Social Networking
Top secret Intelligence agencies discover the power of social networking |
I read an interesting article today on cnn.com about how CIA and FBI have built a social networking site, just like facebook, where their analysts can share information and have discussions. They figured that social networking platforms are the best way to gaurantee that there aren’t any unconnected dots or loopholes.
A-Space is ofcource highly classified and nobody without the right security clearance can access the space. However, I’m glad that agencies are finally starting to discover and utilize the power of social media to their advantage.
Here’s an abstract, enjoy!
“”It’s every bit Facebook and YouTube for spies, but it’s much, much more,” said Michael Wertheimer, assistant deputy director of national intelligence for analysis. The program is called A-Space, and it’s a social-networking site for analysts within the 16 U.S. intelligence agencies.
Instead of posting thoughts about the new Avenged Sevenfold album or Jessica Alba movie, CIA analysts could use A-Space to share information and opinion about al Qaeda movements in the Middle East or Russian naval maneuvers in the Black Sea.
The new A-Space site has been undergoing testing for months and launches officially for the nation’s entire intelligence community on September 22.”
Simon U Ford (SUF.EDBD)
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Is Yahoo Buzz all Fuzz? |
After opening up to the public, it seems Yahoo Buzz has been able to generate quite some traction around the product. To me, the six month wait was rather disappointing in the sense that they didn’t blow me away with anything innovative. So far, it seems to be at par with Digg, Propeller and others of their like.
In Yahoo Buzz any one can submit their interesting story to a link and have an opportunity to get buzzed by the Yahoo community. The stories are arranged by category and is very similar to the concept of digging. Stories on that topic will get an extra boost in the rankings. You can also discover most remarkable story or video or can share it with other social networks.
Is there anything different that they’re doing? If you’ve benefited from regular traffic spikes through Buzz, share your stories with us.
Simon U Ford (SUF.EDBD)
Today’s tip! Every marketing campaign starts with keyword research. If you’re serious about earning money online you’re first investment should be a great keyword research tool.
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10 reasons to use NING for marketing events |
To ning or not to ning; seems to be the question buzzing around the Blogosphere recently. There have been a lot of valid arguments about it being too restricting and hence less useful. I agree that you can’t simply expect it to work for everyone. The good news, however, is that Ning can definitely work well for event marketers, if used properly. Here are ten reasons why event marketers shouldn’t just walk away from Ning.
1- Super simple and quick to setup: Unlike other event pages, Ning can take as little as 10 minutes to setup the entire page. You can customize the look and feel however you want it to be. It’s as simple as picking and choosing themes, colors and fonts that you think will work best for the site.
2- Easy to add multiple events: Once your site is setup, adding events against calendar dates is a simple one step process. The members and visitors to the site will be able to look at the upcoming events and can refer to the inbuilt calendar for the activities taking place.
3- Single platform for all community members: While a lot of people argue that you should disperse your communication across multiple mediums, it’s actually sometimes useful to have a single platform for a specific audience set. For example, if you build a Ning page for your existing community, customers and past clients then it’s good to have a single place to get them all together. My customers or prospects on email can’t get to know those on Facebook or Twitter and vice versa. Often, the first time that they meet is at actual events that I organize. Ning can allow all the community members to network on the same platform without getting bogged down by restrictions and memberships.
4- Reduces time to update members: Whenever I have a quick and important update to make, related to an event status, I just have to add it to Ning and can rest assured that the community members will see it. I won’t necessarily have to go to each of the different social media sites individually to notify the different sub groups of community members that I have. Event managers and marketers are mostly in a hurry, and this is a sure shot way to save time.
5- Easy integration with other mediums: Ning offers the ability to add videos from Youtube, photos from Flickr, Posts from your Blogs, and content from other mediums such as Facebook Pages. This cross integration helps to build a single platform for content coming in from multiple channels. So if you already have photos of your events or blog posts etc, you can share them on Ning with the entire community easily.
6- Rich content: The ability to add multimedia content like videos, sound files and pictures makes the page incredibly rich and interesting. If you’ve just had an event, you can upload its video footage along with sound files of the presenters and pictures of the audience. People who were at the event will find it thrilling to go over the content, and those who couldn’t make it will see just how much they missed out on.
7- Easy demonstration of credibility and proof: As event marketers, we often have to demonstrate credibility by displaying past experiences or case-studies. Nothing speaks better than pictures of successful events and post-event excitement straight from the audiences. Ning can capture all of that information for interested prospects to see and evaluate.
