If you follow me on Twitter or Facebook you’ll know that I auto post blog posts from here / Brittany Beers and a few other places into my stream. I’ve been playing with various systems whether it’s our own RSS.Me / NetworkedBlogs (which I strongly disliked) or RSS Graffiti which I’m currently testing. What they do is take your blog post and post it to the various social media sites you’re on once you give them access to post.

NetworkedBlogs I dislike for a few very simple reasons.

1. They require you to confirm your identity either by spamming or friends asking them to verify you own the blog or through other methods
   I’m sorry but this is spam to create new users. I did it once and I’m sorry I did
2. They seem to post your posts randomly
3. They have a hidious bar at the top when you click through to view a blog post. I’m sorry this is annoying and while some people may find it good I don’t.
4. Removing their access seems like a bit of a chore ( Though I’ve removed access or so I thought things were still getting posted to my twitter account so I was required to go in via twitter and revoke access to the application)

It’s not the best way it’s not even close.

RSS Graffiti seems to come with a lot more options. Allows you to choose when to scan your blog and post as well as the numbers of items you’ll like to post so I’m giving that a whirl until I end up going back to our own system when we’re out of Beta.

Now onto the reason for my blog post title. Yesterday I changed my URL structure on my main blog ( this one in case you’re wondering ) You might not even notice what has happened. I dropped the www prefix from the URLs sometimes I like to see it sometimes I don’t. In the case of my blog here I’m not www.jameslarkin.ie I’m just jameslarkin.ie (it makes sense in my head)

Of course RSS Graffiti handled things nicely and didn’t repost things ( at least I don’t think it did ) Facebook Notes however decided to go tits up as I was informed by Sarah.

Outraged Facebook Follower Speaks Out

So putting things mildly. Facebook with 750 Million users can’t seem to handle that minor change to my URL structure whereas RSS Graffiti can. Go figure.

Oh well hopefully it hadn’t pissed too many people or they can always choose to ignore me.

And I see the bosses picture in there underneath one of the items and I think to myself oh he +’d that it must be reliable.

So erm how long before Facebook or Microsoft issue a lawsuit over it being Anti Competitive I’m wondering?

No doubt everyone knows by this stage about the new Facebook Pages upgrade. It’s cool yadda yadda I made a blog post on it over on Blacknight’s Blog the other day. That’s not where I’m going with this blog post though.

Friday I was making up a new micro site for Be My Valentine .ME and I noticed that the Facebook Like code I was putting in wasn’t showing up. In actual fact it was giving me a big blob of white up the top. ARGH!!! of course I tested in another browser and it was the same.

Not a major thing but driving me up the wall. Today something clicked … It wasn’t appearing on my blog either

And then something else clicked and I checked what I was doing in Facebook. Of course I was using Facebook as a page not as myself. Switching over to myself and hey presto.

No the world hasn’t come to an end you can still have your Facebook likes. This may not be an issue for a lot of people but was driving me up the wall. (I should probably read more Facebook development blogs I’m thinking)

UPDATE: 16 Feb 2011 … Star Date … no seriously another small issue I’m noticing is clicking onto one of your friends (who have privacy details set) when logged in as a page will give up a “XYZ only shares some profile information with everyone.“. It feels like they’ve gone and simply switched “Pages” into “Users” and turned off messaging and friend feeds for these page “users”.

Like (<-- had to start the post with that) a lot of web people I've a pretty full todo list. It doesn't seem to be shrinking at all. Thankfully however it doesn't seem to be increasing exponentially at least not to my understanding of maths anyways ... one of the things I've had on my todo list for a while has been to create a Facebook Landing Page for Blacknight. I’ve toyed with various ideas on and off over the last few weeks and had a pretty cool one made and then Michele points me at an extremely simple welcome page on facebook today and I just had to completely backtrack.

I generally don’t do that much “social media” stuff apart from interacting (oh wait isn’t that what it’s all about) … but I’ve never marketed myself in any way as a social media guru (unless of course you count Donkey Fluff). So it is rather nice to get to play around with things. A while back I created the Town Hall Theatre Facebook page … I hadn’t been asked to but it really is something that can be setup in two minutes (to actively man it is going to take a lot of work I’ll admit) and well I wanted to make sure they got their facebook username. 1300 fans later give or take and it is doing ok … it’s the kind of page that should maybe have 4 or 5 thousand fans I guess for galway (popular around 80k) maybe more. Anyways for minimum effort their Facebook page is up and doing rather nicely. The Town Hall Theatre gang have gotten on board as well and a few of them man it from time to time and I’m going to guess it will become a bigger and bigger line of communication for them over the next while similar to a lot of the theatre groups around Ireland. All in all I think of that as a nice little social media success with limited effort.

Back to the Future or the present at any rate and Blacknight’s landing page. We’ve come up with something rather simple. We’ll see how it works out over the next little while a woman pointing to the Like button … hopefully a clear enough message. Like us … it’s the goal of the page we want people to come back and interact. Limit the amount of text … don’t confuse people with way too much info … and we’ve included a few screen shots of a few of the Blacknight sites some people may recognise. Hey presto it is live. We’ll just have to see how it goes over the next little while and potentially tweak it (but as you know there are countless factors involved … how often we link to it … are people on holidays … times we tweet things online and so on big list)

On a side note … I opted to use a semi generic image / no face on it as half the time people start to ask oh who is she / he and hell that isn’t what this is about … it’s about pointing to the “Like” button so what do you think? Obvious enough? not working for you?

