Business Social networking experiment part 2.

Posted on February 28, 2008 by marc meyer

Well ecademy was certainly interesting. Priding itself with the tag line; “Successful business people join ecademy to do more business”. After the relatively pain free login, I was taken to this page that had sooo much information for me to read and soo much information that they wanted, that I became somewhat discouraged and I’ve decided to move onto the next site on the list. Not a good start for a business social networking site. It shouldn’t be so hard! One note, I keep getting lots of unsolicted emails from users welcoming me etc etc.. The only difference is their names aren’t Mandy, Ashley, and Monique…

Next on the list entremate and I have just clicked on the darkest, most illegible eula/t&c I have ever encountered. God knows what I just agreed to. Time to edit the profile. Not much here to be honest, and it seems to be essentially a bbs. Now how far is that going to get me?

Next up was Friendly Favors, I’m going to give them a second chance on a first impression since I was getting database errors for the better part of yesterday.

Konnects, I liked, it was fairly intuitive and easy to set up and the influx of emails wasn’t too bad. That’s one bad aspect of Ecademy, they like to spam with people essentially “there” to help you. But we’ll see. Here is Konnects pitch: Do more with Konnects Get your own professional space online:

Grow your business

Find a Job

Access 1000’s of communities

Centralize your network

Join discussions

Let others find you

and much more.

Something to remember is that with all social networks, it doesnt happen overnight and with each network that you are in, you have to get your bearings and contribute and share and grow your page and your presence. With that being said, When I logged in to Networking for Pros, they essentially said, screw the advertiser model, we want your money to use our site. So I said to Networking for Pros. screw you, I want free. And Off I went.

Real contacts touted itself as a social networking site but really its the old Monster jobs site model. Its employers connecting with job seekers and nothing more, so I was outta there. And on to Ryze I went. I signed up and was fully expecting quite the expereince given all of the back slapping it gave itself. But to be honest, I didn’t think there was much under the hood. You know one of the things that a lot of social networks assume is that you are able to or want to,”invite your friends”. Has it dawned on anyone that maybe you don’t have any friends or maybe you don’t wanna invite anyone within your circle? That might be why Facebook has a leg on all of these. They allow you to look for your group and just join. Then it’s up to you to connect within the group.

So I came away from Ryze with a shrug of the shoulders and a “oh well” attitude with zero expectations. I liked Spoke, it had a nice interface and essentially asked for the same ole same ole in regards to the information it was looking for, but it might be worth going back and building on the intial info that I have provided them. The last one in the group is Teng which is is a professional community of selected Chief Information Officers, Chief Technology Officers, vice presidents and directors of technology with organizations ranging from startups to the global Fortune 100, from non-profits to government agencies. The interface sucked so I’m not sure if it’s just a source site for someone to collect names. I went through the initial steps, so I’ll let you know.

Ok, so I have gone through all of the sites that were on the list and for now I’m going to focus on 3 of them for now. Those will be Spoke, Konnects and Ecademy. Those 3 seemed to be the best of the bunch and may have the most potential for something. I’ll try and go back and contribute and share and upload and do the things we do in social networks, but for now, you’ll just have to wait and see. One more thing, I did not include Linkedin and Plaxo, which were suggested, because one is clearly THE business social network at the moment and the other is more of a tool for sharing contacts. So I wanted to look beyond those. especially the ones that I can get something from without shelling out any coin. Have I missed one, that we should evaluate?

Mobile, Social, and Search. Quick hits.

Posted on February 22, 2008 by marc meyer

In a quest to pare down my already slim posts, I’m going to fire off a couple of quick blurbs for everyone to chew on until the next post:

Aside from Microsoft not backing down in it’s quest to buy Yahoo, AT&T and Yahoo have entered in a multiyear deal to share revenue from advertising on Mobile phones. Yahoo will provide search and display advertising for AT&T customers. I’m shocked that Google did not get there first.
Speaking of Microsoft, the Wall Street Journal just cut a deal with them in which the WSJ’s paid search and contextual advertising services will be provided by Microsoft. Not to sound redundant but, I’m shocked that Google did not get there first…
Social media giants Facebook and Myspace will become application hubs and launch pads for niche based “smaller” social networks. Alot of this is the residual effect of Facebook opening its platform last fall.
Word of Mouth marketing is the new mode of marketing on the cheap. It’s also just as effective as traditional forms of marketing and has much more of a “buzz” factor.
Magazines drive more than 50% of online searches, followed by reading an article in a magazine and lastly by seeing something on TV.
According to Anderson Analytics, 32% of the 1700 marketing executives polled cited “Green Marketing” as an important emerging concept along with it being considered the trendiest marketing buzzword.
The hottest demographic that you need to be marketing too, but are probably ignoring are the hispanic and baby boomers.
According to Informa’s latest report entitled “Mobile Social Networking: Communities and Content on the Move,” the number of mobile social networking users exceeded 50 million, approximately 2.3% of the global mobile user population on December 31st, 2007

What’s the deal with widgets?

Posted on February 7, 2008 by marc meyer

Ok so I’m going to go out on a limb and here and say that chances are that most of the common masses do not know what a widget is. Even if you use your computer on a daily basis, there is still the slight chance that you might not know what a widget is. No big deal. Yet…

Simply put, a widget is a portable chunk of code that can be installed and executed within any separate web page by an end user( You or I) without requiring additional work or previous knowledge on the users part. Other terms used to describe widgets include: gadget, badge, module, capsule, snippet, mini and flake.

