mlr3cffjYhymHPTsI3vN3OD02lanAV: Media

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Sunday, December 2, 2012

The Two Things That Influenced Social Media Privacy

Social media privacy is influenced by two things in the world. One of them is offline friendships and the second thing is the existing Pay per Click channels. These two things affected how the social networks set themselves up and how they would do business in the future. The offline friendships gave the social networks the free model that they needed to generate the user base, and the Pay per Click systems taught the social networks how to monetize that model.

The original social networks were run by college kids that were only interested in staying in contact with each other. They knew each other well and knew each other's friends. They knew if a person liked the other person then their network would probably be a good base of people to know as well. There would be familiarity and those people in their network may end up being good friends too if they met. This meant that the social networks allowed everyone to view everyone else's friends because that gave them the best chance to grow their database of friends and have more relationships.

However, this does not work in the real world. These sites became popular and started to be used for networking purposes. This meant people would add other people into their networks that they did not necessarily know well, but they wanted to have contact with in the future. They also had business contacts in their profiles that other business people should not see (because they were a secret provider of X and if every competitor knew about how to get X, they would put that business out of business). This means that the social networks are not well made for business purposes.

The existing Pay Per click channels added the structure for monetization. The social networking systems and the search engines have two things in common. They offer a free service and they offer an advertising model based on that service. The free service may be the most useful part of the system. It definitely drives the Pay per Click side of the business because the people who use the free part of the system are the people who the businesses want to reach on the systems. Social media is no different; they have a wide base of active people on their system that the business owner wants to reach. Therefore, the social networks copied the monetization methods of the search engines.

However, the search engines never could get as much information as the social media systems. The social media systems have the advantage that they were built for personal relationships. Therefore, people on the social networks are accustomed to releasing the information to the social network. This is not true on the search engines, because the paradigm is different. The people on a search engine are looking for a solution, on the social networks they are looking to be entertained and to socialize with friends. This dynamic alone makes it difficult for the search engines to get as much information as the social media systems can and do get from their users.

These two things influenced how social media would be used in the future and how they monetized their system. However, the friendship model was the most important piece of influence because it influenced how the default settings worked on the social networking systems. The setting is usually set to let everyone see the profile no matter who they are (friend, family, or complete stranger). Therefore, this is what influenced social media privacy the most.

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How to Use Social Media Privacy to Make More Money

The fact of the social media systems is that they are trying to gather as much information about a person as possible. However, a smart marketer uses this to their advantage because they are able to see how the social system targets their users through social media use. A marketer that uses a social system should know everything about how a social media system will target their target market.

Obviously, the first thing to do is to start a new profile to release information with the intention of seeing how the social system targets the advertisements to that profile. This means that the social user's intentionally giving up information that may or may not be false with the intention of deriving information about how the social system will work in the future for their business.

This is a very smart idea because a marketer who understands how a social media system markets their product is a person who can predict how much they will spend and how effective that spending will be on the social media system. This allows them to make judgment calls on how effective the social media system will be for the business in the future and whether or not the social media systems are appropriate for the businesses use.

This new profile is the key because a social user should not use their social media profile. This is because that will bring him or her closer to buying something on impulse that they would not have gotten before using the social media system. The new profile protects the user from making impulse buys while testing the system to see how effective it will be for the business.

If anything is the key to advertising on the Internet or in real life, it is the ability of a marketer to test a system before they roll it out to the general populace. The social networking systems are no different. This is because the system can be tested for effectiveness and therefore they can be tested to see if they will deliver a favorable result for that particular marketer.

Understanding a social system as much as possible before using the system is a very smart idea. This will give the marketer an idea of what to expect when advertising on the system. Most marketers do not know what to expect when using the social networking system, therefore, they are not prepared for the situations that arise when using a social system. A marketer who takes the time to use the system before they market on the system is better off than those who do not take the time.

In conclusion, it is smart to make the time to learn about a social system before using the social system to advertise. The people who take the time to do this are far more prepared than those people who do not take the time to get ready to use the social media systems. Therefore, a marketer should always try to learn as much about the system they are going to use before they have to use it.

How Interviewing Experts Helps SEO and Social Media Marketing Efforts

Interviewing experts helps build the credibility of the business. This is because interviewing experts helps show that the business is interested in getting the highest amount of good information possible for their clients and themselves as well.

To make a good impression in social media marketing, interview experts and influential individuals within the niche and post videos of the interviews on YouTube. Not only is this going to be interesting to those on the site, but if a person shows that they have an association with those that are respected in their field, they will grow in reputation by default. Inspiring customer credibility and confidence helps sell more of the company's products and services.

Even though people do not think about it, video sites are social media sites. In fact, video sharing sites might be some of the first social networks in existence. Therefore, the use of videos in social sharing sites is a good thing. Therefore, a business that can come up with relevant videos and post them on social sharing sites may experience a rapid growth in their social media follower list. All that the business needs to do is refer them to their social media profile and most of the people who are interested will follow (or friend) the social media profile as needed.

