Oh, spammers will offer to get you thousands of Twitter followers or Facebook ‘likes,’ cheap. You can even buy followers on eBay; one found by Mashable offered to “tweet your message to my 618,500+ followers” for just $7.95.

Bill Rundle, an account manager at Porter Novelli in New Zealand, says in a Ragan article that he bought Twitter followers – $12.50 for 2,000 of them –  “as an experiment.” But he thinks that Twitter is a numbers game, and admits to “looking at a person’s number of followers to determine whether he or she is worth following.”

Call me old-fashioned, but I make my decision about following someone on Twitter by looking at a person’s bio first, then at the last couple of tweets to get a flavour of the person and the personality and the things they tweet about. On Facebook, I’d prefer to keep it to family, friends and people I know reasonably well. LinkedIn is an expanded range, but I still like to already have met my connections, either in person or via email; for all but a handful of my 534 connections, that’s the case.

People get hung up on numbers because they think more of anything has got to be better. A recent e-book by Hubspot, called Lead Generation Lessons from 4,000 Businesses, says businesses with 301 to 1,000 Twitter followers had more than five times the traffic than those with one to 25 followers. Realistically, though, only beginners have just 25 followers, and traffic gains drop to just double for those with 101 to 300 followers – whatever they mean by “traffic.”

It’s not just about traffic, and it’s not just about numbers.

• Writer and coach Nick Usborne says, “A social media following of 10,000 people can be worthless, and a carefully focused following of just 50 people can be invaluable.”
• John Haydon, a social media strategist for nonprofits, points out that “many nonprofits still overly focus on counting likes and followers as if these metrics are the end goal…instead, you want to know who you are reaching; who is reacting and what are they reacting to; are they taking action (subscribing, donating, etc.).”
• Author and consultant Peter Shankman is quoted in Inc. as saying that if you put your focus on getting more fans and followers, you aren’t focusing on the followers you already have. “Numbers don’t matter. What’s important is that you understand your audience, know what they want, and give it to them.”

What do you think? Do you pore over the numbers, or are they meaningful to you in ways I might have missed?

Image: jscreationzs and FreeDigitalPhotos.net.

But the funny thing is that people don’t really want to get cosy with you on Facebook. Sure, they’ll temporarily “like” you to enter a contest or gain access to something you’re holding back, but that doesn’t mean they want to see frequent updates from you.

Via Ragan, I found four infographics that summarize the results of a paper called, “How Millennials Are Interacting With Organizations on Facebook.” It reveals that although 86 per cent of the Millennials surveyed visit Facebook every day, 69 per cent rarely or never visit fan pages. You can temporarily buy a “like” with discounts, products samples or contest entries, but prepare to say goodbye if you’re just trying to sell something. And if you aren’t trying to sell something, what are you doing?

I’ll admit to giving away a few “likes” myself, but these days, when clicking on some kind of offer takes me to a Facebook page and an invite to “like” it, I make a hasty exit. I’m starting to find that being on Facebook is like being on Twitter. Noisy. Crowded. Harder to see my friends. Sure, I can go to my list of specific friends or family to see what they’re up to, but it’s getting more difficult. A quick look at the stream of updates is just as likely to have a link to articles and blog posts or brand updates.

Marketers, I’m not sure what the answer is. I’m sure you’re trying to work it out, too. But for now, you’re driving me away from Facebook rather than pulling me towards your brand.

(With apologies to the gentlemen named, I submitted this for a class assignment.)

Few people are retweeted more often than high-profile Twitter users Chris Brogan and Guy Kawasaki. But which one is more successful? That depends on your measure of success.

Retweetrank.com calculates that Brogan and Kawasaki lead in having their less-than-140-character bons mots shared most often, with both above the 99th percentile of retweeting (99.94 and 99.97, respectively). Based on follower count and dozens of other variables, both men also get a TweetGrader score of 100 out of 100 for impact. They boast similar Klout scores, a measure of more than 30 factors that include retweet frequency, how far their retweets go and the influence levels of followers. Twitalyzer gives both men a score that indicates a great communicator.

