Timothy Carter

Social Media is a growing part of business for any business large or small. From having a Facebook brand page, tweeting on Twitter, showing off amazing videos on YouTube, to having a presence on Google+, social media marketing is a part of daily business activities. The amazing peeps over at Flowtown and Column Five Media take a look at the different social media sites and provide some of the lingo used in each community. A nifty little social media cheat sheet for those who want to get started.

(Source: Flowtown.)

Tweet This Post

The social media changes in 2011 were swift and continually evolving month after month for Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube and the new entry, Google+.

With all the changes, Bluepost Digital created a great social media infographic of all the changes in 2011 with this timeline.

Tweet This Post

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Jeff_Herring

Tweet This Post

What is Social Media?

What is Social Media Marketing?

Let’s take a look at both.

Let’s put them in terms that will be easy to understand.

Social Media is “internet real estate” that is a collection of internet sites that have social functions on the site that allow people to:

1) Communicate with each other.

2) Develop New Relationships and join communities like facebook, LinkedIn, twitter, and Myspace.

3) Connect with people with the same interests and discover many new ideas and possibilities.

4) Share their thoughts, pictures, videos and ideas.

5) Grow in a manner socially that they may have never had the chance to do before.

Social Media sites, or Web 2.0 as it is also known, is a powerful system of Connection that allows people to Connect, Construct, and Converse on many levels in the Social media-sphere.

There are many ways to do this.

CONNECT.

You can connect on just about any level with blogs, wikis, social
networking sites, micro blogging sites, news sites, social bookmarking
sites, and podcast and LIVE streaming video sites.

The list is endless.

You can CONNECT via personal emails, writing on social pages, and
even joining groups and commneting on blogs. It is truly amazing what
the Social Media arena offers the Professional as well as the person
that just like the idea of connecting with others.

CONSTRUCT.

You can Construct new friendships and new relationships with social
media. You can do this by “be-friending” people and joining their
“circle of Influence” which allows you to contact their friends as well
and ask permission to become their friends too. This gives you the
ability to Construct a solid online friendship that many times is tkakn
offline and what we call “localized.” You can meet them in your own
town if that is where they live.

CONVERSE.

Conversation is one of the main keys to Social Media. Talking to
people that you know- and people that you barely know- about what they
want to talk about as well as yourself. You do this with many different
tools- such as blogs, posts, direct messages, notes to people, audio
and videos posted, as well as plain old email through the social site
system- like what the social media site Facebook has.

Conversation is the key to contributing to the community. And there is a secret to the process:

TALK ABOUT THEM!

And share with your friends new ideas and possibilities that you think are of Value. You do this with “tweets” from twitter, “notes” from facebook, “vids” from Youtube, podcasts from mp3s, and emails from LinkedIn.

There are currently over 3,500 social sites- and growing. These
sites offer hundreds of millions of people that have joined them, and
thus hundreds of millions of possible new connections and conversations.

The 4 “Social Media Platforms” ™ for Social Media are:

1) Social Networking Sites: like facebook, Plaxo, Myspace, LinkedIn, Friendster, and Black planet.

2) Video and audio sites- like Youtube, Revver, Metacafe, and Godtube- plus podcasts sites like Podcast alley.

3) Blogging and Text sites- like Wordpress, Blogger, Typepad, Twitter, and Squarespace.

4) Social Bookmarking Sites- like Digg, Reddit, Mixx, and Stumbleupon.

And what new software developments are coming in the future?

Many are on the drawing board, and we will see new sites popping up daily.

The MAIN reason that I see that Social Sites are so popular is the CONNECTION factor to:

People.
New ideas.
Possibilities.
Entertainment.
Education.
Marketing.

What is Social Media Marketing?

It is the process of engaging Social Media sites for Branding, Messaging, Teaching, Exposing, and Connecting to possible new prospects for the product and business.

It is different though than traditional marketing, as traditional
marketing relies on linear communication and where the corporation
determines the market flow.

In social media, the communication is less linear, and the social
community determines much of the market flow. Right now, over 50% of
all Fortune 500 companies are using social media for their business.

