Clay Shirky really has something here. Because I have to say, I just plain love this book. I am a fan! In addition, this book ended up tying with Groundswell for being my favorite of the six books that we were assigned to read in my first Quinnipiac University social media class, Social Media Platforms (ICM 522).
Clay Shirky: Here comes everybody! (Photo credit: ChimpLearnGood)
At the time, I started classes thinking I would only get a certification and nothing more. However, I ended up staying long enough to get my Master’s of Science in Communications in Interactive Media (social media). And a part of that decision can be traced directly back to reading this particular work.
Philosophy To Go
Furthermore, I really liked the philosophical and sociological aspects of his work. Essentially, what he ended up saying was – society is changing. It’s not just the Internet; it is happening to humans ourselves. We are in the process of becoming new, and different. Hence there is a seismic shift going on, in our society.
Of course, that is likely to just be the wealthiest slice of society. Because heartbreakingly poor people in Third World countries simply aren’t going to be adding to online or offline content any time soon. Or, if they are, it is far more likely to consist of content that is survival-based. Hence this would be items for sale, rather than the products of truly creative pursuits.
Amateurs vs. Professionals
In addition, I really love what he had to say about amateur participation. Because in Chapter 5, on page 154, Shirky persuasively writes:
“As more people come to expect that amateur participation is always an option, those expectations can change the culture.”
So here’s to amateur participation. Because it is here to stay and I suspect it will never, truly go away.
Life, Liberty … And Facebook for All – Your Home Page
Your home page is vital. Log into Facebook, and it’s the first thing you see. It’s your Home Page. So here’s what’s in it. You can divide it into what look like columns.
NOTE: Facebook constantly A/B tests. Features move around, change, are renamed and resized, or disappear all the time. These are rolled out in stages; your neighbor may have a different-looking Home Page from yours. And this is 100% normal.
Home Page Links
So first of all, column one (left side, top):
Facebook (Photo credit: Scott Beale)
News Feed
Messenger
Watch
Marketplace
Then shortcuts; this is a section you add to or subtract from.
Then …
Explore
Pages
Groups
Events
Fundraisers
Games etc.
Your Feed
Then column two (center):
Status messages on friends’ pages
Other friend activities
Anything your friends or the pages you follow are sharing
Column Three
Then column three (right, top):
Events
Friends’ Birthdays
Marketplace
Groups You Might Like
People You May Know
Targeted Advertisements
A list of friends available on chat (at the bottom)
Let’s start with Column One:
Groups
So this is a list of the groups you have joined.
Pages
These are pages you are following.
Friends
So pretty obviously, this is a way to access your entire list of friends.
Create Group
So you can create groups for any reason. And this includes to support a beloved entertainment figure, promote your business or just complain about people wearing Crocs. So I’ll get into the specifics later.
Games
These will rotate as you access more games, depending upon recency.
Status Messages on Friends’ Pages
So this is the actual News Feed itself. And you can comment on others’ statuses (statii?) or posted links.
Other Friend Activities
First of all, you are served everyone’s activities. Facebook can be a tsunami of data. However, a lot is aggregated; you are usually shown that six people joined a group, rather than separate messages on all half-dozen.
Events
So if you’ve got upcoming events and you haven’t RSVP’d, they’ll show up here, but you can jettison them by clicking the x on the right side. Note that you’ll be invited to all sorts of stuff, including sponsored activities and openings by commercial ventures. And RSVP’ing is not strictly necessary. However, as an event organizer, I have to say it’s appreciated so as to at least get a handle on headcount (and know who not to expect). You need not RSVP for commercial store openings or whatnot.
Friends’ Birthdays
Whether they’ve made the year apparent is their own business. But if they’ve got the month and day up on Facebook, birthdays will show up here. And of course you’re under no obligation to wish people a Happy Birthday, but it is kind of nice.
