Trying to think of new and interesting ways to keep your business’s social media marketing alive and kicking can be tough. When you get stuck, it’s important to find inspiration and the news is a great place to start. I’ve had a look at what people are talking about this week and how this can help your businesses social marketing campaign.

The kids are alright:

Last week I wrote about the Mommy bloggers and this week it’s all about the tweeny bloggers. Think of it as the revenge of the tween (young teen, to the unitiated) fed up with their mothers endlessly blogging about their nappies, then their first day of school and even their first kiss, the tweens have started to take control. The Independent reported that 15 per cent of 12- to 15-year-olds are already blogging and one in four are interested in starting.
As we are all aware social media is huge amongst teenagers, so targeting the younger segment of this age group is a sure fire way to get yourself noticed. Send a tween blogger your product, ask them to review and watch as all their friends begin saying to mum and dad ‘I want one of those!’

Bugging you:

According to the New York Times, as America is trying to eradicate the recent infestation of bedbugs, the pest control companies are having a war of their own- which ad will be seen first by those searching for pest control online? The New York Times article says: According to Google, general searches for “bedbugs” have increased 83 percent in the last year and 182 percent for bedbug-related searches in the last four weeks compared with the same period a year earlier.

If there is a sudden epidemic, let’s say bedbugs or swine flu, it may be a great opportunity to generate traffic, but don’t forget your ethical compass. Nothing is more likely to alienate potential customers like jumping on a public health bandwagon. It may be all about making the most of the moment – but unless your product is relevant, be cautious.

Be more open minded:

It can be easy to get caught up in trying to drum up business in the UK and the USA. We forget that money can actually be made elsewhere and we may not be as clued up as we think we are when it comes to social media.
India, for example, is currently in the midst of a social media phenomena- Bubbly. It already has 2 million users and is popular with Bollywood stars and big companies. It is basically a voice- based Twitter, using text alerts and dial-in codes to record and receive voice updates on mobile devices. When a user records audio messages and updates, followers can listen in whenever they want.
The idea for Bubbly came from America and presumably must have been targeted to India where mobile phone usage exceed internet usage. So, if you have an idea, think about where it would really work. Do your research and don’t be afraid to target countries you are not so familiar with.

Silver Surfers:

This may seem pretty obvious but you may not be aware about just how much and how fast social networking among older adults is growing. 42% of online adults age 50+ now use social networking sites, nearly twice as many as the 22% who did so a year earlier, according to a study by Pew Research. They are officially the fastest growing demographic among social network users.
This is a big step for the world of social marketing. It is a real chance to get a product out there to what could be a new market. What’s great is that when a mature adult says they like something on Facebook, their friends will listen. Older people still do have an authority that youngest users just don’t quite have yet. Get the oldies on your side and you’re laughing.

Good Week for…

1. Small businesses:

Expert Nicola Clark from Marketing Magazine reveals that small businesses do have the social media advantage over larger companies. She said: “Small brands are at a massive advantage because they are not at risk of being a faceless brand.

“What I think a lot of big brands are trying to achieve through social media is to create a community where it doesn’t actually exist, whereas with smaller brands you genuinely do have that community – you do have that touch point.”

2. Doing the Rubik’s Cube:

After thirty years of trying to find the minimum number of moves needed to solve the Rubik’s Cube, it appears a solution may have been found.

A team used a bank of computers at Google to discover that the magic number is 20. The research found that 100,00 starting positions out of a staggering 43 billion billion can be solved in 20 moves or less. Hmmm, pretty sure we still won’t be able to do it.

3. Using Blackberry’s in Saudi Arabia:

It had been reported that the country was going to ban Blackberrys from 6 August, as they were unhappy that the handsets automatically scramble messages, which get sent to servers in Canada.

However Saudi Arabia’s telecommunications regulator has said it will continue to allow service for the time being, while they try and work out if they can put a Blackberry server in the UK.

4. Social media movies:

First The Social Network is directed by David Fincher starring Jessie Eisenberg, Andrew Garfield and Justin Timberlake.

