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So I’m just going to come out and say it, none of us have time to be active on all the social platforms.

If you listen to the marketing hype and social media evangelists you’d be forgiven for thinking that we all need to be on every platform at least daily. This is just not true.

There are 6 key social platforms and for me they all have different target audiences so I’m going to give you my take on what each offers.  There is some overlap so you may need to be on more than one for best coverage but you can be the judge. They are Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Google+ and YouTube.

FACEBOOK

Facebook is about PEOPLE, period.  It’s a social network where people can stay in touch with friends, family and colleagues without having to physically be there.  It’s like a permanently running reunion.

As Mark Zuckerberg famously said “Facebook is where people go to waste time”.

Is Facebook right for  your business?

If people like your product or service enough they may be motivated enough to discuss it with or recommend it to their friends.  They might also want to get more information on what you offer in an easy to receive and digest form, so following your business on Facebook gives them this. To help this along you can run competitions, give stuff away, offer deals, or pretty much anything you believe people will be interested in.  But remember it’s not about you!  Make it fun and rewarding and you’ll be onto a winner.

What types of businesses work best in Facebook?

Consumer focussed business, large consumer brands, local retail, national retail, all hospitality based business and all “socially” based businesses.

TWITTER

Twitter is about immediacy and perceptions.  Twitter started as an event based service. For example if you were at the motor show you could follow the hash tag #motorshow to get instant information about what happening directly to your mobile device. We now get news through Twitter before the TV news channels have got it on air.  If you really want information in real time Twitter is incredible.

Is Twitter right for  your business?

If you want to tell the world about your business and you believe what you have to say is valuable, this is a great platform. Examples;  “Get a free coffee with any muffin for the next 60 minutes and my coffee shop”.  “We’ve just baked a fresh tray of scones, get them while they’re hot”.  If you’ve got something to say that’s relevant to now then Twitter is for you.

What types of businesses work best on Twitter?

Consumer focussed business, large consumer brands, local retail, national retail, all hospitality based business and all “socially” based businesses.

LINKEDIN

LinkedIn is about connecting with professionals. It started as a social network for professionals and has stayed true to that goal since its inception. It has been a little overwhelmed by recruiters but it still has great value for businesses.

Is LinkedIn right for your business?

If you are mainly business to business then LinkedIn can offer huge benefits. For example you may have a service or product aimed at a specific industry, let’s say this is in the oil industry and you are looking for people based in operations.  Using the ADVANCED SEARCH option you can specify these parameters, and many others, and bring up a list of possible people you could approach.  They have a premium service starting at £25 per month that allows you to get in touch through InMail so you don’t even need to be connected.

What types of businesses work best in LinkedIn?

All businesses should have a LinkedIn Company Page and a list of Products and Services as these are indexed by Google.  All business people should have a LinkedIn profile.

PINTEREST

Pinterest is about pictures and is the new kid on the block. It’s grown faster than any other social network and as of last year has more than 13 million users but I’m sure this is now much higher. At the end of last year they announced business accounts opening up a new channel for getting your content online.  Interestingly Pinterest active users are more female than male so if you have a female audience this one’s for you.

Pinterest is simply about pinning images onto a public notice board for others to find and enjoy.

Is Pinterest right for  your business?

If images are important to you then of course. That said bear in mind copyright an usage issues.  You can setup “secret boards” that are not public and then invite users by email.  This might work if you have a project and you need a place to add images that’s accessible to everyone.

What types of businesses work best in Pinterest?

If you are a business that uses imagery then this is for you. Fashion, hospitality, events, the list is a long one.

GOOGLE+

Google+ is about interests and shared passions. This is still a young platform and although it hass over 400 million registered users then number using it regularly is a lot less.  That said I believe Google+ will eventually outgun Facebook and Twitter.  Why? Because it’s got some great features, you can add people to areas (circles) and interact with each circle differently, but most importantly it’s owned by Google who have the money and talent to make it work.

Is Google+ right for your business?

At the moment you should at least open and account and try and get a username that describes you or your business.

What types of businesses work best in Google+?

If your business focusses on a niche area, for example Kayaking, then Google+ is a great way to find people with an interest and keep them up to speed on your offerings. Please bear in mind this is NOT a sales channel.  Add value with your content, details on kayaking trips, new kit reviews, and stuff that’s going to be of interest, if not like all other social channels you’ll lose the people you are trying to engage with.

YOUTUBE

YouTube is about video. Owned by Google YouTube is the place for free delivery of video.  It’s the 3^rd largest search engine on the internet after Google and Facebook so it can deliver spectacular results if you have good content.

Is YouTube right for your business?

It’s great for being found providing you use the descriptions and tags correctly. You can embed video on your web site and not have to worry about data transfer issues. If you have video this is a great platform.

