Posts tagged facebook

Some days I feel like I might be on social media overload!

I Twitter, I blog, I Facebook, I check LinkedIn, I write a few responses, and then I take a big chunk of my day and dedicate it to learning new systems or mastering the things that I am using on a daily basis.  Once in a while I find some seriously useful and awesome tools that make my life easier; I also have found some very cool things that can help any/every business.  Though these may not be “new” to some people, they can be powerful resources if used correctly and even veterans may want to consider reconnecting with the services.  Also, next week I will put together a how-to guide for utilizing and leveraging each of these.

StumbleUpon

Most people are familiar with Pandora.com (internet radio) – a service that plays music based on user feedback (thumbs up vs. thumbs down).  StumbleUpon works the same way for internet browsing; users choose from a list of topics that they find interesting and StumbleUpon will direct “stumblers” based on what other users have “liked”.  Once “likes” have been established, users can “stumble” by using the installed toolbar at the top of their browser.  StumbleUpon will also interact with Facebook accounts (not automated – users must activate this feature) to allow “subscribing” to other stumblers that you know; subscribing to other users increases the frequency in which you “stumble” onto sites that they specifically have liked.

I firmly believe that social bookmarking will grow substantially in the next year as one of the most valuable pieces of the social media puzzle.  I have seen this service (used correctly and deliberately) create a 2,700% spike in digital traffic in just one day – which resulted in a steady and consistent growth in daily website visitors.

HARO (Help A Reporter Out)

HARO began as a Facebook group that grew quickly.  It is now an independent website connecting REAL authors and journalists to credible “experts” in specific topics.  Basically, it was designed to help promote FREE public relations and provide new resources for professional writers.  HARO is also still developing and evolving; in the future it will offer even more specified topic lists, a database of published articles linking sources to writers, and more.

Registering for this service as a source of information will generate three custom emails per day with lists of topics to be responded to.  Professionals in any field would be absurd not to register for this and start responding to topics relative to their niche.  The service currently (4/30/10) has nearly 30,000 authors submitting queries and looking for new sources.  HARO can be powerful way to organically drive traffic to your site of interested potential clients and customers – get on this NOW!

Meetup

Many people may argue that business is losing the face-to-face human interaction element as we plow through the web 2.0 era; Meetup.com effectively combats this issue.  This service is designed to promote human interaction through live groups in your community.  Meetup has over 6 million users in 45,000 cities, and it promotes over 180,000 meetings every month spanning 28,000 topics.

Meetup allows visitors and users to search for groups of people based on topics of interests and/or city (zip code).  For example: Searching for Business in Denver yields 390 active groups meeting within 25 miles of Denver, CO.  Search results also clearly articulate how many members are in the group, where/when the group meets, and what topics are actively being discussed.

Becoming a member is FREE, so users can search, find, and engage peers in their interests at no cost.  However, creating and hosting a group comes with a very reasonable price tag, but it is well-worth the investment.

Pluggio

Most “experts” on the topic of Twitter agree that keeping a steady stream of valuable information is a good practice for businesses that use Twitter.  Pluggio is a (paid) service that allows direct linking between RSS feeds and your Twitter stream – it also allows you to manage (and “kind of” automate this interaction).  Users can direct several RSS feeds into this service, schedule when to forward articles and blogs into their twitter account, and customize these tweets.  Basically, it takes a (usually) three-step process and shortens it to one.  It does not violate twitter TOS because users must find articles, select them, and manually click them into the “queue” of tweets.  Users can even manage how often and between what hours tweets go out.

Pluggio is very simple and very useful.  I recommend personalizing the blogs and articles you are promoting, as it is very easy to seem like a “bot.”  Simple notes at the beginning of a tweet that indicate the value of the article to you and/or why it was put into the stream will make a world of difference.  Also note that this is not to replace working on twitter to maintain interactions with followers.