Category Archives: Twitter

September 28, 2010

Holacracy and Facebook — are we creating a global brain?

By Giselle Bisson

A map of the Internet

For three weeks this summer, I was totally off the grid and more or less out of touch while immersed in a permaculture workshop near Mt. Shasta. Permaculture, which literally means “permanent agriculture”, is a systems design theory that can be applied to sustainable agriculture, architecture and community design.

While it started 40 years ago in Australia, permaculture is just now starting to hit a “tipping point” and emerge into mainstream media consciouness. (As it did recently when an actress Ellen Page talked about her permaculture workshop on the Ellen De Generes show.)

Our workshop, produced by Living Mandala, focused on teaching the fundamentals of permaculture in the context of training future leaders of intergenerational ecovillages and intentional communities, so we learned about new systems of organizational management.

As we sat in a beautiful outdoor classroom in the forest, organizational management coach and “evolutionary strategist” Shiloh Boss gave us an intriguing presentation on a new method of leadership called Holocracy. The holacracy concept has evolved out of a startup software company in Philadelphia, Tierney Software.

There are now 100 trained practitioners in Holacracy. “It is an open science, but it is also an open technology available to anyone,” says Boss.

“Meshworks are various organizations or communities that can tackle issues that are insurmountable, like climate change,” she says. “The communities in a sense become an “autonomous body” aligned to a larger purpose.”

It’s like a mushoom mycelium — an organizational meshwork that is intricately interconnected. (By the way, we learned earlier this week from a mycologist that the Mycelium of a mushroom, when mapped out, looks exactly like a map of the Internet.)

Holacracy is hybridized in other meshworks and hierarchies, creating funcational complimentaries that result in stable structures. They are localized, as well as have a strategy of interweaving.  Although meshworks result from the action of many individual and collective decision makers, they take on a life of their own.  They add themselves to individual structures operating at different scales.

Aside from the mesh of communications webs that make up a mushroom mycellium beneath the earth, one clear example of a “meshwork” is social networks like Facebook. This web makes it possible for news to travel like a “virus.”

And there is a spiritual, almost cosmic or psychic interconnectedness to Holacratic structures. Says Boss, “There is actually a larger web of the new world and the new culture, serving the greater world and a greater purpose.”

For example, within the larger network of Facebook are autonomous wholes — generally groups or organizations of 100 to 5,000 people.

In a Holacracy, a coherency of a larger whole can align and govern so that within your circle you self govern, and it’s nested into a larger whole that is always taking in greater information and aligning itself.

There is a larger movement of interconnected, interlinked and overlapping communities,  that can respond and react to the larger issues of the world in a coherent manner.

All interesting to think about, as we begin to form more of a unified and rapid communications “mycellium” amongst ourselves by using mobile devices, Twitter, Facebook and other forms of instantaneous communication forming a “global brain.”

3 comments | posted in blog, Facebook, social media, Twitter, Uncategorized, viral, website

July 13, 2010

“Double Rainbow Guy” proves that just being yourself is the key to viral success.

By Giselle Bisson

The "Double Rainbow Guy" -- You Tube Viral Video Sensation

Who would have thought that a trippy hippie witnessing a pair of colorful streaks in the sky became the newest viral sensation to catch fire on You Tube — with more than 1.5 million views?

Excuse me — 3,702,017.

Recently Fast Company magazine added “The Double Rainbow Guy” to it’s new “Influence Project” — a social experiement to discover the most influential people in America. I think we all expected influence to come from celebrities, media icons or corporations — not a hairy bear like guy living in Yosemite and ooohing and ahhing in ecstasy at something as simple and free as a couple of prisms in the sky.

But maybe that’s the point. Maybe being uninhibited, being real, being yourself is all it truly takes to stand out in a world where there is so much posing and posturing and pretending.

Maybe the Rainbow Guy is telling us it’s ok to be real if we want to be noticed. In fact, it’s better.

The Rainbow Guy caught fire on my Facebook page too today, as a lively discussion about the psychology of “The Rainbow Guy” errupted.

Brooks Cole, himself an online media expert, started the conversation:

“FastCompany reports on the Double Rainbow Guy viral phenomenon. What makes this so viral?

