Facebook has recently launched the “Facebook for Business” website which is aimed at providing a step-by-step guide to help small businesses use and make the most of the social networking site. If you’re struggling with the basics or even just after some new ideas to improve how your using it at the moment, I suggest you check it out.

Facebook joins Twitter who has had a “Twitter for Business” resource for a little while now. Both websites are a handy resource for how you can make the most of your foray into Social Media Marketing.

The timing of Facebook’s release is also interesting as it comes in the same week Google has copped a lot of flack over deleting business profiles from the new Google Plus.

Rest assured Google Plus business pages/profiles are coming soon and I’m sure I’ll be able to update this post with a link to Google own version of “Google Plus for Business“.

It’s interesting times indeed.

How are you as a business owner finding the social networking landscape at the moment?

Do resources like these help and make it easy enough for you to get involved? Or is it still a bit overwhelming?

Reading further into the story online, journalists at Herald Sun started to place the blame on social media, particularly Facebook.

This is of course not the first time that social media has had to wear the blame for society’s unruly behavior.

Earlier this year ABCNews.com reported on Flash Robberies and Violent Flash Mobs who orchestrated their anti-social behavior using Twitter.

Last year, the UK’s The Telegraph reported that teachers were blaming social media for an increase in poor grades amongst school children.

Blaming social media is like blaming a murder on the knife.

So with social media in the center of these issues, we should all be pointing the finger at Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg, and Twitter creator Jack Dorsey!

These two men are to blame for school yard violence and mass anti-social demonstrations… Or that’s what it sounds like in the media!

Social media is a tool, a powerful tool which is used by millions with good intentions.

A knife is also a tool, used my millions to cut carrots, skillet fish or the unlikely scenario of saving a damsel in distress who has been tied up on train tracks.

However with evil intentions a knife can be used to harm, inflict pain and kill.

It is highly unlikely that when I open my Sunday Mail I would read the headlines: “Wiltshire knife to blame for death”.

We can’t shift the blame to the tool when it’s the person using it who should be taking the responsibility.

Do you think we should be blaming social media or is it still the responsibility of the user?

I know it’s important not to measure one’s worth in followers. But after a fortnight of being on Twitter, I’ve amassed (yes) nine followers. One-third of these are related to me. As you can see from Angus Russell’s post about Twitter last week, he is beating me by 220 followers. Not that it’s a competition. It’s just that my mum doesn’t use social media.

For such a long time, my friends have raved about how good Twitter is. These Twitter pushers hang out on every corner, opening their trench coats to flash you something to weaken your resolve: Chat with Dr Karl! Be nerdy with Shakespeare Geek! Come this close to Stephen Fry!

I believe I am converted

In two weeks, I’ve become a tiny convert. I don’t have an iPhone, so all my tweeting is done from my home, at my computer. And like all good distractions, Twitter has taken me away from important things, like doing assignments, or unstacking the dishwasher, or standing up.

For me, the attraction of Twitter is the ability to see how others tick. I love the connections you can make with a broad range of people beyond your own friends. From the other side of the world—or just around the corner—I can communicate with people whose lives and interests are similar, or very, very different. By following @BreakfastNews I can learn a little of what’s happening in the world each morning. On Sunday I followed GetUp Australia’s #SayYesAus campaign, with its dozens of updates each hour. I’ve learnt about adding a hashtag to highlight common topics that groups of people may be interested in (it seems to frequently be #justinbieber; a few weeks ago it was #rapture.)

One final word on words

As well as using Twitter to chat and check out photos of friends in distant places, two of my mates are online word game addicts. Scrabble—and games like it that allow you to humiliate your loved ones with a perfectly placed “Qi”—has an authoritative dictionary. Last week, it added facebook to its list of allowable words. Not Facebook, the proper noun, which is Scrabble-illegal, but the lower-case verb, facebook. As in, “After I tweet my sister and fruit-ninja my nephew, I will facebook you my recipe for banana bread.”

I am @WordsAndCo. I am extremely #grateful to @Bluewire_Media for a fantastic internship. Thank you all for having me.

