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.

LinkedIn Photo Advice #1 – Why Upload a Photo?

There you used to be some debate as to whether or not you should include your photo in your LinkedIn profile.  The advice by some then was that including your photograph could mean that a company might not want to hire you because the fact that they saw what you actually looked like could be used against them in a discriminatory lawsuit.  Everyone who commented on that blog post I link to above said there was absolutely no truth behind that argument, and I have even heard from some employment lawyers that many of their clients pass the task of sourcing talent to an impartial 3rd party, within or outside of their organization, so that there are no potential issues here.

Regardless of the above argument, there are many fundamental reasons why you want to upload a photo to your profile if you haven’t done so already:

–> There are fake profiles on LinkedIn.  A photograph shows that you are for real, and it helps establish your social media credibility.

–> Why would you be on a social networking site and not display who you are?  What are you afraid of?  Not having a photograph means people may have a suspicious view of your profile.  In fact, I list this as the 1st thing in my 10 LinkedIn Profile Mistakes You Want to Avoid post.

–> A photo will help bring your LinkedIn profile to 100% completeness.

–> For your personal branding, a photograph is essential.  And as they say, first impressions mean everything, and often our first impression is a visual one.

LinkedIn Photo Advice #2 – What are LinkedIn’s Photograph Requirements?

This information actually comes straight from the source at Customer Support in Mountain View when I had problems uploading a photograph myself.  Here are the requirements to pay particular attention to:

1. The file type is a JPG, PNG or GIF.

2. The file size is no larger than 4MB.

3. The pixel size is at least 80×80 and no larger than 4000×4000.

If you still have trouble uploading a picture, additional advice indicated trying to use a different browser than what you normally use.

LinkedIn Photo Advice #3 – Why Was My Photograph Removed?

My recent blog post on why your LinkedIn account may be suspended has been getting a lot of view as well as comments from those who suddenly found that they were locked out of their accounts for no reason.  Imagine one day you noticed that your LinkedIn profile was naked, i.e. your profile picture was missing!  I’ve never heard of this happening in Twitter or Facebook, but it does happen on LinkedIn.

First things first: I already mentioned why you don’t want to have a company logo or an irrelevant picture for your profile, so if you are still not using a personal photo, you may want to reconsider your strategy in light of the fact that your photo could be removed and your profile potentially “flagged” by LinkedIn.  Otherwise, you may be asking for trouble.

The next thing that is worth mentioning is that anyone can go to a profile and, regardless of your connection status, and report to the “LI Authorities” that a photograph is either an advertisement (i.e. company logo), copyrighted material, inappropriate content, a misrepresentation, or “other.”  This is probably the mechanism that alerts LinkedIn to “suspicious” photos.

It is worth noting that LinkedIn has a clear Photo Policy in its User Agreement:

LinkedIn provides the opportunity for users to upload a photograph to assist other members in recognizing that person. As a professional networking site, there are guidelines to determine which types of photos are appropriate. We consider a photo appropriate as long as it does not contain content that is copyrighted or unauthorized for public distribution and does not contain offensive content. Additionally, if your photo is not an image of yourself or does not contain an actual photograph, it is considered inappropriate. Your photo has been flagged for inappropriate elements and has been removed from your profile.

Normal users should not have any fear about the photographs that you use, but there are some people who like to use effects, like those you find on the Photo Booth application on a Mac or any picture-editing software, to make a statement about their personal brand.  You see many of these types of profile pictures on other social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook.  LinkedIn, however, is holding rigid to its policy of “professional photos.”  Even a gentleman who had an “Obamacon” of himself, the same profile picture that is on his Twitter page, recently had his photograph removed.  I believe that the photograph definitely helps “to assist other members in recognizing that person” as pointed out in LinkedIn’s Photo Policy.  Is it that disturbing that the picture had to be removed?

What do you think?

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!

1) Partner Up for Successful Windmill Networking

Earlier this year I hosted good Windmill Networking events on business trips to Jacksonville, New York City, and Portland.  But each time I was a lone soldier, doing almost all of the inviting and legwork in finding a venue by myself.  This time I had the help of a local in Toronto, Judy Gombita, someone I had never met before but gotten to know through Twitter.  Judy took on the event as if it were her own, spreading the word through her network and Twitter and helping me secure a venue for the event.  In fact, it was someone who listened in to our Twitter conversation, Candice Best, who ended up partnering with the two of us and executing on the final venue selection and logistics.  From Judy’s and Candice’s efforts we were able to get 40+ people to attend a tweetup at a coffee bar on a Thursday night.  By far my most successful Windmill Networking event…thanks to the help of my partners Judy and Candice!

Advice: When going to another city and trying to organize a networking event, try to find at least one local contact in your network who can help you on the venue selection as well as spreading the word.  Your networking event will be the more successful for it!

2) Twitter Relationships are REAL

As the above illustrates, these two people who partnered with me I met through Twitter.  I had never met them before in real life, and yet they treated me like family going out of there way to make sure that I had a pleasant stay in the “T-dot.”  And it wasn’t just them.  There was @Animal, the famous recruiter who has a raucous, entertaining yet educational Recruiting Animal Internet radio show about recruiters and jobseekers, who I had a chance to meet in real life and get to know over coffee at Tim Horton’s.  There were people seeing my tweets from the Virgin flight who lived in Toronto and came out to meet me the next night.  There were countless other tweeps that I met that were drawn into conversations from Judy on Twitter.  In fact, most of the people that I met in Toronto I had met, not through the 300+ LinkedIn connections I had living in Toronto, but in one way or another through Twitter.  Twitter has helped enrich my life in countless ways, and I realize this even more as I write my 2nd book, which will be on Twitter of course!  Some people give Twitter a bad rap, talking about the automated bots that exist and the Direct Message spam.  If you can look beyond that there is a golden group of real people out there to meet and develop relationships with.

