Masterful Marketing » Social Networks

USGA Tribute to Arnold Palmer

Debra — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 16:00:34 +0000

Arnold Palmer Memory Book (click to enlarge)

The United States Golf Association (USGA), of which I have been a member for years, launched a tribute to Arnold Palmer for his 80th birthday. It seems like just yesterday that I kept score for Arnie when one of the first PGA Senior Tour event was held at my home course of Marlborough Country Club. In honor of his birthday, the USGA is creating the Arnold Palmer Memory Book. According to an article on Mashable, the site is powered by private label social network provider KickApps.

The site allows users to share their personal memories of Arnie, telling stories via pictures, video or text. Stories range from professional golfers sharing their memories to sports fans reminiscing of their 30 seconds of fame. I shared my memory of Arnie during that tournament in 1982 when we were called off the course due to thunderstorms. While we were waiting out the storm in a neighbor’s basement, he was sitting next to me and, well the picture tells a thousand words. At the time, I didn’t know that this picture was taken until they gave it to me.

I have kept that memory of Arnold Palmer tucked away for years and am thrilled to be able to share it not only with Arnie through his social media birthday card, but also with everyone who has interest and cares about someone as special as him.

Given my involvement in social media and my love of sports, it is nice to see pro sports using all types of social media to engage fans, increase viewership of events and provide a means for us common, everyday athletes to participate in major events.

Experiencing a Painful Loss

Networking using Twitter

Debra — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 16:39:29 +0000

As business owners, we know the value of networking. Expanding our ability to network using online social media opens us up to a larger world of possibilities. The time is right to add Twitter to your networking mix and gain valuable connections and relationships. A colleague of mine got a client because the person that needed her services searched Twitter for people who could provide it.

As Chelsea Moser advises in her post on Twitter and Promoting Your Business, be selective with who you follow. This is not a popularity contest. Following people just to raise your numbers is analogous to handing out business cards to everyone you meet at an event.

If someone follows you, you don’t necessarily have to follow them back unless you are truly interested in them. Look at their profile. If they have followed Jason Baer’s advice on the 7 Ingredients in the Perfect Twitter Profile and what you see appeals to you, then follow them back. Here are the things I look at when deciding:

Are they real? Do they use a real name and picture or are they hiding behind some cutsie name and fake avatar? The value of social networks is in the folks you meet. Plus I’m suspicious of those who fake it as they must have something to hide.
The ratio of followers vs. the number they follow – if they are following thousands and have a much smaller number of followers, I don’t immediately follow them back.
Their profile description – your first impression is key to people wanting to follow you. If your profile says (this one’s real) “internet marketing s my thing am basicallraking millions per year with it and you might wanna consider joining the game”, I feel like I need a shower. I’m here to learn and build relationships with people. I enjoy getting to know people via social networking and then meeting them in person.
Their updates – how many, how often and the content. If every update is a URL linking to something, that’s not a good sign. There’s no conversation going on, just a sales pitch. Or if they are following many people but have very few updates, I’m not sure what they are getting from Twitter so I’ll keep an eye on them. By all means, if they are new to Twitter, help them out, follow them and get them into the conversation.

How to Behave

Just as you would be guided by your first impressions when you meet someone at a live networking event, use that same instinct when you meet someone on Twitter. Don’t immediately start selling. I’ve experienced the automatic direct message (DM) with a link selling me something that Chelsea also doesn’t appreciate. Those that have done that are on my watch list of those that I will unfollow quickly if they continue to sell. This is not how you build relationships.

Talk to people, relate to them, get to know them through their thoughts and words. Learn from them and you will build relationships that will be valuable to you in the future.

How to Keep Track of it All

I’ve been using TweetDeck as my interface to Twitter recently. What I like about it is its simplicity and its visual layout. By hovering over someone’s image, you can reply, retweet, direct message and favorite a tweet. You can also split the main feed (All Tweets) into topic or group specific columns to make it easy to follow various threads. The default columns can contain All Tweets from your timeline, @replies directed to you and direct messages and you can define your own based on groups or searchs. Visit their site for more explanation and some screenshots of the interface.

For more Twitter tools, read Twitter Tools for Community and Communications Professionals by Brian Solis.

Building Social Media Relationships

Debra — Fri, 23 May 2008 22:56:37 +0000

I occasionally have conversations with people who debunk the value and power of social media. They seem to think that some people hide behind social media to avoid actually meeting people in person. Although I’m sure there are some who are like that, I believe social media has more pluses than minuses and can benefit your marketing activities immensely.

I spoke about the global connecting, sharing, and learning benefits in my post on the Benefits of Social Media earlier this year. So I thought I would share some of my real experiences.

