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You’ll hear plenty of praise for social media from us marketing bods. After all, when you consider the amount of time people are spending on these sites it’s difficult not to get excited. We think so anyway.

However, there’s still plenty of scepticism in the business world. Facebook is often seen as a plague in the workplace: draining people’s productivity and risking damage to the business’ reputation.

The reticence of businesses to adopt Facebook, Twitter and their ilk was highlighted in a recent survey by PC security specialist McAfee. It doesn’t go into too much detail, but the general conclusion was that the UK lags behind Brazil, Spain and India when it comes to adopting Web 2.0 tools.

If you’re still sat on the fence when it comes to social media, here are some pros and cons to consider about implementing it in your marketing strategy:
Cons of social media marketing

Time consuming – Social media is often described as an ‘online conversation’, so you’ll need to be constantly feeding your pages and profiles with interesting comments and links to keep people interested. You also have comments to monitor and respond to on a daily basis. Being consistently interesting and relevant all the time can also be difficult to maintain

Long time before ROI – Social media is a long haul strategy. It could be months, or even years, before you start seeing it translating into increased customer loyalty and sales

Dilutes brand voice – If you have more than one person posting messages on social media sites then this can lead to a mish mash of phraseology and tone

Risk of negative comments – If you use social media clumsily, there’s a risk of a public backlash and damage to your brand’s reputation (read more in When Social Media backfires)

Loss of control – Anything you publish is open to comment and criticism. Providing an arena for people to post negative comments about your company is the stuff of nightmares for marketers (but aren’t people going to talk about you anyway?)
Pros of social media marketing

Relationship building – The one-to-one dialogue you can have in social media makes it a powerful platform for building a closer affinity with customers and brand loyalty
It’s where your customers are – Facebook isn’t merely a domain filled with teenagers and 20 somethings. It now attracts all demographics and ages. In fact, Facebook’s fastest growing segment is the over 55s

Word of mouth/ viral marketing – Social media can spread your offers and messages amongst 1000s of people very quickly. And the best part is that it’s your customers spreading them for you

Give your brand personality – Posting messages everyday can develop people’s perception of your brand’s personality very quickly through your writing style and tone of voice

Gain feedback – You can ask questions and run polls to gain valuable insight on how you can improve your products and services

Learn more about customers – By listening and participating in their online conversations you can find out more about your customers’ problems, likes and dislikes and preferences

Low cost of entry – Creating profiles and pages on Facebook and Twitter is quick, easy and free to do

Customer service – People don’t rely on email and the phone to get their questions answered anymore. They’re now posting messages in blogs and forums to get them resolved. Engaging with social media enables you to respond to the evolving nature of customer service, and improve loyalty as a result

Crisis marketing – When something goes wrong, your customers want to know how you’re going to put it right. Many aren’t going to wait for a press release or newspaper article before they start forming a negative opinion about your lethargic response. Twitter can be used to get your apologies out fast, and enable you to answer concerned customers’ questions

Ultimately, deciding whether to use social networks in your marketing mix comes down to whether it’s right for your business. It’s not a ‘quick fix’ that will suddenly give you a burst of sales, but it does offer enormous potential for relationship building in the long run.

Setting up profiles in Facebook and Twitter is free to do, so why not give it a whirl and see if it works for you?

Before I dive in and give you some juicy, usable ideas for winning new customers and growing your business through social channels I want to get something straight. When I say ‘social’ business, I don’t mean social enterprise or non-profit businesses.

What I mean by ‘social’ is making your business a talking point. It’s about how you can make your business interesting enough so that people want to talk about it and share ‘stories’ of your business with their friends and colleagues.
Social Media vs. Social PR

Also I’m not just talking about Social Media and how to use Facebook, Twitter, Google+ etc… These channels are part of a much bigger, powerful opportunity - ‘Social PR’.

‘Social PR’ encapsulates how people, not newspapers or local radio stations, are now responsible for promoting and marketing your business:
Your customers buy from you, they ‘experience’ your business and they share those experiences with their friends and contacts. Through their online networks their ‘stories’ spread far and spread quickly, reaching hundreds of potential customers who would never have heard of your business through traditional means. It’s super-charged word-of-mouth.
PR Is Dead. Long live Social PR!!

