As proved by Starbucks and Converses and use of the word ‘movie’, you can bet you you bottom dollar (pound) that if the American’s are drinking/wearing/doing it, it won’t be long before we are too.

Launched last Thursday, and currently only available in the States, is the new Facebook application ‘Facebook Places’. Places allows you to ‘check in’ at your current location, giving friends the opportunity to see your whereabouts immediately. Are you coincidently attending the same event? Brilliant! Have you skipped their dull birthday ‘do to attend something far more glamorous? Not so brilliant…

As if this wasn’t likely to become addictive enough, you can also tag those that are with you, like you would in a photo or status update, as well as browse other people who are checked in at the same place. Obviously, this has raised numerous privacy issues – something which the site is all too familiar with dealing with.

But what’s the implication for small businesses? Aside making it even easier for skiving employees to be caught out by a social networking slip-up, there are several advantages to using geolocation technology.

Twitter has offered geolocation for tweets since last year, as well as its ‘local trends’ feature allowing local business the ability to promote themselves as a ‘trending topic’. Location tagging network Foursquare also found popularity with small businesses, many which used the opportunity as a free platform to get themselves noticed amongst local customers. Of course, now that Facebook’s caught up, the site’s tendency to crush its competitors (i.e. The Myspace Effect) could see changes in the way geolocation is implemented elsewhere.

Facebook’s huge online presence means this latest development is likely to be even more effective for small businesses aiming to benefit from geolocation technology. Businesses in less commercial regions are advised to offer incentives to customers on geolocation networks in order to generate interest and draw people in from more tech-savvy areas. Teaming up with other local businesses to do this can be even more profitable for the companies involved, as well as the local area.

Geolocation content also has the advantage of operating in realtime, and by featuring in conjunction with social networking sites it offers businesses the opportunity to utilise valuable social interaction. Many businesses already use static location services, such as GPS, but the social aspect of applications such as Facebook Places are much more effective when it comes to networking opportunities.

Of course, businesses (large or small) will be well aware that no amount of advertising can beat social recommendations from real people, and Facebook Places could well be the answer into generating such valuable publicity. Yet whether a rise in corporate use of geolocation technology from those keen to make their make their mark using social media might result in little more then irritating promotional advertisements and more organised after-work socials is yet to be seen.

You may be thinking, firstly, who on earth is Justin Bieber and secondly why am I writing about him? Well, unless you are a tween reading this, which is unlikely, or have young daughters, you’re forgiven for not knowing who he is.

Justin Bieber is an internet sensation. In 2008, his music, which his mum had posted on youtube, was discovered by manager to the stars, Scooter Braun, who arranged a meeting between him and the singer Usher. The rest is history. Bieber went on to be signed by Island Records. His debut release My World went platinum in the US, he was the first artist to have seven songs from a debut album chart on the Billboard Hot 100. Then he released the single Baby in January 2010 and things really blew up.

But what does this have to do with social media you may ask? Well Beiber currently has 4,556,617 followers on Twitter and there are over 200 profiles devoted to the 16-year-old. So, I think it’s fair to say he is doing something right and, it turns out, a few things wrong, all of which business owners can learn from.

I’m going to take a look at what he does and see how it can be applied to your business, so you too can be a teen heartthrob with millions of girls following your every word. Maybe not that, but at the very least, become a small business with a big presence.

Get the big guns involved:

For a middle-class teenage boy who is only 5 foot 2, Beiber has some pretty cool friends. Not just cool, but ones who are hugely influential in the social media world, such as Kanye West (who has only had a twitter account for a few weeks but has already racked up 689,562 followers.) Following and being followed by these big names of the Twitter world, can only be positive. Having someone with a huge amount of followers @ing you or retweeting your comments brings you to the attention of a much larger audience.
Although this may be easy to do if you are Justin Bieber, if you are not you can still get in there with profiles that relate to you and have a large following. Twitter is all about flattery, so flatter someone and make their ego and profile bigger. Even JB does it, just two days ago he tweeted ‘@kanyewest me, u, and the chef 2gether on a song = EPIC. haha. might sound crazy 2 u but even having this convo is living the dream. thanks’

Talk to the ’small people’

Although there has been plenty of stories saying Beiber is a brat, one thing can’t be denied – he makes a huge effort connecting with fans via Twitter, and there are a lot of fans. Instead of ignoring his crazed fans he will retweet their comments and engage them in conversation.
Beiber, or his management, knows that it is these people who buy his records, so it is them he looks after.
It has been said time and time again, but letting the customer know that you are not a faceless business is essential. A bit of time and effort will make them feel relaxed, trust you and be more likely to buy from you or use your service over someone that ignores them via Twitter or sends out generic messages.

