LinkedIn can be like training wheels for business people who are new to online social networking.

photo credit: woodleywonderworks

Familiarity + Control. A feeling of control + familiarity can make someone new to social networking feel safer at LinkedIn than, say, jumping in to the “rougher terrain” of FaceBook and Twitter. The concept of “online resume” is grounded in the familiar, increasing the comfort level of participation. The executive who posts a profile has control over the content and the connections and recommendations he or she accepts. No one is likely to get past the gate if they say something negative or unflattering!

Where the Training Wheel Metaphor Ends. I’ve met with business people who are extremely connected on LinkedIn — they’re using this tool, and using it well. Other social networking sites hold little interest for them. FaceBook and Twitter seem frivilous and even dangerous. This is where the safety “training wheels” metaphor ends — these executives may have started tentatively on LinkedIn, but they have put their focus boldly on building and strengthening relationships within this powerful network.

Starting in Rougher Terrain… I’ve also met with seasoned business people this year who started their online social networking on FaceBook — usually at the behest of their adult children! Many of these people, surprisingly, have never even heard of LinkedIn. When I did a brief demo of LinkedIn to an executive who had been regularly interacting with his family on FaceBook last month, he exclaimed, “My Goodness! It’s Like FaceBook for Business!”

Different Entry Points. People have entered the world of online social networking from many different perspectives! Many I have talked with usually start with a technology (LinkedIn, FaceBook, etc.) instead of a business objective. They enter, play, gain experience with the technology, and then the synapses start to spark  — “Hey! How can I use this to grow or strengthen my business?”

Where did you begin your online social networking journey? How has it grown? And how have you strengthened your relationships over time?

Have you left your training wheels behind? How are you navigating trickier terrains?

Here is this week’s most oft-asked question:

“In social media, how do you separate your personal life from your professional life?”

photo credit: Kelly Hau Photography

The questioners explain that they thought LinkedIn was professional and FaceBook was personal — but now that people are using FaceBook for professional reasons — what is one to do? (And what about separating Twitter accounts: one for personal, one for professional?)

The answer: Think in terms of your “personal brand.”

What is your brand personality? Quick! Name your three personal brand attributes. Don’t know what they are? Find your personal brand attributes with an easy exercise! In branding exercises, we know that “your brand is what people say it is.” Find out what your customers, prospects, and markets are saying about you — that’s your personal brand. Balance this with the image you’d like to project to the world.

When you know your personal brand attributes cold, go to FaceBook. (Or LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube, your blog, et. al.)

Before you post hastily, ask yourself,

“Is the content I’m about to post consistent with my personal brand attributes?”

If it isn’t, don’t post!

Your brand is what people say it is. You may not like it, but when you participate in social media, you have a personal brand.

Choose to present your brand wisely! Future employers are listening. Your customers are listening. Your prospects are listening.

Represent!

Be yourself!

Be your best self.

Running URLs through a service that shortens their length is a fairly standard practice at Twitter. After all, when you only have 140 characters, you don’t want a lengthy URL address taking up most of your precious, limited space!

At the moment, Twitter uses tinyurl.com to automatically shorten long URLs that you might enter into your Tweet. There are also about a gazillion other free services on the web that let you turn a whale of a URL into minnow. TweetDeck, for example, lets you choose from over a dozen different “URL downsizing” services.

photo credit: scazon

What’s Your Favorite URL Downsizer? My favorite URL downsizer of late is BudUrl. Sure, it creates longer URLs than the popular is.gd. But I love BudUrl for its juicy, mouthwatering metrics. With my BudUrl account, I can track how many people click on my shortened link, from where, and when. When I post a BudUrl, I can check on how many people click on it from Twitter. And because my Twitter posts go directly to FaceBook, I know who clicked on my link from FaceBook. And when.

