Monday, September 28, 2009

Elements of a successful twitter account

Everyone and their cat are now on twitter. This makes twitter a very affective tool for communication, networking, broadcasting and marketing.

Be Yourself. People don’t do business with business cards, they do business with people. This is your chance to put your personality in front of an audience, and create a lasting and positive first impression.

Relationship. If you are following people, start chat, reply to them if they are asking for information you know. Great way to be noticed is to chat and build relationships. If people follow you, follow them back.

Value. Give people value, let people learn things from your tweet relevant to them. Having clear themes can help getting focused messages out and having targeted followers promotes re-tweets.

Clear language. Think before you tweet, provide good tweets, labeling your links, use #hashtags and CAPS to emphasize on topics to help readability.

-- Robin Low

Friday, September 25, 2009

Insight and tips on Facebook.

Facebook is not easy to understand as there is constant innovation and changes done all the time, to leverage on it, you need to understand it.

Remember, in Social Media, most successful campaigns are word of mouth campaigns. Facebook is one of the most impressive user acquisition channels on the Internet and most users spend more than 20 minutes per visit. Even when it is almost impossible to broadcast to everyone on Facebook at the same time, there is nothing preventing you from trying to reach out to everyone relevant to your business.
 
In addition to your personally-defined set of social graph connections, you also have a set of connections defined by your participation in Networks, Groups, and Events. A Network is a group of people that are part of a common workplace, geographical location, or a school. This is a formal affiliation as defined or approved by Facebook, and typically you need to have an email address to participate. A Group is a collection of people similar to a Network, except it’s user-defined and members can be selected, invited, or simply join to participate. An Event is a time- and or location-specific occurrence, that also may have a collection of associated individuals who have RSVP to attend.


On Facebook, you should simply look at simply conduct activities that would engage your fans.

The aim of Facebook fan page is to celebrate your customers, provide them a place to interact and spread your brand to their friends.

As a social media platform, “selling and offers” are frowned upon like spam, and will become a big turn off for many people.

Cleverly sculpted messages which include these information can sometimes be seen as informative and it is essential that your fan page provide more valuable than your sales pitch.

Wednesday, September 23, 2009

7 Reasons to leave blog comments

Consistently leaving high quality comments on other blogs is a great way to market and grow your own blog (and your personal brand). Here are some reasons why you should leave comments on blogs.

1.) Link Building
Every comment you leave will be a link to your blog which will help with your (Search Engine Optimization) SEO efforts. The theory goes build as many links as possible from high quality sources and your SEO will improve.

2.) Attract Attention
If you are leaving comments on a bigger more established blog, there is a very good chance you will attract the attention of the blogger. Use this exposure to pitch guest post ideas, or gain attention of the blogger by posting about one of your articles

3.) Disagree or Add to the Post
If you are able to disagree or add to a post, this will increase your profile as a subject matter expert. Adding quality comments arguing against or extending the original post.

When disagreeing, use facts and other information to support your point of view. You don’t want to come across as a troll when you attack someone you disagree with, but you should rather bring someone round to your side of the argument with quality analysis.

4) Extending the Conversation
Leaving comments extends the conversation, it helps to build a community on your favourite blog, and if you are conversing a lot, your profile can only increase.

5.) Give the Blogger some Support
When a blog is new, it feels like you are posting into a void, no-one is leaving comments or giving you feedback. If you come across a new blog give them a little boost by leaving them a comment, tell them you like their work and give support on their posts.

6.) Increase your Profile
Selecting high profile blogs in your niche, and adding valuable content can increase your profile to the readers of that blog, who in turn may visit your own blog and hopefully become one of your readers.

7.) Make New Friends
Lastly, leaving a comment is just like saying hello in the real world, it can be the start of a beautiful new relationship, say hello today instead of skulking in the background.





-- Robin Low

Monday, September 21, 2009

Traditional media is dead!

  • Consumers do not trust advertisements. (They would rather read a review on a blog or a webpage rather than corporate page)
  • Consumers are immune to interruptive marketing. (too many mediums, too many ads)
  • Consumers are informed, and information is readily available.
  • With a global business, it cost too much to reach out to everyone.
  • With social media, the cost is $0, no external company needs to be engaged.

Saturday, September 19, 2009

Some really cool Twitter Tips (Use of CAPS)

This is very simple but it works.

Simple usage of CAPS can easily improve the quality of your tweets. This is especially IMPORTANT when you only have 140 characters to play with.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Here is a new tip,

When you tweet, use the first word in ALL CAPS to categorize the message or to giving emphasis to the message. In addition consider keywords you can use (only one) that are well used.

Example:

TOOL: great twitter tool at www.xyzurldot.com

Example:

IMPORTANT: mj just passed away

VIDEO: cat loves water:
http://bit.ly/ZE5Ul

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Remember, make sure you think and plan before you tweet.

It will help people understand you better and possibly get you more followers!

Friday, September 18, 2009

Starting a blog

Starting a blog is just a few simple steps away. Here are a few steps to follow and you will be on your way to start your very own blog.

1. Determine a theme. Most bloggers take one of three approaches. Some write on whatever happens to interest them at the moment. In this sense, their blog is truly a “web diary.” Others, select a single theme and stick to it. Frankly, this takes a lot of discipline. Still others focus on a primary theme but occasionally deviate from it. If you want to develop a following of loyal readers, I think the latter two approaches are best. People who have similar interests will keep coming back for more.