People You May Know
So this is based upon some sort of an algorithm whereby Facebook looks at things like your current friends list, their friends, your location and possibly also your school(s) and workplace(s). However, I don’t believe the latter are included at this time. So if you have any mutual friends, Facebook lists them as well. Facebook does not always get this right, or it gets it wrong in interesting ways, e. g. Facebook says I “may know” the spouse of someone I attended High School with. Well, unless I went to High School with the spouse (over 30 years ago), then there isn’t much of a likelihood there.
Hence there are times when this list is bewildering. Hey, Facebook is doing the best it can.
Targeted Advertisements on Your Home Page
Well, they’re as targeted as Facebook can make them. This apparently has a basis in your click activity, your likes, your friends’ likes and whenever you click on an ad to get rid of it. Again, sometimes Facebook can get this wrong in rather spectacular ways; for example, when I wrote this post originally, it showed me an ad for Toyota. And I have neither owned nor contemplated owning one, ever.
A list of friends available on chat
It should go without saying that you should never click on links from chatters you don’t know well. And you’re under no obligation whatsoever to answer anyone’s instigated chat.
So a big part of the Facebook experience is not only playing games but also sharing them with others, or sharing status or links. The way you see and can participate in this sharing is via your Home Page. It is, essentially, a bulletin board between you and your pals. But keep your own wall the way you want it. If you don’t want people to swear or argue politics, etc., that is 100% within your rights.
Life, Liberty … And Facebook for All – Your Profile Page Part I
Let’s look at your profile page part 1.
If you’re a member of Facebook, you’ve seen it dozens, if not hundreds, of times – it’s your Profile Page.
Profile shown on Thefacebook in 2005 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
There is also a Home Page, but I’ll cover that in the next segment. Right now, let’s just concentrate on your Profile. Here’s mine.
Profile Page Part 1: Basics
So at minimum, the Profile page consists of the following:
Wall
Info and,
Photos
And it also contains:
A space for your profile picture
Information on any mutual friends you might share with anyone peeking at your profile
A small subgroup of your friends
Your Likes
and Your Photos
Your Links
A share button, and,
On the right side, there are advertisements
NOTE: Facebook is the biggest A/B tester on the planet. They constantly move things around in order to try for an improved user experience. Hence this means you may see buttons moved, resized, renamed, or even eliminated. And it also means your neighbor might see an entirely different configuration.
Let’s start with the tabs.
Wall
Up at the top, you can put in your status. There doesn’t seem to be a true limit to how long a status message can be, but after a few lines, it’s excessive. People put all sorts of nonsense in here – including not only statements of their adoration for celebrities but also mundane minutiae such as the scintillating fact that they’re about to go pick up the dry cleaning. If you want to use Facebook at all for your business, your status messages should really be short, somewhat on point and inoffensive (this is also true if you are looking for work and are not using Facebook for any of that – potential employers are watching!).
Below is the wall itself, where friends can post replies to your status (they can also reply directly to the status), send you greetings, send you game requests, etc. You can always delete or hide these messages, which can be a good idea if they are becoming something you’d rather not share with others. People routinely answer all sorts of dumb questions about me (e. g. Do you think Janet Gershen-Siegel has kissed a boy? Gee, I’ve been married since 1992. You make the call.) and I usually just hide or delete those.
You can also hide notifications from various applications so, if everyone you know is playing Farmville, and you don’t care about it, right-click on any Farmville notification and select the hide Farmville notifications button. However, be aware that there are any number of similar or satellite applications (gifts, new gifts or whatever), so you may be doing a rather similar task more than once. Still, understand that you don’t need to ask people to stop sending you requests. Just block the app.
Info
You can add any number of tidbits here. At minimum, you should at least list your marital/dating status, your birth date (the year is optional) and your current city and/or home town. This will draw people in and make it easier for them to find you, particularly if you have a rather common name. You want friends and business associates to figure out that they want you, the Mary Lou in Hicksville, New York, versus the Mary Lou in Mars, Pennsylvania.
Marital status isn’t strictly necessary (and I’ve found it doesn’t stop guys from sometimes hitting on me – eek), but I personally think it’s a nice thing to include. However, of course, no one can force you to do this and naturally it is illegal in the United States for a potential employer to demand this information.