Better Metrics Lead to Better Writing. Budurl helps me determine which topics are more popular, where, and when. It also gives me insight into which “headline” techniques work better. For example, I may post the same link twice — but with different Tweet lead copy. If I get significantly different clickthrough results, I need to think about which words seem more likely to inspire action. (Hint: many of the old “direct response marketing” copy techniques that work elsewhere in life work well in Twitter. Fancy that.)

Customize your Shortened URL. As I go about my day, I realize that many folks don’t know that you can customize a shortened URL to make it more memorable. Let’s take FaceBook Profile and FaceBook Fan Pages. Those URLs can be doozies!

For example:

Here’s the direct link to my own FaceBook Fan Page:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Laura-Bergells/20431199713

Who can remember that? Not me! So here’s how I abbreviated it:

http://budurl.com/lbergells
or
http://tinyurl.com/laurabergells

Shorter. Relevant. More Memorable. Better Metrics. What’s not to like? When someone emails me and wants to know my Fan Page link, I can actually remember http://budurl.com/lbergells witout looking it up! And I can put this link on my Profile Page without it looking like a lengthy, sloppy mess!

Watch the video! If you’re the kind of person that likes a demonstration of how this all looks, I posted a quick 2.5 minute “show and tell” video on my FaceBook Fan Page about shortening your FaceBook URL. You can find it here – http://budurl.com/xlongurls

Harrowing Social Media Squatting Story: Last year, I sent a LinkedIn invitation to a thrilled client after I completed a short project for her company. She never accepted.

After a few weeks, she called to talk about another small project. As we chatted, I asked her if she received my LinkedIn invitation.

“What’s LinkedIn?” she asked.

Although she had never heard of LinkedIn, her profile was up there, showing only her current position. I showed it to her.

“I’ll be,” she said calmly. “Yep, that’s me all right.”

How did this happen?

She surmised that her boss had posted a LinkedIn profile for her.

“Oh, he’s like that,” she explained. “It’s important for him to know who employees are connected to and what we might be saying about the company. I’ll bet it’s just his nerdy little way of spying on us.”

Get Smart. Her lack of concern freaked me out. The idea that someone might be posing as her and communicating with her connections struck me as abusive and wrong. Who knows how her boss might be hurting her reputation? Recruiters are all over LinkedIn — job inquiries might be handled crassly. Her customers and prospects are also on LinkedIn — how is he communicating with them? And vendors — me, for example! — are simply ignored.

The importance of social media squatting. Even if you have no interest in participating at LinkedIn, FaceBook, MySpace, Twitter or a hundred other popular social media sites — you will be interested in protecting your brand and reputation. If you don’t snap up your name now, some jerk may.

Who knows what they will do — as they pretend to be you!

It may not be your boss. It may be a competitor. Or just some opportunistic lowlife that wants to sell it back to you for profit. There’s a rife of name squatting going on in social media — leading many to believe that social media name squatting is the new domain name squatting.

Is your name taken? To find out, visit user name check. Enter your company name, brand names, and of course, your own name. This easy-to-use site will instantly tell you if your handle is still available at over 60 popular social media plays. If your name is still available: snap it up. You may not currently have plans for using MySpace or Twitter: but at least hold your name until you do!

This is not a “when I get around to it” kind of thing. Do it now!  I talked to a company owner last month — her name was already taken. Don’t let social media squatting destroy your personal repuation — or your brand(s).

All at once, I am flattered + horrified.

Flattered, because a public figure asked me to manage her online reputation.

Horrified, because she wanted me to “ghost write” her blog content, accept social media invitations, and interact with her fan base.

Without (much of) her involvement.

The horror!

I have nothing against ghost writers. After all, I write speeches and design presentations for others. It’s a collaborative process. Framing, shaping, editing, and polishing always goes on behind the scenes.

