Google Adwords Vs Facebook Ads Vs LinkedIn Ads

I have been a big fan of Google Adwords and have been using it for a long time not only for my own business but, for my clients as well. And, it really worked well. It all depends on what type of products and/or services you are trying to promote on these platforms. The audience on these three platforms is slightly different and come on to Facebook or Google or LinkedIn with a different purpose. So, for one business Adwords works better and for some Facebook or for companies who are trying to find talent LinkedIn works as LinkedIn is a platform for professionals.

I have used all the three platforms and thought why not pen down my experiences.

Google Adwords

It is very easy and quick to set-up a campaign. Unlike Facebook Ads and LinkedIn Ads, it requires skill and experience to get the correct set of keywords and phrases that match your ads and business. You need to monitor the cost-per-click of each phrase and set it up as broad match or phrase match or exact match. In case you have experience in using the keywords tool then you can start. But, it takes time to optimize the campaign to get the desired ROI and to get better results.  

Keywords competition is high and you need to focus on the Quality Score to reduce the cost to attract the clicks. Optimizing the ads is the key here. This can be learnt only through experience.  

Another advantage of Adwords is people who click your ad are the people who are searching for your product or service. They searched for a certain term and were looking for it and they have landed on you webpage. Where as in Facebook and LinkedIn, the intention of the person was something else and they click the ad to come to your webpage. Thus, the conversion time to convert the visitor to a customer is longer on these platforms as compared to Adwords. 

You can target the ads as per the geographical area and set the time and schedule the display of ads. You also have the display ads where in the ads can be displayed across the Google network of ads. Thus, you reach a wider audience. 

The biggest advantage of Adwords is the analytics which Google provides. Google gives lot of data to analyze and fine-tune the campaigns and rectify the mistakes.

Facebook Ads 

It is very easy to setup and maintain. You can target the ads to specific demographic profile as Facebook has all the data with them - age, gender, profession, city, country, marital status...etc. So, you can really target your ads to the niche audience and not just geo specific. This helps in getting quality impressions and clicks.  

As stated above, the intent of the person to come on Facebook is different as compared to Google - thus, the CTR is low for the ads but, you get decent impressions. The clicks will increase the fan base thus, ready for direct future promotions on your Facebook page which is at no cost. The time to convert these visitors and/or likes into customers is longer and you need to build a strategy to keep them engaged and thus, converting them to customers. Facebook is a place of fun and leisure unlike Google and LinkedIn. Thus, the ads need to be designed in such a way that you are not just pushing the product or service for them to buy, but trying to engage them and increasing the fan base. Thus, it is difficult to measure the ROI here. The sales cycle is long and effort is required to engage and interact with the prospect.

Facebook ads can be used for more of brand recognition. A click is not necessary for this. As Facebook ads provide more impressions, people see the ad and can register the brand name. 

LinkedIn 

LinkedIn ads is frequented by professionals and in case you are looking at attracting right talent then this is the right place. Also, B2B ads are effective as compared to B2C.  

To setup and start the campaign will take some time, as the ads needs to be approved first by the LinkedIn staff. Here as well you can target the ads to the niche audience based on the demographic profile. LinkedIn charges as per impressions and clicks as well. Impression mode will burn out the budget faster we will hardly know if the ad was seen by the person or not. Thus, these are not that effective and economical. The CPC model will not be that effective as stated earlier it all depends on what you are trying to promote. You need to remember the intent of the visitor to LinkedIn and the type of audience that come here. 

Reporting tool is also not there. We can download a csv file and we need to do the sorting and filtering ourselves. 

To conclude, Adwords is better, if you know how it works and how to steer the campaign. In case you do not have that experience it will cost you. The conversion cycle is quick and you get warm leads. While Facebook, attracts more likes and fan base for you to keep them engage and interact. LinkedIn Ads can be more suitable to reach for senior executives. Lastly, it all depends on what product or service you are trying to promote.

Thinking and Meeting Beyond Facebook

Last week I met a person personally who got in touch with me through the social networking site. We exchanged few emails and he got in touch with me when he visited Bangalore on a business trip. It was great meeting him and it not only helped us knowing each other more but, it helped us in expanding our network and also exchange of new ideas.

