Archive for category business
Population of Facebook Now Exceeds Population of G7
Posted by Paul Holmes in business, internet, social media on June 27, 2011
Mashable has declared the population of Facebook – measured in users who have logged in at least once in the last 30 days – is now 750 million.
Much has been made of looking at Facebook as though it was a country, so you could compare it with others to see which countries have the largest population.
So I thought it was notable that this latest figure exceeds the population of the entire G7 – the (misnomer) Group of 7 most industrialized nations (notwithstanding the latest economic wreckage) – France, Germany, Italy, Japan, United Kingdom, United States and Canada.
The population of the G7 is 744,342,375, according to Wikipedia.
Of course Facebook has some work to catch up to India, China or the OECD, but at this trajectory, it doesn’t seem that crazy.
LinkedIn Answers
Posted by Paul Holmes in business, internet, social media on March 16, 2011
So at Eat. Drink. Tweet. in Penticton this past weekend, I taught a session on LinkedIn. As mentioned in my previous post, I built a Canadian Wine Group on LinkedIn, and it now has 26 members. (One of the things I’ve been working on–quite passively–for the past few years is a wine site. Our company owns Corks.ca, and it’s on rendition 3, but I’m planning rendition 4 in Fall, along the same business model of Foodie.ca, which has been wildly successful so far.)
At the conference, I had all of 70 seconds left to talk about LinkedIn Answers (my session went on a bit long). But pre-conference, I posed a question about wine on LinkedIn, and I promised I’d post an example on my blog.
You can see that in only a few days, I have had 10 really fantastic answers to my question.
Not being an avid user of LinkedIn Answers myself (but working with clients who use it regularly), I was already convinced of it’s value, but I thought I’d take the opportunity to share this with the people who may have been at my session.
LinkedIn or Bust … uh, literally.
Posted by Paul Holmes in business, social media, speaking on March 12, 2011
I’m putting the finishing touches on my presentation for Eat. Drink. Tweet. in Penticton, British Columbia.
It’s all about LinkedIn.
For those of you who follow my blog regularly (thanks, Mom), you’ll remember that I rated LinkedIn #2 overall, and Twitter #1. In the next rendition of my Top Social Media List, I’m certain these will reverse.
Why?
Twitter is great, and I love it to bits, but the reality is there’s more money to be made building a serious business network. And that’s what LinkedIn does the best.
- BONUS: Canadian Wine LinkedIn Group
The Answers app is the best ever, hands down. Forget about Quora, and Yahoo! Answers is history. And Google retired their attempt.
Forget about also ran’s Plaxo, Spoke, and XING. Forget about this Viadeo … just found this one tonight. LinkedIn is the category killer for business networking, just as Facebook is the category killer for personal networking. And Twitter is … well, just awesome … but different.
Check out this cool swag I got in my hotel room…
Thanks to Cannery Brewing, Tinhorn Creek and Black Cloud for the gifts!
There’s a special bonus during my presentation if you can name the person who stated the following:
Unless you’re dying, dead, retired forever, or too young to join, you should be on LinkedIn!
Quite simply LinkedIn is the future of business networking. Period.
Hint: It was me.
Social Media Presentation in Vancouver
Posted by Paul Holmes in business, events, social media, speaking on November 7, 2010
On October 18th, I was invited by the Cambie Village Business Association to speak about social media for businesspeople in their organization and community. Many in attendance were retailers, but there were several other types of businesses represented too.
I often speak about social media, so that’s not the particularly interesting part.
What was very cool was that it was in an old restored movie theatre – The Park Theatre on Cambie Street. They have a fabulous new projector, and have done a phenomenal job updating the old theatre.
Its also the largest screen I have ever projected PowerPoint on!
A few folks asked for my slides, which are not terribly self-explanatory without the dialog. Here they are:
Next time, hopefully, my name will be in lights!
Camping…
Posted by Paul Holmes in business, events, personal, social media on October 5, 2010
Social Media Camp is now a done deal. See my wrap-up post here.
The short version is that it was fun, and we had lots of great feedback. I can’t wait to do the next one, but want to sleep a little bit first. Just a little though; I don’t slow down much!
My next big side-projects…
- Foodie.ca – Launching November 1st, 2010.
- WordCamp Victoria 2011 is coming up on January 22nd.
Of course, I’ll still be busy with the day to day operations at IdeaZone.ca. We are now celebrating 10 years of website design in Victoria.
