Aug
31

Facebook and Twitter are NOT the same Message Channel

facebook vs twitter

I am a huge proponent of using social networking to promote a business, but first it must be understood that each message channel has a specific audience; especially Facebook and Twitter.

Facebook is now a mainstream social network with 500 million users and counting. 50% of users access Facebook via the web every day. Twitter had 106 million users as of this April so it is growing but certainly not mainstream yet. 75% of Twitter users access it via a 3rd party client such as HootSuite or CoTweet instead of the website domain which suggests most Twitter users are more technical. The average social networker would not know how to download a third party app, nonetheless know which one to use, to access Twitter.

Due to the large disparity between the two social networks, different messages need to be created for each channel.

Since Twitter is largely a technical crowd, they are looking to receive news about new products/services, innovation, gadgets, and statistics.

Facebook users, on the other hand, are there to talk with friends about more mainstream topics including trends, gatherings, celebrities, and their daily lives.

If you are trying to reach customers and leads via social media, it is crucial to keep that in mind.

At Backupify, I manage both our Twitter and Facebook accounts. On Twitter, I am able to tweet about OAuth, Twitter trends, Google Apps, net neutrality, and the like. On Facebook, I have to alter the messaging and post items like Facebook developments, Google trends, privacy, etc. Since our service is high tech in the first place, most followers and fans get the general idea, but I still need to tweak the messages accordingly.

I just started using a tool called Argyle Social, which is still in beta, that helps me measure which posts do best on each channel. You have the option to post any article on Twitter, Facebook or both and then track that URL using their web interface. The more clicks a post gets, the better it does. This helps me measure and tweak my posts according to what Argyle Social reports. If I post something too technical or non-conversational on Facebook and I see that it did poorly, I’ll know that it was the wrong post to put up and will avoid doing that in the future. If I post a really popular topic on Twitter and it gets, say, 200 clicks, I’ll know followers want more of that since they are highly interested.

When managing your Facebook and Twitter accounts for your company, always keep in mind who your audience is. The more you post about irrelevant information to them, the less people will follow, interact and engage with you. If done right, though, you can gain very passionate and smart followers who will become brand evangelists for your company.

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Aug
25

Is the Internet draining us or do we lack focus?

information overload

Five years ago you would never have had access to as much information as you do today. Now the question arises, “Is there too much information available at my fingertips?”

You might not have thought twice about the slow yet apparent increase of information that is available on the web until now. In fact, I hardly thought much into it until I read this article.

The upside to the matter is that no longer do you have to dig through a book, purchase a $500 research report or conduct a focus group to gain information that seems quite simple to obtain today.

On the other hand, our eyes are glazing over so much of this information that we are becoming far less able to soak in pages of data and would rather read quick snippets of information from article titles. For example, say you conduct a Google search for “Percentage of businesses on Twitter.” You might get a great result from eMarketer offering an extensive three to ten page report all about this. But do you choose it? Probably not. Instead, you take in what the title says, “Study finds 56% of businesses use Twitter” and do a quick scan of the first few paragraphs.

This demonstrates the inability and time deficiency that we have to sit down and read a real report anymore. Our depth of knowledge is limited but our breadth is expanding. We are now taking in more types of data but at a shallower level. Many psychologists and scientists question if this will in turn make us more stupid.

They worry that we will not be able to think deeply and thoughtfully into any one topic anymore. While we may be well versed in many topics, what does that do when we are asked to go into detail on a particular subject and can’t?

This debate boils down to focus vs. plethora of information. I stand on the fence about the issue but would have to lean in the direction of saying that in general it will be a good thing. I believe that the more well versed a person is in the world on many different topics, the better off they will be. This is not to say you should know a little about biology, green energy, social media marketing, architecture and pollution, but that you should have a broad focus on a particular industry or topic and take in bits and pieces of data all over about that.

For example, my specialty is high tech internet marketing. Do I read intensive reports on this regularly? Nope. Instead, I set up Google Alerts, subscribe to about twenty blogs, follow around 350 people that are tech and marketing related on Twitter and watch videos related to these subjects. This gives me an expansive and thorough understanding of the general state of Internet marketing. Instead of honing in on one very particular part of my speciality, I like to use the plethora of data to my advantage by expanding my knowledge and expertise to a more general category.