This made me think that Facebook though called by that name, hardly leads to face-to-face communication. It is of no use of exchanging links, photos and messages. What can’t be communicated in 140 characters will give a more tremendous experience when one meets the other personally. I am not exaggerating anything here, but I feel it would be really great if such networking sites add more features to have regular offline meet-ups and schedule meetings of like-minded people. Networking sites have really helped getting lot of people together. I was able to get in touch with 35 of my school classmates whom I did not talk at all – leave alone meeting. I was unaware of where they were and their contact details. Facebook has really helped us in getting together. I met few of them and talked to most of them. And I am really enjoying meeting each of them personally.

I see, a regional or geographical based Facebook or networking sites to come up which will help people meet offline and share knowledge and ideas. The online meeting needs to extend to offline and vice-versa. Sites like Places, FourSquare and Google Latitudes are there, but it really allows or motivates a person to meet his / her friend. I am seeing a system which motivates and prompts one to such meets. The friends I am talking here are not your present colleagues or the ones who meet personally often, but those you were introduced to you online through these sites and helped you know each other better.

And the irony is, these networking sites may just remain a messaging site and will not make each other meet. People may find fun in updating their status messages and chatting online thus, avoiding the need to meet each other. People may get hooked to these sites to avoid loneliness and may this may lead to more loneliness. So, I guess it is high time to get these meets or provide a system to motivate and move these connections to meet face-to-face.

I would love to know your thoughts as well. Please do put in your thoughts as comments. Happy Facebooking…

Facebook Friends' List Missing? How to get them?

You all must be aware of the way the Friends' list help in reasing the newsfeeds or status messages easily by categorizing them in different lists. These lists will reallyhelp you when you have a long list of friends and it is difficult to read all the messages, lest you categorize them and you will seldom miss the status messages. To know how to create the friends' list then you can read here.
Even I created a list of my friends like Work Friends, School Friends, Party Friends, Relatives... and was feeling it very easy to know what all are doing. But, from past one week, the list went missing. I can only see the Friends link on the left side of the Facebook page and when I click it it gives me nothing.

When I searched over the internet, I found I was not alone and there are quite a few other folks who are also facing the same problem. I even contacted Facebook and posted it on Twitter as well. But, no response from these guys. As it is my habit not to keep quiet... I investigated more to find the solution. And here is the very simple solution to get you list back, rather to see it.

1. On your 'News Feed' page you have the links - 'Top News' and 'Most Recent'. Click the downward arrow adjacent to 'Most Recent' link.
2. You can see your friends' list here. Select the list you want to view.
3. In case you have many lists then click 'Choose another'

Hope this helps. It helped me.

In case you are facing a different problem with Facebook, please do let me know and let us resolve it. And if it helped you, then let me know. It will make me happy :). Also, it would be wonderful if you tweet this using the Tweetme.

9 Tips to Know When You Should be Using Facebook / LinkedIn Direct Ads

After efficiently using Adwords, I just thought how could Facebook and LinkedIn direct ads be different or how could these be more effective. Like Adwords, I did not get any free ad money to experiment my campaigns. I usually get free credit for Adwords but, I have to prepare myself to spend on Facebook and LinkedIn.

1. As matter of fact, Facebook and LinkedIn use almost the same algorithm of relevance and CTR to show the ads. The daily budget mechanism or setting of time to show your ads or the frequency is same. One major advantage of these networking sites is that you can target the exact age group, industry type, job function, title…based on the demographic profile you want to target. Google uses the ‘search’ mechanism while Facebook and LinkedIn use the ‘profile’ of the user to show the ads.
2. Unlike Google or Adwords, Facebook and LinkedIn target the profiles that are on Facebook and LinkedIn respectively. If your target audience are not on Facebook or LinkedIn then it is of no use of using these channels for your campaigns.
3. In Facebook you have to upload only a banner of standard size 110 x 80 pixels. Where as LinkedIn has 50 x 50 pixel image with the title and text. These banner sizes are pretty small and they are pretty strict with the image approval process for the banners. I really do not find major advantage of having such small images associated with the ad as the advertiser can hardly convey anything through these images.
4. Unlike Adwords, here you have an option to pay either as per CPC or CPM. And they really have a reason to have the CPM model as well. These sites are particularly for sharing knowledge or connect with your friends. Hardly, folks come here to see the banners and click them or in search of something as people do in Google. So, to start with you better go with CPC model as you pay only for clicks and do shell out money for unnecessary impressions.
5. If you are really looking at building a brand in particular country or segment or age group then you can do it on Facebook and LinkedIn and use the CPC model as it will really cost you very less. If you are not getting the required impressions then you can switch to CPM. Facebook has crossed Google in terms of traffic and you can really build lot of impressions in a short time.
6. Though Facebook and LinkedIn target as per the profiles, these sites also provide very limited amount of keywords to use to target. In Facebook this is called as tag filtering. But, one cannot estimate the amount of traffic these keywords can generate and the cost it will incur. Adwords clearly provides you with the estimates and it really helps in setting the daily budget. Still you can try using the filtering tags in Facebook for your audience hobbies, interests and tastes.
7. I found out that these sites really give you a poor CTR. Thus, you can use it for directing traffic to your blog or fan page or other social networking account. It is always better to use CPC model as it will not burn your budget unnecessarily. If you ads are not generating the required CTR, then expand the demographic scope slowly and find the optimum level that is really converting for you. Start with very specific target audience and slowly increase the scope depending on the required CTR and conversions.
8. The reporting system of clicks and costs is not as great as Adwords. The direct ads system is still new and in nascent stage and we may see improvements in the reporting and tracking mechanisms.
    
