Top Social Media Tools
Facebook: With 63 million active users from around the world and now
more professionals than collegeFacebook Logo students, joining
Facebook is a requirement. If you go to a party, a barmitzvah, a
sports game or have a job, you realize quickly how much people count
on Facebook to run their lives and keep in touch. Aside from
creating a group or event (marketing strategy), there are social ads
for your business, you have a news feed from your network, so you
can follow them, without asking them. Facebook is a great central
resource for your brand and ranks extremely high in Google (helps
you establish great e-presence). The downside is that, as your
network flourishes, it becomes a wasteland of clutter (think of all
the apps).
LinkedIn: A lot of people don’t leverage LinkedIn properly and as a
result, they barely use it’s true power. LinkedIn Logo I’m a victim
of this as well and to me it has become a moving repository of
contacts that remains lifeless, as I bridge new relationships using
Facebook, Twitter and email communication. The value in this tool
stems from your ability to ask and answer questions to your network,
export contacts, develop a virtual resume and finally, by using a
unique link (you better create one with your name linkedin.com/in/danschawbel
for example) to your profile, you can have that on your blog or
website.
Twitter: Everyone is so passionate and crazed about Twitter for a
few legitimate reasons. For one, you canTwitter Logo connect with
people that you wouldn’t have access to before, such as Jason
Calacanis and Kevin Rose. Also, you can force personal brand
recognition by using the “@theirname” in your Tweet (message), so
upon response, the receiver will get to know your name (Hat Tip: Jim
Kukral). Twitter is an amazing marketing tool (just ask Guy
Kawasaki) because it allows you to push messages quickly to your
followers (audience) and either direct them to the location of your
choice or provide another resource. In terms of PR, the TwitPitch
makes absolute sense in how you can type out a 140 character pitch
on your brand, that reporters would typically get in their email
(Hat Tip: Stowe Boyd). The downfall of Twitter is it’s inability to
scale, decentralize and the amount of times it’s not working.
Blogs: I’m at the point, where I cannot talk about personal branding
without mentioning blogs. Frankly, it’sWordPress Logo impossible to
avoid blogging because it’s a continuous rendition of your life,
knowledge, passion and the material actually helps people. Blogs are
amazing because of the Theory of eBrand Attraction, the delivery of
value, the monetization, the acceptance by our society (and
mainstream media) and the ability to form a community to connect to
others in a fraction of the time you could have done it before. If
you don’t have a blog, you might want to study Bryan Person’s, Rohit
Bhargava’s, Chris Brogan’s, Scott Monty’s, David Armano’s, Jeremiah
Owyang’s, Valeria Maltoni’s, and Drew McLellan’s for excellent
examples (good personal branding).
Wiki’s: I think this tool is completely underestimated. Aside from
the obvious example of Wikipedia, a wikiWiki Logo allows you to
collaborate with one or more individuals and the best way to network
is by creating projects and working on them with people. Think about
it; don’t you build stronger rapport with people you accomplish
something with? There is an obvious business application, but
personally, your perceived as more tech savvy when you use them and
you can create lists of people, things to do, or start your own
personal projects.
Ning: A lot of people underestimate Ning, even with over 180,000
social networks. The fact that anyoneNing Logo can build their own
social network gives it a personal edge and allows one to take a
leadership role within their own community, on the topic of their
choice. One of the main issues with Ning, just like many other
social networks, is that it is far too cluttered and it’s not as
customizable as it should be. If you start a network on Ning without
a clear objective, just like all the rest, then it will be abandoned
at some point.
YouTube: In January 2008 alone, nearly 79 million users watched over
3 billion videos on YouTube. TheYouTube Logo con is that your
podcast is one of 3 billion, but the pro is that there are 79
million possible users that may watch your podcast. The bigger pro
is that you can take a podcast from YouTube and stick it on your
blog or personal website (and others can do the same). Video is
extremely hot right now (as Paris Hilton would say) and I truly
believe it’s the closest thing you can get to meeting someone
without ever speaking to them. Some posts have too much passion and
emotion behind them, so traditional posts won’t be able to express
how you’re feeling about a particular subject.
FriendFeed: You need to be careful with this one. Depending on how
open you are to the online world, youhttp://friendfeed.com/ will
want to turn on or off your privacy. FriendFeed does what many of us
social media fiends wanted for a long time; seamless integration,
consolidation and syndication of our social media. All the social
networks listed here can be syndicated through FriendFeed, which
allows those with access to view every time you add a video to
YouTube (or favorite one), as well as add to del.icio.us or Flickr,
etc. When someone gains access, they can comment on each blog post,
tweet, and more that runs through your FriendFeed. There is also an
option now for FriendFeed rooms, where you can take a selection of
people interested in a common theme and put them in a single room to
have the conversation. You bet Twitter will do this at some point.
Flickr: People like Brian Solis have used this tool for tagging and
distributing photos of people they meet,Flickr Logo just like in
Facebook. Flickr is a powerful tool because you are showing other
people what you look like and that you care about them by posting
their photo and remembering their name by tagging. Yes, this works
just like on Facebook. There are Flickr apps for Facebook as well,
so don’t think you won’t get enough use out of your pictures. My
favorite part of this tool is that it makes it easier to view photos
and as the size of your photo album increases, tagging will keep it
organized for you.
Upcoming: I haven’t even used upcoming, much like Scoble and others
in the tech world have. I do believehttp://upcoming.org it was a
steal by Yahoo! because you get access to information about where
communities form and meet. If you want a social life or just want to
learn or meet professional contacts, Upcoming is a great database
for you. If you are a speaker or want to hold your own event, this
social tool will position you as tech savvy, as well as give your
audience directions and the ability for you to follow up with them.
Also, you can run your event feed through a widget on your blog or
website (see danschawbel.com).
Del.icio.us: Aside from making you hungry, this tool is incredible.
Google tries to organize the worldsDel.icio.us Logo information as a
whole, but think of del.icio.us as a tasty way to organize your
personal world. Upon visiting a blog or traditional website, you can
bookmark the page and tag it for future reference. It’s a great way
to organize all the sites that you find everyday, so that you don’t
forget about them and you don’t have to add them to your Firefox/IE
bookmarks (which is annoying). By sharing your bookmarks you can
give value, while learning.
StumbleUpon: There are millions of people on this network.
Basically, it let’s do you what you can do onStumbleUpon Logo
del.icio.us, but file a recommendation for a website you find. They
both have browser toolbars that you can use to submit. Upon
submission, your reviewed site goes to your network and the category
of interest. I remember when StumbleUpon was in infancy and now it’s
a top-of-mind social network.
MyBlogLog: Clearly this is one of my favorites, as noted by Mike
Sansone. This tool is on all the topMyBlogLog logo blogs because it
shows the avatars of your visitors. The problem with many of these
sites is that people don’t know how to use them to there full
capacity. For MyBlogLog, it’s obvious to add the widget to your site
to build community, but there is much more. Adding friends is a must
and promoting your other networks is really important. If you join
someone else’s community, they will join yours, thus there is
reciprocal networking going on there.