Keep it relevant

This relates to the previous idea. It’s all very well having the followers, but to keep them you have to keep them interested. Beiber knows that the way to do this is to talk about the things they want to know, like his shows or where he currently is. He always directly addresses the people of that town and he will then thank them for their support.
Make sure your business profile isn’t talking rubbish. Before you hit tweet think about what you are saying, will anyone care? Will it make them want to be involved with you more? Always keep in the back of your mind that you are using twitter as a marketing tool, the idea is to get more custom from using it.

Don’t get twitter revenge

However angry you are do not seek Twitter revenge (Twengeance? Twit for Tat?), it not only makes you look immature but it shows you get hot headed in situations, a disaster for a business. People will be reluctant to work with you if you are seen to make rash or malicious decisions.
Just this week JB posted a teenage fan’s number on Twitter in revenge for having the fan having hacked the Twitter account of a friend of Beiber to get the star’s phone number. The boy, Kevin Kristopik, has consequently had to delete his Twitter page and change his mobile number after being inundated with calls.
Beiber, of course will not suffer greatly from his childish act, but if you are a small business you will. Word spreads like wild fire over the internet, so one mistake or one disgruntled text could marr your reputation beyond repair.

So what have we learnt from Justin Beiber? He’s not just a teen heart throb who can kind of hold a tune but he’s a social media, and especially Twitter, guru. Whether his fan base has grown since he joined the world of social media or his Twitter following is expanding as his fame escalates, is redundant because either way he has a huge following that isn’t going anywhere any time soon and that will continue to buy his music. And this is what all businesses want, loyal followers and a big Twitter following.

Yep, it’s official – Facebook has hit 500 million users, and the internet continues its struggle for dominance over our lives and minds. Quite frankly, I think it happened years ago, but I’m sure many people paranoid about how much time they really spend on social networking sites would love to disagree with me, especially in front of their line manager.

Sometimes, I wonder how big Facebook’s going to get, really. With Mark Zuckerberg due to appear on The Simpsons, Facebook’s fame will be cemented in history, a history that is now digitally catalogued, stored, and compiled into the amateur encyclopaedia that is Wikipedia. That being said, are we truly grateful to Facebook for what it’s done to the internet?

For one thing, it’s connected 500 million people, and you simply can’t disagree with that statistic. It’s an incredible achievement, and one that the forefathers of the World Wide Web would be proud to see occur. However, it also means 500 million people are slowly exposing more and more of themselves to their employers, rivals, the press and to the darker agents sifting through Facebook’s many groups and friend networks.

It’s like the six degrees of separation, only multiplied to the nth degree. People are losing their jobs after whining about their employers, but that’s only possible because they’re publicising the wrong parts of themselves. If you’re a high-profile businessman, that gallery of Bangkok pictures is probably a silly idea. Basic stuff, no?

It just proves we’re still learning when it comes to technology that made its debut less than a couple of decades earlier. People are still releasing potentially harmful information about themselves onto the web, other people (or, intelligence-wise, the same people, really) are buying the iPhone 4 despite the recorded flaws, and most still get Windows releases even though we know they won’t work near-perfectly for almost half a decade.

At the same time, we’re more connected than ever before, and this has advanced politics, social networking, business networking. Hell, I may not be the biggest advocate of Facebook around, but I respect and know the power of it, and my LinkedIn account helps me get recommendations I can then use when I’m bigging myself up somewhere else.

LinkedIn, however, is rather different to Facebook. There’s no gossip, no controversy, no intimate details, just pure business, and the odd brown-nosed recommendation from someone you’ve hardly worked with who’d like to be introduced to that CEO you know. It’s more competitive, more serious, and for that reason, far more likely to fail.

