OKCupid Co-Founder Speaks Further On User Experimentation

 OKCupid Lies To You Almost As Much As You Lie To It

Christian Rudder, co-founder of OKCupid, has spoken further about his company’s experimentation with users following his controversial blog post ‘We Experiment On Human Beings!’ last week. After admitting that the post was ‘sensationally written’ and at least partly intended to incite active debate around the topic, he defended the dating website’s actions on the grounds that it was part of the ‘scientific method’ – that without this kind of experimentation no website could ever hope to improve its users’ experience.

Source: the1stclasslifestyle.com

The backlash against OKCupid (and Facebook, for a similar experiment that they admitted to conducting earlier this year) has mainly centred on the idea that there is some implicit agreement between user and company, that the obligation rests with these companies to represent our data in a reasonable and expected way.

The first problem is that we don’t see everything we theoretically ‘should’ on social media sites anyway. Facebook rolled out its Top Stories feature some time ago, wherein it was the most popular and commented-upon posts which took up most of the space on users’ feeds rather than relying on pure chronology. Users grumbled, but there was still the option to view posts by ‘most recent’ and clearly enough people were happy with Top Stories for it to stay.

Likewise, as Rudder pointed out, OKCupid already uses certain metrics and algorithms to determine who is compatible and who isn’t. These are not written on tablets of stone, contrary to popular belief – thousands of years of human intellectual endeavour have gone into the figuring out what makes people fall in love, and it seems unlikely that a couple of guys managed to crack it on their first try (even if they did go to Harvard). Constant tweaking and refinement is the name of the game when it comes to perfecting user experience, and doubtless these same people would be kicking up a fuss about some other aspect that wasn’t running according to their exact preferences.

Source: 640toronto.com

Perhaps most importantly, everyone who has complained about this is a shameless hypocrite. To launch into self-righteous indignation over how you are represented on a dating site of all places seems to lack so much self-awareness as to be comic. The stereotype of the 22 stone, thrice-divorced chain smoker who lists themselves as having an athletic body and enjoying long walks on the beach is beyond a cliché by this point, but the fact remains that everyone misrepresents themselves on dating sites as well as on the internet in general.

Steven Furtick said that ‘the reason we struggle with insecurity is because we’re comparing our behind-the-scenes with everyone else’s highlight reel,’ and yet that doesn’t stop us posting pictures of our amazing safari but not of us curled up in bed with the flu, of fancy dinners with friends but not eating McDonalds alone in our car. Perhaps one day we’ll reach a stage of self-confidence sufficient to represent our true selves both online and off, but until that mythical point it’s hard to blame OKCupid for fiddling with a few profiles to try and find out who we really are, and who we might really love.

WWI Remembered On Social Media

 People Come Together To Commemorate Losses Of The Great War

Wilfred Owen, as he watched his fellow soldiers die beside him the trenches, asked ‘What passing-bells for those who die as cattle?’ Now, a hundred years later, on the centenary of the beginning of World War I, people have taken to social media to remember and commemorate those who gave their lives during the conflict.

Source: rayburntours.com

While the politicians’ speeches and newspaper articles were about the big picture, social media gave people a chance to speak out about the personal effect of the Great War; people spoke of grandparents, neighbours, teachers who gave their lives.

Engagement with social media also gave organisations a chance to make public information about the War in new and innovative ways. The Greater London Reserve Forces’ and Cadets’ Association (GL RFCA) created a Facebook page for a fictional soldier from Battersea called Walter Carter which was then updated in real time with posts about events leading up to the outbreak of war, incorporating real historical documents and references.

On Twitter the hashtag #WWIcentenary was trending, with people using it to share the memories which had been passed down to them. Since Harry Patch, the last British veteran of the trenches died in 2009 the importance of maintaining this history has become more acute and social media acted as a forum for people to collectively share and store these memories. Almost sixty thousand people tweeted with the hashtag #WWI in July alone, with many of these being concerned with personal memories and experience: according to the website findmypast.com, 1200 of those tweets alone mentioned ‘home,’ and over 1600 mentioned ‘love.’

Source: stokesleyheritage.wikidot.com

The coinciding of the centenary with the Commonwealth games gave an additional poignancy to proceedings, with the contributions from all the former nations of the British Empire being recognised. David Cameron used #WWIcentenary to talk about a special service at Glasgow Cathedral to recognise the contributions of the Commonwealth nations, and individuals used social media as a platform to speak about those who they feared may be forgotten – such as the 400,000 Muslims who fought for the Allies during the conflict.

