Brands need to adopt social media to prosper

Roll back a few years and the main piece of advice for companies seemed to be “get a website”.

We we told that any company that couldn’t be found online would go out of business. That’s not strictly true, of course — it depends a lot on the business — but what is happening is that the stakes are being raised.

Now, it’s not enough to have a website. You need a social media presence and a strategy to drive it.

With Google and Bing incorporating social network data into their search results, there’s an even more compelling argument for brands to capitalise on the power of social, according to Reality Digital.

With the rise in social media comes the need for reputation management — seeing what people are saying about a company or brand and communicating positively with both fans and detractors.

Robert Proctor at Reality Digital said, “Those brands that employ brand focused social networking applications will stand to benefit from these deals hugely, as through this they not only have the benefit of heightened consumer interactivity, but they may also start to see some of the great content from their networks appearing within search engine results.”

5 Basic and Yet Essential Tips to Get You Started with Blogging

So you were inspired by the self-made successful bloggers that you read daily and you want to start a blogging career? The problem is you don’t know where to start.

Here are 5 simple, basic, bare and yet essential tips that will help you get started with your blogging adventure. [Read more]

Australian Court Gives Permission to Live-Tweet Proceedings

In what could be an important development in how social media affects just about any industry and field, an Australian court was recently reported to have allowed live tweeting of proceedings. Judge Dennis Cowdroy states that tweeting was fine as long as it did not disrupt court proceedings. He believes that the public “has a legitimate right to be fully informed of proceedings, particularly proceedings such as (the iiNet case), which have attracted considerable public interest. Twittering can serve to inform the public in a more speedy and comprehensive manner than may be possible through traditional media coverage.”

This has precedence in previous cases in the US. While live reportage of legal proceedings are usually at the discretion of the presiding judge, not all jurisdictions might allow direct discussion of ongoing court cases.

As with any discussions held on Twitter or any social medium, readers are advised to check and verify the information and the veracity of the sources before retweeting, blogging or otherwise helping spread information online.

5 Social Media Tips and Tricks That Work

Since social media is such a powerful tool for increasing the traffic to your blog, I’ve tried many different social media tips.  Here are five of the best tips that have worked for my sites and our clients’ sites.

1. Befriend power users.

Power users are the users that exert the most influence on social media sites.  These users regularly submit content that gets popular and they have many people that follow them.

Check out the popular content in your niche and see who is submitting them.  You’ll often find a select group of people who submit the bulk of the popular content.

Vote for their stuff, send them interesting links, link to their site if they have one, guest post on their blog, interview them.  Basically, do whatever you can to help them and get on their radar without being overbearing or obnoxious.

Once you’re developed a relationship with them, you can send them your best stuff and ask them to submit it if they like it.

2. Create more comprehensive content.

One of the things I started realizing is that much of the content that does well in social media is pretty comprehensive.  The content was longer than your average post and it covered a subject with depth.

Therefore, I started creating longer posts filled with a lot of value and I’ve done better on social media sites as a result.  Now each of your blog posts doesn’t have to be 1,500 words, but it’s a good idea to regularly publish longer, in-depth posts that stand out from the crowd of your typical 2oo-5oo word posts.

3. Add images and video to your best content.

Another thing that has worked out well has been adding multimedia to content.  This is another thing  I noticed about viral content. Much of this content is highlighted by images and video.

It only takes a little bit of  time to go to sxc.hu or flickr.com and find relevant images that will improve your content.

And I think video is the next big thing in blogging.  I know many people have made the same prediction that it seems cliche but it’s definitely true.  More and more people are making web video a part of their routine.   Many of us are already chronic TV watchers so it will only take time before we get used to watching videos on the web.

Therefore, if you have any video skills, use them!  Also, the cost and learning barrier for producing videos has come down with discount equipment, software, and training courses.  I’m actually trying an experiment of shifting one of my blogs to mostly video instead of text and seeing how that works.

4. Try niche social media sites.

Most bloggers just focus on the big general subject sites like Digg and StumbleUpon but there is a lot of opportunity in niche social media sites.  Here’s a great list of these type of sites.  These sites won’t send as much as traffic as the big general subject sites, but the quality of their traffic is often much higher.  You’ll get a higher percentage of repeat visitors, a lower bounce rate, and more time spent on your site because of the more targeted traffic.

