How do you define social media? My definition? An Operating System for humans.

The parallels between a computer operating system’s DNA and how Facebook, Twitter, and other platforms interlink is closer than you’d think. As in The Matrix, because you’re inside, it hard to see how it operates.

Why Social Media is an Operating System For Humans?

One way to start is to define what is social media…

Let’s define computer Operating systems and then see if it matches how we understand social media.

An Operating System is defined as:

• Software that supports a computer’s basic functions, such as scheduling tasks, executing applications, and controlling peripherals. [Google]
• …without an operating system, a user cannot run an application program on their computer, unless the application program is self booting. [Wikipedia]
• …are multiuser, multiprocessing, multitasking, multithreading, and real-time operating systems. [WiseGeek]

Social Media is defined as:

• …a set of technologies and channels targeted at forming and enabling a potentially massive community of participants to productively collaborate. [Gartner]
• Digital content and interaction that is created by and between people. Sam Decker – Mass Relevance
• Extends engagement by creating real-time online events, extending online interactions offline, or augmenting live events online. Heidi Cohen – Riverside Marketing Strategies
• Online communications in which we shift instantly and easily between the role of audience and creator – without needing to know how to code. We do this by using social software that incorporates functions like publishing, sharing, friending, commenting, linking and tagging. Joe Thornily

Social Media – The Human Operating System

Can you see the threads they have in common?

…multiuser, multiprocessing, multitasking, multithreading, and real-time operating systems

Social media networks allow us to:

• Where we share information across different platforms in real time
• Respond, engage, like/dislike, connect/disconnect to form stronger bonds with other members of the network
• Use different personas to engage on different levels

And, most importantly, would feel lost if exiled from the system.

Conclusion

Social media is no longer a fad but a necessity. It’s hard for me to live without it. There’s an emotional itch that needs to be scratched.

Do we struggle emotionally when our social media operating systems were taken away from us?

Is our personal identify increasingly based on how others respect our social media ‘persona’?

One final question.

Which do you put more energy into? How others perceive you online or off-line. Before you hit Reply, think about it for a moment…

Before we go. It’s your turn.

Social media is ________________

Michael Dell, CEO of Dell, is thinking about using Google Plus to replace traditional customer support channels. Is this a wise decision?

‘I am thinking about hangouts for business. Would you like to be able to connect with your Dell service and sale teams via video directly from Dell.com?’

He suggested that Dell should consider using Google Plus ‘hangouts’ (think of hangouts as video chat rooms and you get the idea) to resolve customer support issues.

The response was very, very positive.

Is Michael Dell’s Google Plus Idea an Admission of Failure?

But it’s all a bit bonkers if you think about it.

• Why is Dell considering moving customer support on Google Plus?
• What does this say about its traditional customer support channels?
• Is this an admission of failure?
• Shouldn’t he be doing something else? or
• Was he just thinking out loud?

Should Google Plus Replace Customer Support?

Let’s leave Mike alone for a moment. Maybe it’s just an idea he floated that gathered legs. But would it work?

• Would Dell service teams want to be on video while angry customers screamed at them?
• How would you restrict access to the hangout to one or two people only?
• How would you remove people from a hangout if they got abusive?
• How would you log into the same hangout if you got logged off?

And why not use Skype instead?

It also raises a more serious issue.

Social Media Will Not Fix Your Business

Social Media is many things. What it’s not is a replacement for your existing business processes. In other words…

• If customers are complaining about product defects, your software team should be fixing it.
• If customers are whinging about negative in-store experiences, your customer support team should be responding.
• If competitors are lying about your products, your legal dept should be on it.

Not your social media team.

Social Media As an Admission of Failure

Danny Sullivan takes up this point.

“I don’t want to use Hangouts to connect with Dell customer service. What I want, from you or any company, is to ensure I actually get the best customer service experience possible when I actually use your “normal” customer service channels.

Eventually, I’ll finish my long-planned blog post on how every customer service “success” on Twitter, Facebook or Google+ is really a customer service failure. In short, consider this.

If I walked into a store and started yelling about how bad the store was, to get my problem resolved, who would consider that a successful customer service model? But that’s basically what we are encouraged to do through social media, yell there as an attempt to get problems solved as a last resort.

…But these shouldn’t be end runs your customers need to use because your regular customer service channels are so convoluted and so often backed by people who aren’t enabled to just solve problems”

My concern about Dell’s suggestion is three-fold:

• That Social Media will be used to fix, resolve, or replace systems, e.g. customer support process that have been refined over decades by an immature, untested platform.
• That others will follow the same path. The response on Google Plus was very positive. But that doesn’t mean it’s right.
• That it will fail.

And that’s the worrying part. Unless they’re all sycophants, I find it hard to understand who so few see the flaws in this thinking. Maybe they want to be like by Mike, be seen as visionaries, or don’t want to be ‘that guy’.

You know, the one that finds holes in things.

Social Media As Pseudo-Customer Service

I raised this point on Jeremiah Owyang’s, 10 Reasons Customer Care Has Changed and How To Build a Strategy.

I mentioned that a while back the CEO of Starbucks UK responded to some upset tweep, not once but several times. Even at the weekends….