Now there’s Catfish, a low budget thriller with Facebook as a key plot element. It tells the story of two film-makers who document a film about one of their brothers who falls for a girl he meets over the internet. Catfish was an instant hit at Sundance and has had excellent reviews. Check out the trailer, it looks amazing, no?

5. Social Media itself:
Simply Zesty in Ireland shows that 85% of the UK is connected to the UK, and 25% write blogs, 65% read blogs and social networks are the largest activity on the web.

Bad Week for…

1. The boy who let his girlfriend be hit by a baseball:

In some ways this is good as he has become an internet sensation, but bad because it shows him clearly moving out of the way as the ball comes towards his girlfriend. The shame.

The video, at the time of writing, has racked up 83,120 views and there is even a Facebook page dedicated to him. The incident took place during a Major League Baseball game between the Houston Astros and the Atlanta Braves, Astros Third Baseman Chris Johnson drove a foul ball in the direction of a couple sitting in left-field. The boyfriend, who is called Bo, saw the ball coming, allowing his girlfriend, Sarah, to get hit. Not only was the incident caught on camera, but he was interviewed afterwards and given the nickname ” Bo the Bailer”.

2. Mark Papermaster, the guy from antennagate:

Apple’s senior executive has been let go after the recent scandal involving the iPhone.

What’s got everyone talking is that apparently the problem with the antenna was known for years, way before Papermaster even joined Apple. He had only been working their for 16 months. So who is too blame, if anyone, is it the PR team handling the situation, the designers or Papermaster?

3. Newport State of Mind:

The spoof video Newport State of Mind, which became an instant internet hit, getting hundreds of thousands of views, has been removed from YouTube due to a copyright claim.

EMI say that permission should have been granted to use the same basics as the Jay Z and Alicia Key’s original Empire State of Mind.

4. Craigslist:

The popular online classified advertising site is facing accusations that the ‘adult services’ section is in fact a breeding ground for under-age prostitution. Two young women placed an advertisement in the Washington Post saying they were repeatedly sold through the site to men who ‘paid to rape’ them.

Craigslists has come under fire before for charging $10 for adult services ads, whereas other sites do so for free.

5. iPad:

It looks like the Dell Streak, which is a 5 inch tablet device, is going to cost a lot less than the iPad.

Launching August 12, it will cost $299.99 with a two-year AT&T contract, and $549.99 for an unlocked edition, that is less than half the price of the iPad 3G.

It is however smaller than the iPad and is in some ways just a glorified smartphone. What do you think, should Apple be worried?

I feel frustrated with Amazon sometimes. I’m sold on their new Kindle for the UK, and I’ll order products from them over anyone else. However, recently, I ordered a DVD box set which arrived, as have many Amazon-bought products as of late, not in the best condition, and certainly not what most people would classify as “new”.

Now, what to do about this? I complained, of course, but nothing’s happened. I’ve received no voucher, no apology whatsoever. Nothing. Silence. What makes it even more insulting is there wasn’t even an automatic response, no “Dear Customer, we’re sorry to hear”, just a complete lack of care.

Currently, Amazon are beginning to sell more best-sellers in their Kindle e-book format than in physical form, as I mentioned last week. However, they seem to have forgotten that those ordering physical products aren’t going to be pleased if they’re arriving in poor condition. You can’t dog-ear or scuff a Kindle download, but you can break the hearts of literature lovers with a book in shoddy condition.

It would seem, with the arrival of the Kindle, and now especially BankSimple, the world’s first “online-only bank”, that those willing to go all-digital get a better deal when it comes to quality of service. With BankSimple, this means low-to-zero fees, great rates and less paying out for the offices and branches that need to be paid for, rented, furnished and staffed as a result. But what about the downsides?

One of them would definitely be the lack of actual human interaction. I’m as loathe to sit on the phone talking to a bored twenty-something in a call centre as the next person, but I like the fact that I can walk into Abbey, Lloyds TSB or Citibank and actually speak to someone. I can’t do that with Amazon, or Paypal, and that’s a major source of worry. Being able to know that there are people who have to deal with their customers face-to-face, on the other hand, is comforting.

