Look after your contacts; look after your clients; increase your knowledge and never stop learning.
Learning
Look after your contacts; look after your clients; increase your knowledge and never stop learning.
Do You Know What Your Social Mention Factor Is?
I’ve spoken before about how important it is to know what’s being said about you online. It doesn’t matter if it’s from a PR or branding perspective, or just from a personal point of view – hearing is the first step to responding.
If there’s something negative being said, you need to respond and counter where necessary. If it’s positive, you can also respond and just say thanks for the kind words – it certainly won’t hurt to show someone that you appreciate their words.
One of the tools I’ve been messing around with lately is Social Mention. In the words of the application itself:
“Social Mention is a social media search engine that searches user-generated content such as blogs, comments, bookmarks, events, news, videos, and microblogging services.”
And that pretty much sums up what Social Mention offers. Yet there’s more, and it’s these features that make Social Mention pretty cool for your own use or business use.
When you search for something using Social Mention, you’ll get results sent back to you from a myriad of sources, from the better-known social networks to more obscure ones. Tabs above the results allow you to choose from blogs, microblogs, social bookmarks, comments and more.
Where it gets fun is with the ranking system. Look to the right of Social Mention and you’ll see your score out of 100. The higher the score, the more mentions about you, your business or product.
This can allow you to tailor where you’re more effective online, and either concentrate on that area, or try and become more effective elsewhere, depending on your needs. By showing tags and sources, you can also see what words are being used about you and from where. It even tells you when the last reference to you was made.
Once you have your information, you can then save it as a CSV/Excel file and use it for any stats or reports of your own.
Topping it all off, Social Mention also offers trending topics, as well as email alerts and RSS feeds that you can personalize to exactly what you want to know about.
There are a host of great free and premium monitoring services around, but for ease of use and results, I have to say I’m really liking what I’ve found so far with Social Mention.
How about you? Have you used it yet? What do you think about it? See possibilities or just another addition to a crowded market?
Would You Trust Google With Twitter?
From Techcrunch to the Washington Post and beyond, the rumours/semi-rumours of Google buying micro-blogging site Twitter continue.
There’s enough already being written on the subject, so I’ll keep this brief.
Two words – Gmail and Feedburner. One is Google’s email program and the other’s a blog analytical? tool for stats, readers, clickthroughs, etc. But here’s the thing.
According to my Gmail account, it’s still in beta. Despite officially celebrating it’s 5-year anniversary on April 1. Then there’s Feedburner, which was the best friend of bloggers everywhere – until Google took it over. Now it’s the devil in disguise, with constant feed failures and fluctuating statistics.
So, an email system 5 years in beta and the destruction of many bloggers’ favourite tool.
Would you trust Google with Twitter?
The Difference Between Heaven and Hell in Social Media
This is a guest post from John Haydon. John is a guy of many talents. He’s a teacher, a learner, a singer, a comedian with a very dry wit and one of the nicest guys you could meet.
He’s also a damn fine blogger and the Blogger Outreach partner for 12for12k. I’m delighted to have John here today.
An ancient Buddhist parable involves a young Zen monk asking his teacher about the difference between Heaven and Hell.
His teacher replies, “Both Heaven and Hell have an expansive dining hall with a steamy vat of noodle soup at the center of the hall. The soup smells delicious and everyone has equal access to the soup. The strange thing is that each diner has to eat this soup with chopsticks that are 4-feet long.”
Puzzled, the young monk asks, “So, if both Heaven and Hell have this huge dining hall with this great soup and these strangely long chopsticks, then aren’t they the same?”
The teacher replies, “Yes, they appear to be the same. But how the diners eat is the critical difference.”
“How’s that?” asks the student.
“In Hell, everyone starves because no matter how hard they try, they can’t get the noodles into their mouths. The chopsticks are too long.
“In Heaven, each diner feeds the person sitting across from them at the dinning room table. Everyone is happy and eats to their hearts content.”
How does this relate to social media?
- Understanding technology is important. Twitter’s potential is lost if all you do is post what’s new with you, just like long chopsticks aren’t placed at tables for one.
- Giving to others nourishes our souls, just like feeding each other brings joy and full bellies. Supporting other people’s agendas with social media has surprising and immeasurable business value.
- Everything works better if you put them together, like the two pairs of chopsticks work by feeding each other. There is no “Twitter or Facebook?”, only “Twitter and Facebook.”
- Are you ready for another bite? There is a very good reason that Listening is the very first step in most social media strategies. Why boil more Spaghetti when all along they wanted Soba?
And finally:
There is enough noodle soup for everyone.
- John Haydon does social media strategy and training for non-profits and small businesses. He is also a songwriter and a father to a 5-year old boy. You can find out more by subscribing to his blog or connecting with John on Twitter.