Social media enables me to:

Connect with people through common interests (such as marketing, social media, and golf) irrespective of where they live. Through social media, I have connected with folks worldwide because we found something in common that drove the connection. People I have never met and probably would never have had the opportunity to meet if not for social media have introduced themselves to me either after I’ve connected via Twitter, commented on one of their blog posts or referenced a post in one of mine. It’s really just a matter of time before we’re at someplace in common and our paths cross for real.
Get to “know” the people I interact with because they share information about themselves, including their photo. “Putting a face with a name” makes the person less of a stranger. Last night at the Institute of Management Consultants meeting I attended in Waltham, MA, Scott Monty, Laura Fitton (Pistachio) and Aaron Strout were on a panel to discuss social media (what else!). Other Twitterers such as Mike Langford, Stephen Dill and Dmitri Gunn were in attendance. Our profile pictures enabled us to recognized each other immediately and conversations bypassed the “getting to know you” banter and proceeded quickly to interesting dialog. It was a great evening made more so by not having to walk into a room of strangers. I hope to get many more opportunities to meet folks in person from my social networks as I did last night. It was a great experience.
Constantly learn. I get updated on a lot of information from very knowledgeable people so I’m not the “last to know”. Between RSS feeds and Twitter posts with URLs to interesting information, I keep up on the pulse of what’s happening. By scanning various feeds, I can pick and choose the information I’m interested in at the time, flag that which I want to read later or share it with others.
Carry on conversations with people as if I were in the next office. As a person who works from a home office (and loves it!), I can have conversations with people throughout the day and not feel cut off from the world. But just like co-workers who drop into your office and interrupt your concentration, you have to manage your use of social media to ensure you get work done.

For those of you who are still skeptics about social media, you need to try it in order to understand the value it can be to you. If it doesn’t work for you, that’s OK - it may not be the right marketing activity for your business. But if you are considering social media as a marketing strategy, start with the basics – a blog, LinkedIn and Facebook. Once you get these going, then add Twitter. After that, it’s up to you to determine which other tools may be beneficial to you based on your target market and how you want to reach them.

My First Week’s Experiences on Twitter

Debra — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 23:15:47 +0000

Is it Worth It?

I have to say that using Twitter was not high on my list for a long while, but I finally dove in to see what this social media tool was all about. But since joining the service and selecting a few folks I wanted to follow (right now I’m following only about 20 people who’s blogs I read regularly), I find I’m really seeing a lot of value in this social network from the business perspective.

For those reading who have not heard of Twitter:

Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing? (from the Twitter FAQ).

In 140 characters or less, you can send thoughts, observations, ideas, questions and other topics around you to your “followers”. These posts are called “tweets”.

The service is free. If you don’t have text messaging in your mobile phone plan, you could spend a bit of coin following those you want to keep tabs on. You can also follow using a web browser and Google Talk. Better yet, you can get a Google Gadget for your iGoogle page as well.

As you can see to the left, I have also inserted one of the Twitter badges to display the tweets of those that I am following, including my own. So every once in a while, you will spot my face among the notables tweeting regularly. But rather than just post my tweets here, I though visitors would enjoy to see what others are doing as well.

I have also installed the Twitter Updater WordPress plugin so that all new posts automatically get broadcasted to my followers.

Mike Sansone (who I’m following and vice versa), wrote an interesting post on Twitter on the day I signed up and started poking around (was that fate?). Check out his post on why he uses Twitter.

What have I found interesting and valuable?

Most of those you follow, follow you back – this makes you feel welcome into the community. These folks don’t know me and I certainly didn’t expect people to follow me right away as they don’t know me at all. So if you think you can lurk for a while, you can’t. Those of you who did follow back, I hope my life and daily tweets are as interesting to you as yours are to me.
I get constant updates from people on what’s happening in social media. I can quickly scan the information and decide what is important and what is not. There are many things I’ve gleened over the past week that I would not have heard about had I not been following the buzz. And I just implemented a Yahoo Pipes feed as Mike suggested to keep those tweets that contain a URL to something I may want to find again later.
It keeps me connected at all times. Whether I’m out at an event, in the car, or at my desk, I can keep informed and catch a few morsels of what others are doing.

On the down side, I don’t know how folks who follow hundreds, or in some cases thousands of people, can really absorb all of the information they get. I would assume they tune into certain folks and tune out others. Only following a handful of people to get started, I find myself already doing that.

But the most valuable aspect of Twitter for me is that I’m getting to know many people who I would never have come in contact with personally (and hopefully they are getting know me as well). This media brings the world closer and connects people from everywhere with a common interest. To me, it’s almost not what you say, but the fact you are saying it to me, regardless of where I am.

So is it worth it? I would say absolutely.