account (@jmpineda) is different; I will post personal updates, sites I love, business news and trends, cool gadgets, blog posts and Matrix Group events. You’ll notice that there is overlap in what we tweet when it comes to Matrix Group; otherwise, what we tweet between the two accounts is very different. That’s intentional; we want our followers to have a different experience on each Twitter account.
- Tone and voice. Our Creative Director, Alex, says tone and voice are very important, no matter what the vehicle, so we have guidelines for the writing across our sites and pages. Our updates are always professional, not formal but not too casual either, friendly and warm.
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Time Management and Social Networking: How to NOT make social networking a huge time suck
Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve met with clients about their social networking (SN) strategy. A common refrain is this: “Social networking takes too much time. I don’t have extra time in the day. And I don’t want my staff wasting huge amounts of time on social networking.”There’s no question that we can fritter away hours reading Twitter posts, watching random videos on YouTube, updating our Facebook status, yada, yada.
But for organizations that have made the decision to incorporate social networking into their communication, conversation or marketing strategies, how can we be sure that social networking sites aren’t just a sinkhole of time?
As someone who is fairly active on different SN platforms (I tweet and update my profile on Facebook regularly, I browse sites on StumbleUpon, and I certainly watch my share of YouTube videos), here are my top time management tips:
- I set aside time during the day to read blogs, tweets, Facebook status updates, etc. Typically, I set aside a half hour in the morning and a half hour at night.
- I may update my status on Twitter and Facebook during the day, but I don’t do a lot of reading.
- I don’t read everything. I’m really good at skimming.
- I use Tweetdeck to manage the tweets from people I follow. I set up groups for the people whose tweets I really want to see: family, friends, clients, CEOs, thought leaders, research orgs. Love Tweetdeck!
- If I find something I like, I either read it right then, or I save it to my Delicious account (social bookmarking) site for later consumption.
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Stumbleupon.com
Gets me out of a broswing rut every time! And driving lots of traffic to the sites worldwide.
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What Clients Want: To Be Understood
One of my Project Managers (we call them PMs at Matrix Group) was struggling with an account. The client was frustrated, the Project Manager was frustrated, so of course, now I’m frustrated. I called the client, had a long de-brief session, worked through some issues, and with a few tweaks, the project was back on track. The PM wanted to know how I did that. My secret? I put myself in the client’s shoes.As a business owner, I get to be manager of staff and projects AND client to our many vendors. As the chief salesperson for the company, I interact the most with customers and users. As a liberal arts person turned techie, I know enough to be dangerous, but I can’t write a line of CSS to save my life. All of this means that I can more easily see a situation from a client’s perspective. Here’s what I’ve learned over the years about clients:
- Clients are busy, the Web site is usually just a small fraction of their job, they don’t spend all day thinking about the Web site, and there’s a whole lot of stuff going on that they don’t know and don’t care to know. We can never assume clients know that a new version of Internet Explorer is coming out and it’s going to be more standards-compliant, that title tags should not be more than 64 characters or Google will ignore them, and that a print style sheet is different from a printer-friendly page.
- Most clients are non-techies who need a technical solution. They seek a solution and a result. We need to give them context for our solution, and enough detail so that they can make an informed solution, but not so much that they get overwhelmed. We also need to communicate concepts using terms they understand. For example, when a Web design has been approved and we have to now slice the design, I liken it to going to blueline. Clients who have ever had anything printed are familiar with blueline; it’s close to a final proof and changes cost time and money.
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The Campaign is Over, but President Obama Still Committed to Social Networking
Candidate Obama ran a great campaign and made amazing use of social networking services to get the word out about his campaign, mobilize supporters, create viral messages, and raise money. When the campaign ended, I wondered if President Obama would continue to use social networking tools or if the constraints of the White House or security would put an end all that open communication and engagement.I’ve been so happy to see that President Obama is being just as innovative and engaging online.
- Google Moderator gives participants a way to submit questions and vote for the ones they want answered. The White House launched Open for Questions and used Google Moderator to field questions for the President during in online town hall meeting tonight. 92,934 people submitted 104,049 questions and cast 3,604,964 votes.
- The White House maintains a blog. Imagine that, a White House blog. The President himself is not blogging, but the blog does a terrific job of making visitors feel like a White House insider. Here’s tonight’s post on Open for Questions.
- The White House has a YouTube channel that features press conferences, the President’s weekly address, briefings and other events. Some of the videos are available in HD; check out this beautiful HD video of President Obama’s March 21, 2009 address. If you don’t see the video in HD, click the HD link in the bottom right corner of the video.