Yet their strategies and approaches are wildly different.

Kawasaki stirred up controversy when he revealed that a team of “ghosts” tweeted under his @guykawasaki account. Kawasaki has also been accused of spamming because he auto-posts the same tweet about four times a day, leading to an average daily rate of 62.8 tweets. He defends this as making sure his followers have a chance to read them, borne out by the fact that each repost receives as many click-throughs as the originals.

Kawasaki has said he uses Twitter as a tool driving traffic to his news aggregator site, Alltop.com, to “monetize” the page views. His stated aim is to point to interesting, educational or funny stories, such as Betty White’s 90th birthday and “the four stages of getting Twitter.” He has stated frankly that he is not there for the social engagement. No kidding; by 5 p.m. on a random day, he had tweeted 81 times, and all but one were links to Alltop.

Brogan is the only one who tweets under @chrisbrogan, and he comments and retweets an average of 49.6 times a day. He is all about building community. His tweets generally respond to others, promote other people’s material or provide his own useful information on such things as blogging for business and how to use social networks like Google+. By 5 p.m. on the same day Kawasaki was measured, Brogan had tweeted 41 times, of which half were conversations.

Dan Zarrella, a “social media scientist” for Hubspot, says Kawasaki’s “broadcast” method works better than conversation to encourage retweets. Zarrella also points out that the more someone tweets links, the more followers they will get.

By those measures, Kawasaki wins.

Brogan began tweeting about 10 months earlier than Kawasaki, yet the latter’s prolific posting means he has pumped out 6,000 more tweets (100,844 to Brogan’s 94,745). Kawasaki has more than twice the number of followers (475,199 versus Brogan’s 198,366) and he is also listed in more places (29,049 versus Brogan’s 20,340).

However, by online authority – which measures how much people can trust and rely on someone’s recommendations and opinion on a topic – Brogan wins. A PeerIndex score of 64 ranks Brogan well ahead of Kawasaki’s 34 and puts Brogan in the top one per cent of Twitter users as opinion leaders and influencers.

Fortunately, the true winner is the Twitter user, who can benefit by following both @chrisbrogan and @guykawasaki.

(All statistics were calculated in mid-January, 2012.)

Image credit: David Castillo Dominici and FreeDigitalPhotos.net.

That was just one of many tips shared by Anita Windisman of One of a Kind Marketing at a meeting Feb. 1 of the IABC/Toronto Professional Independent Communicators. An early adopter who joined the network just five months after it launched, Anita once introduced herself to a LinkedIn executive as member number 34,435. That’s early, considering there are now more than 120 135 million members!

To put it bluntly, if you’re not on LinkedIn, you don’t exist, Anita told the group. “It isn’t the sexiest tool, but it is the most useful,” she said. It’s great for personal branding, maintaining an up-to-date contact database, identifying decision-makers, and helping rank your company higher in Google searches.

Anita advised the group to be active and visible on LinkedIn, using these 10 tips for optimizing LinkedIn profiles:

1. Upload a great photo. “Great” means a head and shoulders shot with a neutral background where you are smiling and dressed in business attire.
2. Write a compelling headline. Don’t just put a title and company name. You have 120 characters to create a sound bite that conveys the value you offer. This is also a place where you want key words that help you turn up in searches.
3. Tell your story in your summary. You have 2,000 characters (although as Barb Sawyers pointed out, you’d be doing readers a favour by taking fewer). Write in the first person (“I”). Use key words. Be conversational. Showcase your expertise without boasting. Avoid the most overused buzzwords like creative, motivated and extensive experience.
4. Add your current position, making sure to describe it with key words and two or three accomplishments. Note that you can now have multiple current positions, and you can drag and drop to put the one you want listed first.
5. Add any volunteer positions. Recruiters look kindly on this! It also opens up conversations.
6. Add your education. This is great for networking because it opens up alumni connections. Anita has her MBA listed here because many people use this as a search qualifier.
7. Customize your links. Don’t list the generic “website” but brand it with your company name (choose profile > website > edit).
8. Personalize your public profile URL. The default has a bunch of numbers and letters. Make yours clean and crisp by personalizing it (profile > public profile > edit). If your name is common, add your middle initial or some other identifier.
9. Add certifications and credentials under profile> edit profile > add sections.
10. Add skills. You can have up to 50, but aim for 12-15 (who is good at 50?).