People also took the opportunity to launch campaigns to bring this mass remembrance offline. The hashtag #lightsout was created to encourage people to switch off their lights between 10 and 11 pm tonight, a reference to Sir Edward Grey’s remark at the outbreak of war that ‘The lamps are going out all over Europe; we shall not see them lit again in our lifetime.’

All this helps to remind us that social media is not simply a platform for a display of our own lives, or a tool to facilitate business – it is what it says it is: a society. Its strength is not something inherent, but only a product of the interaction of the billions of individuals who use it, and one may hold out some hope that that the kind of international conversation and cooperation seen on this anniversary is something of a guarantee that that which is being remembered is truly being consigned to history.

How To Get The Best Out Of Facebook For Your Business

Setting up a Facebook page is quick and easy, especially considering how beneficial one can be to your business. However, to get the most out of Facebook, your business’ page, profile and presence on the social media site needs to be correctly managed and maintained. Here are five categories you should consider when managing and maintaining your business’ Facebook presence:

1. What to Post
The Basics:
Post pictures, videos, questions and facts related to your business, or that you think will engage your audience.

Post pictures and videos that excite and amuse or that your page’s viewers will find instantly recognisable. Why not post pictures celebrating special days like Valentine’s Day or Christmas, but with your company’s own special twist? For example, biscuit manufacturers Oreo sculpt pictures emblematic of certain holidays and anniversaries out of the cream in their cookies.
If your company is running a multimedia advertising campaign, post images and videos on Facebook to coincide with your billboard, magazine and television adverts.

Be an Industry Leader:
Ask your fans questions or post facts related to you and your company’s field of expertise. Post links to articles that you think your fans, followers and customers will find interesting, with pictures that will catch the attention of those who view your Facebook page – Facebook lets you post links and pictures at the same time. Cement your position as an expert in your field and your company’s position as an industry leader with the relevant and interesting information you post.

Ask your Fans:
Ask your fans for their input in certain company decisions, like what your mascot should be called, what new flavour of ice cream your frozen goods company should sell, or what your retail company’s new range of clothes should be called. Plush soft toy company Squishable gained over 700,000 likes on their Facebook page by asking their fans to vote for which creatures should be made into cuddly companions.

Promoted Posts:

Whatever you post will show up in your fans’ News Feeds – those who have liked your page – and the better the quality of posts, the more likely it is that people will like your page. Facebook users spend an average of 40% of their time scrolling through the News Feed, so having your posts appear there ensures that your fans will see them.

If your page has more than 400 likes, you can pay to promote your posts. Promoting posts moves them higher in the News Feed so that the people you shared it with are likely to see it. According to Facebook:

You can promote any post you share from your News Feed, profile or Page, including status updates, photos, videos, questions and offers. You can also promote and share posts from friends and people you follow.Any post you promote will be labelled “Sponsored by” and then your business’ name.
Celebrate Milestones:


Milestones are special page posts that take up the entire width of the timeline rather than just one side of the timeline. Add them to your page to mark special dates in your company’s history, such as when the company was founded or when you moved to new offices.

You can post pictures alongside milestones to better illustrate their significance. When your company does something special, record it with a milestone on your Facebook page.

Conclusions:
According to Facebook’s business page, successful posts are:

Short: Posts between 100 and 250 characters get about 60% more likes, comments and shares

Visual: Photo albums, pictures and videos get 180%, 120%, and 100% more engagement respectively

Optimised: Page Insights help you learn things such as what times people engage most with your content so you can post during those hours.Post regularly, about once or twice a week, but make sure you don’t bombard your fans with information: if their News Feed is inundated with your posts they will get sick of hearing about your company and “unlike” your page.

Bear in mind that many of the users who have liked your page have done so because they are interested in the product or services you provide (unless they are friends, employees and colleagues, although they might like your company regardless) so make sure you provide enough information about your company on your page and in your posts.

2. Engaging with Fans and Followers
Responding to Comments:

You don’t need to respond to all the comments on your Facebook page, but answering questions and liking a few statements will make your fans feel like their opinions matter. If managed right, your page will act more like a forum for people to talk about your products and your posts amongst themselves.

Reward your favourite comments, not just by liking them, but by illustrating them and reposting them as a picture. This will further ingratiate your company to your fans and will help you highlight positive feedback about your company.

Unfortunately, there will be a few people who take advantage of the popularity of your page by posting back-linked comments. It is not worth the time or effort to constantly comb through comments to delete the few that are unrelated to your company, your fans are intelligent enough to work out which ones to avoid by themselves.

