A couple of years ago Social Media and Social Networking website where more commonly known as Web 2.0. Web 2.0 was associated with web applications the end user was able to customise and share information with one another. More commonly know these days as Social Media and the top players are Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and long list of many others.

Social Media has rapidly expanded in the last few years, and more and more businesses are seeing the potential of expanding their marketing strategies to include Social Media platforms.

So, what do you do? You hire a Social Media Manager. Or do you? Perhaps we should take a closer look at Social Media first, to determine what the fundamental factors of social media are. Well actually we don’t need to do that either. If you have a marketing strategy, then I’m sure you have a marketing manager, and a customer service manager? Am I right? I’m sure I am! In any marketing strategy the principles are the same regardless of what platform your are using to market your product or service. The most important part is to listen to your customers, and provide what they need using clever marketing ideas that are fun, interactive and capture the audiences imagination.

If you customer service manager does not know how to use Twitter or Facebook, send them on a training course, or get them to figure it out for themselves – it’s not that difficult and it will save you a lot of money if you have a small marketing budget. If you have a large marketing budget and still want to employ a Social Media Manager, please do not hesitate to contact us.

Let me ask a question?

Would you leave you front door open, let anyone you do not know walk into your house, walk around uninhibited accessing everything in your house like:

• Photographs of your children?
• Your date of birth?
• You Social Security of National Insurance No?
• Your email address?
• Your telephone number?
• Enough information about yourself to obtain all the above?
• Where you work?
• Where your children go to school?

I hear you say, ‘no’?

Then why do you do it on the Internet?!

I have seen over the years, countless examples of people not securing their data. Is common sense dead? RIP common sense!

Everything you write on Social Networking website is accessible to everyone who has access to the Internet unless you SECURE IT. Close the door and lock it. You would not let someone in your house who you did not know or trusted. Do the same on the Internet!

Facebook is the most talked about web service, social media, and marketing tool around on the Internet. In Facebooks infancy, the social networking site is what the word described it as; a networking tool for friends to share information, photo and keep in touch with each other. As social networking has moved forward, Facebook has become a tool for marketing, branding, companies, products, and promotions. In addition, Facebook is also an efficient tool in marketing yourself. If you have a business, product, service or a branding and you need to get the word out, let’s take a look at how you can use Facebook to help promote your brand. At this point, it may be worth mentioning that you will need a Facebook account to progress. If you don’t already have an account, why not pop over to Facebook, set one up, and then come back and read on.

1. Personal Desktop:

Think of Facebook as your own personal desktop that everyone else can see on the Internet. Can you remember a time when you’ve walked passed a colleague’s desk and seen how they have configured their desk in a particular way? Maybe they have pictures of friends and family; a mug of their favourite football team; a picture on the wall of  a destination they would like to visit? Perhaps they have a book or magazine that was waiting to be read at lunch-time, or an open address book with contact information. All of these things give you a tangible sample of that person’s life, and Facebook is no different. Facebook is an information snapshot of someone’s life and to use Facebook as a professional tool, you can adapt a Facebook profile to market yourself or your brand. Only display the information on your Facebook profile that you’d display on your desk that everyone else can see. You would not want to display your personal home telephone for anyone to see, or a picture of you drunk after a fun night out. Only post information that you want clients to see and is relevant to your marketing goals.

2. Adding Individuals:

Look for clients, customers and old acquaintances that you know who would be interested in your marketing pitch. In turn, if they like what they see, they may become a customer or even share your brand with friends and colleagues of their own. Be selective with whom you send friends request to. You don’t want to spam people that you know or annoy potential new customers. Contrary to popular belief, Facebook isn’t about collecting friends. In a professional environment, whether you are marketing yourself or a brand, quality is more important than quantity. You can create a limited profile for individuals who you are unsure about, and open the full profile for individuals that you already know, and would welcome your invitation.

3. Applications:

Facebook has thousands of applications to install on your profile that will make your profile more functional as a professional tool, and help you organise tasks. Ten useful applications can be found here. This is not so useful if you intend your Facebook profile to be used for marketing a brand.

