The Christian Entrepreneur » social media

A Smart Phone Could Cost You Your Job

Brad Harmon — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 15:23:30 +0000

The look on this guy’s face when he realizes the implications of the video that was just posted to YouTube is priceless. It’s a great reminder that even something benign posted to a social media site can have consequences for us in the workplace.

It’s Like Living Your Life on a Movie Set

If you’re like me, it’s probably hard to separate you from your smart phone. I can’t imagine going through a day now without my iPhone within arm’s reach. They’re handy to have around for just about everything.

When my sister was married last year, I must have had 50 pictures posted on FaceBook by the time they left for their honeymoon. Only a few relatives could make the trip down from Indiana, so it was great to share the moment with them.

It never occurred to me though that maybe someone at the wedding, especially the reception, may not have wanted their picture plastered over FaceBook. Who knows if a picture I thought was harmless caused grief for someone in the pictures.

I doubt that when they were getting dressed to go to my sister’s wedding they were thinking about their starring role on my FaceBook account.

Blame it on Kevin Bacon

What if someone saw the champagne glass in that person’s hand who wasn’t supposed to be drinking? Try explaining it was sparkling cider to your boss while you were on-call as a nurse or to the Sunday school class you teach.

It’s amazing how many people you’re connected to through the people you know and the people they know. It’s the whole seven degrees of separation game except you’re Kevin Bacon. Is their boss’s spouse or pastor in your social media network?

I was connected to over 1 million people on LinkedIn with only 50 people in my contact list. It’s insane how technology instantly connects us to so many people. It’s likely I was sharing the moment with many more people than I’ll ever know.

Getting Fired Over a Social Media Post

The number of people losing their jobs because of something appearing on a social media network is on the rise. I saw a post the other day of someone being fired through a comment left by their boss in response to their status update.

I guess she forgot her boss was one of her friends. My wife is a teacher, and she has to ignore hundreds of friend requests from her former students every year. She’s seen how an innocent post from another teacher caused an uproar among parents, and she’s not taking any chances.

No matter how careful she is though, there’s always someone like me around to snap a picture or record an embarrassing video with their smart phone.

Smart Phone Dos and Don’ts

Maybe we all need a dose of good old-fashioned etiquette? I know I could use some. The next time you grab your smart phone to capture the moment make sure you’ve done the following.

Let everyone in the picture/video know you’re filming. We all know that everyone acts differently when they’re on camera. Smart phones make it too easy to candidly capture the moment. It might not be obvious to everyone what you’re doing.
Ask permission BEFORE you post that picture/video online. Your social media account actually requires you to have these permissions before you post. Something your friend may know will cause grief for them might not be something you think about.

What did I miss? Do you have a story or a tip about capturing the moment on your smart phone? I’d love to hear it.

Don’t Make Me Unfriend You! Oops!

Brad Harmon — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 05:36:03 +0000

You’ve heard the saying, “Been there. Done that. Got the t-shirt.” Well, the picture to the left proves that they really will make a t-shirt about anything.

Last month, Oxford University Press announced “unfriend” as their 2009 Word of the Year (I found it humorous that as I was typing that sentence my spell check flagged unfriend so I had to add it).

Last week, I unfriended 90% of my Facebook friends on my public profile. There were some that simply needed it because they were sending me 10 or more emails a week about their network marketing event. Others kept inviting me to join there fan pages, groups, or causes – not just occasionally, but 10 a week. That’s 520 causes a year – i don’t think I can care that much!

For the most part though, they were people I simply did not know and with whom I had no interaction. That got me thinking. Why do I have a fan page or a public profile at all?

Facebook is My Favorite Social Media Platform

I love Facebook. I talk to childhood friends that I hadn’t thought about, let alone talked to, in over two decades. We are all busy, and it is hard to keep up with all of our relationships the way we would like.

In fact, if you don’t post a Facebook update then I probably won’t know what is happening in your life. It sounds weird, but Facebook actually makes me a more caring person.

It reminds me of birthdays so I never forget to call and wish a friend Happy Birthday on their wall. I see pictures of former co-worker’s kids and pets that I never saw when I worked with them.

For all the claims of narcissism leveled against Facebook users, I think it does bring people closer together. This was my intent when I signed up for a public profile, and created a fan page when I found out that you were limited to 5,000 friends.

My Facebook Public Profile

The weird thing was that I wasn’t using my public profile page to better communicate with my readers. I was adding anyone who sent me a friend request thinking that I needed as many friends as possible to make my blog posts go viral on Facebook.