Collaboration is a huge part of ghosting. Without collaboration, it’s not really ghosting. It’s sort of like fiction. But not the good kind of fiction that leads you to deeper universal truths. No, social media fiction of this nature is completely made up junk — with no social value.

photo credit: Sérgio Savaman Savarese

I  asked my would-be client about her motivation for getting involved with social media. What are her goals? If the goal is to grow or deepen her fan base, perhaps reaching out to fans through various social media plays can help. Or if the goal is self-expression  — maybe social media involvement can provide a vehicle and an audience for creative ideas.

Or maybe not.

But neither of these goals is likely to be achieved through “faking” relationships and stories.

So I made my “no ghost posties” position clear in my pitch. Crystal clear. Transparent, as the social media types say! But my would-be client pushed back: if I wouldn’t do it, she would have to find someone who would.

My arguments about the value of authenticity and truthfulness seemed to fail. Perhaps one argument hit a nerve — the likelihood that she would eventually get caught. Imagine it: a publicist pretending to be a client might ghost-post about how groovy her new nail polish looks. But at the exact same moment, the client is actually getting a traffic citation. Something as simple and inevitable as a simultaneous Twitter/Arrest would definitely brand a public figure as a fake and disgrace.

Getting arrested? No big deal.

Getting outed as a liar on YouTube, FaceBook, or Twitter? That’s hard to live down!

So when it comes to social media, what’s an appropriate role for the publicist? I asked pals on Twitter to share their insights. Here’s their Twittery response:

Perhaps Twitter pal Charity Hisle said it most succinctly: “Set-up, Monitoring, Advice.”

That’s it. In essence, those are the only 3 appropriate social media publicist roles.

1. Set up. This can include developing a social media strategy and response framework, as well as navigating the client through technical set-up and initial content creation (profile pictures, resumes, background, schedules, etc. “Publishing Data” as Dennis Stevenson put it. But definitely no character or voice pieces… )
2. Monitoring. Listening and responding to online buzz is a huge part of social media publicity. The publicist should stay on top of breaking stories that can impact the reputation of the public figure. That’s where than can offer…
3. Advice. A great publicist will put a client’s reputation first and recommend effective practices for navigating the sometimes tricky tributaries of social media channels.   Embracing and engaging an online fan base requires authenticity: anything less is likely to be a disaster.

Where do you stand on the ghost-post? How many times have you interacted with a public figure online and thought, “I wonder if I really connected with person — or just their army of advisors?” What’s your trust factor when it comes to public figures and social media? Who have you connected with that seems authentic — and who falls into the “fakin’ it” column?

The problem with the term “Microsharing” is that no one has really, truly defined it.

The best definition I’ve read of microsharing is:

Microsharing (def) : “you know, applications like Twitter and Pownce.”

Seriously, people. That’s the “best” definition I’ve found!

Fail!

The bigger problem with the term “microsharing”, of course, is that it’s inherently stupid.

We all know what real sharing is. We learned when we were three years old. With one cupcake and two siblings, Mom said,

“Share!”

And we knew, instantly.

photo credit: Yogi

“Share!” meant that we tried to divide the cupcake into two equal pieces, and give an equal piece to our brother. Or sister.

“Share!” also led to arguments. Debates. Fits of pique.

But it’s nice to share. After a little bickering over who scored the bigger half, we both came to realize that the act of sharing bonded us together. It created conversation. It created discussions about fairness and harmony and values.

It’s didn’t happen right away. It took time. One little act of sharing didn’t do the trick — but a repeated culture of parent-enforced sharing ultimately deepened our familial relationships.

That’s the Basic Tenet of Learning the Value of Sharing! It takes time. Appreciating the value of sharing didn’t happen right away, but eventually, we learned that participating in a culture that values sharing makes us better people. More polite. Mannerly. Gracious. Richer.

Less likely to call people “Morons!”

So, it’s not nice to “microshare”. The term “micro” sharing seems stingy. Like we’re giving a measly crumb.

And the worst part about the microsharing term… it pretends that a platform that supports multiple conversations is somehow a tiny, little, insignificant thing — instead of almost everything there is to fostering and nurturing valuable human relationships!

