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When Twitter Isn’t Appropriate

April 1st, 2009 by lucianmih | No Comments | Filed in People, Twitter

web-2-0We’re at a point in the evolution of the information age, the age of self-publishing, Web 2.0 or whatever we want to label where we are in our increasingly wired world, that, if we do not establish some parameters of behavior, we’ll lose it all. This notion struck me as I read an article by Maryclarie Dale of the Associated Press called, “Tweets Unwanted Twist At Trial.”

The article told the story of Eric Wuest, a juror in a Philadelphia trial who tweeted that the verdict in a high-profile criminal case was forthcoming. While he did not disclose information about the verdict, or the trial for that matter, he violated the normal judicial instructions to not disclose or discuss the trial at hand with anyone. Wuest didn’t get in trouble, other than to be given a stern talking to by the judge in the case, but he did something we as an on-line community need to understand and take a stand against.

Social media is not a special place on the Internet where rules and rights are blurred. Sure, U.S. and International law are far behind in providing fair protection and policing of the web. If a server is in Switzerland, did you post that libelous statement in Switzerland or in the comfort of your Silicon Valley office? Yes, there will forever be trolls and turds, black hat sneaks and cyber criminals who continually maneuver through the system, committing crimes and finding loopholes. But for the rest of us, the fair majority, we need to exercise a little bit of common sense.

Twitter is not a forum where free speech can run rampant. Neither is Facebook or any other social forum, on-line or off. Eric Wuest probably minded his P’s and Q’s when chatting it up with friends at a Friday night cocktail hour. Why would he assume he didn’t have to on Twitter where everyone and their brother can see what he wrote?

I harken back to the key hang-up most people have with understanding social media or the Internet word. It’s not about the tools and the technology. It’s about a mechanism of communications. You aren’t allowed to communicate sensitive information about a trial if you’re a juror, or proprietary information about your companies business if you’re an employee. So why would you do it online? The rules still apply, even if the law is unclear about which ones apply where.

The first rule I give company employees when teaching them how to be representatives of their employer in their respective online spaces is, “Don’t be stupid.” Sure, I borrowed it from Flickr or Microsoft or some other list of guidelines, but it’s appropriate. Apply a different filter if you must: “When in doubt, don’t.”

Our interconnected world is reaching into unprecedented omnipresence. The thoughts and notions of random people are now being broadcast around the world in lightning speed. For most people, few will notice. But the fact that it’s there changes the impact and measure of one person’s opinions or experiences. It’s permanent. It’s indexed. It’s searchable. If it’s inappropriate or even illegal, you’ve shot yourself in the foot.

Eric Wuest probably should have been held in contempt of court. It would have sent a stronger message to all of us who love social media tools so. Mind your P’s and Q’s folks. If you don’t there will be repercussions. No matter how personal your space on these networks is, we can see it. It doesn’t just belong to you.

Jason Falls is the director of social media for Doe-Anderson, a brand-building agency in Louisville, Ky., specializing in building brand enthusiasts. A public relations professional by trade and writer by craft, Falls is co-founder of the Social Media Club Louisville. This blog is his own, contains his opinions and observations and does not necessarily reflect those of Doe-Anderson or its clients. For more email him at jason-at-jasonfalls.com.

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When Twitter Isn’t Appropriate

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How to Tell If Facebook Is Worthwhile For Your Business or a Waste of Time

March 18th, 2009 by lucianmih | 1 Comment | Filed in Marketing, People, facebook

Social media is here to stay. There. I said it. It will be around in some form for years to come. Do you really see Facebook, Twitter and Web videos going somewhere?

Or do you just see them evolving and becoming part of a larger system the same way business blogs did? Great. Then we can start figuring out how to use social media to our benefit.

Now that we’re past this issue of whether we are in love with MySpace, LinkedIn, Facebook, Ning, etc., and we realize that we’re focusing on whether these tools are useful or not, (not on whether or not they give us the warm fuzzies), there’s still a fundamental question. This goes for whether you’re using Facebook pages, Facebook ads, or a regular Facebook profile.

How do you know if sites like Facebook are for YOU? How can you tell if a social networking site can help YOUR company?

