Because of this glut of social stimulation, I have found it easier to limit my attention to the big three…Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

Yet, even narrowing the field still does not relieve the frustration or feeling that I’m falling behind on the social side of my business.

Facebook is where I spend most of my time talking with friends and colleagues and it really does promote daily communication, because its mission and delivery are in sync. In other words, the idea of this social network is to be social and the tools are in place to facilitate this. Mission accomplished. Although I don’t know how much talking about my 30 song countdown, or talking about my favorite ballparks is really affecting my bottom line at the office.As for Facebook Pages, they are business focused and are starting to become more business friendly, but Mark Zuckerberg’s vision was not about building up businesses, it was about personal “hook-ups.” And it shows in the way Pages are designed. And if the spam isn’t controlled better in the future, I may have to lock up my profile which takes away all the advantages of getting feedback from clients.

The other popular social platforms also create difficulties for the small to medium business.  Twitter is very stripped down and so it takes some knowledge to get the most out of it. If you work it, you can really build value in relationships and business contacts on this network. But most of the people who are good at this are in the social media field, not the small business owner running a mom and pop outfit. Its a time management issue and they usually turn it over to a third-party, which is entirely the wrong way to handle a social experience for a client.

So that leaves LinkedIn.  The problem is, of all the major social platforms, this one seems to want to be all things to everyone and it really goes beyond its original mission.

It tries to mimic Facebook and Twitter as a social network with the ability to update your followers.  But who is hanging out on LinkedIn chatting with their colleagues? And do you really want to hire someone who is hanging out on LinkedIn at their job all day?

It tries to be Facebook Pages with company profiles, but no one sits around all day reading stale marketed company profiles…they just use it like the Yellow Pages…when they need it, they look it up.

And some things it could do, it doesn’t do well. It doesn’t have a good lead capturing system, because it requires you to have worked or have gone to school with the contact, otherwise you have to go through hoops.  It would also be nice if you could directly refer people without having to write a recommendation (which I have found most people ignore anyway). And as a referral source, its really no better than email (sending messages) or Twitter (having to work relationships consistently).

LinkedIn, to me, started as a replacement for my roll-a-decks. It was a great way to connect with people I did business with or went to school with and keep up with them wherever I go or they go.  It was a dynamic address book.  And this was good. And it still does this, but that original purpose is now muddied with tools, status updates, news and clutter that is starting to remind me of MySpace.

With this general overkill of information, I find that I don’t use LinkedIn for any more than what I did originally…a replacement for my roll-a-deck…a way to keep up with contacts.

Then, two days ago, I received an invitation to join someone’s ReferralKey network.  Apparently ReferralKey has been lurking around behind the shadows for about 3 or 4 years, but in April had a relaunching of sorts.

It caught my attention.  It reminded me why I signed up for LinkedIn so many years ago.  It has a simple, business friendly interface and a simple purpose that solves a business problem.  In this case, it gets to the core of why a small business owner should be on the social networks, to build business and exposure.  And it does it easily, without having to troll the site for weeks to get exposure, or build a personality. It wins by creating rewards for referrals, which is something that I think creates a more compelling reason to use it and share referrals…more than any recommendation.

Its not subtle, you know what its about up front. They have a mission and I hope they stick to it.

LinkedIn has to bow to its investors and will most likely continue to bloat over time. Its core purpose was never really a money maker (being a fancy online address book) and still more than anything is a place to go when you are looking for a job (more HR support for small business than bottom line).  So to, Twitter is discovering a utopian project sooner or later has to make money and while they are doing a better job of holding to their vision, you still will be interrupted with ads, so they can make money.

Referral Key, on the other hand, has built a model off of delivering what small businesses really need…new business.  I was told it charges a membership fee if you want more than just a few referrals, but I haven’t seen information on this yet. If it does, it should be a little bit more up front about that, but still, at $20 per month, it might be worth the extended referrals.

It won’t fit all businesses, but is great for a country of service industry providers. It will be interesting to see how they plan on making money off of the site. Maybe they get residuals off of the companies that they promote “rewards” through?