Photo: Caitlin Regan

We’ve all seen a Facebook ‘Like Box’ before, even though some of us may not have know what it was called.

The Facebook Like Box has a couple of advantages over a simple link to your Facebook page:

• The user can like your page without having to leave your website, and
• It can also display your news feed, follower count and profile pictures of your fans.

These two advantages make it more likely that a single website visitor will ‘Like’ your Facebook page because:

• They can see that your page is active and that you have some fans (possibly even some of their own friends are fans), and
• It’s as easy as a single click, and won’t distract them from other tasks.

Twitter’s Answer

It’s been possible to display your latest tweets on your website for quite a while now, either with Twitter’s widget builder or a number of other plugins and packages. What Twitter hasn’t had though, is the single click follow. Any “Follow us on Twitter” link would simply point to twitter.com/username, meaning that the user is taken away from your website… Until now.

Yesterday, Twitter announced their new “Follow” button as an answer to this problem.

The “Follow” button still isn’t a one-click process, but it’s a big step towards it. Rather than take the user away from your website, a smaller window pops up and displays your profile, a follow button, two of your latest tweets and a preview of who you’re following and who’s following you.

Once you click the “Follow” button, the window closes.

You can be one of the first to add a follow button to your website at twitter.com/followbutton.

What do you think, do you like the popup? Or would you prefer a one-click-follow?

Why? She uses it. (The first time I met her she confessed she was a twitter addict! You can follow her on twitter @mysocialpolicy or read her blog: My Social Media Lawyer.)

Particularly when trying to convince CEOs, we are frequently asked about the legalities of social media policies so I asked her to write a guest post to address just that.

Enter Vivienne…

+++++++

Blake Burningham, Vivienne Storey, Me, Hanh Keary, Jim Stewart at David Meerman Scott's Real Time Marketing and PR masterclass

Have you thought about the real purpose of taking the time and effort to write and implement a social media policy in your organisation?

There are many answers to “why have a social media policy at all?” and the main ones usually revolve around risk management issues such as:

• How do I protect my brand?
• How do I protect confidential or sensitive information?
• How do I hand over “control” of my message?
• How do I manage productivity?
• How do I address privacy concerns?

These are all highly valid questions that can and should be addressed in a social media policy (along with a whole host of other risk management issues) but there is one main function a social media policy should address and that is:

“How do I enable my organisation to communicate in “real time” without having to wait for approval from the marketing/comms or legal team?”

Policy making

A social media policy should in effect be a pre-approval document for employees in your organisation to have a real time dialogue on the internet, whether it’s via twitter, blogging, Facebook or responding to comments. Imagine the power of unleashing all of your interested employees as marketers on your behalf, safe in the knowledge that they are following well thought out guidelines and processes? Imagine.

Throughout the process of writing a social media policy, this should be your single goal; “Am I enabling the organisation to engage on-line without having to ask “Am I doing the right thing?”, “Am I breaking any rules?””.

Examples

If you look at companies that are “doing” social media well, this is exactly the approach they have taken. Companies such as Coca-Cola and Deloitte have developed and implemented clear, well thought out, policies that encourage real time online engagement. And how successful they have been!

Content

Content is so time sensitive that you simply cannot afford to be waiting around arguing over whether certain pieces should be published by certain people. If you have to wait days to get agreement over publishing, the content is probably passé; relevancy and opportunity long gone.

Have these arguments while you’re developing your policy; dispute, wrangle and wrestle your way through the content of the policy always keeping that key question in mind; “Does this enable my organisation to engage in real time, on-line?” It’s worth having that intense debate during the development of your social media policy so that once it’s complete you can hand over to the organisation and say “go for it”

As Nike say “just do it”.

Note from Vivienne: Thank you to David Meerman Scott for the “real time” reference via his book, Real-Time Marketing & PR, and the inspiration for this blog.

It was pleasing to see that the Top 20 words included ‘calls to action’ (eg. please, retweet, check out & help) and words that indicated new and remarkable information (eg. blog, post, how to, top & great).