A business may also interview an expert and allow the audience to participate through a webinar or a phone interview. The interview should be presentation based and only allow questions and answers at a particular time. The best thing to do is to have the questions moderated so that the attendees cannot hijack the call for their own purposes (i.e. pitch their own business in middle of the webinar).

Another place where traditional social media could be useful is attracting an audience to the interview. The social media systems are great at advertising and generating attendees to events because the events are social in nature themselves. This means that the social media user is transferring from one social media platform to another and this generally increases the conversion of a social media user to an attendee of an event quickly and easily.

In closing, there are many uses to interviewing an expert because of the many benefits that interview will give the interviewer in the long run. Not only will the interview generate more publicity for the interviewer and interviewee, it also gives them another asset to load on to a social networking video site. Therefore, they have another asset to rank on the first page of the search engines. This means that they can knock other users off the first page of a keyword if properly targeted. It also can serve to defend the brand when another user uses a video to try to release an attack on the business itself. Therefore, this interview is not only a great way to generate interest and authority. It also has SEO applications that even stretch to the ability of the website to defend itself in the end. Therefore, an interview is always a good thing for a business to schedule and execute.

Social Media Networking: Be an Active Participant With Relevant News, Articles, and Assistance

The success for any type of social media networking is active participation. Yes, technology allows us to become automated in just about every aspect of postings through cyberspace. The convenience of scheduling blog posts to Twitter, then to Facebook, then to LinkedIn is a great time save, but we must set a daily reminder to become engaged personally in our social networking.

I admit with a red face I've been guilty of allowing my automation take over and have become absent as a live person via my social networking. I have given myself the good old slap upside the head and no longer will I allow myself to become the absentee marketer.

As of late, I've downloaded the Twitter application (app) to my Droid phone, providing me the opportunity while waiting for my daughter to come out of basketball practice or religion to engage with fellow Tweeters. This is proven to be a successful way of engaging for me and have connected with current and new colleagues, potential clients in the children's publishing industry, and for those seeking out assistance with their social media campaigns. Twitter works perfectly on the Droid phone because of the rolling screen of Tweets. Thanks Twitter, for keeping tweets to 140 characters!

Luckily my family gave me an iPad several years ago and I've downloaded the Facebook and Twitter apps to further engage with others. I personally like the Facebook app on the iPad since it's a much larger screen than my Droid phone.

Mind you, I do try to keep my personal social interaction down to 30 minutes per day so I'm not spending the majority of my time away from my valuable writing, editing, Author PR Services time, and of course my family.

Key attributes in becoming an active social media networker:

Share relevant information to followers, friends, and colleagues (whatever the specific social media network calls them). If you are a children's book author share... the latest publishing industry news you've read about, your latest magazine article publication or book release, children's book fair events, children's book conferences (such as SCBWI by region), your experience in conducting school visits, etc. The list is endless. Important to note, don't make it all about you. Shout out the successes of your colleagues.

Engage in online chats through social media networks. For example, on Facebook search groups you are interested in joining... such as, teachers, librarians, parents, schools. Participation is imperative, so I strongly suggest you do not join more than 1-2 groups per social media network you are a member of.

Offer tips and assistance from your expert standpoint. When a particular topic is being discussed and you have experience in said topic, join in the conversation and engage. You will be pleased and amazed on how much people appreciate your feedback and they will remember that in the future. You will eventually be known as the go to person in your field of expertise, which often times leads to much more than you ever provided.

Don't fall into the "it's all about me attitude." This is a sure fire way to turn people off. Don't chat about your specific book or product unless the conversation specifically lends to it.

Once you join a group on most of the social media networks you are able to set an email option to be reminded of the latest discussions in the group so you remember to participate. You can also set a reminder through your To Do/Tasks option in your email. I utilize Outlook for my email and I'm constantly updating and checking off my To Do/Tasks list, which by the way gives me great satisfaction in checking off the latest item. Yep, I'm a list person and love to see the list of checked off tasks! I tell my girls all the time, if it's not on my list it won't get done.

Happy networking and remember don't overload yourself!

Until next time...

Donna M. McDine

Publicist & Award-winning Children's Author

Why Controlling the Points of Contact in Social Media Campaigns Is So Important

Controlling how people can contact a business through the social media programs is very important. Most sales funnels are generated around a certain contact type. This means that a person can circumvent this system by using a means of contact that is not related to the approved contact type. Ultimately, this skews the effectiveness of the sales funnel because the contact type was not trackable within the system. Therefore, a person or business will not know for sure how effective their advertising campaign is or was because the system has skewed results.

