Social Media 101 Linkedin Facebook Twitter

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Clarence Fitzgerald
5 years ago
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1 Social Media 101 We re in an era in which people want to be communicated with, not talked at. We ve already had to become schooled and comfortable with the Internet. Now we have social media primarily in the forms of Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin. These tools allow us to create content, connect with others, promote ourselves and our clients, share information and introduce ourselves and our clients as experts. Consider it an integral part of your visibility plan. You have decisions to make about how to use these tools. What are your goals? How frequently do you engage in the course of a day? What do you say? How personal do you want to get? How do you start? Why would anyone want to read it? Will this take over my life? Each application enables both similar and different opportunities for engagement. Linkedin is a professional networking tool and not really used in a social context. Facebook started out as social engagement but as more older people are signing up, it s gaining some networking cred, and now they ve launched competition to Linked in with BranchOut. Twitter is a complete mashup of opportunities. I have a variety of types of people and organizations I follow on Twitter. There are organizations for specific information: AccuWeather, Poynter for media info, local and national news orgs, food orgs. There are individual journalists like Amanda Hesser, Melissa Clark, Howard Kurtz, and David Pogue. And, there are a wealth of bloggers, media writers, tech folks, political folks and friends. 1 Many of these Twitter connections are also Facebook friends and Linkedin connections. They do overlap, both in terms of the people and the applications. You can run your Twitter feed on both Facebook and Linkedin, for example. For our purposes, we ll focus on Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin they re the most popular applications and we might as well start where the crowds are. As you dig in, you ll find other applications like the new Google+, BranchOut (via Facebook), FriendFeed, YouTube, Mixx, Stumbleupon, Digg, and others are worth checking out and integrating with the other three. And, there may be some specialized social media applications that apply to your particular interests or profession. And, all of these can and should be integrated with your blog and/or website. You should list your primary applications in your signature, on your blog and website, and, of course, your business cards and other materials. The bottom line is that we have the big job of introducing ourselves to potential clients and engaging them so that we can learn more about each other and make valuable connections. Social media is very effective in achieving that. Prepared by Caron Golden caron@goldenwriting.com Follow me on Connect on Facebook and Linkedin 2013 by Caron Golden

2 Twitter ( 7 Stages of Twitter: curious, confused, illuminated, enslaved, nauseated, strategic, twiumphant. Amanda Hesser, The New York Times What is Twitter: According to the official Twitter FAQ: "Twitter is a community of friends and strangers from around the world sending updates about moments in their lives. Friends near or far can use Twitter to remain somewhat close while far away. Curious people can make friends. Bloggers can use it as a mini-blogging tool. Developers can use the API to make Twitter tools of their own. Possibilities are endless!" For our purposes, Twitter can function as a way to gather information, network, promote our work and that of clients, display our expertise, get and disseminate news and meet colleagues. The basics: Twitter allows you to write a message of 140 characters or less. That requires compressing thoughts into tight messages. These messages, also referred to as tweets, go out on a general timeline and to specific people or organizations that follow you. You can reply publicly to someone s message and they can do the same to yours. If you follow one another you can communicate privately via direct messages no one else can see. You can also pass along to your followers a message you find interesting or worth distributing to a larger audience. In turn, you receive messages from those you follow. You can also include URLs of web sites you want to share, including your own stories online. You can upload photos and video for viewing. You can participate in a conversation on a particular topic or event. Your Twitter messages, or tweets can be fed into your Facebook, FriendFeed, and Linkedin accounts through applications found on the sites. I Need a Handle and an Avatar?: Your handle is your Twitter name. It follows sign, as Make it something easy to for others to recognize and remember. An avatar can be your head shot, an illustration, or photo. Pick something that is distinctive and remember that your handle and your avatar are ways in which you are branding yourself. And do complete the profile and put up an interesting wall shot for your Twitter page. You want people to be able to learn about you and what you do. Should I Protect My Updates? : No. You ll see a lock that indicates that. But, it s considered bad form. If you are concerned about someone who is following you that it s a spammer or porn site or something else that s troubling you can block them from following you. Who Do I Follow and How Do I Find Them?: You can follow friends and colleagues for starters, as well as news organizations, political groups, celebrities, destinations, restaurants. I ve found that the best way to get started is to do a Twitter search of people you already know are on Twitter and click to 2

