Sexiest Social Network: Your E-Mail Inbox

Let me preface this discussion by saying that I've been involved in online social networks since the 1980s, when they were dial-up bulletin-board services. I've spent more informal time on them than most people, and I've made them part of my profession for well over a decade. Because of this, I get asked one question quite a lot: What's the best social network?
The truth is that the best social network is the one that benefits you the most.
What is beneficial may differ, depending on your business. If you're a home-improvement company, you might get more out of Pinterest. If you're a musician, you'll love Soundcloud. Google+ is loaded with photographers.
But none of those networks are the sexiest. Instead, your e-mail inbox is the most powerful and alluring network that exists.
Inbox Allure
When someone chooses to read your e-mail and responds or forwards that e-mail, it's a much deeper interaction than hitting a Plus icon or a Like button and moving on to the next consumable.
If I've earned a spot in your inbox, I've got your most intimate social network near at hand. You can introduce me to people who matter to you. You can forward my message or idea to someone else. The interaction stays with you.
Smaller Is Sexy
There's a reason that smaller is sexy. While Facebook is nearing its 1 billionth customer, another network called Path that imposes limits is getting some attention. Path limits you to 50 friends. It's a very small, very intimate social network. You can do a lot of the same things that you can on Facebook: Post location, photos, text, and so on. But only be 50 people can see what you post.
As a small-business owner, if I can focus my attention on a very small group of people (or maybe two small groups—my would-be buyers and my sources of new ideas), I won't be so overloaded with what could be. I can decide who matters and dedicate my efforts to them.
Huge social networks generate fantasies of huge potential: I could reach millions of prospective buyers. But check out some smaller networks and see if you can serve them more fully. You might find that you'll do better.
Small Is Not Local
When I praise small networks, I don't mean location-specific networks. Geographic diversity is very important if it's at all possible in your business. If your customer base is limited to your region and it's impacted by an economic or weather issue, you'll be low on buyers. If you can sell to more than one locale, you have a better chance of diversifying your streams of revenue.
More paths help sustain your business. If you can sell somewhere other than only local, give it a go.
What Works for You
Sometimes targeting a smaller network serves your business better than trying to reach infinite numbers of customers. Evaluate what you put your energy into to decide what will best serve your business. Don't be distracted by the potential of reaching the masses when your own closest network—your e-mail contacts—may be the one that will benefit you the most.
What are you doing with small or not-so-small networks? Which network matters most to you now?

06:13 by Robert dawne · 0

What’s America’s Most Engaging Social Network? You’ll Be Surprised

Try to guess America’s most engaging social network. Facebook? Wrong. Twitter? Wrong. Pinterest? Wrong again. According to comScore‘s most recent social networking data, from the month of March, the San Francisco based site Tagged engages users like no other service. It was the only site to finish in the top two in both of comScore’s engagement metrics.
Tagged users visited an average of 18 times each during March according to ComScore, second only to Facebook’s average of 36 visits per vistor. And each time a Tagged user visited the site, he or she stuck around for 12.1 minutes — which trailed only Tumblr (14.7 minutes) and beat out Facebook (10.9 minutes).
Tagged co-founder and CEO Greg Tseng says he’s happy about ComScore’s March data, but that his company has been among America’s most engaging social networks for about a year now. The secret to Tagged’s success? A pivot Tseng and co-founder Johann Schleier-Smith made around the beginning of 2008.
The longtime friends started Tagged in 2004, at the time angling it to be a Facebook-like social network for high schoolers. Eventually, however, Facebook expanded beyond a closed college network and allowed anyone over the age of 12 to join.
“We took a hard look and decided we weren’t going to win,” Tseng says. “But we had found out a lot of our users were actually using Tagged to meet new people, so that led us to pivot into a new space called ‘social discovery,’ where people use sites to make new social relationships.”
As opposed to sites like Facebook, where people primarily organize and maintain relationships established offline, Tagged functions mostly as a portal to meet new people online for romance or simply friendship. The site’s algorithms encourage users to connect based on shared interests, tastes and hobbies.
Tseng says Tagged’s 10 million core monthly active users form an average of 100 million new connections per month. The site has been profitable since 2008, and over the past year tripled its staff to a current count of more than 170.
With social discovery as a whole seen by many to be a rising tide, Tseng believes Tagged’s success will continue to grow.
“If I look out at the next five or 10 years, I really see social discovery as big as social networking — in some sense I think you can think of social discovery as the engine for social networking,” he says, referencing Dunbar’s number, which theorizes that humans can maintain an average of 150 connections at a time.
“Facebook is the place where you maintain your current 150,” he says. “And Tagged will be the place where you refresh that 150.”
Do you think social discovery is the next big thing? Let us know in the comments.