Top 5 reasons why t.co is a bad move by Twitter
Posted by Paul Holmes in business, social media on September 2, 2010
Twitter announced, by e-mail to every user, that they are going to make their URL shortener (“wrapper”) mandatory on Twitter, and this will be applied to every URL posted, effectively eliminating the need (and, presumably, the functionality) of every other URL shortener in existence.
Here are 5 reasons why this is a bad policy:
- It will put the nail in the coffin for competing shorteners, like bit.ly (which was just starting to look like it had a viable business model). If they go out of business, every Twitter user could be put in the position of having everything they ever tweeted with a bit.ly link become instantly dead.
- Twitter vaguely suggested they may offer some analytics tools for shortened links. Fine. Great. But what if I don’t like your analytics? Can I use the other guy who is offering to do better analytics? No.
- While not the most unstable country in the world (arguably, Libya may be more so), relying on the goodwill of Colombia for every link on your network is not something I’d be inclined to do.
- Shorteners like bit.ly allow people to post to a number of networks, and track link origins, thus aggregating all the activity into one place. Twitter will force people to check two places for analytics, assuming the whole industry is viable at all without allowing their links to be posted on Twitter.
- It’s another slap in the face to the developer community. Companies worked within Twitter’s rules to develop some of these great products, like bit.ly and ow.ly. And, in one swoop, Twitter puts them out of business for no apparent reason. This will hurt future development, as it will discourage others to develop add-ons for Twitter for fear of similar treatment. This comes on the heals of the official Twitter iPhone app, which instantly made all the other apps (many of which were far superior, in my opinion) at a serious disadvantage.
Why doesn’t Twitter work with the few viable URL shorteners that are out there, and allow them to implement into Twitter if they meet certain pre-determined criteria?
This would allow Twitter to universally enable features like previewing links, checking for malware, etc., without forcing users to use one style of analytics, and will also allow companies to continue to brand their shortened URLs (like bitly.pro allows you to do).
Social Media – Top 25
Posted by Paul Holmes in business, internet, personal, social media, society on August 30, 2010
Social Media Camp, Victoria BC, October 3rd, 2010
If you are using social media for business, you are probably best to stick with LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter (perhaps with a dash of YouTube or Flickr). But if you are a geek like me, you might find a few little gems in this list.
25. Google Buzz
So much buzz, yet so little sting. It’s my new FriendFeed, although I don’t think Google intended it to be used this way. I rarely use it, despite the fact it’s in my face every time I use GMail.
24. MySpace
Oh! How far you have fallen, MySpace. For those of you who haven’t heard of MySpace, it’s a website where you can find music. Is there anything else? Not really. Don’t accuse me of dissin’ MySpace though, you’ll notice this list doesn’t include bebo, hi5, Friendster, Multiply, Plaxo, ecademy, or any of the other also-ran general interest social networks.
23. Identi.ca
It’s like a better Twitter, only it hasn’t reached critical mass. I hope they have some commercial success with status.net, because competition is good.
22. FriendFeed
As predicted, Facebook bought FriendFeed and did nothing with it. It was number 10 on my last list.
21. meme by Yahoo!
I have met some very interesting people on this. It’s another offering that blurs the line between micro-blogging and blogging (like Posterous and Tumblr tend to); it seems to be a great place to profile photography. Like VIMEO, it’s a better network not for the features or marketing potential, but for the interesting users and their content.
20. Hunch
Great idea – a taste graph for the social web. I hope it catches on; a good idea is only that unless it gains critical mass. Notably, the founder of Hunch was also a co-founder of Flickr.
19. StumbleUpon
I have nothing against StumbleUpon, and I know it can be a dream come true for people who spend all their time on SEO. It’s fun and easy to use, but I honestly don’t use it much…
18. Slideshare
Share your PDFs and PPTs easily, embed them elsewhere, and share them directly on Slideshare itself, with your friends and contacts there. Great tool!
17. Goodreads
Do you read good? This is a great social network for people who like to read. I love it, even though I don’t read so goodly.
16. Flixster
I like movies. In fact, I like movies a lot. The Flixster website itself is a bit MySpace-y, but the iPhone app rocks. You can mark movies you want to watch, and rate your movies, and add a review. It doesn’t seem this network has caught on, but I use it at least once a week.
15. Sprouter
If LinkedIn is Facebook for business, then Sprouter is Twitter for business. It seems to be catching on. Time will tell.
14. Tumblr
It’s a blog or a microblog, and a social network, all beautifully united. Simple. Fun. I use it a little.
