Participate in Question and Answer Sites to Market Yourself

I go through spurts where I monitor and participate on Question and Answer web sites. Usually I monitor Yahoo Answers & LinkedIn Answers via RSS feeds.

I gather a lot of information and knowledge this way and keep organized using tags in Google Reader and Google Notebook.

I also participate and give my answer or feedback on questions from time to time.

I haven't been doing this for a couple months now, but I did actively participate for months at a time.

I recently got the following email off LinkedIn:

For a while now, I've been digging around for answers to a question that no one seems to be able to answer. Your name keeps coming up in my searches. If you don't mind, I would like to tap your brain.

How would you project your monthly costs in terms of storage and bandwidth if you didn't know

how much traffic to expect on your startup photo/video sharing site?

This is just one notable connection I've made via social networks, thought it showed the value of a continued presence for your business on Questions and Answer web sites.

Why We Give More Weight to Facebook Application Development Over MySpace

I was just reading MySpace Developer Platform: Jim Benedetto, MySpace on Jeremiah Owyang's blog. He is at the Social Graph Conference in San Diego. I wish I was there.

Anyways he was posting a bunch of information about the MySpace development platform and it really shows an impressive approach on their part in reaching out to the developers community.

Their approach is much better than Facebook.

Yet we still give more priority to building Facebook apps and maintaing our presence there than we do on MySpace.

It is primarily because of the demographics. It will be interesting to see who stays ahead in the Social Networking race.

White Label Social Networking for a Mobile Platform

I have been playing with Ning a lot lately and really pushing it to see its potential for a rapid social network deployment.

It is very powerful and gives you a huge amount control over setting up a social network.

Now I heard about a new white label social networking platform for mobile and handhelds. It is called iamota impact.

It allows you to:

• Quickly and easily create and launch mobile services.
• Add mobile "Opt-ins" to many types of media: Web, blogs, email, social networks, TV, print, billboards, bus boards, on-product, radio, POS, live events

And it gives you:

• Single interface to power mobile marketing, messaging, social networking, location-based services, content delivery and payment
• Handles all wireless carrier certifications, device-specific content optimizations, digital rights management, carrier and Mobile Marketing Association rules
• Open API and custom mobile services
• Financial clearing and settlement
• Reporting and statistics

It looks like the start of a pretty sweet service. It is a little pricey, but as we see more competition in this space I think we'll see more FREE and low cost solutions.

Bebo Social Networking for Social Media Marketing

Been doing some work on various Bebo Social Network Profiles as part of a social media marketing campaign. Since I am spending some time here I thought I would share some thoughts and strategy.

First off Bebo is a very European focused social network. There are a lot of US users, but definitely heavy on the European market.

I got setup and have my profile all filled out from my social media profile content platform. Wish I had some data portability tools!

Put in a nice picture of myself or my logo, then I went ahead and started a couple of photo albums, and picked the best pictures I have for the first albums.

I don't have any video so I didn't do anything there yet.

I emailed a handful of friends, coworkers, and business contacts I had to make them mad about joining another social network.

I looked through the applications directory to see if there were any relevant applications I could add. Bebo had some nice Widget hooks which I will play with later.

They have a whiteboard feature which is unique. You don't see this many places, it is kind of like the wall...but you can draw. I just posted one myself.

I went to my central company blog on this topic and found a couple of the latest blog posts and and made links to the articles.

Next I went ahead and did a search on a couple of keywords that are relevant to what I am doing. Several groups came up and I went ahead and either became a Fan or a Member. Which gives me some eyeballs on their profile and starts some potential relationships.

That was all I did. I am going to write-up a formal strategy for business social networking strategy using Bebo as marketing of your social media strategy.

Then I will work on a social media maintenance strategy for your Bebo social networking account.

50 Social Sites That Every Business Needs a Presence on

Everyone is a little intimidated and overwhelmed about where to start with your social media marketing campaign. There are so many sites and so few metrics for evaluating your success.

You really can't ignore social media for your company anymore, if you do your competitors are going to eat your lunch. So where do you start?

InsideCRM just released a great list of 50 social media sites that every business needs a presence on.

It is a pretty comprehensive list with a great introduction to each. They cover the following types of Social Network Sites:

• Social-Media/Social-Bookmarking Sites
• Professional-Networking Sites
• Niche Social-Media Sites
• General Social-Media Sites
• Job Sites

It is probably more sites than the average business can handle, but it is a great place to start.

Interesting Tools for Evolving Your Social Graph

I was reading, Delver Comes Out Of Stealth With a New Twist on Social Search on Techcrunch tonight.

Delver is a social graph search engine that allows you to easyily connect with people.

Delver is attempting to solve two key search-related problems:

The first is that current search engines do not take into account the identity of the searcher.
The second is that current search engines do not allow users to search for information created and referenced by their own social graph.