A few months ago I wrote a post titled ‘Information Overload or Filter Failure’ which discussed that maybe we are just having trouble creating our own data filters in our minds. To combat this, pick out particular topics you want to be aware of while scanning the web. While scanning through your Google Reader, email and Twitter feed, act as a keyword catcher and focus on picking up only articles related to those. Don’t let the data explosion overtake your whole Internet experience and let it ‘dumb you down’ as experts are calling it.

As a tip, I try to read a book a month to allow myself to not become too entrenched in only learning from what the Internet has to teach me. I also do this to be able to immerse myself into a longer story and focus on reading hundreds of pages of the same piece rather than snippets. I have realized recently that this has been a bit of a struggle to do since I read so much online now, but I am sticking to my mission to do this and it definitely helps. Try that out too and let me know if it works!

How do you react to this issue? Do you feel dumbed down by the Internet or do you think it can provide us with an opportunity? Let me know your thoughts in the comments section below!

You might also want to follow me on Twitter to learn more @kristinedziadul.

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Aug
24

10 Crucial Blogging Mistakes To Avoid

mistakeWhile I haven’t been a blogger for an extended amount of time (only since January 2010 to be exact) I have had a significant amount of time to learn about blog writing. To date, I have experience publishing 101 blogs on this site (this is 102), was invited or asked to guest blog on over thirty sites, and I have written well over forty blogs for the company I now work for. This adds up to a little less than 200 blog posts written in just eight months.

From this experience, I have gained a good understanding of the do’s and don’ts of blogging, both for a personal site and a company blog.

Below are the top 10 most common mistakes I have experienced or seen to avoid:

1. Not backing up statistics.

Coming out of college, I started blog writing the way I wrote research papers. I very quickly realized that the two writing styles were very different in several ways.

a. How you cite your source. When writing college research papers, I was accustomed to using parenthesis and citing the source of information. In blogs, you use a link over the text. In general, whether it is a paper or blog, it is crucial to cite your source to establish credibility.

b. If you spout of statistics like “80% of X attributed to a 25% increase in X” without any link, how will anyone know you are correct?

c. The first step to establishing blog credibility is in linking your statistics and research to real links.

2. Promoting you or your product in every blog post

You may be familiar with the inbound marketing rule that no one cares about you or what you sell; they only care about what is in it for them. This means that while blogging, don’t write about yourself or your products. Instead, write about what interests your customers. At Backupify, our customers are interested in social media compliance, new technologies, computer security, etc. We write about our research on this and how to safeguard against security threats. Not once do we promote our service in the blogs.

3. Not editing posts before they are published

Thankfully I am a stickler when it comes to editing and writing good sentences, but it surprises me to see how many people forget spaces between words, misspell the most common words, use the wrong word type (i.e. their instead of there), or write incomplete sentences. Even people who are regarded as thought leaders and who have high subscription rates on their blogs still make obvious mistakes. All it takes is a few glances back over your post to check for spelling and grammatical correctness. This goes a long way towards establishing credibility.

4. Writing an unorganized post

Many times when writers sit down to write a blog post (and I am guilty of this as well), they get so excited about what they are going to write that they forget that there must be a structure to the post in order to engage the reader. If your writing is all over the place, the reader will wonder what you are trying to say.

As I am a writer for BostInnovation here in Boston, my editor, Kyle Psaty taught me that there must be a strong, compelling introduction that explains why I am talking about my topic. Then I need to bring the reader through my story in a clear, chronological order followed by a strong summation of the importance of what I learned from what I am writing about. People want to read a story, not a random collection of sentences that seem semi-related. Always keep the reader in mind.

5. SEO is ignored

If you are trying to rank your post in search engines, make sure to pay careful attention when adding relevant and targeted keywords into your post. There are several keyword discovery tools including Trellian Keyword Discovery, Hubspot’s Keyword Grader, Wordstream, etc. Also, just putting yourself in your reader’s head and thinking about what they would be searching for to come to your post is very helpful. Make this the last part of what you do before publishing to ensure you include all relevant keywords.

