Social Media

How NOT to Win Friends and Influence People

When is sharing information useful, and when is it just spamming off the back of someone else’s community?

I ask because when I logged into my Facebook page today to post an update on a future Bonsai Interactive event, I was met with this at the top of my wall (click to expand).

It was posted by Claire Reynolds on behalf of the DSNR Media Group. At least I think it’s by Claire on behalf of DSNR, since Claire’s Facebook profile has her located in the U.K., while DSNR are based in Israel.

DSNR describe themselves as “a recognized global provider of result-based online and mobile advertising solutions… with cutting edge optimization tools.” Really, DSNR?

So spamming your message onto a Facebook wall is considered cutting edge? Shilling your wares without permission is your great advertising solutions? Posting links to your service where they may or may not be relevant to the audience is ethical?

Here’s a heads-up – spam is not cool.

You can paint it whatever way you like, but you’re spamming.

You’re an online advertising company, so I’m pretty sure you’re aware of Permission Marketing from Seth Godin. Even though it was written over 10 years ago, it’s still more than relevant today. Check it out – it’s a great read and might open your eyes as to why your current spamming approach isn’t welcome.

In the meantime, I’m removing your post on my wall. I respect the community I have over there, and I don’t want them spammed by you either.

Have a great week.

Hungover Radio ? A Social Media Success Story by Marcus Edwardes

January 16th? 2010, I?m at a party with a few friends.

We were bragging to each other about the usual things. Girls, sport, gadgets, movies. I make a remark that would change my life.

?I?m gonna launch my own Radio Show!?

The idea has been swirling around in my head for years but I?ve never vocalized it. Not even to my wife ? she just knows that I am a big Talk Radio fan. By the way, I own a Video Games recruitment company. I?m British.

?Right, of course you are Marcus. Want another beer?? Sure. Get me shot too.

Over the next week I dedicate myself to the task of setting up the show. It?s not easy.

Sunday Jan 24th. I broadcast my first internet radio show. Hungover Radio is born. People love it. Raw, full of potential. I?m loving every minute of it.

I hire a sound engineer and turn my garage into a Radio studio over the next week. A proper studio. Mics, mixing desks, computers, cables.? The show is real.

The next few weeks fly by ? largely to good reviews by my small but growing audience.

I invent a game called The Domain Name Game and pretend that it?s sponsored by GoDaddy. I send them the tape.

A week later GoDaddy call me back. ?We want to sponsor you.? What?

GoDaddy want to sponsor Hungover Radio after 6 shows. We are off to the races.

I?m on a roll. I send a tape to Rick Dees Entertainment. I?m looking for some constructive feedback. They call back. ?We want to meet you?.

I go to the Rick Dees studios in Burbank. Rick Dees extends his hand to shake mine. ?Marcus ? consider this your second home?. What?

I go to lunch with Producer Dave Lipson from Rick Dees Entertainment. ?We?d like to develop a daily radio show with you as the host?.? Get the fuck out of here.

Week 8. Hasn?t happened yet. But I?m feeling lucky. Bring it on.

About the author: Marcus Edwardes has spent his career in technology and video game recruiting. Earlier this year he started Hungover Radio, which he describes as “roast lamb for the ears”. You can listen to Hungover Radio at HungoverRadio.com, or follow Marcus on Twitter @hungoverradio.

Together Again ? 25 Years Later: A Social Media Success Story by Debbie Kipp

Our story was set in motion during those wonderful college years. It starts long before the term social media was coined and meanders through graduation, relocation, marriages, children, careers, and over 25 years of life. It ends, or rather begins, with LinkedIn and Facebook.

During the early 80?s, as students at Missouri State University in Springfield, MO, my (now) husband joined 17 other men and founded the Zeta Nu chapter of Delta Sigma Phi fraternity. Their chapter survived on campus for eight years before college antics forced the hand of their superiors and ultimately closed the chapter.

During that time over 180 men became active members with the love and support of nearly as many wonderful women. It was a surprisingly close-knit group comprised of students from all walks of life. We loved, we laughed, we shared, we studied (well, some of us did), we supported, and we played. In short, we were together during a time in our lives where strong bonds formed friendships that would last a lifetime.

As we each graduated, moved on, started our careers and began the ?adult? chapters of our lives, we somehow managed to let life get in the way. Sadly, many of us eventually lost touch.

