Social Media

We all wish that our businesses was talked about as much as the headline news or the next big election. The key to getting noticed, of course, is to increase publicity – to somehow wangle our brand into the eye of the public. One good way to achieve this is  by becoming a popular and trending topic on Twitter. But how can we reach these heady heights?

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Running a business often mean being tied to our desks. Our computers house our contacts, work documents and so much more. However, thanks to a wide variety of business apps for the smartphone, we can keep on top of our work, track business and easily contact employees, even if we’re on a mountain side in a snowstorm. Let’s explore the top 10 applications which help to keep us on top of our work load and track business when we’re away from our desk.

1. Pages

Even when you’re not at you’re desk, Pages makes it easy to keep on top of your work load. This portable word processor has been specially designed for the iPad, iPhone and iPod touch. The clever application allows you to create spread sheets, annotate PDFs and create word documents, as well as letting you access important files on your corporate network. If you have an iPhone 4s, you don’t even need to type, thanks to the dictation software. Pages costs just £6.99 and is available from the iTunes store. Viisit http://tinyurl.com/43dg2rd

2.WebEx for iPad

This handy iPad application keeps you connected with your business even when you are away from your desk, by allowing you to access documents on your work PC or Mac. You can even keep a track of your colleagues by setting up online meetings via VoIP. WebEx is a free application which is available for download from the iTunes store. Visit http://tinyurl.com/7sj9lm6

3. Popplet

Do you ever have moments when you think of a brilliant idea but there is no one to pitch it to because you are not in the office? Popplet is a platform for all your inventive and creative ideas, no matter where you are. The app lets you to fill various sized boxes with text, sketches, notes and photos, in any order you desire. This makes it easier to remember the next day, allowing you to pitch your idea without forgetting anything. Popplet costs £2.99 and can be downloaded from the iTunes store at http://tinyurl.com/72v3f7f

4. E*TRADE Mobile Pro

If you run a trading business, this app keeps you on top of the ever-changing figures in the market. Its integrated live stream informs you of real-time stock updates, news and quotes. You can watch the prices rise and fall, as well as keeping an eye on your online watch-lists. It is free to download from http://tinyurl.com/7aozpp3

5. Employee Tracker

What better way to keep on top of all your employees when you are out of the office, than to connect to your very own employee behaviour database. This application stores information about your team, such as days they were late to work, to how they have been using the internet. Simply add their name to your employee list and add their behaviour habits when necessary. You can also add positive comments about your team, such as the date they were awarded employee of the month, or if they stayed extra hours. It costs just £3.99 to download and is available from the iTunes store. Visit http://tinyurl.com/7ckaudk

6.Linkedin

Linkedin, the virtual business card site, is pretty much the networking site for businesses. This app is perfect for when you are out and about and need to contact one of your clients. It allows you to keep in touch with people you have met through business meetings or conferences, by letting you send them messages and keep track of who’s doing what. So rather than letting your wallet become full of old business cards, why not find them on Linkedin and save their details online. Your contacts can also be transferred to your iPhone’s contacts list, so even when you are away from your desk, you can contact them easily. Linkedin is a free application which is available from the iTunes store. Visit http://tinyurl.com/7bgnldl

7. Roambi Analytics App

This app is essential for small businesses. Google Analytics is the eyes and ears of any online business worth its salt. You don’t have to be at your desk to check the stats, simply open the app and have a look any time. Becoming a true Analytics Maven might take rather longer however. It if free to download from http://tinyurl.com/7bu764f

8. Order Manager

This online application handles your orders and records. So even when you are not in the office and you need to check an order or a price, this app simply brings up your inventory history in an organised database. It costs £0,69 and available to download from the iTunes shop at http://tinyurl.com/7b555gv

9. BeenVerified

If you are advertising vacancies, or you are interested in a supplier or a business partner, it is important to know as much as you can about them before recruiting them. This application allows you to conduct a background check in a matter of seconds from the iPhone. You no longer have to sit at your desk for hours, researching for a person or a company because this app collects information from public records and displays it for you instantly. It is free to download from http://tinyurl.com/7l2md78

10. Shoeboxed Receipt Tracker and Reader

Whether you want to claim expenses or warranties, this useful application stores your receipts on an online database, available to access at any time. It is perfect for when you are on the go; simply take a photo of the receipt and let the app extract the data, organise and store it on an online archive. This handy application is free to download and available from the iTunes store at http://tinyurl.com/72bvqcn

It’s arguable that in recent years, the “buzz” has overtaken traditional channels of promotion. But what about news, and journalism? Is it faster to glean the headlines from your feeds, or from the front pages of whatever eclectic mish-mash of physical and digital content providers you’ve gone to, regular as clockwork, for years?