The problem was that I didn’t know any of these people, so I wasn’t sharing any information about myself. My wall became just another stop I made submitting my blog posts for the link and hopefully a little traffic.

I had become a spammer! It changed the whole way I looked at Facebook. I hadn’t even logged into my personal profile in over 3 weeks and was feeling completely out of the loop. This is when I decided to unfriend over 90% of my Facebook friends and start over.

Yes, I want to share all of my blog posts on Facebook. I also want to be able to get to know my blog community better and for them to learn more about me.

Now that I know all of my friends again, I have started sharing more information and sharing the events in their lives. My rule now is that I would love to have many more friends, but I require some form of interaction prior to accepting a friend request.

Why Do I Have a Fan Page?

The fan page for The Christian Entrepreneur was in very much the same boat. Other than getting your Facebook profile pictured on my sidebar widget, there really was no reason to become a fan.

You might have noticed that my featured video box is gone from the sidebar. What I have decided to do is to share most of my videos through the fan page.

I will also be using my fan page to make announcements, introduce you to new bloggers or resources, and trying to add more value to being a fan.

If you like the content that we provide on this page then I think you will like my plans for the fan page.

I will also be relying on it more for micro blogging; especially, when I need input from my blog community.

So There You Have It

If you were one of the people that were unfriended, please know that it was nothing personal. If I accidentally unfriended you please let me know. I only know some of you by user names so I could have made a mistake.

If you want to learn more about me and develop an online friendship, please send me a friend request to Become My Facebook Friend. If you like the content provided on this site, won’t you please Become a Fan of The Christian Entrepreneur?

Goodbye Digg, Hello Blog Engage!

Brad Harmon — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 16:57:40 +0000

Okay, so I am not totally getting rid of Digg, but I am definitely burying it.

You can still find it on the bookmark bar at the bottom of each post, but I will no longer be proudly displaying the Digg logo at the top of my posts.

Why the change? There are a couple of things that I do not like about Digg.

Why I Have Decided to Bury Digg

First, this blog falls under three primary categories – small business, religion, and social media. Digg has none of these categories. It has a business & finance sub-category, but that is such a huge hole that getting published would take a miracle.

Second, they make it too hard to search for all articles Dugg from a single source. For example, bradleyaharmon.com shows up under all submissions from this site; however, if you click on the link you get a message that no results were were found.

Unless you know to manually edit the search adding “www.” before the address, you’re left scratching your head. I know these are not huge beefs, but to quote Dr. Phil, “How’s that working for you?” Quite simply, it’s not. I’ve received little from Digg.

Why I Chose Blog Engage Over Digg

I’ve been a member of Blog Engage since October 6, 2009. Being a newbie blogger, I noticed Keller Hawthorne used it, so I decided to start an account. It had a manual submission process which I hated at the time, but at least it was a back link.

Active Owner that Helps Bloggers

I didn’t think much more about the site until my listening post kept picking up bbrian017 tweeting many of my posts. It was the owner of the site, and I saw that he had also left a few comments on my blog, voted on my posts, and even Dugg some of my posts.

I Was Able to Get Published on Blog Engage

I noticed that I was actually getting published on Blog Engage. This not only translated into more traffic to my blog, but I also saw the listing in the top pages for my keywords on the search engines.

I Actually Get Paid to Submit My Posts

Recently, Brian decided to share up to 100% of his Google AdSense revenues with his community. Why I am not going to get rich from this, it is certainly a lot more than I am receiving from any other submission source.

What This Means for My Readers

So what does this mean for my readers? Hopefully, it enhances your online experience.

Digg is Still an Option

If you still like Digg, don’t worry it is still an option on the bookmark toolbar after each post. I am still going to stay active with Digg because there are other metrics that use it in their evaluation of this site.

Just Click the Vote Button

You will not have to manually submit anything unless you are really fast and beat me to it after I publish my post. You will need to set up an account just like you did for Digg. Other than that, just click on the vote button at the top of each post.

Join a Lot of Familiar Faces

Many of my readers are already members of Blog Engage so you will see many familiar faces. I’ve also set up a group there called Christian Entrepreneurs where we can start posting articles we find across the web in one place.

Won’t You Join Me (AggieBrad) at Blog Engage?

How to Set Up a Listening Post on Twitter

Brad Harmon — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 14:26:30 +0000

Ever wonder what is being said about your small business on Twitter? You might think that anytime someone mentions your small business in a tweet that Twitter would notify you.

