How it works:
Digg, Netscape and Delicious are just a few examples of social bookmarking tools, which allow users (us) to flag or ‘bookmark’ something of interest – from large corporate sites and news announcements to obscure blogs and the wandering thoughts of anyone who happens to have access to a computer. Other members of the site community then vote on them (it’s time sensitive, so after about 51 votes within 24 hours on Digg or 10 votes within 10 minutes on Netscape) your story can be catapulted to the stratospheric heights of the home page.
Use it to:
Drive. Lots. Of. Traffic. The catch? What you’re writing has to be of serious value, well-written and incredibly well seeded. Perfect for when you’ve written a timely, interesting and relevant article. If you can upload this and seed the link on all of your social platforms, including your blog and website, providing one-click access to rate your article, you’re sure of a major spike in traffic.
What you could get:
Impressions on your impressions. Engaged pairs’ of eyes at that. For someone to read your article and consider it worth putting their name to as a voter or commentator means that they more than likely actually read it (and it’s now immortalised in a massive repository of newsworthy content for more people to find, which sounds like a bit of a Brucey Bonus to me).
Tags: Delicious, Digg, new media, social bookmarking, social networking, Stumble Upon
How it works:
So there are thousands of other sites from which you can launch your message and participate in stimulating debate other than just your own website….but there aren’t a thousand extra hours in the day with which to complete the enormous task of staying abreast of the ever-evolving online community. So exploit your efforts by writing once and posting, tweeting or updating many times simultaneously on your different networks.
Use it to:
Claim back your life! As much as social networking is a fabulous exercise in brand building, lead generation, customer service, conversion and retention; there is other work to be done in the office, you know like actually developing the products and services you’re generating all this buzz around, strategising, finance plans, meeting humans face to face, that kind of thing. Between your feed burner and your aggregator you can live the life of a social entrepreneur, continuing to converse, provide information, have an opinion and stay up to date with everyone else’s news, as well as actually leaving the office before midnight.
What you could get:
An online footprint like a woolly mammoth. Big enough to make you known to a much wider audience and net people that can be drawn in to your social web (by cross-promoting your various channel appearances), ready for you to nurture and over-awe with your valuable wisdom. Enough said.
Tags: Aggregators, friend feed, gigya, ping.fm, social networking
Posted by Rebecca Sykes on Aug 6, 2009 in
marketing,
new media,
social networking How it works:
Linkedin is your 80’s rolodex…online. You create a profile to sell yourself (which should do the equivalent of a power suit and walnut desk for your online reputation), including all of your professional qualifications, experience, fields of interest and expertise; and then you add your contacts. As in everyone you know in a business capacity, who knows when a contact of a contact will become a vital link in your career path?
Use it to:
Link with people you know. Keep people informed about what you’re up to or looking to be involved with. But crucially, as with all networking, stay interested in what everyone else is doing too. Be part of other people’s chains – if you have a colleague who does freelance web design and know the Digital Marketing Manager of a firm you used to work for is looking for support with their new site, introduce them. Acts of altruism in this context propel you to the front of people’s minds and reciprocal connections inevitably come flooding in.
What you could get:
A widened net. As in MUCH wider. Wider than that which you could ever have cast in real life. Instead of ringing round old friends and colleagues for access to their rolodex when in need of an opportunity or referral, these people become your own contacts, to nurture as you see fit. The better you do this, the stronger your net and the greater your pool of resources becomes.
One thing to remember: nurture when you don’t need anything. Then when you do, connections are already established and not on an awkward ‘needy vs bestower of contacts’ basis.
Tags: business, contacts, corporate networking, employee network, Linkedin, social networking
Posted by Rebecca Sykes on Aug 5, 2009 in
digital marketing,
marketing,
new media How it works:
Facebook has been and to some extent still is THE social connection platform that helps over 250 million people communicate more efficiently with their friends, family and coworkers. Now with fan pages for business users, vanity URLs and Facebook advertising there are many more ways to grow your network, build awareness and link to new prospects through the news feeds of your loyalists.
Use it to:
Create a hub (yes, much like the way in which your website is a hub) but with the added bonus of being rooted in sociability. Meaning that you can upload images, videos, thoughts, opinions and links…and other people can upload them too. Creating a dialogue, a cumulative net of resources, an audience for asking questions and seeking feedback and an organic mechanism for inspiring new prospects to come and take a look. NOTE: this is not your own personal advertising platform, one way communication is as ineffective on Facebook as national cinema advertising might be for your local garage.
What you could get:
A friendly network.
A social hub (from which to connect all other social mediums, with an Aggregator if you’re not a fan of spending hours repeating yourself across numerous platforms).
Or…a completely useless page of one-way announcements and dwindling fan numbers, if you don’t invest some energy and backbone into. Dare to ask, reveal what isn’t yet finished, collect feedback and respond directly to it.
Tags: connect, dialogue, facebook, fan page, friends, MySpace, social networking
Posted by Rebecca Sykes on Aug 4, 2009 in
digital marketing,
marketing,
new media How it works:
Twitter is a micro-blogging platform for messages of less than 140 characters. Short sharp tweets, delivered across a number of platforms to followers (of your brand, not knights of the realm). It is partly down to this assimilation across mobile platforms (the only social network to truly grasp this, due to its simplicity, as even Facebook stumbles when it comes to images and video) that Twitter is so successful. The other reason is its use of vertical connects. You follow on Twitter based on interests and expertise, as social as it is, it’s about information dissemination and VERY niche targeting, which makes it unrivalled in its power to connect brands and the individuals who want to meet them.
Use it to:
Develop your personal branding; direct traffic to sites, blogs, podcasts, videos, images, comment, forums – WHEREVER the party is; or crucially to administer unparalleled customer support and prospecting. Organisation happens via #tags, which collate tweets around a certain topic, creating pockets of relevance and applications such as Twitterhawk allow for the searching and automated tweeting of hot, not vaguely warm, but HOT leads in your exact target vicinity. Your searches can include key terms, exclude key terms, be weighted for positive or negative attributes, filter for location and include up to 5 different responses for different types of identified tweet. Very clever.
What you could get:
Real business. Whereas conversion has historically been hard to prove, with almost no concrete stats emerging from any social (or anti-social) media for that matter, Twitter can deliver hot leads that just require tipping over the edge into a pot labeled ‘revenue increasing’.
Information, faster than any other method as networks catch fire with big (and small) world and niche news.
Tags: clients, follwers, link sharing, micro-blogging, real time, social, social networking, TweetDeck, Tweetie, Tweetpic, tweets, Tweetvid, Twestival, Twitter, TwitterFox, TwitterHawk
