New Discussions On the KIWI Facebook Page

Just started three new discussions on Facebook. Feel free to make comments, add your suggestions and ideas.

Thanks for your comments.

Social Media ... Revealed

I think I've got it! I just attended a Webinar about marketing with Twitter. The speaker was Jamie Turner @60 Second Marketer. He had a great way of explaining the various social media in an easy-to-understand parable. Here's how he explained things (in my own words).

• Facebook is a like a pub or bar. You get to know people on a personal level.

• LinkedIn is like a trade show. You hook up with people for business purposes.

• Twitter is like a cocktail party. There are may conversations going at the same time. It's sort of like Instant Messaging groups of people. You listen to one group and then you take that information and relay it to another group via your retweets.

• YouTube is like Times Square on New Year's Eve. It's difficult to break through the lines of people. But, if you get through to where the cameras are focused you can be seen by a million people.

• MySpace is like Woodstock for the younger generation. It is very cause-oriented marketing of sorts.

Jamie's explanation really opened my eyes to the benefits of social media in marketing B to B. He noted that marketing has changed from a monologue to a dialogue. Marketing used to be pushing out the message to a mass audience. Now, it's more of a two-way dialogue between customer and company and vice versa. He used the word "narrowcasting" to describe today's conversation with customers vs. the traditional "broadcasting" method of the past.

I didn't realize how many other types of social sites existed other than the ones I've mentioned above. You should also consider using the following types of media:

• Blogs
• Bookmarking and Tagging
• Content Aggregation
• Crowdsourcing & Voting
• Discussion Boards & Forums
• Events & Meetings
• Photosharing
• Podcasting
• Presentation Sharing
• Ratings & Reviews
• Widgets
• Wikis

So, next time you're tweeting, posting to your Facebook page, or linking with someone on LinkedIn remember that each social site can be used for a specific purpose. If you're not on the sites, try them personally first, and then start doing some marketing for your business. You'll discover a whole new world of conversation with your customers.

LinkedIn: How to Get the Most Out of Your Social Networking Experience

I attended the AMA Kickoff Party last night where we had a most engaging speaker, Dorothy Gilbert, speak about the social media networking site LinkedIn. She profiled her experience as a user of this social networking phenomenon and provided tips to help the audience get the most benefit out of using LinkedIn. Here are a few tips that I learned from Dorothy:

Tip No. 1: Keep your profile updated. Dorothy mentioned that the most important part of your profile is the Summary and the Headline. Most of the people attending the session are marketers, so they should know something about writing copy. However, when we're talking about ourselves, it seems to be difficult to think of persuasive copy and our unique selling proposition. We just don't want to be a braggart. But, when networking and marketing your small business, especially if you are a consultant, you need to discover and communicate what you do differently from any other person in your same line of business. In other words, use the same good old marketing techniques to market yourself as you would use when marketing one of your client's products.

Tip No. 2: What is the optimum number of connections you should make? That was a big question in last night's session. Dorothy says it will be a different number for each person depending upon your goals. And speaking of goals, you should have some goals as to what you want to get out of your LinkedIn experience. How many connections do you think is enough? How long will it take you to obtain that many connections? Do you want to receive speaking opportunities? Do you want to gain a new client? All of these goals will take time so don't expect to do one thing and expect a flood of business to come your way immediately.

Tip No. 3: Set some rules for yourself regarding how you use LinkedIn. For example, one audience participant says that he has a rule to never accept a connection unless they show their connections. Some LinkedIn users control their privacy so much that no one can see much information on their profile, their connections, their work history, etc. This gentleman will send an InMail to the person and explain his rule. Sometimes it works and the new connection will change his privacy preferences. Other times people are bound by an agreement with their employer so they cannot show their connections. In any event, a dialogue is created and connections can then be accepted or not. Another rule may be that you only accept invitations from people you know or have met. This is a good rule because some people think that the more connections you have the better. They think they are having a contest to see who gets the most connections. I'm of the thought that you want good, solid, trustworthy connections. If you are sharing any information with your network, you want to make sure that they aren't abusing the information you share.

Dorothy added many more tips at last night's meeting. But, I hope these few tips that I shared here will help you get more out of your social networking experience.