13. Posterous
Another good and simple blogging tool. Notice Tumblr and Posterous are neck-and-neck, I only put Posterous a notch ahead because I use it to subscribe to some great blogs (and they e-mail me a daily digest). However, I don’t use it much to blog (see item 3 for my real bias).
12. Gowalla
Share your location with your friends. Creepy, but fun and interesting. There are a bunch of tools that do this: Gowalla, Foursquare, Yelp, BrightKite (not on this list), and now Facebook Places (not yet available in Canada). Admittedly I use all 4 (soon to be 5) on my iPhone, and sort of get a kick out of it. I like Yelp the best, and it has a legacy review function, which is, in my opinion, way cooler than the simpler Gowalla and Foursquare.
11. Foursquare
It seems to be the category killer, but the game is definitely not over, especially with Facebook getting in on the act, and Yelp revving up their user base. I put Foursquare ahead of Gowalla, because you can be Mayor of the places you visit! Imagine my joy in being Mayor of First Choice Haircutters!
10. YouTube
Oh, YouTube. So famous, so popular, so immature and anti-social. Your comments remind me of things I used to say when I was 12. YouTube is great because it will host your video, and because it has critical mass. But for grown-ups, VIMEO is much better.
9. VIMEO
It’s like a nice YouTube. Better content, and more mature users. I’m a bit surprised it’s done as well as it has, considering YouTube’s market dominance. There have been other contenders in the video space, too – DailyMotion, VEOH, and others.
8. Meetup
They actually had a friend feature, but they apparently phased it out. But it’s still a social network, in that you can find members of your meetup groups, and see what other groups they are in. It also allows you to indicate your interests, and suggests new groups to you based on geography and interest.
Best of all, Meetup is about meeting people in real life, not just online. And isn’t this the best sort of social networking there can be?
7. Digg
Geek alert. I still like Digg. It’s fun. Sorry.
I’m still a bit unsure about the new version (I was an Alpha user), but I think it will be better in the long run.
6. Facebook
I don’t really like Facebook. However, it must make the list because I do like that I can connect with almost all my friends there. Also, it has some great marketing tools (like Facebook Business Pages and Facebook Ads).
5. Yelp
I really like Yelp. I think it’s better than Gowalla and Foursquare. It started out as a review site, but they’ve since added the check-in functions to mirror Gowalla and Foursquare, and you can be a Duke (or Duchess) instead of a Mayor! What can be better than that!? It’s gaining critical mass, albeit not as quickly as Foursquare.
4. Flickr
Best. Photo. Sharing. Tool. Ever. Forget about TwitPic and TweetPhoto and that frog one… if you want to Tweet a photo, use Flickr! It has some incredibly powerful group and sharing functions, and is itself a social network, too. If you’re going to share photos on Twitter, it’s hands-down the most sensible tool to use.
3. Blogging using WordPress
I’m a huge fan of blogging, and a huge fan of WordPress!
I’ve organized two WordCamp events in Victoria, and cannot say enough good things about it. It’s a great product. It’s easy. It’s fun. It’s free (you have to have web hosting, but if you have a website, you can add WordPress fairly easily).
There are numerous other blogging tools (some mentioned in this list), but with the self-installed version of WordPress, you own your social media! And you build your own community. You are not reliant on a startup with an unknown revenue situation or business model to host your media.
I’m a big fan of integrating Feedburner and Disqus, too.
2. LinkedIn
Are you in business now? Will you one day be in business? Do you have business dealings? Are you a professional that might expect one or two job changes or career focus changes sometime in the next thirty years? Are you a student? Are you management? Are you between the age of 18 and 80 and expect to live and work for the next 6 months, or longer?
I’m not going to beat around the bush here. I’ve heard all the excuses for not being on LinkedIn. They are all misguided (at best), lazy or stupid (at worst), and of no validity whatsoever.
You must sign up to LinkedIn immediately, and shame on you for not doing so before now!
This is not Facebook – there are no party photos, funny status updates and kid’s stuff. This is serious business, and it will take all of 5 minutes a month out of your hectic schedule.
1. Twitter
I (heart) Twitter.
It can be whatever you want it to be. If you want to talk marketing on Twitter, there are definitely some best practices. But outside of that world, there’s no right or wrong way. Want to socialize? Want to meet people? Want to talk business? Want to talk shop with other people in your business? Want to find out the news or the weather?
Jump on in and join the conversation!
Twitter, as crazy as it may sound, in it’s 140 character glory, is really the everything network, and remains steadfast in it’s number 1 spot on my list.