2. Select a service. Some of these are free, such as Blogger.com, LiveJournal.com, Blog-City.com, and MSN Spaces (also Xanga.com). Others charge a nominal fee. Examples include SquareSpace.com, BlogIdentity.com, and Bubbler.com (also TypePad.com). However, even the fee-based services usually offer a 30- to 60-day free trial.

3. Set up your blog. Most of the blogging services make this a very simple process. Don’t be put off because it sounds technical. It usually isn’t. You won’t need to become a geek. However, you will have to make some decisions about how you want your blog to look. You’ll have to decide on a “theme,” meaning the colors, number of columns, and the overall look and feel of your blog. You may want to include your picture. If so, you’ll need a digital copy. Regardless, this is something you can tweak as you go.

4. Write your first post. Okay, now you’re ready to create your first post. If you haven’t done a lot of writing, this may prove to be the most difficult part. If you don’t have a lot of experience, keep your posts short. Develop momentum. Get the hang of it. Stick to what you know. You probably take for granted the fact that you have a great deal of specialized information that others will find helpful—possibly even fascinating. If you don’t know where else to start, begin with a “Welcome to My Blog” post. Tell your prospective readers why you have started your blog and what kinds of things you intend to write about.

5. Consider using an offline blogging client. This isn’t a necessity but it will make blogging much easier. An offline blogging client is like a word processor for blogging. It enables you to write when you’re not online and then upload your post when you connect to the Internet. The two most popular are BlogJet and ecto (yes, the lowercase “e” is part of the branding). BlogJet is my favorite, but it’s not available for the Mac. ecto is available on both Windows and Mac platforms. You can try both programs before you buy.

6. Add the bells and whistles. Most blogs allow you to post the books you are reading, albums you enjoy, and various other lists. TypePad is especially adept at this. You can also incorporate third-party services like Bloglet. This enables your readers to subscribe to your site and receive an e-mail whenever you post a new entry. The best way to get an idea of what is available is to read other people’s blogs and take note of what you like.

7. Publicize your blog. You’ll want to make sure you’re “pinging” the major weblog tracking sites. Most of the blogging services handle this automatically, as do the offline blogging clients. Don’t worry if you don’t understand this process. You don’t need to understand it to use it. (Here's a simple explanation.) Basically, your service or software will send a notification to the tracking sites to alert them that you have posted a new entry. If your software doesn’t allow this, you might want to make use of pingomatic. This is a super-easy service that will ping fourteen different services. All you have to do is enter your blog address whenever you post a new entry. If you want to manually enter a comprehensive list of ping services, here’s a list to get you started.

http://api.my.yahoo.com/RPC2
http://api.my.yahoo.com/rss/ping
http://bblog.com/ping.php
http://bitacoras.net/ping/
http://blog.goo.ne.jp/XMLRPC
http://blogdb.jp/xmlrpc
http://bulkfeeds.net/rpc
http://coreblog.org/ping/
http://ping.blo.gs/
http://ping.cocolog-nifty.com/xmlrpc
http://ping.rootblog.com/rpc.php
http://ping.syndic8.com/xmlrpc.php
http://ping.weblogs.se/
http://rcs.datashed.net/RPC2
http://rpc.blogrolling.com/pinger/
http://rpc.pingomatic.com/
http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping
http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2
http://topicexchange.com/RPC2
http://www.a2b.cc/setloc/bp.a2b
http://www.bitacoles.net/ping.php
http://www.blogpeople.net/servlet/weblogUpdates
http://www.weblogues.com/RPC/
http://xmlrpc.blogg.de/
http://www.blogroots.com/tb_populi.blog?id=1
http://xping.pubsub.com/ping/

8. Write regularly. This is the best advice I could give you for building readership. If people like what you write, they will come back. However, if there’s nothing new to read, they will eventually lose interest. So, the more regularly you post something, the more your readership will grow. I suggest you schedule time to write. It won’t happen on it’s own. At some point, it comes down to making a commitment and sticking to it.

Finally, I would suggest that you be patient with yourself. Writing is like anything else. The more you do it, the better you get. If you have a little talent, and stick with it, you’ll eventually get into the rhythm and joy of it.

Wednesday, September 16, 2009

Social Media

Social media is a new way of communication. By experiencing social media, using flickr, twitter, youtube, facebook and digg, I find that you get to meet many different people with similar interests forming great networks which you can be proud of.

With this new communication tool, I feel that now, the individual can make a difference. When you have a good idea for a business or a just cause, you can share this idea on your blog with the people in your network and as they propagate your idea through word of mouth, you may find enough people with similar interest that may help you in your endevours.

More heads are better than one. If you would like to share an idea for a cause like saving the rainforest, join a group, tweet, link up with people on facebook and Linkedin. You'll find that many people are willing to give advice and help out even if they don't know you. Likewise, you may come across someone who needs your expertise in some advice and you could help them too.

It is a great concept, making the world smaller and allowing people from diverse background share their ideas, which may allow sometime simple and good to become GREAT!

I hope to educate more people in using social media as it has enriched my life much. I am starting classes on How to leverage Social Media on Monday in Sri Lanka, so stay tuned on this blog for the latest updates on the lessons teached and lessons learned during the social media course.

-- Robin Low.

Facebook makes money, tops 300 million users

Facebook makes money, tops 300 million users

For those who still doubt the effectiveness of social media in reaching out to people, this is just in. Well 300 million people is not that much people to some, however, it is the largest Social Networking site, and its success means it is here to stay.

Facebook is now generating enough cash to cover its operating expenses, as well as the capital spending needed to maintain its fast-growing service.

