I like jewelry. I’m not a big fan of diamonds and gem stones but I love Venetian glass jewelry. Kind of like the dahlias I grow in my garden, Venetian beads come in an amazing array of colors and complexities. Each bead is its own little world you can get lost in. That’s why when an ad for Marco Polo Designs*, popped up in Facebook, I checked out their page and became a Fan. For those of you not well versed in Facebook, this means I clicked on the “Like” button on their Facebook Fan page. Now their updates show up on my Facebook home page.

MPD’s Facebook updates have largely consisted of promos for a series of contests where you can win a piece of jewelry. Cool! I’d love to win a piece of their beautiful jewelry so I was ready to enter the contest. Keep in mind, I rarely enter contests. I closely guard my privacy online and it’s more important to me to stay off of mailing lists than get free stuff but this sounded good. All I had to do to enter the contest was…

1. Have a profile as a person not a business…  Check
2. Be a Fan… Check
3. Friend Marco Polo Designs… Whaaaat?

Problem #1: Understand the Privacy Difference Between Friend & Fan

You’re probably wondering what the big deal is about “Friending” MPD in order to enter the contest. The issue comes down to privacy. Depending on how you format your privacy settings, you give Friends access to a lot more information about you than you do the owners of pages you Like. For example, Friends typically have access to your Friend list, your birth date and other sensitive information that could be used to steal your identity. But when you “Like” a page, the owner of that page only has access to information you make available to anyone on Facebook. Long story short, owners of Fan pages have a lot less access to your information than your Friends do.

I take my online privacy very seriously. So I only Friend people on Facebook I am friends with in real life. I doubt the owners of MPD understood what they were asking when they required contest entrants to Friend their business which is why I did the following.

Problem #2: How NOT to Handle Customer Inquiries

I really wanted to enter this contest so I posted a question on MPD’s Wall asking, “Why do you require people to Friend your business in order to enter the contest?” Here’s the reply I got.

“Hello, Eldge! As a business, Marco Polo Designs has a studio in Portland, Oregon, over 100 retail and gallery outlets, and a solid website.  We’ve recently begun to establish our presence in the social networking arena. The giveaway sweeps is our fun and friendly way of building a friend and fan base of folks who might have an interest in our beautiful designs. We have been so excited to put our creations into the hands of our sweepstakes winners! A camera can only do so much … the play of light through our beads is constantly changing – colors morph, sparkle  and play before the eyes but not through the lens! It is our pleasure to put “live” jewels into the hands of people who have an interest and desire to truly appreciate them! We hope that you’ll consider joining us. With warm regards ~ Penny and Claude”

I don’t really care that MPD misspelled my name. That happens all the time. But, they didn’t even answer my question! To make matters worse, when I went back to ask for clarification, MPD had deleted my question from their Wall! Maybe the didn’t realize the automated email I got from Facebook with their reply included a link to reply back. So, when I clicked on the reply link, it took me to a post that no longer existed. A post that I’d created and had obviously been deleted by someone else!

I can only guess MPD deleted my Wall post because they didn’t want other people to see my question. Part of why I draw this conclusion is because prior to writing this blog post, I searched out the rules for the contest and the rules have changed. MPD no longer requires people to Friend them. That’s a smart decision.  Having more Friends won’t help them sell jewelry. Having more Fans won’t help them sell jewelry. Promoting a quality product to interested buyers will help them sell more jewelry.

Personally, I’m a lifelong fan of learning from other people’s mistakes. I hope you are too and will keep the following lessons in mind in you adventures on Facebook. I can only infer what the owners of MPD were thinking but I think they did 3 things wrong.

Lessons to Learn from MPD’s Mistakes:

1. Friends + Fans DON’T = Sales. – I’m pretty sure the owners of MPD were just trying to run up their numbers. They figured “The more Friends and Fans we have, the better we’re doing!” Wrong.
Your lesson: Making money via social networking is not about how many Friends and Fans you have. Making money via social networking is about the quality of your Friends and Fans. 100 rabid Fans will lead to more sales than 5000 disengaged Friends.