If you look at the hashtags for anything from Libya to The X-Factor, it’s clear as day that people are happy to inform each other and keep everyone up to speed, because what they’d tell five people around the water-cooler is now something they can tell hundreds of millions by tweeting – and both take less than a minute. In an astonishing turn around, journalism – a discipline that champions brevity and concise description above all else – has, in some aspects, been usurped by the popularity of a big old chat. Or has it?

The For

News has become stale. That’s not because it’s badly written, but because news, in its infancy, was about bringing people the facts as soon as possible. There’s an age-old saying in print journalism that your first paragraph should contain everything someone needs to know. Not only is this common sense, but it also means that if your article gets chopped down during the editing process, it doesn’t “break”.

In 2011, it’s possible to go one better, and present someone with an entire article’s worth of information in 140 characters, which trumps content several times the length. It’s said often during technological discussion, but we’re becoming an extremely impatient people, and seeing “Libya liberated, Gaddafi dead” flood my feed, rather than it hitting me once at six ‘o’ clock – rather than taking time out to read the news during the day – is what matters, to me.

If you’re a business, it also means that you’re able to reach into a space you couldn’t before – consumer’s personal information spheres. By doing so (tweeting at them, talking to them, and generally not being an old-fashioned “we only tweet promo content and never retweet or reply) you enable yourself to impress them directly, rather than through the love-hate filter of the press.

The Against

Twitter, Facebook – they’re far from perfect, and what’s worse is that they’re like blogs and their impact on online journalism – suddenly, everyone’s an journalist, and with Twitter, everyone’s an informant. As most people are a) prone to gossip, and b) not trained journalists, and will therefore proceed to repeatedly provide their followers with hearsay cast as fact, and hashtag relentlessly in order to flood key searches with irrelevant statements.

It can also be used alongside traditional journalism, or online – simply by delving into it and using it as a promotional tool, and if your business happens to deal in information, news, reviews and other media, there is no platform more prone to content going viral than social media. But to replace long-form content entirely would be a horrendous miss-step, especially given the long-established place in the media that journalism has, in comparison to the fly-by-night nature of social media – even Facebook’s losing members.

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It’s certainly a tough topic, and I think a mix of the two is best – read your long-form stuff, but grab your water-cooler headlines from Twitter or other mediums, such as Reddit. But for those businesses who are wondering whether their product press releases are going to be required reading for anyone in the near future when we’re social to a fault online, I’d keep your cards close to your chest until we see where Twitter and the like end up in 2021. Time will tell.

Developing a new products can be difficult especially if you are trying to gear it towards a specific market, which most companies are. There is one area that some people overlook, and this is the growing world of social media. We would do well not to overlook it as most of our customers use it on a daily basis.

Online presence

As customers become better versed in Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Google+ and the rest, they will expect companies to be doing the same. In 10 to 15 years’ time, most customers will be within the ‘Facebook generation’, and have grown up with social media as a prominent part of their lives. These sites are where they will share experiences, socialise with friends and most importantly they will talk about products and services, and recommending them too. If businesses want to get ahead of the game, then infiltrating that world and building an online presence is essential. Keeping in touch with customers in a more personal way, providing them with useful updates and facts to keep them interested is invaluable. Adaptability is key to keeping a business successful in this day and age.

Know your market

Social media is really useful not only for keeping in touch with customers, but for conducting product research and development. If businesses keep track of conversations and comments on social media sites, then they can gain an impression of the way that their customers think and plan accordingly. The Social Media Examiner expands upon this idea with some great tips for ways to use social media can help make a business seem more accessible to customers and if they feel able to communicate with it on a more personal level, then they are more likely to remain loyal.