6. Headlines are sloppy and uninviting

Many of you have experienced the dramatic increase of information available to us on the web. While this is generally a good thing, it also causes us to put up strong information filters while looking for information. If your blog is in a blog aggregator site such as StumbleUpon or Digg and your title, for lack of a better word, sucks, no one will want to read it. Why would I open up an article with a title like “Inbound Marketing is the New Thing” when I could open one up that says “Ramp Up Your Company’s Marketing With These 10 Internet Marketing Tips”. Not only is this more eye catching and intriguing (people LOVE tips) but it also includes important keywords in the title that will help your article rank in search engines.

7. Not including keywords in the title

As a follow up to the point above, it is also crucial to include keywords in your title. This is important for many reasons:

a. Search engines will pick up your post as related to a particular search term much easier.

b. People will click on it more if it has keywords they are searching for right in it.

c. Google Alerts and other web filters will be more likely to pick it up with a keyword included in the title.

8. You’re writing about something you think you should write about, not what you want to write about

While it is sometimes hard to avoid writing about something you aren’t inspired to write about (such as if you are doing it for your company) it is very important to be passionate and excited about what you are writing. If you don’t even want to read what you are going to write, why will anyone else? If you write with conviction, passion and integrity, it will surely show. You can probably tell that I am passionate about this post by the detail and conversation-like tone I have added to it. This has hopefully led you to read this far down. If this was a post that I was negatively motivated to write, you would not have read down this far.

9. Not including keywords in the post itself

Many times when writing, you don’t think about SEO until right before you are about to publish. However, since SEO is still such a huge part of getting found online, it helps to put keywords not only in the title and post description, but in the body as well. This helps Google confirm that what you say the post is about is really what it is about. For example, if you are writing about the importance of mobile advertising, make sure to include mobile advertising and variations of that phrase inside your post.

10. Not promoting it or making it easy to share

After all the hard work you have put into your post, why not share it with the world?! Your blog should have multiple social sharing buttons such as Twitter, Facebook, Digg, StumbleUpon, Reddit, Email, etc. This allows visitors to easily share a post they love without having the trouble of submitting it themselves. It is also important to share your posts on your own social channels. After I publish this post, I’ll share it on social media so my network will see it. This exposes it to thousands of eyes who will then pass it onto thousand more. Once you hit publish, begin sharing!

For beginning bloggers, this may seem like a daunting task. It takes a conscious effort to incorporate all these skills into every post, so integrate them at your own digestible pace. After a few posts, you’ll get the hang of it and will become a blogging maven!

To find out more about blogging best practices and to follow up with me, make sure to follow up with me on Twitter @kristinedziadul.

Aug
12

From Zero to Cloud in Three Months

I first heard of cloud computing when I purchased my iPhone about a year ago and signed up for the push-based cloud service “MobileMe.” Although this was a small-scale version of cloud computing, I began to slowly digest and understand the broader concept of cloud computing and storage.

About a month after signing up for MobileMe, I joined Twitter where I interacted with others that were experimenting and learning about cloud computing as well. During my interactions on Twitter, I came across a few business contacts who suggested I start writing a blog.

About three months after starting my blog, I landed my first and current career job at a cloud computing company, Backupify, focused on cloud to cloud social media and SaaS backup. My cloud computing knowledge began accelerating from there. Being the very curious and inquisitive person that I am, I took every opportunity to question, learn and understand everything I possibly could about the cloud industry from my colleagues.

From there, I was able to learn from our product development specialist, immerse myself in industry case studies and blogs and attended the Structure 2010 conference in San Francisco, an intensive two day event focused on new developments in cloud computing. The attendees of the conference realized that consumers are no longer wondering what cloud computing is. Consumers are now in the phase of deciding if and when they’ll adopt the leading edge technology. One of the sessions I found most valuable was titled ‘Hello, Cloud 2′ featuring Om Malik of GigaOM and Marc Benioff, CEO of salesforce.com. They gave a great overview of what the cloud means to SMBs today and how it will continue to evolve. Another fascinating part of the conference was the ‘Guru Panel’ which featured executives from Facebook, Yahoo!, PayPal, and Zynga. They all provided great overviews of how each of their corporations were pushing the boundaries of cloud computing. They discussed how to scale quickly in the cloud, real-time web experience considerations, and technologies they hope to see developed.