That would certainly be nice, but unless they mention you by using @YourName, chances are that you will miss their comment. In What Are People Saying Online About Your Small Business?, we discovered two underlying problems with trying to listen for comments about your small business on Twitter.

First, you can’t follow everyone so not all comments make it to your feed. Second, the comments from those you do follow can easily get lost in the myriad of other comments in your feed. The new lists feature helps this, but at the cost of the first problem.

To overcome both of these issues, it was suggested that we set up a listening post. Okay, but how do we do that?

Using Twitter’s Built In Search Functions

Before we set up our listening post, let’s look at what Twitter already offers. There’s no sense reinventing the wheel, so to speak. Twitter has three primary functions that serve to help us find what we are looking for in a sea of tweets.

Twitter #Hashtags

Think of #hashtags as keywords inserted into a tweet to make it easier to find in a search. Anyone can make, or post to, a #hashtag. All that is required is putting a # at the beginning of the word.

If your keyword has more than one word you simply concatenate the two together. One such #hashtag on Twitter is #FollowFriday where people recommend others to follow.

Twitter Search

To find tweets with these #hashtags, or any other words you want to find, you will need to use Twitter’s search feature. While the #hashtags makes it possible to group like tweets together for easy following, it is not necessary to include them.

Chances are that your small business name is not going to be a #hashtag that people will follow, but you can still search for the name via this function to pull up any tweets that mention your small business. If your company name is quite common then you will need to add other qualifiers to your search to narrow down the results.

Twitter Lists

This is a recently added feature. It allows users to create their own lists that follow certain people based on whatever criteria they desire. It’s useful to organize the people you follow into related channels so you do not miss their tweets.

Setting Up Your Twitter Listening Post

While you can save your searches and lists in Twitter for future use, they only work while you are online returning real time results.

Here’s a step-by-step guide to walk you through setting up a listening post using just Twitter’s built-in features.

Step #1: Decide What Your Search Terms Will Be

The first thing you need to do is decide on your search terms. What exactly should your listening post be tuned to find? Here are some suggestions:

Your small business name
Your own name
The names of products/services you sell
Your competitors
Industry terms

Be as specific as possible, and think of variations – especially ways to shorten it since Twitter forces updates to be no more than 140 characters. I have set up one for “The Christian Entrepreneur” and “Christian Entrepreneur.”

Step #2: Search Your Terms Using Twitter Search

When I first started using Twitter, I thought the little search box on my home page was Twitter Search. It was not until later that I found out there is a more robust search feature at search.twitter.com.

The advanced search option gives you a lot of flexibility with how you perform your search. For searches on your company name, make sure to use the This Exact Phrase box; otherwise, you will return tweets with any of the words in your company’s name.

Step #3: Subscribe to the RSS Feed of Your Search

Once you have performed the search, you will see an option to subscribe to your query’s feed in the upper right-hand corner. This option will continue to periodically run your query and send the results to your favorite reader.

I use Google’s Reader for my RSS subscriptions, but you can choose whatever one you like best. Now all that I have to do is open my reader to see what my listening posts have picked up. I don’t even have to be online for it to continue working.

Organizing Your Listening Posts

I organize all my listening post feeds into folders based on keywords. This way I can quickly see what people are saying across the spectrum of networks by keyword.

As we continue the small business social media series, we will look at many other social networks and how to set up listening posts on them as well. With just a few tweaks, the method above will work on just about any social media network.

What are People Saying Online About Your Small Business?

Brad Harmon — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 21:03:07 +0000

Your customers, employees, and competitors are among the millions talking online everyday. Are they talking about your small business?

The rise in popularity of social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube give people more online avenues than ever to express themselves to the world. Once their comments are on the internet they are pretty much there forever. They can quickly be picked up by RSS feeds that redeposit them all around the internet.

Even if the original comment is deleted, chances are high that it has already started to make it’s way through the internet. It’s like ripping open a pillow filled with down feathers on a really windy day. Good luck getting all those feathers back into the pillow!

Wouldn’t it be nice if there was a simple way for you to find out if your small business is being talked about online? If they are talking about you, don’t you want to know what people are saying?

You Got Your Ears On? Set Up a Listening Post

The online world is a big place. There are many places that people could be talking about your small business. You could even be active on the same social networking site where these comments are flying all around you and not know they exist.

Let’s take Twitter for example. You can’t follow everyone so tweets about your small business may never make it to your feed, or if you follow too many people these tweets can get lost amongst all the others in your feed.

You could do periodic searches to find these tweets, but wouldn’t it be nice if you were notified anytime someone tweeted about your small business? This is exactly what a listening post does for you.

