I was sent 30 Day Facebook Fast link today and i really wanted to share this with you all and share my ideas on it.
Firstly he puts me on the wrong foot by calling his blog "personal development for Smart people", what right does he have to judge if your a smart person or not? But that is not the point here.
He does have some valid points and those points are exactly why I am teaching people to how to use social media more effectively so that it works for us and we are not working for social media. Social media can be an unruly beast if you do not understand how to control it.
What his is doing is is having what is called a media-related moral panic and it happens every time a new medium evolves, it happened with newspaper, radio (Google "War of the Worlds") it happened with TV "it with fry our kids brains" and it is historically speaking a normal reaction.
It is an amazing subject and what is most fascinating about media moral panics is they continue to happen no matter how advanced the technology. We all value free speech but when a new technology comes along why is it all of a sudden bad for us? I believe we have a choice and I choose to see the benefits but not be naive to the negative but balance is the key! I would love to hear your thoughts!
If you’re a follower of marketing and sales blogs beyond just this one, you’ve probably noticed all kinds of blogs and tweets sprouting up today around The Blog Tree, just released by Eloqua and JESS3.
And I think the attention is well deserved.
Every blogger has some kind of blog roll, but without guessing from the names or clicking through each and every one listed, it’s challenging to know what you can learn from them and what value they provide. And if you wanted to know what blogs influence them, how they’re connected to other blogs, or how they contrast and compare to the rest, you were out of luck unless you had hours upon hours of time to invest in research.
Until The Blog Tree.
At a glance, you can see the scope of the best content in the marketing and sales blogosphere and how it all works together. Joe Chernov, Director of Content at Eloqua, puts it this way:
“Anyone can cobble together a list of Twitter tips or 'must-read' blogs and crown themselves ‘content marketers,'” he explains. “But when you produce content that surprises, informs and delights, you don’t have to market it. It blooms naturally.”
I look forward to watching The Blog Tree continue to flourish as more thought leaders share their insights and fresh blogs emerge.
In his recent book, Real-time Marketing and PR, David Meerman Scott gives many examples of companies that suffer from not reacting in real time to customer issues. Going “real time” means preparing an organisation to react to what’s happening in their world, cohesively and adeptly. It requires planning for the future with room for ambiguity and change, and the flexibility to react from the top to the bottom of a company.
Going real timeis something most companies, especially large ones, are not geared to do. Now that customers have the power they do with social networking, with their conversations visible to all, Scott’s premise is that creativity and improvisation is required in the "real-time" culture that consumers now demand.
2011 and the years ahead will be a time when marketers start to get away from thinking of social marketing in terms of the limited information posted on Facebook or LinkedIn, and start to figure out how to influence and encourage the transmission of information across the vastly larger real social networks their customers inhabit.
A recent study at Harvardshowed that information and influence travel up to three degrees across a social network. The information you communicate to friends, family and colleagues is often passed on beyond your network – possibly to thousands of people, most of whom you will not even know. Similarly, the information you receive each day may have traveled two or three degrees before it reaches you.
This is where the meat is for social marketers. In our connected world of Tweets, blogs, emails and posts, this information transmission is captured in electronic form, and what we know as “word-of-mouth” in face to face interaction has become “word-of-digital”, and it’s incredibly track-able and useful.
Business owners are now aware of the need to have a social media presence, but how do they organise it? The answer Social Media Management tools. These tools are constantly being updated and developed with a variety of functions and effectiveness.
To give you an idea of what's out there, here's a round up of the 10 most popular business tools companies can use to organize their social network accounts.
1. HootSuite HootSuite offers three packages -- Basic, Pro and Enterprise -- that are targeted toward small or medium-sized businesses and others who need control and analytics for their online activity.
Users who sign up for the free basic plan get five profiles and two RSS feeds for Facebook and Twitter, as well as a 30-day free trial for its stats-tracking service, Ow.ly Pro. After the free trial expires, users can either purchase an upgrade or stick with the basic plan.
Pro Plans range from $5.99 to $49.99 per month and include unlimited profiles, RSS feeds, and Ow.ly stats, one "team member" to help you maintain your status updates, Google Analytics Integration, and more.
The company's Enterprise Package costs about $1,500 per month or $2,000 per month if you want to use a vanity URL shortener. This delux service includes geo-segmented social network monitoring, a full-featured analytics package, Zendesk integration, "HootSuite University" certification training and other features.
2. Sprout Social Sprout Social is a social relationship manager designed to help small businesses and brands manage multiple social networks from one place. Prices start at $9.99 per month under Sprout Social Professional, which lets you manage up to five identities.
Sprout Social Professional can monitor Twitter, Facebook (fan and personal pages) and LinkedIn. This means you can search, monitor and cross-post to networks, schedule messages to be posted, as well as track links and referrals.
For $49.99 per month, Sprout Social Business lets you manage 10 identities or locations. You also get additional metrics, more advanced tracking data, Foursquare and Yelp support, geotargeting ,and the ability to create daily specials or offers.
3. Involver
Used by Facebook's internal marketing team, Involver offers four packages: Basic (free), Professional ($99/month), Business ($549/month) and Enterprise ($2,749/month).