Was this great customer service and responsive?

No.

The CEO of a large firm should NOT be manning the station responding to every whim, moan, and grip on the web. They’ve a business to run.

Jeremiah responded that, ‘It depends on the culture and brand promise. Michael Dell, Tony Hsieh, the CMO of Best Buy all respond directly to customers, and as a result, the rest of their employees know the value of customer service. It depends on the culture.’

I’m not sure what brand promise really means.

• Why is the CEO responding directly to customers? I’d prefer them to run the company and let sales respond to customers.
• Or build products that worked?
• Or hired native English speakers for their US customer support team?

Conclusion

Would it not make more sense to fix broken customer support depts instead of monitoring tweets and getting groovy with cool new tools like Google Plus?

Maybe the real problem is that it’s not very glamorous. Let’s fix customer support? Hmmm…

As regards the ‘rest of their employees know the value of customer service.’

I’m sure they do but sending them over to Google Plus will only make frustrated customers even more furious.

Maybe I’m wrong.

What do you think?

Klout is to Influence what Google is to search. You can use Klout.com to determine how much influence you have online, how to change your level of influence, and identify other influencers to network with. Like Google, Klout uses a complex algorithm (factors, weights, and criteria) to calculate your Klout. Once you understand this, you can refine your online behavior to adjust your Klout and network more effectively online.

How Klout Calculates Your Influence

While the exact algorithm is kept secret, Klout.com outlines some of the criteria it uses to calculate your score. Your Klout Score is the measurement of your ‘overall online influence’.

It ranges from 1 to 100. The higher the score, the greater the sphere of influence.

What Social Media networks are used to calculate your Klout?

Klout uses over 35 variables on Facebook and Twitter to measure this including:

1. True Reach
2. Amplification Probability
3. Network Score

It also factors in your Social Media activities on LinkedIn and others networks. See this screenshot to see some of the Social Media networks it uses to calculate my Klout.

Note: you can follow me on Twitter here.

Klout: True Reach

This is the size of your engaged audience. It is based on your followers who actively listen and react to your messages.

Klout: Amplification Score

This is the likelihood that your messages will generate actions, such as retweets, @messages, likes and comments. Scale from 1 to 100.

Klout: Network Score

This indicates how influential your engage audience is. Scale from 1 to 100.

Therefore, the Klout score is a combination of:

• Clicks
• Comments
• Retweets

How is Klout Calculated?

According to the site, Klout is the ‘influence is the ability to drive people to action — “action” might be defined as a reply, a retweet, a comment, or a click.’

To calculate your Klout, it does the following:

• Defines 25+ variables to generate scores for each category.
• Runs these through its analytics engine.
• Applies a specific weight to each data point.
• Runs the factors through its machine-learning analysis.
• Calculates the Klout Score.

The Klout Score shows how successful you are at engaging your audience and the impact your messages have on others.

Klout: True Reach

This is the size of your ‘engaged audience’. It removes inactive and spam accounts, and only include accounts that you influence. To do this, it calculates the overall influence for each relationship.

Tip: our Facebook page is here.

Klout: 3 Different Types of Reach

True Reach is broken into the following subcategories:

Reach

Are your tweets interesting enough to be shared?

How many have shared your content across Twitter (and other Social Media channels)?

Are you on lists? Are those lists followed?

Demand

How many people do you have to follow to get followers in return?

How often are your follows reciprocated? i.e. they follow back.

Klout Metrics

Next are the metrics they use. These include:

• @ Mention Count
• Followed Back %
• Follower/Follow Ratio
• Followers
• Friends
• List Count
• List Followers Count
• Mutual Follows
• Total Retweets
• Unique Commenters
• Unique Likers

Amplification Probability

This is the likelihood that your content will be acted upon, eg shared, retweeted, or commented upon.

‘The ability to create content… that spreads into networks beyond your own is a key component of influence.’

Amplification Ability

This is determined by:

• Engagement – How diverse is your group of followers? Are you participating in conversations?
• Velocity – How often are you retweeted? Do different people retweet you or is it the same followers?
• Activity – Are you tweeting too little or too much? Are your tweets generating new followers, retweets and @ replies?

Factors measured:

Comments Per Post Follower Retweet %

• Follower Mention %
• Inbound Messages Per Outbound Message
• Likes Per Post
• Unique @ Senders
• Unique Messages Retweeted
• Unique Retweeters
• Update Count

Klout Network Influence

This is the influence level of your engaged audience.

Engagement is measured based on actions such as:

• @messages
• Comments
• Follows
• Likes
• Lists
• Retweets

Network Score

This looks at the Klout score of each person who interacts with you. It determines the influence of people who:

• @ message you
• Follow your lists
• Follow you
• List you
• Retweet you
• Other factors measured include:
• Followed Back %
• Follower/Follow Ratio
• Influence of Followers
• Influence of Friends
• Influence of Likers and Commenters
• Influence of Retweeters and Mentioners
• List inclusions
• Unique Commenters
• Unique Likers
• Unique Retweeters
• Unique Senders

Will Klout Increase Your Influence Online?

This brings us back to the original topic, using Klout to position your blog as an authority online. How do you do it?

