Social Media

Just How Fast Can Google Index? Very Fast

I just happened to be on Facebook when word struck at about 5:10pm (PST) that Whitney Houston had passed away. I immediately Googled news for Whitney Houston, trying to figure out whether or not this was a hoax. After all, many still-living celebrities have had their time in the online obit column (Jon Bon Jovi being the most recent.)

Google was showing that the Associated Press had posted about it. The only other news was from Perez Hilton, who had posted a photo of her leaving a club the night before. No other mention of her passing appeared.

Two minutes later, another blog post was indexed. The ABC post was next. I was amazed to be witnessing how quickly Google was indexing such an “of the moment” event. Within 15 minutes, most of the major media outlet posts were listed.

When my friend arrived at 5:30pm to pick me up for dinner, the internet was a buzz and confirmation and a few details of her death had been received from her publicist.

The moral of the story? Google indexing just books it, trucking along at lightening speed. If people are searching for it, Google’s going to make sure it’s available.

What does this mean for business? Make sure your blog articles are topical, of the moment, and using keywords for which people are actually searching.

A Great Social Media Trick? Listening

One of the greatest uses of social media and online life is the ability to listen. Yes, no kidding — listen.

I know, I know…there’s a lot of monologues going on out there. But it doesn’t have to be that way. There are lots of opportunities to:

• Stay up-to-date on what’s happening in your industry
• Hear about what clients and competitors are doing
• Find out what’s being said about you and your company (the good, bad, and ugly)
• Keep your ear to the ground for the next “it” thing
• Get news first (online news of Steve Jobs’ passing beat traditional media by over an hour on the West Coast, by even longer for media in other time zones who had to wait for the 11 o’clock or morning broadcasts)
• Receive first-hand information about news items (e.g. the Arab Spring, Japanese Earthquake, and much more)

There are many ways to get listening. Here are five:

1. Follow the Key Players: Choose 20-30 people who are “in the know” and follow their Twitter stream.
2. Twitter Lists: I like to check out other people’s well curated lists rather than painstakingly build my own. How does one find these? Well, you can look for lists on accounts of those you think may have built one or you can go to Listorius.com and search for them using keywords. What’s a Twitter List??
3. HootSuite Filters: Hootsuite lets you build continuous searches for keywords. That means that it’s always looking in your choice of program (e.g. Twitter, Facebook, of course, but also mixi and PingFM) for those words and streaming the results in real time. Pretty clever, huh? Keywords can be a company name, an industry, or anything else you’d like.
4. Google Alerts: These are brilliant. Google scans its index for new mentions of your keywords each day and sends you an email. That’s it. Brilliant. More on Alerts.
5. RSS Feeds: Build a stream of blog posts so you don’t have to visit individual sites everyday. You just log into your reader (Google offers one, Outlook 2007/2010 have one built in, the Firefox browser has one), scan through to find interesting headlines and read the blog articles that entice you. More on RSS

Do you find this overwhelming?

Don’t worry. Start with Google Alerts — they’re easy to set up, they arrive in your email at whatever interval you choose, and they link to information that you can either read right away, save for later, or ignore. This article gives step-by-step instructions.

Use Social Media without Saying a Word

It’s true. You can use social media for listening and never send out a Tweet, a Facebook update, or even fill in your LinkedIn profile. That’s the beauty — you get to choose how deep you go. However, if you do engage in the talking bit too, think how much more interesting your interactions will be if you listen and engage in conversations rather than just send information into the cyber-world. This is, after all, they type of behaviour that build relationships, trust, and networks.

Build Your Social Media Following

One of the great — and most frustrating — characteristics of social media is that it’s entirely permission based. We only have to follow those from whom we want to receive information, messages, and offers. Like wise (and this is the frustrating part), everyone else has the same option.

How, then, can you build your list of followers if they can choose whether or not they want to be there (sheesh!)?

Ready for it? Be the Twitter account, Facebook friend, (insert social media site here) user they want to hear from.