Promotions, Competitions and Contests:
Facebook has very strict guidelines for companies who want to run promotions on the site and, if you stray outside them, you run the risk of having your company’s Facebook page deleted.

Promotions, however, are one of the most successful ways to attract more fans onto your page. The problem is, you can’t use any of the features on your page to run the promotion.

All Facebook promotions need to be run through a third-party application, such as Google’s wildfire. You can’t use any of the features on your company’s page – the comments section, the photos, the events tab, the like button, etcetera – to run your Facebook promotions.

What you are allowed to do on your company’s Facebook page is advertise the promotion. However, make sure that at no point are you requiring users to “like” your page if they want to enter the contest or contacting winners and entrants on your page. It is advisable to include a disclaimer with any material related to promotions on your Facebook page, saying that in no way is Facebook itself involved.


Keeping Facebook’s stringent policies in mind, running a successful Facebook promotion is easy and often extremely beneficial: according to ExactTarget, 40% of Facebook users become fans to take advantage of promotions.

Here are a few ways to ensure your promotions success:

Make sure it’s free and easy to enter.
Offer prizes for the winners that are related to your company’s products or service.
Decide what sort of Facebook competition you want to run. There are four basic types: sweepstakes, essay, photo and video. The last three take a lot of time, but will potentially provide your page and followers with some quality content. Sweepstakes are an easier way to engage with fans and get their information.
Collect emails: one of the greatest benefits of running a promotion on Facebook is that you can collect all the names and email addresses of the entrants, making it a great way to reach more potential fans outside of the site.
Advertise the contest everywhere you can: your website, on Twitter, in a Facebook ad, for example.
Make sure the third-party app you use is flexible, competitively priced, has mobile capabilities and can be embedded on both Facebook and your website.Post on the Pages of Other Companies:
Businesses with smaller followings on Facebook can leverage the networks of businesses with more followers in order to increase their own fanbase.

Post on the pages of competitors and experts in your industry. Comment on their posts or the posts of their fans and followers with related information and links to your own Facebook page or website.

If you comment on the pages of other businesses, their followers who have commented in the same thread are instantly notified, drawing their attention to you.

Even if a follower hasn’t commented on a thread that you comment on, they may see it on the page. If they appreciate what you write, they may click the “like” button, which will show up in their activity for their friends to see, or they may even follow you.


Offers:

If you are a page administrator, you can pay to run offers on your page, which will reach those who have liked your page and even their friends.

Offers will appear on your page and in your fans News Feed. When your fans claim the offer, it will show up in the News Feeds of their friends, who can claim the offer in turn.

Offer something that your fans will want, like a discount on a new product or a free trial. if more people claim the offer then more people will see it.

Word-of-mouth marketing is one of the greatest tools in a business’ arsenal: according to Facebook, businesses typically receive a 3x higher return on investment when fans refer friends.

Rewards:
You could also reward your fans exclusive benefits for liking your page.

Say you are a chocolatiers releasing new flavours of one of most popular snack bars: why not give your Facebook fans the chance to taste them first.

You shouldn’t only be trying to get new fans to like your page: you should be thanking those who have liked your page already. Customer retention is the basis of growth and rewarding your customers is one of the best ways to do this.

Conclusions:
Always stay active on Facebook: posting comments, replying to your fans, constantly networking and connecting.

Make sure that the quality of your response is high and that you post information relevant to the thread – don’t be mistaken for a spammer!

Give your fans something they want, so they will keep returning to your page and also refer their friends to your business.

3. Marketing and Advertising
Creating adverts:
Creating adverts on Facebook is perhaps the best way to get people to like your page and buy your products from Facebook: according to Facebook, people who like a company’s page will spend an average on 2 times more than someone unconnected.

Facebook gives businesses three options at the start, asking whether they want to:

Get More Page Likes: Reach people who aren’t connected to your Page yet. You’ll be asked to design your advert including headline, body text and image

Promote Page Posts: Promote a specific post; giving you increased reach and increasing your chance of placement in the News Feed

Advanced Options: See all creative and bidding options in one place. You can toggle your bidding options between CPM and CPC.Creating a good advert is like creating a good post: you need to ensure that the picture and the text is just right, catching the eye of the viewer and then telling them exactly what the advert is all about.


Targeting:

Businesses are then given options on who they want to target with their adverts, with categories such as gender, age, interests, location, connections and marital status.

Make sure you target your adverts to the right audience. For example, if you are advertising a new people carrier, the ad should pop up on the pages of parents rather than the pages of single teens.