My own explanation? I think it mirrors (and leverages) the same human factors that drive sex, along with sex’s power to drive DNA replication, then taken to the power of network technology. I think the viral key is this:

All viral videos have to be:

a) unusually amazing or demonstrably curious in some palpable way that builds curiosity/intensity/amazement to a climax, and:

b) have to provide some tension+release that carries the seed of its own propagation, and:

c) that the speed and success becomes its own amazement factor, multiplying the propagation.”

Karen McKrystal chimed in:

“And then… leverage the viral video to deeper content, transcendent analysis, all for the convergence of activists & thinkers working to bring forth the new society emerging from the ruins and in spite of the ruinous activities of savage capitalism. End of rant.

What I mean is, this whole viral thing, driven by basic motivator sex drive/power, as Brooks suggests, could be leveraged wider, and not be left to the “rainbow” people alone — here for a moment, then gone. Let’s provoke social DNA evolution, helpl nature do what it’s designed to do anyway. Within the human DNA is enfolded the potential for further and further evolution — into potentials yet barely understood and rarely even anticipated.”

Aneline:

“I hadn’t seen this – that’s so great! WOOO-HOOOOO!!!!! ♥”

Karen:

“What, exactly, are you saying is great? If you don’t mind my asking.”

Aneline:

“That FUNTASTIC rainbow video – and the fact that I’m not the only one who feels this way!!! :D ♥ ♥..♪♪♫•*•”

Yes, at least 3.5 million people at last count are either laughing uproariously at the Double Rainbow Guy, or they feel like Aneline.

“WOOOOT WOOOOT !!!!! :D ♥ ☼”

It’s great to see happiness can even more contagious than the latest Britney spears rumor.

Leave a comment | posted in blog, Facebook, renegade marketing, shameless self promotion, social media, Twitter, viral, viral video, you tube

May 5, 2010

Social media is not for everybody.

By Giselle Bisson

Who needs social media anyway?

The other day I ran into an man in Peet’s cafe. He introduced himself as a seasoned marketing professional.  I told him I was too — but that I specialize in social media.

He spat out vehemently:  “Most of social media is pure bullsh*t for my clients.”

Maybe he’s right…for his clients it might be a waste of time. (Maybe his clients are all computer illiterate, over 60, still use a landline or are Luddites who don’t trust ATM machines yet either.)

For a few, select businesses, like lawyers, (unless they deal with high profile cases), or people with government or corporate jobs (unless they are company spokespersons), or arms dealers, or private detectives, or anyone with a security clearance, it’s probably better to keep a very low or non-existent social media profile.

But if you’re a business that would be listed in the Yellow Pages, if you’re a business that would have  a business card, if you’re a business that would get written up in the newspaper, if you do your business online and especially if you’re a current or aspiring public figure — Social Media is  your new calling card.

Social media, like PR, is not for everyone.

Not everyone wants to be famous, and not every business needs a public profile. Some businesses are better off quietly working their sales team, Rolodex and one-on-one relationships. For example, if your customers don’t use the Internet, then you won’t find them here either.

But if you run any business with an online presence, and if you want visibility,  then social media is for you.

Social media campaigns are also critically important for most small town “Mom and Pop” businesses like restaurants, bed and breakfast inns, hair salons, moving companies and the like — because getting listed in Yelp! and showing up on the Yahoo or Google Map is now more important than a Yellow Pages listing. (Yellow what? Who, under the age of 65, uses the phone book anymore?)

And for that reason, social media is quickly becoming a tool in the marketing/PR professional’s arsenal — to complement speaking engagements, press tours, article placement, trade shows and the like.

I’ve been doing traditional print and broadcast PR for more than 20 years. But social media is by far, the easiest, cheapest, fastest, most effective promotional tool I’ve ever used.

Better than email. Better than newspaper ads. Better than brochures and postcards. Much better than a website that nobody ever finds or reads. Faster and thus sometimes even more effective than traditional news media press relations.

For some businesses, like doctors, dentists, real estate agents, authors, consultants and especially small businesses and sole proprietors, it can bring you a whole new level of visibility.

And for others, like artists, musicians, performers, workshop leaders or anyone who throws events, it’s downright essential.

But if you’re still reading a newspaper, listening to the radio and using  a landline, maybe Social Media is not for you.

1 comment   |  tags: , , , , | posted in Facebook, public relations, renegade marketing, seo, social media, Twitter, Uncategorized, website

March 24, 2010

Even the richest men in the world can’t maintain Internet privacy.

