On Monday, Google opened up Google+ and allowed companies and brands to create corporate pages.

If you haven’t done it already, I encourage you to create a page for your organization, company, brand or initiative by going to the Google+ Create Page.

Even if you don’t know how or what you’re going to do on this new social media platform, I think you need to be on it because:

• Google+ has 40 million subscribers and that number is growing fast. It’s nothing compared to Facebook’s 800 million subscribers, sure, but 40 million is still a big number.
• Google+ users tend to be early adopters. According to Target Marketing, in the first few months of the network’s presence, the users were mostly young men, a third of users were between 25 and 34 years old and 59 percent of all visitors were male. This will surely change over time.
• Just as there isn’t one TV network or channel that dominates anymore, chances are your organization’s target audiences are on various social networks so you probably need a presence on all the major platforms.
• Google likes to drive traffic to its web properties, like YouTube and Blogger, so having a corporate presence on Google+ will be good for search engine optimization.
• Google likes to integrate its offerings, so there will surely be really neat tools to tie together Google+ with Google Analytics, Google search, AdWords, Google Reader, Gmail, etc. For example, there’s already a way to +1 an article in Google reader. +1 is Google’s version of the Facebook “like.” I’m especially excited about Ripples, which is an interactive graphic of the public shares of any public post on Google+ to show you how a post has rippled through the network and help you discover new and interesting people to follow.

My dilemma right now is that I don’t know how the Matrix Group Google+ page will be the same and different from our presence on Facebook. If you’ve ever heard me speak or if you follow this blog closely, you know that I preach a layered approach to social media where each platform has a different purpose and content strategy. There is overlap to be sure, but it’s best to have a different strategy for each platform to encourage your target audiences to follow you in multiple ways.

As your marketing team ponders this same question of market positioning for your Google+ page, be sure to create your page early to reserve the name and have a presence for the early users who will be looking for you.

Have you created your company’s Google+ page? How will you be using it to connect with your customers, prospects or members?

This totally makes sense to me. When I find something new, cool, interesting, amazing or whatever, I immediately post it to Facebook and Twitter (increasingly, Google + as well, but more on that in a future blog post).  And I rely on my network of friends, co-workers, clients and business colleagues to find out about other new, cool, interesting and amazing things.

So I got to thinking. If social sharing is an important means by which we (again, the collective “we”) learn about new sites, we can’t and shouldn’t leave this sharing to chance. Sure, most websites now have a ShareThis widget, but is this enough? I say no. I think every organization needs a social sharing strategy that includes the following:

• What you want people to share. Do you want visitors to share your home page? Individual articles? Donation pages?
• How you want people to share. Do you want visitors to send an e-mail, post to their social networks, save to their social bookmarking pages, all of the above?
• Regular review of analytics to find out what and how people are sharing links on your site. Be sure to review your usage reports, ShareThis account and other reports to find out what’s popular, how people are sharing, and learn why certaini articles or posts generate activity.
• Design and CSS guidelines that make your site shareable. For example, if you share a link on Facebook, Facebook automatically indexes the images and allows you to cycle through the images and select one to include with the link. If your organization logo is set up as a background image in your CSS or the logo is not whole, your logo can’t be included in the link.
• Calls to action to encourage sharing. While many of us will share our favorite links on our own, other won’t unless prompted, so I think it’s important to have calls to action to encourage sharing. It’s also a good idea to test calls to action on a regular basis to find out which calls to action work best.

The design and front-end team at Matrix Group has developed a set of guidelines for setting up web pages so that titles are complete and the proper images are included in links. Be sure to test the shareability of your site on a regular basis and address issues with your web design or maintenance team.

How about you?  What’s your platform of choice for sharing links?

But what’s even cooler about social bookmarking is that my bookmarks are public (unless I mark specific links private, which I do when they’re links to sites related to my children or my friends), which means I can easily share my bookmarks with others. For example, I use the RSS feed from my Delicious account (www.delicious.com/jmpineda) to share my bookmarks on this blog (check the bottom, right column), and I encourage my staff to access my bookmarks when they’re looking for Internet statistics or case studies.

Finally, I love that I can create a taxonomy for my bookmarks. I’ve carefully created a list of categories that I’m interested in and whenever I bookmark a link, I associate that link with one or more categories. For example, I categorized an article on optimizing your Facebook page for search engines under the tags of Facebook and SEO. I have 148 tags and I bookmark sites nearly daily.

So I was very happy to learn that social bookmarking of choice, Delicious, which had been bought by Yahoo! several years ago and then put on the block recently, had been purchased by the founders of YouTube. You see, I started my social bookmarking life on a platform called Magnolia. I loved Magnolia and still think the user interface is better than that of Delicious, but January 2009, Magnolia suffered a huge data loss and I nearly lost all of my bookmarks. So I switched over to Delicious and I never looked back. If Delicious had gone under (which was a possibility if no buyer were found), I could have exported my bookmarks, but it’s always hard switching platforms and getting used to a new interface.

If you haven’t yet discovered social bookmarking, I encourage you to give it a try. Not only are my bookmarks easily accessible, I have found amazing resources by checking Delicious’ top links and exploring the bookmarks of other people. It’s fascinating when thousands of other people have bookmarked your same links and equally interesting when you’re the first person to save a bookmark.

How about you? Are you a social bookmarker? What’s your platform of choice?

According to Facebook, “Top News shows popular stories from your favorite friends and Pages, many of which have gained lots of attention since the last time you checked.” What this really means is that Top News shows the posts from the people and company page that you interact with the most. For example, I tend to “like” and comment on the updates from my friend Eileen, the photos from my brother Alex and articles from PBS. Since I interact with these Facebook account regularly, their posts are pretty much guaranteed to be in my Top News stream, which, by the way, is the default view.

Top News also displays updates by relevance, based on an algorithm. If a post is getting a lot of comments, it will probably show up at the top of your stream, even if the original post is not the most recent in your stream.

Most Recent “shows updates from as many as 250 friends and Facebook Pages.” This is a more traditional stream because it shows all posts, in chronological order, unless you’ve hidden posts from a specific person or company. If you haven’t checked out Most Recent recently, click on it now and you’ll see posts from a bunch of people and companies you thought weren’t posting. If you start interacting with some of these accounts more, you’ll start to see them in your Top News stream.

What does this mean for marketers?

It means that it’s absolutely not enough to have fans or followers. Your company’s Facebook page can have a million followers but unless they’re liking and commenting, your posts won’t show up in their Top News, which means they’re likely not getting much attention. On the flip side, once you get followers to interact with you more regularly, your posts will show up in Top News, which will further encourage them to like and comment.

Remember, the key to Facebook success is to get your followers to interact with you regularly. I’ll blog in the future about ways to encourage interactions. And oh yeah, I’m doing a webinar next Wednesday, May 18, 11am Eastern on Social Media Marketing and Customer Engagement. Hope you can join me.

BTW, you can edit your stream options by clicking on Edit Options at the bottom of your News streams.

What do you think of Top News vs. Most Recent? Which stream do you prefer?

I did it! I finally became a Mayor on Foursquare!

Foursquare crowns you Mayor of a location when you’ve checked in from that location more than anyone else. So I decided to make it a personal quest to become Mayor of Rustico, a restaurant in Alexandria that I enjoy and visit fairly regularly. So for the past couple of months, I scheduled all of my lunch meetings at Rustico, and even took my family there a couple of times. About ten days ago, I finally unseated the current Mayor to become Mayor. Woo hoo!

But here’s the rub: aside from getting a congratulations message from Foursquare and a crown in my profile, being Mayor gave me nothing. I told my waitress when I became Mayor and she looked at me like I was nuts. Ditto the manager. Where other venues offer Mayors something special, I didn’t even get a thank you for promoting the resturant to my Foursquare and Twitter followers for the past few months.  Many establishments, especially restaurants now offer “specials” to Mayors and people who check in xx number of times; it’s a great way to encourage people to come, to foster loyalty and spread the word about your company. When a friend called to invite my family to dinner at Rustico, he asked if being Mayor made it easier to get a reservation and I just snorted. Ha! I wish! Not even a free soda!

So I began to wonder if the folks at Rustico are even aware of Foursquare, Foursquare specials, and Mayors! I visited the Rustico website; no familiar links to Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, etc. I did manage to find Rustico on Twitter, but the page is not customized, there’s not even a description! Their Facebook page has 3 fans and no status updates. Okay, so it’s looking like Rustico hasn’t yet developed a solid social networking plan.

I don’t believe every business should be on the Web and every social networking platform; it’s just not realistic, practical or even necessary. What I do believe, however, is that every business should have a listening strategy so that they can know if and when their business is being mentioned or discussed in a significant way on specific platforms. Does Rustico even know that hundreds of people are “checking in” to Rustico on Foursquare and Facebook places each week? Gosh, it takes just minutes to set up Google Alerts and Twitter searches.

Imagine this: you set-up a Google alert so you’re notified when your business is mentioned on the Web. You notice lots of mentions on a specific social network. You check it out, learn more, maybe invest in ads or specials. Foursquare, for example, has a primer for businesses on how to use Foursquare to encourage more business.

As for me, I recently lost the title of Mayor of Rustico but I’m not upset. I’m gunning for Mayor of another restaurant that I KNOW offers specials to its Mayors.

How about you? Are you on Foursquare? Have you managed to become Mayor? Did you get anything special for it?

We’re taking the money we’re saving by not mailing printed cards to our entire list and once again donating it to charity. This year, however, we’re trying to increase the amount that we give away.  For every new Facebook fan who “likes” our fan page (the deadline is December 14), we’re adding $10 to the charity pot.

Next, we’re asking our entire network of clients, partners, vendors and supporters to tell us how to give away the money.  I polled the staff and asked for recommendations for charities they thought were worthy of a gift.  We came up with the following organizations:

• Back On Your Feet
• Capital Area Food Bank
• Doorways for Women and Families
• Goodwill of Greater Washington
• John L. Gildner Regional Institute for Children and Adolescents
• The Reading Connection
• The Washington Animal Rescue League
• WEAVE

In our Facebook page, we set up a Poll that allows fans to vote for their favorite charity from the list above. So far, we’ve gained over 100 new Facebook fans and nearly two hundred people have voted.

I like this year’s holiday campaign because we’re able to increase the amount of our donation this year, we gain new fans, and we are able to showcase effective and well managed charities in the DC area. It’s also been fun to promote this holiday campaign to our house e-mail list, on our social media pages, and to our network of friends and supporters.

Here’s how you can help:

• “Like” our Facebook fan page at http://www.facebook.com/MatrixGroup
• Vote in our poll
• Spread the word about the campaign to your network of colleagues, friends and family

We’ve got a goal of $5,000.  Help us support some terrific charities this holiday season!

P.S. In case you’re wondering, we decided to still mail printed cards to our key client contacts because we were worried about some clients and partners not receiving the e-card because of a firewall or anti-spam software. In the end, we liked the idea of clients receiving something tangible from us and the ability to sign and personalize cards.  But instead of mailing nearly 1,000 cards, we’re mailing fewer than 200 cards.

I was researching an organization last week and visited their website, blog and social media pages.