Birth date is kind of nice to have, partly as an identifier and partly to give another piece of information out that’s just pleasant to see. It’s a minor revelation (particularly if you only give out the month and day) and is essentially harmless. And an American employer cannot legally ask for the year. However, employees do have to be of a certain age in order to work full-time at all. Still, if you get that far along in a job application, an employer won’t use Facebook to confirm your age – the employer will instead use official governmental records like your birth certificate for that.
Adding your birth date also means the inevitable onslaught of Facebook birthday greetings.
Biography
Biography is optional and, if you use Facebook for business, keep it short, on point and inoffensive. Work history is also not necessary but it can be helpful if you need for people to find you (are you the Mary Lou in Hicksville who worked at AIG, or at the Dairy Queen?). Plus that can add to the networking vibe but keep in mind that Facebook for networking remains a poor substitute for LinkedIn.
Educational information also helps to identify you. Graduation years are not necessary. Likes and interests will show up in part by your typing in here and also by you “liking” various pages. Keep in mind that this can be found, so “liking” a page with a profane name is going to be something that can be picked up by potential employers and clients.
Profile Page Part 1: Photos
These are pretty self-explanatory. Any photographs that you’re tagged in them will show up here. You can collect photos into albums, of course. Also, if a photograph is unflattering, compromising or just plain not of you, you can always untag yourself. Before my parents were not on Facebook, I was sometimes tagged on my mother’s photos so I would be able to find them. I don’t mind this. My profile has enough photographs of me that it’s obvious I’m not her. But you might. So, if this happens, talk to whoever’s doing this. There are other ways of sharing photographs and albums which might suit your needs better.
Are You Interested in Getting More Twitter Followers?
Getting More Twitter Followers.
twitter icon 9a (Photo credit: marek.sotak)
Oh, it’s the Holy Grail, isn’t it? Getting more people to follow you, and moving that magical Twitter followers number up, up and ever upwards, to stratospheric heights. And, even more importantly, increasing it to more than the number of people you’re following (more on that later).
Social Media Today weighed in on this, and I support their ideas but would love to expand up them in this post. Here’s what they had to say about Twitter followers and increasing their numbers.
Quality vs. Quantity
First off, they point out that it’s not quantity, it’s quality. Well, yeah. Kinda. However, various Twitter graders (such used to be found on HubSpot – now they provide a website grader) did give more credit for having more followers. Were these graders meaningful? Kinda, sorta.
HubSpot admitted that they did give some weight to the actual numbers. I am not averse to actual numbers being used as a part of the grading system. They are, after all, somewhat objective. But does any of it have a meaning? Probably, mainly, to fellow social media marketing-type folk. But if you were to tout your grade to anyone not into it, they’d probably look at you as if you had three heads (my apologies, HubSpot).
Who Do You Want to Follow You?
So onto the techniques. (1) Think about who you want your Twitter followers to be – like with any other idea, you need to have some sort of a plan. If you want to sell landscaping services, it would help to target homeowners and gardeners, yes? And in your area, right? You might get John from Cincinnati but unless you’re in the Cincinnati area, forget it. John may be wonderful, but his following you is of little help to you. Social Media Today‘s suggestion is to go after directories like We Follow. Agreed, and possibly also go after local groups of people. As in, put your Twitter handle on your business cards. You’re mainly going to be handing those to local folk, so there’s a match there.
(2) Complete your profile – this is a no-brainer and I have no idea why people don’t do this as it takes very little time. And, while you’re at it, add a photograph. Make it of your face, or of the company logo if the profile is shared.
Return the Favor
(3) Follow others – sure, but don’t do so indiscriminately. At some point, you will hit maybe 2,000 following. However, if your own Twitter followers are nowhere near as high, you’ll mainly look like a spammer (e. g. an account indiscriminately following whoever).