9. We can use content targeting for Adwords where we can show our ads on other sites which are in Google’s content network. While in Facebook and LinkedIn it is limited to the sites.

Bottom-line is there is nothing like Adwords. Facebook and LinkedIn do provide specific audience to your landing page, but it is difficult to get those clicks and to convert them. Unlike Adwords, visitors are looking / searching for the required info and it is easy to convert them. Adwords identifies the users’ instant needs and has the mechanism to show the relevant ads to them.

I would like to suggest that you need to decide where your target audience is and act accordingly. You may have your target audience on Facebook and it may help you in tapping the missing traffic from these channels. For example if you have a dating or matrimonial website, then social networking sites may work well for you as you can target as per the gender, age, marital status and interest. To add more if you have gaming sites similar to Farmville or the Mafia then Facebook can be the better choice as compared to Adwords not only in targeting the right interest group but you may get economical CPC as well.

Do let me know your experiences as well and would like to read your comments.

How to handle fake profiles on Facebook

Facebook has reached a level where the user base is roughly estimated to cover around 37% of the total world population and along with this huge user base, the fake user base has risen to 27% of the total Facebook users (Nyberg, 2010). In other words, it means that if you get 10 friendship requests a day, then out of that 10 only 7 or 8 are real and the rest are fake (Nyberg, 2010).

There are various reasons that people tend to create fake profiles for themselves or they create fake profiles of others. The most common reason is for fun. It is just to have pranks on friends with the profiles. There are also other stupid reasons of why such fake profiles are created. It can be because of shallow relationships, lovers want to test their partner or a person wants to take revenge on someone.

There are people who create second identities online because they are not happy with themselves in real life. So when they are online, they can be a person whom they have always want to be.

The other reason why people create fake Facebook accounts is for business purposes. Most of the fake accounts are used by some companies themselves to promote their products; this is because people find it more convenient to believe in a product or a service when an individual refers or endorses it (Nyberg, 2010).

Another major reason which can affect the business is creating a fake account of your company. It may be created by someone who is not satisfied with your services or it can be your competitor. And such fake account/s can not only affect your business and reputation but can also frustrate you and loss of trust among your other customers and partners.

So, how to cope up with such fake business accounts.

1. Report it to Facebook: The very first thing you need to do is report it to Facebook as soon as you are aware of it. You need to go to the impostor’s profile and click “Report/Block this person” at the bottom of the left column. Check the “Report this Person” box, choose “Fake Profile” as the reason, and add “Impersonating me or someone else” as the report type. Be sure to add a valid web address (URL) leading to the real profile so that Facebook can review the information. Alternately or simultaneously you can also submit the form here on Facebook to report about the impostor profile.