There is even an “advanced targeting” targeting option to narrow the boundaries even further.

Paying for and Scheduling Adverts:
After you’ve named your advert (make sure its something easy to remember in case you plan on making a few) you will be asked to set a budget for your advert.

You will never pay more than your budget, but you may pay less. What you’re paying for is impressions (clicks-per-minute), the more impressions, the more of your budget the advert will cost. However, impressions prove that people are seeing and clicking on your advert, increasing the chance of a sale.

You can adjust payment options, however, by clicking “advanced options” in the goals section.

Make sure you schedule your adverts for an appropriate length of time. Facebook allows businesses to schedule their adverts to start on a certain date and end on a certain date.

Schedule your adverts to be seen at the best possible time. For example, if you are advertising for the January sales, schedule your adverts to start after Christmas and end at the start of February.

Running Multiple Adverts:

If you are unsure of your best audience (and you have the money) you can run more than one advert targeted at different audiences to determine which audience is best.

If you are running more than one advert, Facebook will optimise your adverts automatically:

When multiple adverts are running in a campaign, we'll automatically allocate more of your daily budget to higher performing adverts so it's important to put your adverts in different campaigns when you're testing them.Change things subtly to fine tune your advert. Facebook make it easy with the “create a similar advert” option.

CPC and CPM:
Cost-Per-Click and Cost-Per-Impression are used to monitor Facebook advertising’s ROI. Here are the figures for the average CPC (also sometimes called PPC) and CPM (also sometimes called CPI) in the twelve most expensive countries, as measured by socialbakers.com:


As you can see, the price of Facebook advertising in the UK is relatively cheap CPC-wise, compared to Australia and the United States, but is equal to the latter for CPM. Canada and Germany are cheaper still: Canada’s CPC is $0.41 and there CPM is $0.09, while Germany’s CPC is $0.37 and ther CPM is $0.08.

Coordinate your Adverts with Third Parties:

You can coordinate with third party services to run adverts on Facebook based on traffic to your website or people who have bought your products online or in-store.

Target customers who may not have liked you on Facebook but have been in your store with offers and adverts for new products.

Sponsored Stories:
Sponsored stories are Facebook’s brilliant feature which highlights the comments of fans, allowing companies to pay for them to appear in the News Feeds of people who are friends with the commenter.

Sponsored stories are optimised to reach the highest number of people through word-of-mouth advertising, promoting businesses through the words of people that the viewer trusts.

Conclusions:
Make sure that what your advert is offering something that your targeted audience will see and will want. Drive traffic from adverts to the relevant websites. You could advertise an offer or a coupon to drive more traffic onto your main site.


Chinese restaurant chain P.F. Chang’s ran a three-week Facebook ads campaign which offered coupons to reward their customers.

The restaurant chain also used sponsored stories, it’s Facebook page, its website and other social media sites to drive traffic into their restaurants'.

The campaign reached 9.1 million people and grew P.F. Chang’s Facebook fanbase by more then 100% to 420,000.

Facebook ads and sponsored stories are costly, but effective. If you have money to spend on advertising then Facebook is an economical outlet, allowing you to promote your business to a wide but targeted audience.

For more advice on running Facebook ads, click here.

4. Monitor and Analyse
Monitor you Page:
It’s simple really: keep an eye on your number of fans by counting how many likes you have. You can count how many of these likes are coming from your adverts and sponsored stories in the “actions” section of the Adverts Manager page.

Make sure you monitor the comments on your page, deleting anything that is inappropriate or too irrelevant. As I said before, you can delete all the spam and back-linked comments if you want, but checking through them is not very time-effective.

Adverts Manager:
From the Adverts Manager page, you can view various statistics and analytics to do with your adverts. Here is Facebook’s list:

Actions: The number of Page likes, app installs, and event joins that come from your adverts.
Reports: In-depth performance and demographic information to understand how your campaigns are doing over time. Run News Feed reports to optimise adverts being shown in News Feed.
Inline Reporting: Your bid and price for each advert or sponsored story, advert previews and a summary of your targeting and performance.
Key metrics: Info on the size and engagement of your audience to help you monitor the success of your campaigns.
Audience graph: How much of your target audience your campaign is reaching compared to how much it could reach. If you find you’re not reaching enough of your target audience, try raising your bid or budget.
Response graph: Track the performance of your campaign by clicks and actions over time.With all these analytics at your fingertips, you can optimise your adverts and your page to get the most out of Facebook.