Of course, it’s not the CEO behind the glass wall stamping your cheque, but it’s someone, at least. BankSimple reminds me a bit of the Mac OS X. It’s simple, easy, visually friendly and quick. But it’s so simple that if something goes wrong, figuring out how to fix it can be an exercise in sheer frustration.

So how to promote a brand as human and friendly when you’ve got absolutely no humans on show? Put humans at the forefront of your business strategy. BankSimple’s plan to integrate itself with Facebook Connect and @Anywhere is a vital part of bringing banking to the next level of “online” compatibility. I don’t know about you, but given the choice between the traditional awkward exchange of bank details anywhere but online (our main source of communication now, don’t you know?) or being able to click someone’s name on a network page and transfer funds, I’d take the latter.

So, given the advantages, what about the disadvantages? Everyone’s forgotten, seemingly, about Amazon’s rather awkward George Orwell scandal, but I sure haven’t. What if BankSimple were to make a mistake? You can’t give someone a voucher to replace the money they spent on, well, their money, can you? Social media is a popular but casual affair, and I’m not sure how seriously the bank will attempt to get everyone to update their status while paying off a debt to a friend in the same five minutes on the same site.

People are cagey about money and their purchases, but they’ll talk at length when in the local branch or on the phone with customer service (unless they’re on pay-as-you-go). But if BankSimple reneged on its pledge of loyalty to customers, and became another bail-out bank like the ones it so wishes to put out of business, then what happens?

A word of advice: whenever wondering whether to invest in anything digital where your rights seem blurry, think of  Space Odyssey: 2001. Now imagine the bank telling you they “can’t do that, Michael”, when you’re trying to pay your mortgage. Makes Wall Street look like Sesame Street, doesn’t it? If It’s a Wonderful Life taught me anything, it was that warmth and love for your customers make your bank a good ‘un.

Not too long ago, I stated that LinkedIn wasn’t as popular as Facebook. I’ll be honest, I thought it would get sucked into the heaving morass of social media that is Facebook a la The Blob in the not-too-distant future. But seemingly, Mashable’s ever-impressive documentation of statistics has proved me wrong.

Nope, that figure isn’t false. Two billion dollars. Admittedly, it doesn’t hold a candle to the ridiculous worth of Facebook, but it’s an impressive display of what happens when you create a social networking site that focuses on the business side of things.

Far too many people are getting caught out doing silly things at parties via Facebook, but their LinkedIn profiles? Immaculate. Neat CV structure, experience, formal and (sometimes) well-worded recommendations from ex-colleagues or clients go a long way to improving someone’s online image.

We like the attitude of sites like LinkedIn. It’s a site that really devotes itself to providing as much information for every industry possible within its expansive networking system, and its this system that proves to be so popular.

It’s rather like networking at an industry event – you know the PR, and you know a few fellow journalists, who in turn, may know bigger journalists, who know or may even be related to the big people at the top of the corporate food chain. Now, hassling your way through endless degrees of separation at a cocktail party or a product launch can be mentally exhausting.

However, do it on LinkedIn and it’s simply seen as a normal, everyday activity. You’d be shocked to see who you can link to through the LinkedIn’s connection system, and getting your contacts to introduce you (via a simple series of clicks) is an incredibly powerful business tool.

It’s also a fantastic forum for people who work freelance or contract to discuss challenges they may be having at work in an environment where it makes them look productive, rather than simply incompetent. I’m a member of a few writing groups, and I have the writing questions section up on my welcome page. I’ve seen authors, copywriters and marketing veterans write long screeds out of the kindness of their hearts, and it’s fantastic to see a personal favourite author of yours take up someone’s question and run with it.

It’s not about friendship, sadly, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be. Although the LinkedIn ‘adding connections’ system does indeed seem to be geared towards business – asking you if you worked with/for/alongside/above them or if you’re simply an ‘other’, certainly it isn’t openly telling you to get all your mates to listen the second you’re done posing for your display picture. But make use of linking yourself to your friends and justifying it to the system, and you’ll soon realise that Barry at the pub actually works in a similar industry to you, and that PR bloke you’ve been hunting for months is actually one of his work colleagues.