Advice: Part of the problem of starting out on Twitter is not finding relevant people to follow.  Do yourself a favor: go to the Twitter Yellow Pages Twellow as well as the Twitter List Directory Site Listorious, enter some keywords of things you have an interest in or the name of your local city, and look for people that might be interesting to follow.  You’re bound to find someone…and then take it from there!

3) Social Media Events are Not Just about Freebies

Through Candice’s help, we were able to secure not only free coffee tastings from our sponsor Crafted, but also some free beer (Mill Street Brewery), pizza (Pizzeria Libretto), and chocolate (Nestle…in the picture).  But we weren’t able to advertise these things until the last minute.  It had no affect on the turnout.  Those coming to a networking event were coming for the networking and meeting people, not the freebies.  Sure, it was nice to know that local businesses were supporting the event and, don’t get me wrong, the food and drink was awesome and greatly appreciated!  But if you think freebies are enough to draw a large crowd for networking, think again: it’s all about the networking!

Advice: Businesses often think they need to give something away to provide “value” to their social media audience.  While providing free products does get your product talked about in social media and are appreciated by attendees, try going beyond that by thinking outside of the box in terms of other ways of providing value and becoming participants in social media events, which could draw more potential future customers to the event!

4) Businesses are Starting to Realize the Value of Content Curation

Whenever I speak with clients about social media strategy, the subject of content curation always comes up.  Still understood by relatively few, the art of sharing content about your line of business, if done right over time and combined with your own compelling content, can help elevate you to a subject matter expert or even a thought leader status.  Imagine how surprised I was when members of a start-up company from Toronto, ConnectedN, were excitedly talking about their software platform which helps businesses automatically curate and publish content.  Here’s a video of an interview I had at my #VXToronto tweetup with the co-founder, Brad Milne:

Advice: If you want to know how content curation can be utilized as part of a comprehensive social media strategy for your business, please contact me.  If you’re ready to invest in a platform to help automate the content curation process, contact ConnectedN!

5) Think Social Media?  Think Canada!

Whenever I think of areas of the world that foster the growth of social media companies, I always think of the Bay Area.  Think about it: Within a small area of California one can visit the headquarters of Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn!  The existence of these companies in close proximity has spurred countless social media startups in San Francisco, Silicon Valley, and surrounding areas.  But this trip made me realize how many of the leading social media companies are located in Canada, not the Bay Area:

The leading social media monitoring software company?  Many would say Radian6, and they are located in the beautiful Canadian province of New Brunswick, northeast of Maine.

Up-and-coming social media monitoring software company?  We were blessed by the presence of Sheldon Levine, the community manager for Toronto-based Sysomos, who are apparently working with a lot of big brands and are gaining major traction in the market.

The leading integrated social media client platform?  Look no further than HootSuite, hailing from Vancouver.

Although there are many excellent social media agencies that exist worldwide, one that has gotten recognition as one of the top 15 social media agencies worldwide and is also famous for its relationship with Ford, is the Social Media Group which hails from Toronto.

Advice: Be on the lookout for exciting social media startups to spring up in Canada in the next 6 to 12 months.

6) The Zen of SlideShare

I’ve been talking a lot about SlideShare recently, primarily from a B2B social media marketing perspective.  But there’s another side of SlideShare, something concerning the “Sharing” of content through social media and developing your personal brand.  I always talk about blogging being a great way to share your expertise with the world.  Why not take it one step further and repurpose your content into a Powerpoint presentation and upload it to SlideShare?  If you’ve ever spoken on a subject, why not upload your presentation to SlideShare to share with those that might not have had a chance to hear you speak?  A presentation is a powerful way to package and share something in a format that is easy-to-read and professional looking.  Furthermore the demographic that is active on SlideShare is overwhelmingly professional.

It was a conversation with Sacha Chua, an Enterprise 2.0 consultant working for IBM, tech evangelist, and Toronto rockstar that helped me see the light.  She has uploaded 25+ presentations to her SlideShare account, and she has shared information on topics ranging from “The Shy Connector” to “A Teacher’s Guide to Web 2.0 at School.”  In fact, her most popular presentation, “The Gen Y Guide to Web 2.0 @Work,” has more than 50,000 views!  That is more views than a lot of blogs get in one year!

Here is one of Sacha’s presentation where she has off-the-cuff calculations of the ROI of sharing your content throughout social media:

Pretty powerful, huh?

Advice: Knowledge is not power.  Knowledge is there for you to share with the world, and in doing so display your expertise.  Get on the bandwagon…share…and you shall reap the benefits!

7) Social Networking: No Person Left Behind

My concept about social networking vis a vis hosting events was that the event had to be larger than I was.  In other words, even if I didn’t get a chance to speak to everyone who came, if the people I didn’t speak to were able to meet others and had a good time, I would consider it a successful networking event.  I learned of a totally different perspective on social networking from the Networking Queen of Toronto, Dennie Theodore.  Dennie runs a popular networking group in Toronto called Similar Circles that periodically meets and often has a waiting list in order to attend one of their popular events.  The secret of her networking success?  She personally makes sure that every person that comes to a networking event is meeting new people.  Instead of herself networking at her event, she is looking for people that are not networking or speaking with others.  If she finds them, she will make sure they are not “left behind” and get them socializing with others.  Isn’t that a great idea and refreshing approach, that someone is providing a personal touch in leading the event and ensuring that no person gets left behind?

