Twitter – A New Frontier

Twitter is a micro-blogging tool designed to share short messages with people who follow another person. Users can share anything that they can say in 140 characters. Twitter can be an effective tool for sending out quick messages to clients, prospects, and friends. In this article I will look at some popular ways to use Twitter and show their value in business, I will also show some areas where Twitter does not work so well in a business environment.

Twitter is a wonderful tool for sending out updates about things that a business is doing or a new article that has been posted. Updates should be no more than a couple times per-day or these updates because overwhelming to many users. Personally I try to twitter no more than once per-day.

There are many users of Twitter that like to update with every new project they start, food they eat or place that they go. For some this is fun and may even work for some businesses to draw attention. I know personally I can’t follow that much information about anyone during my work day. If we are going to make the Internet a productivity gain we cannot be distracted by constant updates by other users. I like what a user named heathr said “Hoping twitter's 900% growth isn't just one really ADD social media marketing person.”

You can easily create a chain of tweets (messages on Twitter) by adding a # and then a unique code. For example if you will be at a conference and want to let people make live comments about the conference you could have #conference and then follow that. Some conference are even encouraging this and announcing the feed at the conference. These are called hash codes.

Internet radio host like Susan Kildahl use Twitter to communicate with people during their shows. Many news shows on TV are letting viewers use Twitter to communicate with anchors. You can use hash codes to communicate with others but also if you go to someone’s Twitter page you can reply to their post. For example if you reply to me it would say @denverdataan.

Part of trying to use new technologies like Twitter is taking risks. Denver DataMan had a Twitter Sale where I asked users to reply to my tweet to get a very special sale. This did not work too well but that does not mean it could not work well for others.

Twitter’s phenomenal growth gives business an opportunity to try and use Twitter to make the most of the Internet. Reply and share your success stories or challenges.

Pay Attention to Blogging

In the past two posts I have written about getting people to pay attention I have written about social networking where sort blasts of information are the way you get people’s attention. We will go back to that next week with Twitter but for this week I am writing about Blogs where we share several paragraphs of content and sometimes more with our readers. Blog stand for Web Log and it is good to think of it as a place to log activity and share thoughts.

In the article we are going to address using blogs for small business. There are blogs for politics, cooking, medicine, news, sports, and almost anything else you can imagine. If someone does it they have probably blogged about it. To get an idea of what is out there Technorati and Ice Rocket are great places to search. Social Bookmarking sites like Digg and Del.icio.us can help you see what content is popular.

Rather than try and dance around the issue of what should be in a blog for your small business and what should not I will give you the tool I use. Will my readers care? If I cannot answer in the affirmative than there is no reason for me to post. Just because you can post about what you ate for dinner does not make it relevant to my readers, now if you are a personal chef and you just made the best Salmon and mustard sauce that you want your readers to know you can make for them then this is a perfectly relevant post.

There are many tools to help you blog and some of them pug directly in your website like Ballet Nouveau Colorado, in Broomfield or you can have your blog be on a separate site like the Denver DataMan blog you are reading. There are lots of blog sites that bring together many well known or talented bloggers like Examiner.com that has many topics Eric Elkins an accomplished blogger and owner of WideFoc.us a social media strategies company. Eric writes as the Internet Business Examiner. When considering the placement of your blog consider who will read it, why they will read it, when they will read it, if only one person will write on it or if many users will share in the writing.

If you are going to start a blog make sure you have the time to commit to keeping it up to date. I am not perfect about this are there are times I go two weeks without posting and then post three times in a week, but the better you can be about regular posting the more you will get people coming to look for your posts or RSSing your posts for future reading.

If you are not ready to blog a good way to get started is to read others blogs and make comments. Blogs are designed to be replied to. Good blog authors do not sensor appropriate material even if it argues with their point. Our goal is to Join a Conversation and encourage others to interact, share our blog with others and keep your message flowing. With social networking and social bookmarking your blog can become a hit very quickly. Tools like Nielsen’s Blog Pulse help you track where your blog is linked to or forwarded.

The two most important things you can take away from this is that when you blog you need to do so consistently and always ask yourself will my users care.

Next we I will write about Micro Blogging using twitter and how all of these social media technologies can come together to help you make your small business thrive. Also consider attending the Denver DataMan March Social Networking Seminar series.

Developing Relationships With LinkedIn

LinkedIn is the shirt and tie venue of social networking. It is relatively formal and designed to be corporate/business like. It is not for everyone. LinkedIn is a place to cultivate relationships and share information on a professional level. To get a more detailed picture of how LinkedIn fits with other networks see Mapping the Networks and you can also look at the Denver DataMan LinkedIn Dictionary.

LinkedIn is a great way to connect with people in your industry, your school, your Chamber of Commerce, your clubs, Fraternal organizations, etc. it is not the place to connect with people who like the ABC hit Lost. I guess, it would be possible to have the business owners who like Lost group but this type of group lends itself to the more laid back nature of Facebook. Groups give you a way to connect with people who are like yourself or are seeking your service.