Jason Keath suggests that you listen for pain points and solve them.

Jason Cupp recommends that you add value to a trending topic.

Trey Pennington, in his excellent article Klout is Necessary explains that ‘Klout gives companies something they are immensely comfortable with, readily understand, and can quickly use for decision-making—a two digit number.’

How I Accidentally Raised My Klout from John Hewitt reflects the strategy I’ve adopted. The four steps are:

1. Unfollow everybody you don’t feel a connection with.
2. Write more tweets.
3. Respond to other tweets.
4. Follow people again BUT be very choosy about who you follow.

In other words, put some structure on the way you use Social Media. I’ve written an article about how I created an action plan for marketing on twitter and many of the principles I’ve used there I also use for increasing my Klout.

That’s it! If you want to raise my Klout  please leave a comment below or share this post with your friends. Thanks!

Last week we share some free ebooks on Social Media. Here are some more I found. Most are PDFs and can be read offline.

14 Free eBooks about Social Media

1. Amber Naslund – Getting a Foothold in Social Media
2. Brian Solis – The Essential Guide to Social Media
3. Chris Brogan - Social Media and Network Starting Points
4. MarketingApple.com – Marketing Apple
5. Peter Pixel – Good Usability
6. Amber Naslund. – The Social Media Starter Kit
7. Philip Sheldrake – The Social Web Analytics ebook
8. Positioning Strategy – The New Rules of Business Blogs
9. Amber Naslund – Social Media Time Management
10. PRSA – Blogs & Social Media
11. SEOBook – Google Adwords Secrets
12. Brian Solis -The Art of Listening and Engagement Through Social Media
13. Skellie – The Simple Web: A Philosophy for Getting What You Want
14. US Air Force Public Affairs Agency – New Media and the Air Force

Other Free eBooks?

If you know of other free books, please add them below.

If you’re looking for some primers on Social Media, in particular how to make money from Facebook and Twitter, then these 25 free ebooks including Brian Solis, Chris Brogan, Chris Penn, and John Jantsch will get you started.

What I like about these books is the high quality and effort from the authors. In some ways, these ebooks express what’s best about Social Media and sharing information.

25 Free eBooks about Social Media

1. Amber Naslund - Building a Social Media Team

2. Antony Mayfield - What is Social Media?

3. Blizzard Internet – SEO for WordPress blogs

4. Brian Solis – The Art and Science of Social Media and Community Relations

5. Chris Brogan - Mapping Social Media to the Buying Cycle

6. Christopher S. Penn – Podcast Marketing eBook

7. Cory Doctorow - Content

8. Craig Rentmeester – We Have a Website. Now What?

9. CRM Transformation – Increasing Your Email Marketing Program

10. David Meerman Scott – The New Rules of Viral Marketing

11. Duct Tape Marketing – Guide to Using Twitter for Business

12. Dynamic Copywriting – Marketing With Case Studies

13. Edison Media Research – Podcast Customer Revealed

14. Effective Internet Presence – Effective Internet Presence

15. Geekpreneur – Promoting Yourself With Twitter

16. Geisheker Group – How to Write a Marketing Plan

17. Hunter Nutall – Zen of Blogging

18. iCrossing – What is Social Media

19. Jeff Hayzlett – Social Media Tips: Sharing lessons learned to help your business grow

20. John Jantsch- Let’s Talk: Social Media for Small Business,

21. Jono Bacon - The Art of Community

22. SmashLab – Primer in Social Media

23. Social Web Analytics – Social Web Analytics

24. Stacie Mahoe Get Viral Get Visitors

25. Startup Internet Marketing – Masters of Marketing

Other Free eBooks?

If you know of other free books, please add them below.

Facebook’s new security features help control your privacy, especially if you log in on cybercafés, hotels or at airports. You can now force Facebook to logoff from a remote location and create one time passwords. These are easier to use than you’d think and, for me, give greater confidence when using Facebook on business trips. Here’s how it works.

How to Sign Out of Facebook Remotely

Facebook has added more security features to its social network. I’ll avoid the technical details and explain three ways to protect your privacy and stay more secure on Facebook.

1. One Time Passwords

Facebook has released one-time passwords to make it safer to use public computers in places like hotels, cafes or airports. If you have any concerns about security when accessing Facebook, they can text you a one-time password to use instead of your regular password.

To do this:

• Text “otp” to 32665 on your mobile phone
• Facebook will send you a password that can be used only once.
• It expires in 20 minutes.
• To access this feature, you’ll need a mobile phone number in your account.

2. Sign Out From Facebook Remotely

You now also sign out of Facebook from a remote location.  These session controls are ideal if you log into Facebook from a friend’s phone or computer and then forget to sign out.

To do this:

• Go to your Account Settings, you can check if you’re still logged in on other devices and remotely log out.
• Under the Account Security section of your Account Settings page you’ll see all of your active sessions, along with information about each session.
• If someone accesses your account without your permission, you can also shut down the unauthorized login before resetting your password and taking other steps to secure your account and computer.

3. Keep Secrets Secret!

When you log in to Facebook, it will regularly prompt you to keep their security information updated.

If you ever lose access to your account, having this information helps us verify who you are and get you back into your account quickly.