Fast forward to March 14, 2009. I received a message from my LinkedIn account that read, ?So what?s new in the last 25 years?? Blink. Blink. OMG! It was from a friend that I hadn?t seen since my last party as a college student.

That evening, I excitedly told my husband about the LinkedIn connection. Our conversation ignited a curiosity, the result of which would not have been possible without the assistance of social media. Who else might we find on LinkedIn? And what about Facebook?

We began what most would refer to as an intense search, spending every evening and many weekend hours for several months on a mission to find as many old college buddies as possible. We plugged name after name into the Facebook and LinkedIn search fields. If we couldn?t find someone on either platform, we turned to Google and the Internet. We created a database of current contact information and continue to share regular updates with everyone.

It wasn?t long before reconnection conversations turned to talk of a reunion. A planning team was formed and on July 24-26, 2009, we held the first-ever Reunion of the Zeta Nu Chapter of Delta Sigma Phi. Old memories gave way to new and all enjoyed a truly delightful weekend!

In the end, we reconnected with over 150 friends, had almost 100 join our Facebook group and another 25 connect in our LinkedIn group. Today, our renewed relationships are sustained through social media and we continue our search for those not yet found. Tomorrow . . . another reunion, of course!

About the Author: Debbie Kipp is a Production Manager at Paradowski Creative in St. Louis, Missouri by day and a social media nut and amateur genealogist by night. Learn about life on the production side of the advertising/marketing/graphic design community by visiting her blog The Production Side. Or, follow Debbie on Twitter at @DKKipp.

Social Media and Travel ? A Social Media Success Story by Jeanne Dee

What could be better than traveling the world on an open ended tour?

At Soultravelers3, we have been amazed to find absolutely stunning opportunities, beautiful connections and world wide collaborations through social media.

When we began our open ended, family world tour in 2006 we had no idea that it would play such a big part of our journey? and our lives.

We travel the web 2.0 while we travel the world and it expands our benefits as well as the benefits of our audience that travels with us virtually.

We are the opposite of geeks, don’t own an iphone or ipod, yet our world traveling digital lifestyle as a family led us to be early adopters in some ways, primarily in social media. We knew nothing about blogs when we began, but wanted to share with family and friends, plus create a memoir for our child, so we are shocked that out of the estimated 200 million? travel-related websites on the net, that we are in the top 20 today. We were stunned when our first Youtube travel video went viral with over a million views.

We live richly and travel the world on just 23 dollars a day per person and find ourselves to be accidental trail blazers for a new way of being. Social media has also played a huge part in our daughter’s education as? a 21st century global citizen which is the primary goal in our journey ?(as well as wanting to spend more time together).

The very best part has been the people that we have met that have enriched our journey beyond measure in so many unique ways.

Before leaving, I researched information about what digital piano to buy on a piano forum and by chance the most helpful person was a man from Spain who lived an hour away from where we would winter. That family became one of our best friends in Spain and our guardian angels.

Our daughter takes piano and violin lessons via Skype webcams with teachers on a different continent, both found through social media. We find great travel secrets by asking on social media and we share the great secrets that we discover.

The positive stories are truly endless and I wrote about some a while back in a popular post called “Twitter and Travel 2.0”. We’ve had a lot of fun meeting up with some of the people we’ve met online, like Wendy Perrin from Conde Nast Traveler who invited us to do Hallowe’en with her family when we were in New York City meeting the thousands of disadvantaged school kids who followed us virtually through a non-profit. Her kids were fans of ours because of our Youtube videos and they all had a blast together.

When I had a bike wreck on the Danube and landed in the hospital in Austria, a quick tweet on Twitter allowed my mom and sister to find us and call us. When I tweeted about my daughter taking an online? class with John Hopkins University’s CTY program, a teacher sent her the books she needed from London,? gratis because he was a fan.

Perhaps the biggest way social media changed our lives is when we got a Twitter Direct Message out of the blue which resulted in a featured story in the New York Times from one of our favorite writers. That led to many literary agents finding us and now we are writing a book. Social media makes it a small world today!

About the author: Jeanne Dee is an internationally recognized travel guru and creative lifestyle design consultant, via her award winning website Soultravelers3 that National Geographic Traveler called “One of the best Family Travel Blogs in cyber space”. Find us in Social Media via our Google Profile.

7 Days to Turn Your Blog Into a Social Media Hub – Day 4: WordPress

This is the fourth part of a seven part mini-series looking at how and why to turn your blog into a social media hub. You?ll be able to find the complete series?here.