From operating out of a dorm room 5 years ago, Facebook is increasingly challenging the Web's established powerhouses like Yahoo Inc and Google Inc.

Well, Facebook offers a lot of services, and individuals and companies can definitely benefit from the services. It creates networking opportunities in the form of groups, and helps you connect with your old friends and lost friends.

For companies, Facebook is a platform which allows the companies to show their capabilities, services and products, and allow the users to come in and comment, as a free feedback channel. Organizing events reaching out to fans is much easier as well.

I would like to congratulate Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg for the success of Facebook and the success to come.

--Robin Low

Tuesday, September 15, 2009

Social Media in Action

Many people want to feel connected. In today’s fact paced world, many people may feel left out. With the Internet, online communities and forums makes communication a lot easier than before. Many thing that were previously not possible is now a reality and many people can be connected like never before.

Enabled through different platforms such as media sharing, blogs and forums, communities are formed where people can meet, organize and collaborate in an unprecedented fashion.

In today’s Social Media landscape, it is important for most companies to get on the Social Media as people will talk about the companies regardless whether it is on Social Media or not.

If these companies have a blog, Twitter account or Facebook page, their customer can engage with them if any issues arises, otherwise these customers may just start blogging about the problems they face. More often, when other customers read about these complains, they tend to add in their own comments, and sometimes their feelings and opinions.

With more people joining in the conversation of “bashing” a company, it can easily snowball into a crisis. If the company had a blog or some other mediums where their customer could contact them, at least, the customer would attempt to get a response, as most of the time, when a customer has a problem, they want it resolved rather than complain about it.

Sunday, September 13, 2009

Shift in Company Policies

In order to use social media effectively, many companies must adopt a “customer first” ideology. To respond to requests or feedback, the process of getting things approved must be streamlined, so that if a problem arises, the person responding can be empowered to respond.

In my experience, I found many companies believe that Social Media is like Public Relations and should be handled by the Pubic Relations department or the marketing department, however, I feel that a company should not use the marketing manpower on Social Media. Although it has a lot of brand building aspects, and it should tie in with the company’s marketing plan, it also involves much of a company’s customer service.

Furthermore, social media is much more than just marketing and customer service. It can be used for informational gathering, managing relationships with vendors and customer, organization knowledge management and much more.

Social media is considered by some as “putting the public back in public relations” and it does take time to build relationships, but the returns are far greater than just advertising. When a customer, feels happy, they will become a repeat customer, and with them on board your social media platform, some of these customers can help spread your products and services and eventually become an evangelist.

Companies who are interested to engage in Social Media should consider starting a new department, and the duties of this department would include the following:

- Monitor the Internet for new, blogs and other articles about the company.
- Write blogs about interesting tips or findings in the industry.
- Engage bloggers, tweeps and other contributors who write about the company. (either thank them or resolve their problems)
- Maintain and update the company’s Fan Page on Facebook.
- Maintain and update the company’s Twitter account.
- Disseminate information and achievements of the company on Social Media.
- Liaise with the customer service department and inform them of customer feedback.
- Liaise with marketing department and make sure Social Media strategy supports marketing plans.
- Work with Human resources to gather information on the company (achievements and news), use Social Media to help in new hires, and look out for potential employees.
- Research information on the industry using Social Media, feedback to management or R&D about findings.
- Train and encourage staff to use Social Media. Nothing better than the staff believing in the product and service and promoting using word of mouth.
- Organize events, add picture and videos of company’s happening on Social Media to share the company’s experience and events.

Twitter -- Following and Followers.

I've researched a few tips on Twitter and I felt that this tips from @Reviewsguru made sense, and I'd like to share them with you.


Twitter Basics -

Twitter is simple. Just 2 things and you're off to go!
Following and Followers

1. Followers listen to your tweets. How do you get anyone to listen?
2. To receive tweets, you need to follow others. Who should you follow?

Step 1:

When you first join twitter, you can let twitter check for your friends through your email lists. Twitter will add all your friends and make you follow them.

Now you can read your friend's updates and check up on them.

Step 2:

Search for the people you want to follow. For a start, follow some popular people on twitter. Most of these tweeps (people on twitter) tweet everyday and about interesting things. (remember, there's a unfollow option if you don't want to ready what they have to say.)

Use find people to search for people or even topics you are interested in. You can search for virtually everything, people tweet about everything from history to current events. Try following some of these folks and see what they have to say.

Use the search function to find thousands of interesting subjects; and millions of people to talk with. Search a particular topic, check out the tweets and the links. If you happen to like what someone is saying or his link, check his profile and what he said before by clicking on his username. If you like him or what he has to say, just follow.

Continue your search, click-thru, find a topic, and follow to befriend people.

Many interesting people and topics out there.

Note: Think of Twitter as a HUGE gossip network, you can find lots of rumors and some facts on things that you are interested to know. You just need to find the right source, following people is finding more sources for what you like to hear.

Step 3:

After some tweets of your own, you may start to get some followers. The following is my advice.

1) If you are using twitter as some form of closed network which you just like friends and family to read about your updates, then this may not be a good platform for you as EVERYONE can ready what you say unless you go private.

2) If you are very particular about what you read and you don't want to be distracted by tweets you are not interested in, check out some of your followers. Some of your followers follow you because they like your tweets and may have common interests and tweets. If you like what they have to say, just follow them.

3) If you want to build up your network, don't just follow everyone. Filter out spammers as some of your followers follow you so that you may follow them, and they will SPAM you with ads.