Once your profile is in good shape, work on building  your network:

• It’s not a popularity contest or a numbers game; only add people you know and trust.
• When asking to connect with someone, use “we’ve done business together” rather than “friend.”
• Be sure to personalize any requests to connect with how you know the person or where you met or who you have in common.
• To use your connections for prospecting, search for the person you want to reach, and see how you are connected. Rather than use the LinkedIn tools, though, pick up the phone and call your connection.
• Check in once a day. Be sociable, share business-related updates, comment on other people’s updates.

Anita also told the group that company pages are underused, and this is also a good option if you don’t have a website. If you add a company page, link it to your personal page under websites. Anita considers Microsoft an example of a company page done well.

For more on LinkedIn:

• Donna Papacosta’s summary of tweets from the session
• Tips from a PIC meeting last year about LinkedIn
• LinkedIn Q&A about use

Recommended reading:

• Tom Peters, “The Brand Called You,” Fast Company (on the importance of branding)
• Keith Ferrazzi, Never Eat Alone (on building a strong network)

“People used to rely on the morning newspaper and the nightly news, and the library held the sum of human knowledge,” Donna told the group. “Now, we’re dealing with a firehose of information when we’re just trying to take a sip.”

That’s where curation comes in. It’s not the curating that museums do with paintings and dinosaur bones, but a way of finding, grouping, organizing and sharing the best content relevant to your audience. And it’s not just aggregating information, scraping and dumping like a robot; with curation, you add your own voice and perspective.

For an independent, curating can show others that you’re an expert resource or a trusted guide, something that will keep your brand top of mind. For a company’s intranet, curating pulls into one place important information like company updates, news about competitors, industry happenings and other factors that affect the market. You might also curate content for yourself, just to collect a daily summary on an important subject.

As with any communications, the first step should be defining a strategy. How are you trying to position yourself or your organization? What role does content play in your overall marketing or communications strategy? How will you keep your efforts going? And how will you measure success?

Next steps:

• Understand your market and what your audience cares about
• Identify thought leaders and influencers you want to track
• Find content, using tools like Google Alerts and Twitter searches
• Collect and save content, using tools like Delicious (a better way of sorting the 200 bookmarks you have on Firefox!), Paper.li, Pearltrees, Storify, Scoop.it and Tumblr
• Organize and document the content, adding context, meaning or opinion, or telling a story
• Share the content, and make it easy for others to share – but always link to the original source or you’re just plagiarizing
• Measure your results. e.g. increasing number of leads.

You could gather industry news, case studies, expert tips and advice, videos, photo, podcasts and/or presentations, publishing the content as an e-newsletter, blog post or microsite. Donna showed how companies like Adobe and Intel publish online “papers” that focus on interesting content with just a discreet mention of their sponsorship. Guy Kawasaki pulls together a range of topics using Alltop. Smartbrief.com collects information into a “brief” on topics from the expected (leadership and social media) to the niche (Geena Davis on women in media).

Donna encouraged the group to “keep your eyes open and think like a curator” and share, share, share.

Here’s a similar presentation on curation Donna gave at the IABC Western Region Conference in November.

Image: PANPOTE and FreeDigitalPhotos.net.

That’s what Adele McAlear told the group attending the Nov. 2 session of IABC/Toronto’s Professional Independent Communicators. Adele is Director of Operations for Measurement & Analytics at Edelman Digital’s Montreal office, heading up a team that provides social insights and measurement to help guide business decisions.