Epilogue
There you have it, my exhaustive list. You may notice I removed Instant Messaging from the list. I’ve decided it doesn’t apply to this list. Like text messaging, I still use it, of course, and occasionally do business on it – but it’s not inherently social in the 1 to many sense that we’ve come to recognize social media as being.
Like my list? Hate my list? Agree with something? Disagree with something? Did I miss something real obvious?
My Crappy E-Book – DELIVERED!
Posted by Paul Holmes in business, events, personal, social media on July 13, 2010
Want to get 10,000 followers on Twitter!?! BUY MY E-BOOK!
Want to get 10,000 followers on Twitter!?!
No, I’m not going to charge $0.99 (or 2 for $1.97), as promised, and the first 1,000 people to retweet it will not get a free copy.
This advice is free – for everybody:
The number of followers you have on Twitter means absolutely nothing.
Remember the old analogy: it doesn’t matter how big it is, it matters how you use it.
If you engage with others in a spirit of community (you know, helping your neighbours…), you win and your followers win.
Twitter is an amazing channel for communication, but there are a few things that make it awkward, or even annoying and counter-intuitive. Add spammers to the mix, and the whole experience gets a bit hairy.
So, here’s how I got to 10,000 followers:
1. I stopped caring about the “Home” feed.
The home feed is an age old dilemma for serious Twitter users – once you start following more than a couple hundred people, your home feed becomes effectively useless.
The old answer was to start a “secret” account where you secretly follow the people you really want to? Today, this is much simpler – build a list of the people you truly want to follow.
I use many lists and searches to find who and what I’m looking for on Twitter.
The home feed is dead to me.
2. I discovered the best ways to alert people to your existence is to follow them or list them.
Most people start on Twitter by writing stuff. Intelligent, informative or witty tweets don’t mean anything if nobody is paying attention. Some people get bored and quit; others learn about tagging posts, searching, retweeting, following people, and replying.
I am most interested in connecting with people in my geographic region – Victoria, Vancouver Island, Vancouver, Seattle. This is both natural, and a business decision (my main business, IdeaZone.ca, serves clients primarily in Victoria, and I organize events to serve the region, like the upcoming Social Media Camp).
So I find people I want to connect with, I follow them, and I list them. What have I noticed? Many of them tend to follow-back, and often they send a message.
Many people don’t follow-back.
This is totally fine, and I will eventually unfollow these people. Does that mean I don’t like them anymore? No. It doesn’t matter to me? Remember, I don’t read my home feed, I keep them on my lists, and they still show up in my searches. Some of the best interactions I have are with people who don’t follow me.
I unfollow them simply because Twitter won’t let you follow more than 110% of your followers, so they are using up a notch in my ability to discover and connect with new people by alerting them with a follow.
3. As a policy, I follow people who follow me.
I do this for two reasons: (1) I don’t have time to filter through and find the good or bad accounts, and (2) people cannot send you a DM if you don’t follow them.
The latter is important (for me, not everybody). I’m in business, if I prevent somebody from sending me a DM, I might be preventing them from sending me business, or a referral. I don’t want to risk snubbing a potential client.
I’m fairly certain this policy means I’m “following” some pretty sketchy accounts as a result, but remember, I don’t read my home feed, so all the sketchy people in the world could follow me, and it means nothing to me.
And this, my friends, is how I got to 10,000 followers on Twitter, probably half of them are real people I want to connect with, and the other half are spammers. To the uninformed, it might look pretty to have 10,000 followers, but I can assure you it means nothing – but the several hundred or so folks I have had the privilege of connecting with on Twitter have made a huge difference in my business, and my life.
Thanks for connecting with me!
And thanks for reading My Crappy E-Book.
Victoria British Columbia Officially Proclaims “Social Media Day”, June 30th
Posted by Paul Holmes in business, events, internet, social media on June 25, 2010
Victoria, British Columbia, the Capital city – for visitors, there are lots of great things to see and do. But did you also know it’s the capital city for technology and social media?
It was big news when the technology industry eclipsed tourism in 2007. But what about social media? Well, the industry here might not be colossal, but it’s growing, and there is plenty of expertise for a small city, not to mention the power users.
Here’s a sample of our accomplishments…
- Victoria was the first city in Canada to form a Social Media Club chapter.
- Victoria is hosting the first Social Media Camp in Canada on October 3rd, 2010.