Note: I feel that as a general rule of thumb, you should follow people who follow you if you wnat to build a network (except spammers -- spammers need no love).

Twitter has the 2,000 and 10%-of-followers limits. If you allow those you follow to NOT return the favor, you're boxed under 2,000 friends.

Celebrities like Oprah, Britney Spears, Tony Robbins and Ashton Kushner unknowingly box their fans. If 200 real or wanna-be celebrities don't return your follows, YOU ARE STUCK under 2,000 friends.

Thus, remember these golden rules:

* Return the follow of fans.
* To jump past 2,000 followers, unfollow those who don't follow you - including iamdiddy. Celebrities like Guy Kawasaki, schwarzenegger, WholeFoods, and zappos do re-follow hundreds of thousands of fans.
* If wanna-be celebrities follow you to entice you to follow, then drops you to make themselves look popular at your expense - block them. It's a stupid pet trick.

If you don't, you're stopped by the 2,000 rule.

Twitter imposed a new, undocumented rule with 1,000 follows per day. This impacts whales (tweeps with 10k followers or more). They can't return every follow.

We agree with the new rule, but Twitter should not count re-follows as part of the 1,000 limit. Social etiquette says we should return the follow without penalties.

Since whales can no longer follow everyone to see their tweets, you need a new means to reach whales. Type a reply or message like @whalename message. The new Twitter inbox allows whales to see the message.

Don't use DM, which is widely ignored by whales.

Celebrities don't always respond. Social whales frequently do. Note that whales don't provide tech support as a service. Ask favors nicely.

If you have built up a lot of followers, its nice to just post a question and get answers fast!

Please follow @reviewsguru for more information like this.

Saturday, September 12, 2009

Different usage of Social Media Between Youths and Adults

Different usage of Social Media Between Youths and Adults

As many of you know, youth played a central role in the rise of some social media. Now, many adults have jumped in, but what they are doing there is often very different than what young people are doing.

For American teenagers, social network sites became a social hangout space, not unlike the malls in which I grew up back in the 1980s. This was a place to gather with friends from school and church when in-person encounters were not viable. Unlike many adults, teenagers were never really networking. They were socializing in pre-exiting groups.

Social network sites became critically important to them because this was where they sat and gossiped, and jockeyed for status. They used these tools to see and be seen. Those using MySpace put great effort into decorating their profile and fleshing out their "About Me" section. The features and functionality of Facebook were fundamentally different, but virtual pets and quizzes served similar self-expression purposes on Facebook.

Teen conversations may appear completely irrational, or pointless at best. "Wasssup?" "Not much, how you?" may not seem like much to an outsider, but this is a form of social grooming. It's a way of checking in, confirming friendships, and negotiating social waters.

Adults have approached Facebook in very different ways. Adults are not hanging out on Facebook. They are more likely to respond to status messages than start a conversation on someone's wall (unless it's their birthday of course). Adults aren't really decorating their profiles or making sure that their “About Me's” are up-to-date. Adults, far more than teens, are using Facebook for its intended purpose as a social utility. For example, it is a tool for communicating with the past.

Adults may giggle about having run-ins with friends from high school, but underneath it all, many of them are curious. Similar to what happens at school reunion. We all secretly really want to know what happened to out high school Sweetheart. Nowhere is this dynamic more visible than in the recent "25 Things" phenomena. While teens have been filling out personality quizzes since the dawn of social media, most adults only went through this phase once, as a newbie when they felt as though they really needed to forward the chain letter to 10 friends or else. The "25 Things" phenomenon took me by surprise until I started thinking about the intended audience. Teenagers craft quizzes for themselves and their friends. Adults are crafting them to show-off to people from the past and connect the dots between different audiences as a way of coping with the awkwardness of collapsed contexts.

Social media continues to be age-graded. Right now, Twitter is all the rage, but most kids are not on it. It's not the act of creating and sharing social nuggets that's the issue. Teens are actively using Facebook status update, MySpace bulletins, and IM away messages to share their views on the day and their mood of the moment. So why not Twitter? While it's possible to make Twitter "private," the culture of Twitter is all about participation in a large public square. From the digerati seeking widespread attention to the politically minded hoping to appear on CNN, many are leveraging Twitter to be part of a broad dialogue. Teens are much more motivated to talk only with their friends and they learned a harsh lesson with social network sites. Even if they are just trying to talk to their friends, those who hold power over them are going to access everything they wrote if it's in public. While the philosophy among teens is "public by default, private when necessary," many are learning that it's just not worth it to have a worrying mother obsess over every mood you seek to convey. This dynamic showcases how social factors are key to the adoption of new forms of social media.

With all of this, it shows that as a developer, you are no longer simply an author of software. You are an actor in a process in which software is being developed and repurposed. The key lesson from the rise of social media for you is that a great deal of software is best built as a coordinated dance between you and the users.

There are also significant policy implications in all of this. Many people are aware of how inaccurate the public portrait of the Internet risk is. Policy makers in many countries are hell-bent on "solving" the safety problem, but what they're trying to fix is not what's really happening. Yet, in trying to address public fears, they run the risk of putting more kids in harm's way AND forcing companies to build technologies that would help no one.

Friday, September 11, 2009

Blogging...


Blogging is a low-cost, high-results tool for competitive differentiation, marketing, customer relations management, media contacts, and sales. Plus, the software platform is much simpler than what’s required for websites, so any business can afford to set up and maintain a blog. And now blogging is getting more and more popular:

Blog search engine Technorati was tracking more than 112 million blogs since 2007.

