Think about the conversations you have in the business world.  Which ones are most pleasing and which annoy you?  You know what I am hinting at, those conversations when it is all about why you should buy this product or service.  As humans, we aren’t prone to communicate this way but hold a greater appreciation to personal interaction.

Do not get me wrong, there are times where a sales discussion is valid. Just remember, constant selling will perturb your audience.  Unfortunately this is a point social media users may forget.   The constant promotion of yourself through social networks will quickly get old for your audience.  Just think about your real-life conversations, which do you prefer: sales driven interactions or personal interactions?

If we can’t sell through social media, than what shall we do?!  Take a deep breath, button your britches, and get ready to interact.  As you begin your campaign, take the time to build relationships with your network.  It is called social “networking” for a reason.  Just as you would do at networking mixers, minus the cheese spreads and finger foods, you develop connections with others to grow business awareness and potential.

At a networking mixer, you grab a drink, scope the scene and ease yourself into a group’s conversation.  Standing on the cusp of the group you listen, waiting for something to pique your interests or to provide an opportunity for interjection.  An inquiry is made which relates to your expertise and you pounce at the chance.  Sharing your knowledge and becoming involved in the conversation.

In social media, you take the time to research and locate your audience.  Vigilantly monitoring the conversations occurring, you being to understand what is interesting to your audience.  Perhaps you roam the social media sites looking to answer a few questions or your build your Facebook profile with some cool and interesting content.  Just as you dress to impress for those networking mixers, focus is placed on cleaning up your social sites and website, hoping to entice your visitors to stick around and join your conversation.

Take some time and review your social media updates.  Think about your audience and what they see.  Are you posting things to generate conversation or simply stating things about yourself?  Try the networking approach: listen, ask questions and provide expert advice not promotion.

So, you’re sitting at your desk. You close your eyes and think about a vacation in the sun. Where would you stay? Would you go to the best restaurants? What are the best bars? What if you get there but have no idea what to do? Suddenly, your peaceful day dream has turned into a stressful stream of questions. Fear not, you have Yelp!

Founded in 2004, Yelp is the free, online opinion community that is making waves. Yelpers from across the country can rate, review and find local businesses and services. From restaurants to real estate, Yelp allows users to voice their opinions online for millions to see. Loved a restaurant? Really want to tell someone about it? Yelp it! Going to Miami? Want to find a great, local restaurant? Hit up Yelp and choose from the best reviewed restaurants in town.

Yelp is not only a powerful tool for consumers, but also for businesses. Over 26 million users visited Yelp in December 2009 alone, and it has mobile applications for all major smart phones. Millions of potential customers are just a click away from viewing your business and reading what others have to say about you. This information is both powerful and useful to grow your business.

Getting the Word Out:
Advertising will only get you so far. Each day we are exposed to thousands of messages telling us why one product or business is great. Millions of dollars are spent to “break through the noise” and reach new customers.  Internet marketing is bound by a new set of rules. Credibility is given to opinions not ads. Yelp is a way for your business to reach new customers and establish credibility by getting real reviews from real customers.

Customer Loyalty:
Your best customers can sometimes be your biggest critics. Yelp makes it possible for you to reach out to those customers who may not have had the best experience. Send them a message, ask how you can improve and get them back in the door for a second chance to wow them. Reward customers who left positive reviews. Send them a message and let them know you appreciate them.

Feedback:
Constant improvement through customer feedback can also be a powerful way to grow your business. The most successful businesses know that feedback is important. Businesses can use Yelp to pin point areas where they are successful and areas where they need improvement.

Competitors:
One of the most important ways to be successful in any industry is staying ahead of your competition. Yelp’s user reviews can tell businesses exactly in what areas their competitors are doing well and in which areas their competitors are weak. Capitalize on this information and find your niche. The customer is king, and your competitions’ customer reviews can help make your business even better.

So, today’s the grand opening of your new restaurant. You open the doors and welcome your first customers. They tell you how much they loved the food. You wish they could tell not only you but the whole world how great your restaurant is. Panic sets in. Fear not, you have Yelp!

Like what we have to say? Yelp us!

Community: “A group of people with a common characteristic or interest…”, this is how Webster’s defines a community. This idea is something very crucial to our species. Humans are social beings that build communities. Look around you, you live in a town community, you work in an office community. You belong to local communities and organizations and you enjoy these things. It is almost weird, not to be part of the community. “Outsiders, ewww, gross.” We all want to be part of something. To interact and engage is to be part of the community. The keywords in this phrase being interaction and I.

Social networks are enablers for creating interaction and engagement which are the foundation for community building. Instantaneous information allows individuals to discover those individuals with similar interests. I can go on Facebook and find other people with the taste in music, art, food, weekend activity, you name it, there is probably a group for it. By joining the group I become part of the community and am able to contribute through interactions and engagement.