If they stick with this mission and don’t go off on a tangent, trying to displace Facebook, Twitter, or more likely LinkedIn, I think I will be more satisfied with my ReferralKey network experience.  Because I will use it for what I need it for.  But, if they clutter it up and think I’m going to use it as a social network…they might be in for some disappointment. If LinkedIn isn’t winning me over with clutter, ReferralKey doesn’t have a prayer if they do the same.  Just help me with referrals, prove your value and I will use you when I need you…then pass the word on.  And isn’t that what makes a business friendly social network?

But Twitter’s business model is one in which it is basically just a database, rather than a website portal for information.  Many of us never go to Twitter.com.  And it would be interesting to know how many people actually use third party tools for all of their accessing of Twitter.  In my case, I do all of my work in HootSuite and other apps that just access Twitter feeds.

So, how long before Twitter advertisers figure this out?

Not only are these ads on a page that probably doesn’t get viewed much, but also, their static position at the bottom of the page will probably create a Twitter ad avoidance area (ad avoidance being the area of web pages that users learn to avoid once they become established as advertising areas).

For those of you that haven’t seen the ads yet, I have highlighted one in yellow below:

Not that I am baiting Twitter to start throwing these ads directly into your thread, but I really think its the only way they will be able to show value to their advertisers.  In adding ads to your thread, they force you to have to look through legitimate posts and figure out which ones are ads…thus reducing avoidance and issues with people not going to the Twitter website  But I think they are worried that doing this will upset the apple cart all together and that people will see Twitter as a spam engine…thus causing some people to give up on the medium.

I truly believe making revenue will continue to be the biggest issue facing the social media giants for the next couple of years.

For the advertiser though, in this case (using Twitterspeak), I’d say #adfail.

At our office, we have taken advantage of a lot of these services and products.  One of my favorites has been Sun Microsystems’ Open Office.  After spending $300 plus dollars on an upgrade of Microsoft Office Professional a few years back, I was frustrated to find out that Office wouldn’t install on the new laptop I bought weeks later, because it said that it would no longer upgrade to the newer versions of Microsoft Works.

This immediately sent me looking for another solution and drove me into using Open Office, which was open source and free.

I have happily used that software for the last 6 years, without an issue (or the pain of spending $600 to replace the software I had just spend $300 on).  But a couple days ago, I learned that Oracle (who had purchased Sun Microsystems) was doing away with the suite.  Luckily, there was a team that convinced them to hand over the code and now, it has been reintroduced as LibreOffice.

But the bigger question is, at what risk do we put ourselves by converting our businesses over to these “free” services?

Last night, I received an email from Google letting me know that they are trimming the allotment of email addresses for their Google Accounts.  We recently began talking our clients into using this service as an alternative to our hosted email solution.  The reason? Clients could use the GMail interface and all the advantages of Google Mail, use their own domain name in their address (@yourcompany.com), and get more space for free (up to 50 email accounts at 7 GB each).

Well, it looks like the window to that free ride is closing as well.  Here is the message received from Google:

As of May 10, any organization that signs up for a new account will be required to use the paid Google Apps for Business product in order to create more than 10 users. We honor our commitment to all existing customers and will allow you to add more than 10 users to your account for hannush.com at no additional charge, based on the limit in place when you joined us.
Sincerely,
The Google Apps Team

Just as we were getting everyone interested in it. But, to their credit though, Google is letting those of us that were originally promised up to 50 email accounts the ability to keep those (for a while at least), without charge.

But it makes sense.  Sooner or later, these companies have to show a profit, to remain in business.  Our expectations of a forever free ride are unrealistic.  The world unfortunately cannot be free.

So, it looks like we all need to keep a cautious eye not making these open source and complementary services too much of an integrated part of our business model.

To this day, I keep waiting for Twitter to “go out of business” because they still don’t have a business model for long term financial stability.  And how many companies are starting to use Twitter as a hub for their business practices?

And as much as we all love Facebook, there may be a day when the model no longer works…or some scandal leaves us sick that we’re using the service.  So, what then?

What do you think? And are there any free services you’re taking for granted right now that you could see being “taken away.”

I have attached both the PowerPoint presentation I used today and a quick mini-guide to do-it-yourself search engine optimization (SEO).  If you don’t know why Lucy and Ricky are smoking cigarettes (yes there is some scandalous content in this PowerPoint) than you need to join me for my next presentation or invite me to speak to your organization (hopefully you’ll want to know more than just why Lucy and Ricky are smoking in my slide).