Simple tips for bloggers:

1. Blog what you care about. If you don't care about the subject, it shows.
2. Let your character show through your writing, don't let it restrain you.
3. Experiment with different formats; some like to write short posts, and post often, for eg. Andrew Sullivan. Some prefer more sporadic posting, but write long posts, like Glenn Greenwald, who posts a 2000-word essay on a daily basis. Neither is wrong, both grab their own audiences, and both deliver quality writing and content.
4. Develop your own style of writing, and stick to it.
5. Don't be too bothered with lack of comments or interaction, but be sure to respond quickly to comments left by your readers.
6. And really, blog what you care about.

-- Robin Low

Thursday, September 10, 2009

Social Media Dynamics

Those five properties are intertwined, but their implications have to do with the ways in which they alter social dynamics. Let's look at the different dynamics that have been reconfigured as a result of social media.

1. Invisible Audiences. We are used to being able to assess the people around us when we're speaking. We adjust what we're saying to account for the audience. Social media introduces all sorts of invisible audiences. There are lurkers who are present at the moment but whom we cannot see, but there are also visitors who access our content at a later date or in a different environment than where we first produced them. As a result, we are having to present ourselves and communicate without fully understanding the potential or actual audience. The potential invisible audiences can be stifling. Of course, there's plenty of room to put your head in the sand and pretend like those people don't really exist.

2. Collapsed Contexts. Connected to this is the collapsing of contexts. In choosing what to say when, we account for both the audience and the context more generally. Some behaviors are appropriate in one context but not another, in front of one audience but not others. Social media brings all of these contexts crashing into one another and it's often difficult to figure out what's appropriate, let alone what can be understood.

3. Blurring of Public and Private. Finally, there's the blurring of public and private. These distinctions are normally structured around audience and context with certain places or conversations being "public" or "private." These distinctions are much harder to manage when you have to contend with the shifts in how the environment is organized.

The Internet has long been able to search for people, places and companies. With the introduction of social media, this way in which people can be searched are further enhanced and frankly, a little scary at times. We need to realize that whenever we use the Internet, we share a bit of ourselves whether we like it or not.

Some companies have an illusion of control when they only participate in traditional media. Losing control is a primary reason stated by brands who are unwilling to open themselves up to the conversation – and a major reason why most continue to use social media as little more than a brochure on the web. And yet the illusion of control is just that – an illusion. By not involving yourself you actually do more to remove control than if you did.

In traditional marketing and brand management you set out the position you want to take, the message you want to get through and then you put it out there. You feel in control because you’ve lined up your one-way communications and in a vacuum everything appears to line up.

Combine this with your brand tracking research, which abstracts the consumer response, and you create a feedback loop where your marketing activities and your market research self-reinforce the illusion. And yet under these circumstances you have, and have always had, precisely zero control over what people think and how they will respond to you.

The reality is that great branding has always been about influence and not control – influencing consumer choices and desires in a manner conducive to your goals and their satisfaction.

In today’s world, the way to achieve this is not through bigger advertising budgets or better creative, but through involvement – first by observing the conversation and then by involving yourself in it. As a result, it’s likely that those brands with the most effective influence strategies rather than the most effective control strategies will be the most successful.

Wednesday, September 9, 2009

Implications of Social Media

Specific genres of social media may come and go, but these underlying properties of Social Media are here to stay. Social network sites may end up being a fad from the first decade of the 21st century, but new forms of technology will continue to leverage social network as we go forward. One of the key challenges is learning how to adapt to an environment in which these properties and dynamics play a key role.

Properties of Social Media

1. Persistence. What you say sticks around. This is great for asynchronicity, not so great when everything you've ever said has gone down on your permanent record. The bits-wise nature of social media means that a great deal of content produced through social media is persistent by default.

2. Replicability. You can copy and paste a conversation from one medium to another, adding to the persistent nature of it. This is great for being able to share information, but it is also at the crux of rumor-spreading. Worse: while you can replicate a conversation, it's much easier to alter what's been said than to confirm that it's an accurate portrayal of the original conversation.

3. Searchability. But with social media, it's quite easy to track someone down or to find someone as a result of searching for content. Search changes the landscape, making information available at our fingertips. This is great in some circumstances, but when trying to avoid those who hold power over you, it may be less than ideal.

4. Scalability. Social media scales things in new ways. Conversations that were intended for just a friend or two might spiral out of control and scale to the entire school or, if it is especially embarrassing, the whole world. Of course, just because something can scale doesn't mean that it will. Politicians and marketers have learned this one the hard way.

5. (de)locatability. With the mobile, you are dislocated from any particular point in space, but at the same time, location-based technologies make location much more relevant. This paradox means that we are simultaneously more and less connected to physical space.

Tuesday, September 8, 2009

8 reasons for using Twitter.

After using twitter for some time, I found that it is very interesting and if used properly, it could definitely be a great social media too.

With twitter gaining popularity, the number of users greatly increased after celebrities start to use this social media platform. Some people get tired of twitter after a month and stop using while others continue to use it.

Many people ask, "What are people talking about on Twitter?" or "What's so interesting about micro-blogging?" Well the answers depend on the people you are following.

Enough said, I guess I don't have to explain what micro-blogging is about. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micro-blogging)

Micro-blogging is a form of multimedia blogging that allows users to send brief text updates or micromedia such as photos or audio clips and publish them, either to be viewed by anyone or by a restricted group which can be chosen by the user. These messages can be submitted by a variety of means, including text messaging, instant messaging, email, digital audio or the web.

