IWS » Social Media

Quora Can Make You an Expert

Aaron — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 16:32:04 +0000

What is Quora? Funny you should ask.

Quora is a social question and answer service where users ask questions and receive answers from other users.

I know what you’re thinking:

How is this different than Yahoo! Answers?
How is this relevant?

Quora is different from Yahoo! Answers because of the identity associated with the profiles. Most Quora accounts are already linked to an existing Facebook or Twitter account, providing more identity than a Yahoo profile.

Users also must establish their expertise in a given field. For example, if I go in and answer a specific social media question, I would put that I am a Social Media and Content Producer for IWS. This way, when someone sees my answer, they know the level of expertise that I have in the field.

The best answers are voted up by the users, and are displayed as such:

Quora was co-founded by former Facebook employees who were successful in initially recruiting big names to answer questions. These big names, such as the head of AOL answering an AOL-specific question, gave early credibility to the site.

How is Quora relevant to your business? It is a medium in which you can display your expertise.

If you work in the T-Shirt printing industry and notice someone has a question about T-shirt printing on Quora, it might be a good idea to answer it and increase the exposure of your business.

Quora allows users to create a topic that anyone can follow. When following, questions and answers related to the topic appear in the user’s home page feed, much like other social networks. Your response to the question about T-shirt printing not only helps the asker, but it will also show up in the feeds of anyone following the topic. It’s social variability, just with questions instead of “likes” or “fans.”

Have any more questions about Quora? Go to the site and ask!

Facebook Timelines Now Live for Everyone

David Haase — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 22:15:34 +0000

Things YOU need to do now that Facebook Timelines is live:

Pay attention. You have seven days to review your timeline, but it’s going live on Dec. 22 whether you have reviewed it or not! So, pay attention.
Become a revisionist. It’s your life; that means it’s your story. Revise it to tell the story you want … which for most people will involve removing at least one photo.
Check your privacy settings. You don’t have to let anyone see anything you don’t want them to see, and that includes your Timeline. (See ‘It’s your life’ above.)
While you’re in your privacy settings, clean out those old apps. You know, the ones you said could retrieve all your data and then you forgot that you even allowed them at it. Apps are easy to remove. We recommend that you do a little housecleaning.

Google+ Finally Causing a ‘Ripple’?

Aaron — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 16:47:31 +0000

Google+ ran into a brick wall at the outset, being compared to Facebook.

It was competing with Facebook for the same market, or a very similar market. Both firms have impressive pedigrees, which led to numerous stories about how Google+ could be the next Facebook or a “Facebook killer.”

When such expectations are piled on anything, disappointment is usually the only realistic outcome. After a fast start, Google+ has slowed down, and many people have moved on to finding the next “Facebook killer.”

One area where Google+ has Facebook beat, however, is the graphical display of its pages and profile’s metrics. Note: I’m not saying the Google+ metrics are better. I’m saying their graphic display is better.

This is true because of a service called Ripples, which lets you see in a very nifty way everyone who publicly shared your post.

You can access Ripples from any Google+post by clicking the drop down arrow and choosing “View Ripples.”

From there are you treated to an impressive graphical display:

You can zoom in:

And actually see what was said by the person who shared your post:

Only public shares can be tracked, which saves Google+ from a major breach of privacy but also restricts you from seeing all shares of your content.

Ripples is a cool feature for Google+, but is it actually worthwhile? Personally, I think it’s a really cool toy but not much more. In the end we don’t need a really cool way to see who shared our posts, we just need to know if our posts were shared, +1′d, liked, re-tweeted, whatever. Unless you can afford to employ somebody to sift through the share and see who is saying what about your posts, I don’t see a practical application.

Another Facebook Metrics Change

Aaron — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 22:26:55 +0000

Another day, another Facebook change

Previously, when looking at post-by-post Facebook metrics on your page, you would see “impressions” and a “feedback” percentage. This has now been changed to “people reached” and “people talking about this.”