It boils down to three things.

1- Are There Enough People on the Site in Your Interest Area for it to Be Worth Your While?

You have to think about business connections too, not just clients.

You can connect with people who send you business. Think about what the value of a new client is too, whether you think can get one out of 100, and how long it takes. When people come to your profile, are they visiting your site? If not, is your profile set up correctly?

Experiment. There are several very subtle things you can do that maximize your exposure, not just daily clicks through to your site.

To find out if there are enough people on Facebook who need your plumbing services, search for home improvement groups. Check your regional network and look on the Marketplace page. See if you can find people in your local area to befriend who would need your services – but for heaven’s sake, don’t be aggressive in your promotion.

Instead, create a Facebook page, run an ad, or have the type of networking conversations where “so, what do you do?” will naturally come up. And you can take it from there.

Networking at Facebook can be like hanging out at a neighborhood mixer. Yeah, you might want to mention that you’re a handyman, or that you work at the bank, and give someone your card, but you don’t want to turn those first few getting-to-know-you conversations into a sales pitch.

Let them know who you are, what you do, and after a few conversations, send them a no-strings coupon for them or a friend “just in case you ever need it buddy” and go on being friends.

They’ll remember you if you keep in touch, and are a nice enough guy.

2- Does your company have an RSS-capable site that updates frequently?

If it does, a profile on Facebook gives you another place to share your RSS link. You can import your blog posts going forward, or summaries. There are also applications like NetworkedBlogs that will help your blog posts get exposure from interested readers.

3- Do you already have clients, friends, associates, whose signal you can isolate, or whose noise you can penetrate, using Facebook?

This has to be the most underestimated use of Facebook. My first month at Facebook I had direct interactions with ten influential people I admire. Some of them I look up to for personal reasons, others are greats in some aspect of search, the internet or technology. One actually sent me a client.

Instead of installing hundreds of applications and super-poking someone or posting spam to their Super Wall, you can be the smart person who sends a letter and gets a response, the one who sends a private message and is sent a gift in return, or just get the wonderful feeling of having a world famous personality you admire not only acknowledge you, but contact you directly.

One of the greatest things about Facebook is how it can help cement relationships between you and people you know but didn’t think you had much in common with. You know how sometimes, you want to write to say hello to someone, but at the same time, you don’t want to waste their time?

Or when you think about some great author or celebrity you admire, and what you’d say to them if you could meet them? Maybe you just want to compliment a more famous colleague and not sound like a dork.

Facebook can help with this when it functions as an automatic ice-breaker, facilitating an intial contact between you and someone you wish you had more reason to interact with, then another, and another, until you become friends who call each other on the phone and plan to visit or meet at conferences.

Those are the reasons. It’s not a matter of time because you can block all the nuisance requests and there are ways around the irritating app requests.

It’s not a matter of just traffic because first, you can set up a profile in 15 minutes to automatically send you traffic and never mess with it again if you like. Or you can go in and meet people every day and it can be a major traffic source.

And it’s not a matter of whether you can get anything out of it – it’s more a matter of whether you’re willing and whether the available traffic is targeted to your topic. It’s not for everyone, because let’s face it, not everyone wants to do the work, or even use Facebook that’s way.

And that’s okay! For some people, it’s a nice little escape, like a mental, online Starbucks. For some it’s a bother, and the pain of learning a new way to do things isn’t worth the time. I don’t mean that sarcastically – if you’re functioning as a CEO, you may not want to focus on Facebook.

With a little research, you can find out what kind of role it will play in your life.

Tinu AbayomiPaul – Confused about how to get clients, joint venture partners or more blog traffic from Facebook without violating their terms with traditional online marketing techniques? Go to http://freetraffictip.com/1-facebook to learn the advanced secrets of Facebook Marketing.

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How to Tell If Facebook Is Worthwhile For Your Business or a Waste of Time

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Reverse Phone Search: How You Can Find Out Who’s Hiding Behind Any Phone Number

March 4th, 2009 by lucianmih | 1 Comment | Filed in People, Search

Got a phone number but don’t know who it is?  Maybe you’ve seen strange numbers showing up on your teenager’s cell phone bill. Or maybe you picked up a number to call about an investment – but you suspect a scam.  Or maybe you found a mysterious number in your wife or husband’s things.  For dozens of reasons, we find ourselves with a telephone number – but no name.