What types of businesses work best in YouTube?

All business can use YouTube, just make a video and get it online.

Social media can be overwhelming but sometimes a really simple tool pops up to help you understand more about the people you are in conversation with.

Wolfram Alpha, the scientific and mathematical focussed search engine, has come up with an analysis tool for your Facebook account.

Don’t do this unless you are prepared to be slightly unnerved about the amount of information available as it’s quite incredible.

So here goes, follow these easy steps:

1. Go to Wolfram Alpha here http://www.wolframalpha.com/
2. Put “Facebook report” into the search box
3. Click on the button that says “Analyse my Facebook data”
4. You’ll be asked to connect to your Facebook account.  You can unauthorise the App very easily after you’ve finished if you want to, it’s worth the effort!
5. You’ll be asked to setup a simple Wolfram Alpha account if you don’t already have one.  This will happen as part of this process, just fill in the boxes. I’m not sure this is necessary but it’s worth having a login to this great resource anyway.
6. Hey presto, you’ll get an unbelievably comprehensive report on your Facebook account, friends, likes, ages, marital status, relationship, posts, sharing, and lots more.

Enjoy and don’t be too freaked out…

Low self esteem has to be one of the worst emotional issues human beings suffer from.  It affects every part of your live and is very hard to cure once it’s taken root.

So well done for the University of Salford for running a poll on this awkward subject, albeit just 300 respondents.  I’ve always felt that constantly comparing yourself to others out of context can be damaging. In a world dominated by celebrity culture (is culture the right word?) the pressure to be popular is very real indeed.

Social media and texting allows us to see what our friends, real or otherwise, are doing 24×7.  No matter how much you try and avoid doing so it’s very difficult not to make comparisons between your “friends” and yourself, and if others’ lives look better than yours then this leads to obvious questions.

In reality, like most things in life, what you see and the reality are very different, but it takes considerable confidence to carve your own path, particularly when you are young.

You could get a circle of loser friends that will always make you look good, but who wants to hang out with losers?  My Father always said “we are judged by the company we keep”, wise words indeed.

Why not take a break and just chill out.  Switch off your smart phone, tablet or computer, and become mysterious and difficult to reach.  Make others wonder what you’re actually doing that causes you to be out of touch.  Then don’t talk about it…  You’ll be amazed at the results.

Full report and video on Mashable here http://mashable.com/2012/07/08/social-media-anxiety-study/

I’m saddened to have seen this happen to LinkedIn but after this type of incident its good practice to change your password for LinkedIn immediately.  See the full article here http://thenextweb.com/socialmedia/2012/06/06/bad-day-for-linkedin-6-5-million-hashed-passwords-reportedly-leaked-change-yours-now/

Those of you that know me are probably tired of hearing me bang on about passwords.  They are a serious issue and hard to maintain and remember, but there are solutions, really easy solutions.

I HIGHLY recommend you try RoboForm.  It’s a silly name but it’s a web site and online password manager and is just excellent.  It costs $20 a year and will save you hours of time and effort as well as solving your poor password issues in a second, so it could save you a lot more.  They have a 30 day free trial, I promise that you won’t be able to live without it.

It syncs with a RoboForm App on iPhones, Android, iPads and other tablets, so wherever you are you will have access to your web sites and passwords.

It also fills in forms automatically.  You can create different identities so I have a person one, a WSI one, etc.  These can even include card details so no more filling in forms, one click fills it in, all you have to do is check it’s correct.

No I don’t earn anything from selling RoboForm but I do get more secure client logins which is better than being paid  Go on, treat yourself, you’re worth it…

If I had a pound…  How can I measure my social engagement without spending a fortune on a dedicated package. Well Google now has an answer.

I won’t repeat the post here but if this is of interest to your business you can get much more on the Google blog by reading the post here http://analytics.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/capturing-value-of-social-media-using.html 

Like all measurement tools on the internet this isn’t 100% accurate but it will give you some very useful information and you can measure the trends for your social engagement based on the efforts you, or your marketing team, are putting in.

If you’d like some assistance with setting this up please get in touch.

Enjoy!

It’s easy and free, and offers great search engine benefits, as well as LinkedIn’s own search engine. If you’ve not already got a LinkedIn company page then now’s the time…

Firstly you need to consider the keyword phrases your clients are using to find your business. This is something you should look at every 12 months as these change and you may be adding products and services you’ve not included on your site or on pages like LinkedIn.

I have a document I keep on my system that lays out my business areas and the key word phrases that are searched on to find my services.

You can research your keywords for free using the Google Keyword Tool.

