Social Networking Fail

Yesterday I posted a blog titled "Would you race if there was no finish line?" The idea behind it was to point out silly things I see companies doing in the social networking space along with 5 basic ideas to help avoid failure. I was happy to see that the piece received solid traffic today and has been re-tweeted a couple times. (Thanks to @ocdqblog for being the first.)

While I was reading through the re-tweets I came across the one below from @SocialMediaNew and found it to be a great example of how not to use twitter. A large part of community participation is rooted in trust and I believe in order to add value to your community you need to act in a trustworthy way to gain respect and to positively effect your business. This lesson seems to be lost on SocialMediaNew.

This screen capture is from my TweetDeck application and as you can see SocialMediaNew is re-tweeting my post.....or are they? In reality the shortened Bit.ly URL goes to the page below. This my friends is exactly HOW NOT TO USE TWITTER. I visited the twitter site before writing this post and followed a bunch of links from their page and everyone I hit redirected me to this page so its clear its not a mistake its a "business practice".

Feel free to bookmark this page or print it for your next meeting, share it with the folks in your marketing department who are struggling to understand the need for trust in social networking. And finally if your one of the 117 people who are following these guys you may want to reevaluate your own strategy.

And a quick note to the owner of the SocialMediaNew account please stop re-tweeting my content with bogus URL's.

Would you race if there was no finish line?

How would you feel about sitting down to play a game of Monopoly without rules or a defined way to determine if you have won the game? My guess is that most of us wouldn't play. Why invest your time in a process without a goal or positive payoff? 

The Monopoly scenario above may seem silly but more companies than I can count are doing the same thing with social networking. I talk with company after company that are already "playing the game" but have no idea what the rules are or how to determine how well they are doing. Many executives are looking for the easy way into social networking and don't want to earn a win as they would in almost any other process.

When asked what's the most important thing to do to enable success in social networking my answer is strategy and goals. Jeremiah Owyang published a great post this week on the importance of determining where you are in the adoption curve of social networking and plotting a course to move forward. Before you or your company jumps into the deep end of the pool be sure to figure out where you are now and where you want to be. 

Start here to enable success - 

1. Set Goals - determine what it means for your company to succeed. Set measurable goals and metrics. And put the tools in place to monitor your goals.

2. Invest - Participation may be free but you still need to make an investment. Determine what that means for your company and your strategy. Consistency is a must in social networking don't start and stop.

3. Listen First - don't just start talking, take the time to listen to the community and enter the fray in a helpful and deliberate manner. Don't be the company voice that sells, promotes and bothers. Be a "real" participant and contribute the rest will follow.

4. Pick the Right Community - If you listen you will be able to identify the right spot for you and then listen for the leaders, followers, customers and Mavins within the community each of these participants will require a different strategy on your part.

5. Measure Success - Measure your progress early and often. Track the metrics that align to your goals and feedback the successes and lessons to your corporate stakeholders.

By doing the five items above you will be miles ahead of many companies that are blindly navigating the social network landscape armed only with a twitter account and no discernible goals. You can't win unless you know the rules and understand the goal of the game.

How to use Twitter Hash Tags

Once you have started to get more involved using Twitter it won't be long until you encounter a post that looks some thing like this.

This tweet is a Re-tweet (RT) of a PJRobinson post and it contains 2 hash tags and a URL (I'll talk more about re-tweets in an upcoming post). The arrow is pointing at two hash tags the author used in his post. Hash tags are a powerful tool to help combine or aggregate content on the same topic. Users of twitter utilize these tags to make it easy for you to follow their topics. If you use a client like Tweetdeck you can set up a search for the hash tag and every time anyone anywhere in the twitterverse uses it in a post it will show up in that search almost immediatly.

There is no governing body that sets or creates hash tags they are created by the community so if you want a hash to help combine all tweets on your local poker club have everyone in the club use #localpokerclub in their tweets. It has become common for trade shows, events and companies to declare a hash tag to help users find all the information available on that hash tag. Hash tags like #Degragcon or #iod2009 are active during the event then go quiet until the event rolls around again the following year. Searching for an hash tag during the event is a great way to see what everyone is talking about and a great way for you to participate in the conversation.  Some hash tags like #Social #Fail have been active for a very long time and work as a filter for specific types of content. 

5 of the top 10 trends at http://search.twitter.com this morning were hash tags click on the link and then select a hash to see exactly how this works.

Bottom line using hash tags is easy, use Twitter Search or search in your twitter application to watch the conversation taking place around hash tags, next time your at a trade show or event look in the brochure to see if a twitter hash has been declared and start following it and if you can't seem to locate it send out a tweet declaring one. Hash tags are a great filter and aggregation tool that adds value to the twitter experience.

Guide to Social Media Success

How to make a splash in social media a TED Talk -

Open Web Awards Winners List 2009

Mashable one of my favorite site has announced this years Open Web 2009 winners. For those of you looking for great examples of how to leverage brand and social media here are the winners for that category. You can find the rest of the list at.

Mashable Open Web Award Winners

• Best Brand Use of Facebook: Pet Society
• Best Brand Use of Twitter: @nhlblackhawks
• Best Brand Use of YouTube: Internet Killed Television
• Best Corporate Blog: PlayStation.Blog
• Best Non-Profit Use of Social Media: Thank a Soldier
• Social Media Ad Campaign: Sarah Ezekiel
• Social Media Agency: @mryouthagency
• Social Media Gadget: WiseStamp