09:45 by Robert dawne · 0

Women Are More Likely Than Men to Have a Blog, Facebook Profile [STUDY]

When it comes to the demographic discrepancies of social media usage, we tend to think primarily about age. Young people, we assume, are Facebook addicts; older people, we assume, are Facebook-phobes. And while generational divisions have represented, and continue to represent, a primary division in the way Americans use social media, there’s another important factor, as well: gender.
In a report released Friday, Nielsen found that women, overall, are significantly more likely to engage with social media than men. Per Nielsen’s Internet-usage index, women are 8% more likely than the average online adult to build or update a personal blog — while men are 9% less likely to do so. Similarly, women are 18% more likely than the baseline American to follow a brand on Facebook or other social media sites … while men are 21% less likely. Have created at least one social networking profile? Women: 6% more likely to have done that. Men: 7% less likely. Used the Internet to purchase a product featured on TV? The ladies: 12% more likely. The dudes: 14% less likely.
These are striking discrepancies — particularly because they’re not just about purchasing trends. (It’s long been documented — and Nielsen reiterates it in this report — that women are the more active gender when it comes to digital brands and online purchasing. Just as they tend to dominate with traditional brands and analog purchasing.) The Nielsen findings suggest an intriguing generality, though, to women’s digital affinities: The ladies aren’t just more likely to buy stuff online; they’re more likely to be online in the first place. They’re more likely to blog. They’re more likely to be on Facebook or Twitter. They’re more likely, in general, to represent themselves as digital personas.
That’s fascinating, in particular, because it’s part of a clear trend. A June 2010 comScore study found that women, globally, spend more time online than men (24.8 hours a month for women, as compared to 22.9 hours for men.) A September 2011 report from Rebtel, the mobile VOIP provider, found that 68% of women who use the web to stay in touch with friends, family and acquaintances do so using social media, while only 54% of men do the same. And a February 2012 report from the firm Porter Novelli found a similar breakdown: In a survey of U.K. women, 65% said they used social media at least once a week, while only 51% of men said the same. (The same survey, however, found results that contradict one element of today’s Nielsen findings: Men, it concluded, were more likely than women to write their own blogs, read others’ blogs, and comment on others’ blogs.) And a February Pew survey determined that “women use Facebook more than men,” with women averaging 11 updates a week — compared to 6 updates for their male counterparts.
Those are striking findings, and worth many, many follow-up studies. They’re also a good reason for optimism when it comes to the web as an agent of social change.

10:06 by Robert dawne · 0

Ethics and Social Media: Where Should You Draw The Line?