I can go on Twitter and search for people who tweet about things that I am interested in. Perhaps it’s a cool new restaurant or a popular topic in the news. I am able to share my opinions just like we were having a face to face conversation. I can subscribe to lists and search hash tags to keep up with the conversations. A community has been formed and I am now a contributing member.

Or I can hop on LinkedIn and find like-minded professionals with valuable insights into my profession. Once I find my peers, I can check out the groups that they are in, join those groups and you guessed it, interact and engage the members of said groups. Viola! A new community has been formed.

You may think, well what good is a community if it’s spread half-way around the world. The reality is that, social networks can be vast, but you can focus on the specific by finding those individuals in your already existing, real-life communities. This is where the community building takes off: the ability to find common interests with locals and then interact and engage with the locals. Prior to social networks, I may have to talk to 50 people before I found someone who likes Fugazi, one of the weird bands I listen to. However now, I can easily find the Fugazi fans out there and we can discuss the classics.

As businesses, consider the possibilities. You define your target consumers with specific characteristics. Take those characteristics and define what type of communities they would be found in. Perhaps the characteristics you chose were A.independent, B.young, C.socially conscious and D. empowered. These individuals may be found in online communities centered on politics or local social movements. My point being is that the people are there, they are organized and social networks have enabled the building of your community, whatever your interests.

So with that,Welcome to our community, feel free to share a comment and interact with us; become part of the community!

Becoming a popular, widely-used tool takes time and a lot of public speculation.  Looking back through history,  some of the greatest inventions and innovations initially deemed useless have left significant impact on society.  Things like cell phones, Velcro, and the Internet.  These inventions all faced initial public apprehension and  criticism but have since proven to significantly improve society and its processes.

Twitter falls into this category of being extremely beneficial but facing public apprehension and criticism.   With over 40 million users since its 2006 birth, Twitter is one of the fastest growing forms of communication to date.  The services rapid growth has provided many potential benefits to business as well as personal use.  However, apprehension about using the service is excluding many from the benefits of having a Twitter account.

Branding / Marketing
Twitter has the potential to be an extension of your brand.  Through participation in Twitter conversations, your business has the opportunity to create a positive image in the customers’ minds.  Involvement generates awareness, which in turn, will bring your brand to the forefront of customers’ minds when they are in the marketplace making decisions.  Not only can Twitter build awareness, it also adds a personal level to your company and its brand.   Take a look at this list of companies who utilize Twitter to present a personal side of their business.  Most tweets are not specifically about selling a product or service, but rather focused on the idea and image behind the specific product and service.  Take for example, Starbucks’ Twitter feed which does not attempt to push the Venti Latte but rather captures the aura of Starbucks’ brand and identity.  Creating this identity makes your Twitter page interesting thus making your business interesting.

Communication
Furthermore, Twitter provides an extremely low-cost method of being directly involved with consumers’ communication.  First, Twitter can be used to target the users of your product.  After locating these users, you can become involved in their conversations through answering questions, providing insights or just providing general information about your business.  Take Kogi BBQ, a mobile Korean BBQ Taco Truck based out of Los Angeles, CA., as a an example of an information provider.  Kogi uses Twitter to inform customers of the locations of its various BBQ trucks.  Visit their Twitter page and you will see various tweets about each individual truck’s location and special lunch deals.  With 46,926 followers, Kogi has found an inexpensive way to keep its customers informed and interested in their service through Twitter.

Creating Beneficial Relationships
Creating a brand and successful communication on Twitter can lead to the building of a successful business relationship.  Having the successful business relationship involves a combination of sharing information and handling customer’s inquiries and complaints.  Local cable provider, Comcast, has excelled at using Twitter as a hub for customer service.  Senior Director of Comcast’s National Customer Service, Frank Eliason, uses his Twitter account to field customer complaints, comments and service issues.  By using Twitter, Eliason has made providing cable, a very impersonal service, personal through Twitter.  Check out Comcast’s Twitter page to see Elison in action, handling questions and creating goodwill for Comcast’s customers.

These three examples scratch the surface of how Twitter can be utilized.  With a growing base of users, Twitter’s potential for business grows daily.  Becoming involved with the service now will generate more opportunities for your business in the future.  Take the leap and get involved with the new wave of communication at http://www.twitter.com.  Now is the perfect time to sign up and follow VQC Designs because we are giving away a brand new Acer Netbook!  Visit VQC Designs’ Twitter-Hunt page for more details.

ClickableNow.com – Clickable Now is the twitterverse’s newest and coolest improvement; twitter backgrounds that have clickable links!  Clickable provides a means to place live, active links in your twitter background.  Now your sweet twitter background will actually be clickable and drive traffic to your blog or website and not just look freakin’ awesome.