2. Create your business profile: The next important thing to create a Facebook profile and other accounts in other social networking sites as well so that you get your brand name and disallow others from using it. Next, provide the profile link on your corporate website, newsletters and email communications. This way you will be able to inform your customers that this is the official and the real account.
3. Post messages sensibly: Now as you have an account on Facebook, you need to keep in mind that you have an imposter who is also reading your comments so, be sensible and post the message wisely. Secondly, post such messages so as to when visitors find the 2 accounts on Facebook, they can easily judge your account as the real one. The updates you provide should be able to gain trust of the visitors and the members.
4. Your profile description: You can also, say in the profile description that this is the real and official profile. When some one is searching for your profile and will surely see all the profiles in Facebook related to your business and brand name. The visitor will check the description and if you provide the main website link and say that this is the official page, and you comments too prove it, then it will surely help you to a certain extent.
5. Keep track of imposter: You need to spend some time every week to keep track of the imposter comments and messages. If you find any negative comments then make sure you post the response on that page and on your profile page as well.
6. Legal action: If you feel you have all the details and proofs then you can consult your advocate and the cyber laws prevailing in your city or country and take appropriate legal action.

9 Tips to Guide Your Conversations on Facebook

If you are an online marketer, then you will surely not miss in promoting your brand on Facebook. Facebook has become one of the top referrer to websites like Google. BUT, you need to have a proper strategy for Facebook. Facebook requires a different approach from other forms of marketing messaging and engagement. Here are few recommendations to guide your interactions and conversations on Facebook.

1. You need to act as if you are a real person from your organization and you are also taking to a real person. People like speaking to a real person as they feel confident that they will be attended to.
2. Read carefully through all the comments before joining the conversation. And chip in when you feel it is the perfect situation or required situation.
3. Have patience when you want to comment. Do not go on commenting on each and every discussion. Give others a chance to talk about your products and services. It is always good if other customers respond to questions about your products and services.
4. Do not talk about yourself always. I really do not like a firm which always comments on their business.
5. Focus on conversations with your fans which are of interest to them. Give fans a topic which can ignite a healthy conversation. Discuss about the topics and do not try to sell the product here.
6. Have contents, quizzes, coupons… so keep the audience engage. This can also initiate a viral and can attract more fans. But, ensure you are not doing too much of selling here.
7. Do not forget to promote your Facebook fan page on other promotional materials and collaterals. Example: your website, email signatures, business cards, other ads, events…
8. Make sure the content on your website can be easily shared on Facebook using the ‘like’ icon. This helps in expanding the reach and prospect base through your friends and their friends as well.
9. Try to measure the impact of being on Facebook – no. of fans, no. of comments, no. of engagements, no. of new prospects, traffic referred to your website…

You need to know that Social Media has turned into a powerful marketing medium – it needs a perfect planning and strategy to make the campaign successful.

Facebook For Dummies

3 Most Important Social Media Strategies

To be successful in social media is it important

• To increase your network in social space - have more and more followers in Twitter?
• To have presence in all the forms – blogs, forums, Twitter, Facebook…?
• To keep talking about your own business?

If you feel so, then you are wrong. Social media is about others talking about your business. It is about sharing knowledge. It is not a place to do sales. Your network should talk about it and spread the word.

The most important steps for a social media campaign to be successful are

1. Identifying the evangelists who will talk about your business and get them into your social network.
2. Make the evangelists to talk about you and your business.
3. Allow the evangelists to spread the word among their network

Who can be these evangelists? They can be your customers, prospects, analysts and/or your partners. Try to convert them into evangelists. Discuss a topic among them so that it can ignite a healthy discussion. Share knowledge so that these evangelists can get more dope to discuss. Let them review your product or service. Let them discuss about your customer support. If at all there are few negative conversations or feedback in the social media space, inspire these evangelists to have more positive conversations apart from you immediately responding to the same.

Also read below articles to know more about social media and networking:

The Four Important Steps to Start Social Networking for Business
6 Tips To Be Successful In Social Media Marketing
5 Important Approaches for Social Networking for Companies

The Four Important Steps to Start Social Networking for Business

We have seen over the past few years the “buzz” was and is all about social networking say it on Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, LinkedIn or…. the list goes on. Many other brands, retailers and corporate have also boarded the bandwagon to listen and respond to their consumers with the intent to increase the interaction and communication with them.

But, what are the main things the social networking depends on?

I have just tried to summarize the vast thing in under these four steps. This is just to provide the reader a hang of the buzz word.