As social media usage continues to rise, it’s only natural that statistic correlations will be made about the individuals who use the medium. This isn’t a bad thing; it’s common to deep-dive into demographic information and behavioral data. While there will always be exceptions to the "correlations" that emerge from such data, universal truths about social networking usage and user behavior can be valuable.
The Ethics Resource Center (ERC) is the oldest non-profit organization in the U.S. dedicated to independent research and advancement of high ethical standards and practices in both public and private institutions. Since 1994, the ERC has produced the National Business Ethics Survey (NBES), available for free to the public, to gather information about employees’ perspectives of ethics in the workplace. Dr. Patricia J. Harned, president of the ERC, says the NBES is the only longitudinal study that represents the views of the U.S. workforce in business.
The ERC’s latest report is one of the first to explore the possible connection between ethics and social media. “Social networking has become very important in our culture, and we wondered if the technology is influencing employees’ views about ethics at work," Harned explains. "Additionally, over the past few years, we have seen companies establish policies concerning social networking in the workplace, so this year it seemed fitting to add questions on the topic.”
National Business Ethics Survey results
One of the most fascinating conclusions in the report is that "active social networkers show a higher tolerance for activities that could be considered unethical." But Harned says the findings are not an indictment about the character of social networkers: “It appears that they are more willing to consider things that are ‘gray areas’ – issues that are not always clear in company policies as wrong; and that’s an area for further study.”
The report also points out that active social networkers are at higher risk for observing misconduct. Harned stresses that it's observing wrongdoing, not necessarily participating in it. “You could also look at another set of our responses – particularly the high number of active social networkers who reported misconduct – and say that social networkers behaved appropriately,” she explains.
Defining ethics and influence Factors
In order to understand any potential connection between ethics and social networks, it only makes sense to step back and discuss what ethical behavior means. Jay Shepherd, author of the book Firing at Will: A Manager’s Guide, sums up unethical behavior with a sentence.
“It’s like pornography: You know it when you see it. It’s as simple as knowing the right thing to do, then doing the wrong thing.”
Harned adds that perceptions of ethics are influenced by many things. “One influence is the values that we learn as children. But another aspect is the influence of people along the way in our lives," she says. "It could be that there is something about the conversations and the world view that comes through the connections of social networks that influences employees’ views about what is right and wrong.”
Is there a logical connection between ethics and social media?
There is some skepticism about trying to draw conclusions about ethics based upon social networking usage. Shepherd suggests the study perpetuates old-school thinking. “The idea that social networkers are more apt to be unethical is absurd. It’s just that you’re more likely to hear about it. In my experience, social media participants are likely to be more advanced in terms of relationships and thoughtfulness – not less.”
One definition in the study that drew attention was the classification of “active social networker” as one who "spends 30% or more of their work day participating on various social network sites.” Shepherd says his reaction was, “Seriously? That’s a ridiculous amount of time. Those employees aren’t even working; who cares what they think?”
Maybe it’s exactly this time-wasting factor that creates the perception toward connecting social networking and ethics. Dwane Lay, human resources director at Missouri Baptist Medical Center, also feels the connection might not be directly causal. “Social media tools are the latest in a long line of time-stealers in the workplace, following in the footsteps of March Madness brackets, afternoon golf games, morning water cooler gossip or cigarette breaks," Lay explains. "But social media like Twitter and Facebook are more visible from a distance (of both time and space), so they are easier to criticize and quantify.”
Should ethics blend into social policies?
Both ethics and social media are important in the workplace, so the question becomes: What is the best way to manage them? Should they be treated as two distinct conversations? Or should ethics be addressed in social media policies? Shepherd recommends keeping it simple. “My social media policy is just two words but covers everything: ‘Be professional.’ Unprofessional employees are going to act unethically whether or not they’re plugged in to social media.”
Kristen Fyfe, senior communications manager at training and development association ASTD, points out the component that both ethics and social media must have in common to be successful. “Clarity is the most effective element for both ethics and social media policies," Fyfe says. "Companies that have not incorporated behavior expectations into their employee handbooks should make that a top priority.”
Ensuring both ethics compliance and social media success
Whether you choose to incorporate ethics into your social media policy or handle the topics independently, there’s agreement that setting expectations, conducting training and holding people accountable is necessary. Lay shares some practical advice on how to ensure employees are in compliance with corporate ethics, but it really applies to any policy, including social media.
“First of all, read the policy. Not fun, granted, but educational," he says. "Second, remember that if you identify yourself as a member of a company or organization, you are always on stage. Act like it. How you respond online will have as much or more resonance than in person, so either be on your best behavior or don’t act as a brand advocate.”
More questions than answers
Perhaps there aren’t any definitive conclusions about ethics and social media usage. After all, social networking is still in its relative infancy in the workplace. But we’re learning that social influence exists, and its true impact is just coming to the surface. Further exploration across the social landscape is needed.

06:37 by Robert dawne · 0

Turkish Social Ad Network Co-Founder On The Growth Of Social Networking In Turkey [Interview]

Usually we tend to focus on the world of social media and the statistics surrounding social media in North America, so when a Turkish Social Ad Network reached out to me with a pitch I thought I’d take the opportunity to find out what’s going on in the Turkish social networking world.  Gülseren Arslan, co-founder of adnboost, shared some interesting statistics with me that reveal that social networking in Turkey is booming.  Read on to find out more.

