Tag: social networking

Facebook Internet Marketing VooDoo Podcast

I had the pleasure last week of being interviewed by Paul Lewis of Mindcomet for his Internet Marketing VooDoo podcast. Generally we try to not have “VooDoo” and “Mayo Clinic” mentioned in the same breath, but I met Doug White and Tara Lamberson from MindComet at the Frost & Sullivan conference in Phoenix last month, and they invited me to be one of Paul’s guests.

The interview was posted today, and you can hear it here.

If you’re an Internet Marketing VooDoo listener who is visiting Social Media University, Global (SMUG) for the first time, I hope you’ll read about our school, perhaps starting with our Message from the Chancellor. You can audit a few classes before you enroll, so check out the curriculum. And the best thing is the tuition is free.

In my interview with Paul, I mentioned that Facebook groups can be a great way to create private spaces for interaction with key external stakeholders without giving them access behind your firewall into your corporate network. An example would be managing PR agencies in multiple countries.

Paul asked whether that might compromise the privacy of your PR information, putting it on Facebook before you release it, and so in response I said I was going to set up “The Hacker Challenge” to prove that data in secret groups are secure enough for most basic business uses.

You probably wouldn’t want to use a Facebook group to store launch codes for nuclear missiles, but I think they offer a good degree of security for most other applications.

I’ll be launching the hacker challenge later today, as part of the SMUG curriculum, so you can see for yourself.

Update: Here’s the transcript from the interview with Paul.

10 Tips for Promoting Your Business Through Social Networks

Monte Enbysk, a senior editor at Microsoft Office Live, called a couple of weeks ago asking to interview me for an Office Hours column on using social networking sites to promote your business. I had a delightful conversation with Monte, and he just notified me that his article is now available online, here. Here’s an excerpt:

Are social networking sites such as Facebook and LinkedIn the business tools of the future? Or are they a passing fad that will meet the same fate as disco music?

Time will tell. But if you run a small business circa 2008, ignore them at your own peril. Many of your competitors have already jumped on the bandwagon, and are successfully networking their way to a stronger Web presence, enhanced credibility, and more customers.

Yes, many of these sites are used for socializing by your teenaged sons and daughters. But businesses can benefit too, says Lee Aase, a veteran media relations manager. His employer, the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN, has put him in charge of articulating the clinic’s message through social networking sites such as Facebook.

“The way that most businesses grow is by word of mouth, by recommendations, and by peers and communities,” says Aase, who writes articles and blog posts about marketing through Facebook. “The whole concept of social media is a lot like birds of a feather flocking together” — in other words, people with a common interest or objective interacting online, he says.

I recommend that you check out the rest of the rest of the article, in which you’ll get 10 helpful tips. Monte wrote this from the perspective of a small business owner, but I believe the tips are just as applicable for larger organizations. And even if you work for a larger company, you have a personal brand to enhance, too. You should learn how you can do that effectively through social networking sites.

Others Monte interviewed included Jinger Jarrett and Leslie O’Flahavan.

For further reading, I recommend Social Media 104: Intro to Social Networking, which is part of the core curriculum for Social Media University, Global (SMUG).

Social Media 104: Intro to Social Networking

Note:  Social Media 104 is part of the Core Curriculum for Social Media University, Global (SMUG).

Visiting Professor and honorary SMUG doctoral candidate Lee LeFever, whose material also has been indispensable in Social Media 102: Intro to RSS and Social Media 103: Intro to Wikis, again has a “Plain English” video to introduce new users to the benefits of social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn. Watch it:

[youtube=http://youtube.com/watch?v=6a_KF7TYKVc]

If you want to use social networking sites for business purposes, here are a few introductory tips about each of the top three sites:

  • “MySpace is for middle schoolers.” That’s the assessment of my youngest daughter, the wise-beyond-her-years high school junior. It’s an overstatement, but it does match the demographic reality that the MySpace demographic skews young. Which is why it’s a bit disturbing to me that on MySpace I get far more porn spam “friend” requests than anything else. MySpace claims a much larger user base than Facebook, but somehow I doubt that Alla, Alyson, Anna, Clarice, Esperanza, Estella, Evelyn, Gertrude, Ivy, Jaymie, Judy, Judith, Jennifer, Karan, Keeley, Mertie, Michaela, Maritza, Norine, Nisha, Patricia, Ramona, Traci, Thelma, Vanessa, Valeria and Zada are real people. But if you are an aspiring musician or otherwise want to reach a young fan base, you may want to have MySpace in your mix. For example, my friend Scott Meis with the Donate Life Illinois initiative to increase organ donation has found MySpace a great way to reach young people with his message.
  • LinkedIn is the most popular strictly professional networking site. I call it “Social Networking without the social.” I know others swear by it, and I’m happy to be a member, but I don’t see it involving its users as much as either Facebook or MySpace do. If you work for a professional services firm and are looking to do hardcore networking, LinkedIn could be great. It gives you ability to provide and ask for references and recommendations.
  • Facebook, with its Ivy League college roots, strikes a nice balance between the two. It’s far less susceptible to spam than MySpace is. I’ve devoted a whole section of this blog to Facebook business uses, so for Social Media 104 students who want to read ahead for extra credit, go to the Facebook Business page.