By Giselle Bisson

Somtimes you don't want attention. How do you bury unwanted news in the search engines?

A gossipy story about Google CEO Eric Schmidt  has been making the rounds on Twitter today.  It’s old news — about his “break up” with Steve Jobs from a pay phone while he was on the lonely road to Burning Man in 2007.

But what’s fascinating and newsworthy about this story is that even if you’re the CEO of Google, and one of the richest men on earth, you can’t protect your privacy in the search engines!

Schmidt was also unsuccessful in getting his ex-girlfriend to permanently remove her tell all blog from Google’s own Blogger.

Google’s own FAQ states:

We run into a lot of people who think that Google runs the web and controls all the sites on it, but that’s really not the case. The sites in Google’s search results are controlled by those sites’ webmasters.

The moral of this imoral story? Even the CEO of Google can’t remove negative publicity from Google.

So if you don’t want unwanted attention to linger, forever, in the search engines and on the web, what can you do?

There’s a cheap PR trick I’ve used with clients that can help you bury news you don’t want people to find. Flood the web with good news of your own by sending out tons of free press releases (and paid releases on PR Newswire or PR Web) filled with feel-good feature “stories” with the same keywords embedded in them that searchers will likely use to find the negative story.  This turns the “needle in a haystack” factor of Google in your favor.

Eventually you’ll knock the bad review so far down the ranks in Google that only the most intrepid researcher will be able to find it.

The other technique? Ignore it, and eventually the fickle public will be twittering about the next scandal and it will be as stale as a Tiger Woods story.

Tiger who?


Leave a comment   |  tags: , , , , , , , , | posted in damage control, press release, privacy, seo, social media, Twitter

March 17, 2010

Will Facebook eclipse Google for search?

By Giselle Bisson

Facebook, the new kid on the block, overtook Google as the most popular website in the US this week.

My friends are early adopters. Last year at this time, whenever I walked into an Internet cafe and peered over the laptops, I saw that majority of the browsers were open to Facebook. The rest were using search engines like Google, photo sharing communities like Flickr, and free email portals like Yahoo mail.

Now, this week, the rest of the world caught up with my early adopter friends — the social media site Facebook has overtaken Google for the first time, becoming the most popular website.  According to the Social Media Examiner, five new studies have verified my casual Internet Cafe research.

The Financial Times reported that Google and Facebook accounted for 14 per cent of all internet traffic last week, with Facebook receiving 7.03 per cent and Google 7 per cent.

While the lead is slight, the upward trajectory is clear. It should be more than enough to convince online businesses to immediately shift more of their ad dollars into Facebook ads. And businesses, whether online or off, can no longer ignore the value of marketing to their customers and communities via Facebook Fan pages, Event pages or Groups.

More people are starting to filter their news through people they trust — friends who point them in the direction of interesting articles and trends on social sites like Facebook or Twitter — and fewer are using search engines like Yahoo, Google and Ask to find news and information.  People are also paying much less attention to their overwhelming and overloaded email in boxes — and more time sending messages to each other on Social Networks instead.

In a sense, social nets are turning into both a replacement for email and a new kind of specialized search engine, with human beings, rather than page ranks, deciding what information is hip, interesting and important.

Simultaneously, marketers are scrambling to shift their budgets from print/radio/TV PR over to Social Media marketing. Job openings for “Social Media Gurus” are proliferating — so if you’re in the sales, marketing, video, advertising, graphic design or media professions, you need to get up to speed and shift your business immediately to include the social sphere.

PR agencies, also, are quickly repositioning as Social Media agencies. From small local businesses, to the Fortune 500, social marketing is hot, hot, hot — and the newspaper is not, not, not.

It tipped. In the mid 90s, everyone needed an online campaign. Somewhere around the year 2002, every business suddenly needed a website. Now, we’re seeing the same urgency for all businesses to have a Social Media presence.

The average American spent 7 hours on Facebook in January. (Heck, my friends spend 7 hours a day on Facebook, and hardly ever use email anymore.)  Facebook doubled from 200 million to 400 million users last year — giving it a user base the size of the third largest country on the planet!  For the time being, we can’t afford to ignore Facebook. But in the future? Who knows.