4. News Feeds:

You don’t necessary need to know when someone has uploaded a new photo of themselves; however, you do need to keep tabs on your contacts and especially when your customers or clients are talking about you or your product. Click on ‘preferences’ link on your profile to amend these, and adjust them according to your requirements.

5. Security and Privacy:

Security is important and you need to amend these settings, as Facebook’s default settings leaves your profile wide open for anyone to view, and furthermore, is accessible to search engines for indexing. There has been a lot of bad publicity recently over Facebook’s security and privacy settings. At one point there were more than over 170 settings, which were time consuming and complicated to amend. Fortunately, Facebook listened to what people were requesting, and have now amended these settings to a more simplistic process. If your Facebook profile is designed to promote a service or brand then you need to make you profile as open as possible; however, remember not to post any personal information.

6. Join Groups:

Join groups on Facebook that are relevant to you or your brand. Many groups on Facebook are pointless. Be selective, and you can join a community of like minded people to share and connect with. Networking with clients or individuals who share interests in your field will automatically promote yourself or your brand. Take part in conversations, ask questions, and share ideas. More importantly, if you a promoting a brand, engage with your customers and get feedback.

7. Be Efficient:

Facebook can be, and to quote from a famous song: ‘You are my favourite waste of time’. What I mean is that you can get sucked into elements of Facebook that have no bearing on your professional self or marketing strategy. Flash games, reading pointless status updates, or looking at someone’s holiday photographs of five summers ago, are all time wasting avenue of Facebook that serve no bearing on why you are on Facebook. If you are reading this, you are here to work, so close down Mafia Wars and get to it . Building a successful Facebook profile and marketing your brand takes time and effort. Don’t expect results overnight. I would schedule at least an hour a day to work on this. Alternatively, you can employ a social media manager to manage this process for you, like me .

8. Contact Information:

Don’t forget to include your contact information, which you are happy for people to have access to. Include: Postal Address; Telephone Number; Website; Email.

9. Promotions and Events:

If you have a brand or product that you are marketing, use Facebook to promote special offers. Get the message out directly to your customers and let them know about discounts and how to claim the discount. Provide information as to whether this is in-store, online or via Facebook . Let people know when the discount or promotion expires.

Keep your contacts informed of special events. Let people know where, when and what to expect at your special event. You can create an Events page on your Facebook profile and send out invites to all or selected contacts. You can even ask for RSPV to identify potential numbers, and this information is also good to determine how many people are expected at your event. In addition, this is also useful data to analyse how effective your marketing campaign on Facebook is working.

10. Updates:

Keep your contacts informed of updates that are relevant to yourself or the product your are marketing. For example, if you are selling products, use Facebook to promote new lines. Upload sample photographs of these new products and ask for feedback. If you are opening a new store, tell people about it.

If you make the products you sell, update your clients with details about certain products. Upload videos, step-by-step guides, techniques used,photographs of the design, manufacturing, testing and final product stage.  Many people  find production details interesting.

11. Facebook Ads:

Do you need to send more traffic to your Facebook profile or website? Did you know Facebook has it’s own Pay-Per-Click Ads system similar to Google Adwords? This system allows you to create you own ads, target those ads to specific demographics and only pay each time your ad is clicked on.

12. e-Commerce Integration:

Facebook API (Application Programming Interface) is a platform for building applications that are available to the members of the social network of Facebook. The API allows applications to use the social connections and profile information to make applications more involving, and to publish activities to the news feed and profile pages of Facebook, subject to individual users privacy settings. With the API, users can add social context to their applications by utilizing profile, friend, Page, group, photo, and event data. The API uses RESTful protocol and responses are localized and in XML format.

In terms of e-commerce, you could build a Facebook API application to sell your products directly from your Facebook pages.

Today is being dumbed as quit Facebook day. The formal Facebook revolt was announced a couple of weeks ago over the growing debate of how Facebook uses and protects individuals data and personal information. Only a few people have vowed to quit amongst the 400 million users. In response to the users concerns, Facebook have announced an overview of it’s privacy policy.

So, are you going to quit? The answer by most people will probably be no. Facebook has integrated into many people’s daily lives, and one of the few websites that users cannot be dragged away from. Whether you play the annoying FarmVille, write pointless status updates or read so called friends equally pointless status updates, Facebook has become important to a lot of web users.