Conclusions:
Always keep abreast of how your adverts and your page is doing. Adjust and optimize your adverts according to their success. Make the most of your budget. You can spend as much or as little as you want, its up to you to make it count.

5. Manage
Manage your Posts:
As well as monitoring the comments of your fans, you should monitor the success of your own posts on your business’ Facebook page.

If a post isn’t getting any likes or comments, delete it. Posts that don’t get you any interaction are just taking up space on your page.

Manage your IFrames:


IFrames are the interactive images at the top of your page beneath the cover photo in which you can put links to your photos, old polls, apps, campaigns or even display how many likes your page has.

Your first two iframes should contain your photos and how many likes you have. The rest should be constantly updated to stay relevant to your company’s activity on Facebook at the time: what competitions you’re running, for example.

Stay Abreast of Facebook’s Updates:
Last year, Facebook introduced the new timeline view for pages, providing businesses with a new challenge and a new opportunity to make their pages original and interesting.

Since then, Facebook has already started testing a new page design, introducing it to New Zealand last month.

Facebook has also announced one of their most important features to date this year: Facebook Graph Search.

Facebook Graph Search has numerous applications that could help your business: Graph Search has a huge amount of quality data about Facebook users that could help businesses target new customers or find potential employees.

Facebook’s news feed is also getting a facelift. In the proposed redesign, more space will be taken up by a content and image-laden home page, with the stories, notications and advertising within the news feed taking prominence.

Facebook is updating its service frequently. Make sure you keep an eye on news blogs and websites like this one so you can take advantage of all the features Facebook develops.

Stay Mobile:

Mobile is the future of social media marketing. It is, of course, not the only future, so don’t spend all your time streamlining your social media for mobile users.

It is a good idea, however, to make as many of your adverts and apps as you can mobile friendly. For example, if you own a clothes shop and you are advertising a sale, you want to be able to target customers who are already shopping near your store. Customers who are already shopping will be using their phones.

In November last year, Facebook Mobile hit 488 million monthly active users. Try to ensure that every single one can access you businesses Facebook apps.

Conclusions:
Keeping your business page up-to-date, not just the content you post but the posts you delete, is of vital importance.

Your fans won’t want to come to your page unless the content is changing frequently, giving them something interesting and new to look at and potentially share.

Stay current by utilising Facebook’s frequent updates to the advantage of your business, whether on desktop or mobile devices.

How do you get the best out of your business’ Facebook page?

YouTube’s Built-In Video Editor Gets Easier

YouTube first introduced its editing tool for YouTube video around this time last year, and now editing videos on YouTube is even easier.

Thursday, the company rolled out an updated and simplified interface for editing clips. The editor now has a quick-view for all of the available filters, and as you’re editing your video you can check out a real-time interactive preview of any enhancements you’ve made.

YouTube’s video editor offers many of the same features you might find in traditional editors such as the ability to add a soundtrack or transitions between clips. Unlike most other editors, however, you are still limited to just one video track rather than several — and you are unable to control how long transitions last between clips.

Until your video reaches 10,000 views, you can revert back to the original unedited version at any time. After you pass the 10,000 mark, you can still access your original upload and save it under a new name, but your edited version will be stuck the way it is.

The updated YouTube video editor is gradually rolling out to all YouTube users. You can check out the new features by clicking the Video Manager button followed by Edit and then Enhancements.

http://mashable.com/2012/08/09/youtube-editing-2/

Famous LinkedIn Profiles - Social Media vs. Social Networking

Seems like everyone has "social media" in their profile these days, or at least about 600,000 on LinkedIn do (search for social media on LinkedIn to see). This got me wondering about the difference between two terms we all use a lot to describe Internet-based applications: Social Media and Social Networking; what is the difference? Social media allows anyone to broadcast content that others can discover, share, and comment on, while social networking allows people to connect around shared interests. Both types of software are used as part of broader marketing campaigns and both generally rely on viral marketing to bring in new users and so can grow at exponential rates.

The latest trend in advertising is to tie celebrities and authoritative voices into interactive advertising campaigns, although arguably this isn't all that new since advertisers have been using celebrities to market their products for years, known as the "celebrity endorsement". SocialMediaMarketing.com describes a case study where they recruited influential bloggers to lead as ambassadors as part of a large scale marketing campaign. Say Media took this one step further when they acquired the Typepad blogging platform last year. This is social media.
There is a special case of social networking I'd like to zero in on for this blog posting: What happens when famous people use social networking tools? In some cases such as the examples I give below, I think these people are trying to use social networking platforms as if they were social media platforms, and in my opinion, this usually fails spectacularly. Barack's campaign is one notable exception, but that was unique because his campaign invented a new way to use social networking tools, and I'd hesitate to call this either social networking or social media. I think we need a new term for this. Any ideas?