- Twestival Victoria raised the second most funds in Canada (after Toronto), and was the 15th most successful city in the world!
- Victoria is home to Flock, the social browser.
- And now, Victoria is the first city in the world to proclaim June 30th Social Media Day!
Here is the wording of the proclamation:
CITY OF VICTORIA
PROCLAMATION
“SOCIAL MEDIA DAY”
WHEREAS Social Media has made it easier for people to communicate, locally, regionally and globally, and
WHEREAS Social Media has offered people with critical illnesses and disabilities a tool to communicate more effectively, and
WHEREAS Social Media is an amazing communications technology, and technology is a critical and growing component of Victoria’s economy, and
WHEREAS June 30th is being celebrated in over 400 cities around the world as Social Media Day.
NOW, THEREFORE I do hereby proclaim the day of June 30, 2010 as “SOCIAL MEDIA DAY” in the CITY OF VICTORIA, CAPITAL CITY of the PROVINCE of BRITISH COLUMBIA.
IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I hereunto set my hand this 24th day of June, Two Thousand and Ten.
DEAN FORTIN
MAYOR
CITY OF VICTORIA
BRITISH COLUMBIA
I picked up the official City of Victoria proclamation today, and will bring it to the party on Social Media Day, June 30th.
The historic Fairmont Empress hotel, which uses social media regularly and effectively, was quick to pick up on the event, offering their luxurious Bengal Lounge for the party.
A special thanks goes out to the Victoria City Councilor Chris Coleman, and the City staff who worked on finalizing the proclamation. Mr. Coleman was very enthusiastic when I suggested the idea, and saw the process through to the end.
Top 5 Tips For New Facebook Pages
Posted by Paul Holmes in blogging, business, internet, social media on March 22, 2010
1. Make your page title as generic as possible.
If you are setting up a page to promote your company brand, this may not be an option. But generic pages are far more likely to gain fans than brand pages.
Think about it this way – if you have a website about “Travel to Asia”, do you think Facebook users will be more likely to become a fan of “Travel to Asia” or “TravelToAsia.com”?
As much as it pains you, there are far more people who are fans of “Travel to Asia” than there are fans of your website.
In my experience, people are far more likely to share their photos, videos and comments on more generic sounding pages, and more likely to randomly recommend it to their friends.
All this builds a larger community – a community, remember, that you can promote your website and services on.
2. Set up your page properly.
Put an image on your page. Design your page nicely. Through the magic of RSS, import your blog into your Facebook page.
Change the settings so that fan comments appear to everyone, enable comments, videos, photos, and discussion forums!
3. Name your page.
It’s much easier to share your Facebook fan page if you can give a short, concise, and branded URL for it, rather than some ridiculously long address.
Which looks better to you?
If I had $1 for every time I saw a Facebook fan page with over 1,000 fans, but no vanity URL, I’d be rich! It used to be 1,000 fans were what were needed to name a page, then it went down to 100, and now it’s a mere 25 fans! Do you have 25 friends who can fan your page?
Promote your page on Facebook, Twitter and your blog.
Facebook is here to stay. It’s not going away. Get over any concerns you have about losing traffic to it, and take advantage of the community-building tools it has!
Facebook has a little widget you can add to your website to promote your page, it’s called the “fan box”. Click on “Edit Page”, then “Promote with a fan box” (middle column, third section). Here’s what it looks like:
Of course you can link to your Facebook page in a bunch of ways – with a nice Facebook icon, a text link, or with the Meebo Bar.
Advertise your page.
You can advertise your website on Facebook (and I do suggest any serious business considers this). But did you also know you can advertise your page?
My favourite form of advertising on Facebook are fan page ads to “friends of your fans”. If you have 100 fans on your page, there are probably thousands of “friends of your fans”.
Suppose “John Smith” is a fan of your page, “Acme Widgets”. John’s friends will see an ad pop up occasionally showing your “Acme Widgets” page, and saying “John Smith is a fan of Acme Widgets. Become a Fan?” One click, and they’ve signed up!
The old marketing question in this case has gone from “Do I trust Acme Widgets?” to “Do I trust my friend’s positive opinion of Acme Widgets?”
But why would I pay Facebook to advertise Facebook?
First of all, you need to get over the old rules of web marketing – you are not advertising Facebook, you are advertising your brand on Facebook.
There is another big reason: comfort.
The fact is that Facebook users are far more comfortable with Facebook then all those other scary websites in the world! Once a fan becomes comfortable with your fan page, they’ll become far more comfortable with visiting your website.
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