It’s a great platform to promote a business from, and being able to both apply for and post jobs on its impressive employment section effectively turns it into a combination of business newspaper, job site and business network. It doesn’t mess about – your employment history and recommendations requirements (though optional, are encouraged though the use of phrases like “one more recommendation and your profile will be 100% complete!) really do make sure you know why you’re logged in here – to work, and to liaise.

It’s a different kind of Facebook. The galleries may be gone, and everyone’s a little less relaxed, but the politics, networking and digging through people’s history is essentially the same. Having the CV of a personal favourite author or copywriter at your fingertips is gold, and being able to see how the CEO of a company you want to emulate got to where he was is always going to trump “liking” that photo of his yacht.

(Note: those looking for my personal LinkedIn can find it here.)

When it was announced that BBC 6 Music was to be axed, a resounding cry echoed through the land (or more correctly, ‘through the social media’): ‘How can they do this?’ ‘We are the ones paying, so we should have our say!’ Along with loads of indignation and brouhaha like it.

This is all very well, but I don’t think I’d ever heard anyone talk about the station before the closure was announced, except perhaps my geeky brother and brainy co- worker. Let’s remember it was a digital station (only 32.1% of households own a DAB set) with only had an audience of 70,000. So, what was it that made the public get together and start an almighty social media campaign to Save 6 Music (not to mention helpsave6music. and love6music)?

John Morter, the man behind the Rage Against the Machine Christmas Number One campaign, immediately set up a new Facebook campaign on hearing news of the cuts.

Judging by Morter’s previous successful campaign, the BBC brass were probably quaking in their boots at the campaign. Probably more so by this outbreak of online fury, than by the discussion of the matter in parliament.

Anyway, as you have probably heard, it was announced yesterday that BBC 6 Music, would not be closed, but whether this is due to the social media campaigns or other powers we will never know (unless they tell us).

As Guardian blogger Steve Bushfield, pointed out, in the past a few letters would have been sent, which could easily be ignored. Today however 180,00 people joined the Save 6 Music campaigns and millions of tweets were hash-tagged #save6music. There was still a few old fashioned letters, 250 to be precise, but at the same time there were over 25,000 emails.

On the digital space people can react very easily to things they don’t like, they can just retweet things or ‘like’ something with very little effort. They don’t need to sit down and write a letter. Could it be that the support for 6 Music had actually very little to do with the station itself, but more to do with people climbing on board the latest trending topic?

This ties in with the idea that people are more likely to buy something if they see their friends like it, so if they see them tweet about 6 Music, will it make them want to be part of the action as well? Think about the Rage Against The Machine campaign, did all those who bought the single really like them, or was it more to do with getting one up on ‘the man’? And in this case is ‘the man’ the BBC? Even if people haven’t listened to BBC 6 before, many may not like the idea that they have no say over something which they pay money towards. Figures show that twice as many people listen to 6 Music now as did prior to the campaign.

Social media may not have played the whole part in this, but we know from previous campaigns that social media can be successful.

Take the election of Obama aka the ‘First Social Media President’ for example. During his campaign his team posted 1,800 videos to YouTube, which if you think in comparison to Gordon Brown’s campaign is an extraordinary number. He also used Twitter, Facebook, MySpace and various blogs as a way to connect with people and communicate with them.

Then there was the Compare the Meerkat campaign. They took the meerkat from their TV adverts, Aleksandr Orlov, gave him a twitter account with witty tweets, a Facebook fanpage and ’simples’, you have a phenomenon.

6 Music, in many people’s minds is a very good station, but perhaps it just hadn’t been publicised well enough to get the amount of listeners it needed to look like a money making station to the BBC. After this ‘will they, won’t they axe the show’ hoo haa, it looks like it now has the audience it deserves.

Now what remains to be seen is if the product is as good as the marketing campaign, even if it is a very modern social media marketing campaign.

So you’ve got a small business, it’s coming up to a year old and things have kind of come to stand still. All the exciting plans you had for social media marketing have pretty much amounted to nothing and in your depression you haven’t logged on to Twitter in over a month.