You’re itching to find out who it is.  Not just for curiosity’s sake.  The safety of your family or the security of your bank account could be at stake.  You need a way to discover just whose phone number you have.

There’s good news.  You’ve got options.  I’m a professional writer and researcher. I’ve discovered four different ways you can find out who’s hiding behind any phone number. You can:

-    Call, pretending to be someone else
-    Look it up in a published crisscross directory
-    Befriend (or trick) someone at the phone company
-    Go online and search

Let’s see what’s involved with each approach and discover when they work best…

Call the Number

It’s the simplest thing you can do.  Pick up the phone and call.  But pretend to be someone else to avoid recognition.  When they answer, ask for a person with an unusual name not likely to be there.   Say something like “Hello, is Lilly Becky there? No? Are you absolutely sure? Well, who am I talking to then?”  Be a little forceful. Even sound angry, as if you think they’re lying to you.  This approach can rattle the other person and make them reveal their identity.

Avoid this one if you’re not comfortable acting.  And make sure you don’t call from a number that can be traced back to you!

Look in a Crisscross Directory

Crisscross Directories have been around since the late 1800s. They’re like phone directories. But they organize their listings by phone number, or street address, instead of name.  These directories are still available in print form even though most of the information is also now available by computer.

Such cross-references are primarily designed for business use. Usually, sales departments rely on them to conduct direct marketing, build lists of sales leads and gather business intelligence.

The drawback is that they’re expensive – costing in the hundreds of dollars or more.  Still, you can usually find copies in your library, especially for the local area you live in.  If you’re looking beyond your own town, you probably won’t be able to use the free version in the library.

Get an Inside Connection

Having a buddy on the inside of the phone company was classic approach for TV detectives.  If you recall the Rockford Files or Mannix or any other old private eye show, they were forever pulling over to a pay phone and calling their friend, Ginger or Susie or Maggie, at the telephone company.  The friend would dutifully give them whatever information the PI needed to pursue the case.

Interestingly, this method actually works – even if it’s a little on the shady side.  If you know someone at the phone company, you can probably talk them into helping.

Unfortunately, they probably won’t help you once a week like on the TV shows.  At some point your friend’s better judgment will take over.  You’ll be left with nothing but numbers again.  (Makes you wonder, doesn’t it, just what the detective had that you don’t)

21st Century Answers – The Internet Search Solution

When it comes to finding out who’s hiding behind a phone number, the best way I’ve found is online search.  Yet, search takes time.  And not finding what you want quickly gets very frustrating.

To help, a number of businesses exist to make reverse phone searching quicker and easier.  These businesses have already found the best sources for reverse phone searching. They take you directly to the databases that have the information you need. You can find out names, addresses, and much more, starting with just a phone number.

Some of these Reverse Phone Lookup services are free.  The better ones cost a little. Quality always does, in my experience.

If, in your case, it’s not that important to get accurate information fast, then give the free services a shot.  They’re mostly supported by pay for performance advertising, like Adsense, which doesn’t earn them much. That means the free services rarely have the money to invest either in buying data access or in creating more usable interfaces.

In my case, as a professional, getting quality information quickly is important.  I pay the small fee and get reliable information.

But, even if I didn’t write for a living and were just casually looking up phone numbers from time to time, I’d still go with a paid database service.  The cost is minimal. Often a small, one-time fee covers one to three years or even longer.  If I only looked up a number once or twice a year, it would still be worth it in time saved.

Final Word

As important as it can be, finding out personal information with just a phone number used to be nearly impossible.  Today it can be quick and easy.  I’ve found four approaches that work, but one proved the simplest and most effective. It’s using a quality, reverse-phone-search service online.

In a future article I’ll talk about some of the reasons reverse phone search can be so important in these times.  You might be surprised to hear how it not only can satisfy curiosity, it could even save your life.

Click here to order your Net Detective access today!