Before asking Arslan about social media usage in Turkey, I asked her to provide a bit of background on adnboost.  She founded adnboost with co-founder Cevdet Süer and Ahmet Arslan in April 2011.  She tells me, “adnboost is a new social advertising network in Turkey and is the first and only Facebook ad providing company in Turkey.”
The company recently announced a partnership with SupersonicAds, an international leader in virtual currency monetization for online games.  Arslan tells me, “SupersonicAds’ experienced team and technology combined with the company’s know-how and our strong background in Turkey’s internet advertising industry will enable us to be the largest social media ad network in Turkey with a reach of more than 20 million people performing an estimated 200 million activities on social networks per month.”
Because adnboost specializes in Facebook advertising I asked Arslan if she could provide any statistics about Facebook usage in Turkey.  She explained, “the most popular social network in Turkey is Facebook.  Currently there are 31,247,120 Facebook users in Turkey, which makes it number 6 in the ranking of all Facebook statistics by country.”
But Facebook isn’t the only popular social network in Turkey.  There are an estimated 6.5 million Twitter users in Turkey, 1 million LinkedIn users, 1 million Google Plus users and 1 million Eksi sozluk users (Eski sozluk is a collaborative hypertext ‘dictionary’).  Arslan points out the impressive fact that “Only 4% of Turkish online users do NOT use social networks.” This could have something to do with the fact that Turkeys population is very young, with the average age being 29.2.
Gülseren Arslan hypothesizes that the “large percentage of young people in the country increases the popularity of social media” and explains that “70 percent of the Turkish population is under 35 years of age.”  Additionally, she points out that Turkish people like engagement.  “Turkey has been named the most social and flirtatious country in the world by a new study by social network Tagged.  Turks, and specifically Turkish men, sent the most friend requests as well as the most “winks”—a flirty communication method on Tagged similar to the Facebook Poke.”
Are you familiar with the Turkish social networking scene?  We’d love to hear your experience below.

14:56 by Robert dawne · 0

Get More Business With LinkedIn

When LinkedIn went live in 2003, it made its mark as a place for professionals to network and job hunt. People signed up, posted their resumes and waited for good things to happen. Now the social networking site is evolving into a robust tool for helping individuals and businesses succeed.
That’s right, businesses. There are 2 million business pages on LinkedIn. Viewers can learn about a business, “follow it” to hear about its latest products, and of course, search for job openings. Many employees also are linked to their employer’s company page, making it easier for businesses to find connections and sales prospects.
If you’ve kept a passive LinkedIn account for years, consider strategies for using the service to benefit yourself and your company. "Is there a place for small business on LinkedIn? Absolutely, yes,” says Lori Ruff, a social media trainer who wrote the book Rock the World with Your Online Presence with her partner, Mike O’Neil.
“If you ask small business people where their business and leads come from, most will tell you it’s from referrals,” Ruff says. “They can mimic that same behavior in the online space, and they will be more successful because it just enhances everything. You can speak to 10 to 15 people at a networking event, but on LinkedIn you can speak to hundreds of people and tell them so much more.”
O’Neil and Ruff own Integrated Alliances, a consulting firm that trains people and companies on effectively using LinkedIn. Here they share their tips and tricks for boosting sales, finding new opportunities and making a better name for your company.
Spiff up your profile
Add detail to your job descriptions and make sure to use keywords that are relevant to your industry. That way, your name or company page will show up more often in search engines, says O’Neil. Include details like organizations you belong to, specific accomplishments, the value your company brings to clients and complete contact information so that people can reach you.
Use LinkedIn’s tools to their full advantage
Write a snappy headline and use the 120 available characters to describe what you do in an attention-grabbing way, Ruff says. Also, be sure to use all 2,000 characters allotted in the summary space under your bio. Compose an elevator pitch that tells prospects who you are and how you can help them. Then end with a call to action.
“That call to action really makes a difference,” Ruff adds. “You’re telling people, ‘Here’s how you can do business with us.’”
Build your network
At a minimum, your company should have 500 connections or followers to make sure you’re generating traffic to your profile or company page, O’Neil says. Once you achieve 500, aim for 1,000. The more people you’re connected to, the bigger your network—because your network is made up of your connections’ connections (second-degree connections) as well as their connections (third-degree connections).
When you meet someone at an industry or social event, drop him or her a personal note to connect. “It should be a regular process for you to invite people you meet. It just cements those relationships,” O’Neil adds. “Being connected on LinkedIn causes you to look at each other from a business perspective.”
Be a joiner
Connect with industry groups and organizations to which you belong or want to belong. All other members of these groups or organizations then become part of your network, even if you’re not directly connected to them. This vastly broadens the number of people who can see your profile or company updates, O’Neil says, and you can e-mail them through LinkedIn’s InMail.
Work the tools
Use your newly robust network for recruiting or sales. “Now we get to have some fun,” says O’Neil. “It’s like in sports—you’ve built the stadium and the team, and now the team is going to play.” LinkedIn can be used for territory selling; plug in a ZIP code and a few keywords to find prospects. Then you can view their profiles to gather information about them to use in sales calls, he says. The best part? It’s all free.
Reach out
Build stronger connections with your connections. Follow their companies and “like” their status updates. On a group’s page, join an ongoing discussion by making a comment. “It gets your name out there,” says Ruff. “Show yourself to be a listener—someone else commenting on the discussion posts will take notice of you.”
Eventually, you might find yourself with new clients, stronger relationships with your customers, and a whole different way of hiring new employees who can help grow your organization.
Suzy Frisch is a Twin Cities–based freelance writer. She’s covered business, politics, law and many other topics for a range of publications, including Twin Cities Business magazine, the Star Tribune and the Chicago Tribune.