8- Newbie friendly: Some event marketers find it daunting to get their crowds to network online. While most people are great at events, they are less interested in using social media networks for collaborating with other people. Mostly, it’s because of the learning curves or behavioral adjustments (or restrictions) of certain apps like twitter etc. The good thing about Ning is that it is very easy to understand and get into even for non-techies.
9- Single-stop source for all events: For people interesting in finding out the status or schedule of your events, they can simply check out the Ning page to see the latest activities. Prospects are more likely to catch on to the vibes when they see a lot of things going on concurrently on the site.
10- Multiple conversations: You can use the inbuilt forums to run multiple conversation threads with different sub-groups of your community (e.g. a sub-group of events targeting a reunion). This allows other people to know what kind of activities are taking place, without interfering with the discussions in the individual threads. This is a great place for getting feedbacks, having competitions, brainstorming on event ideas, sharing stories from previous events, filling out surveys, etc.
All in all, I’d say, do check it out yourself to see how you can use it as a community space. Don’t restrict it to a single event’s page, but make it into a place where you can share all of your events with your community.
Simon U Ford (SUF.EDBD)
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Social networks - Have the hunted become the hunters |
Why do some marketers still shy away from social networks?
Its funny how things can take such a flip turn in just a few years. I have seen how marketing concepts have transitioned along with the evolving internet. The greatest difference in the emergence of social media as a marketing medium is that 5-10 years ago marketers would be the ones with the lists. Marketing would be a one-way communication of messages from companies to consumers. They would work off a database of customers to find ways of penetrating them. TVCs, Radio Ads, Publications, Direct mail, Cold calling etc were all a core part of all marketing activities. The impact of the Ads was difficult to gauge.
Google search engines have turned the hunted into the hunters. Consumers now work off a list of merchants or providers and through a substantial supply of information to choose from. They decide who to listen to, trust and buy from. They are more empowered and in many ways less gullible. More access to information makes them wiser and better decision-makers.
This information gets to them via search engines and community based platforms. Search engines run algorithms to parse through information and show it to the consumers. On the other hand, community based platforms are enabled by elements of social interaction. Humans (not machines) filter content based on preferences and popularity. It is us who sort the information to protect our networks from poor choices.
Its the hunted who now have the power - the merchants must win over the prey if they want the prey to endorse whatever they are peddling & invite their social network to embrace it. To some naive marketers these facts represent a nightmare, which it is not. If you use social media effectively and not for spamming, a marketers cost of sales can drop considerably. Not only that, we now have the power to leverage mob-effects, community shifts, emotional linkages - all using simple social networking strategies.
If you are event marketers or promoters you can now directly interact with your audiences and get a direct feel for their thoughts and opinions. You can get early feedback. You can involve them in planning the different dynamics of the event. You can create groups and communities around your event to help build hype and excitement. You can let evangelists and fans promote your event for you. You can allow your prospective audiences to blog about your event. You can enable live twittering at the event. You can allow them to share photos of the after its over to build lasting memories and nostalgia.
Get creative.
Simon U Ford (SUF.EDBD)
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Making Friends in the online Social Networks |
If you can remember the first time you signed up for Facebook and you had no friends or very few. You hear all these strategies for utilizing these platforms but with few friends to start with, its kind of hard to be taken seriously.
I am often asked where to start?
Social marketing is all about getting the most out of social networks. Here are some important friending techniques to be aware of:
Step 1 - Creating your networks
First of all, create your presence on different social networks like facebook, MySpace and Linkedin. Set up your accounts and customize your pages.
Step 2- Adding people to your network
Once you have your pages all set up, you need to get people onto your network. First of all make sure you can distinctly define what kind of people you would want to add as friends. These will be people who can benefit your business in any way. People who are part of your market segments, people who are domain experts, people who can benefit you through synergies, people who are influential in the industry, people who look up to you as an expert.. etc
There are different levels of potential friends on social networks: First of all, add all of those people that you know directly. If you know someone, then approach them in an a way you would to a real human being and not a robot. That is, introduce yourself.
I get friends requests all the time from spammers who use automated software for friending or cut and paste the same message to hundreds of people they find in other people’s friend networks. Be realistic - thats no way to befriend people. Be warned that if you do this you can be locked out of the platform for spamming, your IP address can be blocked from ever accessing the domain again. Recipients can click a link in each request that says, “report as spam”. A few of these reports against your name and you’re out of the game.
