Here in Wilmington NC we have events called Tweetups where people who regularly interact on Twitter can meet IRL (In Real Life).

The next Cape Fear Area Tweetup will be January 27th in The Beam Room at Front Street Brewery from 5:00pm until 6:30pm.

You can find the Cape Fear Tweetup group on the web HERE

I hope I get to see you there!

Gayle
@dalm8ton

Does that mean I am not cutting edge, probably! It also means that I don’t need to stroke my ego….or some BS like that. I often say, or think, there’s a blog post in there but that is generally the end of my efforts.

I wish I could say 2012 will bring major changes in my blogging about social media. I wish I could, but probably I’ll stumble a topic occasionally and will be motivated to put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard) and share.

Today I feel that motivation. You see, I posted to twitter about my lunch today. It was a silly tweet and information I normally wouldn’t tweet. However, today I tweeted this:

A short time later I received this reply:

Had I known Guy, or had any prior contact with him this might have been a welcome and enlightening response. If I had asked for a recipe I would have been delighted; however, because I do not know him and was / am not in the market to change my chicken stew preferences (as an FYI his stew recipe looked NASTY to me) it was an insulting and spammy response.

How are you using your social media powers? Are you spamming? Or are you offering good and useful information? Are you being a bully with your information and trying to ram it down others throats? Or are you being approachable and interesting?

In 2012 I am reassessing my use of social media and suggesting that the time may be right for us all to look at what we do and how we do it on our social media interactions.

because I find dogs more agreeable, I’ll be producing cute puppy videos!

I have kept Charter as my Internet Service Provider for one reason, the twitter support was AMAZING! The guys (haven’t encountered a woman yet) who provide tech supports via twitter are awesome! They have fixed many a problem for me and I appreciate their abilities and their follow-up and follow through.

Over the past few months it had become clear that virtual support was not enough to fix my service. I needed a tech on the ground at ground zero (AKA my office). I set the appointment via twitter for Friday afternoon between 1-3pm. I received a call at 12:45 on Friday confirming my appointment.  At 3:15 I tweeted my frustration at the lack of attendance by the tech:

The response I received shocked me:

The moral of the story is Social Media can help you find customers, it can help you maintain and retain customers, BUT ultimately a company MUST be able to backup their Social Media efforts with true product and service.

Charter lost me as a customer because their service did not live up to their social media. Do your social media efforts match your product or service?

Forty-four percent of the site’s members are in the United States, though the fastest growing regions are in emerging economies. Every business should have a presence on LinkedIn. Does yours?

I for one, rarely watch television news. I don’t need to; it is all available via twitter. If I am looking for a hair cut, I ask on twitter. I have discovered some of my favorite restaurants via twitter. The list of uses for twitter is endless.

I have a great many interests and twitter allows me to follow all my favorites, in real time. From the tour de France to my beloved Cubs, I receive the up to the minute information. I also receive the best and fastest tech support from my internet provider via twitter.

While only 7% of Americans are using it, the Twitter population is still 17 million people, which is roughly equivalent to the combined populations of Connecticut, Oregon, Kentucky, Kansas, and Oklahoma. 49% of monthly Twitter users follow brands or companies, compared to just 16% of social network users overall. Put another way, Twitter users are 3 times more likely to follow brands than Facebook users. Combined with their above average income and above average education, Twitter users’ propensity to interact with brands make them a huge potential source for Mass Influencers.

The biggest advantage I find with twitter is that it is mobile. I may not check my Facebook via my phone. A poll of my friends says that Facebook users are not following businesses via SMS. However, 63% of Twitter users access social networks via mobile phone, compared to 34% of social networkers as a whole.

Twitter is a business tool you can’t afford to leave in the tool box.

Concerns regarding social media use were acknowledged by some eight in 10 businesses participating in the national study of management, marketing and human resource executives.

Fifty-one percent of executives surveyed said they fear social media could be detrimental to employee productivity, while 49 percent believe that using such could damage company reputation. In fact, those surveyed who are notusing social media on a corporate basis say non-implementation is primarily due to concern about confidentiality or security issues (40%), employee productivity (37%) or simply not knowing enough about it (51%).