In the past it was businesses who controlled the ‘stories‘ that were spread about their products and services. Now that power lies with us: the consumers.

How PR used to work

How Social PR works today

The Curse of Mediocrity

‘Mediocrity’, hmmm…sounds like the name of forgettable character from an ancient Greek tragedy that no one really remembers.

The same curse befalls a business who is neither great nor terrible, but just average. No one talks about you and few will remember you.

In the world of Social PR, no one shares stories about average experiences. Their tweets and Facebook posts are either about something they love or something they hate. Positive publicity is what you’re after, but even a negative story creates a buzz and gives a business something to react and respond to. No news is not good news.
Making Your Business ‘Remarkable’

Even the most mundane, boring businesses can become talking points. It just takes creativity, desire and a little courage.

In his book ‘Purple Cow’, Seth Godin (renowned marketing thinker, best selling author and entrepreneur) says that the key to successful marketing is to make your business ‘Remarkable’.

What he means is that you need to focus on making your business standout from the crowd so that people want to talk about you. It’s not about gimmicky or expensive marketing; it’s about doing things differently and surprising people with the positive way you do business.

Here are 5 tips for making your business remarkable and getting people talking. I’ll back-up the theory with some practical applications of these ideas for businesses that you don’t typically think of as ‘remarkable’.
1. Do The Unexpected – Surprise, Don’t Shock

Don’t allow your business to be an ‘also-ran’ and fade into the background. Find a way to deliver something above and beyond what people expect. It doesn’t have to be extravagant or strange, just surprising. Your customers should say ‘I really didn’t expect them to do that, but I love it!’

Example: Commercial Cleaner

Commercial cleaners clean offices and premises late at night when employees have gone home. Their work is rarely witnessed or praised by the office workers who benefit. But what if the cleaner was to do something a little different to leave their mark. What if a cleaner left a foiled wrapped chocolate resting on your keyboard so when you get to work the next day there’s a treat waiting – that’s a nice way to start the day, right?

Or each cleaner could be issued with a sticker with their name, photo & message on it – ‘Have an excellent day!’ They could leave a sticker on every desk they clean which reminds the office workers that someone is there at night, working hard for them, and that person has a name. It humanizes an otherwise faceless business.
2. ‘Going The Extra Mile’ = Business As Usual

Treat customers with a level of service that they just don’t expect, and act like it’s normal for you to do this. ‘That’s just the kind of business we are!’


Example: Plumber/Handyman

When a customer calls you out to their home to do a job, don’t go empty handed.

Take them a muffin or cupcakes as a treat. You should act as if you’re a guest in their house; guests are courteous and they bring gifts. It only costs you $0.50 a time to do this and you can bet they’ll remember the next time their faucet breaks they should call the guys with the cakes!
3. Be Bold Not Boring

Everything you do is a marketing opportunity and you need to make the most of it. Look at the assets you have from your store front to your branded plastic bags. Do they make people stop and look? Do your customers say ‘hey, great bag, that’s really cool!’

If they don’t, then you’re not doing enough to make your business memorable.

Example: Dry Cleaners

All dry cleaners use the same sort of polythene bags to protect customers’ clothes, and every customer carries this bag down the street in full public view.

Yet every bag from every dry cleaner looks identical – transparent with a logo stuck on it. What a great opportunity to stand out and get noticed. Why not switch colors and go for a glaring bright pink bag, or be bold and get some daring designs printed with people in their underwear (funny & relevant).
4. Work Doesn’t Have To Be Just About Work

You want to make your place of work more than just where you work. It should be a social place that people like to come to and has real character. Customers respond to the genuine, personal approach so get out from behind the counter and show them your fun side.

Example: Optician

You want to build up a relationship with your customers so they both trust you and like you.

