An excellent book for those looking to get started in social media, gain a better understanding of it, or understand why it is important. The examples that Kerpen gives are spot on as to the value that lies in the new, but oh so old, form of interaction.
At its base, social media is not much different than all the communication that we have all been doing for years; that the human race and consumers have been doing forever. What is different about it is the immediacy, the permanence, and the reach. Kerpen illustrates this very well with examples of how social media has been used to help companies and causes, or ignored to the peril of those on the wrong end.
As one saying goes about social media, “your customers are already talking about you, don’t you want to be part of that conversation?” Likeable Social Media helps you to understand how to be part of that conversation without being a pushy salesperson or an overpowering know-it-all. You want to be liked. You want to be the person that others gather around at the cocktail party instead of the one they all avoid.
You don’t have to read this book cover to cover, in fact your don’t even have to read the chapters in order. In that way it is a great desk or bedside reference to just pick up from time to time to get a quick bit of inspiration.
If social media bewilders you at all, this book is highly recommended.
I had all but forgotten about this great video until I saw it again today. I was at the College of Charleston taking part in a presentation on Social Media with Dr. Bing Pan. He is well respected in the field and in Hospitality & Tourism Management, and it was on honor to be on stage with him. Anyway, he started the presentation out with this video, and I was immediately reminded of how good it is and how hard hitting some of the facts are. To that end, I thought I would post it here for your enjoyment.
For more from the people who made this, just check out SocialNomics.
Twitter is great. I love it. It is fun, it is informative, and it can get out of control fast. If you are using this great social media party-line, then sooner or later you will start to wonder how to gain control of what is going on there. While there are lots of excellent applications for actually using Twitter from your desktop, such Twhirl and TweetDeek which are Adobe Air cross-platform applications, what I am looking at here are three web-based tools that will help you actually manage your friends and followers.
The first tool we come to is actually called “Friend of Follow”. This site will show you a simple but visually appealing tabbed overview of those people who you are following but who are not following you back, those who are following you but that you don’t follow, and those that are both followed and following. While the display is nice, and by mousing over each user you can get some basic information, Friend or Follow doesn’t really provide enough information for my to find it to useful for most uses. What I do find useful sometimes is that I can put the people listed in order by location or number of followers. This is perfect for when I want to know if there are people local to my area I’m not following.
Next up is “MyCleener”. Ever wondering which of your friends are deadbeats? Or which of your friends just isn’t keeping up? MyCleener will pull the list of people you are following and then put then in order by the last time they tweeted. I was actually surprised to find out that one of the people I was following hadn’t tweeted in over a year. While technically there is nothing wrong with following someone who doesn’t tweet often, it does inflate your following to followers ratio. And many people, myself included, use that ration as a kind of rule of thumb to your legitimacy. Continue Reading »
I seek to empower people by making technology a vehicle for driving businesses and communities. Just as you drive a car without worrying about how the engine operates, I will take care of your information systems as a data mechanic. This lets you drive the technology, instead of it driving you. I provide social media, web development and PC and Macintosh support services for small businesses and not-for-profits in Charleston and the surrounding South Carolina Lowcountry.
Likeable Social Media: How to Delight Your Customers, Create an Irresistible Brand, and Be Generally Amazing on Facebook (& Other Social Networks)
The first tool we come to is actually called “