Advice: If you host networking events and are looking for ways to get people to talk to each other, here’s some advice that Dennie gave me.  Go to a 99 cent store and buy small ornamental objects that you can give out for free at your next event.  When you meet someone, you exchange your unique objects.  In such a way, your “object” should be traveling the room as you and others meet new people.  The catch?  You can’t leave home until you get your “object” back by meeting other people!

Is 6 Degrees of Separation Still Valid?

As we network and meet more people, the world around us becomes smaller.  Sometimes really small.  After chatting with Judy, I don’t remember where, but the fact that I had a Jewish and a Japanese connection came up and Judy had asked me if I had heard of a book called Hana’s Suitcase, which is actually the true story of one Japanese woman’s search for details on the whereabouts of a girl (Hana) who owned a suitcase that was installed at a Holocaust Museum in Tokyo.  Thanks to the efforts of this woman from Japan, the story of Hana, another innocent victim who was all-but-forgotten, was brought to life and now helps children around the world learn about that dark period of history.  Judy had mentioned that the book was written by a Canadian, but both Judy and I were surprised that @40deuce, the Community Manager over at the previously mentioned social media monitoring company Sysomos, was the book author’s 1st cousin!  Coincidence?  Maybe.  But the more I network around the world, both offline and virtually, I am realizing that we are all a lot closer than we think…

Advice: I learned of this magical story just from having a conversation with someone I met on Twitter.  Social media is full of real people that can enrich your life.  They are waiting to engage with you.  It’s not about the tools: it’s about the engagement.  Go for it, and see for yourself how our world is becoming smaller…and how meeting new people can truly enrich your life.

Today’s guest blog post about social media strategy for local marketing utilizing Facebook, Twitter and Foursquare comes from someone I met Windmill Networking on My Blog Guest, AJ Wilcox.  I asked AJ to write about the intersection of local Internet marketing and social media strategy, and he surpassed my expectations with this excellent blog post. AJ is the SEO Team Lead over at OrangeSoda, a local Internet marketing firm. He has been in love with Internet marketing for over 3 years, and has overseen over 2,000 SEO accounts. He is married with a 1 year old son and enjoys cars and running.

Your business may be using Twitter, Facebook, or Foursquare to be connected to its customers, but have you considered integrating all three? Each platform has individual strengths that can make your business’s social media strategy more effective, and they have platform integration functions that make it simple.

My expertise is in local, brick-and-mortar businesses, so I’d like to direct my thoughts towards this type of business. As I see it, there are 5 ways to use social media:

• Branding/PR
• Sales channel
• Customer interaction
• Promotions
• Reputation management

Let’s cover each channel in detail and how they can be integrated for the most cohesive strategy.

Branding/PR

You company has a personality that goes along with the brand. You’ve probably contributed to it for as long as you’ve been involved. Social media can be a great way to establish that brand personality.

If your business is the stuffy, “professional” type, then your Facebook profile page should reflect that. Your tweets and status updates should be professional in nature. Everything coming from you is informational and inspires trust and authority. Yes, even tweets can encourage followers to utilize you as a resource. If your company is the fun, personable type, your Facebook page and tweets should follow suit. It’s all about the personality.

Discuss your company goals and strategy with employees interacting with the public through your social media to keep everything on brand. And I’m not really suggesting it. It’s a necessity.

Use social media to establish brand authority by mentioning industry news and showing you are on top of your game. A company that is involved and active in the industry will be a better place to do business than a company that won’t ever evolve.

Sales Channel

Why did you originally start doing social media for your company? My guess is that it was because you thought that somehow you could use it to bolster sales and build your customer base. This is a fantastic use of social media, and it should definitely be used – but be careful not to overuse this channel. Remember that your fans/followers aren’t following you for the pure joy of being advertised to all day long.

Twitter and Facebook are really the keys to this channel. Did you just start selling a new product? Let people in your networks know. I personally wouldn’t let an advertisement tweet or update go out more than once in 5 or so messages. Foursquare will let you put a sticker in your store window to alert customers to the fact that you’re active, so they can get on and connect.

Remember, the wider your social network, the wider your advertising reach. The more of a reason you give potential customers to follow you, the more effective sales channel messages will be when customers arrive.

Customer Interaction

No matter what industry you are in, your customers are becoming more social-media savvy. Your customers will talk about you or to you on Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, and just about any other platform there is. Being available to respond to your customers’ questions, inquiries, tips, etc. is a great way to build loyalty. Your audience is putting more emphasis on being transparent, available, and savvy. Now is your chance to be there for them. Be real and don’t do automated responses. No one likes dealing with robots.

Think about it. If one of your customers tweets, “This sux, I went to pick up my order and it hadn’t arrived yet,” how about responding to them—immediately—with, “Sorry about your order! Our driver had a truck issue. It should be here at 3:30. We’re sending along a $5 gift card for the inconvenience.”

The customer would be stunned that you were listening and were willing to explain the issue clearly. They may have had a small inconvenience by dropping into the store simply to be turned away empty handed, but now they know it was because the truck was late. Instead of talking about your business as incompetent and uncaring, they leave a comment about your excellent customer service.

Imagine fielding customer service questions like, “How long is that sale going on this week?”, and “how late are you guys open tonight?” Your customers will feel like they are getting personal attention and will be more likely to frequent your establishment.