Yep. It’s entirely possible and here’s how to do it:

1. Give ‘Em Quality: It’s true that nobody wants to follow people who post, “Had lunch. Yum,” but that doesn’t mean that they don’t want to hear about your day. Try, “Had best caesar salad ever @UrbanGate with @AmyWilliamsFoto. Planning new WordPress site for her sports portfolio. Launches June 15.” Wow! That’s better. Followers are also interested in resources such as good articles, tips to make life and business easier, and the heads up on interesting events. The best information is often re-distributed to their networks, which shows their readers that you may be worth following.
2. Be Consistent: I feel like a broken record on this one, but it’s true. You don’t have to post ten times per day; just be regular with your posts. If you’re a once per week updater, great. Once a day? Fine. Just stay on schedule. People like to attach themselves to other active people and will self-select those whose posting rhythm best suits their schedule.
3. Engage: Remember that social media is networking over the computer. Would you stand in front of someone you’re networking with and tell them snippets of information without asking a question or allowing them to slip in a sentence or two? I hope not. Social media is the same. Those (non-celebrities) with the most followers are those who engage with their followers. Ask a question. Share some of the best answers.

One last thing and it seems silly to even need to say this, but be sure to tell people where you are on the social media sites. Make sure your “handles” are in conspicuous places such as your email signature, on your website (home and contact pages at least), and even in handouts, ads, and business cards. I was thinking of not adding this section into this blog post when I received a re-Tweet on Twitter asking people to please add their phone numbers into their email signatures. So, here it is!

5 Reasons to Use Social Media

Woot woot! I’ve been published on Voice Marketing’s website, More-For-Small-Business. For SEO reasons, I cannot republish the article on my site (the same content on two sites is punishable by Google law) but here it is, if you care to take a look.

Come back in the next few days to see Kris’s article on Google’s ranking changes.

Social Media: Coping with a Literal a Stream of Information

I’ve been giving quite a few talks on social media these days and have several blog posts in mind right now, all steaming from interactions with the participants.

Many people wonder how to keep up with all the information social media offers. During the seminar I said that we need to simply be okay with never being able to read and process all the tidbits flying our way. It’s difficult to look back at their expectant faces and see the disappointment. I didn’t have a magic bullet. I point to the Twitter stream and let them know that I can get 10-15 new tweets every few minutes.

On my way home from today’s session, it came to me. There has ALWAYS been a huge amount of information to process. The only difference is that news editors filtered it all for us and offered up what they thought was relevant in a neat package of the 6 o’clock news. Remember when CNN started and we all wondered how they were going to fill 24 hours? Well, they did.

The advent of social media was the same. We all wondered what we’d talk about and who would care? Well, clearly there is no shortage of conversation or things to mention. We all talk about everything — the restaurant we’ve tried, the new supplier we love, the article we just read.

On the receiving side, this looks like a literal stream of information. It is. A stream that we are responsible for filtering ourselves. The news editors aren’t there on social media sites. We need to do it all on our own.

Here are some tips on how to keep the noise to a dull roar:

1. Choose a specific amount of time to dedicate to social media per day. I like to spend about 15 minutes after I deal with my emails in the morning and then again in the afternoon. Others like larger blocks of time. Still others are really smooth at fitting it in their day over their mobile devices (e.g. BlackBerry).
2. Choose who you follow carefully. If you follow quality connections who will offer you the information you are most interested in, it will cut down tremendously on the “extras”.
3. Use a filter program. HootSuite offers an easy way to filter through all the major platforms (e.g. Twitter, Facebook) for keywords in the posts. Yes, this is still a stream of information but it’s specific to what you’re looking for.
4. Use the “Favorites” star on Twitter to mark what you want to read later. See a post you want to find later? Just click on the star (it’s down there by retweet and reply). That post will be put into a Favorites list so you can read it at your leisure later on. This is especially good when posts have links to articles you want to read.

What is a “Tweet Up”?

As more of my colleagues and clients dip their toes in the world of social media, I get quite a few random questions posed to me throughout my day. One that has come up a lot lately is “What is a Tweet Up?”

I’ve seen them take several forms, but an authentic Tweet Up is where someone posts on Twitter that they’re going to be at a particular location at a particular time. They are, in essence, inviting all their followers and anyone else who receives the message (remember, Twitter is very public) to meet them for a drink. In the purest sense of the term, Tweet Ups are not planned in advance — they’re pretty spontaneous. That’s the fun of them.

In the last few months, however, I’ve noticed that the term Tweet Up is evolving to mean any meeting or get together — even ones planned several days or weeks in advance. Every system needs to mold to the users needs to stay relevant, as does it seems the Tweet Up. Business people are using it to plan networking events. Mommy groups are giving a few days notice to allow for family scheduling.

So, next time you have a hankering for a coffee break or even want to try a new restaurant for lunch, try tweeting out that you’re looking for some company. You just may get more than you ever bargained for!

