In the last article I talked about the most important thing about your social media profile. I also talked about the actions your visitors will take once they land on your profile. If you missed it, make sure you read it here: Small Business Brand Management on the Social Media Landscape Part 2
So far, your image is nice and inviting. Someone sees your inviting image and decides to check you out further. They click and land on your profile page. This is where they’re going to get their first impression. They’ll see what you’ve said, some of the things you’ve done, your friends, but most importantly… they’ll read your bio.
Now that they have read your bio, you want them to take an action to get to know you better. Some will just follow you and keep an eye on you to see if they can trust you. Others will click the link you have in your profile to find out more.
It is that link and where it takes them that is golden.
The URL you have in your profile is what will make or break this social interaction. They are looking to trust you here. Don’t give them a reason not to like you. Remember, they are looking for a person here.
Where I recommend you take them is to a website where they can get more information about you. Let’s take a look at Rick again. His only website is his online store for his fishing reels. Sending someone to a sales page is a big “no-no” and most people look at it as you’re just trying to make money and don’t really “get” what social networking is all about.
If your site is an online store, you should have an “About” page, right? I’d suggest you create a specific page to send people from your social profiles. The page should be about the person they’re getting to know better. It should give them a reason to “friend” you. If this won’t work for you, then make sure you at least send them to the “about” page.
Once they see your site and they decide to “friend” you, they may take a look around your site to see what it’s all about. It may be of interest to them and you may have just gained a customer. The difference between this customer and a customer from the search engines is that some from a social environment is more inclined to buy, recommend, and may even become an evangelist.
The value of someone coming from a social site is far greater than anything else. It’s about relationships. Even though you may not ever meet, tweet, chat with or talk to that person, there is still a perceived relationship. Let me explain using Rick again:
I read a blog post on one of my favorite blogs. There are a lot of comments and I notice the comment from someone named RicksReels. I click on the nice smiling face, which takes me to their profile. I notice he is passionate about fishing, family, and fun. So I click the link he has there which takes me to a page on his website explaining more about him, why he’s so passionate, why he created his business, and how he teaches others to have fun fishing.
Since I’m on Twitter, I look for RicksReels there and Follow. I find him on Facebook and “friend” him.
Now through regular interaction on Facebook, Twitter, and other places, I notice someone talking about fishing. I join the conversation and tell them about RicksReels. It’s what we do everyday offline, so why not do it online too? If someone you meet is a caterer and you meet another person who is thinking of doing a big party, wouldn’t you mention them to each other?
This is the social value quotient. Because my recommendation has more clout than if my “friends” found Rick themselves, ROI is really a thing of the past. Trying to measure an interaction or an engagement is hard to do. I may tell my 20,000 “friends” about Rick, or I might just tell 1. That 1 person I tell may tell their 5,000 “friends”.
It’s not ROI, it’s ROE. There is a huge Return on Engagement. What that return is, can only be discovered if you don’t do it. They don’t call this Web 2.0 for nothing. The old, static websites are a thing of the past, or should be. It’s time to engage your customers or potential customers. If you do, your returns will be far greater. 
Brand Management is so important these days. If you want to succeed, you have to build relationships and increasing your social brand equity is the key. Every business and every person should have a presence on the social media landscape. In the next article, I’ll show you how.
The United Nation’s Special Envoy for Malaria will be announcing a special Social Media Envoy group that would be using the far reach and power of social media in order to help raise awareness for malaria control in Africa.
The group aims to motivate the social media audiences to support malaria control through tweets, posts and other social media actions that can inspire people to support this cause. The United Nation’s goal is to provide all endemic African countries to have malaria control through interventions by the end of 2010. They aim to work towards near zero deaths from malaria by the year 2015.
should be aware about and this should be controlled immediately. Malaria takes one million victims to their death each year and 90% of those deaths happen in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Reports from the Guardian and the Global Dashboard claim that Facebook threatened to sue Daily Mail. This is due to an article that wrongfully claimed that the social network giant makes it easier for older sex predators to seduce and approach minors.
The real issue was that the author was not using Facebook in his experiment and in truth was using a different social networking site. The article was updated at the bottom by the Daily Mail staff. The full text of the update goes this way:
MySpace has been quiet for a while in the social network world. Co-Presidents Mike Jones and Jason Hirschhorn are now working together and able to come up with a few future plans to improve the performance of the said social networking site.
According to Hirsschhorn, MySpace is now going to be “pillars of broadcasting, discovery, self-expression, and making content a part of all those experiences.” He shared that engineering, quality and usability would be used as their major focal points.
Tumblr is known to be one of the simplest blogging platforms around the World Wide Web and it has been doing a lot of progress. If you rate their effectiveness, you can see that Tumblr is rated between WordPress and Twitter.
The Tumblr team is doing their best to provide the best features as well. They have added the option to add static pages to your Tumblr blog recently and now there are also dead simple ways in order to directly upload videos in your blog.
Omniture’s products have gone through a lot of evolutions in the past years in order to help support not only Facebook application measurement but also Twitter analytics. The addition of the Facebook ad measurement tool was a good and logical move for the Adobe owned company.
For all iPhone owners out there it is now possible for you to add someone you just met right on the spot as a Facebook friend. All you need is a single bump with the use of the Bump iPhone app.
Now, the Bump iPhone app is being updated with the help of social media giant Facebook. All you have to do is link your Facebook account to Bump and if the person you want to swap information with does the same you can now initiate a friend request on the spot. After you have sent it, a prompt would appear on the other person’s iPhone and she or he can either accept or deny your request. It is as simple as that. This has got a lot of iPhone users talking.
from the online craze. If you need proof, the Dalai Lama has joined the social media giant recently this week.
Evan Williams, founder of Twitter, posted a message this week that he had just met the Dalai Lama in Los Angeles and had a talk with him about using Twitter. He said that the Dalai Lama used to laugh at the thought of using social media but now the Dalai Lama himself has his own official Twitter site set up by his office in India.
A twitter phishing attack has been going on lately and the attack aims to obtain twitter logins through direct messages. If you have received a message that says “lol is this you”, “lol is this me?” or “lol this is funny” with a link to a site called bzpharma you are advised not to click on the link and forget about curiosity.
Luckily, your account will not be compromised if you are merely receiving this message. However, if you find that your account is sending these messages then it is advised that you change your password as soon as possible.
If you get connected to your Facebook or Twitter account you can see comments that would be related to the topic that you are searching for as well either from your friends or from other public comments in the site. When you view a video clip on YouTube or when you look at a movie on Amazon.com then a Kikin bar will show up at the top of the page that can show you the recent searches for that item and feedback from Facebook, Twitter or other options. You do not have to worry about this bar since you can easily close it as well.