Why not use your empty store at night for a wine tasting event. Invite your customers in for an evening of fine wines and run it in conjunction with a local wine merchant – they provide the wine and advice, you offer a free & fun evening for your customers. And again, be playful with it – call it ‘Glasses half empty’.
5. Reward Loyalty With REAL Rewards

Rewarding loyalty is an obvious thing to do, but don’t do the typical thing of offering customers more of the same. You want to extend your relationship beyond your store so that customers really remember you and appreciate you.

Example: Dry Cleaner

Create a loyalty scheme which rewards customers for every 10th visit they make to your business. But don’t offer them 1 free clean – that’s so predictable!

Again, team up with a friendly local business, maybe a restaurant or a salon and offer a free lunch or beauty treatment (good lead generation for that business). Then when that customer is enjoying their free lunch or getting pampered they’ll think of you.
Create Positive Experiences NOT Adverts

The more positive experiences you can create for your customers the greater the impact of Social PR on your business. These experiences become stories and these stories get shared which drives new customers to your door, and keeps existing customers coming back. All this and you didn’t have to spend a cent on advertising.

Opinions expressed in the article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land.

Amazon and Viacom might sign a video deal as soon as this week, bringing Amazon one step closer to launching a standalone video streaming service, Reuters reports.

Amazon’s Prime Instant Video is currently a part of Amazon Prime program, which provides members with unlimited two-day shipping and other benefits for $79 per year.

In September, Amazon inked a video deal with Fox; previously, the company signed deals with CBS, NBC, Sony, Warner Bros. and others.

The addition of Viacom to that list is another sign that Prime Instant Video might soon become a full-fledged competitor to Netflix and other streaming video companies. Google and Verizon are also expected to launch an online video streaming service in 2012, which should make for a very interesting year.

The competition for the streaming video crown is also heating up in the UK, where Netflix recently launched its service to compete with Amazon’s LoveFilm.

Ever since Google announced its new, controversial privacy policy two weeks ago, interest in online privacy has spiked as more people question how Google and other companies are managing their data.

Google announced last week that it would change its privacy policy by combining 60 existing policies into one, with the changes going into effect March 1. While simplification of hard-to-read policies is nice, Google attracted criticism because it will now combine user data across all of its services, including search, Gmail, YouTube, Google+, and Google Docs. First the U.S. Congress voiced concerns about the changes, and on Friday, European regulators jumped into the privacy dog pile.

Google isn’t the only big tech company being scrutinized. Facebook, which controls (and sells) an incredible amount of data people voluntarily submit, has also attracted the eye of the regulators in the U.S. and abroad. In a huge November settlement with the social media company, the Federal Trade Comission found Facebook’s privacy practices from 2009 to be deceptive and in violation of federal law. In 2009, Facebook set friends lists, photos, and other info to a default publicly visible setting, even if the person had already designated that info for friends only. The company has since hired two privacy officers and given more notice to users when changes are happening, as it did with the Timeline feature.

Keeping track of all these privacy issues can be challenging, but this infographic by Frugal Dad outlines some of the biggest privacy problems that have come up in the past few years. More importantly, the infographic also outlines some important ways to protect yourself online, including changing passwords frequently, using more caution with public computers, and turning on cookie notices.

Take a look at the full infographic:

1. How do you boost your LinkedIn profile SEO?

LinkedIn operates a bit like Google did 10 years ago, the more keywords the better ranking you will get for a while. The algorithm of the search rankings are that you will be bumped up and if people actually take action – click on your profile in the search results – that tells LinkedIn you are relevant for those search terms. IF users don’t click on you, you will be sent down to page 16 in no time and classed a spammer by the LinkedIn search engine.

To get better ranking make sure to insert relevant keywords in your headline, in your job title and in your summary. Use keywords such as industry, location, company names (if that’s allowed), and even names of people. Bring it down to a micro level with versions of software and even post codes.

2. How to use advanced X-Ray searches to find anyone on LinkedIn?

On LinkedIn, you can only see the people that are three degrees away from you or members of the same group.

One of the worst kept secrets on LinkedIn is that you are able to see every public profile via search engines such as Google. LinkedIn make sure these profiles are indexed in Google as they want to be the first search results for people’s names.