2. Treat Fans as People. Because they are! – Instead of answering my question, Marco Polo Designs sent me PR copy. That’s annoying.
Your lesson: When you do social networking, you connect with real people not anonymous masses. Handle inquires as if you are talking to A PERSON because you are.

3. Feedback Is an Opportunity. – Instead of taking the opportunity to send Fans an update about how their contest rules have changed, Marco Polo Designs swept my question under the carpet, changed their rules and acted like it never happened.
Your lesson: There’s an old marketing axiom, “Turn liabilities into features.” I know it sounds cynical but it’s more helpful than you think. With a little re-framing What MPD could have done, was change their rules and tell people that the rules just got easier. Then they could have responded to my question thanking me for pointing out this problem and describing what they did based on my feedback.

*In this post, I will refer to Mar Polo Designs as MPD so this post does not show up in search results for their business name. I don’t want to negatively impact their business. They seem like nice people and I’m still a Fan.

But the September 7th New York Times Sunday Magazine had an interesting article by Clive Davis titled “I’m So Totally, Digitally Close to You: How News Feed, Twitter and Other Forms of Incessant Online Contact Have Created a Brave New World of Intimacy” that helped me understand that maybe there are benefits to this level of contact. While any individual communication via Facebook, Twitter or news feed appears to be insignificant, in aggregate they create an “ambient awareness” which is similar to being in physical proximity to someone and picking up on what’s going on with them by their physical cues. This awareness makes us feel like we are close to people with out actually communicating with them one on one. The common reaction to this faux-connection is one of horror and lament about the decline of western civilization but it’s not all bad.

The author describes a phenomenon called the “Dunbar number” in which research has confirmed that human groupings tend to tail off at about 150 people. These social websites and apps don’t necessarily help increase our number of close connections but they do help expand and stay connected to our larger informal network. This has real benefits for anyone trying to network professionally.

If you’re going to use these social tools for professional networking, I wouldn’t recommend you update people on what you had for lunch. But I would recommend that you use them to share information and resources you think might help your network in their business. When done properly, it’s a fairly easy way to stay in front of people and build the perception of expertise. For example, I follow Robin Good on Twitter and he “tweets” several times a day with links to interesting web applications. Sometimes I feel like he tweets too much but unlike email they’re pretty easy to ignore so I’m less likely to unsubscribe from his feed.

If you’ve wondered what the appeal of these social technologies is, I suggest you read this article. It does a good job of describing how they work and why anyone would spend their precious time using them.

Now that’s using social networking to make change!

Jeff Fisher who is a graphic designer, author and speaker was on the panel too. He fielded several questions about how he’s very successfully used social networking to promote his latest book “Identity Crisis: 50 Redesigns That Transformed Stale Identities into Successful Brands“.

Jeff blogged about which social networks he uses and the results he’s gotten from each on his bLogo-Motives blog. If you’re looking to promote a book with social networking, it’s an excellent example of how to do it. Jeff also maintains a blog specific to the book. Check out the Identity Crisis blog to see how he’s using a blog to promote his book as well.

Social Networking is very much like face to face networking. The primary goal is to connect with other people (old classmates, new friends, love interests, potential clients and sub-contractors) for similar purposes and start conversations that can lead to specific outcomes.

Social Media is about content: articles, news, videos, absurd stories, jokes. It’s about using the wisdom of crowds to find interesting stuff on the internet and bringing it to other people’s attention. Social media websites enable users to decide what’s important on the internet by voting on it, sharing it and commenting on it.

The reason why the two terms get used interchangeably is because social networking and social media are increasing found in the same places. (Biznik is an excellent example!)
- Things social networking and social media have in common:
- Designed to create a dialogue
- You need an online profile to participate
- There is an element of trust (which differentiates it from the general internet)
- Typically gather around a particular topic, area of interest or purpose

Why Do I Need to Care About the Difference?

If you want social networking or social media to work, you need to consider the purposes for each and how they fit into your overall eMarketing strategy.