Building Twitter backgrounds is quite easy with a basic Photoshop knowledge and idea for a background.  Utilizing this nice Photoshop template you can easily create a background and check its compatibility with Twitter Background.  Once you have your background established and uploaded on twitter, go through ClickableNow.com to drag and drop links into your background and begin the driving of traffic to your website! Enjoy the added traffic and make sure to check out our twitter background @vqcdesigns.

Photo courtesy of Luc Legay

Consider a typical networking event where you exchange business cards, meet new people, eat lots of cheese cubes and make contacts.  Social media is the business mixer of the 21st century and Card-ly is your digital business-card for the digital mixer.

Card-ly aggregates your online contact information in one sleek little website or “card.” The card offers an about page, a page for your social media pages, a page for business contact info and a page which streams your updates.  This thing has everything.

Imagine the possibility of placing your Card-Ly URL on your actual business card.  Now your contacts can call you, follow your tweets, facebook you, subscribe to your blog and check out your flickr shots with one, short, simple URL.

Head over to Card-ly to improve your networking opportunities today!  Be sure to check out our business card: http://www.card.ly/vqcdesigns.

P.S. we’ll keep you posted on the cheese cubes moving online as well!

Photo: Courtesy of www.youtwitface.com

In the year 3000, Youtube,Twitter and Facebook will merge to form one super time-wasting website called YouTwitFace.
– Conan O’Brien

Thankfully, we won’t have to wait until the year 3000 to have one ultimate social website.  Using the latest in dashboard widget desktop technology you, the average user, are able to integrate your social media accounts easily and head-ache 991 years before Conan O’Brien predicted YouTwitFace. Albeit an all in one site is non-existent, developers have created other sites and tricks to aide in the integration of your social marketing sales force.  Imagine, posting a blog that instantly links to your facebook account which then fires out tweets announcing the update to your face book which in turn returns to your twitter feed which is available on your blog.   Sound confusing, well it may be a little, but it’s pretty cool eh?

The benefits of having your social marketing force linked together return to the basic principle of why you have these accounts in the first place, to communicate with your stake-holders.  But you may ask, are all three truly necessary?  Yes if you consider the possibility that some people may use only facebook and some only twitter and some may only read your blog.  What I am getting at is having a consistent message across all three platforms provides a more efficient way to provide a consistent message to wider target area rather than if you viewed each platform as its own entity.

To begin creating a true social network marketing force it is best to tackle the process one step at a time.  Begin with a blog (check earlier posts for tips on blogging) about your business and cool related topics dealing with your business.  Consider the blog as the foundation to your social plan.  From the blog you can provide links to your facebook and twitter pages.  Facebook and twitter both provide code for a badge which updates a live stream directly to your blog.

From here head on over to your facebook page and get ready for some fun.  Using the facebook application search look for blogging applications which update your RSS fees directly in facebook.  Two applications I recommend are Blogcast and Social RSS .  Social RSS allows you to input 5 RSS feeds to have updated on your page, this allows you to have your blog and twitter updates directly imported to your facebook page.  Twitter applications are also available which allow you to post to twitter directly from facebook.  Still with  me?

So what about your Tweets?   Well, the best way to keep up with the constant flow in the twitterverse is to invest in one of the free desktop modules like Tweetdeck or Seesmic.  These programs allow you to keep tabs on multiple twitter feeds as well as facebook.  From here you can tell the world what your posting on your blog in second by second updates.  Think of these programs as an instant message service for your social media marketing force.

You may dizzied by all these connected social media marketing knowledge but don’t be intimidated, break it down step by step and remember the advantages of social media.  Being completely integrated will save you time and make your message more available to a wider audience at the best price of all: FREE.

Remember the great inventors you learned about in school: Alexander G. Bell, Thomas Edison, and Benjamin Franklin.  Ever wonder what they would do in today’s age and what they would post on facebook?  Well , let’s imagine Alexander Graham Bell was born in 1980: he would probably be spending his days developing facebook applications to call people with VoIP.  Or maybe Benjamin Franklin would have developed a Facebook App entitled “Fly the kite, but don’t get struck.”  What I am getting at is that online applications, particularly ones in facebook, are advancing the internet and its user-ability in the same fashion as inventors of years past.  For this installment of our series on facebook we’ll look at how applications are mobilizing the facebook medium for e-commerce and other fun stuff.

In the not so distant past, facebook developed the facebook platform to allow developers to do what they do best, develop.  At present, thousands of applications exist for the facebook platform ranging from fun things like graffiti and — one of my personal favorites  — rocketman to viable business practical applications.  With many developers, novice to elite, building applications daily, there exists a very large pool to choose from.  If by chance you are unable to find an application to choose from, you also have the option to develop your own.  The facebook developer’s page is an excellent source for the individual willing to get down and dirty with some code.

