Tag Archives: Social Networks
Compelling Social Media Communication (Viva the Internet)
One of the many reasons to be passionate about the Internet, and to defend it from politicians who want to curtail it, is its capacity to be a great democratic leveler. Social media tools, with their potential reach limited only by language and access to an internet connection, provide a megaphone for the little guy to be heard as never before.
Dave Carroll’s video United Breaks Guitars on YouTube is the social media case study de rigueur, a not too subtle warning to companies that they ignore the power of bottom up communication at their own peril.
Carroll’s video, 11 million views to date, resonates in part due to its authenticity, its sincerity. Carroll demonstrates that effective communication on a shoestring budget is indeed possible using social media channels.
United breaks guitars
Naturally social network sites like Twitter, Facebook and Google+ have each done their part in spreading his message by virtual word of mouth.
Search engine visibility: one more reason to participate in social networks
The modern plazas online are arguably social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, Friendfeed, Google+ and, particularly for those selling to other companies, LinkedIn. But before a company decides to dedicate time and resources to preside over social networks, not to mention the definition of necessary processes and metrics, there are a number of advantages and disadvantages worth assessing.
Social network pros and cons
The most evident disadvantage to social network participation are the predictable expenses, such as allocating people and investing in training to avoid getting off on the wrong foot. Social network participation will also require some changes to internal processes – such as integration of social media activity with sales and service departments, and the development of policies regarding the usage of social media by employees and associates. In assessing the benefits, there are the obvious ones, like increased customer visibility and an increase in virtual word of mouth promotion. There is also the opportunity to participate in discussions which are already happening about company products and services. Discussions taking place in the online plaza can be very useful not just to understand what is important to customers, but also to welcome suggestions from customers and potential customers. Another advantage to social media participation which is easy to overlook is the increased visibility it brings to a company and its products and services in search engines like Google and Bing.
Insert proper links in the website box on your Facebook profile
Have you ever wondered how to insert a proper link in the Website box on your Facebook profile? Not just a raw URL, but a URL with user-friendly clickable text?
Don’t bother trying normal html, it doesn’t work.
The solution is actually rather trivial. Just enter each link URL followed by its associated anchor text, one per line, i.e.
http://antezeta.com/news/ Web Marketing News & Views
https://plus.google.com/109425077132341219276 Google+
https://www.facebook.com/sean.carlos Facebook Profile
You should then see something like this
Currently there seems to be a limit of 6 websites.
Google+ data liberation: a promise not yet fulfilled
Ever notice how MS Office can import umpteen different document formats but export options are pretty much limited to Microsoft formats (by the way, rtf is a Microsoft format)? This is by design. Smart companies have realized that data is an asset, to use strategically, including as a barrier to keep customers from jumping to the competition.
Why data portability does really matter
The ability to transfer data from one application to another, data portability, is becoming an issue for users on the social web as they try to find the social and business contacts they cultivated on one social site on other social websites. Contacts accumulated in Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+ and similar sites don’t happen by chance. They’re the fruit of socializing with friends and professional networking over time: activity such as photographing the moment, speaking at conferences, contributing at barcamps, and, why not, just being simpatico. Activities people do, not Facebook, not LinkedIn, not Google+. A social website is just a container, albeit a significant container. If a user has worked hard to fill the container, they should be able to transfer their contents, at will. That includes priceless contact information which has been shared with them. The user shouldn’t be locked into the container.
Google Friend Connect, social web tools worth another look
While Facebook captures the hearts and minds of many internet navigators (around 600 million users as of January 2011), Google has been been working on its version of the social web, releasing a myriad of services which facilitate social interaction on the web. Some, such as buzz, were ill-conceived and justly lambasted on their release. Yet others, like Google Friend Connect (GFC), probably haven’t gotten the attention they deserve. Google’s Friend Connect offers a broad set of basic functionality to support the creation and nurturing of a website community.
Google is more social than one might think – now if they could only coordinate the pieces
Sometimes its easy to overlook how social Google has become – from Google Social Search which gives results from a user’s social circle more prominent display to Google Friend Connect which provides building blocks to make any website social.
What becomes clear after perusing the list of Google social web tools is that Google seems to be missing a central activity hub such as… Facebook. With the launch of Google Buzz Google tried address this problem by transforming Gmail into their social hub but that effort predictably fell flat.
Google CEO Larry Page tied 2011 bonuses to the success of Google’s social strategy but will bonuses stimulate a and execute a coherent social strategy?
| Google Social | Google Description | Date released | Date closed | Notes | Video | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 | Click +1 to publicly give something your stamp of approval. Your +1′s can help friends, contacts, and others on the web find the best stuff when they search. | 2011-03-30 | Used in discussion lists as approval shorthand | video |
How to painlessly import contacts in Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other social sites
It happens to every company and / or professional which wants to promote their products and services on social networks: they are asked to permit the social network to access a contact list in order to find contacts which are already on the social network and to invite others to join them on the social network. A find contacts feature can be an excellent opportunity to quickly grow presence and influence on a social network, but it is also a process that contains many potential pitfalls. The sections that follow consider some of the most important traps and look at how the use of a temporary webmail mailbox can help in avoiding many problems.
Become my friend, at least on Facebook
For a long time I’ve resisted the tempation to create a profile in Facebook – one can’t be everywhere, no? (Andrey Golub being the exception!)
Certainly there aren’t a lack of places online to find business partners.
However, I recently received an e-mail from an American woman I met at a meet-up of SEO (search engine optimization) Professionals in Manchester, England. In essence, she refused my invitation for LinkedIn, saying that she is already in Facebook, and for now, that’s enough.
Adding to this, Microsoft is buying a piece of Facebook for a significant amount of money; maybe its time to answer the messages in my Inbox with the subject “I’ve added you as a friend on Facebook”.
Social media to solar power: RomagnaCamp offered it all
Fresh back from this weekend’s RomagnaCamp, I’m taking a brief break from a “posting hiatus” to report on the event.
After a quick touristic visit to Ravenna on Friday, I caught the bus for Marina Romea. This turned out to be auspicious as I was able to met Giuseppe Lamuraglia of e-net, a company which distributes small solar energy power supplies. Italy has a strong history of renewable energy generation; it was the first to generate electricity from geothermal energy in 1904.
Friday afternoon was dedicated to informal discussions (including wind power with Marco Fabbri) just meters from the beach – a nice transition from the summer holidays. The weather was appropriately windy; despite the sun, most of us were under-dressed.
Notable presentations on Saturday included Nicola Mattina on defining social media, a fairly balanced look at Marketing in Second Life and Lawyer Antonino Attanasio on Informatica e diritto: casi e questioni. Livia Iacolare was probably the best speaker, presenting the soon to open Italian edition of Intruders.tv.
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