Thanks to those that did attend.  I hope the information was fulfilling and that you learned something that will help you improve your customer service and marketing techniques as we move into this new world of influence-based marketing.

Hannush Internet Marketing (2011 pt 1) (pdf)
Hannush Web SEO Research (pdf)

I think its a load of bunk!

Okay, it does have some usefulness. Think of Klout like your daily horoscope. If you really dive into it, Astrology is made up of more than just the Sun sign registered in your daily paper. Its a collective all the other influencing signs and the people you surround yourself with.  That is why the Sun sign horoscope is so vague, because it only encapsulates one aspect of the personality. In the same regard, that Klout score you see slapping you in the face takes the opposite tact, it tries to encapsulate the whole, yet it misses the mission.

Much like the conundrum of new visitors vs. returning visitors in Google Analytics, you first have to know what you want to measure.  If you are running a radio station media campaign to promote your new audio feed, you desperately want returning visitors. If you’re introducing a new store in a new market, your upfront interest is more in gaining new visitors.

In a Klout score, focusing on the overall number doesn’t define the new vs. returning, or the right vs. left.  Imagine a political poll where you take the Republican percentage and add it together with the Democratic percentage to get your final tally.  A worthless number, right?

To find the real value, you have to find the little nuggets underneath, including the trends and breakdowns on amplification, true reach, and your network.

But even there, I think you can go wrong.

There are many ways to game the system.  Ways to make your boss think you are a social media guru. Just set up Social Oomph to automatically follow back, you can do like I did (yes, I was the unknowing king of bad practices at one time) and use Twitterfeed to automatically RT the account of someone who delivers consistently good material.  In my case it was Mashable.com.

Let me defend myself. When I started in social media, I wanted to experiment.  I own a web development firm in South Carolina and I have been very successful just focusing on that business, but I felt I wanted to see what might be good for my customers in this brave new world of social media. So I learned some tricks and soon I had followers galore. In addition, my Klout score was cruising around 45.  But I wasn’t even paying attention to Twitter.  We had really grown in web development work and so my focus was pulled completely away.

Last year, I made a recommitment to knowing social marketing and making it a part of my business. In the process, I unhooked my website from the automation and took charge of my online presence.

In the process, I have influenced and have been influenced by some great people.  No, I don’t write tweets built for RT’s, I just have great conversations and have built a network of people I really enjoy and respect.  They help me every day to improve my business and practices. Meanwhile, I am taking part in their blogs and other aspects of their social experience.

So what happened to my Klout score? It was down to 18 as of today.  Its been slowly tanking since I took my social personality off auto-pilot.

So which one of me is the richer for the experience?  The Klout happy gamer, or the person who is learning, living and breathing the social nature of the experience?

So I had my answer.   So long Klout…I’m off to get my friend score.

What do you say?  Am I crazy?  Am I missing something?  Its the dialogue that helps me think and know where I’m right or wrong.  Lets build some real social clout.

Okay, so that really sounded like old “high school” envy coming out, didn’t it?  Am I just jealous because I haven’t achieved the same level of following in the social marketing world?

I don’t believe so. I think it has more to do with the maturing of a medium, where reach and impersonal communications by definition should be losing ground to quality, personal dialog.

Think about the social media expert with 70,000 followers. If they put out a challenge to their audience that draws a massive response from 8,000 people, how could they ever personally respond to each person? It is physically impossible for these experts to cultivate meaningful relations with this many people, unless they use stand-ins or auto-responders.

Yet, for some like Guy Kawasaki (who is a brilliant writer, venture capitalists, and entrepreneur) this is their method. Guy is quickly building his Twitter following to over 300,000 people.  He is creating a massive reach.  But who is he touching with the social experience?

In reality, he is using a social media platform as another traditional marketing source. In other words, he is blasting information AT you, rather than talking with you. I have followed him before, and I must say, I could get the same information and personality from an RSS feed. And forget having a social experience WITH him.  Do you like one of his books?  Tweet him…I doubt you’ll get a response. There are thousands of others who also like his book and I’m sure many of them have never received a response either.

So Guy Kawasaki has a massive reach, but has he touched this massive audience?  Probably as much as that TV commercial you just DVR’d past.

