Alaska Mystic Ventures » Twitter

Social Media Myths

mysticventures — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 23:01:46 +0000

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Exchange “Web Site” for “Social Media” and this article could be straight out of 2000.

In 2000 we were talking about whether every small business could benefit from a website, many considered it a myth. It’s pretty well accepted now that every business should have at least a minimal presence on the web. I think that the same can be said about business participation in social networks and using social media.

In 2000 we were talking about the need for businesses to have clear goals for their website with strategic and tactical plans for reaching them. The same is true today about the use of social media. It’s important for businesses to make sure that their social media participation are aligned with and support their business, website, marketing and promotions. Regardless the media, there must be a consistency in the presentation of the brand and message.

In 2000 we were talking about the need for promoting the company website in all of their marketing, promotion and advertising. Use of social networks works best if you let people know you are there. People might find you by searching or happenstance, but that’s not something you want to count on. Not only should businesses let everyone know they are using those networks, they should be actively seeking information from their customers and suppliers about which networks they use and begin connecting with them. Everyone accepts the importance of an email list, social network contacts should be considered just as important.

In 2000 we were talking about personal branding through email discussion lists and web forums. While we’ve added different technological platforms, the rules of engagement have not changed. You wouldn’t walk into a cocktail party full of people you don’t know and start announcing your business interrupting conversations. You will just be an annoyance, people will tune you out, or worse yet, have you tossed from the party ruining any possible future dialogue.

In 2000 we were talking about the need for a commitment of time and money for a successful website and Internet involvement. Participation in social networks can be very time consuming so it’s important to budget time and/or money to make certain that there is a consistent presence to be effective.

To follow or not to follow, that is the question

mysticventures — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 20:31:28 +0000

My apologies to Shakespeare for abusing one of the most quoted and quotable quotes of all time. But it is so apropos to deciding who to follow online through a variety social media services. If we aren’t careful we are bombarded with so much information that we can end up missing the best and most important nuggets of information.

Those bits of information, links, photos, opinion, news are as valuable as gold nuggets in the currency of shared knowledge. So we need a mechanism like the gold miners use to seperate the gold from the gravel, or in our case the gold from the noise. That’s why it’s so important to choose who you follow carefully. Choose those that provide a high yield of gold per post based on what our focus and intrests are.

In my own experience with setting up the multiple tweeter accounts for instance has improved my yield. A number of people have chosen to follow me @mysticventures, for instance, that don’t fit my ideal of high yield contributers to that twitter account. But looking at their twitter accounts I most often see that they have a high yield of gold that fit into one of my other twitter accounts. So I follow them from that account. The net affect is that I have improved the experience for everyone by mantaining my focus. I get a high yield of gold from those that I follow and I’m able to provide a high yield to those that choose to follow me.

Ultimately isn’t that the essence of of networking? To recieve and provide the highest yield for your network as possible.

twitter, social media, networking, mysticventures

Pressing Reset On Social Media – Time For Segmentation

mysticventures — Sun, 08 Mar 2009 23:08:29 +0000

I have reached the conclusion that our social networks on line should mimic to some extent our social networks off line. We all have different groups of people that we interact with. We identify with people depending on what group(s) they are in. For instance I have my work group, my sports group, my party group, my fishing & camping group, my music group, my movie and TV group, my family and closest friends, then people that I debate and discuss politics, religion and topics of the day. There is some overlap where some people may be part of more than a single group, but nobody is a member of all of all of those groups. They just aren’t that into me I guess. So why would people in my on line network be interest in all of those areas? They aren’t. We can’t be all things to all people, but we can be the thing for some people. So taking a page out of the niche marketing paradigm I’m going to segment my networks into narrow and deep groups. Twitter is a great platform to use for this kind of segmentation.

My original Twitter account AlaskanBest is the one that I’ll be slicing and dicing into smaller more focused groups. I’m going to strip that down to an Alaskans Only group that I follow. Non-Alaskans can follow me if they choose, but I won’t be following them back from that account.

I’ve created a new twitter account MysticVentures that I’ll follow business sources and contacts. This will include my contacts from my LinkedIn account, as well as my Ecademy account. My updates to this blog will be posted to the twitter account, and I’ll have a widget here that will track my twitter updates.

Another significant part of my network is sports. I’m a huge Seattle Seahawks fan (no jokes, heard them all). So I’ve created another new Twitter account for my sports interests that I’ll use to keep updated on all my favorite teams and stay connected to my fellow sports nuts. AkSeahawksFan

Then there is our casual and sporadic contacts that we share jokes with, talk about the weather, talk about the odd or unusual, current events, music and movies. Basically an account that includes everything that catches my attention but doesn’t fit in any of the other niches. Alaskan Bob

My alter ego, Emperor Bob has it’s own twitter account. This will be for politics, religion and controversial or emotional topics that may be offensive to some. We all have people that we don’t talk politics or religion with, and that’s for a good reason. We want to keep them as friends.

The most important network is our family and closest personal friends. Consider this the most inner circle. A place where we can post personal bits of information that isn’t urgent enough for a phone call or detailed enough to require an email. A place to share our daily highs and lows. A way to stay connected even separated by thousands of miles.

What makes this possible is a tool for managing multiple twitter accounts from one interface. I’m using HootSuite. I use the “Hootlet” application that allows me to tweet any page to any of my accounts. I’m also using TweetLater (free) to track keywords that are emailed to me. Using TweetLater is how I find new Alaskans to follow. TweetLater also has multiple profile capability so I’ll set up an account for each of my profiles to track keywords specific to those profiles. I’ll use them to find more tweeters to follow and to provide value to my followers. The idea is quality over quantity.

Next steps will include segmenting and linking my other social media accounts. I’ll post about that here in the future.

Here are the accounts:

AlaskanBest – Following Alaskans.
MysticVentures – Following business and economy related.
AkSeahawksFan – Following sports related.
Alaskan Bob – Following funny, unusual, entertainment, weather and miscellaneous related.
Emperor Bob – Following politics, religion, international related.