The easiest way to assure that a more balanced ratio is maintained is to get into the habit of doing it now, before you have to care about it. Therefore, don’t just follow back everyone who follows you, unless you’ve got a good reason to do so. A lot of accounts will follow and then unfollow in a day or so if you haven’t followed back. You most likely don’t want these followers anyway. So, unless they are appealing for some other reason, don’t bother with them. Might I also suggest pruning? If someone isn’t following you back and they aren’t that interesting, uh, why are you following them again?
Use Tweepsmap to find people who recently unfollowed you. It’s free!
You’re Not the Only One
(4) It’s not about you – agreed. I may tweet (on occasion) about shoveling snow, but the bottom line is, I know that’s not fascinating to most people. You have a new blog post? Tweet about it. The company landed a new contract? Tweet about it. The laws are changing in your area? Well, you get the idea.
(5) Hashtag, retweet, and reply – that is, pay attention to other people. How would they best be able to find your stuff? Would you want them to retweet your stuff? Then retweet theirs. Comment, reply, engage. Be involved with the Twitter community.
(6) Add people to lists – of course. But use those lists! I’ve been on Twitter longer than there have been lists, and I originally just followed everyone. When I started listing them, I began coming up with people who I didn’t know at all, at least not on the surface. Hence I created a list just called Who Are These People? and began investigating them further. I kept a lot of them, but a lot were sent to the great Twitter post in the sky. And that’s okay. Because it goes back to an original principle: follow who you want to follow, and don’t just auto-follow.
Get Personal With Your Twitter Followers
(7) Welcome your new Twitter followers – personally, I’m not a fan of this one, as I have seen all manner of automated “thanks for following me” messages. There’s nothing wrong with a “thanks for following me” tweet every now and then. Those can be nice. Just try not to be too mechanical about it.
Oh, and don’t make your first direct message all about sales. Seriously, just don’t. It’s a poor look no matter who you are.
(8) Integrate, integrate, integrate – that is, like with any other form of social media engagement, put it everywhere. How many times do people have to see something online before they take action? Seven? Nine? Then get your twitter handle out there. Use it in signature lines, on business cards and, heck, even write it on name tags.
Does it all work? Sure it does. And it’s a lot more in the spirit of Twitter than just getting some generic and spammy auto-following list to add your handle, briefly, to their list of who to follow. Don’t be that guy. Be someone who you would want to follow.
Twitter Followers: The Upshot
Getting followers is not the be-all and end-all, so don’t make it that way. Rather, interact and engage. Be encouraging and positive. Being funny helps as well.
Almost Everything But the Tweet – Conquering Twitter (visual elements)
Visual elements. There are two areas on Twitter where you can make a visual impact, and it has nothing to do with what you’re actually tweeting. No, scratch that, there are three. Kinda.
Avatar
ala10 Twibbon (Photo credit: ALA staff)
So the first, most obvious one, consists of the account’s avatar. Here’s where you should put the company logo. Don’t have a logo? Then it can be a picture of the person doing the tweeting, as this is supposed to be something of a conversation.
Other visual elements of choice for an avatar can be a picture of the company mascot, if there is one. Or a photo of one person (the main user) on the Twitter team, although if two or three people are doing the tweeting, what about a closeup of both or all three of them, photo booth style? This will depend upon your industry and your image therein. But at the very least, you must get away from a generic Twitter avatar.
Background Visual Elements
Where’s the second area where you can make a visual impact? It’s your background. Here’s where your company logo can go if it’s not already being used for the account’s avatar. And if you have a well-known logo, that will add to the visual impact, so long as you’re not using the logo for both the avatar and the background. Because that constitutes overkill unless both are subtle.
Depending upon monitor or device size and screen resolution, some parts of the background will be hidden or revealed. So make sure to place the logo on the left of the background, preferably near the top, and test the look on several different-sized monitors and devices, and utilizing different resolutions and operating systems. You will not be able to customize the look for each setup (like you can with Cascading Style Sheets), but at least you’ll get an idea of where you’re being cut off. Naturally, you want to optimize your visual elements for whatever setup your customers are most likely to be using — if your target audience has vision problems (e. g. perhaps they’re elderly), the most likely setup may very well involve a larger than standard screen resolution.