So did I decide to “follow” the organization on Twitter and “like” them on Facebook?  Absolutely not. Since I had already subscribed to the blog RSS feed, I didn’t feel compelled to follow them on Twitter and Facebook.  Why add clutter to my social media streams with information I can already get elsewhere?

I know it’s tempting to set-up pages on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and other social media platforms and populate them with posts from your blog or press room.  We’re all busy and most communications and marketing departments are stretched thin.  But posting the same information across platforms isn’t doing your organization any good. Why?

• By posting headlines that meet the least common denominator across platforms (probably Twitter, with its 140 character limit), you miss out on functionality offered by the other platforms.  For example, Facebook lets you post longer updates, upload photos and videos, include links, host discussions, etc.
• You don’t give your target audiences a reason to follow or fan you across platforms.  Just imagine this.  If you post complementary but different content across platforms, your clients, prospects and supporters might just follow you on multiple platforms, giving your company an incredible voice with those individuals.
• If you’re posting headlines from your news room, you’re not offering people the authentic, personal voice we’ve come to expect on the social media pages.

Here’s what we do at Matrix Group:

• Our website showcases our products, services, clients, portfolio, news and webinars.
• This blog, which is authored by me, Joanna, the CEO, features my thoughts and commentary on social media, marketing, communications, strategy, customer service, trends and gadgets.  This blog DOES feature website launches at the bottom of each page.
• Our Twitter page showcases our work and clients, but the majority of the tweets are about industry news, trends, how-to articles, and case studies.  Twitter will tell you who we are and what we’re reading.  We’re pretty chatty on Twitter; we post updates multiple times a day.
• Our Facebook page also showcases our work and clients, but we also post photos and updates about happenings in the company, including trainings, parties, fun events, etc.  Facebook will tell you a lot about who we are as a company and our culture.  For example, our staff pumpkin carving contest was featured on our Facebook page.  We’re less chatty on Facebook, just updating a few times a week.
• Our Flickr page is home to our photo library of company events, while our Facebook page has the “best of” photos.
• Our YouTube channel is a work in progress and will soon feature short interviews with senior staff about their areas of expertise, including branding, the user experience, software development and security.

As you can see, our various pages are all designed to showcase our expertise, clients and work but the user experience on each platform has been carefully crafted to take advantage of that platform’s capabilities.  And while the website is clearly a marketing channel for the company, we’re not very sales-y on our social media pages, focusing instead on posting useful and interesting links.

How about you?  How are you creating an integrated use experience across your company’s social media pages?  What’s working for you?

A recent article in Ad Age explores how some of the top consumer brands have Facebook pages with a fan base and interactions that far outstrip that of their official Web sites. Starbucks has 12.9M fans; Coke has nearly 11M fans; Oreo has 8.9M fans.  Of the companies in the article, only Starbucks has steadily increasing Web traffic.

All of this got me thinking:  What happens when an organization’s blog, Facebook, Twitter or other social media page gets more traffic than the official Web site? Is this the ultimate goal for marketers?  Is traffic on a social media site worth as much as traffic on a company Web site?  Does this increased traffic ultimately lead to more customers and sales?

I have clients who worry about redirecting traffic to social media pages, for fear of losing control over the conversations, not owning the Web property, or that the interactions are not quite official enough.  Others hold their social media stats in the highest regard.  Most of us  wonder what it really means when somebody chooses to “like” our fan pages.

How to make sense of all this?  Here are some thoughts:

• If your Facebook page is getting increased traffic and interactions, while traffic on your regular Web site is on the decline, ask yourself, “What is it about my Facebook page that’s working?  What’s making people “like” us, click through to articles and comment?  What are the lessons for content and opportunities for interaction on our official Web site?”
• Your goal should be to have your Web site, Facebook page, Twitter page, blog, e-mail campaigns, microsites, etc., all be part of an integrated strategy where each Web property is complementing the others and encouraging cross traffic.
• Ultimately, the goal should be conversions, whether that means more sales, more subscribers, more members or more donations.  Your goals should never be about traffic on specific platforms; that’s just a tactic.
• You need a way to track the effectiveness of followers, likes, clicks and fans across the different platforms.  Use tracking codes, cookies and marketing codes to determine which platforms are really helping your business to thrive.

Getting back to Matrix Group, here’s what we’ve learned:

• Traffic to our Web site has not declined.  On the contrary, traffic has increased as we have expanded our social media efforts.
• Our most valuable interactions still come from the Web site, where visitors get a chance to look at our work AND, most importantly, make a decision to call or e-mail us for more information or request a proposal.  We get several, high quality leads from our Request Information form every week!
• Our social media pages have proven to be valuable outlets for showcasing our work, sharing tips and resources with a wider audience, and demonstrating our expertise.
• The social media pages have also been a terrific way for clients, prospects and job applicants to make inquiries, give us feedback and comment on our work.

How about you?  What trends are you seeing across your Web and social media pages?  How do you value fans and interactions on Facebook and other social media sites?

Since joining CitizenEffect’s Gulf fact-finding mission trip last month (also called the #CitizenGulf project), it’s been a non-stop learning curve on my end, plus tough emotional processing.

The social media factor and the #CitizenGulf fact-finding trip

CitizenEffect, a nonprofit that helps anyone online be a citizen philanthropist, formed the social media team seven weeks ago to personally visit the Gulf, meet with fishing families impacted by the oil spill, and figure out ways to help them. Local nonprofits in Louisiana met with us too, clarifying perspective and the needs of parishes there. We published content (audio, video, photo essays, written commentary) via CNN’s iReports, Twitter, Posterous, Live Earth’s blog, and more. It was difficult to see such hardship up close. But what helped get beyond the heavy emotional response was a decision made by CitizenEffect after the trip:

A CitizenGulf National Day of Action on August 25th (and you)

You, your friends, and communities can be involved. What’s the goal on 8/25th? To help create a more sustainable future for Gulf fishing families by investing in education. All funds raised on the National Day of Action (less processing fees) will go to the project’s charity partner, Catholic Charities of New Orleans, who will then administer an area children’s educational program.

What’s also exciting is how organizations – online and offline – are offering their support

Social Media Club chapters across the country are organizing meetups to occur on 08/25th — which you can attend (or you can certainly form your own meetup too). In the spirit of Louisiana and many Gulf communities, we suggest that meetups include great music (stereo or live!,) like blues, jazz, or Zydeco. Gulf Coast Benefit, which had fantastic success with a national Gulf awareness and fundraising campaign in early July, is a lead supporter of the CitizenGulf project as well. Enthusiastic partnerships both offline and online in the social space have been incredible.

Would you join us to help children of Gulf fishing families? (lots of different options exist)

• In DC? You can RSVP here for the local SMC chapter event on 08/25th.
• In another city? RSVPs are open in many cities at event pages already set-up.
• Want to donate instead?
• Or you can vote for a PepsiRefresh project that will help Gulf communities.

The oil spill presented a huge challenge which I know, for one, can feel daunting when considering solutions. Thanks to you for listening, to Matrix Group for the chance to share here, and to all those helping Gulf families imagine and hope for a better life beyond the oil spill.

Jill Foster helps entrepreneurs, creatives, and community builders be distinct communicators online through social media and offline through public speech with her company Live Your Talk. She has particular expertise with women in leadership communities and works in the Washington, DC area. Jill was the founding editor of WomenGrowBusiness.com and named by ForbesWoman as one of 30 women entrepreneurs to follow on Twitter. In 2009, she won the Social Citizen Award on how technology could help communities in Washington, DC.

Me (Joanna): I can’t predict the future, but I think Facebook and YouTube will stick around for a while.  Not sure about the smaller networks, especially those without solid revenue models.
Participant: But I’ve heard that the younger audiences are leaving Facebook now that their parents are signing up.
Me: Yes, I’ve read that as well, but Facebook has really tipped in terms of popularity, all the research shows that the older audiences don’t leave a social network once their friends have joined and they’ve made a commitment to the site, and Facebook as a platform for all kinds of third-party applications is really compelling.

But then I got to thinking.  Does it really matter if Facebook survives?  Does it really matter which of the social networks survives?

If you’re hesitating about investing in a social media strategy because you’re wondering which of the platforms will survive, I think you’re worried about the wrong issue.  Here’s why:

• Social media isn’t just a fad. Social networks have fundamentally changed how we communicate, connect and market.  Social networks have “tipped;” there is now a critical mass of people on social networks.  You can’t ignore the numbers.
• In the end, it doesn’t matter which social network survives because there are now so many mainstream and niche social networks, it’s almost pointless to worry about which ones will make it.  Remember when we thought no other search engine could threaten Yahoo!’s primacy?
• Your social media strategy probably needs to include having a presence on multiple networks, depending on where your target audiences are AND to ensure good coverage and reach for your marketing messages.

Here’s what I think IS important:

• Your organization needs to develop a core competency in using social networks to reach your current and new audiences.
• Your organization must be nimble enough to sniff out opportunities represented by upcoming sites and networks.
• Your usage reports should tell you which sites and networks are up and coming and worth investing in.
• Your communication team needs to be quick to understand the capabilities of new social networks and adapt your message and strategy to each site.

Once and when you DO develop this core competency, it won’t matter IF Facebook will survive.  The question will become: What’s next?

What do you think?  How is your organization developing competency in using social media to meet your goals?  What up and coming social media sites are you exploring?

FourSquare is a location-based social network. The idea is that you share your location with your friends and followers by “checking into” locations.  For example, every time I go to a restaurant, I pull up the FourSquare app on my phone, let the app determine my GPS coordinates and show me possible options.  I can select one of the venues select and “check-in” or add a new venue.  When I check in, I can write a little message and share out my update on Facebook and/or Twitter.

Last Saturday, I checked into four locations, including three restaurants and I got hilarious comments from friends about how all I did on Saturday was eat!

Here’s what I’m enjoying about FourSquare:

• I don’t feel compelled to check in multiple times a day, every day. My check-ins are usually to restaurants, but increasingly, I’m checking into events.  Tonight, I checked into the DCWW Content Strategy Workshop held at the Matrix Group office.  I check in only a few times a week, if at all.
• I love the gaming aspect of FourSquare.  People who have the most check-ins at a specific get a Mayor badge.  So far, I’ve earned a Newbie badge and an Explorer badge.  I’m hoping to become Mayor of one of my favorite restaurants sometime soon!
• It’s fun to see where my friends are and what they’re doing.
• FourSquare is not nearly as chatty as Twitter and Facebook.
• I have learned about so many great, local businesses through FourSquare!
• Some enterprising retailers are rewarding frequent customers with discount coupons and other goodies.  The retailers are glad for the patronage AND the free advertising from the check-ins!

FourSquare has its detractors, of course.

• Some critics say FourSquare is just another tool for sharing TMI (too much information). Yep, I agree, some people should Just Say No to checking in everywhere they go.  Seriously, do you need to check at Planned Parenthood or the strip club?
• On a more serious note, there are legitimate privacy and security concerns about constantly broadcasting where you are and where you are not. The Web site PleaseRobMe.com used takes FourSquare and Twitter feeds and broadcast location updates of thousands of people.  The founders of PleaseRobMe say the public is now paying attention and they’re now trying to figure out whether to continue the service.