So when finding old acquaintances out of the blue, approach them like you would if you had seen them in a crowded bar. I’m assuming that if you come across them after a long while; you would walk over, re-introduce yourself and engage them in brief conversation after which you would initiate a desire to share contact details to remain in contact.
Its no different in these online networks, except that the crowded bar extends across the globe and its open 24/7 and you don’t need to exchange contact details. You simply send a friend request.
Next, you can introduce yourself to the friends of your friends by letting them know who you know in common. It’s not recommended to say “hi, I am a friend of John Smiths do you want to be friends on Facebook” - although a lot of folks do adopt this tactic.
I prefer to look at the persons profile to find something in common. I then introduce myself on the basis of our common friend and try to reference the topic that person seems interested in. Its an idea to be positive and complimentary where you can and end your comment with a question so it’s easy for the recipient to reply. If done right you can come back at their reply and before you know it you’re no longer strangers - so at a convenient time you can ask them if they would like to hook up as friends.
Thirdly you can search for groups in whatever niche you’re into and invite the people in these groups to become friends. Its recommended to join the group first and always contribute to the conversations in the group in an intelligent way before attempting to friend its members.
Expand your network as much as you possibly can.
Follow and be followed:
Find people that you want to have on your lists and follow them on twitter and other social network sites. Later, send them invites - a good percentage of them will accept. Social networking is all about following and being followed. Its about giving first and then expecting something in return. The more you follow and the more you contribute towards adding value to the more you will be followed in return.
The rule of thumb is the more value you bring to other people’s daily lives by what you do and say; the more people will follow you. Its no different to life offline, really except its far less forgiving than real life.
Web2.0 platforms take life as it has always been and makes it possible to maintain relationships with far more people that the offline world ever could. It takes away the factors of space, distances, traveling and communication logistics - and viola, there is no limit to the number of people you can befriend online. Um, yes, you will need high-speed internet though. This changes the social dynamics somewhat, which I will go into in another post but the thing you need to be careful about is that in the online world everything is recorded.
Everything you do leaves a footprint so there is less room for error. Offline if you say something you regret to someone, the damage can be limited to those who hear you say it first hand, those that hear what you said second hand and to a lesser extent those who hear it third hand.
Make the same mistake online and what you did or said can haunt you for life, so be careful.
A good writeup from the blogging world around us…
What Social Networking Can Do For You - Social networking is literally the way of the future.
Simon U Ford (SUF.EDBD)
Today’s tip! The first step to being super organized is to manage all of your passwords in you’re browser. Being able to share them across your team is a bonus.
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Networking like a pro |
Networking results in sales and deals and is therefore important for all businesses. Most of us are so tied up running our businesses that we hardly take the time out for professional networking. The good thing is that even a few minutes everyday for online networking can go a long way.
First of all, make a mental distinction between the two types of network groups: a- your peers, colleagues, like-minded folks, could-be partners, vendors, industry authorities etc. b- your potential clients, potential customers, potential audiences.
There are many things that you can do to network;
1- Linkedin is great for staying in touch with your professional networks and to share business advice. It’s a social networking site where you can manage your contacts and find other relevant people to connect to. I call it the massive business card holder. You can choose who to add to your network and have intellectual discussions over the platform. Just like in real life, you can meet people that your friends know (second degree connections). The power of this community is great, because you can find a lot of business opportunities there.
Make a good profile for yourself and add connections to increase your visibility. Add links to your website or blogs so that you can redirect traffic to you through your Linkedin Page.
2- Create a following online. Networking is all about being in touch with your contacts on a regular basis. If you choose to follow relevant people on their microblogs, blogs and sites; chances are that a good percentage of them will follow you in return based on internet etiquettes. So, choose your contacts wisely.
3- Correspond regularly with your business contacts through email or other online mediums. You can set up reminders for emailing or sending cards if you have a busy schedule, so that you don’t forget about one of your biggest asset, your network.
4- If you think you are too busy to manage your contacts, participate in discussions, send emails or put up status updates, you can choose to outsource this work to virtual assistants. I have some friends whose businesses depend entirely on networking but have their hands full 24/7. They’ve successfully distributed a reasonable part of this work to reliable assistants and are comfortable with the way their work is being handled. If you think you can do that as well, give it a try. Otherwise, allocate time from your weekly schedule to network.
Simon U Ford (SUF.EDBD)
Today’s tip! A novel way to rise above the noise is to send prospects or associates a video mail as an alternative to email.
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