Also, it’s easier to network with the power users because of the smaller user base.

5. Use social media widgets at the end of each post.

Widgets are a great way to encourage your visitors to submit your content to social media sites.  Visitors may like a post but without the prompting of a submission button, they won’t think to submit your content.

We added a StumbleUpon button on one blog and we’ve seen a big increase in submissions and traffic from StumbleUpon.

Performancing offers social media marketing services if you need help in this area.

Do You Ride the Wave of Twitter Trending?

Among the trending topics on Twitter earlier this week was keywords related to the late Corazon Aquino, who was a former president of the Republic of the Philippines. Hailed as an icon of democracy, the former head of state passed away on August 1st, and tens of thousands of citizens flocked to the streets to escort her funeral cortage. The expression of support was also shown online. For a few days, Filipino citizens from all over the world sent messages of support through blogs and other social media, including Twitter.

In fact, “Cory Aquino” was among the top trending topics for a few days. Users have been talking about the events at the wake and funeral, and about her contributions to her country from the 1980’s up to the present, often attaching the #Cory hashtag. However, I’ve also been noticing some irrelevant tweets containing the #Cory hashtag. That made me wonder about how people will ride on the popularity of trending topics in the hope of getting their share of the limelight. It also makes me wonder how easily groups of Twitter users can game the system.

Irrelevant posts tagged with a certain hashtag can do one of two things. First, it will make your tweet appear on search results for that hashtag. So if you’re out to get attention, it might be a good idea to attach popular tags to your tweet, no matter how trivial or irrelevant. Secondly, it adds to the volume of tweets with that hashtag attached. So you could imagine that a keyword could trend if a ton of people wrote unrelated tweets, but with the same hashtag.

This could be one way the system can be gamed. It’s akin to keyword stuffing, which was one of the ways website owners optimized their sites for search engines. This practice is now frowned upon, of course, and could cause penalties from the search engines. But with Twitter, weeding out unwanted tweets from trending counts might be difficult, if not impossible. Granted, Twitter can exclude certain hashtags from their trending topics list, particularly if these violate terms of service, or if these constitute content not applicable for general consumption. They have done this before.

However, it might be different with tweets with irrelevant tags. The most they can probably do is not count a particular tweet under a particular hashtag if it is found to be irrelevant. But through what mechanism can this be done would be the question. Twitter staff cannot monitor every tweet and trending topic manually, and it might not be as easy to determine relevance without human intervention. Maybe Twitter can implement a report/feedback mechanism so that users can point out improperly-tagged tweets, and when the number of reports reaches a critical level, then those hashtags or posts would be looked into–something like a “bury” or “vote down” mechanism.

I think the best way to deal with this is to tweet responsibly. I’ve always advocated the idea of being careful with what you say online, be it on a blog post, video, tweet or just about any medium. Social media is powerful, and as such, it should be wielded with care and responsibility. And so, the next time you feel like adding an irrelevant hashtag to your tweet just to get attention, think again. Are you contributing positively to the Twitter community with what you are doing? Or are you just adding pointless drivel?

5 Ways to Remain Focused on Your Blog

Even bloggers who profess a quality-over-quantity focus stress the need for regular posting, if only to keep the blog visible within a niche. The question is, how can a blogger retain focus for what’s admittedly a repetitive task? Here are five ways that have proven useful for yours truly. [Read more]

Understanding Social Media Traffic

Online communities have been around since the dawn of the Internet, even before the World Wide Web made its appearance. People have used computer to computer communications for the same reason they’d use a telephone or, prior to that, the postal service – to interact with each other across distance. Today, what appears to be an emerging market, social media, is actually not new at all. Sites like Facebook, YouTube, Myspace, Digg, Twitter and others are all actually evolutions of the founding ideas that the Web was based upon. We’re just beginning to get good at connecting people with each other and only now are business people realizing the untapped potential of interacting with their customers on the more personal level that social media provides.

If you run any kind of business venture online you definitely need to have a social media presence. One of the big ways to gain traffic these days is through social bookmarking services. These include sites like Digg where users submit links or stories. Those submissions are then voted on by other Digg members.

