Social Media Blog - Social Networking Blog

My Newest Social Media Drug: 4 Reasons Why StumbleUpon for the iPhone Delivers on the Mobile Web Potential

If you’ve been reading my blog and following my tweets, you’ll know that I am a huge evangelizer of StumbleUpon for marketing and professional use. I consume my media a little different than other people. I’m not an RSS person. I know the blogs and websites that I find resourceful and will visit them. I search for the latest conversations on Twitter to see what people are talking about. And I use StumbleUpon to help me find new sources of relevant information that I might be interested in but might never have found otherwise.

Let me explain it another way: I’m the type who, despite having hundreds of songs in my iTunes library, will still often visit my Amazon Recommendations for personalized introductions to new music. So StumbleUpon is the exact same thing for the web, always recommending new and insightful sources of relevant information based on my ratings. And it’s terribly addicting. If you are unfamiliar with how StumbleUpon exactly works, read this great how to article on StumbleUpon.

StumbleUpon has now significantly increased their value and become the latest social media application that consumes my time through its addicting functionality through the release of the new StumbleUpon for iPhone app. In doing so, they have delivered on the promise of the mobile web. Here’s why:

Facebook Places Analysis: 3 Reasons Why Facebook Will Continue to Be Your Aggregator of Social Information

While everyone was talking about the new Facebook Places application last week, I wanted to wait until I had a chance to actually experiment with it myself and report firsthand back to you on my analysis. A little bit of historical perspective can’t hurt any analysis either: A few days in social media seems like a few months in real life. Now that a few days have passed and I’ve had a chance to take the Places application out for a test spin, I realize what Facebook is trying to do: Become the default social aggregator of your information at home or on the go. We’ve seen them do this by creating a platform and mobile application that helps you keep in touch with and check out what your friends are up to. They have extended this with the Social Graph API so that you can see what else your friends “liked” as you browse the web, with some companies like Levi’s extending the Social Graph APIs to the extreme.

If mobile and the location-based application are the next biggest thing, instead of reinventing the wheel, Facebook decided intelligently to partner with the leading “check-in” services in Foursquare, Gowalla and Yelp to extend their presence with the Places application. In doing so, they have positioned themselves as the default place to check out where your friends are when you’re outside on the go. As a result, similarly to extending the Facebook experience to the Web with the Social Graph, they are now extending themselves to location-based services, and in doing so will continue to be a sticky social aggregator. Here’s my analysis on 3 reasons why this is the case:

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Do You Still Have Social Media Privacy Concerns?

Social media and your privacy is an intriguing topic that we should all be concerned about. On the one hand, Pete Cashmore of Mashable has already rightfully declared some time ago that Privacy is Dead. On the other hand, there are those who are actually still afraid to join a social networking site because of privacy concerns. It is these people that I want to address in this blog post.

This week I got this question from my reader:

I have always used alias names and blind emails everywhere online to protect my personal info from ID Theft. Because I have a high credit score, I so far have not been ready to open up, what do you think?

Why Your Company Needs a Social Media Policy and 14 Corporate Social Media Policy Examples

Yesterday I wrote about how to sell social media to your marketing department, and as a follow-up to that question, I received another email from the same person indicating a big reason why internally their marketing department still doesn’t want to move forward:

“After more in-depth discussions it became apparent that the real concern of our marketing department is protecting our “brand name” while employee’s use social media to, essentially further their own careers and successes. I hadn’t looked at it from that perspective but it does present some challenges.”

The fear of how one’s employees will use sites such as LinkedIn and Facebook is a knee-jerk reaction by those who, once again, might not be new adopters to these tools. But upon analysis, it is clear that there is a natural progression of understanding that needs to take place here:

Why not being active in social media can hurt your brand;
Why your company was never in control of their brand (or the conversations of its employees) ;
Why there is a need for a corporate-wide education program; and
Why corporate social media policy creation is the only way to set proper usage guidelines and “protect” the company.

