I’ve tried lots of stuff online. LOTS. When a feature is available or a new site appears, I try to give it a shot to see how it works for me and how others might be able to use it. Some worked out great (I’m now obsessed with meticulously cataloguing EVERY picture I take in Flickr – for a guy who never took pictures as a young adult, I’m now into taking as many as I can – using Dracu-Pig keeps me on a schedule about it.); some haven’t (I’m still cleaning up the mess from my dabbling with Twitter Automation & Following Tools – while they have a use for some, they are NOT for me.)

Being the social media gigolo I am, when I learned that my tweets could automatically update my Facebook status, I jumped on it, thinking I had found a major time saving tool. Rather than going back and forth, I would update both with a simple facebook app! HALLELUJAH! What a huge time saver!

Then I realized something that I had overlooked. The language on twitter is VASTLY different from the language of Facebook. All of a sudden my Facebook status updates sported a series of RT’s, @’s and #’s – to the friends I had on Facebook who were NOT twitter savvy (a good amount at the time), my status updates were confusing, annoying and more likely to drive people away from me than to me. I update twitter more frequently than Facebook because if the real-time conversation feel twitter provides – facebook usually leaves me feeling like I just missed someone. I realized that there are times I want both sites to have the same info, but more often times when I wanted to keep them separate. One of the things I talk about with people is that each site has a different culture; what’s appropriate in one place might not be in another, and while Facebook and twitter share a somewhat casual air, I interact a little differently on each – Twitter is more frequent, while on Facebook I update my status more sparsely – I prefer wishing happy birthdays and catching up on my newsfeed. When I want to post a message to both sites, I use the Selective Twitter Status application on Facebook, or take advantage of the multiple account management offered by Tweetdeck.

For me, it just made sense to keep those sites apart unless I felt the need to cross-post. Are you cross-posting everything? I’d love to know what your experiences have been.

As the components of social media come more into the main stream of daily living, there is a lot being written about its impact on marketing and advertising and how it is being utilized to facilitate networking with people that have been in your life at its various stages. Apocryphal stories about people on Facebook finding friends from their school days or distant past abound, as do conferences, articles, e-books and blogs. Twitter seems to be the enigma of this decade as it grows exponentially while people and companies struggle to find the commercial application. LinkedIn has become the minimal online presence for business people and even television commercials and shows referecne the phenomenon regularly.

I was a panel moderator at ReTechSouth, a conference held in Atlanta Georgia to promote the use of social media by real estate  companies and professionals. During the conference, I got into a discussion with Rob Hahn and Mike Simonsen, two knowledgeable people active in both social media and the tech industry, about what the future might look like as Social Media continues to impact our society.

The conversation started with my statement that Social Media may be the biggest change in the way we interface with entertainment,marketing and each other since television entered everyone’s house. And that Television was the biggest change in how we view and interact with the world since radio. Our ability to find, interact with,

We all understood that futurists are normally wrong about their long term predictions because it seems that the final result of technology or cultural changes is something that wasn’t anticipated . Even though we conjecture about the future, using all the information we have, its the unforeseen stuff that seems to end up being important.

All we can do is participate and be prepared for change, since that is surely the only thing that is constant-

Social Media Conversation Prism by B D Solis

BuzzBuilderz is dedicated facilitating the ongoing conversations generated by Social Media, which begs the question, “What makes a good conversationalist?”.

In his post Three Steps to Becoming A Web Conversationalist , John Battelle of SearchBlog suggests that there are three question to answer to determine how effectively you are engaged in the world of Web 2.0;

1. Are you consuming the web? Are you actively reading and listening? Are you using a feed reader to keep up with the flow of information relevant to your field of expertise?
2. Are you actively using communications tools like instant messenger, Facebook, Linked In, and Twitter? If you don’t get Twitter, see my earlier post (which should also help you if you just asked “What’s Twitter?”)
3. Are you adding value back into the web on a regular basis? Here I part company with Mr. Battelle, who considers Blogging the most important part of the conversation. While I agree with him that Blogging can be an important component of your participation, I believe that a consistent presence on microblogging sites, can make up (through sheer volume ) an even more important component of establishing your reputation in the on-line conversation.

The answers to the three questions will help determine your effectiveness in this new marketing environment. By listening, you understand the issues of the day and the passions of the participants. And, you have a position to react from if you wish. Additionally, the comments you make (and actions you take) generate a valuable impact to your reputation.

By using communications tools like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Plurk, etc.  you create a stream of impressions that help the other people active in your community create an impression of who you are. Each photo you post, each joke you make, each comment on someone else’s wall create a virtual portrait for others in your community to use in visualizing your persona.

Finally, by contributing to the conversation, you establish your value. Your website maybe a reflection of your company, but your Blog is a reflection of your personality and passions. The cumulative repository of posts show what you care about and provides substance for your readers. And the success of your effort will hinge to some degree upon the consistency of your writing. You don;t have to write every day, but you should be posting something a few times a week, be it a video you enjoyed, or a photo you took, or a more in depth analysis of something that is interesting to you. Don’t give a sales pitch, be conversational. Talk about what you know, just as you would if your reader were in front of you. (Just don’t forget to either compose your post in Firefox, or run spell check – you do want to look literate!)

Remember, People want to engage informally, or they would be choosing a different place to do their reading. Be yourself – there’s certainly someone out there who will love you for it!

Image Courtesy of Creativecommons.org

Few people can argue that message penetration is of great importance when marketing a product or service. Various methods are used everyday: Direct Mailing, Print Advertising, Television and Radio Spots, and even Banner Ads. However, as we move into this exciting new age of digital campaigns, I’ve found that the most effective messaging is done with just a few actions.

While there are a plethora of social media outlets where we interact, from networking sites such as LinkedIn, Facebook and Plaxo to Blogs and Micro-blogging platforms like Twitter and Plurk, people are connecting to people. The real value of Social Media is having a presence on ALL of these sites, instead of narrowly targeting just a few. After all the network connections we have on Plaxo and LinkedIn may overlap with our friends on MySpace and Facebook, but they may not, and it would be a big mistake to miss out on reaching a portion of our potential audience.

When you properly integrate all your sites you are inadvertently engaging in what I refer to as “Ripple Marketing”, where small actions create an impact across a variety of different sites, just as throwing a pebble into still water creates outward ripples. Thanks to the portability of information on many of these sites, you can make a small post while on the go that gets pushed out across all of your networking sites simultaneously, allowing you to reach a large audience with minimal effort.

Anyone can spend the time to research the hundreds of Web 2.0 sites that exist today and are currently in production. Then you will need to arrange for the integration of the sites to allow for the flow of information in a proactive and transparent manner allowing you to engage in Ripple Marketing, or BuzzBuilderz can set YOU up with a Social Media network designed by us with the idea of creating a maximum return with the minimum effort . Contact us today and start making waves with your business!