Delver seems to be part of the first wave of social graph tools that will allow you to manage, grow and track your social graph.

Using Facebook as a launching point for your new application, and injecting work into your employees social networking habit.

Was reading the post on Techcrunch this morning called Huddle uses new apps and Facebook to take on Basecamp.

Its interesting on several levels to see another Basecamp competitor as well as someone leverage facebook as a marketing tool for their new web applications. How launching a Facebook can be a tool to drive new users to your application.

I think it is also very interesting from the usage of Facebook and other social networks in the workplace. I mentioned the article in the TimesOnline called Learn to love social network sites about workplace usage of social networks. Huddles new application introduces potential value for the workplace in applications that run in social networks.

I keep saying how companies need to embrace employees usage of social networks from a moral standpoint, work efficiency, and from their social media marketing strategy.

Many firms fear social websites will waste staff time. But they can bring benefits by helping collaboration and the spread of ideas

Great article in the Sunday Times Online called Learn to love social network sites, it is about the widespread perspective of social networks and how allowing them to be used at work will contribute to employees wasting time and losing money for companies.

It talks about how many companies have banned social networks all together for their workers, and how this can back-fire for many companies.

It moves into talking about what benefit allowing employees to use social networks can bring for both internal and external operations.

They even start diving a little into some Wikinomics and talk about crowdsourcing and other 2.0 concepts.

Check it out, it is a good read.

Importance of a Social Networking Strategy in 2008

All signs point to increased growth and popularity of social network in 2008. New regional and niche focused social networks are popping up everywhere and new users are getting involved everyday.

This is definitely a space that businesses cannot continue to ignore and at least need to come up with a basic strategy for having a presence on the major social networking sites.

With the economy slowing, spending may decline however users will be online more and more regardless of their spending habits.

So engaging these users in there social spaces whether they are spending or not will still grow awareness of your brand, services, and products.

And when spending occurs you will be fresh in their minds and active in their worlds.

So don't ignore getting your social network campaign going this year at least in a basic form.

Definition of My Social Graph

I keep talking about what my single social interface, which I have been wrestling with as part of my social graph. Figured I better clarify for some of you what the social graph is?

A social graph consists of who an individual is connected to based on the type of connections, such as work, friendship, interests, and location.

I am still grasping the definition of my social graph as I participate more and more on social networks and in the social media space.

In my single social interface definition I try to define communication with my social graph in another perspective based upon Individuals, Network, and Public.

That could be a mix of many different people across my social graph.

I am also still fumbling with how all my content and information fits into this picture and where does it show on my social graph as I create, share and collaborate within my social graph?

It is great to see different people perspectives on the social graph how they work to define it as well.

LinkedIn's Refreshing Approach to Data Portability and Platform Openess

LinkedIn is just doing it the way it should be done. They fully embrace data portability as well as understand that they need to open their platform up via API's and taking part in OpenSocial.

They provide what average users need in data portability as well as privacy.

They also understand what us developers are looking for in a business class social networking platform.

Check out their perspective by reading their latest blog post Who Owns Your Data? (hint: you do).

Bebo Social Network Application Development Platform

I went ahead and signed up for Bebo Social Network tonight. I was reading a blog post on Techcrunch called Bebo’s Platform Now Open for All Developers and thought I should go ahead check it out for myself.

I belong to most of the major Social Networks now and was reading the other day on how Bebo was named as best social networking site in a survey and is beating out Facebook

It is a very clean application similar to Facebook. Which I like. That is one thing about MySpace that really bothers me is how it is so cluttered and just crappy looking.

I like the video, music and authors sections that really highlights the major aspects of our social worlds.

They don't have too many applications right now, I noticed one business application allowing you to podcast.

This gives me yet another social network profile to manage, but hey it all increases my presence.

Will keep poking around and see what it has to offer.

Usage of My Public Profile Information

Since everything with my public profile is accessible to the general public in some form, there should be a easy profile page get at my bio and display links to all my public information.

You should be able to see my photos, videos, comments, social networks, etc.

Of course the ones I want you to see.

You should be able to review my resume and work / project history. You should know if I am looking for work or not.

All of this without really speaking to me. However, you should be able to interact with me as well.

People should be able to come get my information from me.

If I am selling products or offering services you should see that. Come harvest my public events. Come gather demographics on me.

If you like a video I have you can license it right there and utilize it.

Social Networking Profile Aggregation

I have seen a lot of discussion about the use of multiple social networks and how difficult it is to maintain your profile across these networks.

I don't want a different profile at each of these networks. I want my one profile and these networks to come to me.

I don't want to have go through a lengthy sign up process. I want to be instantly evaluated upon arrival and either let in.....or what?

Every application should treat me like this. I don't have to fill out a form and check my email to validate an email before entering a retail store or restaurant on the street.

I am authenticated at the door for the public environment or there is a simple ID or visual check to make sure I am a valid user.