Setting up your LinkedIn company page

1. Log into LinkedIn with your own profile.
2. Go to the “Companies” menu on LinkedIn. From there, select “Add Company”.
3. Enter basic information about your company, like its description, number of employees, and industry it operates in. Use the keywords and phrases you’ve researched.
4. Follow LinkedIn’s wizard for creating your company profile – you’ll be able to add a logo, locations, and a feed for your company blog.
5. Once you’ve completed LinkedIn’s steps for getting setup, your company profile will be available to everyone so make sure it represents you well.

Your Company Page

In the tabs at the top of your company page you’ll see Overview, Careers, Services and Analytics

OVERVIEW – This is your company description and also allows you to add status updates. This could be a new product, an event, a new service, a new client, a new case study, the opportunities are endless.

CAREERS – Is an area to advertise jobs with your company. Why pay huge recruitment fees when LinkedIn can help.

SERVICES – In this area you should list all your companies offerings and remember to use your keywords here as well.

ANALYTICS – Gives you a simple graphical view of how many people are looking at your entry and the pages they are viewing.

More about your company page

• In addition to showing off the basic information you provided, LinkedIn will pull in data about your company from around the site.
• So, for example, all of your job listings will automatically show up on your profile, along with links to the profiles of all current employees, former employees, new hires, and recent promotions. LinkedIn also does analysis of your company and the connections that your employees have on the network. For example, it will automatically calculate your company’s median age, top schools, and other companies that they are well-connected to.
• As you can imagine, all of this aggregate data about your company gives potential candidates (as well as anyone else interested in your company) a lot of information to dive into and help determine if it might be a good fit for them. And for you, once it’s setup, it all happens automatically as you and your employees use LinkedIn, though you can always make edits to your company’s basic profile information.
• From an SEO perspective this company page has huge value so add as much information as you can, including images and back links to your site for products an dservices, Facebook, etc.

If you have a any good tips and tricks for getting the most out of LinkedIn I’d love to hear them.

See the first 6 here | See the second 6 here.

SoundNote (paid)

Soundnote is a meeting recorder where you can add notes. When you take notes they are synced to the recording so when you go to a note it takes you to the part of the recording at the time the note was written. Never miss anything ever again but do get peoples permission before doing the recording.

WhatTheFont (free)

WhatTheFont recognises fonts from a photo of the text taken by the camera, brilliant when you’re designing and your client has seen a font they love but has no idea what it is.

CardMunch (free)

CardMunch add contacts to your iPhone or iPad by taking a photo of the persons business card, very cool. I can’t understand why this is free, I’d pay for this as it’s incredibly useful (lets hope they aren’t watching). It can take a little while for your contact to be added but it works perfectly.

Skype (free)

No video yet but great for chat.  Does calls on the iPhone so you can save a mint! But not the iPad, yet…  I hope video comes soon, Facetime is great but only if you are talking to a fellow iPad/iPhone user so it’s very limited.

Keynote and Present Pad (both paid)

I use Keynote and Present Pad for doing presentations to clients straight from the iPad, required a £24 cable for VGA connection.  Clients are always impressed and I also have the Keynote Remote App on my iPhone which works brilliantly. Present Pad allows various ways to run through the presentation so there are times when this works better.

Social Media Apps, LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter (free)

A bit boring I know but I can update on the move when I have a moment and it’s great to catchup with friends on my personal account as well as promote my business.

Yesterday Google announced the launch of Google+ Pages so we can finally setup a Google+ business page, but how do you go about it?

It’s actually surprisingly simple and very similar to setting up your Google+ personal profile. Incidentally if you’ve not already setup a Google+ profile you’ll need to do so.

Google’s help files are excellent so if you go here http://www.google.com/support/plus/bin/answer.py?hl=en-GB&answer=1710600&topic=1710599 and look in the left hand column you’ll see all the help you need to get through the entire process.

I’ve just setup a basic profile in a few minutes, see it here https://plus.google.com/108921145564808713160/posts All I needed was a bit of information about my business, a main profile picture and 5 images to put across the top of the page to make the page a little more interesting.

There’s lots of potential here and I’ll be exploring this in more depth over the next few weeks and adding a few videos I’ve done, so why not follow me to get notified when I put these online.

Enjoy.

Dell Laptop Exploding

I don’t normally use other peoples material here on my blog but this post on the econsultancy blog was too good not to pass on, I hope you enjoy it.

It contains my all time favourite with Dave’s guitar on United Airlines and a couple I’d not seen before including rats in a KFC and the CEO of GoDaddy posting a picture of himself standing by an elephant he’d shot, DOH!

“There are scenes in this blog you might find disturbing”.

I’ve said this before but common sense and manners are a great place to start with your social media and the minimum you should be doing is monitoring for mentions of yourself or your business so you are aware when there may be a problem.

If you don’t have a social media policy in place drop me an email and I’ll fire you a free template over.

See the full article here http://econsultancy.com/us/blog/7913-14-epic-social-media-fails