The higher the number of votes, the higher that article or site rises in within the Digg ranking system. Links that Digg members love can get massive traffic sent to that particular site so pleasing Digg users is definitely a good thing! But be careful, because there is also a phenomenon known as “the Digg effect” where a site will take so much traffic that it actually crashes. That’s not hard to imagine when you realize Digg gets over 236 million visitors annually.

Reddit is another social bookmarking site that focuses on news, rewarding users who submit particularly popular links with karma points. A site called del.ico.us takes an approach that encourages people to comment on each others links and build a strong sense of community. With this site, a wiki adds a more collective slant to the offerings and it’s become a real source for viral Internet memes and other popular Web items. These are only a handful of the social bookmarking sites available to those who want to dive into the social media sea of opportunities.

The thing you need to remember is that with social media sites, the key word is social. You do not want to leap into these communities and start flinging your links and promotions around. You need to keep in mind that like any community, and social media sites are very much communities, there are those who are obnoxious individuals and there are those who add value. To gain a true level of popularity, you need to add value. Find out what’s hot and offer bookmarks that others in the community will love. Leave valuable comments and feedback for other users. Make friends and use the social angle to your advantage by creating a positive reputation for yourself and your business activities. For those who match their business acumen with polite, constructive social interaction, there are no limits to the success that these social media sites can bring you.

If you find yourself confused, do what you’d be advised to do in an unfamiliar situation offline. That’s right, ask others around you for help. Learn all that you can about each community that you participate in and show that you care about more than simply the next visitor or sale. Positive word of mouth is what you want from social media, you want people to spread your links based on their own desires rather than because you harassed them into it. Pay attention to emotional cues that people give off in online communication and if you sense people are becoming annoyed, immediately back off and try something else or even apologize. You need all the help you can get to keep your site attractive to visitors and the more popular folks in the social media scene can either help or hurt your reputation and the traffic that goes with that reputation.

It’s not that difficult to succeed when it comes to social media and using social bookmarking sites. By letting common sense, fair play and the same politeness you learned in grade school be your guide, you’ll find that it’s an easy, efficient and productive way to do business on the web. And you might just have a lot more fun than you bargained for finding your way towards the success you’ve been wishing for.

Writing vs. Blogging: Is There a Difference?

A lot of bloggers are proud of the fact that with blogs, they are finding a medium for sharing content with the rest of the world. They have become writers. Similarly, a lot of writers have found a new medium to publish their works. They have become bloggers. You often see published and famous authors starting blogs, and sometimes discussing the differences in publishing a blog post and the process of publishing a book.

Bloggers are, by definition, writers. Yes, you can even pardon the fact that a lot of bloggers write as if they need lessons in grammar, spelling and sentence construction. But are writers automatically bloggers? Well, the moment someone hits the publish button on his first ever blog post, then that person can technically be considered a blogger. But even if you’re a topnotch writer with dozens of books published, or if you have a regular newspaper column, or if you’re a literary genius, you don’t automatically become a good blogger, in the fullest sense of it.

Blogging involves more than writing. Blogging involves interaction, being part of the community, and having your blog serve as your online identity and persona. When you blog, you don’t just write a 500-word essay and publish it on a static page. You open up that essay to the world for critique right there and then. You let people talk back to you on your comment threads and on other blogs. You respond, and you talk back.

When you blog, you don’t just publish a column on a newspaper page. You join in on the conversation. You can react to other blog posts of interest. You link, you get linked to, and you link back. You create a big web of conversations and intelligible discussions.

Whe you blog, you don’t rest on your laurels the minute you publish that scathing commentary. You brace yourself for an onslaught of responses, positive and negative, and you prepare to defend your position.

When you blog, you don’t hide your face behind the written word. Rather, your written word is your face in the online world–your identity to your readers.

Simply put, blogging is not solely about writing. It’s about learning how to interact, how to establish a presence, how to make recommendations, how to be reactive and proactive. If you consider yourself a writer, then well and good. But if you want to be a good blogger, ask yourself these. How far have you gone in terms of being interactive? Have you helped a friend online? Have you added value to the ocean of commentaries out there? Are you just another nameless, faceless entity churning out words, or are you being someone–someone who matters?

