Facebook Questions from a Hat

we had a great turn out this morning with over 20 people at the social media breakfast.  we did things a little different by asking everyone to submit questions about facebook and then we as a group answered them.  it was very informative, here are the questions and the answers that the group came up with:

How do I set up a business page on facebook?
There is a link on the front page of Facebook, you have to have a personal facebook account first and you will create the business page under that.
Here’s the link to get started: http://www.facebook.com/pages/create.php

When you make your own fan page, how do you make it your own design?
Use Facebook Markup language.  http://wiki.developers.facebook.com/index.php/FBML

Is it best to post questions or comments?
Posting questions will usually generate a lot of comments from others on facebook, while comments are just a way to share your thoughts.

Facebook Pages vs Facebook Groups:
http://mashable.com/2009/05/27/facebook-page-vs-group/

How to use facebook and twitter together to promote a business?
Link the two accounts to spread the word to more people.

Is there a way to add a photo or video to a comment?
Put the link to the photo or video in your comment and facebook will automatically embed it.

Putting an RSS feed into your profile.
It is built into facebook or you can use twitterfeed: http://www.twitterfeed.com
Instructions on using twitterfeed:
http://www.helpdeskgoddess.com/2009/06/feeding-your-blog-into-your-twitter.html
what is RSS? real simple syndication http://www.whatisrss.com/

can you set it so your twitter updates become your facebook status updates?
set it up with selective twitter http://apps.facebook.com/selectivetwitter/ and then every tweet that ends in #fb will update your facebook status

can you “tweet” too much on facebook? yes
should you separate your business from your personal on facebook? yes, but it depends on the business

Tim Walker from Hoovers

Here is the link to tim walker’s talk:
http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/1733692?ref=nf

Social Media for Professional Services

this month at the waco social media breakfast, michael talked about social media for professional services and how he incorporated social media into the texas young cpa’s conference (#wacosmb).

here are my bullet points from mike’s wonderful presenatation:

• myspace is not used much by professionals
• young professional groups should have a presence on linked in, facebook, and twitter
• mike tweets from two accounts, @michaellbrown (main twitter account) and @txycpa (account for texas young professionals cpa)
• there are 2 universities in the US that offer professional networking courses
• linked in is an enhanced contact tool, while twitter is a way to make connections and enhance existing connections
• mike started a blog for the texas young cpa’s conference athttp://texasyoungcpas.blogspot.com
• blogger is very easy to use when you are getting started blogging
• created a plan for integrating social media for the texas young cpa’s conference
• 1 blog post per week
• at least 1 tweet per day
• tweet as much as possible from the conference
• publish a blog post for each session as the speaker was wrapping up session
• after conference try to connect as many ppl as possible through social media
• follow @lifehacker for life productivity tips
• twitter desktop client seesmic desktop http://desktop.seesmic.com
• seesmic can keep existing searches and mike likes look at feel of it better than tweetdeck
• seesmic is a desktop application and peoplebrowsr is web-based
• seesmic desktop can handle multiple twitter accounts in one stream and allows you to choose which account to tweet from
• with 2 twitter accounts, when tweeting, be aware of which account you are tweeting from
• lifehacker’s bloggers bag had many reduntant items, but they would have come in handy
• use www.twellow.com to search for similar people on twitter (from @themarketingguy)

links from today’s talk:

• http://texasyoungcpas.blogspot.com – mike’s blog
• http://www.blogger.com – easy blog to get started with
• http://www.lifehacker.com – productivity tips and tricks
• seesmic desktop – http://www.desktop.seesmic.com – desktop application for twitter
• people browser – http://www.peoplebrowsr.com – web application for twitter
• tweet deck – http://www.tweetdeck.com – another desktop application for twitter
• blogger’s bag – http://lifehacker.com/5266491/the-gear-and-tactics-from-lifehackers-laptop-bags
• twellow – http://www.twellow.com – to search twitter profiles to find people to follow on twitter
• twitter grader – http://twitter.grader.com – follow at http://twitter.com/grader and then go to the site for recommendations of people to follow on twitter

How to Choose a Social Media Channel for Business

at this month’s waco social media breakfast,Jay Ehret, talked about how to choose a social medial channel for business. we had a greatturnout with 26 people there. here are my notes from jay’s very informative presentation:

the cluetrain manefesto is the “old testatment” of social media discussing the age of conversations and how markets are conversations. groundswell is the “new testament” of social media

what is social media?