What does this mean? The old way was both comforting — it was nice to see a post with thousands of impressions — and bleak — feedback measured in fractions of a percentage point never felt that successful.

The new metrics show the number of unique people who saw the post (one way or another) and the total number of people talking about it, which appears to be the sum of likes, comments and shares.

Is this better or worse than the old metrics? Personally, I think it makes more sense but also tells us what we already knew – just how hard it is to create useful content that fans will share.

Our First Take on Google+ for Business

Aaron — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 21:21:33 +0000

Today is an exciting day in the world of social media: Google+ officially launched Pages for Businesses. I went about trying to set up IWS’s Google+ page today and it was a learning experience.

First, I had trouble with our logo. Apparently there are some image restrictions with Google+ pages pictures. While these exist in Facebook as well, there didn’t seem to be a good auto-resize feature yet. I had to crop out “IWS” from our picture, even though I tried to make it smaller and smaller.

Once I got past the profile picture, the rest of the set up went smoothly. I ported over some pictures, info and status updates from Facebook and our infant page was ready to start crawling:

Two features that I liked right off the bat:

I like how a map of IWS’ location is displayed right under the profile picture; this should be a boost for some businesses. I wish there was an option to add more than one location; our poor DC office is left out of the Google Maps fun!
I like the initial circle options for pages. The ability to separate employees, customers, VIPS and other companies you may be following (or any other circle you want to create) has the potential to make the categorization of social information easier than it ever could be on Facebook.

Finally, it took me a while to figure out how to move between my profile and the IWS page. Much like Facebook, you need a profile to create a page. Unfortunately, at this point, it looks like only a single profile can admin a page. This will have to change if Google+ truly wants to compete with Facebook.

In the meantime, if you are having trouble figuring out how to switch between pages, look no further than right next to your profile picture:

We’re not ready to swap Google+ for Facebook, but we’ll be watching. What are your plans for G+?

Tell Your Story with Storify

Aaron — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 21:27:23 +0000

Today’s media culture demands real-time information. If we want instant news about an event, social networking is fast becoming the #1 option. Sure, the quality of sources (and grammar) can be inconsistent, but it is the best way to get fast information.

The main problem: It becomes tedious to sift through the thousands of tweets, Facebook posts and other social media updates that make up a breaking story. Even if you do, it’s hard to find an efficient way to aggregate that information. This is where Storify (no, not the music-service Spotify) comes in handy.

Storify allows you to create a collage of social media updates centered on a specific topic. Users can search various social networks based on search terms, and drag and drop updates into their timelines. These updates contain embedded media and links, including links to the profiles that posted the updates. Storify is a sort of a command center of real-time information relating to a particular event.

One of the more famous uses of Storify came during the tragic shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. Andy Carvin, of NPR, used Storify to keep track of all the relevant social media updates pertaining to the shootings. Reading through the timeline he created allows one to relive the events as they happened, with information coming from ordinary people.

How can you use this? Storify could offer a unique way to display the social media coverage of a specific event. Have a grand opening of a store? Is there a one-night-only show at your venue? Want to track response to a debate? Storify offers an easy way to track social media updates of a variety of events. It just might be worth your time.

Big numbers vs. engagement: Which is better?

Aaron — Sat, 20 Aug 2011 19:40:30 +0000

Google+ is growing like gangbusters, but SEOptimise says that growth in users doesn’t equal growth in engagement.

Users vs. engagement- — it’s a battle that not only exists in social networks, but in every social media presence. There is a fine line between user base and engagement base.

For example, if my brand creates a Twitter presence, is it better to organically grow a following or try to “buy” followers? If I organically grow a following, I might have a hundred or so engaged followers that are interested in my brand. If I buy a following, I might get 1,000 followers that aren’t as active.

What’s better: the smaller, engaged following or the larger, less engaged following? While it looks good to have thousands of Twitter followers, most will tell you its not about how many followers you have but what type of followers you have.

Confusing? That’s because the line is theoretical. It’s different for each brand, and it is up to the brand manager to figure out where it is.

Of course, the goal always needs to be to get every user engaged.