Look at society – down go the serious films, up come the comic book movies. Down goes the classic literature, up comes vampire novels. We’re entering into a paradise of fun, of not caring about the more serious ways of enjoying ourselves, and aiming instead for the appealing, the easy, the simply enjoyable and the indulgent warmth that comes with that.

For this reason, Facebook will, in my opinion, hit a billion users well before 2015. This sounds like a mind-bending figure, but it’s not. Once the tweens reach adulthood, and the ever-younger net users hit the right age to start surfing, we’ll see a generation of social networkers who don’t even know what a VHS is. Doesn’t that terrify you? Terrifies me, all right.

“The early bird catches the worm.”

So it’s been said since the beginning of time immemorial, or at least it feels like it. The first to anything tends to benefit the most, and of course in today’s economy, also tends to monopolise and monetise it to high heaven. This isn’t mean, or possessive – just good, solid business sense. The main reason that Twitter’s official @earlybird account is such exciting news for any business looking to use the micro-blogging specialist for advertising purposes is just this – monopolise and capitalise. Come first, win the race, take it to the bank.

If you’ve ever used a book of vouchers at a shop or, god forbid, gone for an item you’d never normally had bought in a sale, then this will appeal to you. Long story short: it’s a Twitter account manned by Twitter staff, giving you updates on discounts and offers from the companies they work with. It’s the closest thing to full-on advertising on the site, so it’s a big first step for a company with a colossal prospective audience.

Twitter currently has around 70m accounts. If even 1% follow @earlybird, any company advertising with Twitter will instantly gain an audience of the best part of a million people. Now picture 10% joining. Makes your bank account tingle, right? If I was a company with the budget, I’d be getting a slice of this action as soon as possible, because it won’t be long before we’re inundated by mega corporations (Apple, Microsoft) who’ve hit @earlybird with the force of a swan’s wing (which can apparently break your arm).

Of course, there’s also the viral nature of Twitter to take into account. Those 700,000 people, that 1% potential follower statistic (if it goes down well with Twitter users, that is) could then turn round and re-tweet. This has the potential to at least double the amount of eyes that see it, and grab more people’s attention and direct it in @earlybird’s direction. However, there are many different sites picking up on the new account, and giving different takes on the service.

The Guardian, being cautiously neutral as usual, have spoke about how Coca Cola received a mind-boggling 86 million impressions after running promotional content through Twitter. This is a big return on an investment that, for all intents and purposes, only costs the thirty seconds required to write and hit “tweet”. Realistically however, I’d imagine Twitter are making a pretty penny out of it too. It just goes to show what you can do by exploiting what appear to be officially endorsed channels on various social media.

But should use these channels over more usual advertising channels? Well, when you think about it, people are more likely to see it, and definitely more likely to read it, pay attention to it and therefore absorb it. WordPress (we’ll discuss this site’s social media identity in a future post), Twitter, Facebook – it doesn’t matter where your social updates come from, realistically speaking these guys have more access to you than other users. They can post things to you via email, through your dashboard, or a multitude of other hidden means.

What this means for you, the blogger, the status-checker and the Twitterer, is that you’re now opening yourself up to social media’s new wave of advertising in a way that’s not intrusive, annoying or outrageous – simply helpful. We see adverts on sites as an invasion of the information we want to absorb and mentally download. However, discounts, sales – are these adverts, or just a nudge in the right financial direction? It remains to be seen whether @earlybird will be a success, but going on Coca Cola’s statistics, I’d say it will be.

Is email really destined for deleted folder/recycle bin?

Email is on its way out, that is according to Sheryl Sandberg, the Chief Operating Officer at Facebook. She made this controversial statement to what must been a flabbergasted audience at Nielsen’s Consumer 360 conference, but what truth is there in the statement?

According to Sandberg: “If you want to know what people like us will do tomorrow, you look at what teenagers are doing today”. She says that only 11% of teens email daily and so in the near future no one will use it at all. She believes that people are turning to SMS, Twitter and other social networks, mainly hers, to communicate.

“E-mail–I can’t imagine life without it–is probably going away,” she said.

But can this really be the case or is she over hyping her own product? It is obvious that teenagers don’t use email. Why would they if all their friends are on Facebook and they can communicate quickly and easily with pictures, videos or whatever they want really.