Getting your recruiting right

If a company is looking for new additions to their team, chances are they will want to find people who are in touch with the modern age of technology and the web, who can move with the times and bring something fresh to the company. Where do you find these people? Well, chances are they are all using social media sites already. If you are looking for a certain type of person, one who is proficient in internet use and social media language, then look for them in this way as well. If the company uses their Twitter page of LinkedIn to advertise a vacancy, then the only people who will apply will be those who know how to use these sites already. This raises the chances of finding the right person for the job.

At the end of the day, everyone should be aware of the rising interest and use of social media. Recent research has suggested that a surprising number of CEOs do not use social networking sites and as this article on CNET shows, “the most admired CEOs had a greater online presence…than those who were less admired.” Social media is not going anywhere and those who keep up with it will be able to keep up with the marketplace.

On Monday, socialmediatoday’s Debra Ellis posted an article that argued that social media metrics are useless, for a wide variety of reasons. It’s reassuring to know that there are those working and/or writing in the field who think the same as I do. These statistics, as a concept, will always be flawed, and rarely useful for making assumptions that rely on precise data. Social media metrics are essentially statistics based around attention-seeking and numerical fetishes. Let’s take a closer look at Ellis’ points.

She states that “the only real numbers that matter to your company are the ones generated from your marketing activities.” This is true, but a little unclear. What Ellis may mean is that the real number, at the end of the day, that matters more than all the others comes under the title of ‘sales’. The end product of a marketing campaign is either more, less, or equal sales to the figure that came before it, and everything else, from numbers of followers to your Klout rating, is somewhat irrelevant.

Mack Collier, social media strategist, reinforces this when he explains that having 22,000 Twitter followers doesn’t mean that 22,000 people are going to click a link you post – in most cases. There are exceptions, and author Neil Gaiman has an ability to – in his own words – “Neil web fail” any site by bringing the attention of his huge follower crowd onto a small site that isn’t prepared. But Collier states that there needs to be a better way to explain the shortcomings of these statistics to clients.

This makes sense – a client is going to see 22k followers, and only 200 clicks, and ask what the problem with your campaign is. The realistic answer is that there isn’t a problem with your campaign – 200 clicks is a great number considering that most people are not following less than a hundred people, and reading every tweet becomes difficult, let alone clicking every link. To quote a protester shown during Bowling for Columbine: “does everyone who watches a Lexus ad go out and buy a Lexus? No, but a few do.”

Discussing things with Jon (as one is wont to do quite often at MoreDigital – the man has a Wikipedia cache installed in his brain), we agreed that looking at follower numbers and Twitter graphs serves little purpose when it comes to measuring your social media reach, and this is true – an advert during the Superbowl could reach tens of millions of people, but it doesn’t mean anyone is actually watching with interest, given that it’s not the scheduled entertainment causing them to look toward the screen in the first place.

“The numbers that matter from social media participation are sales, costs, and satisfaction,” says Ellis. “If sales don’t increase, costs decrease, and/or satisfaction improves, your online activity is a waste of time.” It’s a tough pill to swallow if you’ve been working on a campaign non-stop only to realise that 75% of your followers are spam bots. At the same time, you can’t ditch the spam bots, because if they’ve given you a 300% increase in follower numbers, you’ll know that having 20k followers over 5k increases a user’s chance of following you.

Social media metrics have a long way to go, and there’s nothing wrong with keeping an eye on how you’re doing. But assuming that you can judge company performance using this sort of data is ludicrous, because it’s not actually relevant to company performance. Shouting about fresh fruit and vegetables while working at the market sells you four oranges. It doesn’t matter how many people heard you hawking your wares – those four oranges are your clue to whether or not you should be in the vitamin C game at all.

Facebook has to be the biggest success-story business of the last ten years. It comes as something of an eyebrow-raiser, then, that six million US users have left the site in the last month, according to PCMag‘s Peter Pachal. However, Pachal also highlights that it’s not just the USA where users have been leaving. Canada has lost a significantly larger portion of its userbase in proportion to the USA, as 1.52 million users departed Facebook’s Canadian user-base, a loss of almost ten percent. This is in addition to other countries, as well, and even with almost 700 million global users, that’s a significant sum.