Me? I only update during the day when I’m normally at work and yes, I have an alarm system at home that is always on when nobody is home.  And I never, ever update Twitter, Facebook or FourSquare and broadcast that I’m going to be away for an extended period of time.

As of a couple of days ago (June 22) TechCrunch reported that FourSquare had 1.7 M users and that it had added 100,000 users in the last 10 days.

How about you?  Are you on FourSquare?  What do YOU think about the new location-based social networks?

On December 9, Facebook rolled out new privacy options to its 350 million users.

• You have always been able to limit what information from your profile was public and private.  But now, Facebook lets you control access to every status update, link, photo, video, etc.
• When controlling access, you can grant access to different people or groups: Everyone (as in the world), All Friends, Friends of Friends, and specific friends or lists of friends, or deny access/hide from specific friends of lists of friends.
• Facebook eliminated regional networks, which allowed users to unwittingly share their profiles to entire cities, states, countries, etc.

Advocates for the new privacy changes praised the simplified settings and the increased control over every single post.  Critics, however, are livid over the fact that the default option was to make nearly everything on a person’s profile available to Everyone (that is, until users edited their settings and posts) and the fact that some information is strictly public and can’t be edited.  For example, you can no longer limit who can see your list of friends and your public profile always shows the Facebook pages that you are a fan of.  I know I was ticked off that even though I edited my privacy settings so that my photo albums are globally only available to Friends, Facebook made my existing photo albums publicly available until I edited each one manually.

If the new privacy settings and changes confuse you, here are my recommendations:

• Review your Privacy Settings by clicking on Settings, then Privacy Settings in the top right menu. Ignore Facebook’s Guide to Privacy and privacy recommendations and set-up your settings they way you like.  Facebook, for example, recommends that “Everyone be able to see information that will make it easier for friends to find, identify and learn about you. This includes basic information like your About Me description, Family and Relationships, Work and Education Info, and Website, as well as posts that you create, like photo albums and status updates.”  For me, this is way too much information for the public to see.
• Create lists within your Friends list. To do this, click on Friends in the top menu, then click on Friends under Lists in the left menu.  At the top of the page, you’ll see an option for Create New List.  You’ll be able to name your new list then select the friends who should be on that list.  For example, I have created lists for Family, Matrix Group staff, Close Friends, Business Associates, etc.  Create lists that make sense to you and think in terms of this question: “When posting updates, links, photos and videos, how would you like to group your FB friends so that you can easily share information with the right people?”  For example, I might share a photo album of my son just with Family and Close Friends but not Business Associates.
• Be mindful of the lock icon when posting anything on Facebook. Click on the little padlock anytime you post anything and keep in mind that Facebook defaults aren’t always going to match your privacy settings.  For example, I have set-up my status updates and photo albums to only be available to Friends.  When I post an update or link, the default is set properly to Only Friends, but when I create a photo album, the default is still Everyone.  Grrrr…..
• Check your public profile on a regular basis and don’t rely on the Facebook preview. I can preview my public profile (or the profile that anyone can access even if they are not logged into Facebook or what the search engines can crawl) from different sections of Facebook and they don’t always match; this could be a legacy of the old settings and Facebook will synchronize them up sometime soon.  But I also know that when you’re logged into Facebook, you get a different view of Facebook.  So I log out of Facebook and access my profile: http://www.facebook.com/jmpineda on a regular basis and monitor what’s available to the world.  I also ask friends who are not my FB friends to check out my profile and verify what is available.

If you want to learn more about the new Facebook privacy changes, here are some good articles:

• Facebook’s Guide to Privacy
• PC World announces the Facebook privacy changes
• The Electronic Frontier Foundation on the good, the bad and the ugly of the new changes; this one is absolutely worth a read
• PC World on how to protect your privacy on Facebook
• MSNBC on why you should check your privacy settings now; it appears that Mark Zuckerberg himself left some photo albums available to Everyone for a period of time, giving the world a peek into his private life; oops!

How about you?  What do you think of the new privacy changes?  Have you reviewed and tweaked your privacy settings?  What do you like about the new changes?  What’s making you crazy?

So how do you customize your Twitter profile page to maximize followers? Here are my top tips:

• Make sure you fill out your name so it’s searchable. This sounds so simple, but consider this:  The Humane Society of the United States is @humanesociety, but the profile name is listed as HSUS.  If you use the Find People search on Twitter and type Humane Society, the HSUS page does not come up because the Twitter search only searches the Name field, NOT the username.  A better name would have been Humane Society of the US.
• Fill out the Bio and Web site fields. This is a perfect opportunity to link your Twitter page to your company Web site or blog AND provide a short elevator speech.  The bio and URL add perspective and credibility.  You can be formal, you can be clever, or you can be funny in the bio field.  Check out other bios for good ideas.  I like @pmohara and @neagle.  In addition, I hear from many, many people that if someone has not provided a bio or URL, they are much less likely to follow that person.
• Upload a thumbnail photo, image or logo. If you’re tweeting as a person, your followers can associate your tweets with a photo.  If you’re tweeting as a company, you get another opportunity to display your logo on your followers’ tweet streams.
• If you are in the Web, design, marketing, tech or social media business, then I highly recommend uploading a custom background. Otherwise, use one of the backgrounds available in the Twitter gallery to make your page stand out.  The background is another opportunity to provide information about your organizaton, list your services and passions, and have a call to action/contact information.  I love @adamplitt,   @alexslemonade, and @discover_police.

How about you?   What are some of your favorite Twitter pages?  Do you agree that you are less likely to follow someone if they don’t have the name, Web site and bio fields filled in?

Facebook says that the average user has 130 friends but I know people who have hundreds, even thousands of friends.  500 friends?  I can’t imagine many people who have that many friends with whom they would willingly share personal updates, photos, even their full birthday.  So I asked around and got some good insight into the friending and unfriending business.  These findings don’t represent a large group, just my friends! :-)

• There is a group of Facebook users who will accept friend requests from anyone and who actively try to expand their friend network.
• There is another group that views Facebook as a place where they can communicate freely so they only connect with true friends.  For these folks, Facebook is a place for personal communications, often about self, family, kids, friends.
• There was a general consensus that the new Facebook homepage, which splits updates between News Feed and View Live Feed, makes it harder to see updates from your entire network of friends, which makes it more challenging to have a large network.
• Many people have been cleaning up their lists on Facebook, Twitter, and other social network recently.  They’re actively unfriending people so they can manage the communications and flood of updates.
• Even if  a person has a large network on a platform like Facebook, they are more than likely only interacting with a small subset of friends. Indeed, the Facebook sociologist says that no matter how large their friend network, Facebook users tend to “comment on stuff from only about 5-10% of their Facebook friends.”

So just how does one end up on an unfriend list?

• If you never respond to direct messages.
• If you never update your status.
• If your relationship with a person is tenuous at best.

BTW, if you unfriend someone on Facebook, the person does not receive a notification, but they can no longer look at your profile and they can’t request to get connected again.  If you unfollow someone on Twitter, they don’t receive a notification and chances are, they won’t notice since many people have so many followers and people they are following.  It is quite another thing, however, to block someone on Twitter; if you block someone, they can’t follow you.

As for me, on Twitter, I let most people follow me on Twitter and I follow nearly 700 people back.  On Facebook, however, I only accept friend requests from people I know, people I would gladly have lunch with, and with whom I don’t mind sharing information about my son.  So while I’m connected to nearly a thousand people on Twitter, I only have 170 people in my Facebook network.

How about you?  How large is your social network on the different platforms?  What criteria do you use to assess friend requests?  Are you doing any unfriending lately?

But then I read a study by Nielsen that reports “member communities, which includes both social networks and blogs, has become the fourth most popular online category – ahead of personal email.” Whoa!  Social networking and blogging have overtaken personal e-mail?  Could this signal another monumental shift in our communications?

Perhaps.  But yet another Nielsen analysis reports that “the heaviest social media users actually use email more” than other segments. My God, how could this be?  And where the heck are these people finding the time to be on both social networks and e-mail so heavily?

Here’s my take on what’s going on:

• E-mail isn’t close to being dead because while I can broadcast a status to my Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn, I can’t direct message everyone in my universe because they’re not all on social networking sites, nor are they all on the same site.  My contact list, however, is pretty much all on e-mail.
• The social networking sites make heavy use of e-mail to let me know that someone has commented on my update, sent me a direct message, written on my wall/profile, etc.  I actually find a lot of this e-mail annoying because on Facebook, for example, if I “like” something, I get all the follow-on likes and comments.  On some days, it’s just a lot of noise.  On the other hand, I like the e-mail reminders because I won’t necessarily revisit a status update, link or friend’s wall regularly.  And RSS gets overwhelming and another place to check!
• MarketingSherpa sees a pattern of “aggregation and adoption rather than replacement” when it comes to social networking and e-mail. “Some media suffer in the exchange, but none are eliminated entirely.”  In an interesting survey, MarketingSherpa respondents overwhelmingly said that when they want to share a link, 78% say they use e-mail, while 22% say they use social media (there is overlap in these numbers, of course).
• As more and more of us conduct our daily lives online, e-mail is used for confirmations of purchases, meeting reminders, notes from teachers, yada, yada.  Somehow, I have a tough time imagining that Amazon is going to send me a tweet about my most recent purchase.

I am one who makes heavy use of social networking sites to keep in touch with family, friends, client and colleague.  My e-mail exchanges with certain groups have probably suffered as a result.  But the hundreds of e-mails that pour into my inbox each day tell me that e-mail is alive and kicking.  E-mail is my lifeline and still supremely critical to my business.

How about you?  What’s your ratio of e-mail to social Web usage?  Has your e-mail time declined?  Is e-mail dead?

Twitter is deceptively simple.  You get 140 characters to speak your mind or share some news.  In some ways, Twitter is a lot like instant messaging ((IM) because people use acronyms to shorten common expressions. I found a good list of acronyms that pop up a lot of Twitter on the Examiner.com site.  My favorites?

• LOL – laughing out loud
• BTW – by the way
• IMHO – in my humble opinion
• TMI – too much information
• FTF of F2F – face to face
• LMK – let me know
• TTFN – ta ta for now

In other ways, Twitter is different from IM because it has its own protocols and etiquette. Here’s what I’ve learned:

• People on Twitter are called tweeter or twitterers
• Your Twitter account is @username; for example, I’m @jmpineda
• When you post an update on Twitter, you don’t twitter, you tweet
• When you follow people, you get their tweets in your stream or Twitter app
• People who follow you get your tweets in their stream
• You can post a public tweet but directed at a specific person(s) by including@username in your tweet; this will cause your message to show up in a person’s replies. Be sure to check your replies on a regular basis to find replies or mentions directed at you.
• A private tweet directed at a specific person is called a direct message (DM). You can only send a DM to someone if they are following you. To send a DM, click Message on the person’s profile. You can also go to Direct Messages from your profile and select a person from the dropdown; oddly, this list is random and does not contain everyone following you, so if you don’t find the person you want to DM, go to their profile or type “d + username + message”
• When you see #phrase, this is called a hashtag, which is a category or tag. Twitterers use hashtags to participate in a discussion already in progress or start a discussion. For example, every Tuesday night, I participate in the #sbbuzz discussion; anyone who wants to participate includes #sbbuzz in their tweets; we all follow the discussion using search.twitter.com and searching for the specific hashtag.
• If you see a tweet that you like and want to repost it, that’s called a retweet. It’s common courtesy to give credit to the original tweeter by using RT or via.

