Out of the myriad of social media choices, the most simple and intuitive choice would have to be  Twitter. While I admit that figuring it out at the beginning was puzzling for about five minutes, there weren’t problems setting up my account or figuring out how to use the service. Minutes after I joined, I sent my first tweet and waited. Nothing. However, over time, my following started to grow. Then I learned out how to figure out which accounts were spamming me with porn links and others that were bots. That same night I learned out how to change the background, use the privacy settings, and interact with FriendFeed and Facebook. Simple.

I’m no genius, so I tend to assume that when a company begins to engage in social media, they probably have some idea of what they’re doing.

Wrong! On nearly a weekly basis, news of company’s botched foray into social media is posted on sites and blogs in cyberspace. I have to wonder if anyone reads the thousands of blogs written by the thousands of knowledgeable people on how to begin a social media account. It isn’t, after all, rocket science.

Companies begin social media engagement for a variety of reasons – they’re told to by a boss, it’s imperative for their business (ad agencies take note), or they’ve realized that there are several new marketing channels available for their products. It’s also possible that they dive in because they read, or heard, that it was important.

Thus, with little-to-no research or thought, off they go, creating Twitter accounts, Facebook pages, and blogs until it’s so confusing that it’s easier to just scrap everything and start over than to fix the damage that’s been done. Then, there are those well-meaning companies that are just too damn cautious, waiting by the side of the pool until they’re sure it’s safe. Slowly building their courage by watching others, they leap head-first into shallow water… Read the rest of this entry »

According to an emarketer report currently 59% of marketers are using social media, and that number will go up to 89% within 12 months. This is exciting in a myriad of ways, but it also means that more people (marketers mostly) will be claiming to be social media experts.

While there are lots of opinions on the topic, these are the five main qualities that I believe every true social media expert has:

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Facebook Announces Real-Time Search

Just hours following Facebook’s (FB) acquisition of Social Media aggregator FriendFeed, the ever-growing Social Media site announced real-time search for it’s users. The joining of the two entities gives Facebook some leverage to compete with Google and Twitter. In case you’re not familiar with FriendFeed, PC Magazine explained that:

FriendFeed aggregates and publishes updates from sites like Twitter, Yelp, Netflix, Blogger, and Flickr in one stream. It debuted in 2007 and is the brainchild of [Bret] Taylor, Paul Buchheit, Jim Norris, and Sanjeev Singh – all former Google employees who worked on products like Gmail and Google Maps.

Facebook had been testing their new search product for about a month before going live on August 11th. The enhanced search will sort through the 250+ million users and update any search terms that are marked “Post by Everyone” in real-time. Read the rest of this entry »