Tip: You don’t have to wait for us to prompt you; you can update your Facebook security setting here.

Want to Know Even More?

You can get more security tips and updates on the Facebook Security Page at www.facebook.com/security.

I’ve never had any issues (touch wood!) with Facebook and it’s security.

What’s the best trick you know to protect yourself online?

Guest article by Shannon Suetos from Resource Nation

When implementing any type of marketing campaign it is wise to first take a step back and decide how to develop your campaign. Many companies are have made the executive decision to go forward with social media—they just aren’t so sure what to do.

Decide where your target audience is engaging

Tackling a social media campaign is much like, if not exactly like a traditional marketing campaigning. The first order of action is to decide where your target audience is. You could have the latest and greatest product or services in the world, but if your core audience isn’t hearing the message there is no benefit to your company.

According to a study conducted by Chitika (a full service online advertising network) broke down the users of Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and Digg.com. This study concluded that:

1. 47% of Twitter users are there for news
2. 52% of Myspace users are there for video games or celebrity/entertainment
3. Digg was spread out between news, tech, and video games

Once you have decided on where your target audience is, you can then go to develop strategies for each site that best fits your company.

Social Tone

The tone of your campaign should be less formal, and more conversational. This is not to say you should throw out all social etiquette—but rather a “business casual” approach. People like talking, especially about themselves, but make sure in your campaign you provide information not only about your services, but current events or even industry news.

Staying away from topics such as religion and politics is a good idea as well—especially if you have many clients from diverse backgrounds. Staying neutral will keep your clients happy and keep you out of hot water.

Define Goals and Measuring Results

Going back to traditional marketing tactics, you need to have a clear objective and measurable goals in your social marketing campaign. Knowing how effective your tactics are can also help you determine your social media ROI and help you decide what tactics work and which don’t for your company.

TwitterFriends determines what they call a conversion quotient, which measures how effective your tweets are on Twitter by looking at how many @ replies you receive as well as re-tweets. The goal of Twitter for business owners should be to get as many @ replies (gains you exposure) and re-tweets (helps get your link/links exposed). Once you know how effective your efforts are you will be able to decide on the best social media outlets for your business.

Another great tool to use has been developed by Email Data Source. This tool will allow marketers to measure Twitter’s impact on the traditional brand marketing perspectives of reach, frequency and effectiveness. This tool seems similar to TwitterFriends in the sense it will help you understand what type of people are re-tweeting you, but explains it in a more traditional marketing way. This is a great tool for marketers who aren’t familiar with Twitter yet.

Getting Creative

This is always the fun part of any marketing campaign. There are many types of tactics out there that are useful for brand awareness and fun for the customer as well. Many companies are using quizzes to do this.

Jennifer Stolte, marketing director for Celestial Seasonings (who implemented a Facebook quiz earlier this year) says, “Social media is something that’s really growing. So many people are online, especially on Facebook, so we’re excited to step into the water.”

Another company doing social media right is Dunkin Donuts. Jesse Greco, founder of PRBreakfast Club says, “It’s the small things that they [Dunkin Donuts] truly excel at. They know how to keep consumers engaged and interested on a daily basis and they have a way of making you feel like you’re special, even as just one of their millions of consumers.”

In the end it is up to you how you are going to run your campaign. The main things to remember is research and use measurable means for your tactics. The world of Internet marketing is evolving fast, and it is up to you to keep up.

Shannon Suetos is a writer based in San Diego, California. She writes extensively for an online resource that provides expert advice on purchasing and outsourcing decisions for small business owners and entrepreneurs such as payroll services & small business services at Resource Nation.

Guest article by Shannon Suetos from Resource Nation

The terms social media and social networking have been tossed around for quite some time now, but businesses are struggling with how to implement these strategies in their budgets.  How much is too much, how much is too little?  There are many factors on how to plan a budget, and the same goes for social media.

A study done by Econsultancy and bigmouthmedia has found that of the, “companies (86%) [they] surveyed plan to spend more money on social media in 2010, and a further 13% are planning to keep the same level of budget.”  With that being said, it seems the biggest struggle for companies is not that they don’t want to spend the money, but they don’t know what to spend it on.

Credit: TW Collins

The good news is many social media outlets are free.  Yes, there are programs you can purchase to help manage your accounts and are necessary for some social networking efforts, but for the most part it’s free to sign up on these sites.

Time

The main cost is how much time you are going to dedicate to your social media campaign.  Someone has to put into action your ideas, and they most likely aren’t going to work for free.  When writing up your budget make sure you take into account the time your employee(s) are going to be dedicating to this new project.

You also need to take into account if you need to hire someone to run your social media efforts.  With the social media industry becoming more popular, there are many people out there claiming to be social media gurus.  There are plenty of quality people in the industry who know what they are doing, but make sure you are getting someone with enough background in social media that makes you comfortable.

Monitoring

Once you have set up who and how much time will be spent on social media, the next step is to decide how you are going to monitor everything.  These analytical tools come in all shapes and sizes and the cost varies from application to application—and in some circumstances are free.