How to Use Google+

Aaron — Wed, 03 Aug 2011 15:45:52 +0000

We’ve been arguing among ourselves about whether, and how, we should be using Google+. Who do you add? Who do you leave off? How do you make time for yet another huge social media platform?

We know we are not alone. Every social network user faces the same problems.

So here’s my take on it.

LinkedIn is the easiest; in fact, it shouldn’t even be in the discussion. You add anyone you want to connect with professionally. The only information I, or most people, ever share on LinkedIn is professional in nature. Twitter is a bit different; acceptable to add people you’ve never met, as it is people you actually know.

Facebook is the big debate. Personally, I have no idea what to do on Facebook anymore. I am constantly wondering how to manage my friends, acquaintances and colleagues on Facebook. I first joined Facebook in 2004, when it was restricted to college students. I loved the service because I could keep tabs on my entire social circle. Facebook still serves this function today, but it has become incredibly hard to categorize your social circle. I don’t want my co-workers seeing conversations I am having with my family. I don’t need my mom having intimate knowledge of what I did on my Saturday night.

Google+ is an accelerated social network. It started in the mainstream, which means that there are already a wide variety of people to connect with – not just one small niche. Who do we add?

My opinion: Add everyone! Google+’s circles feature makes the sharing of information easy. Google+, unlike other social networks, is built around controlling your flow of information. Circles allow your Google+ stream to display different content from different people, as well as control who sees your status updates. Have a photo from your late night last night that you don’t want family or professional contacts seeing? Make sure you only share it with the circle that contains your friends. Have a link that you want to share with those in your professional network but know your friends won’t care about? There is a circle for that too, and for any group of people you want. It’s the fantastic merger between your public and private personalities online.

Add everyone! That’s what Google+ is built for.

What Is Badoo?

David Haase — Mon, 01 Aug 2011 16:37:25 +0000

Every so often we like to step out of character and try something new and different.

So let us introduce you to Badoo. Bad what? If you live in the United States, chances are you haven’t heard of Badoo.

It’s a social network without much presence in the greater 48, but in Latin American and European countries like Italy, Spain and France, Badoo is a big deal.

120 million members
Adding 300,000 users a day
4.3 million daily photo and video uploads
Seven billion monthly page views
Facebook’s fastest growing app, with over 570,000 new daily users.
$2 billion IPO being discussed

While Facebook brings your entire social network into one platform and LinkedIn channels all your professional contacts into one service Badoo specializes in … sex. NOT porn. Sex, as in linking up two people to do stuff (not just sex) together.

Badoo’s lack of presence in North America and England, our two favorite English speaking regions of the world, hurts its value as a marketing hub. It may not be a boon to your business yet, but just look at those numbers above . . .

How can you ignore something that size? You can’t, especially if you are in the fashion or entertainment industries.

My thanks to my new colleague, Aaron Thuringer, for pointing this out to me. (I guess we know where you are taking your first vacation.)

Social Media: Congress Believes

Max Fose — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 17:41:38 +0000

I started IWS on email campaigns. That’s what we did, that’s what we were known for. That was 11 years ago, however, and times change. Our clients still want e-mail campaigns, but now we also get requests for social media campaigns.

So it came as no surprise to me then when I saw the latest study from the Congressional Management Foundation. CMF, which is totally nonpartisan, found that the majority of Congress embraces social media. According to the report, 64% of senior managers believe Facebook is an important tool for gauging the viewpoint of their constituents.

For politicians, social media isn’t just a place to be, it’s about conversations. It’s about sharing. This is what we tell our clients. Just having a presence in social media isn’t enough. You need a commitment to engagement. Social media is no different than anything else – you get out what you put into it.

If you get a chance, read #SocialCongress: Perceptions and Use of Social Media on Capitol Hill. If you’re in politics and you aren’t leveraging social media, it’s time to start.

One more thing. TweetCongress can help you keep track of Congress via social media. In addition to Twitter feeds, it has lists of members who use that social platform and their @names.