Email is open to all

For a business however, it is rather different. The difference between email and social networks is that email is open to everyone, you can send an email from one account to a completely different one, ie from a Hotmail account to a self-hosted email. Whereas you need to be a member of Facebook or Twitter to communicate with other people on them.

Let’s say email suddenly disappeared tomorrow, it would have to be replaced with an open, business-focussed social networking site, which any business could join to gain access to each other. I suppose something like Linkedin, but on a much bigger scale. I can’t really see that happening any time soon.

The advantages of networks

Of course, social networks are ideal for certain businesses and perhaps a better way to communicate than email is. With email you actually have to know someone’s email address, unlike with Facebook. Although you do have to be a member of the network, but there are huge numbers of users once you have signed up. As Sandberg said in her presentation, Facebook has 400 million members, 100 million of which are daily mobile users, she puts this in perspective for us by saying:

“ On any given day, you can reach twice as many people in the U.S. as watch American Idol–and that only makes up 30% of our global audience.”

So for a business social networks might offer communicate opportunities. Sandberg cited a study that people who receive product recommendations from their friends are 400% more likely to buy it. What Facebook has is a ‘like’ feature. If you like something you click that and let all your friends know. The same study reiterated this point that friend-recommended products have 68% better product recognition and 200% greater recollection of brand messaging.

What future for email

But for more complicated issues within the workplace, like contracts, bills and in depth discussions, Facebook just won’t cut it. It also comes down to the appropriateness of the situation, are you really going to discuss someone’s will with them over a social network?

It is hard for us now to imagine now a life without email, it is such a big part of our lives. Even as a teenager I used email, but then again Facebook wasn’t around then. And now? I think Facebook is my biggest port for communication, I do email a few friends but only because I have their address. So maybe Sandberg has a point?

And remember how years ago everyone wore watches, it was as natural as putting on underwear. Look around your office now, how many people are wearing watches? I can’t see one person , we all just use our computer or mobiles, so things do change.

Facebook is predicting the death of email by using a demographic of non-users, is this possible? You never know, we’ll just have to wait and see.

Here is a clip of Sandberg at the conference:

Anyone churning their way through SEO and social media news lately is likely to notice an increasing amount of posts and news about Twitter beginning to fail its users on a regular basis. Now, for a lot of people that’s a few regained hours that would usually be spent procrastinating in the office and writing 140-character poetry to loved ones, or, alternatively, Stephen Fry. But for companies who use Twitter as their only source of new-age contact with a consumer base that’s increasingly going digital, and socially digital at that, this could be rather disruptive, and something of a worrying topic to bring up at the next board meeting.

The question is simple: why are companies choosing one social media outlet and running with it to the degree that, if it were to collapse, they would unwittingly cut themselves off from their entire target market? If you’re a company who Tweets, whether as a group, a select team of social media enthusiasts or even someone in Marketing/PR dedicated to the medium, then are you not only wasting your potential by only using one outlet, but putting your entire social media-related business presence at risk as well?

Too little, too late

Let’s be honest – this isn’t the first time we’ve seen businesses face disasters on any scale caused by bad sites or bad software, though software’s definitely the more damaging. CNET once posted an insightful, though rather shudder-worthy post discussing the impact a software failure had on the financial stability of a major company. The bottom line was that the company itself was not held to account for the failings of its infrastructure and its reliance on one piece of software.

Now, this is arguable from both sides of the fence. Yes, even in terms of Twitter (a google search for “fail whale” will give you an idea of the realistic scale of issues with it), the company running the software or website that businesses operate through are ultimately responsible if said companies suffer when the software/site fails. Of course, if this happens with a social media site, there’s a sudden drop in updates and therefore traffic to the blog, which over a day or a week can be rebuilt, steadily. When it goes really wrong is when their blog crashes and they lose all previous posts, or Twitter dies and prevents them from being the first to break industry news – a devastating and horrifying prospect for any business seen to be regularly “on the ball” in terms of new developments in their industry or sub-sector.

However, at the same time, companies are too reliant on one system of doing things, and this largely evolves as a result of the monopoly trend in the digital battle for web dominance. Twitter is never going to be bested when it comes to micro-blogging, and the Microsoft Exchange Server system is an obvious choice if everyone in the office is running to and from conferences with nothing but a netbook and a smartphone to hand.  But to be present in social media circles and rely on only one site, be it Twitter, Facebook or otherwise, is foolish at best. You wouldn’t rely on one leg and never bother having another given the option to have both, right? So why cripple your business in the same manner?