Social media sites come and they go. (Remember all the hype about Friendster, once upon a time? Remember the Well? Remember Tribe? Remember Compuserve?) but whether Facebook remains the front runner or gets replaced something new, Social Media is the media, just as the Internet is business.

Ignore social media at your peril. It’s not going away.

1 comment | posted in Facebook, MySpace, public relations, renegade marketing, social media, Twitter

March 13, 2010

Why the only website worth having is a blog.

By Giselle Bisson

I was having a new business meeting with a client yesterday. He has a restaurant and he’s looking for ways to stay on top of the economic downturn.

The first problem: Nobody can find his restaurant. First, it’s in an obscure location in San Francisco. His website in also on an obscure location on the Interent — buried somewhere in 6.5 billion web pages.

I typed the restaurant name in Google.

It didn’t show up.

I scrolled, scrolled and scrolled through pages and couldn’t find it.

I typed it in quotes.

Still. Nothing.

I typed in the name of his restaurant, plus the keywords: San Francisco. Vegetarian food. Italian. Pizza. Pasta.  The address.

Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.

And finally I just went to the site. It was one of those static websites. It screamed: “We’re gonna party like it’s 1999.” It was so static that there was not a single word of type on the entire site that Google would ever be able to find. It was all pictures and graphics! And of course, it had never been updated. (The way Google ranks you  higher in the search results is by how often you update your information.)

I said: “That’s why you need a blog, not a website.” Because blogs are filled with keywords that Google can find — and they’re updated much more often than websites so they end up higher in the search results.

We then searched for this blog, Visibility Shift.

Out of 8,000,000 results for “visibility shift”, Visibility Shift is the first one on the list in Google! In fact 6 of the first 10 hits refer to it.

I said: “I built the page yesterday.”

“Yesterday?”

“Yes, it immediately got to the top of Google because I built a Twitter following first. I sent 850 Twitters out first and they’ve been retweeted thousands of times, along with the words ‘visibility shift’ in the URL.”

“And I have 11 articles in the blog already, and they’ve been picked up by thousands of spiders and bots and RSS feeds and search engines and are already reappearing on dozens of other websites.”

This blog has already generated more traffic in the first week than my old static website got in a year.

We looked for my other blog, which has been on the web for 5 years. It has a very generic name, so it generates a ridiculous number of results when you try to find it. (A mistake I’ll never make again when naming a blog.)

Even so, out of 451,000,000 results (nearly half a billion) it’s number two in Google!

It’s received a fairly respectable 200,000 visits in the past 5 years. I’ve done a lot of search engine submissions, and Twitter, and link exchanges. But another eason the search rank is so high is because it’s hosted on Google’s Blogger — which automatically gives it a higher search rank than my static website will ever have.

Blogs are much easier to find than webpages.

This was a good lesson in those fancy terms marketers like to use — SEO and SEM.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) organizes the pages on the website for both the search engine spiders and the visitors to the site. Search engines look for your site based on combinations of words on the site. The more words you have on your site, the easier it is to find. That’s why a blog is so much more effective than a static webpage.

“Oh!” he said.

Now, Search engine marketing (SEM) are the things you do off the website to bring more traffic toward it. These are like putting your URL on business cards, restaurant reviews in an online news site,  press releases with your URL and company name in them, and anything else that generates incoming traffic and links — which moves site pages higher in search engine results pages.

You want things that spread your URL around the web — like Twitter, a public Facebook listing, and links from blogs and online zines — or review sites like Yelp!

See, I said, “that’s why social media, press coverage and blogs are way, way, way more important to your business now than an old static website will ever be.”

And this is why if you have a business that depends on your customer being able to find you on the Internet when they’re hankering for pasta, you need to have the words: “Italian restaurant and San Francisco” show up as many times as possible on your blog–so Google can find those words.

I said, “You know, this is totally cheating, but we could just rename your new blog: ‘Italian-restaurant-pasta-sanfrancisco.com.’” That will be a lot more unique and useful than the generic name of his restaurant.

“What a great idea!” he said.

“That’s available in Go Daddy and will cost you only $4.99. Plus my monthly retainer.”

He was sold. I got the job. We’re building a blog and a Facebook fan page this week. I’m looking forward to seeing his restaurant turn into a destination restaurant — one of those obscure restaurants people love to drive across the city to discover and show off to friends.