If you’re using the term “microsharing” — please stop. It’s demeaning.

And can we come up with a better term? And a better definition?

How about:

Public Conversation Platform — or PCP?

Many people say that Twitter is like crack, so why not PCP?

And as for a definition, how about:

PCP (def.): online sites that

a) support multiple public and private conversations and collections
b) enhance networking, communications, and relationships;  and
c) encourage brevity, the very soul of wit?

Whew! That’s a lot for something “micro” to do!

But hey, I’m open to other terms and definitions.

Comment away!

What’s a better term — and definition — for the utterly offensive “microsharing”?

Three business people asked me the same internet marketing question within a month, so I reckon this warrants a blog post! The question, roughly translated, is this:

Hey! My stats show that I’m not getting as much search engine traffic as I did a few months/years ago! I’m still in the top 10 for most of my favorite keyword terms, so what gives?”

What gives at the search engines? Generally, a decline in search-generated visitation (when your search positioning hasn’t changed!) can indicate one of two situations:

1. Your industry keywords aren’t as popular as they were before. This can be seasonal — a quick look at Google Trends for the keyword phrase “tulip festival” shows that searches for this term tend to spike in spring and all but disappear in autumn. Naturally!

Other than a decline from seasonal search, you might have to face a harder truth: your products or services may be in market decline. For example, as new technologies become more popular, searches for the term “iPod Shuffle” became less popular. You’re still likely to see “iPod Shuffle” searches spike during the holiday shopping season — but probably nothing like what we saw in 2005.

So ask yourself: is your product seasonal? Or is your product or industry in decline? Because if the answer is “yes” — of course you’re going to get less visitation from the search engines for your search terms!

But if the answer is, “no” — you’ll have to face findability fact #2…

2. People are expanding internet search far beyond Google. Vertical search is certainly becoming more popular. By vertical search, I mean search by industry or topic area. For example, back in 1999 or 2000, you might have thought of “Google” to begin an online “used car” search. Not anymore! Today, you might be more likely to think, “Autotrader.com” to begin your online search for a used car. Notice how the gap narrowed — then crossed. Autotrader.com did not squander its search engine capital — and successfully branded themselves as a top site in automotive vertical search.

Aside from vertical search, social media and other valuable information/networking sites are also fragmenting the amount of searching that your audience performs at Google. When I want to get advice about new products, for example, I find that I am more likely to ask my friends on Twitter or FaceBook or LinkedIn for their advice on where to go and what to try. Google has become my second choice.

Google is becoming the second — or third — choice for many online researchers and buyers as they look for information to help make purchasing or business decisions. If you notice that you’re spending more of your budget and time on search engine marketing for your website — and getting less of a return — it’s certainly time to take a look at your overall findability strategy!

It’s not 1999 anymore! There’s more to findability than Google and Yahoo! Update and diversify your findability strategy for 2008. Vertical search and social media may become an important part of your overall findability and engagement plan.

In one week, I will celebrate my one-year Twitterversary. I began what I called my “Twitter Challenge” about a year ago.

With close to 1,500 Tweets and almost 200 followers (well, until Twitter ate most of them yesterday, anyway!) I reckon that I’ve gone through different behavior and emotional stages of Twittering over the past year.

Please note: I’m not a psychologist. I don’t even play one on TV. I’m writing this post from personal experience, only. Never mind my Bachelor’s degrees in sociology and telecommunications (which oddly enough, might be a terrif set of degrees for becoming a social media media consultant, what with the “social” and “communications” components in each study area).

What you’re about to read is here pure, extended Twitter Drivel. (It might even be Digg or Stumble worthy. Hint, hint.)