Here’s how to make sense of the Twitter speak:

@danr Wow, you are the first person I know to try #VIA. Thanks for the review. Where did you buy it? Which flavor?
– This is a public tweet directed @danr.  I had previously tweeted about the new instant coffee from Starbucks called VIA. I used the #VIA hashtag to make my tweet more searchable to people following tweets about VIA.

Stephen Hawking retires from Lucasian chair of mathematics: http://bit.ly/hcp4R via @akuchling
– This is a public tweet where I give credit to @kuchling for the original tweet.  I could have put RT or via @kuchling anywhere in the tweet.

@rkunboxed @ChelseaDwyer @pixelgangsta Thanks for retweeting the article about keeping women staff. So impt! http://tinyurl.com/ye8dtzt
– I had previously tweeted an article and several of my followers had retweeted the post.  This is a public tweet, directed at the three people who retweeted and providing context and the URL.

Okay, this blog post is NOT meant to be an exhaustive list of what you can do on Twitter but I hope it’s a good intro. If you want more info, the Twitter portal has a lot of great information on how to use Twitter.

How about you?  What are YOUR favorite acronyms and Twitter tips?

In addition, I recommend against blasting the same message across the different platforms.  Instead, I urge clients to create a layered approach that uses each platform according to its strengths and capabilities.  Here are some examples:

Example #1: Trade Association Wants to Promote a Conference

• Create a microsite for the conference that contains information about the conference, the venue, the program and speakers, and benefits to attendees
• Use Twitter to broadcast conference updates and deadlines, industry news and statistics
• Post photos from the previous year’s conference to Flickr
• Use a Facebook fan page to feature program and speakers, host discussions about conference topics, and allow attendees to interact with experts
• Host a blog where conference organizers can blog news before the conference; during the conference, assign members to blog about the sessions

Example #2: Shoe Boutique Wants to Increase Traffic to Bricks and Mortar Store During the Holiday Season

• Send a holiday postcard to the mailing list; offer a discount and feature a really hot shoe
• Send blast e-mails every few weeks with featured shoes, gift giving tips, and a discount coupon
• On Twitter, tweet about new arrivals, secret shopping discount codes, fashion tips, and cool shoe sightings
• Host a blog and comment on the hottest looks of the season, discuss fashion trends, and offer fashion advice
• On Facebook, create a fun Facebook quiz about shoes (e.g., what your favorite shoe says about you, what’s your favorite shoe this season?), post photos from events at the store, and feature shoes paired with outfits

Note that on the social networking platforms, it’s important to offer advice, share links, and report on industry news and trends and NOT just market your company and offerings.  By participating in the social networks as a provider of content (not advertising), your organization becomes a friends and an advisor, worthy of following.

How about you?  How is your organization integrating social media into traditional marketing campaigns?  How is your message and content different on each platform?  With what results?

Our work included:

• A new blog where Campbell addresses financial issues, and offers insightful tips on how to prepare for retirement and sustain financial security beyond one’s working years.
• The incorporation of other social networking tools like Facebook and Twitter to help establish a fan and follower base.
• The implementation of Expression Engine as the CMS.
• A fresh look and feel that serves  that highlights Campbell’s expertise and perspectives on the nation’s brokerage industry.

Visit Fire Your Broker

You can read a nice recap of the panel on the Solutions are Power blog, but here were my take-aways:

• Your customers, prospects, staff and potential staff are increasingly using social media and they expect your business to have a presence on the most popular platforms.
• We need to view social media sites like Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook as vehicles for marketing, customer service, prospecting and conversation.
• But businesses should not view social networks as just another place to advertise. Social networkers (you, me and anyone with an account) are both suppliers and consumers of content. In order for businesses to thrive in the social media environment, they, too, must be suppliers and consumers of content.  In other words, companies and brands must interact with customers and prospects by engaging in a two-way dialogue.
• The vast majority of Americans’ initial interactions with companies and brands online, so we all better have a great online presence that tells our story, focuses on benefits, and talks to our customers and prospects in a natural, real way.
• When in doubt about where our prospects are and what content will interest them, all we have to do is ask.

What I loved about the panel was the diversity of our backgrounds and perspectives.  The panel consisted of:

• Jill Foster of DC Media Makers and Women Grow Business served as the moderator
• Danilo Bogdanovic of Loudoun Scene is a Realtor and social media consultant
• Terri Holly of Creative Marketing Solutions is a social media consultant and coach
• Brent Leary of CRM Essentials covered the data and CRM (customer relationship management side of the equation)
• Me, Joanna Pineda of Matrix Group International representing an interactive agency

If you were at the Grow Smart Biz conference, what did you think of the conference?  How are you integrating traditional marketing with social media?

The planners of Grow Smart Biz have assembled a powerhouse group of speakers and panelists, which is not unusual for a conference.  What is new is this: the planners have actively engaged the speakers in promoting the conference through their blogs, Facebook pages, Twitter accounts, etc. In essence, the conference hosts are tapping into the vast networks of the speakers to promote the event. So, when Jill Foster, editor of the Women Grow Business blog and social media expert, tweets or blogs, the event is marketed to her over 3,000 followers.  So, if you’ve got big names keynoting at your next convention, why not ask them to update their status and give your event a boost?

I’m also seeing event planners and registration sites encourage attendees to update their status when they purchase tickets. I purchased a ticket to an event recently.  On the thank you page, there was a link to “Tweet This” and “Update Your Facebook” status.  Since so many of us update our statuses so frequently and share what we’re reading, the movies we’re seeing, the concert we’re attending, etc., it only makes sense that we would want to share with our friends and network that we are attending an upcoming meeting or event.  By doing so, we’re helping to promote the event to our networks and followers.

So, for all you meeting and event planners out there, how are you using your attendees and speakers to encourage more attendance and participation in your events? How can you leverage the vast networks of your direct audience to reach new and untapped audiences?

P.S. I hope to see you at the Grow Smart Biz conference next week. The conference will not just be about social media. The speakers and panels will also focus on: how to grow your business in the current economy, tactics for securing financing for your small business, ways to kick start your marketing activities.  And if you use the promotion code OFFER100,  you’ll get $150 off $299 registration fee!

• Except for a few direct reports, I don’t invite staff to be my friend or get linked up. I imagine that some staff would view an invitation from me as wanting to know too much about them; at the very least, it could be awkward if they don’t want to get linked up and they have to turn down a request from their boss.
• I do accept invitations from staff to be my friend or get linked up. If they’re staff, they’re part of my extended family.
• I don’t accept an invitation to get connected unless I actually know the person. Even on LinkedIn.  Random strangers are NOT going to get access to my network just because they want to link to me.
• I do ask staff to follow this blog because I’m communicating with their clients through the blog and it’s always good for staff to know what the boss is broadcasting. :-)
• I do ask staff to follow or fan the company’s pages on the social networking platforms.  I’m not asking for them to friend me, but I am asking them to support our social networking efforts.
• I am never too casual in my updates. The updates are never too personal and I don’t use SMS speak, e.g., R U there? or Off 2 dinner.  I will use abbreviations like LOL (laughing out loud) or IMHO (in my humble opinion).
• In general, I will follow people on Twitter who follow me (as well as a lot of other people I just find interesting), unless their profile photo shows too much skin, the tweets are too racy or adult, or the account has lots followers but no tweets.
• I only post photos of me, my family, my friends, my staff and my clients where they look good.  Why would I want people I care about to look bad?  And if someone ever asks me to untag or remove a photo, I do it.
• I never, ever post a status update that I will regret later. Even if my Facebook profile is mostly private, I figure someone, somewhere has access to my posts and there will be a security breach that undoes all privacy settings.  The other accounts are all public and I assume anything I post will be part of Google’s index forever.

How about you?  What are the social networking etiquette rule that you live by?  Any lessons learned?

Facebook says that it has 250 million users, of which 120 million login once a day, and spend 5 billion minutes doing “stuff.”  Just what what are we all doing on Facebook and why is it so addictive? Here are my thoughts:

• It’s really fun to catch up with a lot of people, all day long, quickly. I have 162 friends on Facebook and I know that’s low compared with most of my staff.  I check Facebook twice a day and I love reading the updates from friends and companies I’m a fan of.
• It’s a great tool for sharing photos and updates of our kids and home improvement projects. Let’s face it, people with kids just love to spam their friends and family with photos of their kids.  I know I do!
• The quizzes are hilarious. In the past couple of weeks, I learned that I’m an ENFP (Meyers-Briggs quiz, but I think I’m really an ENTJ) and that the shoe that defines me is stripper heels.  You should see the photo of the super-high stripper heels that now graces my profile, as well as the comments from my friends. :-)  I learn the most interesting things about my friends from these quizzes!
• Like Delicious and StumbleUpon, I learn about great sites and articles from my network, stuff that I probably wouldn’t find on my own, including links to cool bands, recipes, and news from around the world.

Lev Grossman from TIME Magazine says that Facebook is for old fogies and he might be right.  My nephew and niece seem to be abandoning the platform coz oldies like me are flocking to Facebook.  Dan Fletcher writes about teens dropping Facebook when their parents ask to friend them.  But for now, there are millions of us happily spending time on Facebook each day.

How about you?  Are you on Facebook?  How much time do you spend on it each day?  And what do you find addictive about it?

This is a topic that comes up a lot at Matrix Group. Unfortunately, there isn’t a magic formula for calculating ROI on social media activities. Mashable says that you can measure the ROI in two ways:

• Qualitative – Are you part of the conversation in your industry? Are you able to demonstrate that you or your organization is a thought leader? Is social media able to help you build better relationships  with your target audiences?
• Quantitative – Look to your usage reports, RSS subscriptions, e-mail opt-ins, e-commerce sales and registrations to see if social media is increasing traffic and transactions.

At Matrix Group, our social media initiatives include: a blogging strategy (this blog and participating in other blogs like WomenGrowBusiness), Twitter, Facebook, and Flickr.  Here are the metrics we use to track ROI:

Qualitative Metrics

• Are prospects, clients and candidates mentioning our social media activities?
• Are our clients and prospects interacting with us on the different platforms?
• Are we getting mentioned?
• Do clients and prospects see us as a leader in our field?
• Do clients and prospects reference articles and posts from our Web sites?
• Are we getting recognized in industry and trade publications?

In this area, I’m honored that I made the Washingtonian’s list of Top 100 Techies and SmartCEO’s list of top 50 CEOs in the DC area.  In addition, we’re getting lots of mentions and clients are referring to our social media pages on a regular basis.

Quantitative Metrics:

• Number of followers on Twitter, fans on Facebook, subscribers to our RSS feeds, and opt-ins to our e-mail lists.  This metric is important because these numbers represent the people who are willingly allowing us to communicate with them.
• Increase in traffic to our Web site and this blog. We’ve seen a steady increase in traffic to our sites as we beef and promote our content.  Interestingly enough, traffic to this blog recently outpaced traffic to the Web site, largely because of referrals from Google and social media sites, esp. Twitter, Facebook and StumbleUpon.  We use Google Analytics, Webtrends and FeedBurner for these statistics.
• Number of interactions, including comments on the blog, retweets and direct messages, and comments in Facebook.  Over the past year, we’ve seen a steady increase in these interactions as we gain followers.