Impressive.

And it is growing.

Social Media is perfect for Marketing in 3 ways:

1) Getting your Brand known and exposed to a whole new grouping of people.

2) Using it to Communicate with your prospects and current customers- for customer support and product info.

3) Building new Relationships with other businesses and
people to create a community that shares the enthusiasm for your
products and business that you do.

Social Media and Social Media Marketing is
in it’s infancy and will be for a few more years, as it morphs and
continues to transform into something that has yet to be seen. many are
saying that Social Media will take over traditional media. That has yet
to be seen, but the possibility is there for sure in the future for Social Media Marketing .

blessings…Doug Firebaugh
PassionFire Training
Follow Doug on Twitter

Editor’s note: this post was written by Doug Firebaugh of PassionFire International. If you’re passionate about social media, social media marketing and social networking lifestyle design, contact me about writing an article yourself.

Tweet This Post

Image by Titanas via Flickr

For the last month I’ve been meaning to write a post about the “fragile state” of building your social network following, but Sunday night brought it into acute focus. I became a living example of what can happen with human error and not having ownership of a social network can potentially do to you and your business building activities.

July 5th was a beautiful Sunday here in Seattle. Enjoying the Independence Day holiday weekend with my wife. We just got home from a tasty lunch eating some freshly caught crab. Walked through my organic garden beds to check on how our 9 different types of tomato plants were doing in the 90 degree weather. Life was good…until I sat down and checked my Twitter profile, @TimothyCarter.

I found a not so cool pink box above my Twitter stream saying my account had been suspended and was being investigated for strange activity! Whaaattt?

Apparently while I was gone, Twitter had experienced a massive spammer attack which then resulted in their system suspending hundreds, if not thousands of legitimate tweeters like myself and my buddy Mari Smith. Mari shared her experience in her post, Lessons Learned From Temporary Twitter Suspension.

Since January 2008, I have been an active member of Twitter and have organically growing a following of active tweeters that have now exceeded 17,000 super cool people! I was in shock to find my account to be locked. So I hopped over to my 2nd favorite social networking site, Facebook to see what was going on and learned I was one of growing group of people in the same situation. Conversations on my wall & Mari Smith’s wall was filled with confusion and frustration about what was going on. That got me back to Twitter to start tweeting from another Twitter profile I keep to retain my name on Twitter: @TimCarter about it.

Next thing you know, Mashable has posted about the Twitter account suspension confusion.

A couple hours later, Twitter let everyone know via their status.twitter.com blog that the mass of mistakenly suspended Twitter accounts was due to a human error. Not only was it human error but it was a newbie at Twitter who had the power to screw up a lot of people’s accounts! WOW!

Twitter right now is a HOT place to network online. But it is just one place and one piece to your social media marketing success. It’s important to have a personal presence on Facebook, have a complete and fully functioning Facebook fanpage. Don’t forget you should be active on places like LinkedIn and if you’re doing videos, YouTube as well. You need to be well rounded in your social networking activities and visibile where people are.

Now here is the point of what I teach people who are building their business via social media networking. You have NO CONTROL over your Twitter account, your Facebook profile or wherever you spend quality time building a presence in the myriad of social networking sites. At a whim, or accidental button click, your account can be deleted or suspended. You lose EVERYTHING you’ve built at those communities.

Yes, you need to focus on building your “brand” in these social networking communities & connect with individuals there…BUT, your long term focus and the goal of social networking is to bring people to your social media hub…your blog/website. Your social media home should be where you keep your growing list of raving fans…your social media tribe should be growing there. They should be subscribing to your RSS feed, subscribing to your email list…it is where you have control!

So if you’ve been too focused on building your Twitter following number or trying to max out your 5000 friends on Facebook, you need to change that focus. You never know when the moment can happen where you completely lose your presence on these social networking sites.

What would you do if you did lose your Twitter or Facebook account? Would your business be crippled? How long would it take to rebuild it all over again? Just something to think about.

Tweet This Post