Facebook has announced new privacy controls in response to the criticism it has received recently, and the rolling out of these has begun. I am personally not a big fan of Facebook (as you can gather), which is purely due to how insecure your personal information is stored on Facebook. In response I have removed all my personal information including photographs, which does defeat the object of the service; however, I do not want my information being made available for all and sundry to find via a simple search over at Google. I do hope Facebook addresses these issues and gives complete control to the user in a simplistic interface and not currently with 179 different settings. A simple private on or off button would suffice.

I will watch with anticipation.

This article isn’t about telling you what foursquare is. If you’ve found this blog, you will probably already be an active user of foursquare. If you do need more information about foursquare, I suggest you head over to their website: http://foursquare.com.

This article is concentrates more on the practical application of this service for businesses:

1. Verify Your Location:

If your venue isn’t in the system, a user can choose to add it. Or, they can check in without adding it, which is what most of them will do — but it won’t do you any good. So, you need to make sure you’re in the system and that your info is correct.

To make sure your info is right, got to Foursquare.com and search for your business name via the box in the top-right corner of the screen.

If you are not in the system, you may add your business by going here.

If your business does appear, but the address or name is wrong, go tothis forum and post a correction. It looks rather hap-hazard, but I know it’s official because in the time I’ve been writing this, a few of the corrections that users had posted when I began writing have already been made by the folks at Foursquare.

2. Loyalty Programs:

Major players are offering the social media loyalty programs by using the application to rewards you by returning to their locations with special offers, points programs and discounts. Tasti D-Lite, a popular frozen dessert company offering trendy alternatives to traditional ice cream. The company’s roots are in New York, where they’ve managed to become a part of the city’s diction, but its cross-country and worldwide expansion efforts are heavily reliant on social media spreading the Tasti D-Lite message beyond New York City.

3. Location-Based Social Media:

Using other social media services like Twitter and Facebook will compliment you marketing strategy. Twitter has already seen the massive potential of  location-based social media and Facebook is still dragging it’s feet in this area. Foursquare has been designed specifically for location-based social media. Location-based social networks allow users to interact, share, meet up, and recommend places based on their physical coordinates. This real-world connection to social media can mean more foot traffic and profits for business owners.

4. Creating an Event:

Because Foursquare is specifically for location-based social media, this gives wonderful opportunities to take a local customer base and encourage existing or new customers to participate in your event.

You will need setup your profile that reflects the details of your event include the venue. Whilst you have the facility to create a custom badge you can also add additional benefits to your cliental that  have major status with a discount or voucher.

Not only will Foursquare users be able to check in and follow the tips surrounding your event, but they now have a community to connect with other users. Furthermore, encourage your event participants to add their own tips. Allow exhibitors to offer their own incentives for a visit to their booth. Give speakers a chance to encourage new audiences.

5. Leave Useful Tips for Users:

Business owners can provide the same type of experience for their customers. Leave a tip about the best times to come in for a quick coffee, highlight the groups that gather on certain days, reveal where to find all the best electrical outlets if someone’s coming with a laptop, etc. Anything that betters someone’s experience with your business is good for your business. I recommend that you disclose somewhere that you are leaving the tip as someone associated with the business, as not to come off as deceptive. However, if you make it an Official Tip or a Behind The Scenes Tip, it could become part of the game and increase the fun.

I was listening to the radio today and I heard a story about a women who used FaceBook to find her estranged brother that she hadn’t been in contact with for thirty years. This got me thinking about family members that you have lost contact with or even family members that you have never met but no they exist.

So, I headed over to FaceBook to have a look at whether any of the major ancestry web sites have an application for FaceBook. The only one I found (and the only one I really expected too find) was ancestry.com. I took a look and it doesn’t appear as if there isn’t much activity. Although, there appears to be no promotional elements of their web site on FaceBook, the application button directs you to their web site. So in affect, there is no application. This is a little disappointing from a major player in this field.

Geolocation is the identification of real world graphical location of computers, mobile devices and web site visitors connected to the Internet. Geolocation information can include Country, Region, City/Town, Postcode/Zipcode and latitude and longitute.

In the past couple of month two major players in the social networking arena have incorporating geolocation features and made this technology available to the end-user.