Some reasons for measuring social analytics include reducing risk, proving or disproving your work and improving results. But there’s always a hard reason behind everything you do, which generally comes down to one of two things:

1. Reducing costs.
2. Generating revenue.

Calling social analytics the “starting point for engagement,” Adele pointed out that we’re tracking conversations on the web and “trying to move the needle.” To those who say social media can’t be measured, Adele noted that “If it changes, you can measure it, and if it doesn’t change, why are you wasting your effort?”

Adele ran through five steps to measuring social analytics:

1.  Define your objectives.
What changes do you want to make? Be specific, and more than just “awareness.” Push for a goal, whether it’s selling your product or changing perceptions. “There are ways to measure social media, but it’s not ROI [return on investment],” Adele stressed. “What does success mean to you? Is it increasing customers, increasing repeat purchases, streamlining customer service? Measure THAT.”

2.  Establish benchmarks.
Do an audit to review where you are online. How do people talk about you? your competitors? How far have you come? Use Google Insights to see how people are searching and finding you — it’s the difference between a company saying “mobile device” and most people saying “cellphone.” Pick something to measure and stick with it. Look for patterns. Always benchmark at the beginning and end of campaigns or promotions.

3.  Set key performance indicators.
A small business owner with a goal of gaining new clients will want to measure the various ways prospective clients can move along that path. Companies might want to measure a shift in sentiment or conversation topics.

4.  Report on results.
Track your output (blog posts, tweets, press releases, events, etc.) and look for reaction, comments, brand mentions, click-throughs, web visits, likes, sales revenue. What are people reacting to? Isolate the peaks and valleys and find catalysts, such as a price drop or YouTube video. Look for positive, neutral or negative sentiments and correlations between sentiment and the market segment important to you. Free measurement tools include BlogLevel, BlogGradr, Facebook Insights, Google Insights, TweetLevel and Twitalyzer. Paid tools (although check for free trials) include Crimson Hexagon, Radian6, Simply Measured and Sysomos. Whatever your tools, learn to love Excel, because you’ll track most information in a spreadsheet.

5.  Use insights from the data you’ve gathered to structure future objectives and strategy, and then “rinse and repeat.”

While the whole process may seem daunting, Adele encouraged the group to “Figure out what you want to achieve, and start small and try a few things.”

Pencil and measure photo credit thanks to Paul at FreeDigitalPhotos.net.

1. IABC/Toronto:
Professional Independent Communicators (PIC)
Demystifying communications measurement
Wednesday, November 2, 2011, 6 to 9 p.m.
Metro Hall, Room 310, 55 John Street, Toronto

Demonstrate your worth to your clients or your boss by measuring your efforts! Speaker Adele McAlear, Director of Operations, Measurement & Analytics, Edelman Digital Montreal (stepping in for Rob Clark, Director, Insights & Measurement at Edelman Canada, who has been sidelined by an accident), educates clients on measuring the social web and tracking the business outcomes of PR programs. At this session, she will show us:

• the importance of measuring communications
• why goals and outcomes should serve as measurement yardsticks for online and offline communications
• about social media metrics, including reach, engagement and trust.

You must register and pay in advance for the session, at IABC/Toronto > Events. Cost is $22 ($24.86 with HST) for IABC members and $32 ($36.16 with HST) for non-members.

2. IABC/Toronto Westend:
Content curation (lunch & learn)
Tuesday, November 15, 2011, noon to 2 p.m.
The Curve Restaurant, 55 City Centre Drive, Mississauga

According to Fast Company, “content curation” is here to stay, and communicators are at the forefront of this trend. Content curators don’t just aggregate information; they filter and annotate it, and help their audience make sense of it. Communicators curate to reinforce brand authority and establish relationships with prospects and customers.

In this session, speaker Donna Papacosta — podcaster, writer, storyteller, content curator and owner of Trafalgar Communications — will turn the spotlight on the world of content curation, sharing how to:

• define a curation strategy
• develop simple techniques for curating content
• integrate curation into ongoing communications.

Lunch is included, with your choice from a set menu that includes soup or salad, a main course and dessert. Registration is now open! The earlybird price (if booked by Nov. 6) is $30 + HST for IABC members/students/transitional members, $40 + HST for non-members. After Nov. 6, the cost is $35 + HST for members, $45 + HST for non-members. Register at IABC/Toronto > Events.