The content of a micro-blog differs from a traditional blog in that it is typically smaller in actual size and aggregate file size. A single entry could consist of a single sentence or fragment or an image or a brief, ten second video. But, still, its purpose is similar to that of a traditional blog. Users micro-blog about particular topics that can range from the simple, such as "what one is doing at a given moment," to the thematic, such as "sports cars," to business topics, such as particular products. Many micro-blogs provide short commentary on a person-to-person level, share news about a company's products and services, or provide logs of the events of one's life.

Twitter defines micro-blogging and since July 2006, more and more people are on it, Twitter become a very powerful social media tool. Let me give you 6 reasons why you should Tweet!

1) Networking - You can find all sorts of people on twitter, and following the right group of people, and allowing people to follow you can allow you to build up a strong network of people that share similar interests. You can sometimes rely on the expertise of these people and as they come from varied backgrounds, having these people in your network is definitely great if you need to seek advice on a topic you do not understand.

2) Updated news - I could not believe how fast some of these news show up on twitter. Being on twitter, the news show up real time and unlike certain newspapers of news source, the current events you get from twitter is varied and may give you a very balanced or skewed new on a certain topic. I now get my news on twitter as some of the people I follow watch sports and tweet as the action is going on, and I get a really - real time report!

3) Friendship - Updating your status or what you are doing can allow you to stay connected with your friends and family. Reading about your friend's tweets about their newborn lets you stay in touch with them, even when you cannot be there. You can also make new friends, and people with similar interests.

4) Information - You definitely get a lot of information on twitter. News on google failing to buy twitter, and apple buying twitter, information on how to pick mangoes, and movie reviews. You can find almost everything on twitter. What's even better, you can post a question to your followers and sometimes they will reply you with a link of what you need!

5) Entertainment - There are tons of quotes, jokes and funny picture or video links. Endless entertainment on twitter. You can also follow celebrities and know what they are doing or are planning to do. Its fun!

6) Events and meet ups - Tweetups are getting more and more common, and it is quite funny that many people who are usually not social butterflies, fell more comfortable to come to a "TweetUp" or a twitter event to meet their fellow friends whom they have never met in real life on these events. It is a great way to go out and meet new people.

7) Job Search - In this financial crisis, any new source where you can find a job would be a bonus isn't it? Just do a #Jobs or #Job search with #location for more specific jobs.

8) Find someone to chat - It is easy to go to a trending topic of interest, find who is talking about it and start a chat. If you are bored or just need someone to talk to, there are always lots of people on twitter all the time.

-- Robin Low

http://www.facebook.com/digitalmediaacademy

Sunday, September 6, 2009

Popular Social Media tools

Blogging Tools

Commonly used blogging tools include Wordpress and Blogspot. Wordpress is also available as a module to be installed onto your webserver and you can host your own blogs.

Blogs are commonly used by individuals as a form of diary to share their personal experiences and feelings. However, more companies and online magazines use this today for their posting articles, reviews and their own branding purposes.

Microblogging

Twitter and Plurk are fast gaining popularity in the Social Media community. Microblogging is a form of blogging that is restricted to only 140 characters. People do not need to spend so much time following someone on his blog as now the messages are now only 140 characters long.

With proper use of links and hashtags, microblogging is definitely becoming a very viral form of Social Media with far reaching capabilities.

Media sharing tools

Flickr and Youtube are great resources to find photos and videos on a topic you are interested in. On Flickr, people put up pictures of travel locations and events to share it with their friends and sometimes the world.

On Youtube, you can find all sorts of videos that people upload into the Internet. You can find trailers, home movies, recorded parades, funny commercial and much more which can be a definite way to spend some time entertaining yourself.

Social Networking Sites

Facebook is a very big and popular Social Networking site. With more than 200 million users on Facebook, it is slowing becoming the most dominant Social Networking site. Facebook is a site that you can connect with friends and meet new friends, share photos, play games and organize events.

LinkedIn is a professional networking site where you can connect with your professional friends. You get to meet up with other people in similar industries and you can get introduction through your friends to others and you can give recommendation of your peers as well.



Wikis

A Wiki is a site that allows pooled knowledge about a topic that is contributed by the public. Wikipedia is a online encyclopedia which the public contributes information on everything.

When a topic is deemed too abstract and of no interest to a certain group of people, it is sometimes removed from Wikipedia, however many other people have setup wiki sites for topics for their own use, such as a wiki for a TV series or cartoon.

Forums

Online forums and bulletin boards are sites where users are allowed to register and post some discussion on a certain topic that is of interest to them. Other people with similar interest will post their replies and form a community to chat about their similar interests.

Virtual World

Second life is a good example of a virtual world. Usually, there is a subscription involved and you play a character in a world where you can interest with other players like you would in the real world.

MMO

Massively Multiplayer Online Games. Similar to virtual world, MMO allows players to control virtual characters to join in campaigns to complete quests or battle other factions. Unlike Virtual world where there is often just simple interactions, MMO involves more complex rules and character leveling up in skills and powers as they play along.

Network effects

Community managers and abuse teams have a sense of the health of a community. All sorts of tools are used to search for inappropriate behavior or content. But how successful are they? In a Friend-driven system, if someone is posting child porn, you better be paying detailed attention to that person's Friends. And if you want to curb problematic behavior, you need to think of the problem in terms of networks, not individuals. Further, while we all agree that killing off some behavior is an absolute imperative, what about the gray lines? The health of a community has a lot to do with its network and you can prune if you prune wisely. How can selective censorship done properly so that everyone can stay while they know that they can be banned for violating a certain code of conduct?