• wikipedia defines social media as: information contentcreated by people using highly accessible and scalable publishing technologies. At its most basic sense, social media is a shift in how people discover, read and share news, information and content. It’s a fusion of sociology and technology, transforming monologue (one to many) into dialog (many to many) and is the democratization of information, transforming people from content readers into publishers. Social media has become extremely popular because it allows people to connect in the online world to form relationships for personal and business. Businesses also refer to social media as user-generated content (UGC) or consumer-generated media (CGM).
• the main thing to remember is that you can not control the conversation in social media.

because social media is low cost to free, many companies are tempted to “do it all to make sure we are doing the right thing” but, there is a time cost involved to do social media correctly. once you choose a social media channel you are now engaged with that channel.

so, how do you choose a social media channel? choose it based on your challenge

#1 awareness — people don’t know about you

• best way to overcome this challenge is through video
• youtube is the best way to get your video out there, even if you have your video on other on-line sources, put it on youtube as well
• jay has his own youtube channel, farm bureau and tstc do as well. other than that, not very many local businesses are using youtube
• question: which is more important, quality or content in your video
• content is more important
• quality should reflect your business profile
• title of video or blog post is key tag. Must have key words that will be used in searches

#2 word of mouth — enabling people to have conversations about you

• one of the easiest on-line communities to set up is ning.com
• make sure you have the community support and people to join your community
• yammer.com is a twitter-like app that is closed

#3 complexity — a blog is the best channel if you have some “splaning to do.” also, a blog will give your business credibility and authority and increase your SEO (search engine optimization)

• BLOG = better links on google
• 3 main blogging platforms:
• blogger – owned by google and is good for getting google search engine results.
• wordpress – free
• type pad – paid service
• question: people don’t like to read, should you do video blogs?
• people still read on-line, they don’t read books
• search engines cannot search video
• most people still prefer writing text over video
• post frequently and consistently — the more often you post, the more search engine “juice” you will get

#4 accessibility — if accessibility is the challenge, twitter is the appropriate channel #wacosmb

• are you accessible?

• twitter
• facebook
• myspace
• linked in

• podscope searches in audio and video posts
• social media moves fast, don’t get married to any one thing
• social media is a conversation where you have to be engaged — you can’t just use it like an advertisement without interaction

twitter search for all the tweet from #wacosmb
for more information check out our waco social media website or our facebook page
our next waco social media breakfast is on tuesday, may 26th at 7:30 am at olive branch, sign up here

Caryn Brown Speaking on Twitter

we had a great turn out for this month’s waco social media breakfast with 19 people attending. it was my turn to speak and I spoke on social media and twitter. I asked for some feedback when people signed up for the breakfast and I also had some other questions that I wanted to address or that came up during the breakfast. here is what I talked about:

• what has suprised me about the waco social media breakfasts?
• I thought that I would be the only person here who is not using social media in my professional life, but as I have gotten to know you the members of this group better, I realize that it’s a pretty even mix of professional/personal users
• what do I get out of this group?
• it’s a way for me to meet other people in waco, who don’t look at me strange because I’m on twitter. this group also keeps me informed of things going on in waco and always nice to meet the people that I have been following on twitter and put a face with a name
• why do I enjoy social media?
• first off, it’s an instant connection, I am not a very patient person, so instant gratification is great for me. also, with so many users and so many followers, there is always someone that is going through the same thing I am. it also gives me a chance to learn and share with people that I would never meet in real life.
• twithelpme is one of the ways that I am able to learn and share with people on twitter. I follow this twitter account and anyone on twitter can ”#twithelp” in a tweet and it will be sent out to all the twitter users that are following twithelpme. you can find out more information on twithelpme on their website.
• what are hashtags?
• hashtags are an easy way to follow a topic on twitter. you can enter the hashtag into your tweet, or search twitter for the hashtag and see all the tweets on that topic. here is my blog post explaining hashtag hashtags are also a great way to see what the trending topics on twitter are.
• what is twittermoms and #gno?
• twittermom’s is a ning group (a social networking group) started by megan calhoun. it is a group for mom’s on twitter to interact and share in ways that they are not able share on twitter. #gno (girls night out) is a twitter party that I participate in every tuesday night as a part of twittermoms. you sign up on the girls night out website before the party and then you end all your tweets during the party with #gno. they usually have a topic and host and the party can be very fast paced once it gets started.
• what is #journchat?
• #journchat is a weekly (Mon 7-10pm CST) conversation between journalists, bloggers and public relations folks (conversation started by @PRsarahevans)
• twitter applications
• I use twitterfox which is a firefox plug-in for reading my twitter stream and I use twitterberry for twittering from my blackberry.
• I talked to the lady that started peoplebrowsr at south by southwest and it sounds really promising, but I have not had a chance to check it out yet.
• there are a lot of other ones out there as well.
• explain twitter to someone who doesn’t get it
• it is a great way to connect with others on-line and to form a community where you can share thoughts/ideas with others, using text-based “tweets” of 140 characters or less. updates are displayed on the user’s profile page and delivered to other users who have signed up to receive them. senders can restrict delivery to those in their circle of friends (delivery to everyone being the default). users can send and receive updates via the twitter website or through 3rd party applications
• my blog post on getting cookies from my twitterfriend
• how do businesses respond so fast when I tweet about them?
• you can subscribe to a twitter search as an rss feed by clicking on “feed this query” in the upper right-hand corner of the twitter search page and you will get a new rss feed whenever that twitter search is updated. many companies are doing this so they can know when someone tweets about the company
• how did I get so many twitter followers?
• being a part of twittermoms and #gno helped me to get many of my twitter followers. I also engage my twitter followers by asking questions and conversing with my twitter followers (I am not just sending out links to my website or my blog posts). also, that fact that I tweet way too much and spend most of my free time on twitter helps as well.
• a great site to see your twitter following growth is twitterholic
• how do I keep up with so many twitter followers?
• I only look at the current “tweets” when I am on twitter (usually after the kids are in bed), so I do not read all the tweets from the people that I am following on twitter. I do look at my friends twitter pages so that I can read their entire twitter stream
• additional links on sites that I mentioned:
• twitter parties – a blog of the various twitter parties on twitter
• tweetchat – a twitter application that automatically adds the hashtag for twitter parties
• twitterwiki – a place to post cool ideas, uses and feature requests for Twitter

here’s some linky love to those that were at the breakfast.:
melinda baugh
caryn brown
michael brown
chad castle
jamie crowe
jay ehret
scott everett
matt felder
jeremy ferguson
carla pendergraft
bryan person
richard wootton

for those of you who missed the breakfast, mike uploaded a video of it to the waco social media page on facebook.

I also added the #wacosmb hastag to the hashtag directories at:
tagal.us
wthashtag.com

our next social media breakfast is scheduled for tuesday 28 april 2009 at 7:30 am with jay ehret scheduled to speak. you can register here: Waco Social Media Breakfast #5. you will see that there are 2 tickets this time; one is $5 and it includes a tweetup badge the other one, as usual is free.

staying connected:
if you have not joined the social media group on facebook yet, please join it at waco social media
I will also be updating the social media breakfast blog with upcoming breakfasts and blog posts on breakfasts
you can also check out the waco social media webpage

DeAndre Upshaw

we had 26 people at the breakfast (pretty good for waco!). deandre’ upshaw talked about his position as the spokesperson for young free texas. he was a great speaker and it was very interesting to see how he is utilizing social media to promote texas dow employee’s credit union. if you want to read some more about the breakfast, the twitter hashtag is #wacosmb. http://carynnwaco.blogspot.com/2009/02/i-was-social-butterfly-today.html