11:39 by Robert dawne · 0

12 Most Effective Ways to Engage on Twitter

Even though Facebook tends to dominate social web, Twitter is an important tool for social sharing and for building your own community. Twitter is an ideal tool to use to stay informed and to drive traffic to social properties. Most importantly, it helps you build relationships with like-minded people.
Below are tips that enable you to increase engagement with your communities on Twitter.
1. Infuse personality into your profile
People trust people, not default profile images. Use a real picture of yourself and infuse your unique personality into your bio. This generates interest and encourages people to not only follow you but relate to your passions and keep an eye on your tweets. It all leads to more retweets.
2. Be the first to break the news
Choose a topic (or several topics) that are near and dear to your heart and consistently provide valuable information. That will allow you to position yourself as an expert in that area and your followers will come to rely on the valuable information that's hitting their Twitter streams.
If you stay on top of the latest and greatest, try to break the news to your followers as you get it. That will increase the number of retweets you get and will foster the conversation around your news.
3. Tweet consistently, leave space
I recommend tweeting consistently. However, most of us choose a time during the day to catch up on the news and do some research. We come across multiple data points and links that we want to share with our followers.
But sending 15 tweets within the same hour may be overwhelming to your followers and may be considered spam. So, I suggest you schedule the tweets throughout the day with at least 30 minutes between them. 4. 4.Ask and answer questions
Asking your followers a question is the best way to engage them (and get some valuable information in the process.). But if you want your followers to engage with you, you need to engage with them. Answer their questions, share your knowledge, participate. Also consider engaging in chats. Twitter becomes more beneficial to you when you provide value to others.
5. Connect people
Be a connector, in real life and on social networks. When you connect people with each other, your followers take notice and your credibility goes up. People are more likely to engage with you.
6. Be generous, promote others
Make sure you retweet your most passionate followers. Thank them and link to their social properties. #FF and #Recommend others and their work.
7. Craft your tweets
Make sure your content stands out. When you retweet, customize the copy and add your own thoughts. When you tweet the link, choose a quote or statistics from the article that you thought was impressive or interesting and tweet that instead of the headline.
8. Use under 140 characters
If you want to be retweeted, leave the room for others’ Twitter handles. Some folks prefer the old RT style to the new one. They retweet you more if you leave space for their handle and a little space to add their short comment.
9. Ask for a retweet
If you ask your followers, “please RT,” you usually see higher number of retweets.
10. Acknowledge the source
Always, always acknowledge people who shared the information with you, even if they shared it through other channels. If that person has a Twitter handle, credit them as a source.
11. Tweet the same content again
The Twitter stream moves very fast. There's a good chance that most of your followers won’t catch your first tweet. If you stumbled on great information or you want to share your own content, schedule multiple tweets in advance during multiple days. If your followers are spread across the globe in different time zones, schedule tweets during different times of the day.
12. Be open to new connections
Follow people back. This allows them to connect with you personally through DMs. And you expand your social network. I've made many invaluable contacts just because I was open to new connections.
Image credit: Thinkstock

09:58 by Robert dawne · 0