Another alternative to add some extra “flair” to your page is to use the static FBML application.  Static FBML (facebook mark-up language) allows you to use code to create unique tabs and boxes within your facebook page.  Within these unique boxes and tabs the possibilities are endless to create unique pages to promote and improve your business via facebook.  As you can see from these examples below, static FBML allows your facebook page to become an extension of your business:

Threadless T-Shirts – Threadless utilized the Static FBML to create a customized e-commerce portal for their killer t-shirts.

RED – RED used Static FBML to create a registration page for users to join their cause.

Facebook applications have potential to be inexpensive, efficient ways to generate ROI.  I wish you luck in your facebook application quest.  Next week we’ll be discussing more social media with integration of Twitter and Facebook.

Continuing our series on facebook, our next feature will concern the articulate art of wall posts and searching for friends. The wall originated in facebook as the main form of communication between friends. Typical wall exchanges in the early stages of facebook consisted of inside jokes and college students’ weak attempts to impress females. Now in the newer more improved facebook, the wall serves as an advanced multi-media communication tool.

The wall, also known as the “news-feed”, displays the updates to your profile in a column style fashion, very similar to posts in a forum. The news-feed has many features to enhance your facebook profile.

Text-Based Updates: The facebook equivalent to tweets, these form the basis for the wall and allow you to share your thoughts with the subscribers to your news feed. Friends have the capability to comment and express their fondness of these posts allowing them to take part in your daily business and let you know their thoughts on the matter.

Link-Posts: So you are taking a quick break from work and surfing your favorite web pages. You find an interesting article on digg.com and think “my friends HAVE to read this!” With facebook’s wall you can post the link, accompanied by a thumbnail and description to your wall. This will show up on your subscribers’ pages. Furthermore, you could get really motivated and go to specific profiles and share the link with individuals.

Multi-Media Updates: A real possibility for business is the new ability to post picture and video to their news-feed. Similar to the link, these posts can be accompanied by text. Adding creative content provides endless avenues for promotion of your business. A few quick ideas that come to mind are showing examples of your work alongside press releases, short web-commercials for promotion, or perhaps something outrageous to attract attention.

Privacy Settings: Of course you may want to be selective in who sees your posts. Utilizing the “friends lists” feature allows to organize your friends into groups based on location, relationship, or whatever you prefer. This is possible in the friends application. Using these lists allows you to filter the visibility of your posts which in turn may save you some face.

Importing From Other Sites: In these exciting days of Web2.0/Social Media Revolution/ Ubiquitous Internet, a lot of our time is spent updating sites, posting information, and of course, checking out other peoples’ similar activities. Now with the news-feed you are able to link to other Web2.0 sites and have those updates posted in your news-feed. This makes the sharing of information even easier because facebook does the work for you!

Learn to utilize the wall/news-feed to keep in touch with friends and perhaps attract some new ones in the process. Enjoy your updates and posts until next week when we delve into the world of facebook applications.

http://londoncoder.files.wordpress.com/2007/12/iceberg.jpg

Perhaps the biggest thing since Google, Facebook is a social epidemic that began on college campuses as a way for students to “connect.”  Facebook is now 150 million users strong in 170 countries represented by 35 languages and growing strong (FB grew 85% in 2008).  Within the past year facebook has targeted the private sector for its newest pool of users.  With the new service titled “pages”, which provides a presence for an organization, product, or public personality in the realm of facebook.  For a business, this presents many possibilities, possibilities that are cost effective and possibly addicting.  A series of facebook blog posts ensues covering the Facebook Revolution. Let’s get started on getting started.

Before heading over to facebook you should consider what is achievable through an account on facebook:

• Connecting With Customers – Facebook brings B2C communication to a new level of direct communication.  Reviews can be written, discussions started, and comments made about your business.  Communication in facebook is mutual, fun and comfortable for both parties.

• Informing Customers – “Fans”, the facebook equivalent to customers, to your page will receive updates whenever you post them.  Perhaps your business now offers a new product line; post it on facebook and inform your “fans” instantaneously.

• Brand Management - Your facebook page is an extension of your brand.  By adding information, photos, updates, videos, and applications your page acts as the digital version of your brand which users may interact with.  Facebook personifies your brand and allows extra value to be attached to your brand.

• Brand Awareness - Creating a business account allows other users of facebook to subscribe to your page as a “fan.”  Gaining fans is the facebook equivalent to creating brand awareness.  A bonus to generating fans is that once someone becomes a fan, a link to your page is then displayed on their page; viral campaign anyone???

These 4 things are just the tip of the benefits-facebook-provides-iceberg.  Social media is a young and undiscovered business phenomenon with its full potential yet to be realized.  You may feel overwhelmed by the size of facebook at first, but you must remember to start small and build your page’s elements one by one. Follow this link to start a page for your business.  Complete the forms and be prepared for your journey into facebook.

Stay tuned as we continue our facebook journey next with the wall and finding friends!