Promotions

Twitter and Foursquare are fantastic for promotions. Consider doing a coupon, special, or contest with your social network.

Twitter is fantastic for contests and promotions. You can set rules directly related to your tweets, e.g., retweeting your announcement (and thereby invite their network to the promotion) counts as an entry to the contest. That means that every entry to the contest makes their whole network also aware of the promotion. As retweets fly around the twittersphere, thousands of people will end up seeing your promotion, and it’s a great way to build a larger following.

Foursquare is great for in-store promotions. As customers are checking foursquare in your area, a message will pop up saying that someone in their area is offering a special. Upon clicking, they will see whatever special you have set for your establishment. The best part about Foursquare is that the customer is already within walking distance, and any traffic you can build into your store would most likely be traffic that was not planning on visiting your store.

As a business on Foursquare, you also have access to a dashboard to see how often people are checking into your establishment. You also get to see who the Mayor is (the person who checks in to your store most often in the last 60 days), and have an opportunity to reward the mayor with a special offer. The best part of this is that it encourages check-ins by others who want to be the mayor and therefore have to come by more often. Your business profits from the additional traffic clamoring for the mayoral honor.

Reputation Management

It has been said that a disappointed customers will tell 10 people about their awful experience. It is also true that it’s a lot easier to tell more than 10 people over a social media network incredibly effortlessly. Wherever a customer is talking, they will talk about you.

Enter social networks. When your company is being discussed publicly, you have the opportunity to participate in the conversation publicly. Stand up for your business decisions and diffuse angry customers. Remember that the longer a client’s concern goes unaddressed, the more they are going to scream and shout, so address it fast.

There are a wide variety of keyword monitoring tools for Twitter, both free and paid, to help you watch for mentions of your company on Twitter. Be part of the conversation.

Foursquare also allows customers to leave tips to other customers. Watch for negative tips and warnings, and immediately correct the issues that cause negative tips. If you ignore them, they just build up and damage your rep.

Any other social media advice that you can provide for local brick-and-mortar businesses?  Please do share your experiences with us.  And if you’d like to submit a guest blog post on Windmill Networking like AJ did, please contact me!  Thanks!

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Today’s blog post was contributed by my guest, Ann Smarty, who I have gotten to know through her managing the LinkedIn Subgroup “The Guest Blogger.”   Her post is about my preferred Twitter tool which I am also passionate about and use in my own social media consulting and implementation, Hootsuite, which just today released new Social CRM features allowing you to filter tweets by Klout score or keyword.  Ann is also currently Director of Media for BlueGlass.

Business power Tweeters can rejoice – the tool you need is finally here. Any business who has a social media policy and uses Twitter or Facebook extensively to reach out to customers now can fully manage their social activities through this site.

Hootsuite is an evolution of Twitter management that started out as “Brightkit” in 2008. While Brightkit began with potential, the creators found that the name was not in line with their services.  Subsequently, the company updated their service features, changed the name to Hootsuite, and developed a winning product that is more than suitable for business and personal social media activities.

Hootsuite offers numerous features that result in maximum benefits to business mini-bloggers. Here is a look at a few of the best ones:

Manage Multiple Social Networks

Hootsuite allows a user to integrate multiple social networking sites into one manageable location. The first and main network is Twitter, giving you the ability to manage multiple Twitter accounts. And alongside Twitter, Hootsuite helps you manage accounts with Facebook, LinkedIn, and the ability to update a host of other social networks through Ping.fm.

Create and Manage Team Workflow

Hootsuite allows accounts to add as many users as they want. New users can be added from around the country and be given editorial permissions to update certain feeds and share tweeting responsibilities.

Create Twitter Lists

If you follow any number of Twitter accounts, managing and reading all the feeds can be nearly impossible. Hootsuite allows you to create lists of Twitter followers so you can more easily read their updates.

Customize URLs and Upload Files

Your tweets or other updates with links or files are a breeze with Hootsuite tools. It uses its own URL shortening function that allows you to customize URL parameters. If you want to share a file with your tweets or other updates like a photo, Hootsuite instantly converts the file into a shortened ow.ly link embedded into your update.

Schedule Tweets

Scheduling tweets is a feature that many businesses have demanded, but few have provided. Hootsuite allows a business to pre-write a number of tweet updates and schedule them for later posting onto Twitter. This allows you to provide new and fresh Twitter content any time of day.

New iPhone and Droid App

Hootsuite works with the iPhone and Droid mobile devices. Now your Hootsuite team can perform their social media duties anywhere.

Tracking Statistics

Hootsuite tracking provides you with comprehensive data about how many clicks your tweets are getting, where they are located geographically,

So what does all this mean for your business? The Hootsuite social management tool gives you many benefits:

·       Manage your brand – Through Hootsuite, you can find out what people are saying about your company. Track backlinks and retweets, and follow how your tweets are circulating.

·       Increased Productivity – Hootsuite gives your business added productivity with easy team workflow, tweet scheduling, stat tracking, all in one place.

·       Better Social Policy Communication – Your business can more easily manage how it executes its social media policy through unified interaction with all social media team members.

Indeed, HootSuite makes tweeting for businesses more productive, intuitive, and effective.