Every sales funnel is a machine. This means that the machine has a maximum effectiveness rate. To make this more clear that means that any sales funnel has a number of leads and sales that it will never be able to beat because the machine is only capable of delivering X amount of sales or leads. Therefore, a business owner must keep testing and tweaking their site until they are certain that they are at this top end. A business must keep working to reach this top end until they are absolutely sure that they have reached this level, then and only then should a business look into creating another campaign.

However, a business cannot do this if they do not effectively control how the potential customer can contact them. This is because the numbers will be skewed towards the preferred contact type that the potential customer wishes to use. The only way to have relevant data and statistical relevance is to control the outcome by limiting the factors to two approved contact types. Either the potential customer contacts through the approved contact method or they chose to decline the offer. Any other method of contact skews the data and makes the data useless because it s contact outside of the parameters of the test.

Controlling the contact methods also allows a business owner to control who and what type of contacts reach them from the social media system. As with any system with a social media touch, a person or business that uses their social media actively opens themselves up to attacks from the social media users. This means that the business may find their inbox full of e-mails designed to attack the user. This is a bad situation but an unfortunate part of the internet marketing game. Therefore, the person in charge of answering these e-mails should be aware that these e-mails are coming and the moderator should ignore these messages.

In closing, a business that wants to use the social media systems must control the way their clients and contacts can reach them. There are two reasons this is important. The first reason this is important is that the business may be running a sales funnel test that requires the contact type to be controlled for tracking purposes. The other reason is that there are many people online (and not just in the social media systems) that will seek to attack a business through any means. This means that e-mail, phone, even showing up at the business address could be used to distract a business or employee from the important work that they need to focus on in that moment. These are all reasons that a person should control how a people can contact them and why those controlling those avenues are so important.

Making Efficient Use of Your Social Media Campaign - A Debut Into Social Media Marketing

With over a billion friends on Facebook, millions of followers on Twitter and Google Plus, not every business is joining in the social media revolution. Some businesses had a slow entry into the World Wide Web almost a couple of decades ago, and now some are missing the opportunity to expand their geographic and demographic markets by not taking a plunge into social media. Taking the time to develop a strategy for how you want to use it and making it useful for your business is key. Finding where your competitors, clients and potential clients are is a start to see where your presence needs to be. It is not too late to enter into the social media world and not have to take too much of your time. Here are some helpful hints of where to find a place for your business and make it work for you.

LinkedIn - Seen as more of a professional site, LinkedIn is a first step in creating a social media presence. All that needs to be done is have a well written summary of your company's profile, listing your products services, years in business and a link to your company's website. Your customers and friends will "follow" your company if there are any updates. Creating your company LinkedIn page should take under 30 minutes with confirmation emails, and maintaining it on a monthly basis would take under an hour. Twitter - Using 140 characters to make a few updates a day will create a different kind of social media presence. Much like a mini-press release of announcements, Twitter is the chic way of finding out trends, creating a backlink to your website and offers a new way of seeing what the competition is doing. You can commit up to 30 minutes a day total time in the research for articles to tweet, retweet and linking any information you want to advertise. Avid tweeters can send up to 50 tweets a day, but beginners can commit to 3 or 4 tweets a day, tweeting at different times of the day. Facebook - With over a billion users, Facebook is one of the most accessible of all. Creating a page is easy, and gives users the opportunity to create Facebook ads to reach many users based on Facebook's own data. It is still a way to get a name known to a new market, and offers a way to feed both Twitter and Facebook updates simultaneously. Setting up, creating a Facebook page profile, and finding the right cover and profile pictures would be simple to upload and can take under 30 minutes. The hard part would be investing the time to finding "likes" among your customers. Create a plan of putting the Facebook logo on your printed media as well as your website and it it will help create a following of "likes." Google+- This is Google's way to have circle of friends, offer status updates and share documents. One advantage of having Google+ is that your company will be listed in Google searches. The amount of time to use Google+ depending on how much time you want to create the uploads, the status feeds and the sharing of documents. It would take minutes to set up a Google+ account with a gmail address and fill out the information questionnaire. Generating your list of circles could take some time to build, and could be up to 1 to 2 hours to begin the process if you have a large list of customers. Maintaining Google+ could take as much time as Facebook or Twitter would on a weekly basis Pinterest - This is the fastest growing of the social media sites. It offers a way to organize information visually of your products and services in a different format. Creating an account and setting up boards would take under 30 minutes to do. Maintaining pinnings of your company's interests, uploading pins and creating the videos or infographs that you want to use would take some time. For basic upkeep, it would be 2 hours a month.

For the basic set-ups of these services, it could take a couple of hours, but maintaining these accounts would be key. You can anticipate 3 to 6 hours a week added to your time if you want to self-manage your efforts in your social media presence. You can always delegate tasks of creating videos, infographs or articles to someone on your staff, who is savvy with internet marketing or to a social media virtual assistant to keep maintenance of your accounts.