2 comments   |  tags: , , , , , , , , | posted in blog, Facebook, renegade marketing, search engine optimization, seo, social media, Twitter, website, Wordpress

March 13, 2010

Social media — it’s just a very, very short story

By Giselle Bisson

Social media is nothing to be afraid of. It’s just a story.

A very, very short story.

In the world of PR, you send out a press release once a month, maybe if you’re in the Fortune 500, once a week.

And you wait  and wait … and wait and hope and pray and wait for the press to write and publish it in the news.

Which for a daily newspaper could happen instantly. And for a weekly or monthly magazine could take months, even a year.

And then by the time your audience read the story, and responded, in a letter to the editor, a lot of things could have changed. Your story might not even reflect the truth anymore by then.

And your customer just really wasn’t hearing much about you, because if the news media didn’t deem you newsworthy, (which is most of the time) your story never got told at all.

So if you wanted to tell the story, you could only tell a very, very short story, in a paid advertisement.

But in new the world of social media what matters most is telling a soundbite-sized elevator pitch of a story — in just one or two lines of copy. Every day. Sometimes several times a day.

And seeing how your audience reacts.

And then you can respond, change your product, change your message – immediately. I mean, like in seconds.

This very short story over time becomes a longer story that will draw your audience, the customer, and engage them in a conversation.

Reputation building and relationships happen at warp speed this way–and they happen publicly.

Leave a comment | posted in Facebook, MySpace, press release, public relations, search engine optimization, social media, Twitter, Wordpress

March 11, 2010

Social media dos and don’ts from Obama’s website

By Giselle Bisson

Everything you need to know about Social Media you can learn from Obama. Here’s a social media do and don’t lesson from the White House.

Do: Integrate your social networks into your website

President Obama’s website, and the “Organizing for America Campaign,” is slick and fabulous. It is one of the best examples of integrating social media with your web presence I’ve seen for any public figure.  At the bottom of the page are custom buttons linking to all of Obama’s social network pages.

Do: If you’re a public figure, make your pages freely available.

Everything is public, except Mr. Obama’s Linked In connections. Though it was interesting to see that four of my LinkedIn connections are directly connected to the President, so I am am only one degree removed from the CEO of America.

Do: target your message

The pages themselves are targeted to the special interest niches they serve, and are customized with lots of photos, videos, graphics and messages.

Perhaps that’s not a surprise, given the resources the President has at hand.

Do: Discover and join niche social networks that serve your customer groups and markets.

But what’s more interesting are the social networks President Obama’s team has deemed important.

These include the usual: Facebook, MySpace, You Tube, Digg, Twitter, Eventful and Linked In — and targeted social network sites that serve the constituencies that elected him. In all networks except Gay/Lesbian (where is is identified as “straight”), the President has lots of friends. It’s smart networking both in the real world and online to identify multiple groups and present yourself slightly differently in each one, yet with a consistent “brand” in each “target market” — as Mr. Obama has done brilliantly with the Change logo and color scheme.

Click the links below for Obama’s niche social nets, some with profiles targeted for each niche:

Black Planet (a Black social network)

Faithbase (Faith, gospel)

Eons (for Boomers and beyond)

Glee (gay/lesbian)

MiGente (Latino)

MyBatanga (Latin, in Spanish)

AsianAve (Asian)

DNCPartybuilder (Democrats)

Don’t: Forget to keep your social pages and status updates current.

Unfortunately, Mr. Obama, being the President after all, is perhaps so overwhelmed with urgent presidential duties that his status updates are woefully out of date on most of these pages, which has somewhat stagnated the dialogue with the American people. Some of the blogs and status updates have not been updated by his team since October 2009. I think there’s a job to fill for a White House intern. I’d get on it right away if I were managing the President’s PR crew, as having an outdated profile in a special interest group niche could give one the impression that you’re not paying attention anymore to that constituency and its needs.

Do: Update the status in your pages simultaneously by feeding Twitter to multiple sites.

Ping.fm is just one of many ways to do this. Facebook for example, also has a Twitter to Facebook integration feature — though it can be somewhat annoying if you Tweet frequently. This would solve the President’s updating problem, at least superficially, though the messages would not be targeted, which may be why his staff isn’t doing this.

