It might sound like big words: “social media revolution”, but hopefully you will agree something is happening in the online world. An increasing amount of people shares information and their opinions online. They by-pass traditional information sources and distribution channels and decide based on the opinion of like-wise people they meet online. Before I already wrote it’s no longer a question whether or not it will influence your business. Today they main question is when and how it will affect you. The following (recently updated) movie shows in very short time what’s happening.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=lFZ0z5Fm-Ng

Today two of my social media students at the University of Gdansk presented their final case. They made use of a very funny South Park movie showing the (non)sense of being online friends. It shows we might treat social networks now and then a bit too serious. We had to laugh a lot and I would like to share it with you.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=4SgkfghupFE

Currently I’m testing both Foursquare and Gowalla. These tools enable me to check-in at locations I visit. In an interactive way I’m investigating my own neighbourhood and unknown cities. The competition part of the applications make it even more funny to use. By visiting a location often you can become the Major of that side on Foursquare. Of course people already started faking their check-ins to gain points. Therefore, Foursquare decreased the distance from the spot to login. And to prevent further abuse they hired the Foursquare Cops (LOL!)

www.youtube.com/watch?v=N4rfzYul9O8

Social media are there to stay, whether you like it or not. At its best you can make advantage of them by including social media into your marketing and communication strategy. But at least you will have to follow what people are online telling about your brand, product or you in person. But how do you do that? How can you prevent this becomes a time consuming task? I will explain two tools which I use frequently.

Every day huge amounts of information are being added to the Internet. Think of blog posts, reviews and comments, news items and updates from various social networks like LinkedIn, Facebook andTwitter. It is impossible to keep track on everything. Yet this is important.

It’s fun to see how others write positively about you. A thank you message by you should follow. And it’s even more important to act quickly when someone’s sharing their dissatisfaction. An accurate response to a negative expression is a very good impression among online users. Everyone realizes you can make mistakes. This is not a shame if you at least react with an appropriate response.

Fortunately, there are several tools that continuously scan the Internet for new expressions. Besides several expensive solutions, there are two very good free solutions: Google Alerts and Social Mention.

Google Alerts, e-mail with the most recent Google search results

With Google Alerts you receive daily or weekly by email updates of the latest relevant Google results (web, news, etc.) based on the query you have defined yourself.

You can use Google to search for any random keyword, think of:

• Your company name
• Product name
• Names of employees
• Names of competitors and industry relevant keywords

On the page of Google Alerts the requested Alert can be created. In the above picture you will see I created an alert for the following “search string”:

“peter horsten” OR phorsten OR petersopinion

Determining the right search string is relatively simple by using the Google advanced search page. Enter the keywords Google should continuously search for. Click on “Google Search” and the Google search box shows the search string to copy.

You will receive an e-mail to confirm you would like to receive the alerts, instantly, daily or weekly. Once you start receiving the alert a quick analysis of the e-mail message will show whether or not immediate action is needed.

Social Mention, real-time social media search and analysis

Social Mention, the Google Alert for social media. Gradually, this distinction is disappearing. Google Alerts, like Google, now fully focuses on social media as well. The basic concept of Social Mention is similar. Again, a search term can be made (also to be determined using the Google advanced search method described above) and the result will be send by e-mail as well. The big difference is that you can instantly watch the result online, including additional statistics.

What I recommend?

Normally I don’t mind to share my opinion …. In this case, I think both solutions are useful. Social Mention certainly has the advantage of the immediately visible online result. Tuning the search terms is therefore more convenient. Social Mention also gives more additional statistics. On the other hand, Social Mention mainly shows results from Social Networks and Google Alertsseems better in showing results like blog posts.

Advice: Just try them both and see for yourself what is best and / or works most enjoyable. I invite you cordially to share your opinion below. Let’s learn from each other!

I just came along a nice blog post by Drew McLellan, Social Media Cheat Sheet, where he presents the Social Landscape created by CMO.com. The sheet shows what social media can be used best depending on your personal aim. The bottom line conclusion for me is that you have to make you will be on YouTube to gain most from social media.

Just like Drew states I’m frequently asked what social media site somebody should use. In general I tried to figure out what social media site would fit best. Based on the Social Media Cheat Sheet from now on it’s possible to provide a better answer.

Depending on your aim you can now choose the best performing sites. To achieve this you will have to be aware what you want to use social media sites for:

• Customer communication
• Brand exposure
• Driving traffic to your site or
• SEO?

Analysing CMO.com’s social media landscape I conclude I will have to do a lot more on YouTube. I’m curious about your opinion!

In my previous post I already indicated it is no longer a questions whether or not you want to use social media, because others are using it already. You will just have to follow your brand. The following YouTube movie shows clearly what’s going on. Some figures are already outdated, but for me that doesn’t matter. Besides it has a great addicting beat …. Have fun!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIFYPQjYhv8

A recent study carried out by Manpower Poland shows that 60% of Polish businesses don’t feel the need to use social media (in Polish only). This result isn´t applicable to Poland alone. Recent research shows that in the US about 50% of the marketeers is using social media. In Europe this is about 34% In general a huge amount of companies is still reluctant to use social media. But in my opinion this is no longer a real choice. Just because others are using social media every business and institution has to be aware of their impact. A strong brand can be heavily damaged if you don’t act in time.
I won´t claim that everybody has to jump on social media. I can imagine for some companies and institutes it would be hardly useful. Nevertheless, you will have to be aware of the fact that consumers today are sharing their opinion online. Potentially their opinion about your company and products as well. If you are not aware of this it can potentially lead to dramatic brand damage.