1. Listening: The first and the foremost thing is to know where your prospects or customers come together to share knowledge and interact. It hardly makes sense if you try to build your social networking setup at a place where you do not have your prospects. So, one needs to do extensive research and study to identify such platform as to where they are getting together. If this is not possible, then identify where is the communication relevant to your business is going on. In fact you want to be among with your peer group. You need to know the answers to these basic questions
   - Where do they live?
   - What do they do?
   - How are they currently using social media?
2. Interaction: This is the ability of users to engage with each other and the business owner. The most important thing is a social network mainly depends most upon the quality of the interaction features and interaction between the peer groups. Without them, a social network’s growth becomes difficult, its membership becomes disengaged and its purpose is missed. Moreover, the quality of content that is being shared should be of interest and related to your business. Try to identify thought leaders in your business or organization that can submit good content regularly and can interact with the community. Do not try to talk more of sales here or more of me. You can build successful network if you share knowledge and this platform is not to advertise your business. Create distinctive content that fits with the organization’s identity and mission. The owner should make this as a part of the routine – create content, respond to members and engaging them.
3. Relationship: The third important step is to build relationships with your prospects and customers. With proper interaction (step #2) one reaches to build on this step. This relationship should be such that it should trigger offline relationship and get-togethers. Here the member is more matured in the networking space and would like to increase his/her network may or may not be in the peer.
4. Measurement: So your question now is “What is the ROI?” Lot of sharing content, exchange of opinions, reviews…etc is going on. So, would you like to see the no. of page views, referrals or sales conversions? I would suggest you to develop a set of objective-oriented measurement standards, tied to existing business objectives, to assess the effectiveness of the social networking initiatives. For any social media community, there is an unlimited scope of activity to measure: interactions, contributions and connections across time location and topic. You need to focus on relationships and not selling.

Building a good social networking for business is not that easy as mentioned here in four steps. It needs lots of thinking, detailed plan, strategies, identifying the peer group, getting hold of the contributors that can ignite interaction and engagements and the list goes on. But, these four steps will really help you in understanding what ground word is required. So, good luck.

Also read:
6 Tips To Be Successful In Social Media Marketing
5 Important Approaches for Social Networking for Companies

Seven Social Media Trends for 2010

We have seen what difference Social Media has done to the online world in 2009. The users have increased enormously on Facebook, Twitter… More and more people are using it. Organizations have also moved over to this channel to provide customer service or just to create brand awareness here as well. So, what 2010 has for us in Social Media –

1. Social Media will be more filtered: People do not like unnecessary updates to be seen in Facebook or Twitter. They want to read updates which they are interested in. People would now like to connect with only like-minded people. They just do want to increase their social network – they will now choose in which niche network they want to be a part of. This will give rise to increase in “exclusive” social networks concentrating on niche areas where like-minded people can ignite more in discussions.
2. More Organizations will join this wagon: More corporate and organizations will try to use this medium to provide customer service. This is the most economical way to solve the customers’ issues and it is also quick. Even the customers will feel it is comfortable to reach through this channel. Wells Fargo, Best Buy’s are already using Twitter help out their customers to answer their queries.
3. Organizations will look out for numbers: Organizations will try to leverage this medium and at the same time they would like to know as to whom all are talking about their brand and products on other social channels. They would be keen to analyze the plus and minus feedbacks. They may also want to know about the presence of their competitors here and how they are leveraging this platform. More tools and filters will come into play to help the organizations in getting these stats and analysis.
4. Social Media on Mobile: Organizations will have polices on using networking sites by employees and may even block most of the sites within the office network. Employees will be forced to use mobile phones to help them with the social media. This will increase the usage of mobiles with good apps to help them in satisfying them with the social media addiction.
5. Social Business: More games and apps will be focused on generating revenues. The apps will try to create competition with friends. FourSquare, Rummble will try to concentrate more into this business.
6. Usage of Emails will come down: Social media helps in distributing and sharing of content with large audience much easily than emails. People will try to use less and less of emails and more of social sites. Read more about this - Email Vs Social Networking Sites
7. Leveraging Offline meets with Online Connections: People will tend to meet offline with the like-minded people whom they met online. Networking groups will lead to such meet-ups. More and more websites and people will come-up to have such meet-ups.

Let me know if you anticipate more or do you defer with my thoughts. I would like to hear from you.

Related read: Top 10 Probable Trends in 2010 for Online World

Facebook crosses 350 Million Users, Eliminates Regional Networks

Facebook is rolling out changes that it proposed in July 2009. As per the communication sent by the founder Mark Zuckerberg to Facebook users, some of the regional networks have become so big as they have millions of members. And member’s privacy makes no sense here. So, Facebook is planning to update the current privacy model by eliminating the regional networks. The members will be prompted again to update the settings.