3. Halton-Peel Communications Association (HPCA):
Integrating and managing technology in your small business
Tuesday, November 15, 2011, 6:30 to 9 p.m.
The e-Spot, 353 Iroquois Shore Road, Suite 200, Oakville (north of the QEW, east of Trafalgar Road)

This two-part session will cover integrating and managing mobile/desktop/laptop devices in your small business.

PART 1: Presentation and Q&A

• Mobility related to computers and devices: Backups and document management, remote access, databases and contact management.
• Productivity on cellphone and tablets: Calendars, email, note-taking and sharing, Microsoft 365 and meetings.
• Utilities: Remote access and FTP.
• New digital publishing advances: Interactive PDFs, e-publications, Adobe’s Digital Publishing Suite and Creative Cloud collaboration opportunities.
• Optimizing productivity around social media: Automation, connecting social networks, keeping up the traffic and measurement.

PART 2: Breakout tables and hands-on (bring your laptop, tablet or other device)

• Table 1: Business integration: desktop/laptop/mobile devices.
• Table 2: Apps for productivity.
• Table 3: Social mobile.

The event is free to HPCA members and just  $20 for non-members. Register at www.hpcaonline.com > Events.

See you there?

Image credit: Renjith Krishnan and FreeDigitalPhotos.net.

Non-profit consultant and admitted geek Amy Sept of Nimbyist Communications has made social media part of her daily life for years. She started using Twitter as a way to meet people, knowing that being a military spouse will mean regular moves. As well as meeting people in her personal and professional lives, she’s also found social media to be a great tool for networking and professional development.

Digital marketing and social media specialist Andrew Schiestel of tbk creative has been using social media since he was a teenager, starting with popular online role-playing game Everquest. He believes the power of social media comes when we can find a way to digitally replicate our social relationships. His stories included a $100 giveaway and a “Take your body back” Facebook campaign joined by 5,000 women.

The trio shared their experiences and advice October 5 at a panel discussion on Using social media to grow your business, put on by IABC/Toronto’s Professional Independent Communicators. Here are a couple of other takeaways from “the gardener, the geek and the giver,” as they were dubbed by meeting coordinator Patricia Davies:

Benefits of being active in social media

• Susan admits that “you can get lost in there [social media] all day” but the results are well worth it. She has been hired by new clients, found new opportunities, stayed top of mind and even found a publisher for her first novel, Shades of Teale.
• Amy says every business lead has come to her through social media, including contracts with two clients through Twitter.
• For Andrew, blogging has led to new business, improved search engine optimization and has helped win accounts when the prospective client has “seen a side of tbk Creative they may not see in an RFP.”

DOs and DON’Ts

• Do keep active in the channels you choose.
• Do use scheduling to tweet or post during periods where you might not be active online, but check in at least once during the day.
• Do have a purpose and goals for your online participation.
• Do figure out your ideal clients and where you might find them.
• Do keep your content professional.
• Don’t talk about yourself all the time.
• Don’t do/say anything digitally that you wouldn’t do/say in person at an event; someone is sure to notice! Ask yourself, “Would I be OK if this was in the paper tomorrow?”
• Don’t focus on building numbers, but instead check if you are building value and making meaningful contacts.

Susan was the one who called social media “magic,” saying her blog went from no responses to regularly generating emails and calls. “It has really worked beautifully for me,” she said.

How about you? Are you using social media to good effect? What other benefits have you seen?

Related posts:
How freelancers can use LinkedIn
Making the most of LinkedIn
Tips for keeping up with social media
How often do you tweet?

Image: Helico and Creative Commons.

After a conversation this week with someone just starting an independent business, one of the first things I did was send my new friend an invitation to connect on LinkedIn. This social networking site has more than 100 million members in more than 200 countries. As of January 2011, it includes executives from all 2010 Fortune 500 companies. So whether you’re looking for potential customers or just want to connect with other people, chances are you’ll find someone of interest there.