More About the Background
Below the upper left corner is some space directly to the left of where the tweeting actually occurs. To the left, vertically, you have a little room in which to place the company web address, a telephone number and possibly a short slogan. Twitter is meant to be short and sweet; don’t get caught up in adding a lot of verbiage here. Less can certainly be more in this case. Keep in mind, too, that no one can search on any verbiage you place here in the background image.
You can also add a picture just below your logo, or in place of it, in the upper left corner or along the left side. Try, perhaps, a picture of the Twitter team. Because you can great impact from offering pictorial evidence of who’s listening. Another option: place a picture of your main product here.
There is also some space to the right. However, this is the part that seems to grow or shrink depending upon monitor or device size and resolution. I recommend putting nothing much (if anything) here. This is because you don’t know how it will cut off. Although, if you have a color readily associated with your company (think of Starbucks green) or website, make sure that any unused portion of the background contains at least that color. Use that space as a part of a more unified design, not as a focal point.
Tweet Now, Or Later?
What’s part three? Visuals are also something, like every other part of Twitter, that you can schedule. This can come from a free or quasi-free website or software like Buffer or HootSuite.
But, what do I mean by timing? Picture this. You’re up early, and you’re kind of groggy. So all you really need is a cup of coffee. Then wouldn’t an image of a cup of coffee catch your eye? It just might.
And maybe this is small or even too subtle. But it’s another way to use visuals. Consider what your Twitter stream’s day looks like. And when are your followers up? If your followers are in the Philippines and not Boston, then you will need to think of everything as 12 hours opposite from the way you see it. So don’t put up your happy wake up cup of coffee image when your Filipino followers are heading to bed or going out to parties.
Visual Elements: The Upshot
What you tweet is, naturally, important, but consider the other areas where you can enhance your message. These basic visual elements can help you to place an exclamation point at the end of your tweets.
Almost Everything But the Tweet – Conquering Twitter (verbal elements)
Verbal elements? Twitter is, of course, utterly verbal. It’s just about all text. But not all of that text is tweets.
One piece is the profile. There isn’t a lot of space here. The good news is that these verbal elements are searchable. If you want to make it clear that your company is green, you can put that here. Separate short messages with delimiters like pipes (|) or asterisks (*). Don’t use semicolons as they can end up being converted to code. This is an easy section to change, so consider changing it as needed, perhaps as special events come up.
Another area is the site URL. In order to be better able to track traffic coming in from Twitter, how about using a unique URL here, say, http://www.yoursite.com/twitter? That page could contain a customized welcome message to Twitter users. This is another readily editable area of Twitter, so why not switch it up as circumstances change?
Your location is another verbal area. Of course it need not be a real place, but for a commercial Twitter account you can’t get too whimsical here. However, if you’ve got a multi-state presence (and want to get that across but not create separate Twitter accounts for each state), there’s nothing wrong with making your location something like United States or New England or Great Lakes Region.
Verbal Elements: Names
Another area is the name behind the account. This is a searchable field. A company can add a tiny bit of additional information here, such as the general company location. Hence the user name could be Your Company but the name behind it could be Your Company, Cleveland.
Yet another area is the name(s) of list(s) that your company uses to follow others. Does a company needTwitter lists? Not necessarily, but you can still use them to make certain accounts stand out. What about lists like customers or distributors? Perhaps not very imaginative, but these could prove useful in the future if Twitter ever makes it possible to send certain tweets only to certain lists.
Finally, although it is an issue to change it, the username is another nugget of non-tweet verbiage. Instead of changing it, what about creating a few accounts to cover different eventualities? Able2Know used to do this well (although some of these feeds are abandoned these days). Able2know had split off a few feeds as follows:
A user can follow any or all of these and see a different slice of that site. The individual user names for the accounts make it abundantly clear which cut of the site you’re following.
What do you want to get across? What image do you wish to project? Peripheral information can support or obfuscate your message. Choose what you really want your verbal elements to say.