You can use this by entering a Boolean search string searching every LinkedIn user, this typically renders quite a lot of results so throw in more keywords in the search to narrow it down to a nice shortlist.

3. How do you advertise for free on LinkedIn?

Anyone can advertise on LinkedIn but it comes at a price.

One way of doing it for free is of course your status update; another way is to post it into groups. These are in theory good ways but the trouble is that most people see those updates as adverts and tend to ignore them.

One more creative way is to use a SlideShare or Google presentation where you put your presentation on, integrate this on your LinkedIn profile and share it with your network. This will actually get clicks and if it’s done well it could go viral.

4. How do you use the events section on LinkedIn?

The events section is one of the most underutilized sections of LinkedIn. We all attend events, and so do your customers. Search for these events on LinkedIn and you’ll be able to see who is coming, so that you can plan your conversations way ahead of the event. The attendee list is sometimes a great place for identifying buyers, if ten people are attending a LinkedIn meetup – I would expect a few of them to be interested in some training.

Whether it’s your breakfast briefing on new regulations or networking drinks you are hosting – be sure to list these in the LinkedIn Events section.

When you list an event, your entire network gets notified. You can then share it again to anyone in your network by LinkedIn messages. Every time someone clicks ‘attending’ or ‘interested’ – their networks get notified as well.

Events is one of the best places to build up some buzz around your company.

5. How to categorize connections and send group emails?

Another very underutilized feature of LinkedIn is the ability to tag people. This means you can categorize your connections according to company, position, location, where you met or whatever you choose.

When doing some sales calls, you can tag everyone you speak to. When your next sales session comes up you’ll have an instant shortlist and you are able to send a group email to everyone in that category (let’s say HR managers in Liverpool) to get it out quickly.

6. How do you connect with people in Groups?

Another worst kept secret on LinkedIn is that Groups normally allow you contact and connect with anyone direct on LinkedIn. Sometimes you find a perfect prospect but have no way of contacting them, what you can do is see what groups they are a member of and join one of these. From there you can either invite the person to your network direct or you can look them up in the group and send a message.

Note that users are able to turn this off, it’s enabled by default but if someone gets spammed they are likely to opt out of these contact settings.

7. Who should you connect with on LinkedIn (and who shouldn’t you)?

LinkedIn is all about connections, the more you have the better visibility your profile will have and more people you will be able to search for. But it’s also about quality connections, it’s worth identifying the so called ‘super connectors’ in your field and start connecting with them – if they have 1000 relevant connections that will save you a lot of leg work.

In general, connect with business contacts of all levels. Juniors become seniors within companies, they move companies and remember you…

Don’t connect with your competitors unless you know they have more useful connections than you do. Yes you can hide them from browsing your connections but your connections will still come up in search results so be wary of connecting with competitors.

8. How do you integrate Twitter and LinkedIn?

If you tweet, or if your company tweets, you might want to integrate Twitter and LinkedIn. This is done through an application called Tweets. It’s fairly straightforward to install (see how here) but the important thing here are the settings.

We have all seen users with more than ten updates on LinkedIn per day, these updates typically come from Twitter and probably do more harm to your brand than anything else. The setting you want to use is to only share tweets on LinkedIn when you use the hashtag #in inside Twitter. This allows you to selectively share on LinkedIn as opposed to blanket bombing your network with conversational updates.

9. Recommendations - do’s and don’ts

The recommendation engine on LinkedIn is one of the keys to LinkedIn’s success. Whereas you used to get recommendations on a CV or a website, these recommendations are fully transparent and people can click their way through to actually scrutinize who wrote the recommendation (and event check that person’s recommendations).

Given that people check out the recommender, don’t get recommendations from your mates, don’t do back-to-back recommendations and don’t get recommendations from people who are obviously indebted to you (that graduate candidate you placed on an internship). Instead focus on quality recommendations from C-level executives and former bosses. Just get one from each company and don’t get more that 5-10 recommendations in total – any more defeats the purpose. If you are in the US, the norm is to have double that.