3 follow them. Take a look at who they re following and if you find some interesting people or organizations, follow them. As you start to follow them, see who they re interacting with and follow them if they re appealing. You ll soon develop a large network. You can also do Twitter searches of areas of interest to see what pops up: San Diego politics, gardening, American Idol, sustainability. You ll find all sorts of potentially interesting folks to follow. How Do I Get Followers?: 1. Follow others; most will likely follow you back. 2. Post interesting tweets. Interact with others. 3. Make sure that you include your Twitter handle on your signature, your business cards, on your Facebook and Linkedin profiles and anywhere else you leave a trail. 4. Observe #followfriday. A tradition has developed in which on Fridays people make suggestions of others to follow. My experience has been that the more generous you are with this ( showing Twitter love, the more people reciprocate and then their followers will become aware of you and follow you. How does it work? You send out a tweet that looks something like this: For great @LDGourmet #followfriday Interaction: There has to be a balance between using Twitter to broadcast achievements and promote yourself and getting personal. If all you do is make announcements, you re basically spamming people and they ll drop you. Twitter and all social media is about engagement. You don t have to get too personal but you do need to give good Twitter, be friendly and interested in others, offer information, ask questions and let people get to know you as you would even in a professional setting. I have a 70/30 rule 70 percent of the time, more or less, I engage with others both personally and professionally. Ask questions (great for market research!), put out info you find on websites. Just create great content. The balance can be used to promote yourself/your client s activities, achievements, news, media appearances, etc. And, by the way, you can set up more than one Twitter account if you really want to distinguish between different roles you have in your work life or if you want to engage in a strictly personal way apart from your profession. Reply: Hopefully, you ll develop a large selection of people and organizations to follow. As you read messages you may want to comment on them, offer an opinion, ask a question. You can reply to someone even if they are not following you. In fact, it may spur them to follow you. But the point is you can and should engage with others. DM: Direct Message this allows you to communicate privately with someone. However, you can only exchange DMs if you are following each another. Format: D user Retweet: Share a message/tweet you think is worthwhile with others. And you can use this to resend a tweet you sent out earlier. Always give credit to the original sender. And, if you want to be 3

4 retweeted, keep your tweets shorter than 140 to make it easier for others. Shortening URLs: Given the 140- character limit, this is handy. I prefer bit.ly because you can also track how many people clicked on the site. Hashtags (#): Hashtags followed by a word or phrase representing a topic can be used to place your tweet in Twitter s topic feed. You can click on these in other tweets, which will take you to a page where they are collected. These are also used for real-time events, meaning you can watch the Super Bowl or Academy Awards or election returns and participate in running commentary with others. Feel free to create your own! Third-party Twitter applications: There are a variety of apps for both desktop and mobile. You might want to have a desktop application running Twitter as opposed to using the website so you can have it running in the background and alerting you of new tweets as they arrive. They also work in real time so you don t have to refresh the page, as you do on the website. You can find many apps on and the Twitter fan wiki (twitter.pbworks.com/apps). Some I recommend are TweetDeck (see below), HootSuite ( FutureTweets ( and Seesmic Desktop ( TweetDeck ( My preferred app. I like TweetDeck because it offers multiple columns: All Friends, Replies, and Direct Messages, and you can add columns based on the types of people/organizations you follow to help you more easily find what you re looking for. It also easily allows you to send replies, DMs, retweet and other actions by running your cursor over the avatar. You can run a search from TweetDeck as well (including on yourself) and it will create a separate column for that. It also allows you to send your messages to your Facebook account and manage multiple accounts. All in all, it s a very versatile application. And, it s customizable in terms of colors as well. (You ll probably want to consider turning off the actual tweet sound since it can be annoying.) Twitpic ( This is a photo sharing application that allows you to upload photos from your computer or phone and automatically sends them to your Twitter account with your accompanying tweet. (FYI, if you use TweetDeck, photos on Twitpic will appear as a pop-up on TweetDeck when you click on the link on someone s message or tweet. ) Mobile Twitter: If you have SMS capability on your cell phone, Twitter has an application that allows you both to receive tweets from people you follow and to post tweets. To connect your mobile phone to Twitter, go to your twitter.com page and click on Settings, then Devices, and then follow the instructions. Once you re linked, you can individually select those whom you want on your mobile Twitter stream by going to your twitter.com page, clicking on following and then selecting on for device updates. If you have an iphone or Blackberry, the choices for Twitter applications are more 4