If you are just getting your feet wet, it is a good idea to start small and then grow.  See how effective your efforts are before going full blast.  You need to know where your target audience is engaging.  If your customers are mostly on Twitter and you aren’t there how will they get your message?  Play around with the different social networking sites and figure out which sites are best for your company.

Time will tell

Once you have done some research and dabbled in the different social networking you should be able to get a feel of what tactics work for your company and what don’t.  After you get a better feeling for where your key audience is participating with you, you can then focus your efforts and better know how to manage your time and money.

Shannon Suetos is a writer based in San Diego, California. She writes extensively for an online resource that provides expert advice on purchasing and outsourcing decisions for small business owners and entrepreneurs such as postage meters & postage scales at Resource Nation.

To quote Van Halen, ‘everybody wants some.’ And what you want is traffic. Why write a blog if no-one visits, right? I have 17 technical writers’ blogs in my Google Reader & RSS feeds. Most are fine but… if they used some of the following tactics, they’d get more traffic, comments, money and Nobel prizes. Well, three out of four, anyway.

How To Get More Traffic To Your Technical Writing Blog

Apply five of these tactics and your traffic will double. No kidding, it will!

How To Get More Traffic #1: Add Your Photos

Look at your favorite technical writing blogs. How many faces do you see? Why are they all hiding? I dunno. Stick your mugshot on the page so we can see what you look like! Go on! None of us are Brad Pitt or Paris Hilton (OMG! Paris Hilton rebuilds career as technical writer shock!), so add a pic. Don’t be shy. People like to read about people they know. If they can’t see you…

How To Get More Traffic #2: Video

I’m no spring chicken, so if I can do it, you can. All of these video were taken on a Canon powershot.

Videos let people hear you, see your expression, feel what you’re trying to say in ways that words cannot. Making videos is easier that you think. I use Camtasia 6 for all its sins. (read my frustrated Camtasia 6 review here.)

How To Get More Traffic #3: Social Media Outposts

Use Social Media for maximum impact. With web content publishing tools like Posterous you can get the message out to all these channels with almost no effort. Posterous lets you post once, publish everywhere. Try it.

• Ivan: http://www.ivanwalsh.com
• Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/ivanwalsh
• Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/ivanwalsh
• Business Week http://bx.businessweek.com/profile/ivan-walsh/iwalsh905/
• And also on Disqus, Flickr, LinkedIn, Delicious and Google Reader

How To Get More Traffic #4: Quizzes

We all get tired of checking for split infinitives and looking for typos, so lighten things up. Add quizzes to get people involved… and try to be a little different.

• Did you ever download software illegally?
• What’s your manager’s most annoying habit?
• Would you let your boss friend you on Facebook?
• Do you know any technical writing who can reverse park? (I was going to say Women but then turned on my brain! That was so close!)
• Do you know any men who ask for directions when lost? One for the girls, no doubt.

How To Get More Traffic #5: Comics

May not work for all sites but comics are a nice break from technical documents and other heavy reading. Why do you think they are so popular? Every serious newspaper has them, why not you?

How To Get More Traffic #6: Reviews

If they come to your site, it’s your opinion they are after. So, why don’t you give it?

#1 cardinal sin of most blogs is that they have no opinion!

Don’t be scared! I’m with you! Give your honest opinion (try not to rant or swear) and you’ll see people will respond very quickly.

#2 cardinal sin of most blogs… bland!

If your blog echoes the rest of the crowd, well, why should I come back? Stick your neck out, even a little. Some people were upset that I dissed Camtasia but y’know I’d be lying if I said it worked!

How To Get More Traffic #7: Trends

Pssst! Did you know that… everyone wants to be in the know. Keep your readers up to date. Use graphs, charts and diagrams. See Brain Solis and Information in Beautiful for inspiration.

How To Get More Traffic #8: Lists

It doesn’t have to stop at 10. Here are a few list of get started:

• 21 Left Handed Technical Writers
• 7 Reasons Why Adobe FrameMaker Sucks But You Still Need to Buy It
• 12 Honest Ways to Get a Pay Rise
• 5 Ways To Give An Honest Appraisal
• 28 Ways to Proofred a Technical Documant
• 1 Good Reason to Join the STC
• 18 Mistakes Technical Writers Make Before Breakfast
• 9 Ways to Evaluate a Help Authoring Tool

How To Get More Traffic #9: How-to guides

Ok, the technical stuff comes last. If you’re going to offer technical advice (and you should!) identify the problem, explain how to fix it, and then ask for questions or comments.

#3 cardinal sin of blogging is… blogger doesn’t interact with readers. Ask for comments. If you have a Facebook page, give them the link and connect there. Use Twitter? Create lists for technical writers and add them. Like these lists I created for technical writers and creativity.

• Adobe FrameMaker list http://twitter.com/ihearttechdocs/adobeframemaker
• Creativity list http://twitter.com/ihearttechdocs/creativity
• Technical writing software http://twitter.com/ihearttechdocs/technicalwritingsoftware

Share, share, share!

What ya think! Fire away below.

Ask. That’s it. If you want more Facebook fans, ask people to connect. But, here’s Catch 22. You have to ask in the right way. Asking strangers doesn’t work. Here’s how I do it.