A listening post is a query that you set up once that automatically updates itself and notifies you whenever it finds anything that matches your query. You can set these giant electronic ears up on almost every social networking site or search engine.

What Should You be Listening to with Your Listening Post?

Okay, that sounds great. What should we be listening for though? Well, pretty much anything your heart desires. Here are some possible ways you may want to consider.

Customer Feedback

The first query for your listening post should be your company’s name. Hopefully, your company name is unique enough that you won’t pick up interference in the form of hits on other company’s with the same name.

Employee Activity

A disgruntled employee, either current or former, can be very damaging to the reputation of your small business. Setting up a listening post to gather this information can help you effectively stop and counteract the damage done.

Competitor Analysis

Just like people are talking about your small business, they are probably talking about your competitors too. If your competitor is getting rave reviews then you can look at what they are doing well and incorporate it in your small business.

If there are complaints then you can make sure your small business is not making the mistakes, or perhaps it is an area where you excel and can market to these potential customers.

Where Should You Set Up Your Listening Posts?

You want to set up your listening posts anywhere your customers hang out online. Social media networks are becoming more specialized so do a little research to find out which ones your customers would be most likely to use.

Over the next several posts in this series, we will look at some of the most popular social media networking sites, how you can use them, and how to set up listening posts on these networks.

5 Ways to Tell if Your Small Business is a Social Media Lemming?

Brad Harmon — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 23:00:55 +0000

It used to be that only a few people were brave enough to take the leap when a new technology emerged. These early adopters blazed a path into the unknown, while the rest of us stayed at the top of the cliff waiting to hear if there was a splat.

We’ve seen this scenario play out time and time again. Perhaps, it goes back as far as the invention of the wheel or discovery of fire? There are the early adopters, the naysayers, and then there’s the rest of us.

The early adopters tend to be zealots willing to pay exorbitant prices to become leaders in their field, but many just end up being beta testers (kind of like we have been for Microsoft). The naysayers stand at the bottom of the cliff counting all of those who do not survive the leap as evidence that none should jump.

Recently, however, many of the wait-and-see crowd have taken the plunge off the cliff following the early adopters just like a group of lemmings. The thuds on the ground below from the failure of small business social media strategies have been drowned out by the social media cheerleaders at the top.

Developing a Social Media Strategy for Your Small Business

Did I say it was small business social media strategies that were failing? Let me be more specific. It is the Social-Media-for-Dummies type of how-to advice from would-be gurus that many small business owners are calling a strategy that’s failing (a mouthful, I know).

Social media is a great tool in the right hands, but in the hands of someone that does not know how to use it properly it can be disastrous. Even if you have been properly trained on how to use a tool, it does not mean that it is the proper tool for the job.

It also doesn’t guarantee that if you follow a guru step-for-step that you will be able to repeat their results. It’s like saying you can sculpt The David by knowing how to use a hammer and chisel and reading a book on Michelangelo’s methods.

So, what is a small business owner supposed to do with social media? You must first sit down and develop a strategy. Go back to grade school. Ask the five basic questions – who, what, when, where, and why.

Who are You Targeting with Your Social Media?

It isn’t that surprising that many small business owners fail to reach their target audience with social media. Most of them have never defined their target customer offline either.

Jumping on the Twitter or Facebook bandwagon because you read how much traffic these sites receive, or that some guru had great success there, doesn’t help much if your potential or existing customers are not there.

If you do not know who you are targeting it’s not likely that your message is going to hit the mark. Knowing your audience is the very foundation of any good advertising or marketing campaign. Be as specific as you can.

Have an image of this person in your head when you develop, and later implement, your social media strategy.

The Whats to Ask about Your Social Media Strategy?

There are many whats that you can ask when it comes to social media.

What are Your Target Customer’s Interests?

Now that you have a specific image of your target customer, what do they care about? A cardinal rule of selling is that you don’t sell the product or service, you sell the benefits. You need to know what your customer cares about to know how your product or service benefits your customers.

What do You want to Say to Your Customers?

What is it that you want to say to your customer? Nothing is worse than finding the right target but delivering the wrong message. Too many times I see small business owners babble on about random subjects often having nothing to do with their business. If you don’t have a defined message then you will not be successful with social media.

What is This Going to Cost Me?

Most social media networks are free to use, but that does not mean there isn’t a cost. Effectively using social media will require a lot of time, either your time or someone you hire. Depending on your computer and marketing skills, and your desire to climb the steep learning curve, the costs can quickly become prohibitive for a small business to implement a full social media strategy.