Equally pleasing was the fact that all the words associated with the mundane and inane (eg. bored, bed, watching & tired) were the least retweeted.

20 Most Retweeted Words on Twitter

This picture was taken during Brian Halligan‘s keynote presentation at the recent Sydney Growth Summit.

The ‘take-home message‘ from this… If you’re creating remarkable content and sharing useful information, you are much more likely to be rewteeted!

[If your images are disabled, the 20 Most Retweeted Words are transcribed here for your benefit]

1. you
2. twitter
3. please
4. retweet
5. post
6. blog
7. social
8. free
9. media
10.  help
11. please retweet
12. great
13. social media
14. 10
15. follow
16. how to
17. top
18. blog post
19. check out
20.  new blog post

It was one of Jeff’s posts about 37 Signals monetising their blog that caught my attention, so I dug around to find out a bit more about him.  I discovered that Jeff writes fascinating blog posts every day, is an AdAge Power 150 blogger (that’s a big deal) AND has over 47,000 twitter followers.  I was intrigued (and yes, impressed).

I wanted to find out how…

So I tweeted Jeff (and mentioned a mutual friend).  Within 12 hours Jeff had tweeted me back via a DM (direct message).  Yes, social media is effective for meeting aspirational contacts!

So how does he do it?

Here is Jeff’s story of getting 47,000 followers.

1. Originally started on Twitter in 2008, but didn’t use it much.
2. Then he started to blog.
3. He followed people in his niche (which is ‘blogging & digital marketing’) and especially followed thought leaders like Chris Brogan, Brian Clark & David Meerman Scott.
5. By tweeting his own blog posts, Jeff had something valuable to contribute & he attracted his own following.
6. As his number of followers increased, it increased his ‘online credibility’ & led to more followers.
7. Although some would argue the opposite, Jeff says that Twitter etiquette is to follow people who follow you.

In summary: Produce great content, followers leaders in your industry &  automate follow-backs.

How does Jeff keep in touch with everyone?

OK, you can’t realistically follow 40,000+ people’s live twitter streams, so how does Jeff keep in touch with people he’s particularly interested in?

1. Uses ‘lists’ on tools like TweetDeck or Hootsuite — both free — to follow tweeters
2. Uses the direct message channel (aka DMs) to keep in touch with twitter contacts privately.

How To Get 46,000 Twitter Followers: My Story — is Jeff Bullas’ post after our interview.

Follow @JeffBullas or visit JeffBullas.com for more – I recommend you do!

If you’re not convinced your business needs to have a twitter account, continue reading. I’d like to share a story about a recent interaction I’ve had that might help to see the value you can add to your customers.

I’m off to Japan snowboarding next week (yes that’s me rubbing it in!) and needed to organise my Travel Insurance last night. I’ve used World Nomads before which meant I had an account already and figured I would just stick with them. My last overseas trip was so long ago that I had forgotten my user-name. Now World Nomads allows you to retrieve passwords but not your user-name. They also don’t let you sign up again with the same email address. Frustrated, I used the online enquiry form, ticking the box that I’d forgotten my user-name and explained the issue.

At the same time, I had twitter open and thought why not tweet about it:

Is there a way to retrieve your @WorldNomads username? I’m stumped and can’t sign up again with the same email #fail

I didn’t really expect anything to come of it and was just hoping I’d get a response from the form I had filled out before next week. However, because I had mentioned @WorldNomads in my tweet, a few hours later, I had an email from Chris Nobel, the General Manager of the company with my user-name and the exact details I needed to make a purchase. He also included a note saying they were working on upgrading their user-name retrieval in a few weeks. Now that’s customer service!

We’ve posted before on the power of social media to create brand advocates and Chris’ timely response has certainly had that effect on me. So much so I thought it was worth sharing with you…

I’ve told mine now you tell me yours! Do you have any good/bad social media stories you can share?