Do not panic. This is much more common than you may think. With everybody talking about the power of social media it’s easy to think that it solves everything and brings in thousands of new clients daily.

This couldn’t be further from the truth. Achieving results from using social media actually requires hours of patience and persistence, it definitely doesn’t happen over night.

Here are a few tips and ideas I’ve come up with to help keep your social media campaign moving forward but also how to keep it fresh and exciting and drawing in visitors.

1. Remember that even though you are using social media to help your business, it is not business media. The key word is ” social”, so you have to be social. Communicate with as many people as you can, look alive not just a corporate machine churning out tweets at the same time every day.

2. Assign a part of your day for purely social media work. Don’t leave it until the last part of your day and likewise don’t do it as the first. Use it as a break from your normal work and then it won’t seem like a chore but something fun to do.

I would personally recommend spending 15 minutes a day at least on each social media site. That time should be divided up. To be successful in the online world you need to a) spend time listening and checking out what is going on, whether it’s your rival, your fans or the news. You need to know what is happening, keep your finger on the pulse so you can react accordingly. b) Reply to the things people say to you, let them know you are real. Retweet some of their tweets, comment on their things. Again it comes down to interaction. c) you need to add new content, this is what gets you noticed by the search engines.

3. Be consistent with all of the above. If you talk to your followers on a regular basis they will soon become loyal . Just a small lapse will send them into the arms of another company, it’s a fickle and fast moving world where you have to communicate to stay ahead of the game.

4. Do something a little quirky, try something no one else has done, it may not work but it will get you noticed. Why not try something like having a guest tweeter for the week?

5. Find ways to engage the internet savvy generation. It’s not going to work offering them things that take ages to collect like vouchers. Pizza Express have the right idea, they send emails out offering 2 for 1 main meals. You can print it off there and then.

Or what about the app Foursquare, their recent collaboration with 8coupons in New York meant that Foursquare users received automatic notifications with discounts when they were in a 3 block radius of an 8coupon deal. This went down pretty well because it was relevant and instant, two things that are crucial to bear in mind as they are the two things people want most.

And finally link all your social media sites together and start to communicate, communicate, communicate. Be patient, you won’t see results straight away  but with a bit of perseverance you will.

The World Cup 2010 is exciting for a number of reasons, firstly we all love a good game of footie and pretending that England is in with a chance, secondly because of the wags, they have all been banned this year, ha and lastly because it will unite the world of social media with the masses.

If you think back to the last World Cup 2006 (I know it wasn’t that long ago but many of us spent it in a drunken stupor) the concept of social media was pretty unformed.

In fact most of the things we use daily now, didn’t even exist. We had YouTube but it wasn’t used nearly as much as it is today. Facebook existed but wasn’t open to the general public until that September, and Twitter, well that was just an apple in it’s mother’s (or Jack Dorsey’s) eye.

So, basically it just didn’t really exist. There was no updating your status every time someone scored a goal, no tweet about who played well and definitely no revealing the squad before it was officially announced. It’s not like today where 50 million tweets are sent daily and Facebook boasts more than 400 million active users.

A few days ago the Twittersphere was going crazy. The Football Association’s website crashed due to the number of desperate fans trying to find out the squad. So where did they turn? Twitter to speculate and spy.

The Daily Express’s Matt Law was one of the first to break the news of Walcott’s omission “Walcott out of England World Cup squad,” he tweeted. “Gutted for him.” Naughty naughty, this was before the FA or Fabio Capello had made an official statement. It wasn’t long until other members of the media tweeted about who was in and who was out.

Not a good start for the FA but it clearly shows the way that football commentary for this year is going to go.

CNN recently poitned out that the World Cup is the biggest thing to ever hit Twitter, Facebook and Youtube. Every website these days has links to their social media pages, so whenever the World Cup is written about this year, it will lead to major traffic and huge usage of the sites.