Almost Everything But the Tweet – Conquering Twitter (offsite connections)
Offsite connections. Because Twitter is so bare bones, any number of applications have sprung up around it in order to help you manage it and become as great as you can be. Try Twellow (many thanks to Bobbie Carlton for this particular tip).
This is essentially the Yellow Pages of Twitter. Put your company name here. You’ll have a bit more space to describe your site versus what Twitter gives you, so use that space wisely. Since most of the people checking you out on Twellow are also going to search for you on Twitter (probably after seeing your Twellow profile), make sure that your information is supportive and bolstering, but not redundant vis a vis your Twitter profile.
CrowdLens and Other Software
Another idea is CrowdLens, my friend Nick Ashley’s app. CrowdLens is designed to help remove redundancy (all that retweeting!) from your Twitter stream. CrowdLens can sometimes be slow. Here are some more sites to check out:
HootSuite – a tweet scheduling service (and more) whereby you can track stats and import your lists.
Social Oomph (formerly Tweet Later) – time tweets and gather simple metrics on shortened urls. You can set up more than one account this way.
Tweet Stats – a graph of, among other things, daily aggregate tweets, your most popular hours to tweet and who you retweet.
Idek – a url-shortening service that tracks metrics.
Twitter Reach – exposure and reach information, such as impressions and mentionings of any topic, word, phrase, userid or hashtag.
Offsite Connections: The Upshot
As Twitter continues to mature as a business tool, I predict that more and more of these off-site services will spring up. The most successful one will, in my opinion, combine the best features of all, coupled with ease of use and an ability to show trends over time.
And finally, Twitter changes things almost as much and as fast as Facebook does. So keep in mind, these instructions may need some tweaking.
… And Facebook for All – Your Account Settings Explained
… And Facebook for All – Your Account Settings – in Facebook, how to do you change your account settings? When you pull down on the Account section of Facebook, you see a few choices but they change. Keep in mind that Facebook is continuously testing its format. What worked a year ago might not work now, but these are pretty close to being right although some of the parts have moved around on the page or might now have new names.
First of all, you get a list of your friends. And if you have separate friend lists (say, for work or school), those lists are on the left. Facebook does move these sorts of settings around. By the time you read this blog post, this feature could potentially have been moved. Truth is, it may be gone by now.
You can add friends to various lists, remove them, or delete them from your list altogether. There are also suggested names to be added to various lists (assuming you’ve chosen a list, versus all of your friends). The default here is not only to show the entire list of friends, but to put the ones you’ve interacted with most recently up at the top.
Account Settings: Manage Pages
If you manage pages – and you may very well have that as a task if you are using Facebook for your business – here is a link straight to each page and how to change it. Simply click “Go to Page” and you are transported to the correct page in question. I’ll get into the specifics of what you can do from there later in this series.
Account Settings
This is a part of Facebook that always seems to be changing. It is entirely possible that, by the time you read this blog post, these instructions will be obsolete. I’ll keep everything at a high level and won’t get into too many specifics. So it is divided as follows:
Settings
Networks
Notifications
Mobile
Language
Payments
Account Settings: Basics
This section is currently divided as follows:
Name – your real name
Username
Email – self-explanatory
Password – self-explanatory
Linked Accounts – you can put more than one account together
Security Question – self-explanatory
Privacy – control the information you put out there. But do keep in mind: if something is truly personal, the Internet is an awfully foolish place to put it in.
Account Security – you can add some form of extra protection
Download Your Information – save your photos, etc. to a ZIP file
Deactivate Account – self-explanatory
Networks
You can join networks, such as identifying yourself with an employer or a school you’ve attended.
Notifications
Control settings for notifications such as when someone tags you in a photo. I think that the default settings are pretty excessive. I like to know if someone wants to add me as a friend, and when I’ve been tagged in a photograph. Other than that, I’ll just check when I’m online. Obviously, my preferences need not be identical to yours.
Mobile
Activate a phone and register for Facebook text messages here.