Facebook: the Quickest Way To Get More Fans

I run twelve Facebook pages and this seems to work best. To get more followers:

1. Join groups – with less than 1000 members. More than this and you can’t make an impression.
   
2. Join fan pages – same as above. Choose niche or specialist subjects.
3. Contribute – add comments, photos and videos. Stand out from the crowd in a nice way. Don’t be weird!
4. Respond – to questions people have. Help others. Do this once a week minimum.
5. Suggest – quality links that you find that relate to the group.  Share, share, share.
6. Off Facebook – talk up your Facebook groups on your blog, LinkedIn (http://www.linkedin.com/in/ivanwalsh) and elsewhere.

Then Ask!

Here’s how you ask:

1. Open Notepad
2. Copy/paste your invite text. Don’t write it from scratch every time. Keep this on your desktop, so you don’t  have to go rooting around.
3. Choose someone you’ve helped, complimented etc (i.e. they’ll most likely know who you are)
4. Click Add as Friend
5. Click the Add a Personal Message link.
   
6. Personalize the message, “Hi David, this is Ivan from the Camtasia group, if you’d like to connect, that would be great. Ivan.”
7. Click Send Request.

And that’s it

How about you?

What do you do when you want to connect to someone on Facebook? What’s the worst mistake people make? Spelling your name wrong?

Ever wondered how some blogs appear on Google News and others don’t? Ever wanted to get your site on Google News. Google has published guidelines explaining how the process works. Do it right and you might be indexed. If you’d like a site to be included in Google News, you can also send them the URL directly.

How to Get Added to Google News

To be included in Google News, your articles (and their URLs) must be:

1. Unique

Each web page/blog post that display an article’s full text must have a unique URL. Google doesn’t include sites in its News that display multiple articles under one URL or that do not have links to pages dedicated solely to each article.

2. Permanent

Google can’t/won’t crawl pages (e.g. www.yoursite.com/news.html) if it displays a different story every day.  Make each post unique and permanent.
‘To ensure its links to articles function properly, each article on a news site must be associated with one unique URL, and that URL must be permanent (i.e., it can’t be recycled).’

3. Three-digit number

The URL for each article must contain a unique number consisting of at least three digits.

For example:

Google News can’t crawl this URL: http://www.google.com/news/article23.html

Google News can crawl this URL: http://www.google.com/news/article234.html

Add three unique numbers to each article.

Note: if the only number in the article consists of an isolated four-digit number that resembles a year, such as:

http://www.google.com/news/article2006.html

…Google won’t be able to crawl it.

Exception: this rule is waived with News sitemaps

http://www.google.com/support/news_pub/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=68323

Google News: How to Recommend a site for inclusion

If you’d like a site to be included in Google News, send them the URL here.

http://www.google.com/support/news/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=40249

Recap: Get Added to Google News

Be

1. Unique
2. Permanent
3. Three-digit numbers

That’s it. Over to you.

Have you managed to get your blog indexed by Google for its news section? Was Bing easier? Share any tips you have below.

Would you like to know more about Social Media in China? We are planning to arrange an event, hopefully in the summer, on Social Media in China.

The location is yet to be defined. If you want to attend, or have ideas on who should be invited, please let me know.

Des Walsh, no relation, has been involved in these events here in China in 2007. Debbie Weil was one of the presenters and I’ll contact her this week to see if she can attend. Fingers crossed.

See: http://deswalsh.com/2010/01/08/will-social-media-week-move-further-east-in-2011

Over to you!

• Where would you like to see it organized?
• Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen have all been mentioned. Any preferences?
• Who would you like to see at the event?
• QQ, Ten Cent, Sina, Sohu, Taobao have all been mentioned.

Who else should we contact?

Gerry McGovern

A good link has no time for small talk or niceties. It acts like a signpost, like a promise. With a good link, what you see is what you get.

If most of today’s web links were married they’d be heading for divorce. Because they never keep their promises. “Darling, I’ll home at 10.” But the cad of a link doesn’t come home until 4 in the morning.

The link says, “Launch online application form.” What’s a reasonable expectation? That if you click on the link, an online application form will be launched. So I click. Nothing launches. I just get a page of useless text telling me stuff like: “This is a secure site designed to help customers correctly complete a passport application online.” Well, fancy that.

So I scan the page for a link and I find: “Start application process.” From launch to start, am I moving forward at all? I click on that and arrive at a page whose heading is: “Before you start.” Hello? I already launched, then I started, now this page is telling me that I haven’t even started yet. What’s up?

On another website the link says “Become a member.”

I click on it.

The next link says, “Join.”

I click on it.

The next link on the next page again says, “Join”.

I click on it.

Another page of useless text.

But I’m making progress because the current link says: “Join Now!”

This sort of thing happens all the time.

Why?

Because web teams manage graphics, pages, applications, text, video, animations, portals, personalization, social media, vanity, and internal politics.

Most web teams think about tools and things and units of stuff and what they like and their bosses like. They don’t think about the task of the customer. They don’t feel responsible for helping the customer to easily complete a task.

I talked to a web consultant recently who had found that on one website, 50 percent of the contact requests went unanswered. “That’s not my problem,” was the web manager’s reply. “That’s the responsibility of the Help Desk.” Ah, but it is your problem, Mr Website Manager. You put up the link: “Contact Us.”