Widgets often but not always use DHTML, JavaScript, or Adobe Flash. A widget adds some content to that page that is not static. Generally widgets are third party originated, though they can be home made. They add a more rich, entertainment, multi-dimensional feel to a site that might be otherwise static.

Widgets are now becoming more commonplace and are used by bloggers, social network users, marketers, advertisers, and owners of personal web sites. They exist on home page sites such as iGoogle, Netvibes, Pageflakes, SpringWidgets and yourminis, and hundredes of other sites.

Widgets are used as a distribution method by ad networks such as Google’s AdSense, by media sites such as Flickr, by video sites such as YouTube and by hundreds of other organizations.

Applications can be integrated within a third party website by the placement of a small snippet of code. Which is now becoming a primary distribution or marketing channel for many companies. The code brings in ‘live’ content – advertisements, links, images, and video – from a third party site without the web site owner having to update.

Thus the end users can utilize widgets to enhance a number of web-based hosts, pages or drop targets. Categories of drop targets include social networks, blogs, wikis and personal homepages. Although end users primarily use widgets to enhance their personal web experiences, or the web experiences of visitors to their personal sites, corporations can potentially use widgets to improve their web sites using syndicated content and functionality from third party providers. They are also now using widgets as a carrier of their branding message or product.

So where can you find some widgets? The easiest source would be generally on the page you are currently reading, either on the left or right side of the pages. The widgets are dropped in via a widget managment system. Should you feel compelled, check out KickApps which states: The KickApps hosted, white-label platform puts social media and online video functionality directly into the hands of every web publisher who aspires to be a media mogul and turns every web designer and developer into a social media rockstar! With KickApps, it’s now easier than ever for web publishers to leverage the power of social and rich media experiences on their websites to drive audience growth and engagement.

If you are the casual reader, then hopefully this helps you. If you are a certified blogging fool, then this is nothing that you already don’t know. If you are somewhere in the middle, then now you have been enlightended.

The social networking experiment for business

Posted on February 5, 2008 by marc meyer

Ok so much has been said about whether social networks are good for anything beyond poking someone and building a nice page that your six friends can check out, that I thought it would be interesting to see what the results would be if I had signed up for not 1 but 10 business oriented social networks.

Before I begin I need to set some specific goals though as to what I want to achieve. Do I want to meet potential business contacts? Sure I do. Do I want to help someone else get a project or a job or make a contact? Sounds like a good idea. Ok lets see what else? Drive traffic to the blog? Not a bad thing, but certainly not the end-all-be-all. Ok, so these are good starting points. However, I have no preconceived notions yet, but who does when someone signs up for one of these sights? What should be their expectations?

With that being said. I will have zero expectations but I will attack the 10 social networks with measurable goals so that we can see which has the biggest and quickest impact on me participating. The first thing on the experiment list is how intuitive are the sites? How easy was it to login and register? and What are they promising? Below is the list:

Networking for professionals

Coming up in the next post will be what the intial impressions were, how was the account creations process and a more descriptive explanation of each sites service offereings. Am I missing any sites that should be on this list? Has anyone had any experiences that they want to share?

5 Social Media Marketing Tips You Cannot Ignore

Posted on October 26, 2007 by marc meyer

As social media marketers race to all things social these days, a lot of them go in with blinders on, assuming that they can learn it on the fly. All they see are the massive amount of numbers flocking to MySpace and Facebook and they want a piece of that. But before they jump in here are 5 things they better not ignore as they attempt to slice up the pie.

1) If you think you are going to just bum rush your social network with product before establishing yourself as a “Playa”, you better think again. You will have zero “street cred” if you go in talking about this product, or this company or how great this service is. If you do that from the get-go, you might as well be playing an instrument under water.

2) Target a niche, not a specific social networking site. One of the most foolish things would be to just assume that you are going just “go to MySpace” and set up shop. With that mindest, you might as well bid on the top spot for the term “mortgage” in Google Adwords. You’ll burn through about $300,000 in one day,you’ll have a ton of clicks and zero conversions. Because you were not targeting the right term, the right people and the right niche. The same holds true for marketing in social networks. Find your people!

3) You better know what you are doing. This applies not only to social networks but all forums in which people have an opportunity to speak to a large group of people. You have to realize that WORDS HAVE POWER if used the wrong way. There is usually some individuals who have more power based on longevity or whatever and you really don’t want to start off on the wrong foot. Once you have developed a comfort level with the people in the network, and them you, then you can start to pitch a little bit.

4) Don’t underestimate the power of your profile. Contrary to what some might think, a profile will tell a lot about you, what you do, and how well you do it. When creating the profile, be honest but also be humble. There is nothing worse than reading about how great someone thinks of themselves. But there is nothing wrong with success either, You need to strike a balance. Doing it right, will have people wanting to know more about what you do. It’s another way of promoting yourself with subtle ease.

5) Blog about it. Blog often and blog alot. But make sure that instead of selling, you’re telling. There is nothing more viral than blogs, especially if they are good. An extension of your social network persona, will be your blog. If you take it serious, then your network will realize that you take what you do, serious. Be an expert, but also be someone that your social network can rely on for anything. they will find you through your blog eventually.

If you do these things, along with about a dozen more smaller things, then you can set up your business and yourself for a happy coexistence in the burgeoning social network marketplace. If you don’t so these, you’ll join the other millions of people with empty profiles and blogs with 2 posts in 2 years. It’s your choice.