Language
Set a primary language or translate Facebook into other languages from here. There’s currently a rather extensive list, including some languages not written with a Western alphabet.
Payments
So track your credits balance, credits purchase history, payment methods and preferred currency here.
This area is undoubtedly going to continue to evolve as questions come up and the increasingly complicated Facebook system breaks in all sorts of interesting and as-yet unexpected ways. So you can even ask a question, and the most common questions are listed. Unsurprisingly, these include topics such as how to delete your account or change your name.
But keep in mind: Facebook won’t answer 99%+ of any questions you have for them. Why? Because they are running an enormous site with a surprisingly tiny number of employees. Hence many of the judgement calls come from bots.
Log Out
Pretty self-explanatory. Click here and you’ll log out of Facebook.
Almost Everything But the Tweet – Conquering Twitter (metrics and timing)
Metrics and timing. When you tweet may not seem to matter too much. In particular, if you don’t tweet too terribly often, your tweets will still be out there, so why bother to even care about timing?
Not so fast.
Patterns
According to The Science of Retweets, Twitter users tend to follow some recognizable patterns. First thing Monday morning is prime time for retweeting; so is five o’clock on a Friday afternoon. And that makes sense, as tweeters are either settling into the work week or are just about to start the weekend. Weekend tweeting is another animal as well. Noon is another good time for retweeting — people are at lunch or are about to go.
Plus there’s also the matter of accounts (often for job sites) that pump out a good dozen tweets, one right after another. These have little individual impact and seem only to be useful for later searching.
Timed tweeting seems almost counterintuitive. But for a business to use Twitter effectively, the tweets should be planned anyway. Why not plan not only their content but also their timing?
Scheduling Software
Here’s where services like Tweet Deck, Social Oomph (formerly Tweet Later) and HootSuite can provide some assistance. By scheduling the most important tweets for the very start and end (and middle) of each business day, you can add to their impact. Separating out your tweets can also get them all out there while simultaneously preventing a flood of tweets which many users are generally just going to ignore.
Another positive upshot to spacing out your tweets is giving you content that can be used later. For Social Media platforms, it’s easy to initially attack them with an enormous amount of enthusiasm and then taper off or even fizzle out entirely. If you regularly spit out twenty tweets per day, you’ll be tweeting 100 times during any given work week. Even your most dedicated followers are probably not going to read every single one. Plus, you’re setting yourself up for burnout.
Time Zone Scheduling
Instead, how about scheduling only two tweets per day (say, at 9:00 and 5:00 PM in the time zone where you have the greatest market share)? That way, you’ll have more people reading and no one will feel overwhelmed. Plus your 100 tweets will work for a little over a month or even two, if you are judicious and don’t tweet on the weekends.
So long as your tweets aren’t intimately tied to a specific time (e. g. announcements of an upcoming event), it shouldn’t matter. And, if they are, you might want to consider splitting them over several Twitter accounts. Perhaps open up one for just events in Seattle, for example.
Now, what about metrics?
URLs
Unfortunately, Twitter itself doesn’t do much, so you’ll have to cobble things together yourself and use off-Twitter resources. One idea is to use a URL-shortening service that tracks basic metrics, such as Social Oomph or Idek. You may not get much more data from them than click count, but it’s still something. Hoot Suite provides .owly link metrics, with two free reports.
Another idea is to use a unique URL for the site URL in your profile, say, http://yoursite.com/twitter. If you’ve got Google Analytics set up, you can track when that page is used for landings to your site, and its bounce rate. For commercial ventures, you might even make up a coupon code and tweet about it, or use your Twitter landing page as a means of communicating certain special offers available only to Twitter users.
Follower/Following Ratio
Your number of followers, and the ratio of followers to who youfollow, is all well and good, but it’s hard to say what you’re measuring. On Twitter, as on much of the web, popularity tends to breed even more popularity. And, it doesn’t really mean much if you have a number of purely spammy sites following you. They aren’t reading your tweets, anyway, so what’s the point?