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5 Reasons To Avoid Twitter, And Why You Should Not

February 10th, 2009 by lucianmih | No Comments | Filed in Marketing, People, Search, Twitter

If you are not familiar with Twitter then you are probably not up to speed on social networking. But if you have not decided to create a Twitter account, you are definitely not alone. Many internet marketers are wary of using Twitter for a number of reasons. Here are the top 5.

1. Useless Information.

It is true that many Twitter users update their Twitters with completely useless information. Do you really need to know that someone just finished their second cup of coffee or is leaving the office early for a pedicure? The good news is that if you find that you do not particularly enjoy a person’s tweets, you do not have to continue following them. But do not eliminate this option altogether. One of the most important aspects of Web 2.0 is engaging people in all aspects of their lives, even the mundane stuff. Share yourself, welcome the opportunity to let others share themselves with you, and you will go a long way toward building a loyal customer base. People are much more willing to do business with you if they think you have a vested interest in their needs and thoughts.

2. It is a Waste of My Time.

This is probably the most valid reason of all. But the truth is that many marketers generate traffic and leads when potential customers find them through Twitter. When the content you share is relevant and high-quality, you can drive visitors to your website to learn more. Twitter is simply another tool for online marketing, so do not write it off until you have given it a shot to see what it can do for you. Do some of your own research to discover the multitude of business uses for Twitter and you might just be convinced that It is not a total waste of time after all.

3. It is Time-Consuming.

Like any online endeavor, you can blow a lot of valuable time following your streams and entering your own tweets. But you can salvage some of your time by using RSS feeds to follow relevant conversations. Visit http://search.twitter.com and click on the link to Feed for this query. You can then follow the conversations that are most important and relevant to you and your business. If that is not optimal for you, simply discipline yourself to check only once or twice per day.

4. Twitter Does not Cater to My Customers.

Before you decide that your customers are not on Twitter, look for yourself. Go to http://Search.Twitter.com. Search for the name of your company, the name of your product, and keywords relevant to your business. If you are afraid that your market may be too niche-y for Twitter, remember that your job as a marketer is to find people where they are. If there are a few folks on Twitter within your niche, put yourself there as well.

5. It Could Lead to Bad Press.

Whether you are on Twitter or not, people are still talking about you, and you need to know about it. Even if there is poor feedback on Twitter, you need the opportunity to let folks know that you are aware and that you are going to do something about whatever it is that has disappointed them. If you respond quickly to the concerns of your detractors, you will go a long way towards putting out potentially damaging fires. Thoughtful responses make a huge difference in customer attitudes. Remember that if a critical mass of bloggers pick up on negative press and write about it themselves, things can get out of hand very quickly. On the other hand, you can make a great name for yourself if you address customer concerns promptly and tactfully.

There you have it. No more excuses for avoiding Twitter. Even if you think It is the most ridiculous tool ever invented, you still need to check it out for yourself. Give it some time and see what it can do for you. Explore different applications of this valuable tool and let it help you grow your business.

About the Author: Seomul Evans is an internet Marketing expert with a leading Search Engine Optimization specializing in Top Meta Search Engines and a contributor to Moe’s Online marketing Articles.

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5 Reasons To Avoid Twitter, And Why You Should Not

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Twitter Metrics

January 15th, 2009 by lucianmih | No Comments | Filed in Advertisting, Marketing, People, Social Media, Social Networking, Twitter

WHEN I first heard of Twitter, I thought about it much like many of you probably still do. It’s just noise. Who needs to know when someone is having a pizza?

But I’ve had a few epiphanies along the way that have changed my thinking. The general background is on my professional blog with link above, so I won’t repeat it here. I also posted a piece on my Fastcompany.com blog. The bottom line for me is that Twitter is a great news source, a great place for learning about social networking and a great place for tracking general noise in the blogosphere, whether it is about you, your company, your competitors or any topic of general interest. If it is worthwhile, someone will be tweeting about it. And the noise level behind something is a good indicator of general interest.

There are two major things that you can do right now via Twitter from a metrics standpoint. The first is, measure what is happening with your tweets. The second is, what is the noise about your clients?