The head of new media for FIFA told CNN “Football is the world’s biggest sport, so the world will practically stop for the month of the World Cup. There will be so much more media consumed, used and published in 2010 than in 2006. Social media can bring fans closer together and give fans more opportunity to communicate with each other,”

Robin Sloan, who works for Twitter on media partnership confirmed this saying: “Our notion is that [the World Cup] will eclipse everything we have seen so far [on Twitter] including the U.S. election, the Oscars or the Super Bowl, simply because it is so international.”

And lets not forget it’s won’t only be the fans using social media during the World Cup. It is thought that advertisers will use it for marketing rather than more traditional methods.

Callum MacDougal, the director of global marketing partnerships for Sony Ericsson, the official handset makers of the 2010 finals tells Reuters.com: “We have made the conscious decision to steer away from the traditional branding route… Instead we are going straight to online fan communities through popular social networking channels.”

And if you think about it, why wouldn’t they use it? It’s much cheaper than more traditional advertising, it’s current, it gets the public involved and it is proven to work.

So, those of you who love football and love social media this is a match made in heaven. If you aren’t a big user of social media this may be the time to get involved, especially if you like football because it is bound to be the best way to keep up to date with what is going on and to have your say.
It’s officially the summer of social media and South Africa. Come on England!

Have you ever submitted your well-written, thoroughly-researched article through to an aggregate site and watched it flounder as endless top-tens and ridiculous controversy soars to the top of people’s reading lists? I can identify with you if you’re one of the many suffering from what I’d like to call “aggregate aggravation syndrome.” It’s a tough disorder to crack, but with the right content and the right attitude to summarising and pitching your content to a global, news-hungry audience, this can all change easily enough.

Realistically, it’s just a case of making sure your article looks more interesting than all the others, and I’m sure we’d all love to think it was as simple as that. Unfortunately, it’s not. Your article remains a needle in a haystack, and it’s your job to make sure it reaches the eyes and ears of every single industry-related party and all the genre-disinterested browsers it can. It’s a tough gig but there are possibilities you may have overlooked, and of course, contraversial strategies you may be using that are, much to your shock, having the opposite effect.

Bigger than Elvis

So, say you’ve written a long, sprawling article on SEO, and it encompasses research, interviews, and a level of writing rarely seen since The Guardian was released that morning. You’re happy with the work, MS Word is letting it go without so much as a single squiggly red or green line, and you’re so into your own work that sharing it with the world seems like the only viable option. So where to go from here? Why, to an aggregate site, of course!

Let me explain this logic with a sobering fact. If you’re blogging, right now, on a WordPress.com account, there are over 300′000 new posts today alone. That’s somewhere in the region of thirty new books full of articles, and you know at least one of them is likely to be similar to yours over the course of the week. Three hundred thousand. Let that sink in for a moment. What chance does yours have, even with tags and that awesome graph you made in Excel? Not many. In fact, one of my highest-traffic articles of all time on my personal blog was a random rant about a LEGO version of a Harry Potter videogame. A year or more later, and it’s ranked thousands of hits, and it was never submitted.

The point I’m making is that the internet is a seriously fickle thing. Take a look at the front page of Digg and tell me what you see. Today, for example, there are a range of articles, but most of them focus on three key elements of global-appeal news: danger, drama and pictures. If we drift into the technology section, as this is where you’re far more likely to turn up (or browse – all news bar the exclusive is, to some degree, regurgitation), then we begin to see a different pattern: humour, heated debate, and leaked intel on new tech. The reason the pattens change is because as news and articles become more specialist, more niche, readers are absorbing writing whose mindset, tone and texture more closely reflect their target audience.

I’d just like to say a few words

Every time you write a new article, think of how you’d pitch it as a freelance piece. I’m serious. I know no one wants to voluntarily pitch freelance pieces ever again if they can avoid it, as it’s something of a humiliating, degrading, grinding process that kills the soul and maims the ego. But it’s also a brilliant acid test – if you could pitch your article to me in ten words, using as much or as little jargon as possible, I can tell you whether or not it’ll work. Let’s take a look at a few high-ranking examples of more opinion-based pieces.