My friend and I discussed a lot of other tips for indie success, but here are some of the specific points about LinkedIn I mentioned:

Visibility:

• First, you need to be seen. Work on your profile to include all the pieces suggested by LinkedIn.
• Include key words that describe what you are passionate about, what makes you different from others and what you do so people can find you.
• LinkedIn helpfully shows you how close you are to completion. To reach 100%, you must include all the basic sections, including recommendations.
• A good time to ask for a recommendation is when a client praises you for a project you’ve just completed.
• LinkedIn has a new section where you can add volunteer experience, and you should, especially if you are a student or just starting out and don’t have many other ways to show your capabilities. Go to Profile > Add Sections > Volunteer Experience & Causes.

Building relationships:

• Find people you know and make a connection.
• Don’t just send the generic invite; personalize it to include a note about where you met, who you have in common or why else you want to connect.
• Remember it’s not a numbers game. More important than having thousands of names is having a real connection with people who know you and trust you.

Work it:

• When you meet others and exchange cards at networking events, ask if they are on LinkedIn and if you can connect there as well. Do that within 24 hours, reminding them where you met and maybe what you had in common.
• Search LinkedIn groups and join ones related to your field. Ask and answer questions related to your interests or areas of expertise.
• Use the search function to research potential employers, businesses or specific people you want to target.
• Use the status updates wisely, keeping them professional and relevant.

Do you have any other LinkedIn tips to share? What particularly works for you? Let me know in the comments.

More LinkedIn tips:

Social Media Examiner’s 5 simple steps to improve visibility
My own previous post recapping a presentation on LinkedIn.
LinkedIn’s five ways to make the most of LinkedIn.
Helpful LinkedIn etiquette tips.

Between back-to-back deadlines for clients and multiple readings and writings for school, it’s been a struggle to keep up my (never-very-robust) online life. Still, I’m trying to post here at least once a week, and dip into Twitter and LinkedIn and Facebook once a day, but not for long. And no following endless online treasure hunts; I’m strictly rationing the number of interesting links I follow!

So when I attended an IABC session on May 17 with author, speaker and management consultant Randall Craig called “Social media without wasting your time or losing your identity,” I was thinking it might have some fresh ideas in relation to fitting blogging and Facebook and Twitter into a busy life. These were some key points that caught my attention, and you may find these interesting too:

• The idea of anchors and outposts. There are way too many social media sites out there to keep up with them all. Randall suggested we choose a small number of key “anchors” among these outposts, such as Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn and Twitter. Create a profile, a narrative and other content, then link and point visitors to your main website. These inbound links to your site are great for search engine optimization, too.

• If you haven’t done this yet, GO NOW (I’ll wait for you!) to www.Zoominfo.com. Search for your name and/or your company name. Zoominfo will pull up all the online profiles of you and the other people with your name; find the main one that’s you and claim it. If there is more than one that you can claim, you’ll have a chance to pull them all into the same one.

• Is the “noise” in your social media stream too much, and some people are just posting too much and too many things that don’t interest you? Shh, you can “unfriend” on Facebook and LinkedIn without broadcasting it to the other people, although they’ll find out when you don’t show up in their list of friends.

• If you’re working up to a blog, start by assigning yourself the task of writing three thoughtful paragraphs a week (seems doable, doesn’t it?) and emailing them to yourself. After a month or two, see how you did. If you’ve proven yourself prepared to keep up a blog, go for it! You’ll also have a bank of posts already written to help you out on those weeks when you’re on vacation or just too darn busy to come up with something new.

Update: The ever-helpful Hubspot has a new e-book, “How to Monitor Your Social Media Presence in 10 Minutes a Day,” the equivalent of “Eight-minute abs.” You’ll find where you should be and why, along with how you can scan everything in 10 minutes — IF you are disciplined. It’s free but you must hand over your name, email address and other info.

Do you have any tips for keeping up your online life?

Image credit: Renjith Krishnan and Freedigitalphotos.net.