I bring up his case because it is a larger scale version of what I see from other social media experts. Creating tweets, blogs and pages without really taking part.  It doesn’t seem like a recipe for long term success in the social community.

My hope is that 2011 will be an awakening for the true power of social media and marketing.  A time when quantity of posts or followers is no longer accepted as the measuring stick for social media experts, but instead the quality of his or her active participation in their corner of the social world.

How to get there?

By taking extra care with the customers you talk with, thus turning them into friends of your company and making them feel some ownership or loyalty. By creating a special “voices” on Twitter (you can make it private if you want) and making it your mission in 2011 to really help, influence, or communicate with the people you populate in this list.  By acknowledging those that do take part with #FF “Follow Friday” mentions or random #TS “Twitter Socializer” mentions.

What about those masses that you’ve gathered as followers? They will be listening in. Occasionally one of them will make a comment.  If they take the time to talk to you, take the time to talk to them. Put them in your “voices” list for a while to see if they stick. This works for partners, colleagues, clients, students, and so on.

Make a New Years resolution to harvest your social community.  Choose to make a new friend every week.  Remember quality over quantity. And take social media back from the guys with the ego driven measuring sticks and move it into the realm of conversation, where the experts know we are supposed to be.

Picture courtesy of the Morgue File

When I opened my inbox, I discovered I had a new Twitter follower…@JRRichards.

To the average bloke on the street, that probably means nothing. But to me, I knew (through following my favorite band Dishwalla on Facebook) that J.R. Richards was the lead singer of the band.  

It got me wondering.  First of all, I found it very cool that the lead singer for a band I loved would take the time to follow me.  But it also baffled me how he discovered I had a Twitter account.

Then it hit me.  I set up a Tumblr account a few weeks earlier to show off my love for music and to highlight some of the best songs I’ve heard.  One of those songs was “Until I Wake Up” by Dishwalla.  Whenever I post one of these songs, it always sends a tweet to my Twitter page and my Facebook wall.  All J.R. Richards had to do was search on Twitter for people talking about Dishwalla and then he’d find me.

Its a simple plan, but a genius use of Twitter and Facebook.  First of all, my following on Facebook earned J.R. Richards a CD sale, because I was alerted to the fact he had solo material coming out.  Then, by following me on Twitter, he made me feel connected and important.  Now, as he releases his Christmas CD, again, I am primed for getting a copy of something I wouldn’t have know about in the non-social world.

For both J.R. Richards and for me, this was a win. Inexpensively, he was able to promote his new music…and I learned quickly about the new music and now become an even more devoted fan to the singer and the band.

The record industry has changed dramatically in the last ten years, and with the hundreds of albums that get released every month, it is hard to keep up with what your favorite artists are doing.  Meanwhile, the record companies are doing less and less to promote these artists meaning many deserving bands get left out in the cold.

By connecting with the fans through real tweets (as far as I can tell, J.R. is authoring his own tweets) and seeking out and following fans through searches, a talented singer/songwriter can get past the machine marketing programs that chew bands up and spit them out…and instead build a strong, loyal fan base with minimal effort.  All through taking part in the communities where these fans live.

It definitely inspires me to keep up my music blog, but it also is a great case study for anyone wanting to promote their brand.  If you feel less “untouchable” and you participate in social marketing, it can have a profound effect on your long term success and create passionate fans of your brand, product or service.

An excellent idea and a good use of social media marketing, right? Well, in theory, but the execution changed a happy customer into a frustrated one.

Here’s what happened:

The first thing I did was follow the link in Twitter.  Success, I was at the vendor’s forum page and all I had to do was post my response.

But then the trouble began.  Immediately I was sent to a log-in page.  I must admit, I have been with this vendor for six years but haven’t once logged into their forum…and good luck finding my introductory email from way back then.

So I had to go recover my username and password.  Easy enough, right?

Wrong. I spent a good 10 minutes typing in multiple Captcha phrases (which for those of you who don’t like puzzles, they are a nightmare) and it kept kicking me back out saying I had typed it wrong. I finally gave up and tweeted back that I was frustrated and needed a different way to post my suggestion for the contest.

Good will, suddenly turned bad…and a satisfied customer becoming frustrated by a company that was just trying to enhance their reputation.