Now, to start with, I found an article that I think is relevant to anyone who works on websites that use Adobe’s wonder-project, Flash. The title is “Is Flash Dead? The Future of Adobe’s Plug-In.” Now, this is a fairly controversial thing to say, but what’s clever is the question mark placed after the opening statement itself. This is key – if you’re debating something about social media, and you had the choice between “Twitter is Pointless” and “Is Twitter Pointless?”, choose the second option. The reason for this is you’re posing as a neutral party, even if this isn’t the case. The decision as to whether or not to invest ten minutes reading an article of considerable depth and debate, and then responding in the comments thread, is often one made in the opening few moments of reading an article’s title and subtitle. By phrasing the controversial statement as a question, it invites debate without inviting wrath or apathy and zero click-throughs from offended parties who see you as a prejudiced commentator.

The second example I’d like to give as a great example of effective aggregate-site-management is “Fortune 100 Companies Leveraging Social Media (Infographic)“. Now, this may seem a tad deep and a little too serious, but this is currently the top Digg article on a search for “social media”. Social media’s a relaxed sport, at best, and not something you can cover without being a little relaxed. This is also a graph site, which suits that industry perfectly – anyone using FaceBook and Twitter is going to want new-age ways of communicating information, and nothing does this better than indicating to them that all they’re in for is a slick diagram rather than 1000 words of prosaic musing on the subject.

It also has stick figures.

Seriously, though, it’s a great way of dragging people in. Entertain them. Tempt them. Make them curious or make them mad, and let them click through to shower you with praise or hatred. One of the most irritating sites in the universe, in my games journalism days, was also one of the most successful, because it kept encouraging heated, angry debate between Sony loyalists and Microsoft fan-soldiers. With social media, why not talk about the advantages of Twitter over Facebook, or why Bebo’s a lost, pointless art? Tempt them in with your tag-line the same way you would if you were designing a film poster, and watch your Diggs soar.

The recent BP oil spill has created two different disasters, firstly the devastation to the ocean and surrounding environment but secondly the ruining of BP’s image.

There is no two ways about it, the PR has been terrible and could possibly have affected the company beyond repair, perhaps more than the spill itself.

It took BP seven days to tweet a response to the situation and even when they did it was a mundane, impersonal tweet. There was no reaching out to the victims and those affected or even some reassurance that they were doing what they could to rectify the situation.

Why did it take them seven days? In a situation like this social media could have been a great way to get in the public’s good books, constant tweeting with apologies and updates would surely have been appreciated.

What they did finally come up with was a website sponsored by Deepwater Horizon Response. I say sponsored but there is in fact very little evidence that BP is even involved with it. It is this web-page that is using social media to it’s advantage and encouraging people to interact. I can’t help but think it’s all come a bit to late and the lack of apparent BP involvement isn’t helping the brand.

Although this case is on a much larger scale than we will hopefully ever have to deal with, there is quite a lot that companies can take away from this to avoid a similar disaster.

Firstly be quick- if there is a problem, try and beat the more traditional forms of media with your social media sites. That way you can say what you want to first without the facts being blurred in anyway.

Apologize straight away- if you use Twitter or Facebook to immediately admit it when you make a mistake people will be much quicker to forgive you. The public like to know that it is a human behind a brand or company. The more you engage with them and the more vulnerable you are the more comfortable they will feel with you.

Don’t be afraid- one argument I’ve heard is that BP were worried that by using social media to talk about the problem it would trivialize it. This is not the case, we live in an age where so much is determined by what we read on social media sites. It is often people’s first port of call for information. It is how we communicate, share ideas and build up business. If we use it to promote the good things, we must also use it to say sorry when we have made a mistake.

The oil spill is still causing major problems and extreme worry. Unfortunately I don’t think anything BP say now will make the public believe in them as company again.

When venturing into the world of social media for the first time, with the intention of increasing your business growth as a result, it’s sometimes a daunting and slow process, with a lot of uncertainty and insecurity thrown in for extra discomfort. But a look into the effect of social media on small businesses is sometimes enough to turn even the most archaic workplace into a haven of Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.