My expertise to date is cloud backup. At Backupify, we back up all types of online data including Google Apps (Docs, Gmail, Contacts, Calendar, Sites), Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Picasa, Blogger, Basecamp, and more. Backing up data is becoming more and more critical as people and business rely on online interactions. Businesses remain concerned over vital customer communications and social media compliance.

Cloud backup ensures you peace of mind that your online data will be there regardless of user error, account deletions, accidental deletions, web hacks, and more. Cloud computing in general provides companies with a cost-saving way to do the same processes they have always been doing but in a much more collaborative and inexpensive way.

Since cloud computing is fairly new, adoption has been slow due various concerns. Industry sectors like education and government for example, are worried that cloud services are not as secure as their legendary servers. This is a problem we are addressing for Backupify users and prospects today.

While I have found many challenges from working in this industry, it has also proven to be quite rewarding. There are many barriers that both individuals and companies are facing that require us to educate consumers on cloud computing on a daily basis. On the other hand, it is great to see our user base grow every day as people are moving from the phase of wondering what cloud computing is to considering which one to use. This alone has been a great consumer development as of late.

While cloud computing is still an early and somewhat unproven technology, its potential is immense. As cloud computing becomes more widespread, the need for providing secure backup will as well. All facets of our lives, from social networking to emails to photo sharing are moving online. Because the cloud is becoming an intrinsic part of our lives, backups are and will become more important than ever.

Bio: Backupify is a cloud to cloud social media and SaaS backup provider. We back up over 120 million emails, 78 million tweets, and 41 million pictures already. We have recently released a Google Apps backup solution for the enterprise sector. Find out more here, subscribe to our blog, follow us onTwitter, and ‘like’ us on Facebook.

Note: This post was originally written by me for cloudcommons.com

Aug
03

Will Reward Systems Increase Foursquare Adoption?

foursquare logoFor many of us socially connected techies with smart phones, the idea of Foursquare is a no-brainer. Share where you are with friends, earn badges and mayorships and occasionally be rewarded by a venue for your check-ins.

With over one hundred million Foursquare users to date, you might think it is more popular than it really is. In fact, Forrester Research found that only 4% of the adult, internet-using population has used a location-based application and only 1% of all adults check into locations once a week. Compared to social network behemoths like Facebook and Twitter, this is quite a small user base.

While Foursquare has integrated with the History Channel and has an ad on Bravo it is still not mainstream, but is getting there.

While many marketers believe Foursquare is not worth integrating into their marketing program, I think it CAN be a viable marketing channel, if not now, then in the near future.

Take a local restaurant, for example. They could create a check-in for their location, monitor who checks in, see if they tweet about it or share it on Facebook, and keep track of repeat visitors. With some simple monitoring, they could begin to view trends of who comes in on a regular basis and how they share it.

From there, the restaurant manager can create a special promotion or coupon for the user to reward them for their loyalty. Of course, getting a coupon from just using Foursquare will generate some local buzz which can only help the restaurant. Just like any social network, word will spread fast and more people will want to visit this venue and check-in frequently to get rewarded as well.

Now, take a large company like Target or Macy’s, for example. They could use a tool such as developed by Burlington, Mass based Awareness which can help them monitor and track visits to their locations. They can easily see trends and develop a rewards program for frequent visitors, such as 20% off an entire purchase after 5 check-ins.

Many companies and marketing agencies may view creating a Foursquare marketing campaign as a complex process, but all it really needs to have is a simple understanding of the people who check-in and how often, and then a type of promotion to give loyal visitors.

If large companies like Target and Macy’s begin to adopt these reward programs, it is sure to gain traction and press quickly. The great part about Foursquare is that it can be used anywhere, from a local boutique to a large clothing department store, meaning anyone can create a program around the application.

Even with their recent partnership with the History Channel and ad on Bravo, they have gained some serious traction, and now have over 40 million check-ins to date.

It will be very interesting to see how local to world-wide companies begin to use Foursquare in their marketing efforts. As more companies join the bandwagon, users are sure to follow. Within the past year alone they have significantly increased their user base, so it is only expected to grow exponentially from here.

How has your company used Foursquare to engage visitors? Do you see it as a viable marketing channel now or in the near future?

Note: I originally wrote this article as a guest blog post on 4squarebadges.com

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