Facebook is also including more granular control for the privacy settings. Now, your information, contact details, photos… can be shared with your friends, friends of your friends, or everyone.

Mark says, “The plan we've come up with is to remove regional networks completely and create a simpler model for privacy control where you can set content to be available to only your friends, friends of your friends, or everyone. We're adding something that many of you have asked for — the ability to control who sees each individual piece of content you create or upload”.

I also want to add that Facebook has added 50 million users in 2 1/2 months. That’s actually a bit slower than the amount of time it took for them to get from 250 to 300 million users, though still a fast pace.

Top 10 Probable Trends in 2010 for Online World

Here is my early guess work of the trends that can be expected in the online and internet world during the year 2010. All may not be true and damn sure to happen… but, we can just expect it. So, here are the predictions:

1. Social Media may replace email to a certain extent: Social media may reduce the usage of communication through emails. Facebook, Twitter… are providing access to your friends and like-minded people much easier and faster than email. The usage of email communication can reduce a lot among friends and personal communication. More about this has been discussed in my earlier post Email Vs Social Networking Sites.
2. Facebook you friend: People will not be searching for personal details of their friends on Google first. They will try to find it on social sites like Facebook, Twitter… So, the new verb will be Facebook your friend and try to find his/her personal details. “Hey Bob, can I have your phone number?” “Dude, Facebook me and you will get it”. Yes, this is the way it goes. Social search will be important in the coming year.
3. Branchless Banking: The trend of online shops is matured. Now, banks will not boast of the number of branches they have and the footprints they have all over the country or the world. Online banking will be the trend. They will assure of high security and will stick to the regulations and will have customers who will operate their accounts only online. You do not need to have to go to the bank at all.
4. mCommerce: eCommerce is on internet. mCommerce is through mobile phones. Mobile phones are being used for money transfers and bill payments. They have been hardly used for retail payments. The trend will be that users will use only their mobile phone to make payments instead of entering their credit card number in it. This may work for downloads, apps or other upgrades.
5. Draw money from POS machines: You just need not use your card at POS machines to pay for your purchases. You can as well as the retailer to give you cash after swiping the card. For this you do not have to go to the ATM machine again to draw the money. I am sure if this comes, then there will be certain strings attached to it by the bank.
6. Outsourcing will lead to Crowd Sourcing: Business will try focusing on crowd sourcing as it is an open call to a group of like-minded people and they expect to get better ideas. Business will look out to develop new technology or would like the community to test it out. This is already being used by Google and will extend to other business as well. Not only this, political parties will try to use this for canvassing; Ad agencies will find this very lucrative. This will be the best way to collect donations from the masses as well.
7. Social Media Analysis and Stats: Organizations will jump in this social media to keep the brand buzz alive here as well. But, they will also like to get the analysis and stats for the same. The same way as we have for the website. Agency will provide these services and more tools like radian6, buzzgain, Filtrbox will come up to help the organizations to get more filtered and useful data to help them analyze and plan the strategy.
8. Video driven communities: We have seen YouTube. Now, we will have communities driven by the videos which will lead to conversations. Momversation, sponsored by Target, is driving conversation and community around the issues of moms.
9. Leveraging Offline meets with Online Connections: People will tend to meet offline with the like-minded people whom they met online. Networking groups will lead to such meet-ups. More and more websites and people will come-up to have such meet-ups. Businesses will also have to plan a strategy as to how to leverage offline to online connection. Something needs to be done to get it reversed.
10. Semantic Web: This buzz was earlier as well and will continue in 2010. It will offer a wide range of possibilities to build more applications with deadly features, which can enable users to use it.

Email Vs Social Networking Sites

I remember a decade ago, I was frequently visiting the internet café near my home to check emails and reply to them. Also, I used instant messengers to find like-minded friends or chat with friends. Now, the days have changed. Many folks, especially the teenagers use internet not to send and receive emails, but to log on to sites like Twitter and Facebook to know what their friends are doing and post a tweet or write something on their wall.

Earlier, I used to keep my calendar update to remind me of the birthdays of my friends. I used to send them a e-greeting or send an email wishing them. Now, I use Orkut or Facebook directly and wish them. I do not have to wait for the calendar to remind me. The networking site will remind me of their birthdays.