The basic package consists of a number of social media tools, such as RSS Feed, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, etc., from which you can choose two that will be added to your Facebook page. Each succeeding plan offers more tools like analytics, an account manager to set up your accounts (comes with Business and Enterprise), multi-media publishing (publish images, audio, video, and text across multiple networks) as well as tech support.
4. CoTweet
Users can choose between CoTweet's free Standard plan or its new paid option, Enterprise. The Standard plan is aimed at individuals and organizations that manage a small number of Twitter accounts and need only basic features to manage their conversations. CoTweet Standard offers Tweet scheduling, email notifications, multiple account publishing, click tracking, message assignments, and some analytics reporting. It does not include Facebook account access or have a native iPhone app.
Last year CoTweet added a paid option to its standard plan, which provides additional analytics and tweet history and starts at $7,000 per year. The Enterprise plan includes more detailed analytics resources, a lifetime archive of customer interactions, faster Twitter updates, and help with account management from CoTweet's team.
5. TweetDeck
An oldie but a goodie, Tweetdeck is a free tool that has been ramping up its features.
In addition to managing Facebook and Twitter accounts, users can also update their Foursquare, LinkedIn, Googlebuzz and MySpace accounts, share photos on Flickr, watch YouTube videos and more.
6. Vitrue Vitrue offers three main components -- Vitrue Tabs, Vitrue Publisher, and Vitrue Apps -- to help businesses personalize their social media networks.
With Vitrue Tabs, users get a content management system for creating a Facebook fan page and custom homepage. Tabs lets users manage as few as one Facebook page and one Twitter stream to multiple streams.
Vitrue Apps helps you create custom videos, photo slideshows, polls, surveys, coupons and other marketing tools for Facebook.
Vitrue Publisher allows you to post scheduled messages and apps to Facebook and Twitter as well as monitor responses to your posts.
Vitrue offers a month-to-month license in three price plans, beginning with a $300 entry-level package. For more information, first tell Vitrue what your budget and tech needs are here.
7. SocialOomph
Formerly known as TweetLater, SocialOomph lets users schedule messages on both Twitter and Facebook Fan pages and send targeted messages to specific audiences.
The Twitter scheduling feature is free while Facebook scheduling is available for $29.97 a month with the Professional plan. The paid plan also includes a spam-blocking feature; users can customize this with their own spam words.
8. Ping.fm Ping.fm is a free service that allows you to "ping" or update multiple social media accounts and transmit the same data or message to various accounts.
Ping is designed to provide the easiest way possible for users to post to their social networks all at once. It's a simple service that eliminates the middle man when it comes to posting information on Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, Bebo, Blogger and other networks.
9. Gist Gist integrates all your contacts to one location from Salesforce, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, email, and other sources onto one dashboard, which you can divide among people and companies.
It pulls news and updates from the various networks onto one newsfeed automatically. Gist also recently added Tungle to its list of integrated profiles.
10. Nutshell Mail Nutshell Mail brings social networks to your email inbox for free, enabling you to keep track of all your Facebook, Twitter, and other email accounts by sending scheduled, consolidated email alerts.
Nutshell Mail sends one email updating you on multiple social media accounts, such as Facebook and Twitter, without clogging up your inbox. It's ideal for those who have several accounts but aren't heavy social network users.
This seminar is a strategy workshop for business who want to learn how to use social media; it summarizes the "best practices" of businesses who are successful in using social media and brings them to life.
Here, you'll learn about the key issues that every business faces when using social media along with guidelines for addressing these issues within the context of your own business community. You'll also learn which communications tools are most appropriate for you and which technologies are necessary for your online community to truly thrive.
All you need to enjoy and make use of this seminar is familiarity with Internet basics and a desire to create or improve your own business through social media like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Linkedin etc. You don't need to be an expert!
This seminar is a must if you're preparing to launch (or redesign) your social media presence, use this seminar as a planning tool to help you formulate your vision, identify your audience, prioritise your time and plan your resource needs.
Or, if you're already using social media you can use this seminar as a source of ideas and inspiration to help you meet your goals, improve and develop your community and better serve the needs of your members.
Everyone will leave the seminar with a strategy and action plan to successfully use this new media effectively and to build a social media community which will create your brand as the expert!
This seminar is a strategy workshop for business who want to learn how to use social media; it summarizes the "best practices" of businesses who are successful in using social media and brings them to life.
Here, you'll learn about the key issues that every business faces when using social media along with guidelines for addressing these issues within the context of your own business community. You'll also learn which communications tools are most appropriate for you and which technologies are necessary for your online community to truly thrive.
All you need to enjoy and make use of this seminar is familiarity with Internet basics and a desire to create or improve your own business through social media like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Linkedin etc. You don't need to be an expert!
This seminar is a must if you're preparing to launch (or redesign) your social media presence, use this seminar as a planning tool to help you formulate your vision, identify your audience, prioritise your time and plan your resource needs.
Or, if you're already using social media you can use this seminar as a source of ideas and inspiration to help you meet your goals, improve and develop your community and better serve the needs of your members.
Everyone will leave the seminar with a strategy and action plan to successfully use this new media effectively and to build a social media community which will create your brand as the expert!