But is this just a random drop, or the sign of a public that are beginning to realise that “likes” and photo-tagging are no longer actually necessary? Twitter is a format I believe meets the need of a constantly evolving target market, as it’s inevitable that as technology progresses, those using the same hardware, software or websites will begin to perceive their current set-up as too slow, due to the ever-increasing need for digital immediacy.

Twitter provides immediacy better than Facebook does – one long feed of instant bursts of information, without the web-surfing experience. There’s no long profile page to go through, no personal information beyond a short bio section, and best of all, it has succeeded in bringing microblogging to an audience that previously never even considered a conventional blog. Even the conventional blog is being rapidly matched in appeal by Tumblr, a more social approach to the well-established method of simply commenting on someone’s work. Quotes within quotes, tweets within retweets.

Pachal suggests a number of reasons behind the Facebook exodus, and all of them are logical and well-argued. Seasonal changes, a “blip” in user statistics, Facebook’s recent disregard for user privacy, and of course, the elephant in Zuckerberg’s conference room – that Facebook’s time may indeed have come. It’s a social network, and although it’s become bigger than MySpace ever was, that doesn’t mean it can’t go the same way – struggling ever onward and reinventing itself as a platform for advertisers, musicians and the like in order to survive.

For Pachal the major downside to Facebook disappearing off the map  is the removal of the 40 % increase in the web-surfing by Facebook users. This is true for most social networks – I certainly read a lot more web pages due to Twitter and an Android app by the name of ReadItLater (offline viewing of webpages as plain text-and-images, almost like a digital magazine article), and I wouldn’t do if I wasn’t tapped into the network.

This will hurt those not only marketing through Facebook, but relying on the world-of-mouth traffic it can generate. We are now able to draw more people towards a site than ever before, and that number is only going to rise. But if one of the main methods of communicating concepts, ideas, and most importantly, links to one another is removed, it damages a company’s ability to reach users, and damages, say, my ability to reach all of you. Facebook may be something of a privacy-invading social behemoth, but like everything else on the web people claim to dislike and yet can’t stop using, we’ll miss it if it goes.

For some time, it’s been argued that the social network every business should be tapping into is Facebook, but is this really the case?

Social Media Examiner states that “with 500 million people on Facebook, chances are more of your customers are active on Facebook than any other network.” Aliza Sherman of GigaOM claims that in terms of advertising, “there’s no question that Facebook wins.”

It all appears so clean-cut, and it’s interesting reading when you get into the reasoning behind their championing of Zuckerberg’s platform. The ease of viral promotion, the size of the existing community, and the way in which Facebook constantly pulls users in towards it because it’s so central to modern social communication.

However, a recent study by Three_D, the social media arm of PR company Threepipe Communications, has revealed that 65 companies on the FTSE 100 use Twitter instead of Facebook. While they may only represent sixty-five companies out of countless millions across the globe, a majority vote for the small blue bird from a hundred of the most successful companies in the UK is a significant statistic.

Twitter is no longer the novel concept it was in 2006. It now has over 300 million accounts – a growth of 60 million a year. This stands in comparison to Facebook’s 500 million accounts, accumulated since 2004, a growth of 71 million. The difference isn’t all that great, relatively speaking, and the immediate accessibility of the Twitter platform means it takes minutes to set up a company account, rather than the longer period required to adequately establish a Facebook fan page.

Sherman concedes similar points within her article, and her differentiation between the two platforms is key to understanding what some businesses prioritising their Facebook presence are missing: the reasons consumers connect to your company. “The way you accumulate page fans on Facebook and followers on Twitter is different,” states Sherman. “You might gain a fan on Facebook just because someone sees someone they know becoming your fan. You gain followers on Twitter — genuine and engaged followers — because they actually want to hear what you have to say.”

Twitter is a feed of information that the user selects themselves, rather than another group affiliation or sign of consumer appreciation to be hung on the Wall of a Facebook user. Businesses are no longer seeking those who are willing to give them no more than a nod of approval; they want people to connect with the company out of personal interest.