Let me hit you with a scary statistic. The world’s most widely read newspaper – and this will come as a shock to devotees of USA Today – is the Times of India, with over three million copies read every day. Add to that the rest of the top ten and their respective circulation figures and you’re looking at around 18.7 million papers being read on a daily basis in the top ten around the world. That’s almost twenty million pairs of eyes looking at advertising, news, gossip and other sources of information that would, surely, cancel out any effect of word-of-mouth product, service and business recommendations. Right?

Wrong. Twitter, as of January this year, has 75 million users and climbing. Say each of those users don’t post more than once a day, but they read the hundred or more tweets of other people. That’s a 300%-plus advantage over the papers we read, filled with adverts that are never taken is as readily as a friend’s opinion, be it positive or negative. In fact, Buzz Agent is commonly quoted as indicating that a word-of-mouth recommendation will do more for brand awareness than 200 TV adverts. When you consider the budget involved in producing and maintaining a run of 200 ads on television, and compare it to the non-price of a few good tweets supporting a recent product or service you offer, the choice is clear.

Jack and the Digital Beanstalk

But statistics and opinion are nothing without examples. A mere several months ago, a man called Ramon DeLeon was simply a manager of seven Domino’s outlets across Chicago. A regular manager of a small group of franchises, advertised globally but still never seeing any major changes in operation or surges in demand across the year. However, when an unsatisfied customer turned to Twitter to berate one of his outlets for delivering a cold, incorrectly-made pizza, he took to social media to apologise. The resulting video was then embedded almost 100,000 times – everywhere from blogs to major newspaper outlets.

Social media is all about the individual. Twittering as a business is a great way to interface with the public in a more relaxed forum than, say, a one-way TV advert or sponsoring a sports event. Even so, allow the public to put a name to the person behind the businesses’ Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn page. These people will have opinions, visit industry events, and become an ambassador for your business in the new era of the first online source of digitised interactivity to outrank the pornography industry. Of course, there are risks, and these usually come with careless employees who aren’t as well-read on social media as their peers, but chosen to be the businesses’ digital ambassador simply because they’re young and hip.

For small businesses, it’s an important first step. Twenty years ago, starting out as an entrepreneur with a dream was a risky venture, and usually ended in tears. For those of you involved in one of the many, many dot com collapses in the early millennium, it seemed like a risk to attempt to launch an online business. However, what most people missed out on until the rise of sites like the IKEA online store or your local florist was that we were looking at the problem from the wrong angle. It wasn’t necessary to build a business as an online-only entity when it was in its starting phases. The key was to develop the business as physical presence – an office, a shop-front – and then build its online presence alongside it to maximise potential customers.

I Came, I Saw, I Hash-Tagged

Men and women striking out on their own and winning big is a common fairytale, and one we’re reminded of all too well by Alan Sugar, Duncan Bannatyne and the like. But when we take the plumber uncle we see at a family gathering and the business cards of his we give out to locals who are suffering a broken pipe after a holiday, and transpose it onto Twitter, Facebook etc, it stops becoming a willfull word-of-mouth in person, and becomes a series of online adverts.

Anyone who insists the internet isn’t viral is lying through their teeth. Every single successful site on the web was put there by customers, and the same can be said for any physical business. Amazon, Twitter – these things are spoken about on forums, in bars, on iPhones, and in chatrooms. They spread faster than wildfire, and you’re never waiting for the newspaper the following day to see if your shop launch was a success – as of late, that make-or-break announcement will be coming to you directly through social media sources.

Of course, there’s a trend to be noticed, and one covered well by many social media industry sources: you’re relying heavily on the customer to do your work for you. Word-of-mouth is a fickle beast – either something goes viral and explodes across the web, or it fizzles out within a few re-tweets. The main thing you have to remember is that Twitter is not a replacement for a good reputation – keep satisfying customers, and more importantly let them know that your avenues of feedback have expanded to incorporate social media and the web. The ability to tell someone my pizza is not only cold, but has anchovies instead of chicken on it, and have them respond with a video watched by hundreds of thousands of people, is a pretty good indication that business cares about its customers. And when did you last hear of Domino’s Pizza going bust? Tweet away and remember: it’s not what you’re selling, but how you’re selling it.