Using Twinfluence.com, one can get the equivalent of a research run, showing reach, velocity and social capital of leading Tweeters. Barak Obama shows up with the most “reach” (followers and their connections at one degree) at over 15MM. However, he has not sent a message since the famous post-election victory declaration and now the question is whether in fact it was him or his PR machine. Blogger Jason Calacanis is #2 with over 13.5MM “reach”. Due to a factor called retweeting, Twinfluence rationalizes that the followers of followers could quickly be reached through an important message being forwarded or retweeted. In fact, many of the rankings of importance of Tweeters take retweeting into account. (When they retweet you, your ranking goes up).

Some other metric companies include TweetRush, which can give you an idea about the total volume (running about 300k people per day with about 5 Tweets per person); Tweetlists, which shows the most popular “conversations”; TweetVolume, where you can find the volume of a word or brand; TwitterGrader, which measures your rank (happy to say I am in the top 5% based on reach and authority); and Twitterrank, which for some reason does not rank me as high as TwitterGrader. (By the way, my Twitter address is mediadls.)

As mentioned above, another major use of Twitter is following noise about clients and client campaigns, as well as your own company. The easiest way to follow the noise about your client is Twitter search, which is search.twitter.com. Type in your company, a client’s company or a competitor and see what the chatter is. If you click on the advanced text link, you can add keywords to do with a campaign or many other factors. In fact, when the rockets started shooting from Gaza, I searched for “within 150 miles of Gaza.” Very interesting to see the tweets from both Gaza and Tel Aviv on one page. This parsing of Twitter is key to the future here.

In the future, we should be able to measure the metrics of individuals on Twitter and understand how much traffic they are getting, setting up the potential of an Adwords-type situation where the writer and Twitter share in revenue. We should also be able to do the same for individual topics written about, thus facilitating keyword advertising. Technologies for both of these situations exist today; it’s just a matter of Twitter deciding to open up APIs and to determine what this small company of 25 people who have achieved major influence wants to be when they grow up.

David L. Smith is CEO and founder of Mediasmith, an internationally recognized digital media agency with expertise in targeted media planning, execution and measurement.

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Twitter Metrics

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16 Must Have Tools for Twitter Users

December 22nd, 2008 by lucianmih | No Comments | Filed in Advertisting, People, Search, Social Media, Twitter

By Kalena Jordan (c) 2008

Hands up if you’re a Twitterholic. Yes, my hand’s up too. If you love the micro-blogging platform Twitter as much as I do, then keep reading.

I’ve put together a list of the coolest plug-ins and apps designed for us Twitterholics and scored each out of five on the *must have* scale.

Twitter Specific Tools:

1) TwitterFox is a Firefox extension that notifies you of your friends’ status on Twitter and lets you make posts from your browser status bar. It also allows you to switch between multiple Twitter accounts in one click. This is my #1 must-have, deal-breaker, cannot live without Twitter plug-in.

Must Have Scale (5): • • • • •

2) Retweet This is an application designed for use with the Greasemonkey Firefox plug-in. It allows you to append a retweet button to the end of each Twitter entry to encourage your followers to retweet your posts.

Must Have Scale (3): • • •

3) Classify Twitter Users is a script that allows you to classify Twitter users and decide whether they are worth following based on their friends, followers and post ratios. Another Greasemonkey app, it’s a great tool to help you weed out the Twitter spammers and fan boys from the socially healthy.

You can set the script to use your own Twitter user scales (e.g. spammer, social climber, social rock star) or just gather more information about people you are following.

Must Have Scale (4): • • • •

4) TwittAd allows Twitter users to monetize their account by accepting advertising on the background image of their Twitter user profile. You decide the duration and price advertisers pay for exposure and get paid for every hour you serve the ad.

Must Have Scale (2): • •

5) TwitterCounter lets you add a daily updating TwitterCounter to your blog so everybody can see how popular you are by the number of persons following you.

Must Have Scale (3): • • •

6) TweetBeep is just like having Google Alerts for Twitter. It enables you to keep track of conversations that mention you, your products or your company via email. You can even keep track of who’s tweeting your website or blog. It’s a great tool for online reputation management and you don’t even have to be a Twitter user to benefit from it. TweetBeep is another one of my personal *must haves*.