The Ten Behavioral and Emotional Stages of Twitter

1. This is stupid. Don’t get it. Talking to an empty room about what you had for lunch. What’s the point?
2. Connecting with a few friends. Writing witty observations called twitticisms. Feeling simultaneously like a new age Oscar Wilde and a Twittering, jabbering idiot.
3. Connecting with the friends of friends. Comfortably expanding your social network with quasi-familiars.
4. Tentatively entering conversations with people you’ve eavesdropped upon who seem interesting.
5. Following the people with whom you’ve entered into engaging dialogue.
6. Blushing with pleasure when these amazing people follow you back.
7. Buoyed with confidence at your new found popularity and a spirit of bonhomie, you Twitter more enthusiastically, using a plethora of Twitter apps to enhance your experience.
8. You ask questions. You share responses and other Twitticisms from your coolest friends at your blog.
9. You become the unofficial ambassador to Twitter novices you like; eagerly offering online followship (yeah, I said followship).
10. You learn of new ideas, gain wisdom, build relationships and friendships. You realize you’re leading a surprisingly richer life from wielding such a stupidly simple tool.

How fast do novice Twitterers progress through these stages? For a fossil like me, it took about a year. However, I’ve seen others smash through these stages, in no particular order, in a matter of minutes.

Further, there’s no guarantee that there is any steady progress through these stages. Some folks die at Stage I or II, and never move on. And once you hit Stage 10, you may simultaneously drift into Stage 3– or even 1 or 2 — and go back to 7. All within the twitch of a keystroke.

Right now, I’m at stage #1. Again.

This is not backsliding. It’s interactive.

And it’s all so Twitter, in all its goofy, stupid, profound glory.

It’s changing my life. How has it changed yours?

(I’ll leave my Twitter outcomes for another post…Until then, please let me know how this list resonates with your own Twitter experience: did I forget a few stages? What’s missing? )

PS — And if you want to follow me at Twitter, I would feel so honored! Please do…

Hash is in the air!

Not only did I enjoy “Hippy Hash” at a local diner recently, I also discovered the joys of using hashtags at Twitter.

photo credit: ninjapoodles

What the? Why Hashtags?

Hashtags are a joyous way to track only certain Twitter posts. For example, if you’re at a conference, you might want to use a previously agreed upon hashtag in any Tweet that covers the conference. That’s what the attendees at the recent NAR conference did — you can actually follow the conference through their hashtagged Tweets at http://hashtags.org/tag/nar_midyear. Those of us who couldn’t attend the conference still felt like we were there!

Another example: yesterday, I started the #ATT_unwanted hashtag. I will only use this hashtag in my Tweets when I get yet another unwanted AT&T telephone solicitation. Instead of getting irritated with AT&T for continuing to plague me with unwanted phone calls, the hashtag is an easy way for me (and others!) to log the abuse. (If you keep getting unwanted AT&T calls, feel free to Tweet the details with the hashtag #ATT_unwanted.)

Backstory: for months, I’ve been getting an almost daily phone call from a person who claims to be an AT&T rep. When I tell the rep it’s the umpteenth time I’ve told them to put me on the “do not call” list, they all smugly say, “This is the first time I’ve personally called you.” One rep explained that when I tell each AT&T rep to put me on “donotcall” — they pass my number on to another AT&T rep. The rep said (nastily), “AT&T is a huge company. Ever hear of it? We found a way around the “donotcall” list by passing your number on to the next rep. We’re not going to stop calling until you buy from us. We’re way bigger and way more powerful than you’ll ever be. You might as well give up now: someone from AT&T will keep calling until you do.

Like I’d do business with a company with that kind of ‘tude!

As Twitter friend @phits said, “Lame!”

How to Hashtag

Hashtagging with Twitter is 4-step easy!

• First, get a free Twitter account, natch.
• Next, follow @hashtags
• Thirdly, in the appropriate Tweet, use the pound sign (#) followed by a unique & descriptive phrase (the hashtag)
• Finally, follow your hashtagged tweets at http://hashtags.org/tag/enter-your-hashtag-name-here

How to Give Your Hashtags Meat

If you’ve invented a new hashtag for an event and you want other Twitterers to participate and follow, you’re going to have to let them know what your hashtag is!