My name is Company A Ltd, and I’m a digital dependoholic

The first step to solving problems like this is simply to spread out. If you’re only running a Twitter, set up a Facebook, even a Flickr account (you never know, allowing the press easy access to pictures of your award-winning team of staff has its benefits, and wastes less of your time when it comes to the news-hounds sniffing around for something to colour their article about Employee 49 with). The same goes for software – if you’re only using TweetDeck and your entire staff roster follows suit, get them to have other options installed (or re-introduce them to their browser, if it comes to it) to prepare for the event that TweetDeck suddenly crashes and the entire tech support department stage a four-week walkout strike. You’d be surprised at the fallibility of online support for software – if Twitter went down and every single account requested support, that’s (judging by January’s statistics) over 75 million angry users. Not a weekend job.

The main issue you have to consider is the support in place in the event of a system/site-wide crash. Let’s take the Twitter example and run a few numbers:

• January 2010 number of Twitter users – 75,000,000.
• Twitter crashes, globally, everyone makes a tech request.
• Time taken to fill out forms on the part of the user, and deal with each request and give a form answer on the part of Twitter, even on auto reply: 10 seconds (thinking along the lines of writing “my twitter account doesn’t work, ” and hitting send, and the receipt page loading on a decent connection).
• Total amount of time to deal with all 75 million requests:
• 750,000,000 seconds
• 12,000,000 minutes
• 20,833.333 (recurring) hours
• 8,680 days
• 23.78 (rounded down, non-leap year) years.

Now, admittedly everyone would get their responses immediately, not one-by-one. But imagine the server capacity to respond, and take into account that almost 24 years of productivity has been lost – it’s enough to give any CEO a heart attack. But of course, if you tweet 50 times a day as a business PR attempt and twitter goes down for a day, that’s 50 tweets lost, and therefore 500 possible re-tweets – 550 tweets talking about your company lost, per day, the equivalent of one or two press releases. It’s a damaging thing to happen, and dependence like this means a lot of companies face a seriously blank afternoon if their means of doing business is lost. Scrooge would be ashamed – we should all still be keeping manual, physical records, but an over-reliance on digitised information, no need for filing cabinets (that new plant looks way better, anyway) and so-called “infallible” backup systems means we run the risk of losing everything.

Remember the Titanic? The “unsinkable” ship? Now apply that to MS Office, your email server, MSN, Facebook, Twitter, and even your phone network and the Royal Mail. Scary, right?

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!

If asked whether small businesses currently use social media, most of us would reply ‘of course’ and wonder why I’m even bringing it up. Well, all I seem to read about nowadays is how small businesses are benefiting from social media and using it to expand their businesses. Even my colleague Christos Reid wrote an blog titled ‘Businesses are growing through social media’. However, I know a number of people who have small businesses, admittedly many of whom aren’t in the ‘digital’ industry, that don’t use social media as their main tool for growth. This got me thinking and led to some research to see if this was really the case.

Expelling the myth

One of the most interesting things I found was a survey carried out by Citibank which clearly shows that small businesses are not, in fact, using social media. Out of the 552 small businesses surveyed throughout America, in the last year 37% of small businesses have not used a website to increase business for their company and a huge 84% have not used e-commerce to sell their services or products. What’s more 62% don’t even use basic email as tool for drumming up business. These are quite astounding statistics, in a country were about 76% of the population use the internet regularly, yet such a tiny proportion do not use it to fully benefit their businesses.

Of those who do have a website, 74% say that it has been effective at generating more business. So, why haven’t others picked up on this? This isn’t the only contradictory piece of information found in the survey. 63% said that word of mouth is the most effective marketing tool, yet they hadn’t translated this to the online world. 81% said they haven’t used Facebook, Twitter or Linkedin. Of those who do use social media sites, 47% said they didn’t think they were of any use to their business. 21% thought the sites are most suitable for personal rather than business use, and 18% said they thought they didn’t know how to use the sites well enough to benefit their businesses.