Must Have Scale (4): • • • •

7) Twitter Grader measures the reach and authority of a Twitter user, calculated by the pace of their updates, the completeness of their profile, their number of followers and the network power of those followers.

Twitter Grader displays as a score out of 100 and is consistently updating and adapting as your Twitter account grows. Based on those grades, Twitter Grader lists the Twitter Elite globally and in each country, just like Technorati does for bloggers.

Must Have Scale (3): • • •

8) TwitPic, as the name suggests, is a photo sharing tool for Twitter. When logged in, it allows you to upload photos and post them with comments as a Tweet. It works with a range of Twitter clients such as Twitterific, Twhirl and MobileTwitter and stores all your photos in a single location with updated viewing stats. As far as Twitter image sharing goes, this is king for reliability.

Must Have Scale (5): • • • • •

9) Twuffer is a Twitter buffer. It allows Twitter users to compose a list of future tweets, and schedule their release. Twuffer is ideal for making hourly, daily or monthly announcements or send post-dated birthday greetings or reminders to people about upcoming events. It’s also perfect if you’re the type of person who wants to give the impression that you never sleep.

Must Have Scale (3): • • •


10) Twistori I have a real soft spot for this one. One of the developers is Amy Hoy, one of my favorite speakers from Webstock 2008 and a goth geek to boot. Twistori is a social experiment that taps into the Twitter conversations revolving around life’s central activities: Love, Hate, Think, Believe, Feel, Wish. You can click on any of these emotions and witness a live feed of Tweets that use them. It’s voyeuristic and utterly compelling.

Must Have Scale (4): • • • •

11) iTweet is another interface for Twitter. It has built-in auto-refresh, search and hash tags and features full follow, block and notifications features. Users can view and post user bio, location and URLs inline with their tweets. Another cool feature of iTweet is the ability to Retweet a user post with a single click.

Must Have Scale (3): • • •

12) Twitturly is a service for tracking what URLs people are talking about as they talk about them on Twitter. Similar to Digg, on Twitturly, people “vote” for a URL. The more votes it gets the better it ranks. If it does well enough, it gets promoted to the home page and as the votes increase it gets displayed higher up the home page. Twitturly differs from Digg in that instead of voting on their site, you vote by participating on Twitter. Each time that you send a link to your followers on Twitter, Twitturly takes a note of it and applies your vote to that URL. It’s a great way to follow the loudest global conversations.

Must Have Scale (4): • • • •

13) Mr Tweet is another big favorite of mine. Similar to LinkedIn , it looks through your extended network and makes suggestions to help you build effective relationships on Twitter. For example, which of your followers should you be following in return? Who are the most influential people you should be following? Who are your followers following?

Must Have Scale (5): • • • • •

14) Twitter Search is Twitter’s own built-in and oft-overlooked search tool. You can use it to search for other Twitter users, keywords, hash tag topics and a range of cool shortcut items.

Must Have Scale (4): • • • •

Non Twitter Specific Tools:

15) FlipTitle is, not surprisingly, a tool that enables you to flip text upside down. It’s great for Twitter because sometimes your tweets can get lost in the conversation. Using FlipTitle makes sure they get noticed.

Must Have Scale (2): • •

16) Bit.ly is a very cool URL shortener that also includes click-thru statistics. Why is it perfect for Twitter? Because the length of the converted URLs is generally much shorter than other URL converters like TinyURL. When you are tweeting, space is premium as your whole post can only consist of 140 characters including spacing.

The other neat thing aspect of Bit.ly is that it keeps a record of clicks that your URLs received and where they originated from. It even provides a share button so you can re-tweet your URLs on Twitter or send them to friends on Facebook, Gmail or another email client.

Must Have Scale (5): • • • • •

So there you have it, 16 cool tools to help you indulge your Twitter addiction.

Happy Tweeting!

About The Author
Article by Kalena Jordan, one of the first search engine optimization experts in Australia, who is well known and respected in the industry, particularly in the U.S. As well as running a daily Search Engine Advice Column, Kalena manages Search Engine College – an online training institution offering instructor-led short courses and downloadable self-study courses in Search Engine Optimization and other Search Engine Marketing subjects.

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