Despite these apprehensions, social networking is being viewed as a key strategy. Eight in 10 said social media can enhance relationships with customers/clients (81%) and build brand reputation (81%).

The recently completed Russell Herder/Ethos study found that 40 percent of companies technically block their employees from accessing social media while at work. At the same time, 26 percent of companies use social media to further corporate objectives, and just over seven in 10 said they plan to increase the use of these new opportunities.

Remarkably few efforts are being made to mitigate perceived risks. Only one in three businesses surveyed has a policy in place to govern social media use, and only ten percent said they have conducted relevant employee training.

“Rather than bypass the social media opportunity, organizations should embrace it while taking steps to educate their team about internal guidelines and best practices,” said Carol Russell, CEO of Russell Herder. “Companies of all sizes should begin to define their strategy regarding social media, and most importantly, the rules for employee engagement. By doing so, management can take advantage of the benefits offered by these new communication channels, while mitigating undue risk.”

Ethos President David Baer, who advises companies on business law issues, agrees: “Social media is a far different animal than traditional technology, so a company’s current policies on IT matters are usually not sufficient. Plus, such guidelines must take into consideration the form, substance, philosophy and culture of the organization.”

To read about the recent findings and key elements of a social media policy, go to www.russellherder.com/SocialMediaResearch.

Available Topic Expert(s): For information on the listed expert(s), click appropriate link.

Carol Russell

https://profnet.prnewswire.com/Subscriber/ExpertProfile.aspx?ei=80833

    Contact:
    Yuliya Horbach
    612.455.2368
    yuliya.horbach@russellherder.com

Read original article here

It very likely you will consult a map again before your arrival, if only to make sure you are heading in the right direction. These days most people are consulting their GPS system, or just trusting the turn-by-turn directions. However, we have all heard horror stories of the GPS gone wrong scenarios. By trusting the device, a turn is made into a building or water or some other non-navigable entity.

Your social media campaign should be no different. Create a map of where you want to go and how you plan to get there. Know the message you want to transmit. Know the audience you want to reach. What are your markers along the way? Is it hits to your website? Or increased traffic in your store front? Keep track of your markers so you can know what is working or maybe more importantly, what is not.

Whether you are doing this the old-fashioned way (i.e. doing it yourself) or in a more high tech fashion, (i.e. you hired a consultant), this is your business. Every word said, every message portrayed reflects on your and your business. Blindly following can lead to some places you may not want to be or some tight squeezes that were completely avoidable. Know your message and watch for your markers to know you are on the right path.

Oh, and don’t forget to wear sunscreen on that vacation!

On Saturday night after a very long day, I put the movie ‘Hitch’ in the DVD. It is a movie I like, it makes me laugh (even thought I have seen it many times), and because it is a familiar movie, it requires no brainpower. In the movie, Will Smith’s character makes a comment, something like ‘as humans 90% of our communication is non-verbal’. The comment resonated with me. In social media, there is no ‘body-language’ tone or inflection.

Miscommunication happens. It happens to everyone. On Friday, I was working with my partner to manufacture product. We had discussed at length our plan for completing this project. When we reached our halfway point, things were not going as we had planned. We discussed this and I said ‘mix the rest’. What I meant was stick to the plan. What was heard was deviate from the plan. The words were the same in the message sent as in the message received but our meanings were polar opposites.

I know a guy, I introduced him to twitter. He is a nice married 30-something working man. On twitter he is a first rate jerk…his tweets are channeling his inner gangsta. This is fine, except he wonders why no one interacts with him. He often expresses dismay that his tweets are ignored or not retweeted. I know, or think I know, his persona is comedic but no one else knows this. He knows his message, comedy. He knows his medium, twitter. However, his message is not being received.

Is the social media message you are sending and the social media message you want to send the same? Social Media is communication. Nothing more, nothing less. The message sent is only as good as the message received.