You created the form to allow contact.  If your organization is unwilling to get back to people who contact you, here are some alternative ways you could name your link:

• Contact Us (only joking)
• Contact us if you can
• Just try and contact us
• Don’t contact us; we’ll contact you

It’s time to end this Pontius Pilate ‘wash my hands of responsibility‘ kind of website non-management. If the website doesn’t help customers to complete tasks, it hurts the reputation of the web team and it hurts the reputation of the organization.

We click on a link because we want to complete a task. Thinking linking is thinking doing. It is thinking about the customers’ journey as they seek to complete a task. It is about making that journey as simple and fast as possible.

Stop thinking in web pages and what the organization has to do. Start thinking in tasks and what the customer has to do.

Links are New Yorkers.

Straight to the point.

No messing around.

Gerry McGovern

You can read more from Gerry at: http://www.gerrymcgovern.com/

Zachary M. Seward http://www.niemanlab.org writes that The Huffington Post applies A/B testing to some of its headlines. Readers are randomly shown one of two headlines for the same story. After five minutes, which is enough time for such a high-traffic site, the version with the most clicks becomes the wood that everyone sees.

Put the Author’s name above a headline to get more clicks

Paul Berry, Chief Technology Officer at The Huffington Post, said Huffington Post editors have found that “placing the author’s name above a headline almost always leads to more clicks than omitting it.”

Also, The Huffington Post’s new social media editor, Josh Young, has also been soliciting better headlines from readers on Twitter. Interesting use of Crowd-sourcing?

Takeaway

The Huffington Post is considering separate East Coast and West Coast editions.

Why?

Take the Oscars, It’s old news to East Coast readers by noon, but fresh for the West Coasters logging on.

Read more here: http://www.niemanlab.org/2009/10/how-the-huffington-post-uses-real-time-testing-to-write-better-headlines/

Will real-time rating lead to “better” headlines or more popular ones?

Dustin Curtis likes experiments. He re-arranged the words Follow Me on Twitter and the position of the hyperlink to see if it would increase the number of followers, i.e. click-throughs. Changing the text increased the clickthrough rate from 4.7% to 12.81%. Here’s how he did it.

At the bottom of his posts, there’s a phrase with a link to his Twitter account.

He started by “using commands instead of statements for guiding users.” The idea was to test what he calls “forceful phrasing”.

Using a Statement

a. “I’m on Twitter” 4.70%

The original phrasing led to a 4.70% clickthrough rate.

Using a command

a. “Follow me on Twitter” 4.70%

The clickthrough rate increased by 55% to 7.31%.

Note: Using a lower case “t” for Twitter led to a slightly higher rate of clicks (up to 6% more).

Using a stronger personal command

c. “You should follow me on twitter.” 10.09%

Using the words “you should” increased the clickthrough rate by 38% to 10.09%.

Adding the literal callout “here”

d. “You should follow me on twitter here.” 12.81%

Adding “here” as the link at the end of the phrase increased the clickthrough rate by 27% to 12.81%.

To recap:

“You” identifies the reader directly,

“should” implies an obligation, and

“follow me on twitter” is a direct command.

Moving the link to a literal callout “here” provides a clear location for clicking.

He tried other permutations that dulled the command, for example, using “please” in place of “should” and made the whole sentence a link. None performed as well as the final sentence.

You should read his article here

http://dustincurtis.com/you_should_follow_me_on_twitter.html

From Adobe Tech Communication RJ Jacquez, ” I don’t think it would be an overstatement to say that thanks to Social Media, we are experiencing a fundamental shift in the way we discover, share and consume information. This was the topic of my closing presentation at this year’s Technical Communication UK.”

He just read how Dell took social media mainstream and there was one thing in particular which stood out to him, namely “On Twitter, word spreads like wildfire, and companies no longer have the option of ignoring the conversation.”

He (or Adobe) estimate that new technical information is doubling every 18 months with much of this content being user-generated.

To get you started, he is hosting a Twitter 101 session for Technical Communicators, where I will share from personal experience how you can become the go-to person for your customers looking for technical information about your products and services.

Click HERE for more information and to Register.

eSeminar: Twitter 101 for Technical Communicators

Ben Minson makes some interesting points about the role of the STC (Society for Technical Communication) and the value it offers to its members.

As an ‘outsider’ looking in, I have to confess to finding the STC a rather odd organization. A longer post is probably in order to discuss this. Back to Ben: “In recent months, the discussion usually comes down to value. In fact, the other night after our local chapter event, one of the members told me that she is the representative STC member for her team at work. Her employer is paying for her membership but no one else’s, and they want to know what they get back from STC for their money. They have every right to be asking that.”

Ben: http://www.gryphonmountain.net/2009/07/stc-help-the-communities-provide-value/

This employer doesn’t see enough value in STC to pay for all of the employed technical communicators to belong.

Ben’s quotes Michael Hughes, First Vice President of STC who wrote a post about what it’s like leading STC during this difficult time, “We tend to keep a core of loyal members, but that has created a demographic problem: A lot of us are older and will be retiring in the coming decade. We are losing our “next generation” of STC members. The upshot is that decisions about how to grow the society are being made by those who often lack the perspective of what the target population wants.”