Last November Twitter introduced this feature for their mobile site as well their static web site. If you access Twitter from a mobile device not only are you tweets linked to your current location, but you can also view other users tweets that are in your surrounding location whether you follow them or not. The static Twitter web site allows users to add their location, and those tweets are also pinned to that location. You can read more at Twitter’s blog.

One of the most useful web sites I’ve seen to date that utilises this technology with a practical application is http://uksnow.benmarsh.co.uk. What Ben has done here is pull this information using a short hash tag and present peoples Tweets in a geographic layout plotting Tweeters who are reporting snow fall in real-time. I personally found this extremely useful in making decision whether to venture out or not. This real-time information far exceeds out dated, incorrect and national weather reports that simply where not local enough.

Last week we saw Google enter the social networking market with the launch of Google Buzz. Google Buzz can be access through your computer or mobile device and is pinned to your static location or uses the technology in your mobile device to pin-point your location much like Twitter when you are mobile.

So, what practical application does this new technology have for you and me other than the obvious? I’m sure we’ve all read the tweets or buzzes posted by our friends informing us what they’ve had for lunch. Now we will now where they’ve eaten lunch. But seriously this has mind blowing possibilities for marketing, real-time geographical information and practical application.

The possibilities are endless. For example, if you are a local business and you have a spontaneous promotion that you want local people know about it, tweeting and buzzing could be the answer in drawing people in. Perisable products that need to be sold at a discount is one example that springs to mind.

uksnow is an amazing example of this technology being put to practical use that incorporates real-time. Another idea is road traffic information: People reporting in real-time how traffic congestion, accidents and road works are hindering their journey and providing invaluable information to other road users.

I’m sure in the coming months their will be new web sites and applications being developed that incorporates this technology and providing real-time information. I wonder how long it will be before FaceBook jumps on board?

I’ve been using Google Buzz for a couple of days. It would appear the UK didn’t get access until a couple of days after the American’s did. This isn’t surprising as Google is an American company and their headquarters is located in the United States.

To date, a couple of my friends and family have followed my on Buzz and I’ve followed them back. Also, several other people have followed me who I do not know and I think this is as a result of others I’ve followed, or comments I’ve made on Buzzes (not sure if the is the PC term) that I found through searching.  The immediate issue that struck me if you want to use Buzz as a means to communicate with friends, family or colleagues, every one needs to have a Google account. Needless to say some do and others don’t. I have attempted to convert a number of people to Gmail; however, to some people email is email regardless of what the logo is in the corner.

There are number of improvements I would love to see already, and it does appear Google have been quick to address on major concern of privacy. The issue of followers seeing who your Gmail contacts are is a concern for everyone and Google have addressed this and made it easier for the end user to find and amend this setting.

Like most social networking platforms there is usually a lot of noise and within that noise somewhere is the interesting information that you want to read and reply too. I find it irritating the there is no easy and quick means to delete or in Google Buzz language ‘mute’ posts that you don’t want to see. What I would like to see is a filter, where you can filter in or filter out tags or keywords that are relevant to your interest. Plus a big delete button or X that is easy to hit if you don’t want to see that post again.

I was hoping there would be more drag and drop functionality. Having to type or pasting links to other web pages, images or video is a pain. I want to be able to drop it into my post.

As there are so many social networking platforms available today, Buzz would have the edge if it became the one-stop-shop for all your social networking activity embedded in your email. I personally only use Twitter and FaceBook and what a wonderful place Buzz would become if I can read and post directly to any social networking site from Buzz.

As usual from Google, this a real sterling effort, and I hope that it’s developed into something that no one can do without. At the moment I do have an open mind, and wait with anticipation of how this will develop.

Facebook blocked at work? You don’t need to worry any longer about keeping in touch with your contacts. The social media giant has introduced reply to comments via e-mail.

As long as your have not changed your settings to stop email notifications, it’s likely that you receive an email every time someone comments on your status updates, photos, videos and Wall posts. Before now, the email contained a link that you had to follow, which logged you into Facebook where you could reply. You’ll now notice that the email contains a line reading “New Feature: Reply to this email to comment on this link.”

Now you can reply to comments without login into Facebook.