That’s just basic marketing techniques, if we look at slightly more advanced methods like SEO, PPC or banner adverts, over half of the businesses surveyed haven’t used them either.

What on earth is going on?

Now we know that American small businesses are not taking full advantage of social media, but we don’t really know why. I have tried to find statistics for the UK, but there does not seem to be an equivalent survey. It would be interesting to see if UK businesses are also shunning social media or if we are more technologically savvy.

It seems that age does matter, the older the person behind the business, the less likely they are to use social media as a marketing tool. It makes sense, the younger generation or millennial generation as it is known, have grown up with social media sites, they didn’t have pen-pals, they had friends and followers. Whereas the older generation have had to adapt to it. My dad is still slightly miffed by the whole thing, he asks me why I can’t just talk to these people and why I have to spend hours spying on my ex-boyfriend’s new girlfriend. If he can’t understand that, then I can’t see him using Facebook as a means to gain extra clients.

The Citibank survey confirmed this, showing that small business executives of 45-years-old and over are less likely to use online tools than younger business executives. A healthy-ish 27% of executives under-45 used social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter as marketing tools in the last 12 months, while only 16% of those who are 45 or over used them.

You can teach an old dog new tricks.

If the case is that the older generation simply don’t fully understand how to use social networking to help their business, then surely this is easy to solve? The Citibank survey shows that those who do use social media for their small business have found it beneficial. Gradually more and more people will start doing the same. Social media is a great marketing tool and anyone who does use it is likely to say the same. People need to see that social networking is not as daunting as it looks, and once you’ve got the hang of it, you will see your business grow.

Some people refuse to use social networking sites because of security fears. So, what you can do is encourage those around you who don’t use social media sites, to start a Facebook page or Twitter account:

• Remind them that now you can have a pretty secure Facebook page, which will only allow those you want to see things.
• If they don’t want people to see certain things, don’t put them up in the first place, it’s as simple as that.
• Update their sites at least twice a day to get the most from it.
• Help them find groups or trends to follow that they will find interesting and relate to them, so they can start getting involved with dialogue.
• You want them to realise that a part of these sites is about self publicity. If you post your blog on Facebook, it generates traffic to your blog. Once the social media shy see this, they will see the power and benefit that these sites offer.

Once they have found their footing with a personal account, it shouldn’t be hard to help them move over to a business account. There are hundreds of videos and blogs that can help. They will soon see that it is more beneficial using Facebook to network with business clients, than just with old friends.

And the future?

The Citibank survey found positive answers for the future. 72 % say they are likely to use a website for marketing or expanding their business in the next 12 months – up 14% from those who do today. 24% are likely use e-commerce to sell their products or services online over the next 12 months – up 50% from those who do today. And 30 % say they intend to use social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter or Linkedin for marketing or expanding their business – up 58% from those who do today.

Whether this is all just wishful thinking, only time will tell. What this has showed us, however, is that bloggers, SEO guys and social media commentators believe that small business are already using online channels to the full, and reaping the benefits. We’ll just have to wait and see if all this hype will turn into money for small businesses.

It’s exciting times in the world of social media once again! Advancements seem to be getting bigger and better but, more often than not, leave me begging the question- is there any need?

Now our favourite free music service, Spotify, has launched its newest venture which aims to allow users to connect with new music in new and exciting ways. I don’t know about you but it’s pretty standard when I listen to music, I either like it or I don’t, I’m not desperately seeking new ways to connect to it.

Anyway, one of the new features of Spotify allows you to connect to Facebook while on Spotify. Users of Spotify can share their profiles, which includes track-lists, favourite artists and tracks, with their friends on Facebook now. So not only can you see pictures of your friends, read their latest, and sometimes most intimate status updates, but now you can also know everything about their music tastes. The new feature means you can keep track of your contacts’ music selections, in a social feed. I actually think this is kind of cool but are we over sharing with people? Are there no secrets? When you’re on a first date and someone asks you what music you’re in to, do people just say ‘oh check out my spotify playlist’?

I suppose Spotify has basically just become another social media site. The question is if people will bother setting up a whole new profile on there, as well as the ones they have with Twitter, Facebook, etc etc. Am I being naive in thinking that what they are offering is just a more advanced form of what MySpace was doing years ago? If this is the case, it could take off, MySpace was huge in it’s hey day. Is this the new direction for social media sites for 2010?