Ultimately, where the rubber meets the road is whether or not we are getting leads and converting prospects to clients. Over the past year, here is what we have seen:

• We are getting 2-3 high quality leads per week from our Web site where we were getting 2-3 leads per month in the past.
• Traffic on our Web site and blog has tripled in the past 12 months.
• Twitter and Facebook are two of the top five referrers of traffic to our site.
• At least three clients in the past three months told us that they believe Matrix Group to be a thought leader in the interactive space for associations and non-profits.
• We closed our last fiscal year up 10% over last year.

No matter how you track it, we’re getting a positive return on our social media and that’s worth blogging about.  How about you?  Are you tracking the ROI of your social media activities?  What’s been your experience?

I don’t know about you, but even though I love Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, yada, yada, I still really like getting together with my college buddies, grad school buddies, fellow DC Web Women, fellow volunteers for Doorways, etc.. Yes, it’s “efficient” to get updates from friends in far away lands via their social network pages, and I have strengthened ties with folks via Twitter and FB, but will my social networks ever trump my traditional networks?

I don’t think so.

A recent article in The Economist maintains that “(o)ld-style networks… are usually stronger than online ones, , and the trust between their members facilitates transactions of all sorts.”  Transactions like doing business together, hiring staff, and lending money.

For me, however, it’s not a black and white issue.  Here’s what I think is happening:

• Family networks will probably trump all networks because “blood is thicker than water” although we all know that families are also our craziest and most dysfunctional networks.
• School, fraternity and work networks will remain the strongest because these are ties that get developed over time and involve shared efforts. So for me, my Stanford and Matrix Group networks will continue to be my strongest networks.
• Offline networks that involved shared interests will remain strong because members have a common interest. These networks, however, will be expanded to include online members.  In fact, I expect these networks to be strengthened by the ability to connect with others worldwide, in different languages.
• Increasingly, we will use our online and offline networks to make connections for work and play. For example, I may access the SAIS alumni network for a contact at the White House, but once  find a contact, I will continue to mine that person’s network through LinkedIn and Facebook.
• Across all our online networks, we will likely target a few people with whom we will establish a meaningful offline relationship. I have “met” and networked with dozens of people through Twitter but I have singled out a few for further cultivation and even a face to face meet up.
• We will rely more and more on our social networks to initiate and nurture our relationships. My school (grade school, high school, college and grad school) friends are all over the world.  Where I would have relied on phone calls, letters and emails to stay in touch in the past, I now use FB to stay connected and certainly connect with more people on a regular basis through social networks.

I actually feel that my offline networks are enhanced by the addition of online network capabilities.  And I love being able to share stories, photos and videos with family and friends in one fell swoop.

How about you?  How would you rate the strength of your traditional vs. online networks?  How are they competing or complementing each others?  Which is stronger?

So, what the heck is a Twitter visualization?  If you’re on Twitter, you know that there are millions of individual posts, replies, and discussions every day.  Figuring that people out there would want to do things with this flowing data, Twitter publishes an API (application programming interface) that lets developers have real-time access to tweets and some user information.  The result is hundreds (thousands?) of sites that let you search, map and analyze tweets, relationships between users, and topics.  Here are some of my favorite Twitter visualization sites.

• Twistori is my favorite.    Click on the words love, hate, think, believe, feel, wish and see a real-time stream of posts that contain these words in the tweet.
• WeFeelFine is a visualization of not just tweets, but blog posts and images as well.  Explore Murmurs and see a flood of tweets with the words “I feel” in them.
• Twittervision shows tweets from around the world, overlaid on a world map so you know where the tweet are coming from.  Twittervision is even available in 3D.
• Having an event?  PepsicoZeitgeist shows real-time tweets about Internet Week in New York City.  I especially love the top words from IWNY tweets.
• TweetStats lets you enter your Twitter username and see a bunch of statistics about your tweets, including when you tweet, average daily tweets, who you tend to retweet, etc..  Did you know all this about yourself?
• Twitter Friends Network Browser lets you see your Twitter network and click and drag to do fun things.
• Hashtags shows you the top hash tags on Twitter right now.
• MyTweetMap lets you see tweets from the people you are following, overlaid on a map.
• Dipity lets you explore tweets in a timeline format.

What’s fascinating to me is how Web designers and developers have found countless ways to transform the universe of Twitter data in new and different ways.  Each site introduces me to new people to follow and gives me insight on new topics.

How about you?  What are your favorite Twitter visualization sites?

But on Facebook, currently I’m http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=716098588.  Ugh.  Not exactly a memorable URL.  But all this is changing at 12:01am this Saturday, June 13.  At that time, you’ll be able to create a vanity URL for your profile.  You guessed it; I’m hoping very much to be http://www.facebook.com/jmpineda.  Perhaps more importantly, I want a vanity URL for the Matrix Group fan page, which is currently at http://www.facebook.com/pages/Matrix-Group-International-Inc/48658676723.  (The Matrix Group Facebook fan URL is so long and unfriendly that I have to access my bookmarks to share it with others.)

Vanity URLs, also known as addressable identities, will sure make it easy for all of us to share our Facebook profiles with others and encourage friending and fanning (are friending and fanning real verbs these days?)

The Facebook blog has this to say about the rules for creating a username:

• Facebook usernames will be available in basic text forms.
• You can only choose a single username for your profile and for each of the Pages that you administer.
• Your username must be at least five characters in length and only include alphanumeric characters (A-Z, 0-9), or a period or full stop (“.”).

So, if you have a relatively common name or you want to more easily share the URL for your personal or company Facebook page, be sure to stay up and get your new username/vanity URL/addressable identity on Facebook on June 13  (yep, it’s only a day away.)

Good luck and please report back on this blog about the experience — did you get the name you wanted, did you have any trouble on the site?

Update from Joanna on January 14, 2010:

It seems Facebook has changed it policies again. Good news! Now you only need 25 fans to apply for a vanity URL. Check out:
http://www.facebook.com/help/?faq=15073

The first thing I did was call my husband to see if he could deal with the dog on the roof.  The second thing I did was tweet about the dog on the roof. The third thing I did was contact a few neighbors to try and figure out who the dog might belong to.  By the time I figured out which neighbor had left his 4th floor balcony door open, Maki had coaxed the dog (his name is Kerbie) down from the roof, brought him into our house and dried him off.  Within an hour, dog and owner were reunited.  I duly tweeted the happy news to my Twitter followers.

Why does this dog on roof story matter? It matters because:

• My dog on roof story became news to my community – my staff, my neighbors and my online network.  Within minutes of tweeting about the dog on my roof, I got tons of tweets about said dog on roof.
• Kerbie’s story reached hundreds of people within minutes. Remember the plane crash in the Hudson?  Janis Krums posted the first photo of the crash on Twitter.  Within minutes and hours, the news was all over Twitter and the blogs.  By the time the 6 o’clock news covered the story, it felt like ancient news.
• I bet that if I had asked for help, I would have received a dozen offers within minutes. People would have tweeted and retweeted until I got the right resource to solve my problem.

Whether or not social networking floats your boat or makes you crazy, I believe it’s forever changed how we get our news, the speed with which we receive news, and how we filter information.

How about you?  Have any dog on roof stories to share?  What’s been your experience with this so-called transmission effect?

When I’m on vacation, I like to really unplug, which is why my husband and I go to places like Japan, Cambodia, Vietnam, Prague, Costa Rica. We go to places where we’re not tempted to go online and work because there is so much to see and do; often, the time difference makes it difficult to stay in touch.

In the past, I might have dropped an e-postcard or quick e-mail to the office from an Internet cafe. But these days, with wireless access everywhere and social networks broadcasting everyone’s minute by minute status, what’s a girl to do? It seems all my friends and colleagues update their status wherever they are: on a date, at the beach, at dinner, at Disneyland, out West.

If we spend our time tweeting,updating our status on Facebook and MySpace, uploading photos to Flickr, or blogging about our experiences, are we really on vacation? Will I lose followers if I leave the grid for a while? Will anyone even notice that I haven’t blogged, tweeted or updated my status in a week? I bet not.

So, even though I have been on the grid and broadcasted my whereabouts, thoughts and food adventures pretty much daily for the past year, for the next week, I will likely just vanish from the Internet.

Unless I get free wi fi from my iPod Touch of course and I can use Twitter….. Argh. Have a great holiday.

• FoodBuzz is a social network for people who like food.  You can create a profile and share your recipes, restaurant reviews and photos. In addition, FoodBuzz aggregates content from food blogs and allows food brands to create a presence and interact with users.  Here’s a link to my jmpineda profile, although I’m new so it’s still sparse.
• TeeBeeDee is a social network for “grown-ups” aka mostly the 40+ crowd.  You can invite your friends, join and create groups, and participate in discussions. As expected, the top topics are: Work, Sex Over 40, Relationships, and Health.
• Bebo is AOL’s social network.  It allows you to aggregate streams from other social networks, including Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, etc. I really like how you can create an interactive timeline of your life through LifeStory.
• If you want to create your own social network, there’s Ning.  Ning lets you create your own social space, invite people, and customize what people can do through the hundreds of applications.  Associations might use Ning to create a closed network just for members where you control the brand experience and ways that members can interact.

How about you?  What social networks are you on?  Which best suits you and your interests?  Which one is your favorite?

When you “follow” someone, you:

• Accept them as a guide or leader
• Imitate or follow their example
• Watch their movement or progress

While I understand that my “followers” on Twitter probably don’t see me as a leader, there are certainly people on Twitter who I “follow” because I consider them thought leaders and I want to know what they’re reading and thinking. Think about it.  We never say that we “follow” a Web site, company or newsletter, but we do say that we “follow” someone’s blog.  I know I consider it a high compliment when someone tells me that they “follow” my blog.

In the book Tribes, marketing guru Seth Godin tells us it’s human nature to want to be part of a group that shares a common passion and recognizes the same leader; in other words, most of us want to be part of a tribe.  Further, Seth believes that using the Web and social networking tools, everyone can now find or assemble a tribe and lead it.

So I say to each of you and your organizations:  People want to follow, are you ready to lead?

• Status updates (aka What’s on your mind?) are definitely posting to the organization’s Wall and showing up on fans’ streams. Fans can indicate if they like a post, they can comment, and they can share the update.

• Only native Facebook applications are showing up on fan’s streams. In the past, we brought in photos and videos from Flickr and YouTube via RSS.  You can still do this today, but these updates do NOT show up in fan’s streams.  For example, if you want your fans to know that you posted a new photo album, you have to use the native Facebook application.

• Sending an update to fans does NOT trigger an e-mail. Instead, these updates show up in fan’s Inboxes, in the Updates tab.  These updates also exist in View Updates in the left navigation of the company pages, but only if you click More.  It took us forever to figure this out and I’m convinced that nobody is reading our updates because they have no idea these updates exist.