5 sophisticated. You can find them online or ask others what they use. While you may not want to constantly tweet from a cell phone, it can be useful in an emergency (think fires, earthquakes or traffic accidents), while you re traveling or if you re at an event and want to fill people in on what s going on as it s happening. These latter ones can be great fun to receive, especially if they re cleverly written. Facebook ( Facebook, of course, started out as an application for college students but has now been embraced by people of all ages for personal and business use. There s no reason you can t use Facebook for both personal and business purposes, especially now with BranchOut. The key is discretion, which you would want to use in any case. The basics: The first thing you want to do is to complete the info page as thoroughly as possible, including a photo, basic information, contact information and education and work. I leave the personal information section for you to work out. Also check out the Settings section and complete the various privacy, account and applications settings. Remember you can always change these as you better understand how this works. Friends: This is the heart and soul of FB. You ll want to invite people to friend you and others will no doubt reach out to you. On your homepage, on the right hand column, Facebook does have a teaser with Suggestions of people you may know. You may find friends that way, in which case, you click on their name or avatar and invite them to be a friend. You can also use the search function to find people you know and check your friends lists of friends to identify people to connect with. You ll probably also receive invitations from people to become a Facebook friend. You have the choice of accepting or ignoring the invitation. Once you are connected as friends, you can check out each others profiles, comment on notes you place on your walls and exchange direct notes. There are a lot of interesting but also often strange and/or silly applications associated with Facebook, with people sending invitations to do everything from virtually fling drinks to join a fan page. It s your choice to decide how you want to participate. What s on Your Mind? This is the space at the top of the page that allows you to write a message to share with your Friends. But once you click in the space, you ll find it expands to allow you to add a link, photos or video. That means you could add a link to an interesting story You can add a photo or video of an event you ve catered or attended. Comment and Share: You don t have to post an original message all the time. One way to connect with others is to comment on their messages, photos, links and videos. Or you can click on Share to share them with your friends. 5

6 Blogs: If you have a blog, you can upload it to Facebook and endeavor to draw people to it and become fans. You can do this by creating a page. Click on Ads and Pages, then Pages and Create Page and follow the directions. Groups: Start or join groups and then be sure to participate otherwise you re just creating a list. Fan Pages: This is an opportunity to build a fan base around a business or other organization, or, perhaps, a blog or website. You can announce events, publish press releases, post photos and videos, operate contests, etc. They have functions that are a little different from personal pages and some organizations have opted just to create a personal page for their business. If you do create a fan page, it should be robust with content so people will want to become fans and return to your page to learn about what s new. You can create contests, run video, add YouTube links or other applications to make it compelling. To create a new fan page, go to hp. BranchOut: As of this writing, this application on Facebook just launched. It is a subset of Facebook that is geared to professional relationships and networking a la Linkedin, but using your friend connections to get your network started. It also has the potential to show potential jobs and provide endorsement opportunities. It s so new I can t say how useful it is yet. Linkedin ( Linkedin is almost pure play professional networking and as such, allows you to go ahead and brag on yourself or your clients as much as you like. The basics: Focus on fully completing your profile. People who come to your page will learn everything about your career here so make it count. Build Your Network with Connections: One of the benefits of having a complete profile is that it helps the back end of Linkedin come up with potential connections for you. The more connections you have, the larger your network. And a large network gives you more visibility and more ways to promote your business or clients. It s uncanny how that works. Send invitations to people you know to start creating your network. Once you have some connections, look at theirs to see if anyone you know surfaces and then invite them. You can also have Linkedin search your address book to see if anyone there is already on Linkedin and someone you would want to invite. And, of course, you can use Linkedin search to find people to connect to, using specific names or using search terms. What are you working on now?: This is a little space that you can update as frequently as you like to promote the acquisition of a new client or project, ask a question, announce a personal appearance on a radio or TV show, etc. They will appear in your connections home page under Status Updates and be under your photo on your home page. 6

7 Recommendations: You want to get great recommendations from current and former colleagues or clients and it s just good karma (and smart business) to give them. These will show up on your profile page. Don t be shy about asking people for them, so long as you do have a positive relationship with them. And, if someone asks you for a recommendation and you re not sure of what to say, just ask the person what he or she is looking for. them, then follow the directions for uploading the application. Groups: There are endless numbers of groups to join, with some very general and others more directed to specific fields and professions or areas of interest. You can search for groups in the Linkedin search engine by topic, geography, even your alma mater or former employers. You might also see interesting groups that your connections belong to. You can start your own. The key with groups that you join is that to be beneficial you have to participate. Introduce yourself, ask questions, answer questions, add a news story, announce an achievement if it s appropriate. You ll find that people will respond and it will help promote your client. Applications: Linkedin has recently launched a number of applications that you can upload that allow you to automatically feed your blog posts to your profile (Blog Link or WordPress) or upload your Twitter feed (Company Buzz). There are about 10 new applications on the site so far that also enable file sharing, slide show presentations and other networking capabilities. Just click on Applications on your Linkedin Page to be directed to 7

How to Set-Up a Basic Twitter Page

How to Set-Up a Basic Twitter Page 1. Go to http://twitter.com and find the sign up box, or go directly to https://twitter.com/signup 1 2. Enter your full name, email address, and a password 3. Click Sign