Homework Assignments:

  1. Visit my MySpace page. If you want to send me a friend invite, that would be great to actually have some non-spam requests. I don’t spend much time in MySpace, though, so if we want to have a SMUG class about MySpace, we probably should have a guest instructor. Any volunteers? If you think I haven’t been fair to the biggest social networking site, I’d be glad to accept a guest post about the advantages of MySpace. If you want to create a MySpace page to get more hands-on experience, that gets you extra credit, too, but it’s optional.
  2. Create a LinkedIn profile. Find at least five current or former work colleagues and add them to your network.
  3. Join Facebook. This is a remedial assignment, as it was part of Social Media 101, but if you haven’t completed this step yet, now is a great time to do it. Then you can enroll in SMUG and Friend me.

Class Discussion

Answer the following in the comments below: 

  1. Which social networking sites have you joined?
  2. Do you find one of them more useful than the others for your business purposes?
  3. If so, which one, and why?
  4. Do you belong to a social networking site not mentioned above? Which one(s)? Why do you find it helpful?

Connecting With Your Audience Using Social Networking

J.C. Bouvier of the International Fund for Animal Welfare and Kevin Reid of Issue Dynamics presented this case study. In his previous career, J.C. started Avid’s podcast series.

He took the job with IFAW, a more pragmatic organization than PETA, to  promote the Stop the Seal Hunt campaign, aimed at getting the Canadian government to take action.

Goals:

  • Recruit thousands of new users into IFAW’s existing
  • Generate 10,000s of new messages to the government of Canada
  • Increase fundraising
  • Provide a range of engaging, meaningful activities for new and old users

Campaign Components

Goal was to get 300,000 actions taken.

Evoca is a way to upload and share audio…like YouTube for audio.

Results:

  • Community Members: 98,000+
  • Subscriber List: 5 percent increase
  • Actions taken: 346 percent increase
  • Donations: 56 percent up over previous year
  • MySpace: Doubled number of Friends
  • YouTube: Over 60,000 views

IFAW also has the Stop Whaling campaign, with similar elements.

Why SMUG?

social media university global

So how do you choose what to name a new institution of higher learning?

  • Stanford University was named after a former California governor’s son, who had died of typhoid fever at age 15.
  • Yale University, which was founded to train ministers and was called Collegiate School, was eventually named after benefactor Elihu Yale.
  • Harvard University likewise was named after an early benefactor.

When choosing a name for a new on-line University providing social media education, I didn’t have any benefactors to consider. (Not that I’d be above selling the naming rights!) Social Media University, Global was the first name that popped into my head. But I did a little brainstorming and identified some other options, including:

  1. Social Media University – Technical (SMUT)
  2. Social Network Institute of Practical Education (SNIPE)
  3. Public Relations Institute for Social Media (PRISM)

The first one’s an obvious non-starter, and though the second reflects the hands-on nature of the proposed curriculum, somehow the acronym doesn’t quite fit. And while social media definitely have public relations applications, the third name’s focus on PR is too narrow.

friendmap.jpg

SMUG seems to fit because the curriculum will be covering social media in all its varieties, from blogs to social networking sites to microblogging to YouTube and everything in between. And seeing as I’ve made friends in Facebook from across the U.S. and as far away as Singapore, Egypt, Australia, Norway, Panama and Thailand (and that it is a world-wide web), the “Global” part isn’t an overstatement, either.

I’m open to other suggestions: it’s not like I’ve printed a bunch of letterhead or put a lot of work into the school logo. And considering that SMUG was established about 15 hours ago, we don’t have an entrenched history to overcome. Renaming wouldn’t be a problem.

But meanwhile, if anyone has an artistic bent and would like to design an official SMUG seal, I’d love to see what you can do. I’m thinking something like an old English crest or a round seal would be neat, with the following text elements and suitable graphics:

Social Media University — Global   *   SMUG   *   Established 2008

Whoever designs the winning logo gets a 50 percent tuition discount.  Then again, 50 percent of free is…