In January of 2008 Twitter announced that the Japanese company Digital Garage had invested in them and would create an official Twitter Japan presence.  In October of 2009 Twitter announced the new release of a localized application for the Japanese cell phone market.  From January to June of 2009 it was reported that the number of users in Japan grew from about 200,000 to almost 800,000.  In March, 2010 that number jumped up to 7.52 million users and it was reported that 14% of global tweets are now originating from Japan.  But it’s more than just that: The Japanese are revolutionizing the way they use the platform by beginning to truly integrating it with their society, and in doing so starting to take a global lead on its usage.  Don’t believe me?  Here are 6 proof points that show that Japan is already leading the US:

Politics

Back in late 2009, one of the two leading Japanese political parties, the LDP, announced that all of their elected officials should have Twitter accounts.  This is equivalent to Michael Steele of the Republican Party telling all elected Republican officials that they need to have active Twitter accounts!  In reality, not every LDP official has signed on, but reading the tweets of active government officials is one reason (another one being the growth of celebrities) that explains the growth of Twitter.  It also shows how more ubiquitous the use of Twitter in Japan has become.

Television

What would you think if I told you that a major TV broadcaster liked Fox created a weekly drama based solely around a group of young people who met and created relationships from Twitter.  You’d say I was crazy?  Well, that show already exists in Japan: “Sunao ni Naranakute,” has been broadcasting on one of the major networks in Japan since April.

Telecommunications

Do you think Twitter is an application that should be pre-installed on every cell phone from your major carrier similar to applications like an email client or web browser?  Masayoshi Son recently said “If it doesn’t come with Twitter, it’s not a cellphone.”  Think he’s some crazy early adopter techie?  Nope.  He’s the CEO of Softbank, one of Japan’s largest cell phone carriers and exclusive distributor for the iPhone in Japan.  Chairman Son recently announced that a Twitter client would be available on all new cell phones distributed by Softbank, not just the iPhone.  AT&T and Verizon, are you listening?

Advertising

In the United States a lot of print ads are appearing with the Facebook or Twitter logos on them asking fans to “follow them.”  A few months ago Coca-Cola Japan took this one step further.  Traditionally Japanese TV commercials have ended with a “search for us on the Internet” text overlay in lieu of a long URL to promote campaigns or to engage with their viewers on their websites.  Coca-Cola Japan replaced the “search for us on the Internet” with “search for us on Twitter” with a keyword to lead its users to a landing page link for its campaign.  Sure, there have been targeted Twitter campaigns in the US before, but as part of a TV commercial from a Fortune 500 brand? [It's actually a funny TV Commercial so watch below if you are interested!]

Services

When a communication platform like Twitter becomes ubiquitous, new services that didn’t exist before arise to the challenge by integrating tweets into their standard service infrastructure.  This week the Japan Weather Association (JWA), the public foundation that provides weather-reporting services in Japan, announced that they would integrate tweets with their weather maps.  Because of the location-based option of tweeting, the JWA is linking tweets concerning the weather and compiling them for each region where they show the temperature.  This gives someone a unique, real-time report on the actual weather conditions in a given city without being there.  Clever idea.  Unfortunately the tweets are in Japanese, but click here to see the “Everyone’s Feelings Weather Map.”

Popular Culture

When Disney announces a Mickey Mouse application for Twitter I’ll be amazed.  But until that happens, all of the cutesy people will have to buy the Twitter application branded by that popular icon of Japanese culture, Hello Kitty.  Hello Kitty on Tappit was recently released to meet the increased demand from Japan.  FYI, yes, an English version is available from iTunes as well!

As a social media consultant who also lived in Japan for 15 years and still speaks Japanese fluently, I am personally and professionally excited about how quickly and revolutionary the trends continue to be for Twitter and Japan.  I look forward to reporting back to you periodically on the latest developments from Japan and what both businesses and professional can learn from the Japanese.

Anything here surprise you?  Learn something new?  Any other country that you know that is a global leader in using Twitter in a unique way?  Please share!

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I often get asked about whether it makes sense to completely integrate Twitter Tweets with your LinkedIn Status Update, so that every tweet shows up on LinkedIn.  Obviously there is no one correct answer for this as it depends on your objective and LinkedIn Brand.  However, the question brings to mind a greater issue:

How often should you update your social media status on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and Your Blog?

Each social media site has its own functionality, demographics, history, and culture.  And you may have one or multiple objectives for using these sites.  I won’t go into detail on how varying objectives may warrant different frequencies in which you update your status on each of the social media channels, but on average I would make the following recommendations:

Twitter

Because there are so many tweets out there (there are more tweets than people now!) and the culture is one that accepts people who tweet a lot (this is explained by the fact that you could tweet a lot and go unnoticed), it is accepted to tweet several times a day.  I tell people, when they start out, to aim for 4 to 5 tweets a day.  I personally aim for 8 to 10, although I rarely achieve this goal.  When I say tweets, I’m talking about sharing some type of relevant and valuable information, not just chit-chat.  I do not preach automating in social media, but if there were one automation tip I recommend, it would be to schedule your tweets in advance with a tool like HootSuite so that they appear spread out throughout the day.