Earlier, to be in touch with my college class mates, alumnus or ex-colleagues, we used to have a group in Yahoo or Google. And we used to exchange emails. Now, I do not have to. I have these sites and they are in my network always, and I can access it where ever I am moving.

Will all this is phasing out the life of emails?

If the social sites are being used for personal use and friends, then yes. Friends are using less of emails and more of social sites to contact. They feel this media very comfortable as they can blast out one tweet to many. This media provides them the instant information. This media not only provides posting of messages but, at the same time allows them to chat, share photos and videos without using another website or app. This one social platform does it all. So why will they go and upload the video or photos somewhere and provide the link in the email after selecting the friends’ email addresses from the address book?

But, how far this social media communication will be successful for within the corporate if they stop using emails? Will the corporate allow such communication in their organizations to build healthy network among the employees? Yes, organizations need to open up. Organizations can build the networking sites accessible only to the employees and they will have all the stuff here. Zappos is extensively using the Twitter now. Organizations can use such media on intranet for better knowledge sharing and transparency among the levels. One-to-one communication can also be provided in the platform to maintain confidential communication. You will not need, a sharing folder to exchange files, need not need to use the intercom to contact the other person, do not have to check calendar to see if your boss is free, you do not have to switch windows or install other apps to communicate… A separate interface for customer communication can be provided. Customers can also log in to see the status and the discussion happening about their project. Customers can chip in-time to update the developers or the folks working on the project.

Yes, a day may come when email will be extinct.

Aggregator Tools to Update Your Status on Multiple Social Networking Sites

My first question and probably for most of the readers – Is it right to use a tool or aggregator to update your status on most of the social networking sites without really logging in and updating it individually?

Yes, it really saves time of logging into each of the site say Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Xing or LinkedIn. But, one should also note that these networking sites attract different sets of audience and with varied interest. Moreover, social networking is more of conversations between like-minded people and should only be used for sharing of knowledge and discussions. It should not be leveraged as sales pitch and use automated tools to update the status. One needs to be very personal in participation on such networking sites.

Lastly, is it necessary to be on all the networking sites? It is better to use two or three good ones where you feel is the best community for you and build network, share knowledge and keep the engagement as lively as possible. You will be benefited by this in the long run. One has to realize the real value of social networking sites.

Short-cuts may not work always. But, still if you are interested then here are few good tools which can be looked at.

Ping.fm: Allows you to post on Facebook, Wordpress, LinkedIn and Twitter
HelloTxt: Update status on Twitter, Facebook, Bebo, MySpace and more. It takes status updates from web, mobile, sms, email.. to more than 45 social networking sites.
GlueNow: Enables you to post content across the social networking sites using web or mobile phone.
Posterous: Is a blogging platform that allows you to post to multiple social networking sites except for Ning, Viadeo and Xing.
Flock: A Firefox plug-in and enables you to aggregate most of the networking sites.
Postling: Can be used for blog posts and simultaneously update the status in social networking sites. They have a 30-day free trial.
Digsby: Manage various IM, Email and social networking sites. You can update Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn status from Digsby directly.
Yoono: Is free software that allows you to connect and share with all your social networks and IM services in one place.

But, still the bottom line is use social networking sites carefully, thoughtfully and strategically. Definitely, no one likes to read the same status message on your profile when they visit Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn. All are different and so should your status messages.


Also, please take time to answer the poll question on LinkedIn.

Related post:

• More Than 100 Free Twitter Tools for You
• 5 Important Approaches for Social Networking for Companies
• Update your Facebook Status from Twitter

Channel [V] Uses Twitter to Promote Re-launch Of Website

After Advani it is Channel [V].

Channel [V] used this novel way to announce and promote its new website on Twitter. The deal was – Members can opt to replace their profile picture to Channel [V] logo. And the logo is displayed on the registered member’s profile on Twitter for 50% of the time. Rest of the 50% the member’s picture is shown.

What do the members get in return? If members stay registered for 5days continuously, then they will be given a neat Channel [V] T-shirt (again branding). If they continue having the logo as their profile pic, they may be lucky to win an iPod.

The good thinking which Channel [V] has done is it did not hijack the profile pic completely. No one likes their pic to be hijacked completely. This helped many people to participate.