I recently discovered that a number of famous people appear to have their own LinkedIn profiles. At least I'm assuming these are real as I expect they would have been torn down if they were fake. Here are my personal favorite examples of celebrities trying to use LinkedIn as if it were a social media platform. I've just requested a direct connection with all of them. If I get any responses, I'll come back and edit this blog posting and let you know who let me in!

Sarah Palin's profile is just downright funny to read - her summary ends with such badly written English, you have to wonder how this could still be here online, but there it is:


"My fellow Americans, come join our cause. Join our cause and help our country to elect a great man the next president of the United States. And I thank you, and I -- God bless you, I say, and God bless America. Thank you."
Bill Gate's profile is awesome in it's conciseness. With only 38 connections it's pretty clear Bill is not using LinkedIn for its social networking capabilities. I'm guessing he wanted to try it out at some point and just abandoned his account. Maybe he thought his profile description would be a good way to describe himself to the LinkedIn community.
The man does not need to say much in his profile. He calls the Gates Foundation, the largest foundation in the world, "A humble initiative", and Microsoft, one of the most dominant software forces in history, "A small monument". A bit of false modesty? He never finished college though, so I don't know. One of his public recommendations appears to be this comment which probably wasn't meant to be public so I am a bit surprised that he'd post this:

"Great job on your promotions. Please contact executive assistants at MAP92112 @ gmail.com to work out details of future promotions."


Like Gates, this guy doesn't need to say much. His job description for being President simply says, "I am serving as the 44th President of the United States of America." This is the complete opposite of Bill's profile: millions of connections - over three million on facebook alone. This is not social networking in the sense that most people think of when they think of LinkedIn, yet at the same time, he never posted anything new on his LinkedIn profile so there could not have been much social media going on either. I think this was something else, neither social media nor social networking; it was a badge his fans could put on their profile to show their support to their own network.




Talk about not needing to say much, Britney has the shortest profile of the group. This is the entire profile:
Summary

It's Britney Bitch!
Specialties
Dancing and singing

With only 23 connections and not being open to accepting new connections, I'm guessing she's not using LinkedIn. I think the only reason she has a profile there is to provide a link to her real fan site.

How to get more retweet action on Twitter

I’m sure you’d love to receive more retweets that you currently do. In fact, we all do, I’m the first to admit it. Why? Because more RTs means more traffic to your blog, to your videos and to whatever it is you want to share with others. Besides, more RTs also mean to get more exposure in other people’s stream so it would be easier to you to attract new followers. Well, today is your lucky day buddy because you’re going to read my best tips to get lots of Retweets.

• Keep your tweets short and leave at least 25 characters with free space. ¿Why? In order to get RTs your tweet will need that free space to contain the RT and @username. Besides, short tweets get more RTs because they look nicer and cleaner than long ones and, above all, because lazy people don’t like to read too much, and the Internet and Twitter is plenty of lazy people .

• The content of your tweet must be interesting and eye-catching.

• Just ask on your tweet for a RT. I don’t use it but I know many people who apply this technique and works quite well for them. For example: “Looking Into the Mirror of Life – http://su.pr/193M7S – Please RT!”

• Place strategically some call-to-action buttons on your blog to make easier for your followers to share your content. If you use wordpress I recommend you to download and use the smart sharing plugin just as Mashable.com does.

• Make some RTs to your followers. Some of them will want to return you the favour. If they don’t do you can’t get upset with them. Well you can but you shouldn’t because they don’t force you to RT their tweets; it was your choice.

• You can create a group of 5 to 10 twitter buddies and share your own tweets. I don’t apply this tip because it has two potential negative effects: (1) I don’t think that your followers will be happy to see the same people’s tweets time and again; and (2), it’s quite probable that your buddies don’t have the same or similar amount of followers as you have.

• Use hashtags in an effective way. I suggest you to add just one hashtag or even two but not more. ¿Why? Because they make your tweet look dirty and, at the same time, you would seem a spammer.

• Find some twitter users in your niche. Create a new column using TweetDeck with their @username. Check the RTs they receive and follow those people who made the retweet. If you’re lucky they will follow you back. If they don’t you can try replying some of their tweets or Retweeting them. You can identify who don’t follow you back and unfollow them manually with who.unfollowed.me.

• Make sure your blog posts have great and eye-catching titles.

• Send your tweet several times over the day. You can schedule your tweets with su.pr.