Don’t: Play it so safe that there is no personality in your profile. Make sure it feels like you’re really there — or hire someone who knows your communication style to do your updates for you.

Be daring (within reason) and share some of your thoughts once in a while. Share a song you’re listening to, a favorite quotation, what you’re doing, where you’re traveling, how you feel, what’s the weather. His profile is a bit too corporate and businesslike on MySpace  – it would be nice to see some of his favorite bands or some casual family photos, for example.

Social networking was brilliantly used during his election campaign, but recently there’s no there there behind the President’s profiles, and that gives us a feeling of abandonment or stagnation. Keep the news flowing and think of your updates as little mini press releases you send out, reminding your customers/followers that you’re busy, not absent.

1 comment   |  tags: , , , , , , , , , | posted in Digg, Facebook, MySpace, press release, shameless self promotion, social media, Twitter, website

March 10, 2010

Is Gravity spelled Danger to Facebook and Myspace?

By Giselle Bisson

According to Tech Crunch, three more key employees bailed on Myspace and jumped that sinking Titanic and swam over to Gravity, a startup founded by former MySpace COO Amit Kapur, SVP Steve Pearman and SVP Jim Benedetto.

Maybe you can actually build your page with preset templates without knowing HTML. Imagine that? Maybe it’s like Facebook, only with customizable features, skins, and some personality instead of a generic one size fits all page. Oh, and the ability for musicians to showcase their tunes. That would be Danger to more than Myspace.

Naaah. Gravity is the next generation evolution of forums (BBS, The Well, Craigslist) and groups (Yahoo Groups, Google Groups.) It’s more like a blend of Twitter and Google Wave (an early adopter site that I was recently invited into, that I can’t figure out what the heck it does, that seems to be only popular with my trendsetting geekster friends who have been to Burning Man).

It’s about creating conversations that are Many to Many (kind of like a Boardroom or Roundtable or Salon…only everyone  can talk at once, and yet listen to every conversation happening in the room, simultaneously). Unlike Twitter and Facebook which are One to Many. (Like a Professor talking at the head of a classroom as an audience listens, raptly.)

Unlike Twitter, which filters out your conversations into special interests only with a feature called “lists” (that arguably few people are actually using), Gravity will be filtering them with a feature called “Interest Graphs.”

If it helps facilitate the kinds of delightful, thought-provoking, issue-oriented group conversations that happen on Facebook, yet are incredibly annoying and awkward when they happen on a list like Yahoo Groups, I say, Gravity could spell Danger to more than just Facebook. It could revolutionize, once more, what we think of as media, becoming a kind of virtual, unmoderated Talk Radio for issues and ideas.

Or maybe only my trendsetting Geekster friends who go to Burning Man will figure out what to do with it.

3 comments | posted in Facebook, Google Wave, Gravity, many to many, MySpace, social media, Twitter

March 8, 2010

6 ways to determine which social sites are best for your business.

By Giselle Bisson

Today there are at least 350 social networks. And thousands of smaller, focused and specialized social networks that have been built on Ning — like Etsy, which is now essential for craftspersons, and Architects of a New Dawn, a new age network of “positive and uplifting content” created by musician Carlos Santana.

How do you make your way through this mountain of potential sites and decide where to focus your precious time and marketing dollars?

1. Decide what your market niche is and choose the top 3 networks in that niche.

For example, if you’re a Yoga business, you might want to join the three largest, fastest-growing, or most heavily visited networks in the New Age and Yoga market — Yogamates, Architects of a New Dawn and Gaia. If you are a yoga non profit organization, perhaps you’d also add Wiser Earth. Keep an eye open for all new social nets in your industry and create a basic page on all of them if possible–you really never know where a new customer is going to come from.

The best and most active groups will soon become apparent and then you can start unsubscribing from the less popular ones. (It’s better to have an active page you’re paying attention to than a dead one that could be collecting negative comments or will make your business look stale and outdated.) But in this day of emerging media, it’s difficult to predict in advance who is going to be hot and who’s going to fizzle out. (Once upon a time, only two years ago, Facebook was just a niche network for Ivy league college graduates).

2. Add the Yahoo groups and Meetups in your marketing niche.

Do a search for Yahoo groups relevant to your market, and join the largest ones. These lists become valuable places to announce and promote your events and services. For example, as a Yoga business, we would join all of the Yoga and Vegetarian Yahoo groups, Google Groups and Meetups in our region. Your profile should always list all of your Facebook, Linked In and Twitter profiles, your website, blog and any other urls that relate to your business. This generates links and traffic back to your website.