I know the world of spam has caused site owners nightmares.  I have been there.  I’ve had both forums and blogs overrun with junk from spammers, so I can sympathize with the method my vendor is using.  But I doubt the average visitor to a site has the same patience and understanding.

I removed Captcha from my own site because all it does is make things harder on my viewer.  We went to putting math problems that are very simple, but seem to do better against spammers.  But an even better suggestion might be to make Facebook Connect available.  Any way you can make signing in a “click” instead of a mad search for a login or going through a forget password email procedure will help your viewers.

Don’t blow a great social marketing idea by having your website frustrate customers.  Think of them first and they will appreciate you for it.

By the way, I never heard back on my Twitter post…another #fail for a tech vendor that should know better.

I have run into this a couple of times.  Mainly it is with features that you don’t use very often…and sometimes with things you turn on during setup and then forget all about. Unfortunately, not all of these are under “Settings.”

Today I was looking for a way to stop my Hannush Web Facebook page from auto updating my Twitter account.  This is something that I was prompted to do when I set up my Facebook page and now that I see the value of real updates to Twitter over automated ones, I wanted to shut it off.  But where?

Here are two secret links that can help you turn on or off some great features Facebook provides.Are you wanting to turn automatic updates on or off from Facebook Pages to your Twitter account? http://www.facebook.com/twitter

Would you like to claim your own unique Facebook address for your Facebook Pages? http://www.facebook.com/username

Hopefully this saves you some time and painful searching.  You’ll find the username to be a very handy feature, but remember, you need at least 25 followers to use this.

For Twitter, I suggest using doing the extra legwork to promote your Facebook Page posts.  You should use your own Bit.ly type URL shortener to track these links all in one place…and you don’t want to start putting # and @ symbols in your Facebook posts…this audience doesn’t like it and you’ll lose that feature if you post standard messages in Facebook and have them post directly to Twitter.

Plus, if you’re like me, you get tired of seeing automated messages from Twitter posters.  Let me know you took the time to be with your community.

Good luck and happy posting and tweeting. Agree or disagree with me…share your comments.

If there is anything I have learned from my 40 years on the planet, there is a point with anything where it goes from being the cool, hip new thing…to commercialized and overexposed…to burnout.

As a former radio DJ, I can tell you I saw plenty of hot new trends (punk, disco, new wave, college rock, second British Invasion, hair metal, grunge…) go from being underground cool cult favorites to becoming mainstream and over marketed to complete burnout. Oh, they might return in another form like Happy Days, That 70′s Show or Pop-Punk as nostalgic fun, but the second version is never as exciting as the first.

This past week two social networks that I’ve had little or no contact with were suggested to me. One was Naymz.com (similar to LinkedIn and Plaxo) and the other Ning (no not Bing, Ning!) which is a Facebook style self-starter social network.

So as a small business owner, I am enticed to jump in with both feet on these new networks.

Well, I don’t know about you, but for me there are only so many hours in a day.  And I know for my customers as well as myself, our job is supposed to be running a business.  For most companies that don’t have someone dedicated to social media it is very tough to keep up a blog, be faithful to tweets, and monitor their Facebook wall, let alone add in these new kids on the block.

Now we start adding in copycat networks that try to sell themselves as the “new thing” and to create a buzz.  The only problem is, its like taking a shot of beer in the morning to cure a hangover, its never the same as the initial buzz. Like Warrant and Winger in the 80′s, some social networks may have come along a little too late in the game and may be trying too hard to be like someone else and not original or innovative. They think the buzz of last year is going to carry them this year. When the Warrants and Wingers of social networks start to appear, it might be time to start watching for the inevitable social media burnout in your customers.

Right now in the business community, it might be time to be cautious about putting eggs in too many baskets.  You not only risk your own premature burnout on social networking, but you also may be leaving profiles on networks that you will soon ignore and that can work against you.  Then, when some of those fringe social networks soon morph into the next MySpace (see the Village People) your reputation will go down with them.

Remember, with any hot new thing, there are only a few that make it through to long term success (see Bon Jovi, U2, Prince). My advice, be cautious…guard against your own burnout, and choose quality networks where you can provide quality material and services to your customers and potential customers.  Create a strategy and know where your customers hang out.  Don’t get sucked in because its new and because “social networking is hot!.”  That leads to disco and disco leads to Disco Demolition Night.  And that was not a good place to be.