What still makes me think is why have they not used MySpace for this? They would have got more participation and target audience. Twitter and Facebook need to get smarter to cash on such things. They need to build good apps and features to build such brand communities and promotion which can attract advertisers. Cheers!!

Source: Medianama

Obama’s Advise to School Students on Using Facebook

Obama recently advised a group of school students that they need to be very careful about what they post in Facebook and other social networking sites. Stupid posts on such sites can haunt you back later. Many organizations are using LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook to know more about their prospective employee. Not only Facebook, a video posted on YouTube can ruin as it can be pulled up sometime later. Who knows, you may need to pay for the words which came out from you on these sites much-much earlier in your life.

Obama, himself was a victim for couple of times to the YouTube age, when some off-the-mark remarks came up on YouTube and blogs.

One young person asked the president whom he would choose to dine with if he could make only one such selection. "Gandhi," Obama replied. "He's somebody I find a lot of inspiration in. He inspired Dr. (Martin Luther) King" with his message of non-violence. "He ended up doing so much and changed the world just by the power of his ethics," Obama said of the inspirational leader Mahatma Gandhi.

Obama also says: "At the end of the day, we can have the most dedicated teachers, the most supportive parents and the best schools in the world, and none of it will matter unless all of you fulfill your responsibilities."

Source: Huffingtonpost

If the Ramayan were on Facebook

In my earlier post, I did mention that Sreedharan is trying to re-tell Mahabharata on Twitter. Now, here is an imagination of Ramayana on Facebook. Kokonad. If the Ramayan were to have an status update like Facebook, how would it be like! He has used the appropriate icons and apps to come up with this.

Read If the Ramayan were on Facebook

The Ramayana: A Modern Retelling of the Great Indian Epic

Facebook Going Lite on Twitter

According to TechCrunch, many social networkers who have been asked to try out Facebook Lite saying - Surprise, it is more Twitter-like.

The message sent out to beta testers reads, "You have been selected as a beta tester for Facebook Lite! We are building a faster, simpler version of Facebook that we call Facebook Lite. It's not finished yet and we have plenty of kinks to work out, but we would love to get your feedback on what we have built so far."

Check out Facebook Lite now at http://lite.facebook.com.

It has already purchased FriendFeed and according to some sources, Facebook earlier tried to buy Twitter for $500mn last year. And now, it has come up with Lite. What is next?

Men, Women Use Facebook Differently

Researchers at the Queensland University of Technology have found that while woman prefer applications which they can express themselves through, men chose ones they can compete against others with. So, your gender determines which Facebook application you would rather prefer.

According to the lead researcher Russell-Bennett, applications were also considered cool when they allowed self-categorization such as discovering which movie star you are applications which change daily, applications which allows high level of interactivity like scrabble or bowling and lastly applications which are special and novel. Facebook users use the applications and share them only to enhance their standings in their network of friends.

This study is important from a commercial point of view. This will help the organizations developing these applications as they can now identify which features encourage people to recommend the game to others. The more they recommend to others, the more people use it and this will attract a substitute to the traditional and/or viral advertising.

Update your Facebook Status from Twitter

Yes. You can update your Facebook status right from Twitter now. And that too only for the tweets you want. Just end a tweet with #fb when you want it to update your Facebook status – It’s that simple.

Some more tips to take care –

1. Take care not to confuse your Facebook friends with different and frequent tweets
2. Leave certain updates on Facebook for longer time
3. Twitter is Twitter and Facebook is Facebook. One needs to treat them differently
4. There can be some time lag for the status to reflect on Facebook. Have patience.

Social Media – Is It the Online Revolution?

Iranians both inside and outside the country are using social media networking sites to spread, to organize, and to make their voice heard. Iranians have shared online images, video, emails and tweets about the protests and spreading violence thus overtaking the local media. Efforts to control the populace of using internet is visible – limited internet bandwidth, blocking of networking sites, interrupted cell phone service and blocking SMSs and more.

And THAT is signal! This is what I guess. All these groupie networking sites Twitter, YouTube, Facebook – are heading the populace towards a new revolution - the online revolution? Is this just infatuation of the internet or the new technology? The revolution has just started in the gathering and sharing of information, of intention, of expression, of opinion and of connection.

The hierarchy is slowly reversing. Many people will control the few. Social media is a great weapon in the hands of the people. This isn't just an Iranian revolution - this is a bottom-up revolution impacting everything. Is it a boon or a bane?