May I start by saying that some of you are not going to like this post and some of you will no doubt sit behind your computer screen and stress your dismay to my opinions only to then share your comments with all your tweeters and facebook “friends” and so on and so forth. I am just having a Wednesday morning rant after my nightmare tube journey and pouring orange juice on my Jordan’s Country Crisp!
Its goes without saying that social media is a great tool no matter what industry your in, admittedly some are more social media friendly than others but nether the less there is a little piece of social media to suit every kind of company.
However, if your a new company that is still establishing itself, how are you going to build any kind of following & build awareness for the brand? No one is going to search for you so how are you going to get people to “Fan” you?
Here is a quick example of how I used Facebook to build awareness for a new brand in a niche market at ZERO cost, zilch, nada. Enjoy 
With thanks to clicky media, Here’s your latest round up of Social Media stats for February 2010!
Social Networking websites continue to grow on a huge scale with Facebook recently announcing that they have now reached over 400 million worldwide users and Twitter soon to be reaching the benchmark of 50 million tweets per day. Facebook and Twitter also both boasted a triple-digit growth in 2009 with social networking now accounting for 11% of all time spent online.
Its to no surprise that with the growth of Facebook, brands in their hundreds are flocking to Facebook to build or cement their brand presence and digital footprint. For the bigger brands, they can hire the special agency with a plethora of knowledge to get the hard work done for them and go leaps and bounds, but what about the smaller companies that have to do in house? Well, here are some tips collated from around the web to help people to setup their fan page, how the get those fans and how to use Facebook effectively.
A question I am often asked is why a fan page? why not just a group? Good question, one that Mashable has answered on its thread titled: difference between Facebook pages and groups. But for those lazy bones out there he is a summary:
For personal or smaller scale interaction then a group is great for this but Pages are better for brands, businesses, celebrities, bands all of whom want to interact with their “fans” without having them connected to a person account. Remember, there is a 5000 friend cap on Facebook, so you are limiting yourself with a personal account. The great thing about Pages is that you can grow as big as you want whilst keeping the focus on the organisation and sending messages, notifications and updates to large numbers of people, unlimited infact.
Just stumbled upon this interesting diagram from Flowtown.com on how social engagement is changing. The useful of social media marketing is often pulled into question with the biggest being who and how many are not only joining the conversations but engaging with them. Flowtown used stats from a recent study conducted by PostRank and have kindly illustrated what is happening in the Internet’s social community — how people are communicating, what is changing, and where people are doing the talking. Read the rest of this entry »
Originally posted on American Express OPEN Forum & then posted on Mashable, Here’s a quick guide to dealing with negative feedback on social media.
By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is noblest; Second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third by experience, which is the bitterest.