It’s also not surprising to learn that potential customers are leaving Facebook along with the companies now devoting themselves to the 140-character marketing effort. The New York Times suggests that there are several factors at work driving people away from the social networking site, amongst them the overlapping of personal and business relationships, and the “inevitable” Orwellian undertones of Facebook’s aspirations to usurp Google as the central hub of today’s online society.

Twitter certainly seems like the better option, at least from my own perspective. There’s a sole purpose to a Twitter account – to tweet i.e. to communicate. There’s little else to do, nothing in fact, if you discard personalising your display picture, your small bio or your website link. It’s a streamlined experience that separates itself from the Facebook morass of Mafia Wars, Wall comments, privacy paranoia, and the endless struggle for the consumer’s “like” click. Perhaps the pro-Twitter trend will extend beyond the FTSE 100 in future. If the New York Times’ exodus analysis is anything to go by, it’s almost certain.

Today, I was reading through the usual batch of SEO, social media and small business news when I happened across a rather intriguing response on SEOmoz to the allegation that hiring a social media expert was a waste of time. Both the unintentional instigator of the debate and the individual who responded had a number of valid points. The instigator, one Peter Shankman, claimed that claiming someone was a ‘social media expert’ was akin to claiming they were able to remove bread from the fridge, but minus the ability to actually make the sandwich.

The individual refuting the statements made by Shankman was Rand Fishkin, SEOmoz CEO and co-founder. Interestingly, he went to the length of creating a chart detailing the expertise of social media specialists (a far more legitimate term, in my opinion), which I’ll post here for you (all credit goes to him, of course):

As you may be able to tell, it’s fairly comprehensive. However, I’ve got a few issues with his categorisation of certain slices of ‘web-knowledge,’ especially given that some of the skills he categorises as advanced are actually what he states social media expertise is not – ‘common sense.’ I believe in offering somebody the best service they can get, and I think it’s important to analyse his competent summary, given that the few flaws within it do point to an overall problem with the image of the ‘social media guru.’

First of all, the basic and intermediate skills are literally common sense, and are actions that people perform in their daily lives – people who don’t touch social media professionally. Shortening tweets, Google Analytics, Wikipedia, competitions with few requirements to enter – this isn’t anything new, and contesting that this is somehow specific to social media is awkward, especially given that some of it has nothing to do with social media. SEO, I can understand, but to purport something as vague as someone’s display picture as relevant solely to that sphere of expertise is a flawed argument, at best.

It’s all about what you’re willing to classify yourself as. No web expert wants to be a Jack-of-all-trades, and this is because you’re not actually seen as skilled at anything, only competent. But herding in a bunch of skills from disciplines separate to your own highlights that ‘competent’ characterisation of social media experts.

By no means am I contesting the relevance of social media experts – if I myself ran a company that worked with SEO, or even any business entity with an online presence, there’d be a full-time social media specialist on staff, because to ignore the importance of social media to marketing is ludicrous. However, the first commenter on Fishkin’s article made the most valid point of all: that most ‘experts’ on the web are usually self-proclaimed as such. ‘Ninjas’ is a personal pet peeve. You are not a ninja. Ninjas assassinate people and live by a code of honour. You actively seek to make friends, and employ no code of honour whatsoever, given that the most common phrase you’ll utter within any given online situation is ‘follow me and I’ll follow you back!’

Fishkin sells his expertise well – the advanced skills are really something to consider, but I feel he sells himself short by including basic knowledge in that chart. When defending any discipline, it is paramount that you state only what separates you from all the would-be experts, because giving the ‘common sense’ qualifications for the title in addition will inextricably mesh your field of expertise with theirs and make that distinction infinitely more difficult.

He then reveals his master-stroke; that Shankman himself is listed as a social media consultant in a featured listing on InvestinSocial. Priceless, and proof that if there’s one group of people you shouldn’t criticise unfairly on the web, it’s the people who’ve made it their stomping ground. Nothing is hidden, everything’s fair game. Now, where is my ‘social media ninja-pirate-alien-robot’ badge?