Network effects are also critical for deployment. People pick up the things that their friends use. This is all fine and well if everyone can get access to the same platform, but when that's not the case, new problems emerge. We're all developing nice new social technologies for the mobile phone. Even when people want those technologies, they aren't taking off. Why? There are no cluster effects. If you use IE and I use Firefox, we can still both get to Facebook. If you use Windows Mobile and I use an iPhone, the chances of us being able to do the same things with our devices are pretty limited. We can't role out cool new technologies if there are no cluster effects.

Saturday, September 5, 2009

Implications of Social Media

Specific genres of social media may come and go, but these underlying properties of Social Media are here to stay. Social network sites may end up being a fad from the first decade of the 21st century, but new forms of technology will continue to leverage social network as we go forward. One of the key challenges is learning how to adapt to an environment in which these properties and dynamics play a key role.

Properties of Social Media

1. Persistence. What you say sticks around. This is great for asynchronicity, not so great when everything you've ever said has gone down on your permanent record. The bits-wise nature of social media means that a great deal of content produced through social media is persistent by default.

2. Replicability. You can copy and paste a conversation from one medium to another, adding to the persistent nature of it. This is great for being able to share information, but it is also at the crux of rumor-spreading. Worse: while you can replicate a conversation, it's much easier to alter what's been said than to confirm that it's an accurate portrayal of the original conversation.

3. Searchability. But with social media, it's quite easy to track someone down or to find someone as a result of searching for content. Search changes the landscape, making information available at our fingertips. This is great in some circumstances, but when trying to avoid those who hold power over you, it may be less than ideal.

4. Scalability. Social media scales things in new ways. Conversations that were intended for just a friend or two might spiral out of control and scale to the entire school or, if it is especially embarrassing, the whole world. Of course, just because something can scale doesn't mean that it will. Politicians and marketers have learned this one the hard way.

5. (de)locatability. With the mobile, you are dislocated from any particular point in space, but at the same time, location-based technologies make location much more relevant. This paradox means that we are simultaneously more and less connected to physical space.

Those five properties are intertwined, but their implications have to do with the ways in which they alter social dynamics. Let's look at the different dynamics that have been reconfigured as a result of social media.

1. Invisible Audiences. We are used to being able to assess the people around us when we're speaking. We adjust what we're saying to account for the audience. Social media introduces all sorts of invisible audiences. There are lurkers who are present at the moment but whom we cannot see, but there are also visitors who access our content at a later date or in a different environment than where we first produced them. As a result, we are having to present ourselves and communicate without fully understanding the potential or actual audience. The potential invisible audiences can be stifling. Of course, there's plenty of room to put your head in the sand and pretend like those people don't really exist.

2. Collapsed Contexts. Connected to this is the collapsing of contexts. In choosing what to say when, we account for both the audience and the context more generally. Some behaviors are appropriate in one context but not another, in front of one audience but not others. Social media brings all of these contexts crashing into one another and it's often difficult to figure out what's appropriate, let alone what can be understood.

3. Blurring of Public and Private. Finally, there's the blurring of public and private. These distinctions are normally structured around audience and context with certain places or conversations being "public" or "private." These distinctions are much harder to manage when you have to contend with the shifts in how the environment is organized.

The Internet has long been able to search for people, places and companies. With the introduction of social media, this way in which people can be searched are further enhanced and frankly, a little scary at times. We need to realize that whenever we use the Internet, we share a bit of ourselves whether we like it or not.

Some companies have an illusion of control when they only participate in traditional media. Losing control is a primary reason stated by brands who are unwilling to open themselves up to the conversation – and a major reason why most continue to use social media as little more than a brochure on the web. And yet the illusion of control is just that – an illusion. By not involving yourself you actually do more to remove control than if you did.

In traditional marketing and brand management you set out the position you want to take, the message you want to get through and then you put it out there. You feel in control because you’ve lined up your one-way communications and in a vacuum everything appears to line up.

Combine this with your brand tracking research, which abstracts the consumer response, and you create a feedback loop where your marketing activities and your market research self-reinforce the illusion. And yet under these circumstances you have, and have always had, precisely zero control over what people think and how they will respond to you.

The reality is that great branding has always been about influence and not control – influencing consumer choices and desires in a manner conducive to your goals and their satisfaction.

In today’s world, the way to achieve this is not through bigger advertising budgets or better creative, but through involvement – first by observing the conversation and then by involving yourself in it. As a result, it’s likely that those brands with the most effective influence strategies rather than the most effective control strategies will be the most successful.

Thursday, September 3, 2009

Reasons to use Twitter

Networking - You can find all sorts of people – both locally and internationally on twitter, and following the right group of people, and allowing people to follow you, can allow you to build up a strong network of people that share similar interests. On Twitter, you can NETWORK and NETWORK FAST. You can sometimes rely on the expertise of these people and as they come from varied backgrounds, having these people in your network is definitely great if you need to seek advice on a topic you do not understand. Networks – Social media allows networks that share common interests to form and communicate effectively and quickly.


Updated news – Speed of news on twitter almost unbelievable. Being on twitter, the news show up real time and unlike restricted by news source, the current events you get from twitter is varied and may give you a very balanced or skewed views on a certain topic. Real time Connectivity – Social media thrives on connecting people, allowing people to share their experiences on the web and add their comments and links to related topics.