• Suggest to Friends sends a personal e-mail from your personal Facebook page. A company can’t actually send invitations to fans to people who are NOT fans, but individuals can send a recommendation to their friends.

• Where Facebook pages used to be fairly static pages, they are becoming more like blogs and Twitter.  Companies need to have a content strategy that covers what and when to post.

• It is darn near impossible to figure out your company’s Facebook page address. As near as we can tell, the addresses use this syntax: http://www.facebook.com/pages/company-name/number/.  For example, the Matrix Group Facebook page address is http://www.facebook.com/pages/Matrix-Group-International-Inc/48658676723 Keep clicking on the profile link and the logo, remove extraneous referrer codes to figure out your Facebook page URL, and keep trying until you figure it out.

Here is more information about the new Facebook pages direct from Facebook.  How about you?  What has been your experience with the new Facebook pages?

• First, you need to set-up an account on Twitter.com. Unlike Facebook or LinkedIn, you don’t connect your organization’s Twitter account to a personal account.  And both people and organizations have equal status on Twitter.  Not sure if you’re ready to start tweeting?  I recommend setting up an account anyway so that somebody else doesn’t grab your name.  And be sure to record the username and password on the account so that if the person in charge of tweeting for your company leaves or goes on vacation, someone else can do the tweeting.

• Next, you need to personalize your account. I recommend uploading a logo or image, and entering a short description of your organization plus your Web address.  This is critical to helping others find your company, and to encouraging others to follow you.  For example , I generally don’t follow people or organizations that don’t have a description or URL.   You can also get fancy and customize your background image.  Check out how ClearedJobs.Net customized their Twitter account with images from their Web site and job fairs.  I also like the backround image for IThinkMedia.

• Now that you’ve got your account set-up, you need to start tweeting!  If it’s your organization that’s tweeting (as opposed to an individual), I recommend developing guidelines for what and when you will tweet.  For example, a think tank might tweet about new commentary and analysis, the organization in the news, relevant news, interesting statistics, and upcoming events.  A software company might tweet about upcoming releases, an interesting customer request or inquiry, a co0l feature, company news, and power user tips.  A trade association might tweet about industry news, current research, new blog posts, key legislation, compliance tips, upcoming conferences, and market trends.  The key is to NOT just tweet the headlines from your press releases.  Your followers expect new insights, memorable quotes, key stats, cool and useful Web sites, and news of interest.  Check out how the National Park Foundation tweets about NPF activities, fun events for kids, gorgeous photos of parks, national park news.

• Okay, so you’re tweeting, how do you get followers? Like anything else, you need to promote your new Twitter account.  When Matrix Group started tweeting, we let our Facebook fans know, we announced in our e-mails, we added a link to our e-mail signatures, and we linked up from our Web site and this blog.  Another idea is to follow the thought leaders in your industry or field; chances are, others following those thought leaders will find you and follow you.  You will find that a mix of individuals, organizations and bots will start following you; look through the accounts and follow who you think will provide value back to your organization.

• Manage your tweets. When you first get started on Twitter, it’s easy to read every tweet and track your followers.  Over time, you’ll probably get overwhelmed by the volume.  I recommend using a program like Tweetdeck or Twhirl.  Personally,  I use Tweetdeck and have created groups for friends, clients, companies/organization, CEOs and thought leaders.  This way, I can still peruse the flood of tweets from the 300+ accounts I’m following, but I can also quickly zero in on the tweets from the people and orgs I care most about.

• Interact and create relationships. Your followers can interact with you in different ways.  They can send you a direct message; they can mention you in a tweet, and they can retweet your tweets (retweets usually have RT in the post).  Be sure to check your direct messages and @ tweets on a regular basis, respond to inquiries, and thank people for retweeting.  For example, when Matrix Group tweeted about a project manager opening, we got a bunch of direct messages; we responded to every single one, landed great retweets, and got some great candidates as a result.

Here’s a YouTube video from CommonCraft on setting up your Twitter account.  And here’s more great advice on getting started with Twitter from Dave Fleet and TwiTip.  Finally, the Twitter site has useful information, including how to nudge someone or get your Twitter statistics.

I could go on and on about Twitter, but I’m already up to over 750 words in this post, so I’ll stop here and ask you all: when and why did your organization get started with Twitter and what are your top tips for using Twitter effectively? Finally, if I can help you get started with Twitter, please call, e-mail or tweet.

Our communication/conversation strategy has several elements:

• Communication vehicles. We created an inventory of all the ways that we use to communicate with clients and prospects.  Our inventory includes: the Web site, e-mail newsletter list, blog, Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, and e-mail discussion lists.

• Communication schedule. We have mapped out a schedule that delineates what we will post or send out every day, week, month, and quarter.  For example, we strive to tweet every day, update our Facebook page twice a week, and post new blog entries twice a week.

• Content strategy. We believe that it’s important to NOT post the same stuff across all channels.  For example, on the Matrix Group Twitter account, we tweet about association/non-profit news, how companies and organizations are using the Web and social networking in interesting ways, cool sites, Web standards, site and application launches, job openings, Matrix Group events, and fun stuff going on around the office.  My personal Twitter account (@jmpineda) is different; I will post personal updates, sites I love, business news and trends, cool gadgets, blog posts and Matrix Group events.  You’ll notice that there is overlap in what we tweet when it comes to Matrix Group; otherwise, what we tweet between the two accounts is very different.  That’s intentional; we want our followers to have a different experience on each Twitter account.

• Tone and voice. Our Creative Director, Alex, says tone and voice are very important, no matter what the vehicle, so we have guidelines for the writing across our sites and pages.  Our updates are always professional, not formal but not too casual either, friendly and warm.

• Engagement and response. Since we seek engagement across the different channels, we strive to respond to every single e-mail, blog comment, direct tweet, etc.  We may not get back to folks instantly, but inquiries and comments get responded to within a day or two.  For example, when someone asks a question on my blog, I post a comment AND I send a direct e-mail.

You’ll notice that we don’t have a separate social networking strategy.  Instead, we have integrated the social network sites into our overall communications plan. All of this is working for us.  Leads from the Web site have increased by several hundred percent, the quality of the leads is amazing, we are getting good candidates for our jobs, and clients are interacting with us in new and different ways.

How about you?  What content and communication strategies are working for your organization?

There’s no question that we can fritter away hours reading Twitter posts, watching random videos on YouTube, updating our Facebook status, yada, yada.

But for organizations that have made the decision to incorporate social networking into their communication, conversation or marketing strategies, how can we be sure that social networking sites aren’t just a sinkhole of time?

As someone who is fairly active on different SN platforms (I tweet and update my profile on Facebook regularly, I browse sites on StumbleUpon, and I certainly watch my share of YouTube videos), here are my top time management tips:

• I set aside time during the day to read blogs, tweets, Facebook status updates, etc.  Typically, I set aside a half hour in the morning and a half hour at night.

• I may update my status on Twitter and Facebook during the day, but I don’t do a lot of reading.

• I don’t read everything.  I’m really good at skimming.

• I use Tweetdeck to manage the tweets from people I follow.  I set up groups for the people whose tweets I really want to see:  family, friends, clients, CEOs, thought leaders, research orgs. Love Tweetdeck!

• If I find something I like, I either read it right then, or I save it to my Delicious account (social bookmarking) site for later consumption.

• Do the important stuff first.  For example, I try to blog a couple of times a week.  On the day I want to blog, that is my priority, not other SN sites.

• I don’t feel compelled to reply to direct tweets and blog messages in real-time. I set aside time to read, reflect and reply; I figure nobody’s going to die because I didn’t comment fast enough on their question about Facebook URLs.

• As a company, we have developed a content strategy that delineates the type, tone and frequency of our updates and tweets.  Which means we’re clear on what we need to do, when to do it, and the content we will provide.  Finally, we don’t tweet all day long; once a day is fine.

Will you catch me doing random surfing every once in a while?  Some days, and we all have them, I just need a brain break and I want to look at pretty photos on Flickr, catch up on my favorite blogs, and scan the cool URLs and mindless tweets from people I follow.  But hey, a recent Australian study says that “people who use the Internet for personal reasons at work are about 9 percent more productive that those who do not.”  Imagine that.

David Allen from Business Week says that social networking is worth the time if you organization has an agenda that is supported well by social networking, you are doing research, or you need to know how social media really works.  Beth Kanter has some additional tips for using your time wisely and not getting in trouble on SN sites.

How about you?  How much time do you spend each day or week on social networking sites?  How do you manage your time?  And do you think time management is an issue for you and your staff?

I’ve been so happy to see that President Obama is being just as innovative and engaging online.

• Google Moderator gives participants a way to submit questions and vote for the ones they want answered.  The White House launched Open for Questions and used Google Moderator to field questions for the President during in online town hall meeting tonight.  92,934 people submitted 104,049 questions and cast 3,604,964 votes.
• The White House maintains a blog.  Imagine that, a White House blog.  The President himself is not blogging, but the blog does a terrific job of making visitors feel like a White House insider.  Here’s tonight’s post on Open for Questions.
• The White House has a YouTube channel that features press conferences, the President’s weekly address, briefings and other events.  Some of the videos are available in HD; check out this beautiful HD video of President Obama’s March 21, 2009 address.  If you don’t see the video in HD, click the HD link in the bottom right corner of the video.
• The President’s weekly addresses are also available on Vimeo, a niche video sharing site that features only user-generated content, and has stricter content requirements.
• Recovery.gov claims to be “the main vehicle to provide each and every citizen with the ability to monitor the progress of the recovery.”  The Web site features news, the full-text of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, agency budgets, and more.  I especially like the share your story feature.
• I love the slideshows that give us glimpses into the President’s and First Lady’s meetings and visits.

How about you?  Are you participating in any of these online initiatives from the White House?

A meal, however, is simply a metaphor for creating, nurturing and maintaining a relationship. The relationship is what matters. A meal is one really great, fun way to establish or further a relationship. Face to face meetings and social events are others. Can social networking help you nurture your relationships?  Here’s how.

• A really great blog lets you connect with your staff, customers, members. A blog lets you share your perspectives, talk about what’s important to you or your field, speak more conversationally about a highly technical or complicated topic.
• An authentic social networking strategy lets you share aspects of your organization’s culture and values. So don’t just tweet about your press releases!  Share tips and tricks through a video, tweet about Web sites that move you, and upload photos of your staff in action.

How about you?  How are you using social networking to support your relationship goals?

What does this mean? Well…

• Fans will interact with organizations the same way they interact with their friends. Updates from the org/company pages will be added to fans’ home pages.  Fans can view and comment on status updates, they will get notified when other people join a conversations, and they can view photo, videos and links.
• Organizations will be challenged to do more with their Facebook pages. The change to the new format is good and bad.  Good because companies can do more and have more engagement with their fans.  Bad because their Facebook pages will need more oversight and content.

The Matrix Group Facebook page was previously fairly static.  We posted events and pulled in news, blog posts and photos via RSS.  We didn’t want to overuse the “Send an Update to Fans” button too much, so we used the page to have a presence.  But now, our Facebook page just got a whole lot more dynamic.  We uploaded photos with captions, we’re posting status updates, and soon we’re going to post videos.  Just think, when we updated the Matrix Group status to say “congratulates International Assoc of Chiefs of Police for winning Best In Class for Discover Policing from the IMA. http://www.discoverpolicing.org/,” all of our fans’ home pages or status update pages got that post.  Pretty cool and I hope someone will comment on the site or the award.  So now we’ll use Facebook to create more of a dialogue, promote projects, share information about technology we’re playing with, give candidates a sense of what it’s like to work for us.