LinkedIn

Before Twitter became as mainstream as it is today, LinkedIn had its own replication of the tweet with its “Status Update.”  A lot of people used to wonder what to use their LinkedIn Status Update for.  Now that LinkedIn is integrated with Twitter, and more LinkedIn members are on Facebook, people get the idea of what they could put on their Linkedin Status Update.  That being said, because LinkedIn doesn’t have the same “Timeline of Tweets” like Twitter or “News Feed” like Facebook, it doesn’t make sense to post more than once a day on LinkedIn.  I personally wouldn’t post anything if I didn’t have anything of value to say that wasn’t aligned with my objective.  Furthermore, if you repeatedly show up multiple times in Network Updates on someone’s Home Page in the same day, it begins to look spammy, that you are trying too hard to “gain mindshare.”  There are other and better ways of doing that on LinkedIn.  And do remember that LinkedIn is also a Professional environment, so some personal tweets and Facebook posting content might not be appropriate here…

Facebook

Facebook is a tough one.  Similar to Twitter, there are so many people on Facebook competing for space on your News Feed that if you don’t post a lot you may not get noticed.  However, I do see a lot of people who only post once a day, and when I have gone over that in the past, I have received word from Facebook friends that I posted too much!  People definitely get most personal on Facebook.  Certainly Twitter is not Facebook, so I personally don’t think that you should be posting every tweet here.  On the other hand, if you have a lot going on, it may make sense to post multiple times in a single day.  If I could compare the frequency of updating your status on Facebook compared with LinkedIn and Twitter, it would look something like this:

LinkedIn Status Updates < Facebook Posts < Twitter Tweets

Blogging

You really need someone to tell you how often to update your blog?  As often as you can, of course!  Seriously speaking, if you are going to blog, I do recommend that you do your best to blog at least one a week.  Consistency is also important, but even if you are not consistent on the days of the week or how many times you post each week, I think you should try to publish one blog post on a weekly basis.  Want to blog more?  You can never blog too often. I dream of having the time to blog on a daily basis…and envy those who do!

On a final note, it is impossible to do all of the above using a tool like Ping.fm or even a client like HootSuite (although they are fantastic products) unless you are really disciplined.  Just as it does not make sense to integrate all of your tweets into your LinkedIn profile, it also doesn’t make sense to overly automate your engagement with others by blasting the same message to all of the various social media platforms simultaneously.  Yes, there may be an occasional post, like a new blog article that you wrote, that it may make sense to post on all platforms at once.  That should be the exception, however, and not the rule.

What do you think?  What are the social media status updates frequency guidelines that you use?  Please comment and share your experiences with us!

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Today’s blog post is from one of my new friends that I met Windmill Networking on Facebook, John Atterberry.  John has a great story to tell from the perspective of a seasoned Marketing Strategist who approached Facebook business strategy from a social perspective.  I have been telling companies all along that social media was made for people, not for businesses, and that they need to learn how to network with people in order to gain their trust.  A look back at my post on why businesses should like birthdays on Facebook will give you more background on this.  John’s success in Facebook is rooted on these same principles, that the core of doing business in social media is networking amongst people.  John has been involved in marketing strategy for 20 years and is a Marketing Strategist at Sunergeo Creative.  He is adept in assisting companies utilize online and traditional marketing. To learn more please contact John Atterberry at 678-561-4332 and visit www.SunergeoInc.net.  If you would like to connect with him click here.

Monetizing Facebook is not impossible. Oh yeah, it is easy to see that it can be done by a company such as Victoria Secret who boasts an mammoth 2.3+ million “fans” or those who “like this” members. The majority of companies do not have the notoriety of a Victoria Secret, not even on their best day. So the question of how to start on a path to make money with this tool was is in need of an answer.

Having actively managed Google AdWords campaigns, I first thought the best way to capitalize on Facebook was to utilize their pay-per-click system. However, I have a client whose web site we manage using Facebook ads thru another agency. When I asked them how this was performing, he noted the performance numbers such as Click Thru Rate (CTR) were significantly lower than the identical campaign run using Google AdWords. It would seem that Google being the preeminent search engine is better suited for the pay-per-click model. Since would be purchasers are actively using this channel to search for services and products to buy.

I asked just a few people where they would go to find products and services, all of them said Google or Yahoo. Not one said Facebook. This was not done scientifically, I just made some calls to people I know and received some honest responses. I even tried to prompt a Facebook response by asking, “Do you ever use Facebook instead of Google when you want to buy something?” The best answer to this question was “…I use Google when I want something – Facebook when I am looking for someone.”

That was enough for me. I started building my Facebook Fan Page on Saturday March 27, 2010. I used some basic FBML to build a few pages on this site: Discounts, Advertisements and My Twitter pages. Using AWEBER’s Email Marketing Software tool I set up a form to collect visitor data [Note: Windmill Networking uses Constant Contact, which also has a Facebook Page Application]. By March 30, I had 31 Fans. This was enough to get my own unique URL from Facebook (you need 25 Fans).

By the end of my first month I had 8 quotes for new business and 3 deals had closed. One of the 3 closed deals wound up being a client who has me under retainer to provide marketing services. Not a bad business strategy, huh?

What did I do to deserve all of this? Nothing but hard work with the right mind set. I set out to use Facebook as a way to network, as I would do in-person at any “real” networking event. I was going to meet people one at a time. I would take time to meet them, ask the right questions and let them know the services I provide. With Facebook I could “meet” more people in 1 hour than I could at any networking function in a 2-3 hours, plus saving gas money and entrance fees.

I searched for DDS, Dentists (or whatever vertical I wanted to sell to) and attempt to befriend them. I also joined a few groups to and tried to befriend the members.

If the friendship was accepted, I sent a personal message to introduce myself and my services, providing a link to my companies FB Fan page

If I did not get a response, I followed up within 24 hours with a very polite nudge – “Hi FB Friend’s name…did you receive my information? I really would like to see if you may have some interest in working together.” The majority responded very positively. And the ones who did not? Well, I just moved on.

When a friendship was established I sent a Thank You email and pointed them to my LinkedIn page to show them that I am a legitimate business.

I responded to every question they had via FB, or set up a time to chat with them on FB.

I removed individuals who did not respond. They don’t have to join the Fan Page, I am just looking for a response.