LinkedIn Answers is my favorite part of LinkedIn. With LinkedIn answers users post questions that they have about almost any area of business or technology and then get answers from people who just want to help and get their name out there. You can get business by being seen as the expert but don’t write that you sell the answer. The best way to use LinkedIn answers is to write quality answers and get the question asker to mark your answer as the best answer. You can also get valuable answers for yourself using this tool.

Each person who has worked extensively with LinkedIn will have a different view on the quality vs. quantity debate. I put myself squarely in the quality camp and believe that LinkedIn works best as a tool to enhance existing relationships or to start new ones with introductions. LinkedIn does not work well for hard selling at all or for blast messaging; it just does not fit the culture of the network.

If you are someone who is a public figure and you are expected to “link” with everyone, you should do this and you will need to consider your spheres of influences and expectations by others when making your plan of action for using LinkedIn.

The top 10 things you can do with LinkedIn

1. Connect with people who you know like and trust in your business community

2. Fill out enough information in your profile that people finding you can learn new information about you and understand why you are an expert in your field

3. Write recommendations that show that you care

4. Avoid the hard sell

5. Answer questions on LinkedIn answers to share your expertise

6. Join groups that relate to your industry, organizations and passions

7. Only share information that you would share with your most distant clients (content on a social network should be able to be posted on the Interstate)

8. Use applications to enhance your profile like the Amazon application to share books you are reading in your field

9. Add events to the events directory – as the events directory becomes more know it will become more valuable

10. Avoid excessive blast mailings to your connections and groups

Use these tips and you will start to make LinkedIn an effective tool.

Library Resources

I meet with Donna Keslin at the Kollbel Library to learn about business resources at the library and in the Arapahoe Library District. We looked a two databases that are worth a great deal to businesses that make the most of them. Business Decisions gives you amazing amounts of data about individuals and their demographics and spending habit's. You can also use the ReferenceUSA database to get names and addresses of businesses and individuals the meet the criteria that you find in Business Decisions. You can get help with these resources from Denver DataMan or in weekly classes at Kollbel.

Developing Relationships With LinkedIn

If you are a regular reader of my blog you know that I was supposed to post a LinkedIn article. Regrettably, this article is not yet done and will be posted soon. Please come back soon.

Facebook – Business Tool or Business Toy?

In my article Attention – The New Currency I told readers that I would outline technologies that are available for them to try and get the attention of readers, customers, prospects, supporters, the media and others. I am going to paint with a narrower brush than to just cover social networking and focus this week on Facebook. Next week I will cover LinkedIn, followed by blogging and then Twitter.

As you read through this article you can find definitions for terms about Facebook at the Denver DataMan Facebook Dictionary.

Facebook is designed to be very casual and laid back. Facebook is geared at business to consumer relationships but more and more business to business relationships are being fostered using Facebook. If your business is not compatible with being laid back and having some fun with the work you do Facebook is not the place to be. If you think your business does not have the compatibility you might want to reconsider changing this given that fostering relationships is critical to success and we do businesses with people and firms we like.

Mike Hanbery is Owner & Chief Business Development Officer of Hanbery & Hanbery . Mike uses Facebook for business and helps drive traffic to his company and other social media projects that he does like his blog The Holistic Interconnectedness of All Things.

Hanbery & Hanbery that has a page for theeir accounting and business consulting firm so that they have another channel to reach people who they want to meet. Many of their clients and prospects come through the South Metro Chamber of Commerce who is helping people connected with Facebook and other services. Experience Pros is another SMCC company that is using Facebook to promote their business to business events.

If you are have a storefront then Facebook is another place to put up your hours and drive traffic. Cartridge World of Englewood is doing this well. If you are a restaurant or club build a following and send out specials. If you are an artist, like musician Julie Geller you should have a page to excite your fans and share music samples with them.

Facebook does not lend itself to selling. Social media in general lends itself to the idea that people will see your name and be reminded of you or you will post something that resonates and keeps you top of mind. Hard selling does not work unless you are buying ads (a post for another day). In all things we do with social media we are trying to pull people in not push information to them.

One way to passively remind and inspire is to change your status message to talk about what you are doing or drive people to a new project.

Example:

If you have interesting ideas on using Facebook, post them here and share.

Given that I started using Facebook before I had a business and before business was being done using Facebook it has been very hard for me to transition to using Facebook for business. This is a big challenge for people in their 20’s and early 30’s who have started connecting on social networks for purely social uses and are now being asked to use them for work. All users should be aware that if you would not put something on an I-25 Billboard you should not put it on Facebook or other social networks. If you are wondering if you should post something or not than it is probably best that you not.

Facebook can be a great business tool to stay connected with their supporters. If you like this article become a fan of Denver DataMan on Facebook. Next week I will talk about ways to use LinkedIn to gain attention.