Getting Your Facebook Vanity URL

Many of us have set up Facebook pages for our companies. Did you know that it’s possible to set a vanity URL for your page? Yes, you just need 25 or more followers and — voila! — facebook.com/SassyEntrepreneur could be yours.

How, you ask? After you have your 25 followers, click on this link http://www.facebook.com/username/ and Facebook will let you choose your user name. You can get to the user name function in the Account Settings area as well.

Beware! You can only choose your user name once — it can never be changed — so choose wisely.

Now that you have your very own vanity URL, what will you do with it? It’s great for business cards or any print material where users cannot just click a link to get to your Facebook page.

Note, you can have vanity URLs for LinkedIn (called a public profile — just hit the “edit” link beside it in your profile) and for Twitter too (it’s twitter.com/username for everyone — no need to set it up).

Speaking of vanity URLs, check out Pebble Road's new one! facebook.com/PebbleRoadMarketing. You can follow me too (or instead) at facebook.com/candrina

Get Your Own Avatar

Have you ever left a comment on a blog only to realize your “photo” was a weird symbol or, worse yet, a picture of some random robo-thing? Ick.

You can have your social media photo follow you wherever you comment from now on by simply adding your photo at www.gravatar.com. It’s easy. You just sign up for your free account and upload your photo. Make sure you use the email address you use when you comment and voila! Your photo will pop up whenever you comment.

Small print — okay, it takes a day or two for your photo to find your comments. Be patient.

Changing Your Twitter Background

Did you know that your Twitter page can take on your branding design quite easily? Even if you’re at a loss at how to make a background image, your page can include your brand colours. Here’s how to spruce it up:

• Go into your “Settings” at the top right-hand corner of your Twitter page
• Choose “Design” from the blue navigation bar just under “Your Name’s settings”
• Choose a theme from the different options. Don’t like any of these but have an image you’d like to use?
  • Scroll down and choose “Change background image”, upload your image, and click the “save changes” button at the bottom of the page
• Want to change the colour of the background, column, links, or the text? Simply, scroll down and choose “Change design colors”, click on the appropriate box and choose a colour
  • If you know the hex colour code, type it in without the # at the front
  • If you know the RBC colour, you can find the hex code with this handy site

Be sure to click “done” once the colour is picked and “save changes” once the correct colour or image appears in the box. Otherwise, the changes will not update on your page.

Inspiration

Would you like to see some updated Twitter pages? Check these ones out:

Bluelime Media
Ballistic Arts
David Suzuki Foundation
Edible Vancouver
Pebble Road Marketing

All Tweets Are Final

Despite my initial objections (what will I say??), I find myself really enjoying Twitter. I’m not on there very often but — when I do visit (it’s like a little land of its own) — I often learn a new tidbit or meet a new personality. Those who visit more often or have an on-going feed on their desktop often develop a community. They have a group of people they chat with, exchange ideas with, and promote (usually through “re-tweets”).

I am, however, very cautious with my own “tweets” or comments. After all, all my followers will have access to whatever I spontaneously type and — worst of all — All Tweets Are Final. That is, you can never take anything back that you say on Twitter. It’s all recorded for forever more.

My recommendations? There are a few ways to prevent making comments you’ll dread later:

• Think it through: I know the format of Twitter is to encourage spontaneity, but take a few moments to re-read what you’ve dashed off. Make sure this is a comment you would feel comfortable saying in a business meeting.
• Consider scheduling your messages: Hoot Suite is a Twitter management program (free) that allows you to schedule your tweets ahead of time. I know! It takes the spontaneity and fun of being wild and free. But, if you tend to message impulsively, this will become your friend. Schedule your messages and then, if regret visits before it goes live, simply delete it.
• Give yourself guidelines: What are you comfortable talking about on Twitter? This will depend on your focus — business, personal, a combination of both? If your primary focus is business, maybe it’s wise to not talk about your morning bathroom routine. If you’d like to present yourself as a serious professional, perhaps your guideline will include “no rants or swearing”. Decide what you want to project and stick to it.

Twitter can be a great addition to your business — if you just remember that All Tweets Are Final.

Post-Script — Okay, apparently Tweets are no longer final! You CAN delete your own tweets now by hovering over your post and pressing the “Delete” when it shows itself. However, Twitter remains an instant medium and even if you do delete something, there is always the possibility that someone has seen it!