Here are some other Facebook pages that are now taking full advantage of the new Facebook page format.

• Stanford University has a great page.  Love the videos and all the comments.
• The National Park Foundation is using it fabulous collection of images to good use and even soliciting donations online.

My top tips for managing your new Facebook page:

• Post a status update, link, photo or video at least 2-3 times per week.  This will get your fans accustomed to hearing from you.
• Experiment with topics and messages to see what elicits comments and feedback from your fans.
• Make several people in your organization an admin on your Facebook account so that there is always someone tending the page.  (Select Edit page, then manage admins in the lower right of the page.)
• Have a content strategy so you are clear on the type and tone of updates, links, photos and videos you will use to populate the site.

Advertising Age says this change makes Facebook more like MySpace and Twitter and wonders “can brands be trusted to respect social (network) etiquette?”

Wikipedia says that a tag cloud is a visual depiction of the tags (topics) on a Web site. The tags are usually listed alphabetically and font size or color is used to show the relative importance of a tag.

But first, let’s talk about tags.  The choice is tags is incredibly important on a Web site or blog.  Your tags should represent what’s important to you and your target audiences.  Personally, I think you should limit your tag universe to a couple of dozen topics so that you can focus your content and visitors can easily grasp what your site is about.

So once you’ve got your tags, you’ve got to tag every piece of content.  Yes, it’s extra work but it will pay off.  With tagging, you can display related content and of course, you can have a tag cloud!

Take this blog.  You’ll see from the tag cloud on the right that the tags with the most number of posts are: marketing, social networking, blog, leadership, Google and Twitter.  It’s great for me to see the topics I post about most frequently and I can easily see if I need to post on other topics so as not to bore my readers.

Here are some interesting tag clouds:

• Flickr has a tag cloud and I love how you can see hot tags from the last 24 hours, as well as the most popular tags of all time.
• TagsPage has a tag cloud that uses color and size; this one is a little too crazy for my taste.
• Delicious has so many tags so you can only see a list of top tags for all users.  Individuals, however, have their own tag clouds. I was fascinated to learn that the top tags in my jmpineda Delicious account are: management, statistics, twitter, things to do, social networking.
• Web Designer Wall has a small tag cloud that uses size to indicate important and frequency

But the most interesting thing about tags is how they connect people. Here’s how:  on a social bookmarking site like Delicious, I can see how many other people have bookmarked the same pages.  On my list, for example, I can see that 421 have saved The Cult of Done Manifesto in their bookmarks; I can also see their comments, and their tags for the same site.  I can click on the Delicious profile for any of the users or click on any of their tags to see what they’ve saved under a specific topic.  I am fascinated to learn that most poeple tagged this site under Manifesto, productivity and inspiration, while I tagged it under management, leadership and culture.

Bonus: I found cwmurphy’s bookmarks on productivity really terrific, so I added him/her to my network.  Yep, I don’t know this person but I hope to find out about more cool sites through my expanded bookmarking network.

Last note: there are now sites that you let you make tag cloud from any site or text, like Wordle.  Here’s a word cloud of this blog, created a couple of weeks ago.  A little chaotic, but super fun.

• They’re called Business Pages on Facebook and they need to be connected to an individual profile.  Click on Create a Page for My Business at the bottom of a company page.  I recommend selecting Category = Brand or Product, then select Professional Service.  Choosing this category will let you enter the year the organization was founded, as well as provide an overview, mission and product information.  If you choose other categories, you are likely to only be able to enter the hours of operation and a URL.  And once you choose a category, you can’t undo it!  Thankfully, if you make a mistake, you can just not publish the page or delete it.
• I recommend uploading a company logo to dress up your page. Gif images don’t display properly, so upload a jpg instead.  The logo on the Matrix Group Facebook page is 350 x 114 pixels.
• Facebook lets you write on your wall, enter notes, post events, upload photos and videos, even host discussions.  But here’s the challenge: chances are, you’re probably already entering this same information elsewhere (e.g., on your Web site, on YouTube, etc.).  So the trick  is to use one of the zillions of Facebook apps to integrate your Facebook page with other sites. For example, we use MyFlickr to automatically bring in photos from the Matrix Group Flickr page into our Facebook page.  Just know that these third party apps can be a little flaky and there is little support should you run into trouble.  For example, we’re having trouble with SimplyRSS so we’re going to replace it with another app; we’re looking at RSS-Connect.
• The magic of Facebook comes from the fans.  You’ll want to Share your new Facebook page with your friends. Be sure to tell them how you are going to use your new FB page and encourage them to become fans.  When a person becomes a fan, you  now have the ability to “Send an Update to Fans.”   Since fans don’t automatically get notified when you post a new note, photo or event, use the Update feature to let your fans know about new content.  Be sure to ask your staff and network to share your FB page with their networks.
• Remember that FB business pages are connected to indvidual profiles. So if the staff person who manages your FB page leaves, your Facebook page will go with them.  So I recommend creating a generic individual profile and connecting that to your business page.

In a future post, I’ll share ways that we’ve helped clients create successful Facebook pages that are distinct from their Web sites.  In the meantime, if Matrix Group can help you navigate the social network maze, be sure to drop us a line.

P.S. Here are some posts you might find helpful:

• Getting Started With Facebook – Part 2 – The New Facebook Pages
• What We’ve Learned About the New Facebook Pages
• Become a “Fan” Has Been Replaced with “Like” on the New Facebook Pages
• How to Increase “Likes” and Interactions on your Facebook Page

I hope you find these posts helpful as you set-up and manage your Facebook page. Please do keep commenting and send me suggestions for topics you’d like me to blog about in the future!

The key take aways from the webinar were the following:

• The social networking services (e.g., Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc.) complement the social networking that non-profits and associations have been offering to their members for years through meetings, e-mail discussions and bulletin boards.
• It’s no longer enough to have a communications strategy that includes a Web site, e-mail, direct mail and newsletters. Customers, members and staff alike are craving, indeed demanding, engagement and conversation.
• Every organization needs, at the very least, a listening strategy so that you know what is being said about you, your organization and industry; you are aware of the conversations taking place between members; and you get a sense of the most pressing issues of the day for your field.
• We organize the SN universe into the following platforms: networking sites; friend networks; broadcasting (with conversation); rating and recommender sytems; sharing systems; and SN community platforms.
• Social networks are reaching close to 50% of all active Web users and 3 of the top 5 sites in the US (MySpace, YouTube and Facebook) are SN sites.
• You can use SN to recruit staff, raise money, provide thought leadership, engage members in conversation, provide customer service, promote meetings and events, and extend the learning and networking of events.

A point we tried to emphasize is this:  your SN strategy does not need to have everything but the kitchen sink. Every organization needs to craft an SN strategy that takes into account its organization type, size, goals, and internal resources.  For example, a research organization client of Matrix Group uses its Web site to disseminate its research, Twitter to announce new research, and a Facebook page to make consumers aware of their consumer-oriented research.  This organization decided against a blog because it is a neutral organization; as such, they don’t provide a whole lot of commentary on their researh.

Another client is using a CEO blog to provide thought leadership and have a dialogue with members, a Facebook page to reach younger members, and YouTube to gain a wider audience for their research and events.  Yet another client uses Twitter and RSS to engage the media, Flickr to share photos from their fabulous events, and Facebook as a way to generate leads and promote their events.

So which SN activity takes the most time?  Blogging, because it involves generating original content that provides a perspective on a topic, issue, profession or industry.  And yet, keep in mind that for every SN page that you create, you will need to cultivate readers, fans, group members, or subscribers, and that customer cultivation is ultimately where the greatest staff time will be needed.

But first, let me tell you about Chris’ speech, which was terrific.  Among the things he talked about:

• What is Google’s secret sauce? Chris says that Google has become a powerhouse because they take really talented engineers, present them with really big problems, and then give them lots of computing power to solve those problems.
• The 20% Rule. Evidently, everyone at Google can allocate 20% of their time to whatever they want, so long as: they log their actiivities in the projects database and they present their work to their peers every few weeks.  If a project is deemed worthy, the responsible staff will be given more staff time and computers.
• You only get laughed at when your ideas are too small. Google leaders Eric Schmidt, Sergey Brin and Larry Page want all Google staff to think big and use their brains and computers to solve really big problems.
• The 150 feet rule. In addition to having over a dozen cafes on the Google campus, there are snacks every 150 feet to feed the body, feed the mind, and encourage socializing and networking.
• Search is going to get a whole lot better soon. Although the Google home page looks the same, the search technology behind it is getting better every day.  Google now tracks what we click on when we search; in the future, the search results for the same keywod may be different for you and me, based on our individual preferences and past history.
• Google Trends is not only cool, it’s surprising what we can learn from search patterns. Chris says that Google Trends can predict the box office success of a movie and where the flu will hit.

Okay, so back to stalking Chris.  I had read about FriendFeed (FF) a few months ago and decided to give it a try.  FriendFeed users can see what their friends are reading, listening to or viewing on the Web as a continuous stream of updates.  You can view the updates on a Web page, in your Google personalized page, via IM, or Facebook.  In a New York Times article, one of the founders, Bret Taylor, calls it a “blog that writes itself.”

None of my friends seem to be on FF, so I’m following just a couple of Web celebrities.  Chris Sacca provided his FF address so I started following him.  FF is like a firehose of information about the people you’re following. I follow 180 people on Twitter and love the updates and the diversity and randomness of the links posted.  I have 101 friends on Facebook and can easily scan the status updates and links.   I’m only following 3 people on FF, but every day, I get pages and pages of updates. I get tweets, blog posts, comments, links, favorite photos and videos, and comments from their friends.  I feel like I’m stalking Chris Sacca because I practically know where he is and what’s he’s reading and watching.  Do I really need this much information on one guy? Duncan Riley of TechCrunch said last year that FF is better than Twitter, but I’m overwhelmed. I think this is going to take some getting used to.

Anybody out there on FF?  How are you using it and what tools do you use to wade through the data?  Is it cool or just TMI?

Imagine my horror when I clicked on the Magnolia home page this morning and found this message:

Dear Ma.gnolia Community Members or Visitor,

Early on the West-coast morning of Friday, January 30th, Ma.gnolia experienced every web service’s worst nightmare: data corruption and loss. For Ma.gnolia, this means that the service is offline and members’ bookmarks are unavailable, both through the website itself and the API. As I evaluate recovery options, I can’t provide a certain timeline or prognosis as to to when or to what degree Ma.gnolia or your bookmarks will return; only that this process will take days, not hours.

Magnolia has been down for most of the day and I’m devastated.  It’s not unusual for me to add one or more bookmarks each day to my Magnolia account.  And I refer to my bookmarks constantly.  For example, while preparing for my presentation on tech trends and their impact on small associations, I scoured my bookmarks under the tags of statistics and tech trends.

My husband says I should have used Delicious all along, but really, this outage could have happened to any of the free, hosted sites.