So far we’ve looked at prepping the networks you’re going to be using for your hub, and what features you might want to consider. By now, you should have a pretty strong idea on what your hub is going to look like, so all we need to do now is find a home for it.

For that, the best option is setting yourself up with a self-hosted WordPress blog.

While there’s nothing wrong per se with free blogging options like Blogger or WordPress (the .com version; self-hosted WordPress is on the .org domain), they severely limit how much interaction you have with them from a user perspective. Designs are limited as well, and add-ons aren’t supported, and to make a truly effective social media hub on your blog, you need fluidity to design.

The worst thing about free blogging options is that you’re also placing all your content into the hands of a third-party. If Blogger, WordPress or any other free blogging platforms change their Terms and Conditions, you could find yourself without a blog. With a self-hosted option, all the control lies in your hands. While there are other options like TypePad and Squarespace, I just prefer WordPress for its ease-of-use and community support.

Going Self-Hosted

Just in case you aren’t already using self-hosted WordPress, here’s a quick guide to getting set up :

Choose a domain name and a web host to host your blog. Bluehost is perfect for this, since it offers packages that set up the domain and hosting as an all-in-one package. There are several others, so Google “web host” and find the one right for you.
Once you have your account, you’ll be taken to an area called C-panel. This is simply the Admin dashboard for all the backroom stuff associated with your site. Once in there, its simply a matter of using Fantastico to set up your WordPress account, as shown by my friend John Haydon’s video.

Planting the Seeds

The reasons for using a self-hosted WordPress blog are numerous, but the main two (at least as far as a social media hub is concerned) are design and add-on flexibility. Since the hub is going to be both your home-base and outpost, you need a platform that can handle your needs – WordPress is perfect for this.

The look and feel of your hub will define how useful it is to your visitors. The less cluttered the look, the more effective the hub can be, although some folks prefer a more information-led design. This is where WordPress and a premium theme comes into play (a theme is just a pre-designed look or framework for your blog) -? you can choose a template, page, sub-pages, sub-domain or any number of design options to present your hub.

There are benefits to each option:

A page holds everything in one area, although it could get cluttered.
Sub-pages allow you to set up different niche hubs (more on that tomorrow).
Sub-domains offer a completely separate hub altogether, but still tied to your blog’s main domain.
Templates allow a different look and feel from your blog design, and help give that unique hub feel.

What you choose will mostly be determined by how many resources you populate your hub with. How you populate these resources is up to you; again, the great thing with self-hosted WordPress is that the flexibility of design is limitless, thanks to plug-ins.

Social Media Plug-Ins for Your Hub

WordPress is an open-source community, which means that there is a whole community of developers making really cool applications (or plug-ins) every day. These are released to the WordPress userbase (almost always free of charge) and you can then use them on your blog to help turn it into anything you like.

Some of the best ones for a social media hub (and ones that I’ll show you examples of in the design post coming next in the series) include:

Enthropia’s Lifestream. One of the ways to show what you’re up to on different networks is Lifestreaming, and Enthropia’s plug-in for WordPress is one of the simplest. This is perfect for those that don’t want a full-on social media hub.
Twitter Tools. Offers great integration between Twitter and your blog and vice versa, including tweet archives, posts, admin options and more.
Smart YouTube. Ideal for video bloggers, this gives you a larger set of options than just video embedding – playlists, RSS feed support and iPhone compatibility being just a few.
FotoBook. While there are plug-ins and widgets to integrate your blog with Facebook, one of the coolest to do this in reverse is FotoBook. This imports all your pictures from Facebook and enhances the personal aspect of your social media hub.

These are just some plug-ins that, along with your design and the existing applications from the various social networks, will make up your social media hub. The great thing with WordPress is that, no matter what you’re looking to do via your hub, you can probably find a plug-in for it. Just go to WordPress Extend and start searching – that’s where the treasure is to shape your hub, your way.

Takeaway: Make a list of how many features you’d like on your blog. Decide if you want to go for a single page, sub-pages, sub-domain and how intensive or lite you wish your hub to be. Sketch some ideas for layout, since tomorrow we?ll look at the various options available, with examples of each to a successful hub. To make sure you receive the latest from?7 Days to Turn Your Blog Into a Social Media Hub, feel free to either?subscribe by RSS feed or?email subscription.

photo credit: pexatar

Note: This blog no longer runs on the Headway framework. Instead, it’s a custom WordPress design by Lisa Kalandjian of SceneStealer Graphics.