I don’t think there’s anyone sane out there who’s not been at least slightly shaken by what’s going on in Japan right now. Nuclear power stations at risk of meltdown, 17,000 dead or missing after the tsunami caused by the 8.9 earthquake that started this horrendous series of events, and countless more disturbing facts and figures that don’t seem to be coming to an end any time soon.

The problem has been, like all major disasters, covered by the global media, though, due to very vague and slippery reports on how bad the situation actually is emanating from the Japanese government, the coverage varies. However, some people are getting their stories straight, and if there’s one thing that has kept me on top of the reality of the situation in the Land of the Rising Sun, it’s Twitter.

In fact, specifically, it’s one person who goes by the username @mikecane. He tweeted humorously at me during my discussion with author Adam Christopher about vanity publishing, and his display picture – the paranoid and politically insightful Rorschach, from Watchmen – drew me in. I then found that he was a veritable goldmine of unbiased, hard-hitting Japan coverage, even though it clearly wasn’t his day-job. I was getting more interesting and shocking reports from his feed than the BBC ever gave me after work, and I was grateful.

Now, don’t get me wrong – I know very well that those wading into the power plant are more brave and committed than we will ever be, but that’s not the point. The fact that someone is willing to go out of their way to catalogue everything and provide scathing, honest commentary and ask the hard questions, then share that with the world, is beyond journalism, most especially without a wage slip at the end of the month - it’s a commitment to an idea, specifically that this stuff is important and there’s a bigger picture at work, here.

It’s great that journalists in Japan are working damn hard around the clock to bring me news, but it’s all from one source, and if you’ve got a smidgen of anti-monopolistic thoughts rattling around in your brain you’ll know that listening to the Sky News filter is an extremely silly thing to do when you want to build up a picture of the event. So I’m going to stick with my social feed and, as a result, see the photos the BBC won’t show me, and the statistics and reports that Sky News (in the UK at least) are reluctant to throw my way. It’s horrific, and heartbreaking, and I don’t want it filtered. Thanks, @mikecane, and thanks, Twitter.

I’ll be honest, had it been April 1st, I might have dismissed this news as a joke, but it’s mid-March and it’s not only a very smart approach to communication, but a forward-thinking one, too. This year, for the first time in UK history, a solicitor has issued a court summons via Facebook.

No, seriously.

Debtors, as you can well imagine, are probably slightly reluctant to delve into the legal morass of court visits and other inconveniences that come with owing people a significant amount of money. However, this also means you’re not likely to find them responding to any letters or phone-calls. However, upon proving to Hastings County Court in Essex that the slippery individual was a bit of a Facebook user, solicitor Hilary Thorpe was allowed to jump on the site and put the fear of Zuckerberg in them.

Away went the summons, and assumably they’ve either now responded or are considering finding another, similar social network with their mates on (yeah, good luck with that one). It was a tactic that was used once before in a similar cause Down Under, and that particular Australian couple found their legally binding documents served to them via the social networking site.

If anything, it proves that there really are no limits to the uses of Facebook and Twitter. Yesterday, author Adam Christopher found that using Twitter to befriend publisher Angry Robot resulted in them offering him his dream career, after many years of effort. Social media is no longer a distraction from your career, but a tool you can use to take it even further. Not to mention that if your legal career is being impeded by someone’s unresponsive nature, you can start tracking them down via their status updates.

It’ll be interesting to see what other landmarks social media sees in 2011, though don’t be surprised if people start conducting lectures or broadcasting them through Twitter. I recently saw the novel idea of tweeting a live surgery, demonstrated by the cast of Grey’s Anatomy. Other doctor’s joined in, offered suggestions and even a loan of their medical equipment during an operation that wasn’t going well. There are so many possibilities that it encourages those who’ve not joined in to join in, or so I’d like to think.

Even if you’re not going to use Twitter to talk, it might not be a bad idea to just use it to listen, considering it’s none too interested in your real name. Think of it as an RSS Reader that’s evolved into something else entirely. Social media is rapidly becoming the preferred method of communication, conducting business and even bringing lawbreakers to justice. The first two uses are pretty great. The third one is just downright cool. Now all Judge Dredd needs is a login and he’s good to go.