Is this true? Is the STC really at a crossroads?

Moreover, do you feel you’re getting value for money?

I’ve had a relatively successful career in technical writing and never felt the inclination to join.

What am I missing?

Chris Brogan (read and bookmark!) just hit a new milestone.

He’s now getting over 600 emails a day on average. 50% were people asking me his time, 25% were “really nice people,” 20% were business opportunities, and 5% were friends. A quick bit of math: if he answered 1 email a minute, 600 emails would take me 10 hours to answer.

The thing is, we’re all busy. We all have tons of email. We have no time to get it all handled.

But what will you do to get your email answered (for the most part)?

I’ve got a few thoughts, and this relates to some of what Julien Smith and I talked about in Trust Agents: Using the Web to Build Influence, Improve Reputation, and Earn Trust.

If you want to improve your chances of an email being answered by someone (like me), here are some thoughts and ideas.

How to Get Your Email Answered

1. Brevity.

I have no time for huge rambling emails. Lead with what you need from me. Fill me in on the backstory (if you feel you must), and then end again with what you need from me. (Most imporant part: lead with what you need from me).

2. Connectivity.

If you talk with me on other platforms (like comment on my blog or talk with me on Twitter or Facebook), then I’m much more likely to know who you are.

3. Skip the flattery.

PR types: starting with “I love your blog” and then pitching me something I could care less about is a bit of a mismatch. You clearly don’t understand my blog if you’re pitching me stories that don’t relate to what I’m doing.

4. Get right to it.

Most emails have about 200 words of throat-clearing. Feel free to just be brief and to the point.

5. Make it mutually beneficial.

It’s very nice that you want me to help you get attention, but it’s rare that this does anything for me. Is there anything you’re going to do for my community to make this more worthwhile for them to care about you?

6. Make every email about resolving to a close.

I hate open-ended emails. Examples: “what would you like for lunch tomorrow?” Instead, how about, “I’m thinking about either tapas or Korean BBQ tomorrow. Do you have a preference?” One makes things close faster. The other makes the message linger.

7. Give the right lead time.

Asking me for something today is probably not going to happen. Asking me for something in three months is going to be forgotten. Think more in terms of two weeks for a typical response, or two or three months for something involving travel. Make sense?

8. Equip a trust agent.

It’s easier to get some kind of response by having someone who knows your target person introduce you.

What else? What else do you think will help?

By the way, since I started my contact form, I’ve found that I *love* responding to information that goes through it. It resolves to a Google spreadsheet, and I can bang out several dozen answers a minute on the form.

Get Your Email Answered: http://www.chrisbrogan.com/get-your-email-answered/

Read: Trust Agents: Using the Web to Build Influence, Improve Reputation, and Earn Trust

One of the success stories on MySpace was Ashley Qualls, a savvy 17-year-old, who set up a shop selling backgrounds for fellow MySpacers. It became a huge hit and she was the first real star of the MySpace generation.

On Twitter, there hasn’t been the same thing. Granted there have been examples of stars using Twitter to raise their profile and use it in a productive way. See Guy KamaZaki (@guykawasaki) as a classic example. But he was a star anyway before Twitter.

The reason there have been no new stars on Twitter is this.

1. You can’t make money out of it directly.

You can do it indirectly, through raising your brand’s profile and maybe plugging products – but not in the same way as Adsense as shown above.

2. Twitter‘s community don’t need any add-ons or plug-ins to enhance their experience.

Of course, you could try to sell customized Twitter backgrounds (and some do) but these haven’t really taken off because

3. Twitter users tend to be slightly older than the MySpace generation.

Maybe this is one reason they don’t care too much about adding bling to their Twitter page.

4. There is no place to put ads or other affiliate products on your Twitter page.

You could shows references to products in your profile but it’s too obscure to make any real difference.

5. Twittering tends to be a 1 way street.

It’s not a community in the sense the facebook or MySpace is and because of this the opportunities to make relationships and cross-pollinate business ideas and marketing opportunities doesn’t really exist.

But here’s a thought!

If you can show people how to make money while ‘inside’ Twitter – and not clicking through to other sites – you stand a very good chance of becoming the first real Twitter star.

Let me know what you think.

You can follow me on Twitter @ivanwalsh.

FYI: Aldian Prakoso discusses this example of successful long tail niche: Free MySpace Layout for Teenage Girls.

Aldian mentions that ”I learned that a 17-year-old high school drop-out girl makes $70K a month from AdSense revenue. Ashley Qualls is a 17-year-old high school dropout, home owner and millionaire. She makes $70,000.00 a month in Google AdSense revenue with her website.” http://aldianprakoso.com/long-tail-niche-free-myspace-layout-for-teenage-girls/

Writers at the Wall Street Journal have been given a list of rules for “professional conduct,” including a guide for use of online outlets, noting cautions for activities on social networking sites.

[ad] Writers should consult their editor before “connecting” to or “friending” any reporting contacts who may need to be treated as confidential sources, and business and pleasure should not be mixed on services like Twitter. www.dowjones.com

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