Twitter seems to be a rising star in the medium of new-age social communication. Everyone from major business CEOs to Stephen Fry are building large followings, and it’s all to see several sentences fly from their fingers a day as the world’s shortest blog format continues to take over the world. But what if we want to use this same technique not to inform people of where our band is playing next, or what we’re watching on TV at the moment, but what products and services we offer as a business? Of course, it’s tempting just to set up a Twitter account for your business and start following everyone in sight whilst posting your company’s homepage URL every five minutes, but that’ll just lead to an identity as a blocked online irritant, which isn’t what you’re after. Here’s a list of tips for engaging with the world run by the small blue birdie:

1. Network. Don’t expect people to follow you and retweet everything you say just because you’re a business they might deal with from time to time. Advertise what they’re saying to other people and discuss their tweets with them via replies and your own little @company is going to gain a reputation as a social, interested party.
2. Retweet. When thinking about how to best advertise concepts, ideas and news you’re interested in as a company, think about retweeting specific people. If you’re a business that specialises in finance and the Financial Times has just done a piece on the Base Rate changing, consider a quick “RT @financialtimes: “Base Interest Rate – our thoughts: [link]” and you’ll be surprised at how many people will start to view you as someone to follow for information as well as getting in touch.
3. Update. Don’t turn your Twitter page into a failed foray into social media: if you’re going to commit to a regularly updated Twitter account, even if it’s once a day, you have to meet the minimum you’ve set for yourself. Ideally it won’t just be 140 characters a day of information, but if your output begins to decrease, people will view your Twitter account as an experiment and not a reliable side of your company’s identity.
4. Ask. Ask questions – don’t feel that because you’re a company, you’re not entitled to be curious about other people’s ideas and activities. To have the Twitter account of an entire business ask an expert a question is often a flattering experience, and they’re not only likely to respond quickly and in detail, but their responses mean people following them are going to start seeing your company’s @username more frequently and investigate out of curiosity.
5. Link. In every tweet you send out into the digital realm, think about putting someone’s @username into the tweet. By connecting with someone every time you say something, you’re not only appearing as someone who’s aware of specific industry figureheads and sources of information, but you’re going to start appearing on hundreds, if not thousands of people’s Twitter readers every week.
6. Verify. If you’re looking into making announcements or predictions in your industry (or others, but this is risky for the following reason), then make sure you’ve got your facts straight. One typo or bad statistic and news of the mistake will fly around the Twitterverse fairly rapidly. Hell hath no fury like a web community scorned.
7. Smile. Be polite and friendly. I know this seems like a tall order in 140 characters, but simply sounding enthusiastic with the odd exclamation mark – or if you’re a person and not a company on Twitter, even a smiley – can lead to people viewing you as more than just another corporate face. There are people behind every company logo, and it’s important to bring this across in a medium where even sarcasm is difficult to get across.
8. Compact. If there’s one thing that people who rarely read individual Twitter pages can’t stand, it has to be messages that run on for several Tweets, as more often than not they’ll be broken up by other people’s – even if you’re Tweeting the next portion every twenty seconds. Try and keep everything compact and succinct – the ability to communicate in 140 characters is actually a skill, and one you’ll develop over time in Twitter, but the sooner the better.
9. Decorate. People will occasionally read your Twitter page individually, so make sure you’ve got a custom background that tiles well on higher resolution monitors and that represents your company. Silly pictures and bright, clashing colours are for teenager’s bedrooms. Keep it mature, and you’ll gain respect for making the effort to individualise your page.
10. Expand. Keep track of everything you’ve said and that people have said about you. I’m sure if everyone had the funds there’d be a Twitter-only employee for every company trying to gain a larger market share. Of course, try and get your employees to reference the company’s Tweets and Twitter page whenever they mention work, and encourage them to spread your identity as a company as far and wide as possible while remaining casual about the whole affair, lest they all seem too robotic and forced in their praise.

Here’s hoping some of this helps. Twitter is a mad, furious rush of energy condensed into 140 collections of pixels and fired out at a rate of thousands upon thousands every second of the day, and the numbers are increasing all the time. Gain your foothold and your following now, and you’ll never risk missing what could be the biggest boat in the history of online marketing.