10. How do you detect that a friend is on the job hunt?

Recruiters are very keen on finding out when anyone goes from being a ‘passive’ to an ‘active’ candidate on LinkedIn. If you are a bit nosy and or want to help your network you can do what they do and look out for the signs. We all know the very obvious people who actually post “I’m looking for a job” in their status updates. But how can you figure out the stealth job seekers who might just need your help?

Look for any of these signs: a number of new recommendations on the profile, tinkering with the headline, the summary or even a new picture. Contact details in the open and crucially, the LinkedIn email address changed to their webmail from work email.

Go ahead an contact these people but do it in a subtle way, as they are obviously a bit jumpy and wouldn’t want anyone to know they are on the hunt. See how you can help them and they will remember your kind assistance when your turn comes to explore opportunities.

11. How do I remove annoying users from my homefeed?

Whether someone is plugging their own services every day or tweet on LinkedIn a bit too much, you can easily hide these people from your home feed. Just to the right of their update there is a little grey text reading “Hide” – click that and you won’t see this person on your feed again. You can un-hide them later if you so please.

If someone is even more annoying, you can remove them as a connection altogether on the My Contacts page and click ‘remove connections’. They will not be notified that you have deleted them from your network.

12. Why is LinkedIn the best job search tool on social media?

LinkedIn is the place where you can find professionals on social media. Yes, Facebook can be great for graduates and Twitter for media recruitment but LinkedIn reaches people who haven’t got time for every social network under the sun. A lawyer, banker or accountant will check their LinkedIn profile periodically but very seldom would they even have a Twitter account. So from a mere reach perspective LinkedIn is your best bet.

This means most recruiters and HR departments are using LinkedIn to find candidates already. So you can actually be found via one of their searches, or you can actively network your way to opportunities within companies. And you can of course have a look at the Jobs section to make it really easy on yourself.

13. How can you scan what anyone on LinkedIn is saying about a company or topic?

Another virtually unknown feature of LinkedIn is what’s called LinkedIn Signal. It’s basically a search tool for status updates on LinkedIn. You can search for your company name, your field or location or even a combination of them all. LinkedIn will tell you who is talking about the keyword, including people up to 3 degrees away from you. If someone is talking about Java programming on LinkedIn but the profile says ‘consultant’ – chances are they are actually a Java developer with a misleading profile.

14. How can you stand out against the other millions of [insert job title here] on LinkedIn?

By being useful to your network, by sharing interesting and valuable information and by not selling your products and services at any given moment. Your network probably knows what you do and they are likely to let you know when they have a referral for you, so it’s better to get mindshare – creating daily awareness and staying visible.

15. What’s a good daily LinkedIn routine?

Most active LinkedIn users I know have a LinkedIn browser window open all day but they mainly use LinkedIn as a database. I would make a habit of sharing an interesting piece of content every day, checking out the events section for relevant networking dos, engaging with other users in Groups and generally keeping an eye on the homefeed to keep my finger on the pulse. This only takes 15 minutes per day but it’s easy to get sidetracked and lose the bigger picture.
16. How do you run a successful group on LinkedIn?

There are over a million groups on LinkedIn, many of these were set up by recruiters. If you look at what makes a group successful it’s all about creating a strong community. When it’s set up it’s ideal to make it ‘exclusive’ in some way – i.e. only open to Java developer in Manchester, this just makes more of them want to join. Assign a team to run the group and to seed conversation, moderate discussions and sharing interesting content.

The number one gripe people have with groups is that they get too much spam emails so make sure you vet all members, only ever send relevant email updates and do not tolerate any blatant promotions from members.

17. How to use your company page to attract customers?

The LinkedIn company page is your company’s number one branding tool on LinkedIn. There are lots of things you can do here such as write up a proper description of the company, add contact details, insert your Twitter feed, link your blog posts to the page, add your products and services, ask for company recommendations and check out the visitor statistics.

Prospective clients are likely to check out your company page so make sure it represents your brand fully.

18. What are the essentials on your LinkedIn profile?

There are four essentials on an individual’s LinkedIn profile; they are the picture, the headline, the summary and the keywords.