And by following hashtags organized around an interesting subject area — who know? You may find more Twitter friends to connect with!

What are some of your favorite hashtag uses at Twitter?

Every month, I trash at least 4 or 5 magazines — without reading them.

They arrive in the mail. I stopped subscribing to them ages ago.

photo credit: bravenewtraveler

I’m sure I’m not alone. A number of friends of mine were just grousing about this annoying issue last week. It’s not just a waste of paper. It’s needless clutter. I have to pay to have unwanted periodicals hauled away. And it’s all a huge waste of my time.

But magazine publishers need to keep their subscriber numbers artificially elevated to keep their advertising prices artificially elevated. Pull the plug on your magazine subscription, and 50% of the time, the monthlies keep coming, anyway. The other 50% of the time, you’ll get swamped with sales letters that beg you to re-subscribe — at rock-bottom prices.

Quality of subscriber? Not important.

Quantity? That’s what these flailing magazine publishers are after.

What’s this have to do with your social media subscriptions? I was a little surprised to hear two internet marketing colleagues whine about their paltry number of “subscribers” this week — and the desperate measures they were considering to increase their numbers. One considered a crazy scheme to increase blog subscriber numbers, and another felt like a failure for having slightly less than 1,000 Twitter followers — after Twittering for a few days.

To me, this kind of needless fretting over subscriber numbers seems like a form of mental illness.

• Maybe it’s obsessive compulsiveness – “1 more, no, 10 more, no, 100 more, no, never enough!”
• Or an inferiority complex — “I must be popular, or I’m worthless”
• Or anxiety – “I must have the appearance of popularity, or I will lose face with my colleagues…”

Or perhaps all three?

In reality, the number of subscribers my cohorts have is irrelevant. Ironically, the quality of the relationships they have with their current subscribers — that’s actually very good! Their subscribers seem to love them — in spite of their neuroses! This camp of lovey-doviness should ensure the word-of-mouse (yeah, I meant mouse!) that will increase the quantity of subscriber numbers.

Over time.

But, my neurotic colleagues want instant results, and instant popularity. They measure their value not in the quality of their relationships, but the quantity. (I also suspect my colleagues are attracting an equally neurotic subscriber base, what with the law of attraction being universal and all.) I hope their quantity-quantity-quantity attitudes don’t make their current subscribers feel unappreciated — because that can surely impact long term goals!

Like John Lennon said, “Instant Karma’s Gonna Get You!”

Over the following weeks, I’ll share some of the unethical and neurotic ideas I’ve heard to increase your followers, connections, and subscribers. They’ll work like crazy all right — but I wouldn’t recommend a single one of these tactics!

You don’t want to be like a magazine, after all! Or develop a mental illness…

I’ll also share some ethical and humane ideas for increasing subscriber quantity — and quality.

First up: here is one completely legitimate way to increase your blog subscriber numbers — overnight!

Use the Feedburner FeedSmith Plugin. If you’re using WordPress to self-publish your blog and Feedburner to manager your Blog feed, be sure to use the FeedSmith Plugin for WordPress. This plugin scoops up all the different ways someone might be subscribing to your feed, and re-directs them to Feedburner. You can keep track of every subscriber.

Now, my sensational headline “Double Your Subscriber Numbers Overnight” is about as true as any headline you’ll see on any woman’s magazine in the checkout stand. You actually already HAVE these subscribers — you just aren’t SHOWING all your subscribers NUMBERS in your Feedburner subscriber counts without this plugin. You can’t brag effectively without it!

And if you’re subscriber-quantity neurotic, seeing a higher number will make you feel better.

For about a second.

(Results may vary. One WordPress user I know only saw a 50% increase. And it took two days, instead of overnight. But that justified the 5 minutes of work it took to download, upload, and activate the plugin. And yeah, bragging rights aside, accurate measurements are actually important!)