Right now on twitter if you search for #qldfloods, you only need to wait 5-10 seconds before the new tweets button appears saying “20 New Tweets”. This means that people in Brisbane and Queensland are tweeting at a rate of around 2 tweets per second. These tweets range from people posting photos via services like TwitPic and YFrog, to people linking to the premier’s disaster relief appeal, to general tweets about individual situations. What is notable though, is how well some organisations such as the Queensland Police Service (@QPSMedia) are using twitter to disseminate important information.

QPSMedia has tweeted many important announcements today including:

Residents in flood prone suburbs should make preparations now #thebigwet #qldfloods

and

By Thursday, Brisbane and Ipswich facing higher flooding than ’74 floods #thebigwet #qldfloods

They’ve also used facebook to make longer announcements, then linked to the posts via tweets.

Evacuation Centre set up – RNA Showgrounds, Bowen Hills #QldFloods #TheBigWet http://fb.me/NwqIcU9F

QPSMedia’s tweets have been retweeted by hundreds of people, thus keeping them in the live stream and exposing them to a huge audience, meaning that potentially tens or even hundreds of thousands of Queensland based twitter users have seen these announcements on twitter and most probably passed them on both via twitter and other mediums.

Notice that each of these tweets includes the “hashtags” #qldfloods and #thebigwet. By using these hashtags, QPSMedia are ensuring that their tweets are seen not only by their followers, but by anyone who searches for those hashtags – which in this case includes tens of thousands of Queenslanders.

In rapidly changing situations like the Queensland floods, twitter can be an excellent medium to communicate important announcements in real-time. No other tool on earth could be so quickly and easily used to rapidly disseminate information to the relevant people.

Where did you first hear important news during the Queensland floods? Twitter, TV, radio or other?

EDIT: I’ve also seen some interesting cases of people/businesses taking advantage of the powerful #qldfloods hashtag. Bing Lee have decided to donate $1 for every person that likes their facebook page today, and CUE are donating 10% of all sales on Sunday to the appeal. What do you think of them taking advantage of the situation like that?

Sadly there’s no magic rubric for deciding whether an in-house social media workforce, a social media consultant, or an agency will best be able to meet your particular business needs. Like almost every business decision, it depends on your business’s goals, budget and particular situation.

There are, however, definite pros and cons to each approach. We’ve highlighted some of the most important factors to consider for each style of social media team. Read More…

Calendaring Your Social Media Marketing Content – Hubspot
From the many Website Optimization Webinars I’ve done over the past six months, I’ve signed up for many Facebook company pages, and I follow tons of people on Twitter. I realize there are those companies – or people – that overkill on the posting and those that I never hear from. The over-killers tend to post information about themselves, and to be honest, after a while I don’t even read their content. Then there are those whose information is consistently valuable. I may not have time to read everything they send, but whenever I do, I’m rewarded. Read More…

5 New Ways to Market Your Brand on Facebook – Mashable
With 500 million members and growing, Facebook offers brands and marketers direct contact to the largest pool of online users on the web. After all, social media is fast becoming more popular than e-mail on mobile devices and more convenient for news consumption than the daily paper.

In recent weeks and months, Facebook has introduced and improved a number of on-site tools that sage brands and businesses can use to better market themselves. Even the simplest of tools such as “Likes” and photos could serve as a catalyst for a viral network effect. Of course, there’s also opportunity to be had with more calculated efforts around Place Pages, Questions and the New Groups. Read More…

Should Your Content Aim for Traffic or Conversion? – Copyblogger
Which articles attract reader attention, bringing you more traffic, more tweets and Stumbles, more eyeballs on the page?

Which articles convert, bringing you more subscribers and sales?

And how do you roll out a strategy that maximizes the twin impact of attraction and conversion? Read More…

7 Deadly Assumptions of Online Marketing Success – Open Forum
It’s not really enough to have a website. These days you must create a total web presence, but you’ve also got to create strategy based on overall objectives.

This is another way of saying unless your online activity ends in a sale you’ve failed in the game of online marketing. There are countless ways to fail on the quest to convert a pair of peering eyes into a paying client. Read More…