Your picture should look professional and reflect your brand, people like dealing with faces as opposed to just text – studies show you get 30% more clicks in search results when you have a picture (see more at How To Choose a Picture for Your Personal Brand).

The headline (along with your name and picture) is what comes up in search results and based on this the user will decide whether to click on you or the competitor. Make sure the headline talks about what you do and not who you are, i.e. you recruit Java developers to top tier consultancies in Manchester and not Consultant and Recruiter X – which means very little (more on headlines at How To Write Your Killer LinkedIn Headline).

Your summary is where people go to see what you are all about and what your track record in the industry is. If you get someone to take their time to check this out you will want to add you contact details at the end and not leave them hanging.

Finally, you have to get the right keywords on your profile or you will not come up in any searches. Yes you might come up in searches for your name but let’s face it if someone already knows your name you already have a foot in the door. It’s better to come up in the search for “Java recruiter Manchester”.

19. How do you connect with people outside of your network?

There are lots of ways of connecting with people outside of your network. You can join the same group as this person which allows you to connect direct (most of the time). You can do an introduction through a common connection, this can take a bit of time but usually works. If you have a premium account you can send an inMail or you can actually buy inMail credits on a free account.

But let’s forget the online world for a while, I think the best way to connect is actually outside of LinkedIn. Pick up the phone and ring the person up, or if you don’t have the number you can probably guess the email address and try that. It’s all about being creative and just because you found someone on LinkedIn doesn’t mean you have to approach them through LinkedIn.

20. Do you need to upgrade your LinkedIn account?

It really depends on how you are using LinkedIn, most people don’t use inMails, Profile organizer and require additional search results. If you do pay for an account make sure you make the most of it, paying a monthly fee is not a silver bullet to success - you actually have to understand what you’re doing first.

21. What applications should you use to attract business?

You can use SlideShare to share presentations of your company or about specials or promotions you have on at the moment, you can use the Amazon Reading list to show off your extra-curricular interests, use TripIt if you travel a lot and actually want people to contact you to have a coffee in various locations. You can use Google Docs to get video going on your profile and if you blog you should definitely integrate the Blog Link application. Remember that every time you make any changes to your application, your network gets notified which is usually a good thing.

The majority of journalists are involved in social media already: journalists use social media to collect and syndicate the news as well as (which is so important to us, marketers) find sources to cite. Journalists are in constant search for original (first-hand) news and article ideas. Social media sites make it very easy to track sources down.

Would you like to be in popular journalists’ contact books? Would you like to have the list of influential reporters to share your important news next time you have any? Would you like to be cited in popular (both print and online) media outlets? If so, be sure to bookmark the following tools and tips.

Note: While the focus of this article is primarily on building media and PR contacts using social media, you are never limited to one use only. Feel free to apply these tips to find local bloggers, representatives of huge educational institutions, editors, etc – anyone who could be happy to grant you with a well-deserved (and highly valuable!) link in exchange for your timely or useful content.
Twitter: Finding Journalists by Company

Twitter is highly breaking-news-oriented and therefore Journalists love it.

In a study of “j-tweeters”, Lasorsa et al. (2011) found that journalists express opinions more freely on Twitter, write more often about their lives and their jobs, engage in direct conversations with users, and share user-generated content.

Here’s the best way to find journalists on Twitter: bio search. Most professional journalists mention the name of the newspaper or magazine they work for in the bio section, so all you need is to search Twitter bios by that name.

Twiangulate is a great tool for that. It supports some common boolean operators that help make your search more targeted towards your industry:
Both words should be present in the bio: hot & dog (in our case this can be “Name of the newspaper” & “Topic of expertise”)
One of the words should be present in the bio: hot | dog
All bios with one word but NOT with the other one: hot !dog
Exact match: “hot dog”

Twitter: Finding Local Journalists

Another highly useful Twitter bio search tool is LocaFollow that lets you combine a few relevant search queries (for example, location and a word in a bio).