Matrix Group offers a hosted membership database solution for associations (MatrixMaxx) and we work very hard to and spend good money to make sure we have good, reliable and redundant back-ups.  Our clients expect nothing less from us because their applications and data are mission-critical.

But what kind of expectations can I have/should I have re: back-up from a free, hosted service like Magnolia? Can I really be pissed off that my bookmarks are gone when I haven’t paid Magnolia a dime?  And if Magnolia does recover, will I trust them with my bookmarks again?  Ugh.

1. Your Browser as the New Operating System. The Web browser is increasingly the platform for mission critical applications, like association management systems, intranets, document management systems and e-mail.
2. Conversation is King. We used to talk about creating a communications strategy.  Today, we need to create a conversation strategy because customers are interested in engagement, in two-way conversations.
3. Unified, Integrated Data. I call this the Amazon Effect.  Our customers expect us to know who they are, communicate with them in a personalized way, and give them personalized offerings.  We can’t do this unless we have a unified view of their activities and interactions.
4. Zen Tech Warrior. These warriors want information on specific topics, when they want it, on the device(s) of their choice.  Take me, for example.  I might want my magazine in print, news via e-mail, and alerts via text.  Can your database handle these preferences and can you execute on this information?
5. Green Computing. We all know that we need to do our part to reduce energy consumption and save the planet.  Data centers represent 1.5% of the electricity demand in the US.  Think green when you buy computers and peripherals.

Since my session was an Idealab, I got terrific comments and questions from my audience.  The liveliest discussion centered around creating a communications strategy because it intersects with the need to create a social networking strategy.  My top tips here?

• Monitor what is being said through Google Alerts and Twitter searches (that you can RSS).
• Create a social networking response team.
• Have a blogging strategy.  Even if your organization does not host a blog, what should you do when your organization is mentioned negatively in a blog?

Here’s a link to the handout from my session.  What about you?  What big trends are coming your way and how you are dealing with them?

I’m excited and fascinated by next week’s Inauguration.

• I’m following the Presidential Inaugural Committee (PIC) (@obamainaugural) and loving the YouTube contest, the news about the inaugural activities, and the updates about various balls.
• I’m following the DC Government on Twitter (@Inauguration_DC) and appreciating the news about road closures, tips from the National Park Service, etc.
• I’m impressed with the Web site of the Presidential Inaugural Committee, especially the blog.    I have enjoyed reading about the rehearsal and the stand-ins, the concert at Lincoln Memorial is going to be fabulous, and the videos from Barack and Michelle Obama were a nice touch.
• The PIC’s Flickr account is full of beautiful photos of DC and the preparations for next week’s events.
• I plan to be part of the Facebook crowd watching the inauguration live and updating my status when the new President is sworn in.

For the first time ever, I feel like I’m getting an insider’s view of what goes into an inauguration and know about a lot of the activities.  The blog and photos especially are creating an intimacy to the event that I did not think possible, considering that hundreds of thousands (millions?) are going to be here next week.

However, I am more than disappointed, okay even angry, that Virginia will be virtually cut off from DC next week. With roads and bridges from Northern VA blocked, and metro sure to be in gridlock, how is someone like me supposed to participate in person next week?  I had hopes of attending a ball, but gave up after I heard that bridges would all be closed.  Come on, couldn’t the PIC have organized buses and car pools?

I guess I’ll participate in this inauguration virtually.  The few people working at Matrix Group on Tuesday will either watch the inauguration from outside City Hall in Alexandria or watch the inauguration live on CNN from our conference room.  Oh well.  At least we’ll be warm and we’ll have water and pizza, which is more than most people on the Mall will be able to say.

But here’s a news flash: an increasing of us are getting our news from citizen journalist sites, or sites that feature news, photos and videos from people like you and me. Armed with camera phones and video cameras, average folks are reporting on news in their neighborhood and covering news from their perspective.

Here are some of the most popular citizen journalist sites and why I love them:

• NowPublic is now one of my favorite news sites. Last weekend, NowPublic had lots of coverage about the earthquake in Indonesia. When I mentioned the earthquake to a client, she said, “what earthquake?”
• Topix has a combination of syndicated news and user-generated news. I love that my home page is automatically personalized with Alexandria, VA news, even though I haven’t registered; I think they do a reverse DNS look-up against my IP address and determine my location.
• IReport boasts that thousands of its user-generated stories have been used on CNN. I love the top tags and the ability to view the stories by highest rated, most viewed, most commented, and most shared.

The Pew Research Center says “the audiences for most traditional news sources have steadily declined, as the number of people getting news online has surged.” Today, I can read about an earthquake in Indonesia even if mainstream media doesn’t cover it, or only covers it sparingly. Wow.

For those of you who are new to all this, you can “follow” people on Twitter and people can follow you. When you follow someone, their tweets are posted to your Twitter home page all day long. In my case, I’m following a random collection of friends, Web thought leaders and organizations. My friend Joe tweets his location, the books he’s reading, the articles he’s reading. The National Wildlife Federation tweets about promotions, events and issues.

The vast majority of my followers are people I know — friends, family, clients, acquaintances. But here’s the strange thing. I’ve started to get an increasing number of random followers. Twitter lets you know via e-mail when people start following you and the last six people are strangers to me.

I know that my tweets are not that interesting, no matter how hard I try. I asked my friend Cat if random people follow her and she said, “oh yeah.” Who are these people and why are they interested in my tweets? How did they even find me?

I guess this is all part of the big, social world we live in. Many of us choose to broadcast and share; evidently, there are many people out there willing to receive all this data.

I can’t think of a more fitting match between Twitter and CNN’s breaking news.  My god, Twitter is nothing but a bunch of headlines!  Today, nearly 54,000 people follow CNN’s headline news on Twitter.

The National Wildlife Federation does a great job of using Twitter to promote events, broadcast NWF news and mobilize people to do something (vote, send an e-card, donate, watch a video).  Over 1,600 people follow NWF on Twitter.

A technical support technician from Comcast uses Twitter to provide tech support.  Over 4,800 follow this guy on Twitter.  If they need help, they tweet him directly, then he tweets them directly to provide help.  Of course, you see all of his tweets on the comcastcares Twitter page.

I’ve already blogged about how the Barack Obama campaign used Twitter to mobilize support, let followers know the whereabouts of the campaign, and link to videos and speeches.  The Barack Obama Twitter feed is perhaps the most popular feed of all, with 128,000 followers.

In case you’re interested, Twitterholic has a list of some of the top Twitter feeds so you can find more people and companies to follow.

My niece (age 17) and nephew (age 20) ignore my e-mails. But when I send either of them a message via Facebook, I’m likely to get a message back. When Facebook sends an automated messages about what I’m doing or posting, I might get a hello or an update. My older sister says she gets the same kind of treatment — that she needs to contact her kids through Facebook.

A friend who lives in Philaldelphia wrote on my Facebook wall to let me know he and his family were coming to the DC area and ask if we were interested in going to the Baltimore Aquarium.

After our trip to Costa Rica, I posted a few photos to Facebook and sent messages to friends. I’ve even had long lost high school friends send me messages via Facebook even though my e-mail is part of my Facebook profile. Finally, a friend is throwing a party next week and she sent an invite via Facebook.

It seems I’m not the only person to notice this phenomenon. Steve Tibbett talks about how conversations in Facebook are more meaningful because they are in context (of your interests, photos, activities) and they are not subject to spam filtering. Yes, Facebook sends you an e-mail when you’ve received a message, but if that e-mail gets lost in cyberspace, it still lives in Facebook and will be waiting for you when you next login.

It’s been fun to keep up with friends, read about their activities, and see photos where they’ve been tagged. I even love the little Facebook apps that let me announce how green I am, send karma points to friends, show the world where I’ve lived and visited, and send cute animal postcards. No, I don’t have a gajillion people in my network, just people I know and have some type of relationship with.

Don’t get me wrong.  E-mail continues to be a killer app for me. I get hundreds of e-mails a day on my matrixgroup.net e-mail — from clients, staff, family and friends.  But a great many of my family and friends are on Facebook, so it just makes sense for me to be there, as well.

The array of outlets for political junkies is truly breathtaking.

The official DNC Web site offers a real-time feed in HD, in English and Spanish.  There was about a 15 second delay, presumably to encode the feed.  But HD in real-time?  Amazing.

The DNC blog features news and videos.

A search on YouTube for “democratic national convention 2008″ yielded 2,420 results.  Most videos are clips from the convention, but there are lots of homemade videos, some funny, some serious.  BTW, this number jumped by nearly 250 videos between 10-11pm tonight.

A search on Flickr for “democratic national convention 2008″ yields 2,476 results.

There are dozens and dozens of delegate blogs.  Here are a few:

• Pam Cahill from California
• Naki Stevens from Washington
• Allison Cotton from Colorado

Dozens of delegates are Twittering (is this now a verb?) about their experiences at the convention in Denver.

Within minutes of the conclusion of Hillary Clinton’s speech, a Ning group was announcing her call for unity within the party.

I’m struck by the fact nobody on my staff watched the convention on TV, but most watched a clip or read news and commentaries on the Web.

I’ll be watching the Republication National Convention next week and monitoring the blogosphere, the social networks and the video and photo streams.

Just think about it.  In the past, if a dog or cat went missing, we put up flyers in the neighborhood and told all our friends.  Today, we use the Web, especially social networking sites, to tell the story, spread the word, and ask others to spread the word.  If a cause or issue takes hold, thousands of people catch wind of the story within minutes, hours, days, without the involvement of any government or news outlet.

In Jeddah’s case, WJLA reported the story, which reached the ears of Kate Bland, who asked Matrix Group to put up a Web page and Twitter account.  In between, dozens of people have e-mailed and actually joined the hunt for Jeddah at Dulles Airport and in Reston.  Today, thousands of people have heard about Jeddah.

Can the Web, e-mail and Twitter help save Jeddah?  Let’s hope so.
 

A recent study by Nortel and IDC showed just how wired and connected we have become. The study found that:

• 16% of global workers are already “hyperconnected,” fully embracing a world of multiple devices and intense use of new communication applications. The hyperconnected worker uses a minimum of seven devices for work and personal access, plus at least nine applications like IM, text messaging, web conferencing, and social networks.
• 36% of global workers were designated as “increasingly connected,” meaning they use a minimum of four devices for work and personal access to six or more applications.
• The most hyperconnected country is China and the United States. The least hyperconnected countries were Canada and the United Arab Emirates.
• The ranks of the hyperconnected are expected to rise to 40% in the next few years.

Seven devices and nine applications! Okay, I use four devices: My laptop, iMac, regular phone, and cell phone. And I thought that was over the top, but seven?

I can think of eight applications I use to stay connected and have people stay connected with me: E-mail, voice mail, text messaging, IM, Facebook, LinkedIn, personal blog, company blog. I can barely keep up with all these communication vehicles and I’m not even hyperconnected! Last weekend, I picked up voice mail messages on my home phone and discovered three messages that were nearly a week old. Can I / should I even consider twittering? I wonder if that’s why my husband and I like to vacation in places like Cambodia and Vietnam and we don’t stay in the big cities? Are you hyperconnected?