The only difference I have experienced using FB to network as opposed to my face-to-face encounters is the level of questions from the prospects. The questions were a great deal more direct and in depth, as all those who may have wanted to use my services and desired to know as much as they could about me before meeting. I call it the “Make Sure This Person is Truly Legit” line of questioning. With each of these experiences I thanked the person for “grilling” me. It put fears on both sides to rest.

The main aspect of networking on FB is to be as polite and open as you can. Trust still needs to be earned and nothing beats a face-to-face meeting. However, using FB as an ice-breaker seems to be my wave of the future. All but one of my new clients since March has come from the networking I have done on Facebook. Like any other tool, in the right hands it can help you build your business into something fantastic.

If you haven’t noticed yet, Facebook “Like” buttons are starting to appear on many websites throughout the Web.  These are part of the new Facebook “Social Plugin” options.  For bloggers and businesses running websites, adding this “Like” button should be a no-brainer in that it adds the following benefits to your website:

1. If someone “Likes” your website, a message is passed on through that person’s News Feed on Facebook that they liked your website, complete with a link to entice one of their friend’s to check out your website.
2. For new visitors to your website, from Google or Bing web searches for example,displaying a number of people that already “Like” your site shows that your site has already been confirmed by many people to be a trustworthy source of information.

Today I recorded my first screencast to show you how to actually implement this on your WordPress powered blog or website.  Even if you are not technical nor have your own WordPress blog, I hope you’ll see my video because it illustrates how truly easy it is to integrate social media features into your website.  I consult with many companies who need to pay a lot of money to integrate social features into their website.  While WordPress may not be the most ideal e-commerce platform nor appropriate for large enterprises, if you use it as the engine for your small business website, you will be able to see how non-technical people like myself can implement the latest social media features.  If you’ve ever thought about blogging, I hope this screencast illustrates how truly easy it is to customize your blog, should you wish to begin blogging.

As this is the first in hopefully many screencasts to come, please do comment if there is a screencast or tutorial on any of the social media sites that you would like to see me cover!  Thanks!

Have you heard of Business Exchange?  It is an information-centric social networking site that is run by Bloomberg and sits on the same URL together with Business Week magazine.  As you can already guess, it is a site that is extremely focused on business and the news.  After reading a great blog post on Business Exchange by Larry Brauner, I have been experimenting with the site seeing how it fits into my daily social media routine.  I am now at the point where the value of being on the site has become apparent, and now I want to share the 6 reasons why I believe every professional should become a Business Exchange user.

First of all, I know what you’re saying: between LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and reading blogs, I am exhausted!  Yes, social media can be overwhelming, and this is why you need to create social media boundaries.  But as we become more active users of social media, some new niche social networking sites such as Brazen Careerist, Amplify, and Business Exchange have appeared that have compelling value propositions when compared to more “general” social media sites.  What targeted demographic does Business Exchange appeal to?  The LinkedIn user.

LinkedIn, as you already know, is the site for every professional to find and be found.  I always mention that the trend of social media is about the growing convergence of where we go for communication and information.  LinkedIn excels on the communication side, but it may not be the first place to look for the latest information when compared to Twitter (albeit LinkedIn is trying to change this with their recent introduction of new sharing features).

This is where Business Exchange shines: it is THE place to find out the latest news on anything business-related, vetted by its professional users and categorized to make it easy for you, the user, to find relevant information quickly.  That’s Business Exchange in a nutshell; here are the 6 compelling reasons to become a Business Exchange user if you are not already sold on the idea:

1.) Easily Import Your LinkedIn Profile

If you are already on LinkedIn, rest assured that you are not reinventing the wheel when you use Business Exchange: you can seamlessly and easily connect with your LinkedIn profile and import all of your profile information into Business Exchange.  This makes it very easy for the LinkedIn user to get set up with a rich profile on Business Exchange in a matter of minutes.  It also means that your professional branding is 100% portable.  Ease of getting started is one reason to at least establish a presence on Business Exchange.

2) Where the Professional Demographic Truly is

Some think that LinkedIn has become flooded with the job seeker and recruiter.  A client I was talking to today reminded me that most people see activity on LinkedIn equivalent to searching for a job.  While any social media site will have its share of any particular demographic, just by looking at the featured users and popular contributors will make it clear that Business Exchange has a demographic that is executive and professional-centric.  For instance, let’s look at the most active users in a topic that I also contribute to: Social Media Marketing.  As I write this, the most active contributors are four thought leaders in social media, including John Jantsch of the famous Duct Tape Marketing, as well as a Senior Vice President of Public Relations & Communications.  In fact, here are the titles of users I randomly selected who’s names begin with “Neal”: Business VOIP Specialist, Principal, Vice President of Sales & Business Development, Chief Investment Officer, Managing Director, CEO, Owner, Business Systems Analyst, Account Executive, IT Manager, and another Principal.  If you are an Executive or would like to be part of a social networking site that has a very professional demographic, this is the social networking site for you.

3) Completely Free of Spam

The potential problem with every social networking site is the potential to be spammed.  This is where Business Exchange shines: it concentrates only on information and no communication.  You can follow the news updates of anyone you want, and you can “react” to their news posting which may send them a notification in their email box.  But you cannot directly access any Business Exchange user.  Instead, when you navigate to their profile, you have the option of finding their LinkedIn profile, following them on Twitter, or navigating to one of their customizable links.  In other words, you can rest assured that you will not be receiving any spam by being a member of this site!  Furthermore, you can rest assured that your news stream will also not be spammed because all postings must have links…and every posting can be easily reported as spam if it indeed is so.