Thus it can be a great source of local journalists on Twitter. The search results are also highly informative: you can see how long each journalist tweets, how many followers he/she has, what his/her latest tweet was and how old that last tweet is:

 LinkedIn: Getting Introduced

LinkedIn is the most popular and the fastest-growing social network populated by journalists because it provides the easiest and most reliable way for reporters to connect with sources.

LinkedIn is thus highly effective when it comes to both discovering and building new media contacts.

It’s best feature: the ability to ask your current contact to introduce you to another member he/she is directly connected with.

LinkedIn built-in search is perfect for finding “2nd degree”* contacts at any company (*”2nd degree” means you have a common direct contact who can introduce you).
The left-hand sidebar panel lets you filter results by company
The top panel lets you sort search results by relationship level:

Besides, you can subscribe to regular updates to be alerted of new members of the media company (to be one of the very first social media contacts of the newcomer: the earlier you connect, the better you remember!)

My Web Career is an awesome tool for discovering and visualizing your current connections at a media company you are interested in. Just look through your contacts’ current companies – the connection is visualized through the line color and thickness:
Red Links means current position
Blue Links means previous positions
Link Thickness visualizes time at company.

And here’s my network connection to Google:

Conclusion: First Contact

1. Follow the Journalists: journalists often post questions or polls for upcoming story content. The more you get involved and help them, the better you know each other! Creating a separate Twitter list to have all your media contacts in one place as well as follow them more effectively (through a separate column in Tweetdeck, for example) is another essential step to strengthening your relationships.

2. Touching Base? Offer to be useful. There’s no way to build effective business connections by asking for a link (or to be cited) just outright. Start from offering something before asking for anything.

Good luck!
 

Are America’s fastest-growing companies shifting away from blogging as a primary social media platform? ”Maybe” could be a conclusion based on new research examining the INC 500 from The Center for Marketing Research at the University of Massachusetts.

For the first time in the five years that this research has been conducted, the use of blogging declined. Blogging had been steadily climbing as a corporate communications tool — 19% of the INC 500 blogged in 2007, 39% in 2008, 45% in 2009, 50% in 2010 and just 37% last year.

But there is an element of mystery here. Despite the decline, blogging was considered the most “successful” social media platform for the fourth consecutive year! In addition, among those companies not blogging, 62 percent are considering adding a blog.

How can we reconcile this seemingly inconsistent data? Is corporate blogging really declining? I have a theory that would conclude “no,” but before I explain my rational, let’s look at a few more interesting trends from this study:

Facebook and LinkedIn lead the way. For the first time, the platform most utilized by the Inc. 500 is Facebook with 74% of companies using it. Virtually tied at 73% is the adoption of the professional network, LinkedIn. As you can see in the graph above, video and podcasting use declined in this period. The researchers theorized that companies are spending more time on Facebook at the expense of blogs and video.

Social media tools are seen as important for company goals. 90% of responding INC 500 executives report that social media tools are important for brand awareness and company reputation. 88% see these tools as important for generating web traffic and 81% find them important for lead generation. 73% say that social media tools are important for customer support programs.

Social media investments will rise. 25% of the respondents said they plan to keep their social media budget the same in 2012, and 71% plan to increase their investment by 20% or more. Just one company had a plan to decrease the social media marketing budget.

Monitoring the social media buzz levels off. The 2011 study shows 68% of companies are using social media monitoring tools, down from 70% in 2010, which was the highest percentage of the past 5 years. Only 24% of the companies have a formal social media policy.

Measurement is inconsistent. When asked how they measured the effectiveness of their social media efforts, executives reported using fans, followers and supporters (26%), web traffic (25%), lead generation (16%), reduced cost of customer support (10%), the value of sales generated through social media programs (7%).

The work is being handled inside. Executives were asked how social media resource needs were filled in their companies. Two-thirds of the companies reported retraining or repositioning existing employees to handle their social media efforts, 10% use external consultants or agencies, 7% have made new hires specifically for their social media efforts.

Are company blogs really declining?