Blogging is a social medium, after all. And as such, blogging goes far beyond writing.

Twitter and Twitocracy: the Case of Moonfruit

If you haven’t eaten moonfruit, then you’re missing out on a lot. It’s a delicacy in some parts of the world. But it’s rare and expensive, and not everyone can afford it.

Of course, there’s no such thing as a moon fruit. But there is a web development company called Moonfruit. To celebrate their 10th anniversary, they’ve recently run a Twitter campaign involving the giveaway of 10 MacBook Pros. The mechanics are simple: Just include the hashtag #moonfruit in your tweets and every day they select a winner at random from among those who mention the keyword in the past 24 hours.

Sounds interesting? Of course to the folks who want a free MacBook Pro, it is. And a lot have participated, resulting in #moonfruit being a trending topic. People have won, and Moonfruit has even sent special prizes to folks had been creative in using their keyword–some have sung, some have created poems, some have recorded videos.

So is everyone happy? Apparently not. According to the Moonfruit blog, Twitter imposed some kind of censorship, in particular by taking the #moonfruit keyword off the trending topics list.

Late Friday night 3rd July, around midnight UK time Moonfruit finally tumbled off the top of the trends list on Twitter. Now this wasn’t wholly unexpected with July 4th on the way and the resignation of Sarah Palin. But what was odd is how it that it never returned despite the stats being above other trending topics.

…

[I]f Twitter had come to us and said, “guys, enough is enough”, then we would have worked with them to limit the campaign, or complied with whatever they were demanding. However, if they have pulled the trending without explanation or communication, this sets rather a different tone.

Moonfruit provides some links to statistics, claiming that the #moonfruit hashtag continues to surpass most others, but is nowhere to be found in the trending topics list.

There are precedents here. Twitter is known to have taken off inappropriate terms from the trending list in the past. It’s understandable that Twitter needs to protect its network and technology. Adult and raunchy material definitely don’t fall under “acceptable” given Twitter’s diverse audience. I wouldn’t want my kid to read about those kinds of things. But what about keywords that are not necessarily offensive?

The argument here is whether Twitter’s trending topics list should be a pure numbers game, or whether it should involve some algorithm that determines which is eligible, and which is not.

Should there be an algorithm for trends rather than making trending topics a pure numbers game? Should the system be fixed so that #liesboystell doesn’t win out over truly important, significant, or newsworthy content? Should tweets, like images and other kinds of content, be screened for “adult” material and user preferences be set accordingly? Or do trends really belong to the lowest common denominator?

And if all else fails, should there be human intervention to flag something as spammy or obscene?

Other social media services involve some sort of algorithm to minimize or moderate the possibility of gaming. DIGG, for instance has its secret algorithm for bringing entries to frontpage. It’s not just a purely numbers game, but it also involves a host of other factors like aging, authority, timeliness of votes, and the like. Even Google doesn’t use a purely numeric algorithm in determining PageRank. It’s secret algorithm also uses a lot of factors. And even search results don’t rely solely on PageRank and the quantity of links.

The danger here is that using a simple numbers game would make Twitter prone to spam. I’ve already encountered my share of spammy marketers trying to push affiliate links at my face. Without some filtering or moderation mechanism, the Twitter trending topics list would be easy to fill up with useless keywords. Not that marketing on Twitter is bad. There is, after all, a better way of doing it, which does not involve in-your-face, pushy and spammy advertising. But if trivial, unimportant topics keep on edging out the more relevant keywords, this could dilute the value of Twitter as a live search platform.

Still, the question here is about “Twitocracy.” Is Twitter democratic at all? And is there sense in implementing a purely democratic system of presenting information? Or is pure social media democracy a pipe dream?

Episode 4: How to Choose a Social Media Site That Fits Your Blog

Notes:

#1 principle: Choose a site where your target audience is hanging out.

Don’t choose a site just because other bloggers are talking about it. Digg and Twitter are popular social media sites. However, you may not want to participate on Digg if you have a wedding blog or Twitter if you have a dog blog.

[Read more]