Dominos Pizza was not aware of the social media impact. Last year some employees posted videos themselves showing in what a disgusting way they prepared the food. Initially Domino hardly reacted. In no time a miljon people watched the movie on YouTube. Nevillehobson.com provided a good analyses how fast bad news travels. On Twitter many people were Tweeting about it.

But especially the lack of “social” reply and “engagement” caused most of the brand damage.

What would you do in such a case? Would you  notice an online complaint about your company or product?

In fact it is rather easy to follow the online mentions of your brand or products. Just let tools continuously browse the Internet.

For example Google Alerts can, once Google finds a certain “search term”, directly send an alert to you. This “search term” could be your company or product name. But you can use it to trace news on your clients or competition as well!

Managing to write on four blogs is not an easy job. Especially not because my days are rather busy. That’s one of the reasons I like to write blog posts while travelling. Some time ago I installed WordPress for iPhone 2 and for some time I was really happy. Unfortunately, recently I noticed the application deletes and changes posts, content of a saved post shows up when I start changing another existing post. That’s why I decided to continue searching for the right editor for my iPhone and meanwhile I decided to look for a desktop editor as well.

Windows Live Writer became the desktop editor

Although the dedicated WordPress editor is not bad at all a desktop editor seems more convenient. Several times while travelling I didn’t manage to save my posts due to a bad Internet connection. In such a case a local draft gives a secure feeling. At least for some time I will give Windows Live Writer a try. It appears to be a convenient editor enabling me to edit multiple blogs from one application. I heard some good opinions about it and the application integrates many other applications and provides many ways to include pictures and video, meanwhile uploading them to Flickr and YouTube if you wish.

A good editor for the iPhone is hard to find

As mentioned above I used to be very happy with the WordPress for iPhone editor. I am only writing on WordPress blogs and therefore I don’t need support for any other blog types. But the issues I’m facing with this app are really annoying. From the “Making WordPress for iPhone” blog I conclude that soon a version 2.2 will be released. Hopefully this will solve my issues. The WordPress for iPhone editor offers most of the needed functionality. I also downloaded some paid editors like BlogPress and iBlogger. Also BlogWriter didn’t satisfy my needs. In my opinion they don’t manage to compete. A simple feature like the “more”-tag is even not supported. Basically this means that you only see the introduction part of your post if you decide to split them. Be aware! Saving them will delete the rest of the post. Can you please refund my money?

Guys, please release WordPress for iPhone 2.2 soon and make that my issue will be solved!

I am curious what editors you are using and would like to know your experiences. Please share!

As I wrote some time ago I had quite some trouble keeping my Twitter friends and followers list clean and tidy after using some auto-follow tools. Taking part in the Twitter followers earning race I thought it would be good to follow everybody who started following me, but after some time I knew better. No human being is able to follow hundreds of people, not to speak about the fact that it is impossible to engage with them. Today I happened to find Refollow, a tool that enables you to filter your followers and the people your are following in different ways. It let’s you follow the right people, the people who try to engage.

Why I like to use Refollow to clean up my Twitter friends and followers

There are two main ways in which Refollow for me shows its real power:

1. It enables me to quickly clean up my list of people who I follow. Twitter has a lot of inactive accounts, which can still be in your follower list. It won’t harm to have them there, but I prefer to delete them. Besides I do not want to have potential commercial spammers in my list.
2. More important it shows me who tries to engage with me or my company. In an easy way I can see who is following or mentioning me or my company. These are people who would like to engage. In general it could be useful to follow them back as well.

How it works

The first time you login to Refollow, you might feel a bit overwhelmed. There is a lot going on. The makers of Refollow decided to pack as much functionality and info as they could into a single screen. I promise you will get used to it rather quickly. By clicking some check boxes you just filter the list. Loading the application will take some time after you logged on because your friends and followers have to be loaded.

Once you see a list of followers the filtering can start. If you move your mouse over one of the pictures in the grid, a popup will show you some info about that user. At the top left of that popup is a little icon that let’s you know your relationship (a pink bar means you’re following them, a yellow bar means they are following you, and both bars mean you are following each other. A red “X” through the pink bar means you previously followed them, but not anymore).

Below I will explain how I use Refollow to support me with the two tasks I mentioned above.

1. Cleaning up the list of followers

Why to follow someone if this is not mutual? In some cases there is a clear motivation, the specific Twitter account generates valid news, but in other cases it mainly means we are not engaged. Then in my opinion it’s better to unfollow. Why to have updates in my timeline that I do not really read? Just click “I’m following” and “Not following me” and you see the Twitter accounts that apply to this filter. When you point with you mouse on the icon you can decide whether you want to keep following or not.In a similar way you can easily check what Twitter accounts are no longer active. Just check “I’m following” and “No Tweets in the last 90 days”. You can set this to less as well, but not everybody is active on a daily basis. If you wish you can select all of the results and unfollow them with one click.

2. Find new friends!

In my opinion this is the most important feature of Refollow. I do not follow the daily Twitter e-mail flow of announcements of people who started following me. All these e-mails are being filtered. The disadvantage is that I take the risk to miss new good friends. Refollow shows with ease who is following or even mentioning me. If I wish I can directly start following them. Choose “Following me” and “I’m not following” and you have an overview of who’s following you without even knowing it. If you select “I’m not following” and “Users who have @mentioned me” you will find the people who seemed to like your Tweet(s). Could be worth to value their effort.

Refollow managed to give me one page where I can quickly keep track on my Twitter friends and followers. If you would like to have more information I advise you to visit the Refollow blog. Feel invited to leave your opinion below.