4) Sharing Information on LinkedIn and Twitter is Easy

With the help of first Twitter and now LinkedIn’s new sharing features we are becoming a “sharing society.”  There are compelling reasons why we should be sharing, which will be content for future blog posts, but you don’t want to have to find something on Business Exchange and then have to copy and paste and navigate over to multiple sites if you want to share it elsewhere.  Business Exchange allows you to easily and seamlessly post your article or reactions and comments straight to LinkedIn and/or Twitter just like you can do with your LinkedIn Status Update.

5) Easily and Quickly Find the Latest News on Professional Subjects

This is the most important value that Business Exchange provides the user.  How do you filter through all of the noise that is out there in social media to find information that is relevant to you?  Everyone who posts information here must post it to a certain category.  For instance, I may want to share an article concerning social media.  If I enter “Social Media” into the category list, I get the following options: Social Media Analytics, Social Media Branding, Social Media Business Failures, Social Media Business Success, Social Media Design, Social Media in the Workplace, Social Media Innovation, Social Media Marketing, Social Media Operations, Social Media Privacy, Social Media Training, Social Media vs Old Media, Conversational Media, Micro-Blogging, Relationship Economy, Social Networking, and Web 2.0 Marketing.  In other words, I can’t just post something to “Social Media” and need to be more specific in the category that I choose.  Because of this, I am forced to correctly classify the article that I am sharing.  You can now see how Business Exchange can help you easily and quickly find the latest news because the information has been properly classified by its professional user base.  In fact, I just counted, and there are 1,699 different categories for which you can share news on Business Exchange!  True, some of these categories are actually Company Names, but from the example above you should be able to ascertain that there are probably specific categories that exist that you have a professional interest in.

6) An Excellent Destination to Strengthen Your Personal Branding

So in addition to being able to potentially network with other professionals and find and share news information, why spend the time to be on Business Exchange?  Sharing relevant information to a targeted demographic is a great way for you to strengthen your personal brand and potentially win a little more mindshare in the world.  Similar to Twitter with its information-centric approach, what articles you point people to will determine how they perceive of you and thus will become part of your personal brand.  The beautiful thing about Business Exchange is, because of the choice of Categories, you can in essence compartmentalize the way people view your personal brand by which categories you post to.  It really is that simple to strengthen your personal brand in a particular category to a particular demographic should you wish to invest the time to do so.

On a final note, some of you may be worried that you are potentially investing your time in a social networking site that may not be around tomorrow.  Business Exchange is run by Business Week which is run by Bloomberg.  Furthermore, it is just one tab away from every reader who navigates to Business Week.  Business Week gets 5 million visitors a month to its site.  Hopefully you can see both why I believe that Business Exchange is here to stay and its potential to become a true source of relevant information for the professional demographic.

Have you ever heard of Business Exchange?  Have you started using it?  Please do share your experiences and advice below!  Thanks!  And please feel free to follow me on Business Exchange!

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If you are one of the 400+ million people on Facebook, you have probably already figured out a way to deal with filtering out the many potential notifications that you could be receiving.  Going to the “Account Settings” page under your personal profile leads you to a complex screen like the one pictured below:

If you keep going down the list, you will notice that you have full control over the notifications that you receive from Facebook to your email inbox.  I felt like I was in full control over these emails until I started receiving a certain type of message that started to bother me because I could not control it.  If you have been receiving messages from Facebook that you do not know the origin of, keep reading as you may have the same problem I have: receiving messages from people that you are not friends with and/or groups that you are not part of!

I should first of all point out that, in addition to the above screen, there is another screen in which you can control your Facebook notifications: Privacy Information –> Contact Settings.  In these contact settings there is the following selection that you can make:

If you select “Everyone” for this you are allowing people who find you in search results or visit your profile to send you a message.  I leave this on as I am open to hearing from people that may want to get into contact with me.  But this particular type of spam is not related to this type of general message.

The particular type of Facebook email notification that I have been getting has these characteristics:

• The email title displays that it is sent out by what appears to be the name of a Group that I am not a member of
• The headline at the beginning of the email now shows a person that I do not know sending out a message to all members of what appears to be the Group that I am not a member of
• When I click on the person who sent the email we are not friends
• When I click on the name of the Group it is not the name of a Group but is actually the name of a Facebook Event

And that is where I discovered the spam message loophole: If you create a Facebook Event, in addition to inviting your Facebook friends to the event, you can add email addresses from people that you don’t need to be friends with nor are even on Facebook to send them the notification.  Similar to how people spam you on LinkedIn by joining the same LinkedIn Group that you are in and sending you a message, there are many people on Facebook that are spamming you with Event notifications that you can’t turn off because they are inputting your email address.

In this age of social media there are many ways in which you can obtain someone’s email address.  The real question now is how to report these messages that you do not want to receive anymore.  With LinkedIn, if you receive a message, you can pinpoint the profile and report spam to either LinkedIn and/or the LinkedIn Groups that the person is a member of.  What to do in the case of these FB spam messages?

On the FB Event page itself there is a place to “Report the Event,” but even though there is a “Spam” option the event itself could very well be a legitimate one.

The only remaining option is to select the link to reply to the message and at the top there is a “Report Spam” button.  Once you press it there is no questioning for clarification but it says that the message was reported for spam.

Will Facebook be looking at those messages that you report for spam?  Will it prevent the sender of the message from spamming you again?  Only time will tell…

Have you been receiving similar mysterious spam messages?  Have you received other types of messages in which you can’t stop them from being sent to you?  Please comment and educate us!

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