If you just read the headline of this study and looked at the graph at the top of this blog post, you would be hearing a death knell for blogging. But let’s not bury blogging so fast. Let’s apply a little critical reasoning to this study …
It is important to consider that the data presented by the university researchers is not an apples-to-apples comparison. There is a tremendous “churn” of companies on the INC list. In fact, from 2007 when the survey started to 2011, the list of companies has almost completely changed.
The authors admit that these changes have impacted the overall statistics in “distinct ways.” Most notably, there has been an increase in companies providing Government Services (a result of “Obama administration initiatives”). The researchers state that Government Services companies are among the least likely companies to blog. So in 2011, many traditional “blogging companies” were replaced on the list by companies that are unlikely to have blogs. If the researchers surveyed the exact same sample group, blogging levels may have even gone up in 2011.
Also notable is that more than 60 percent of the companies on the INC 500 list did not exist in 2005. It is possible that these start-ups are not moving away from blogging to Facebook as the authors surmised. I think a more likely scenario is that these young companies are STARTING with Facebook because the entry barriers are so low compared to blogging. This would reconcile the curious fact that the companies with blogs see them as successful (why would they quit?) and that most companies who are not blogging plan to do so.
Finally, another possible cause of the strange drop is sampling error. Only 34% of the INC 500 companies responded to the survey. Within the stated sampling errors, it is possible to conclude that the 2010 data and 2011 data are nearly identical.

It’s also interesting to note that the UMass researchers also do similar studies for non-profits, universities and Fortune 500 companies. In these studies — which have a relatively stable group of comparison organizations from year to year — blogging rates are level or on the rise. Why would the INC 500 companies be so different? I don’t think they are.

Is blogging dying? We can’t tell for sure, but I would not make that conclusion from this study. What do you think? What does business blogging look like where you work?
 

One thing I’ve been particularly obsessed with recently is the SEO elements of social profiles. It began with checking out the SEO for Facebook fan pages and then onto social content. Now, it’s time to take a look at the differences between the optimization of your Google+ personal profile and the new Google+ Pages.
SEO Elements of the Google+ Personal Profile

We’ll start by looking at the parts of the Google+ personal profile that you can customize based on the data you enter in specific fields.

SEO Title: Your Name – Google+

Google+ is all about the personal branding, and they insist that you use your real name for your profile. If you want to use a business name, blog name, or keywords, save it for your Google+ Page.

Meta Description: Your Name – Your Headline + Your Occupation

The meta description for your Google+ profile is a combination of different pieces of your profile information including:
Your name followed by your headline.
Your occupation.
Your current employer.

Those items are followed by your introduction text, but by this point you’re usually well beyond the 160 character mark. Make sure that the first 160 characters count by writing a great headline and occupation title. Also make sure those areas are set to be seen by anyone on the web.

Dofollow Links: Everywhere

From what I can tell, the links within the introduction content as well as the ones under other profiles, contributor to, and recommended links are all dofollow. So don’t shy away from anchor text as this is a premier Google property. Just make sure the profile still sounds good and doesn’t look like a big link farm.
SEO Elements of the Google+ Page

When it comes to the customizable SEO elements of the Google+ pages, they are about the same as the personal profiles. One exception is that there isn’t an occupation or current employer field in the pages (or at least not for products or brands). Hence your meta description will be your page’s name, headline, and then the introduction text.
How do Google+ Profiles Rank vs. Pages

As of right now, I see that my personal Google+ profile ranks No. 9 for my name when I use Google Chrome (signed out of my Google account), but it’s on the second page of results when I use Firefox (also signed out of my Google account). My Google+ page for my blog isn’t ranking in the first 100 results for my blog’s name Kikolani.

Pete Cashmore’s personal Google+ profile, for example, ranks at No. 8 for his name in Google Chrome, but it’s on the second page of results in Firefox. Mashable’s Google+ Page, on the other hand, ranks on the second page of search results in both Google Chrome and Firefox.

As another example, Arianna Huffington’s personal Google+ profile ranks at No. 8 in Google Chrome, but it’s on the second page of results in Firefox. Huffington Post’s Google+ Page ranks on the third page of results in both Google Chrome and Firefox.

How do your Google+ profiles and pages rank? Do you believe that links from these Google+ pages are helping your personal or business brand in search results?