Connecting vs. Sharing – Social networking is about meeting people while social media is about sharing what you know with the hope it will be helpful.

Proactive vs. Passive – While with social networking it’s generally okay to be proactive about seeking out introductions, it’s not okay to be proactive about seeking votes for your social media content. (Yeah. People do it but if you get caught, you will have to dig yourself out of a public relations nightmare.)

Meeting People vs. Getting Links – Social networking is about making human links while social media is about getting website links.

Hopefully, knowing the difference between social networking and social media will help you decide which combination of the two will work best for your business. Please! Let me know fi you have any questions!

For a brief moment I thought I’d discovered “Twitter Spam” so I decided to Google Twitter spam and realized someone (or many people) had already discovered it, named it and created a website around it. I’m not kidding. Check out www.TwitterSpam.com.

Every directory and social networking site wants slightly different stuff so it’s hard to say “This is exactly what you need.” But if you have the basics, you can edit or add as needed. The following is a list of information you will most likely be asked to add to your profile (assuming your profile is mainly for business purposes).

Components of a Social Networking Profile:

• Screen name – Base it on your name or business name. “Cutesy” screen names make you look unprofessional.
• Job title
• Company
• Website URL
• Blog URL
• Tagline
• Email address – Use a professional email address not your personal email address. If you have a website, have your webmaster set up an email addresses at your domain name. It looks a lot more professional than a Yahoo or Comcast email address.
• Thumbnail picture (aka Avatar) – Get a good headshot! Don’t have your kid or spouse line you up against the wall and take a photo. It’s unprofessional and can be downright scary. You don’t have to spend a fortune on professional pictures. I recommend going to a high school portrait photographer and asking them for a CD of the pictures.
• Summary or Bio of different lengths – It is crucial that your summary or bio be well written. Don’t just throw it together on the fly! Spend some time working on it or get help with it. Tailor it to the audience of the specific social networking site.
• Key words and phrases that describe your products or services. These are words your target markets would use to find you so be careful about using industry specific jargon.

Information you might need or want to include:

• Education and job history – If you’re in a field where these types of credentials are important and you don’t mind disclosing them, go ahead but be mindful of how much information you’re giving out.
• Recommendations or Testimonials – You do have these, right? Well put them on your profile! Show people this isn’t your first day on the job.
• Interests or Hobbies – Remember; people are looking for information about who you are. Adding pertinent interests and hobbies can make you memorable.
• Groups and Associations – Listing these adds to your credibility. If you have access to the group or association logo, add it if possible.

Social Networking Resources:

A short video with an overview of social networking. (CommonCraft who produced this video also has other helpful overview videos on blogging, wikis and RSS.):
http://www.commoncraft.com/video-social-networking
(Or see it on YouTube) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6a_KF7TYKVc

An in depth history of online social networking that includes links to the major players:
http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2007/08/digging_deeperyour_guide_to_so_1.html

Social Networking Blog where you can learn about latest developments and new tools.
http://www.socialnetworking-weblog.com/

Search engines specifically for finding social networks:
http://www.digfoot.com/
http://www.findasocialnetwork.com/search.php

List of Social Networking Sites organized by category (i.e. books, business, family)
http://mashable.com/2007/10/23/social-networking-god/

A good list of Social Networking Aggregators. (Yeah. There are so many of them you need to worry about putting them all in one place.):
http://mashable.com/2007/07/17/social-network-aggregators/

The Blogger’s Guide to SEO – I don’t agree with everything they say in this guide (sucha s telling you not to use a service like Blogger) but it does give you good info for how to think of your blog from an SEO perspective.

SEO Digger – With this SEO tool you can find out for which keywords your site ranks high enough to be in Google Top 20. You can analyze your own sites as well as sites of your competition. The only problem is that you can’t tell it which key words to search for.

Tips for Using Digg – I’m doing reserach for an article on social media and came across this video on SEOmoz. I had to watch it several times to understand the points Matt makes but it’s worth the effort.