• Be grateful to people for retweeting your tweets. Don’t thank all at the same time. Each follower who RT your content deserve your complete attention and your sincere gratitude.

• And finally, my best piece of advice: be a good twitter user, be social, actively engage your followers, build meaningful relationships and your retweets will skyrocket for sure.

Follow these tips and your tweets will receive more retweets than ever before.

How To Personally Brand Yourself On Social Media

Personal branding is the topic of a presentation I will be giving this week and it got me thinking how social media has changed everything.

We used to be able “tell” a future employer, client or customer about ourselves with a resume, a college transcript and/or a list of references.

Today we are more likely to “show” them a little about ourselves with all our online presences (whether we intend to or not).

I’m not saying the old way is dead, but it may well be on life support.


Let’s start with Five Personal Branding Basics in Social Media:

1. Have your avatar be the same across all presences: That little image of you needs to be instantly recognizable. We recognize a face before we recognize a name. And, even if you have a common name, your face is distinctive. Also, make sure your face is what dominates the space. Anything less makes it hard to recognize.

2. Have your name be your real name OR a consistent name with a consistent bio: Your name on your social media presences should be the same. This may not be practical if you have a very common name or a long or difficult-to-remember name. In that case come up with a memorable name for your account and be sure your real name is prominent. For example, I am mikefixs on Twitter, but my real name is right there at the top of the bio. In the bio say concisely who you are and say it consistently across platforms. This consistency will ultimately help with the search engine optimization (SEO) of your name.

3. Have all your social media presences linked (as much as is practicable): Reference all of your social media presences (as much as you can) from each of your social media pages. There is a whole blog post in how to do this for SEO value and that will come later. For now it’s enough to say that anyone finding you on one social media platform needs to know all of the other places they can connect with you.

4. Have a consistent stated reason for being in social media: It says a lot about some people who are on Linkedin to find their next job but on Facebook to recall all the partying. It may reflect your true nature, but it sends a mixed message. Decide why you really need to be in social media, spell it out in your bio spaces on each page and stick to it.

5. Have a clear vision for how you add value in social media: This is trickiest part if you’re relatively new to social media on many platforms. Do you know how you are adding value to others by being here? It may be to answer questions from others. It may be to share great stuff you find. It may be to help others connect. How you are perceived on the “giving” side of social media will have a huge impact on the likelihood you will be on the “receiving” end of good things in social media. What kind of good things? Introductions to new networks, tips on great jobs, leads on the latest information in your field … the list does go on. The important thing is that ultimately this may be the real reason to be in social media.

So, does this list do a good job getting you started? To the more experienced out there: What did I forget from my list for social media newbies?

Will people ever tire of Social Media?

You can say many things about Social Media but most assuredly you cannot say it's boring, lifeless; standing still. No, Social Media moves along at a breakneck speed.

To answer my own question - is that allowed?... I don't think we will ever "tire" of Social Media per se. There will be times in our lives of course when we all collectively say "enough is enough" and the need for more platforms and apps, etc will begin to wane.

And during the course of a given day I think all of us Social Media evangelists feel the need to step away from the proverbial cookie jar.

That's what I think... but I wanted to find out what others think; what others would say to the query: "Will we ever tire of Social Media?"

So I posed the following query on LinkedIn...

Will we ever tire of social media?
Like everything else, things come, things go... personally I dont think social media and acrt of being social with folks will never truly ever go away.

But I can see the time when folks en masse start saying 'enough is enough.'

How about you?

What do you think the future holds for social media?

Here's some of the far ranging and fascinating replies I received...

"When the next big thing comes along, social media will be tossed aside... Until then, for many, it's a great way to market one's business... Time for humanity to start communicating with one another verbally or we'll end up with a new bunch of workers who have no idea what it means to actually talk with someone..."

"...blogs are likely to never go away....We have a new medium for the masses to be heard....but then, never say never"

"If by Social Media you are referring to web sites and tweets, then yes we will eventually get tired. Just as we did with communicating thru newpapers or fax machines. The art of being social won't go away. The tools that we use will change."

"No, what we will get tired of is social media that at the end does little or nothing to our social and professional life."

"Social media will be mature (and maybe we will be, too) when we no longer think about it, use a name for it, break into a cold sweat worrying if we understand it, pretend we understand it better than anybody else does, or salivate with anticipation about the riches it will bring us."

"People haven't tired of television, and I see no reason people would tire of social media."

"I tire of it weekly. So I take a few days off and when I return, it's kind of fresh again."