3. Create a Facebook personal page AND a Facebook fan page. Then create Facebook Event pages for all of your events.

Why multiple Facebook pages? Because you will eventually want to separate your personal life from your busines. Also, fan pages offer the potential to send out news to your whole list with one click — whereas an Event page created from your personal identity requires tediously clicking on every single name in order to invite people. Trust me, you need both.

Again, link back to all of your other social profiles and URLs from your Facebook profiles. More about how to create a kick-butt Facebook fan page in a future article. There are both free and paid Facebook fan pages, depending on the number of friends you have and the features you want.

4. Decide if Twitter, Linked In, Myspace or Flickr are for you. They’re not for everybody.

Twitter is more impersonal than Facebook — I think of Twitter as where I can blast out news to the entire planet in my professional niche. But Facebook where I reach my closest community circle–real people I actually know.  If your business does not need to reach the whole world, Twitter is overkill. For example, a local pet store probably won’t need Twitter, but a distributor of pet products would use it to communicate with stores, pet magazines, customers and fans.

Myspace is in decline, but is still one of the world’s largest social networks, and because it has music player features that Facebook lacks, it’s still essential for musicians, authors, festivals, nightclubs and entertainment venues. Myspace is not trafficked much anymore for other businesses.  More about music promotion, which is a world unto itself, in a future article.

Linked In is essential if you’re a high tech executive and want to link up with your peers and business development contacts — but it’s fairly useless for a massage therapist.

Flickr or Photobucket are great if you’re a professional photographer, or if your collection of photos is somehow relevant to your business, and it will drive traffic to your other sites because these photos are tagged and will show up in web searches.

5. If you’re a local business, you absolutely need to be on Yelp!

Yelp is essential for all local businesses — whether you are a dentist, offer professional services or run a restaurant. You need to actively encourage your friends, family and best customers to write positive reviews on Yelp — because positive reviews will crowd out the negative ones. More about Yelp and review services like Epinions later in a specific article. One of my clients, a mover, says the majority of his business referrals now come from Yelp so he offers a discount to encourage happy customers to write a Yelp review.

6. Local businesses also need to consider local listing services, specific to their niche.

Proactively seek out the free listings first. The ones that are selling ads will seek you out and beg you to spend. Personally, I would hire a competent social media/marketing consultant first and foremost before I paid for any online advertising. For example, if you’re sending out invitations to events, you’ll want to pay for email lists that reach your geographic and business niche, and you may find value in highly targeted Google Ad Words or Facebook ads. For a local restaurant, for example, you’d want to get listed on Bing.com, Restaurants.com, Yelp, Urban spoon, Fodors, Zagat, Dine.com, Citysearch, Boorah and Gayot, plus you’ll need to pay careful attention to Yahoo and Google to make sure you show up on the local search maps.

More about restaurant-specific social media in a future article, as I start to work for a restaurant client and give you some real world examples.

7. Join video listing services, photo sites and podcasting communities, if relevant to your business.

Video communities like You Tube, veoh, Metacafe, Google Video and Current.TV let you host small video clips for free to promote your business or brand. I have a client who is a yoga teacher, for example, who has clips from several of her Yoga DVDs and cooking videos online and considers that an important part of her promotion strategy. Another client, with an Astrology website, uses podcasting networks to promote his online radio show.

7. Listing sites like Digg.com are important too…but you can deal with those later.

I’m going to save this for a separate tutorial, because listing sites like Digg and Delicio.us are a whole other social animal. These sites, which tend to appeal mostly to a younger audience, are where the community “votes” on the importance or relevance of a topic or article. Your blog is like the center of the wheel that is your social promotion strategy. Get started  building your fan base on social sites and the listing services relevant to your business first, and develop a blog that links all of these sites together - before you worry about the listing sites.

The bottom line is — if you’re customers, peers, pundits and fans are there, you need to be on a social network. If they’re not, I’m sure you have better things to do with your time.

3 comments   |  tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , | posted in blog, bootstrapping, Digg, Facebook, renegade marketing, search engine optimization, shameless self promotion, social media, Twitter, website

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