When Should You Implement Your Social Media Strategy?

Social media is just one tool in your advertising and marketing arsenal. It is rarely effective on its own; however, when used in connection with traditional tools and leveraging other online tools it can be very effective. If these other tools are not in place, your social media efforts may be in vain.

Where do Your Customers Hang Out?

The last thing you want to do is show up at the wrong party or to throw a party and have nobody show up. Do your research when it comes to social media networks. Find out which networks your customers, or potential customers, are using. A tree may make a sound when it falls in the forest, but if nobody is there to hear it who cares?

Why do You Want to Use Social Media?

This is probably the most telling question of all. Why do you want to use social media? What is it that you expect to receive?

If the answer is that everyone else is doing it, or some guru told me I needed to do it, then you are probably a social media lemming. If you do not understand why you are using social media, it is very unlikely that you will be effective with it.

Is Small Business Saying No Thanks to Social Media?

Brad Harmon — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 00:13:38 +0000

With the phenomenal growth of social networks over the past two years, one has to wonder if this is not another example of the chicken versus the egg. Has social media become so popular because of the tremendous press coverage, or has the coverage led to the growth?

Honestly, I don’t know. To quote Rhett Butler, “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a …” The fact is that it is here, and it is dominating web traffic. The question we should be asking is, “What are we, as small business entrepreneurs, going to do with it?”

According to a recent survey by Citibank/GfK Roper, the answer for many small business owners appears to be nothing at all. In a press release last month, they dealt a blow to social media advocates with some pretty stunning, and somewhat unexpected, findings.

Citibank/GfK Roper Survey Results

The telephone survey was part of a larger survey on small businesses and the economy. The survey, conducted in late August, was of 500 small business executives with fewer than 100 employees.

Here’s what they found …

78% did not find social media sites effective in generating leads.
86% have not used social media sites to get business information or advice.
61% rely on search engines or sites like WSJ.com to gather business information.
10% sought information or advice from blogs.

Maria Veltre, Executive Vice President of Citi’s Small Business Segment said,

Our survey suggests that small business owners are still feeling their way into social media, particularly when it comes to using these tools to grow their businesses. We were very surprised we did not see more use of some of the social media outlets, even if just for advice.

Are Small Business Owners Abandoning the Internet?

Small business entrepreneurs are not forsaking the internet though. It just seems that sites like FaceBook, Twitter, and LinkedIn are not seen as essential to them according to the survey. Ms. Veltre went on to say,

What this survey indicates to us is small businesses are very, very focused on running their business and on generating sales and managing their cash flow and doing the things that are really important, especially in these economic times … I don’t think quite yet the social media piece of it has proven to be as significant.

So what are these “really important” online activities? The survey found that …

42% have made greater use of their website to generated leads and sales.
- It grew to 57% among those with 20 to 99 employees
28% used email marketing to generate leads and sales.
25% advertise online to generate leads and sales.

Is Social Media a Waste of Time for Small Business?

Critics of social media point out that we have been down this road before. They point to the lack of value, or clear return on investment (ROI), as justification for small businesses to stay away from social media. Their sentiments may be best summed up by a comment made in response to Largest Social Media Study to Date Released – What Does it Mean for Small Business?, my first post in this series. You can read the comment here.

Ms Veltre offers this possible explanation,

While social media can provide additional channels to network and help grow a business, many small businesses may not have the manpower or the time required take advantage of them.

Both certainly have valid concerns. Employing an effective social media strategy requires either a lot of time to get over the learning curve or money to pay for someone else to implement our strategy. It would be nice if we had a clear ROI history for social media, but I am not expecting to see reliable across-the-board reporting like that any time soon. It’s just too early in the game and social media networks are still evolving.

What Does this Mean for Small Business?

I think it is hard to just ignore social media as a small business owner. It is certainly not going to be the panacea for small business owners that some are claiming, but at the same time, I think it deserves a place in your advertising and customer relations strategy.

As I pointed out in Is Your Small Business Taking Googlebot by the Hand?, never count out Google. As this survey showed, it is still search engines that small business owners are turning to on the internet. Where are your customers turning though?

Now that Microsoft’s Bing has announced they will start indexing Twitter and Facebook what will it mean for the online landscape? Again, I must say that I honestly don’t know.

My advice is to stick with Google using the best search engine optimization (SEO) techniques for your website, blog, and social media accounts. Treat social media as a never-ending networking event where you make those first contacts and build relationships.