Relationships - Updating your status or what you are doing can allow you to stay connected with your network and friends. Reading about your friend's tweets about their updates allows you to continuously remain in touch with the ground despite your physical presence may not be there. You can also bridge and foster new relationships wirelessly and effortlessly.


Information - You definitely get a lot of information on twitter –even learn something new. News on “Google failing to buy twitter”, and “Apple buying twitter”, information on how to pick mangoes, and movie reviews. You can find almost everything on twitter. What is even better is that you can post a question or poll to your followers and get instant feedback on them. Direct responses makes twitter a very attractive tool for many.


Entertainment – People are attracted to twitter for all kinds of reasons and the most important of them all is… fun. There are tons of quotes, jokes and funny picture or video links. Endless entertainment on twitter. You can also follow celebrities and know what they are doing or are planning to do.


Alerts on Upcoming Events - Twitter acts as a platform for many social groups, organizations and businesses to promote upcoming events in particular seminars and big parties. You might even get to meet your followers at those events.


Talk to someone - If you’re down or need someone to talk to, Twitter might well be what you need. No matter what time it is, there will always be someone, somewhere in the world who is awake and ready to hear you out.


Share emotions or “off your mind thoughts” - Just got a new gadget and can’t wait to show it off? Met the most unreasonable shop assistant and need somewhere to vent your frustrations? Got some sort of enlightenment on the train and just need to share it? In 140 characters each time, you can do all that. Share your “at the moment” emotions and thoughts on Twitter.


Job Search - In this financial crisis, Twitter transform itself into a new source where you can find a job, attracting a new group of previously non-social media savvy users to join the network. Simply do a #Jobs or #Job search with #location for more specific jobs.

Wednesday, September 2, 2009

Twitter Power

Twitter is growing to be a very powerful business tool. It helps business share, connect and research information on their customers and the current trend. So are you a tweeter yet?

A tweetname or a tweeter user name is preceded by the symbol @, and my my tweeter name is @dmediaacademy.

Leveraging Twitter as a Business Tool
Like the past when presence on the web is important, the presence on Twitter and other Social Networking platforms is very essential. Your presence on Twitter is also part of your brand and choosing the right name for your twitter account now becomes essential as it is your "face" on social networking.

Using Twitter as part of your marketing strategy.
How do you translate your time spent on PR and marketing on Twitter for Market Returns?
--Understanding Twitter.
As far as I can understand, there are a few kinds of followers on Twitter, one which will follow you when you follow them, they are all about the numbers game. And the other kind of follower, one that is really interested in what you have to say.

If you are looking to build broad reach as part of your thought leadership/influencing strategy, then I’m perfectly agreeable to obsessing about the number of followers I have, however if you want have a group of followers who would read your tweets and propagate them, you will need to spend time and know about your followers.

Your activity on twitter is building your brand, (140 words limit) a tweet at a time.
Remember, you are limited by the number of characters, so tweet carefully. It takes a lot of planning to get a successful tweet campaign going. Your activity, tweeting and re-tweeting is literally building your brand. Read and view the links before you re-tweet as it takes more time to troubleshoot a bad tweet.

For the 140 characters limit, fortunately there are url shorteners such as tinyurl and bit.ly to make the long extensions, manageable.

Tweet frequency is hard to manage. If you tweet to frequently, or have too many "ad-like" tweets, some of your followers may not like it and will unfollow. If you tweet too little, you may not be optimizing the opportunity to reach out to potential followers.

It is recommended by Gurus that you tweet at least once a day, retweeting interesting or inspiring stories and share useful information.

Focus on connecting with your followers as this new media is based on networks and it should be used less like a "broadcasting" channel. Follow your genuine followers, connect with them and learn their needs and the trends.

Try twitter out, it fun, its new and its here to stay.

Be patient and wait for results!

-Digital Media Academy

Introduction to Social Media

Introduction to Social Media

The Internet brings about many advances in how people communicate. Today, sharing knowledge and information is a very common thing. By sharing experiences, groups of people with similar interests can participate and contribute to make an idea better.

From the idea of open-sourced software, many great products came from jointly sharing codes, information and knowledge. When people started to expand on this similar idea, they participate with stories, jokes and experiences. By joining forums and different online groups, communities and networks are formed. People can find other folks with similar interests, meet up or even jointly work on a projects when they are miles apart. Isn’t this great?

Social media is not new. Media has been leveraged for sociable purposes since the caveman's walls. Even in the realm of the Internet, some of the first applications were framed around communication and sharing. For decades, we've watched the development of new genres of social media - MUDs/MOOs, instant messaging, chatrooms, bulletin boards, etc.

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What is Social Media?

Social media is the latest buzzword in a long line of buzzwords. Academics still tend to prefer terms like "computer-mediated communication" or "computer-supported cooperative work" to describe the practices that emerge from these tools some might even categorize these tools as "group work" tools. Social media is driven by another buzzword: "user-generated content" or content that is contributed by participants rather than editors. So besides being a buzzword, what exactly is social media?

“Social Media is a group of online media which has the following characteristics.”

Participation – Social media encourages participation and feedback from everyone who is interested, the kind of audience participation blurs the line between media and audience.

Networks – Social media allows networks that share common interests to form and communicate effectively and quickly.

Two-way communication – Social media is a new way of communication which content is distributed by audience, unlike traditional broadcast media, it allows user comments during transmission.

Connectivity – Social media thrives on connecting people, allowing people to share their experiences on the web and add their comments and links to related topics.

Open source – Social media is open to feedback and participation. It encourages voting, sharing and comments and it frowns upon restrictive barriers like passwords.