This dilutes any idea of what these numbers might provide regarding influence, but if for some reason you really want to be followed by a bunch of spammers, just place the term weight loss into your profile and never block the spammers. In fact, follow them back, and you can get even more of them.
It hardly seems a worthwhile trophy to be followed by the biggest-ever village of spammers, eh?
Some Metrics
Some sites, such as Audiense, show number of followers and their influence and activity. You can see which inactive people you follow (so you can drop them), which famous people follow you, etc. Some of these are admittedly vanity metrics, but they are helpful.
Tweet Stats demonstrates, among other things, a graph of daily aggregate tweets. And it also contains your most popular hours to tweet and who you retweet. Twitter Reach reveals exposure and reach. E. g. this means impressions and mentions of any topic, be it a word, a phrase, a userid or a hashtag.
In conclusion, keep up with Twitter, but don’t overwhelm your followers with floods of content, and measure your influence as well as you can, both using your own and external tools. If you can adjust your tweets to better serve your followers, your true influence will surely rise.
Last Little Bits. Now, there’s more to LinkedIn than what I’ve already covered. And, truth be told, the number and diversity of add-ons and features is only going to keep growing. As with any other truly viable online business, LinkedIn keeps adding new bells and whistles, and constantly A/B testing. It is already a far different site from the one I joined a few years ago. And, by the way, I have never gone Premium. I think it’s a waste of money, particularly for job seekers who are often watching every dime.
LinkedIn pen (Photo credit: TheSeafarer)
However, there is an appreciable difference between making and keeping your page lively and interesting, versus making it too busy. I don’t think that you need everything. Really. I think a bit of restraint is in order.
Instead, the site offers groups. Create a group, and invite likely people to join it. Your High School’s graduating class, or your sorority chapter might be good choices, as your High School is probably already represented and your sorority might be as well. But these groups provide more specificity. Of course, not everyone you invite will join one of these groups, but it’s worth a shot. Still, LinkedIn is no longer trying to be like a CRM system. That’s, I feel, for the better, as it gives the site more focus as a networking platform.
Events
Another tool that is gone is events. A pity, in some ways. But again, the site is looking to focus itself better. That includes eliminating some of the fat.
Following a Company
LinkedIn provides the ability to follow a company. If you are in charge of your company’s LinkedIn profile, you can help to stimulate this information stream by listing comings and goings, promotions and transfers. Got an event going on, with an interesting or attractive look to it? Take a picture and post it!
Profile Page Shortcut
The shortcut to your profile page is an easy way to make yourself stand out a bit more. Just select a reasonable shortcut for yourself. Mine is my last name, because it’s unique.
Interests
The Interests section (found under your Profile) is useful for adding not only keywords but also some personality to your profile. Do you play the violin? Do you like to cook? Safe, positive information is good here, so long as it’s not extensive (you don’t want this section to overwhelm everything else). It’s probably not the best place to mention, for example, your extensive action figures collection.
Personal Information
The Personal Information section is what you make of it. I keep in my birth date (because it generates a status update on the day in question) but not the year. And I list my town but not my full home address. Although that is easy enough to find elsewhere online. Furthermore, I list myself as married, but you certainly don’t have to. I keep my phone number off as I don’t want to perhaps have LinkedIn become a vehicle for calls I don’t wish to receive – if someone wants my phone number that badly, they can connect to me and ask.
You Profile Photograph
The last, and perhaps most important bit is your profile picture. To add, or not to add? I say, add it. It’s not like you’re going to hide your race, your age or your gender if you meet someone. So you may as well come forward so that, if you meet in person, they can recognize you. Use a recent, clear headshot, and for God’s sake, smile! Mine is of me wearing a dress with a blazer. Look professional and try to keep it current. That reminds me; I should update mine.
Conclusion
There will undoubtedly be more changes and last little bits as LinkedIn dreams up new ways to connect business persons. Perhaps video demos, or real-time conferencing, are in its future. Stay tuned – I may blog more about LinkedIn and its last little bits as it continues to reinvent and improve itself.