Here is the landing page www.facebook.com/blacknight (of course if you’ve already liked blacknight you’ll need to go to http://www.facebook.com/blacknight?v=app_6009294086

As always I love getting feedback … yes sometimes I’ll be gutted by the responses but meh democracy in action says the majority rules or something like that

My name is James and I made the Greatest SEO Marketing Guru website ever I also made the theme for the site Social Media Expert

Like most people using “social media” I’m constantly amazed by the amount people seeking advice / how to’s and so on. I’m also heavily amazed by the amount of people offering their services to them. While I realise there is always a need to have some advice with new technology / ways of doing things the social media guru stud guy coaching type thing is a bit extreme no ?

So really what you’re wanting to ask is WTF is social media marketing ?

In a nutshell … its spamming the **** out of your friends initially in the hopes things will take off and you’ll get more people following you. This in turn will lead to every “tweet” / Post / Message you make getting read by an ever increasing number of people.

Wow you make it sound so great where do I sign up?
Well like most things I’d first advise you have a website to redriect your “fans” (people that follow / stalk you) to

This will help and who knows a few might even end up book marking your actual site instead of just seeing the off message from you. I’d also recommend you get and RSS feed onto your site. A what now ? .. ( an RSS feed is simply put … a list of the recent posts / activity on your site) People will see updates from you in an RSS reader of their choice if they use one. I actually being quite computer il… er … literate don’t use one. Why … again its down to time and how much time you have at the end of the day. There are so many posts to read things to check and so on it can be a bit overwhelming.

So you’ve got your site .. you’ve got something that you can drag people back onto your site with (RSS feed) .. what do I do next.

Well you pretty much start telling people about what you do. Its social media … can you be social ? .. can you be social online ( its potentially a lot easier to be social online than in real life) and away you go. Follow people you find interesting .. interact with people … let people know whats happening … open up your “company” to the world and interact. O…. K … you say … erm really thats what its all about.

1. Interact with people
2. People may follow you back if you’ve something interesting to say
3. You’ll follow them back
4. Connections will be made .. you’ll say hey to them they’ll say hey back
5. You’ll update info … people will see it .. some might like it and let their friends know
6. Interact Interact Interact ….

So … erm … that sounds simple enough doesn’t it? This is what social media is about … you’ll have people telling you its all about the number of followers you’ve got following you. NO … this is pure BS for example … I could have 10 people following me who are my customers and who might like to see I’m available for work … or I’m interested in doing XYZ … and there’ll be some interaction … or I could have 10000 people trying to sell their services to me .. following me … me following back … cluttering up my stream ( twitter stream … updates from people ) … which is more useful … well to be honest the 10 people you’ll interact with. Of course if you’re huge and can hire a marketing department and get loads of people involved in your twitter account then go for it. If its just you .. then … erm forget about it … follow people have them follow back or not … and let things happen naturally so to speak.

All this said there are a few things you can do to speed up the interest in you / your product or service …

Special offers … ooooh wow 20% off and save now today only .. <-- you like the look of that no ? well why not make a few discounts available for people. What will it cost you ... hopefully not that much .. you've probably got margins worked out on what you earn / profit and so on already ... so factor in what you've got in your marketing budget as well and go from there.

So all this been said it sounds pretty simple no ? Well hell it is .. its not rocket science ... its basic human interaction ... if you say hi, people will say hi back.

Things not to do:

1. Don’t spam … don’t spam your product .. don’t spam messages …
2. Don’t direct message people about your products
3. Don’t auto message people saying thanks for following
4. Forget about the .. you can earn $50,000 a day with my social media tool!!! click here to find out more … type offers. They are BS
5. Don’t read posts online and think they are the number one way of doing things … Trial and error should be heavily involved in your process ( We all make mistakes .. I’ve made them others have made them .. we try and move on )

Do realise that all the social media interaction is free BUT its damn expensive …
1 Tweet – 20 – 30 seconds of your time … (thats nothing you say)
.. reading the tweets of others … add on another bit of time …

We’ve 5 minutes gone just there like that … what have we done .. posted one message read a few others tweets.

Lets speed up things … how? … erm … social media is about building up a following .. interaction … respect (respect is import .. if people like you or your product they’ll help you promote it .. if they don’t .. you’ll have pointless twitter accounts RT’ing (Re Tweeting .. sending one your message to people who follow them) .. all your messages .. end result you’ll pick up useless followers

You will come across the odd thing which takes on the Viral nature … you say something clever .. you write something clever and suddenly lots of people are linking to you RT’ing your message ad so on … GREAT … WOO HOO and I’m happy for you .. but generally you can’t force this to happen it just does and if it does congrats and well done

So this ends part I of maybe a one part article .. maybe I’ll write a bit more ( For most people reading its hopefully DUH! material .. for others hopefully its something of an eye opener to the magic that is Social Media) Let me know what you think

James

(PS: Please note I’ve been really using twitter as my social media tool of example here … similar would apply to facebook and so on)

But what to do what to do .. I ended up setting up a facebook page for my cat … sad … no he doesn’t think so at all

What started rather silly has become a minor fun obsession for me for Example one of the first ones I created was:

A fun little image based on the Avatar movie with my cat

Ah well if you fancy becoming a fan of his page you can go on over to http://www.facebook.com/catatar I couldn’t get Squishy (before you ask its my nickname for him his real name is Yoda.