7 Ways to Sell Social Media to Your Marketing Department

I am returning to my roots of how I started blogging on today’s post by answering questions provided by you, my blog reader and member of my extended social network.

Below is a summary of the question that I recently received:

I was wondering if you had any quick tidbits of advice for how to sell the benefits of using social media to ones own marketing department. As you know there are many who feel uncomfortable with Facebook and Twitter and feel that it is only used for play. I handle HR for a staffing agency and our recruiters and sales people are begging for the permission to use social media. Our marketing department is tentative about opening up use to everyone for fear that “something bad will happen” – my fear is if we don’t open it up then nothing will happen. We are behind the curve and I need the buy-in of marketing to move forward.

This question actually brings up two very important questions:

7 Great Social Media Websites and Blogs for Insightful Advice and News

Let’s face it: Social media in 2010, and the way we utilize it as professionals and businesses on a daily basis, is constantly changing. It is impossible for any single person to keep up with everything these days, which is why it is important to be seeking out additional points of view, case studies for reference, and the latest statistics. But where do you start seeking out this information? Instead of pressing that Google Search button for everything, why not start frequenting some top websites where definitive blog posts are being published by thought leaders in the industry?

This question prompted me to ask fans on my Windmill Networking Facebook Fan Page as to where they go in 2010 to read up on social media advice and news excluding Mashable. I exclude Mashable because they have, in essence, become the CNN of social media, so needless to say they are one of the most important sources for news & information. If you want to find other sources and different perspectives of advice, news, and unique insights, where do you look? Here’s how my readers voted, in descending order of importance (and what percent voted for each particular website):

Poken and Social Networking – The Perfect Match?

What is a Poken?

To be honest, I first encountered Poken on a business trip to Japan in December of 2009 and assumed the technology was Japanese because of its “cute” factor. At first I didn’t really understand exactly what it was until I saw it in action before my own eyes.

In essence, similar to the iPhone Bump application, Poken allows you to wirelessly exchange your contact information and social profiles with those that you meet instead of exchanging business cards. Their corporate homepage has an excellent overview of how Poken works.

A detailed description of how it works would go something like this:

How to Find New and Targeted Social Media Content on Business Exchange

Hopefully after reading my blog post on 6 Great Reasons to Become a Business Exchange User you have registered on the professional networking site and are already actively sharing and reacting to content as well as making new industry contacts. Today I want to discuss one of the valuable aspects of Business Exchange, and that is the ability to quickly find new and targeted news and information for business. I believe showing you how to curate social media content in Business Exchange will best illustrate this point. And if you’re not a Business Exchange user yet, this will hopefully show you an example of the value of being on the site!

LinkedIn Photo Advice : The Why, What and What Happened?

LinkedIn, like any other social media channel, is a social networking platform. This means that people are networking with each other while revealing who they are and what they do. LinkedIn reminds you to do this when you log in by making sure your profile is 100% complete. Part of getting to 100% completion is uploading your picture, and here’s all that you need to know about why you should upload your photograph, sizing tips for a successful upload, and what could happen to your photograph if you’re not careful.

That’s right: Your profile photograph could be forcibly removed. Read on for more details.

8 Things I Learned about Social Media and Social Networking in 24 Hours in Toronto

If you’ve been following my blog, you already know that I won a free ticket to fly to Toronto thanks to Virgin America’s #VXToronto Twitter campaign. I’ll write about the “Virgin” experience later. Right now I want to share with you all what I learned on this trip.

I’ve had many people ask me, “Was the trip worth it?” My answer, of course, is “Of course!” Because what I was doing in Toronto is what I do in social media everyday: meet new people, have interesting conversations, share information, and learn a lot of new things, things that help advance my business as well as my career. What is there not to like about that?

I wanted to share with you all what I learned or confirmed on this trip for your future reference. It is just one example of what is possible if, when you go on a business trip, you schedule your own tweetup or meetup and go out there and Windmill Network! All this happened primarily over a 2-hour tweetup, so if you have never gone to a tweetup before, this is a preview of the types of people you could be meeting and conversations you could be having!