"Was Radio tossed aside for TV?! Was TV tossed aside for Internet?! Ridiculous."

"Social media has always existed it just had another name "word of mouth" the internet only broadened the boundries and increased the speed of the info..."

"Hey - I get tired of working - but still do it. Get tired of being a mom - but still there:) Tire and doing don't always go hand-in-hand:---)"

"Nothing is constant except change. And people are already asking what next? No sooner the next medium pops up the social media will go in hibernation. Having said that Social media ( networking by fingers) should get replaced by Telepathy - networking by minds in not so distant future.."
Hands down that last one was my favorite answer. Networking by minds is a very scary proposition because it all depends on which minds are doing the networking. Of course if Mr. Spock can do the vulcan mind-meld anything's possible.

But I digress...

What do you think?

Will YOU ever tire of Social Media?

Are you tired of it already?

Watch out for these social networking scams

Social networking websites such as Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and Bebo have changed the way we and our families keep in touch with friends and share information online. The problem is, scammers know exactly how we use these types of sites and are constantly developing malicious software and other swindles to take advantage.
While websites have a responsibility to keep users safe from scams, you can stay safe by learning to spot the most common scams before they spot you.

Dodgy Facebook applications
Facebook applications, or apps, such as movie quizzes and Scrabble games sound harmless enough, but remember that Facebook does not approve third-party apps. A recent app scam that went viral was the Facebook ‘Dislike’ button. Users were encouraged to install this tool but, by doing so, gave the rogue app permission to access their profile page and post spam messages. Victims were also asked to complete an online survey, which generated money for the scammers.
The best way to avoid falling victim to these scams is to give Facebook apps – or, at least, those developed by third-party websites – a wide berth.
You can also adjust your Facebook privacy settings to control which apps have access to your data and which of your friends can see information from apps, or simply turn off apps altogether.
And remember, this isn’t the only way Facebook can end up costing you money. Read Why Facebook means your bills will rise to find out more.
Spam messages
What would you do if you received a Facebook message or a tweet on Twitter from a friend claiming they had been robbed while abroad and needed money in order to get home? You know the sender, so you might be tempted to offer your help.
But before you do, try to contact your friend via email or telephone because the chances are their account has been hacked and someone is trying to extort money from their associates. If you aren’t able to contact your friend, then try replying to the original message with a personal question that only they know the answer to.
Read Stop spam and spot scams for more tips.
Fake links
The sharing nature of social networking websites means it’s fairly easy for scammers to dupe their victims into accessing malicious websites. To stop this happening, you need to be vigilant against links posted on your profile page or sent within an instant message, even if these appear to come from a friend.
Before you click on a link in your friend’s Facebook or Twitter status use a little bit of common sense. Is it likely your conservative work colleague will have posted a link entitled “OMG: funniest drunk car crash ever”? Young users are particularly susceptible to these scams so make sure you warn your children or grandchildren to be on their guard too.
Phishing emails
Hackers are increasingly using well-known social networking website brands in phishing emails to elicit personal information from you. The scam works like this: an email purporting to be from the site asking you to follow a link, which takes you to an official-looking log-on prompt. Enter your personal details, and this information is stored and used by the scammers to hijack your account.
One of the most common Twitter scams sends messages such as “Just saw this photo of you” or “See who’s been checking out your profile” to tempt users to follow a link to a website that either attempts to steal their log-on information or uploads malicious software on to their computers.
As with any phishing email scam, the best way to stay safe is to enter the website address manually so you can be sure the site is genuine.
Read Three scams to avoid! for more help on how to deal with phishing messages.
Promises of thousands of instant followers
Building up followers is the Holy Grail for many Twitter users. However, if you receive a message promising you thousands of instant followers then don’t be fooled.
This scam claims it can increase your followers by identifying Twitter users who automatically follow anyone who follows them. It sounds plausible, but this service comes at a cost. Some victims pay only to see the scammer vanish from the site, while others see their followers increase but are accused of trying to send spam themselves – an offence that could see them banned from the site.
Oversharing information online
Last month I changed my Facebook status to “Rebecca Atkinson is off on holiday for two weeks”. While this seemed harmless enough at the time, it was effectively an open advertisement to burglars that my flat would be empty for a fortnight. Although not technically a scam, oversharing on social websites makes life far too easy for crooks.
As well as thinking about your status updates before you click the “Share” button, remove personal information such as your home address, phone number and full birthday from your profile. Facebook allows you to decide who can see your profile – as long as there are spammers about, it’s probably a good idea that you play it as safe as possible.