Small Business Brand Management on the Social Media Landscape Part 3
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.
UN Uses Social Media to Raise Awareness for Malaria
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 special Social Media Envoy is composed of well known figures from both the broadcast media and the social web. Those that have joined this group have pledged to do their part and to taking social action – like a Tweet or a Facebook post each month for the next year starting on the World Malaria Day which takes place on April 25.
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.
Using the power of social media in the fight against Malaria is a good move for the United Nations. The disease is something that everyone 
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.
There is a lot of money needed to be raised and there is a lot of work to be done for this cause. It would be better if the group would be able to go beyond the once a month social action that they have committed to. Malaria after all is not an easy battle to cope with.
The 2010 Social Media Envoys are the following:
- Derrick Ashong, Musician, Social Activist & Oprah Radio host
- Veronica Belmont, Host of “Tekzilla” and “Qore” and Internet Personality
- Mayor Cory Booker of Newark, New Jersey
- Sarah Brown, of MillionMums.org and wife of Gordon Brown, the UK Prime Minister
- Pete Cashmore, CEO and founder of Mashable (Mashable)
- Anderson Cooper, CNN Anchor of “Anderson Cooper 360?
- Dennis Crowley, Co-founder of Foursquare (Foursquare)
- Anil Dash, Director of Expert Labs and Partner at Activate
- Justine Ezarik, “iJustine”, Internet Personality
- Jack Gray, CNN Producer/Writer for “Anderson Cooper 360?
- Arianna Huffington, Co-founder and Editor-in-Chief of the Huffington Post; www.twitter.com/ariannahuff
- Guy Kawasaki, Co-founder of Alltop.com
- Larry King, CNN Host of “Larry King Live”
- Loic Le Meur, Founder and CEO of Seesmic (Seesmic)
- Alyssa Milano, Actress
- Dave Morin, Former Facebook executive- responsible for Facebook Connect and Platform
- Jeff Pulver, Founder of 140 Characters Conference (#140conf) and Co-founder of VoIP (Vonage)
- Kevin Rose, Founder of Digg (Digg)
- Chris Sacca, Founder of Lowercase Capital
- Ryan Seacrest, Founder, Ryan Seacrest Productions
- Biz Stone, Co-founder of Twitter (Twitter)
- Padmasree Warrior, CTO of Cisco
- Jon Wheatley, Co-founder of DailyBooth.com
- Randi Zuckerberg, Director of Marketing, Facebook
Facebook Give Lawsuit Threats to Daily Mail
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 article was written by Mark Williams-Thomas, a former police detective. His original title for the said article was “I Posed as a Girl of 14 on Facebook. What Followed Will Sicken You”. The writer talked about his experience when he posed as a minor on Facebook and how he was able to attract sexual predators immediately.
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:
“In an earlier version of this article, we wrongly stated that the criminologist had conducted an experiment into social networking sites by posing as a 14-year-old girl on Facebook with the result that he quickly attracted sexually motivated messages. In fact he had used a different social networking site for this exercise. We are happy to set the record straight.”
The article had caused a strong response from Facebook. According to the Guardian, a UK spokeswoman for Facebook said that the company was considering taking legal actions as the article has damaged its reputation. Aside from the erroneous reporting, Facebook do not accept members below 18 years old and has measures already in place to prevent that kind of behavior from taking place.
MySpace Reveals Future Plans
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.
Hirschhorn admitted that MySpace lacked focus and he and Jones were making plans to speed up the site and learn more about the business at the same time. They plan to do this by doing a re-imagination of the site from both a user’s perspective and in the development of new products. The social network has a new overarching goal which is the promotion of user discovery and self expression.
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.
Aside from instilling a new level of discipline in regards to the implementation process of user interface changes and new products, Hirsschorn made sure that MySpace will still always be about the “music that you love, the photos that you love, the video that you love, and the artistic stuff that goes on every day that says that you’re you. Those are the pillars of how we’re going to be building our product.”
When asked about how they are to deal with social network giants Twitter and Facebook as competitors, Jones says that there is ample space for numerous social sites these days. Cross networking is possible these days wherein Twitter and Facebook users can also work together their social online activities with MySpace.
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