Your abandoned blogs and websites could be doing you harm

 “By leaving these web profiles to wither on the vine you are allowing anyone who views them to draw whatever conclusion they want. This is a loss of control over your message, plain and simple.” 

BY ADAM WHITE 

If you are looking for a social media resolution to make for 2011, how about this one: stop littering the internet with abandoned projects. We have all done this. As one social media site or another has gained popularity we have rushed in to claim our space. This often leads to a two to three week halo of activity. I am talking about that company blog you started but have not had time to update in the past year. This is that Twitter account you created when you saw the company featured on CNN, but have never really used. This is the handful of Facebook groups and fan pages you slapped your company name on, but do not have time to fiddle with. This is the old Blogspot account that you left for Wordpress, only to leave that for Tumblr. Experimenting with different tools is of course healthy and laudable, but whether you still give them any attention or not, these half-started attempts to gain traction online are still there with your name on them. More importantly, they are still in your Google search results. What does it say to a client who arrives on your outdated blog or your vacated Facebook page? What indeed.
     By leaving these web profiles to wither on the vine you are allowing anyone who views them to draw whatever conclusion they want. This is a loss of control over your message, plain and simple. A blog on which the newest post is tagged “August, 2009” forces the reader to make assumptions. They have to wonder why there have been no further updates. They speculate if perhaps there is another, more up-to-date blog. Finally they have to decide if it is worth their time and mental energy to go find your “real” website. That asks too much of your potential customers. At best they will go back to their search results and dig further for relevant information, at worst they will make a judgement call. If this business cannot manage to keep their online house in order, could that be a sign of problems in the brick-and-mortar world? You never want a potential lead to be left worrying if you are still in business at all, but one abandoned website can have just that effect. If you only have time to update your blog on the first Monday of the month then make sure the site says that in big bold letters. That way your reader knows what to expect and when. 
     The solution is not that you necessarily need to start actively using all of these online tools. Sometimes a false start is simply a false start. However, if you are going to abandon that Twitter account or Facebook fan page, you have the power to close it. At the very least, the last message posted should indicate what the best way to contact you is. You can keep that old MySpace page so long as the top post says something like “We won’t be updating this profile anymore, but please come visit us on Facebook or our website.” Tie those loose ends up! Give that person who stumbles across your profile a clear and obvious destination where they can find you. What about that Twitter account that you are sitting on to preserve your brand name, but have not had time to start using? Be careful. We are no longer in the wild west days of the 90s where names are the be-all and end-all of online identity. The reputation of the account matters much more these days and mechanisms are in place to stamp out fakes. That you have your name locked away means nothing to anyone but yourself. The rest of the world just sees another abandoned profile. 
     Furthermore people are more inclined to communicate with someone that appears to be active. I know I won’t leave a comment on a blog posting from 2006, because I have no idea if the author is even checking it anymore. Why bother wasting my time starting a one-sided conversation? Likewise, I am far more likely to reach out to the author of a blog that is updated regularly. Their continued activity is good evidence that they will at the very least see my attempt to engage with them. 
     If Google never forgets these sites then why do you? Resolve in 2011 to stop abandoning things with your name on it.

Adam White (AdamWhite.org) is a web development consultant at JMR Logics (JMR.ca). Visit his Niagara video blog at CheckInNiagara.com or join the Social Media Club (SMCNiagara.com). Published in the Niagara Business Link Volume 3, Issue 12, January 2010.

Online Video: Stop Waiting and Start Filming

It was December of 2008 when comScore, a prominent Internet marketing research firm, revealed that the number of searches on the video sharing site YouTube had surpassed that of Yahoo. As of January 2010 YouTube remained second only to their parent company Google in number of searches. That breaks down to roughly 3.7 billion monthly YouTube searches compared to 2.7 on Yahoo and 1.8 via Microsoft’s offerings. That is a critical mass of people and your business can no longer afford to ignore them. Take a second and search for your company (or even your own name) on YouTube. Do you like what you see in the results? If not then it is time to create some content. Even if your search returned nothing you have a great opportunity. Online reputation only exists with the presence of information, and a blank canvas is open to anyone. If a person posts something regarding your business on YouTube, in the absence of other relevant search results it will be all that defines you in that space. Why give up that control when it’s so quick and easy to contribute yourself?

Business people need forget what they think they know about video. The Internet, as a medium, and YouTube, as a platform in particular, come with different expectations and standards than television. Videographers and ad agencies have their place, but your cost of entry is generally a camera, a computer, and an idea. As for cameras, it’s not uncommon to find YouTube footage shot with a web cam or a cell phone, so a relatively cheap point-and-click camera like a Flip Video will more than suffice. Most cameras and consumer-level computers even come with free editing software, but given the impromptu nature of online video you might not even use it. Some of the most successful video bloggers, like Wine Library’s Gary Vaynerchuk, forgo editing altogether. If your goal is to connect with people and build your reputation, a “warts and all” approach is humanizing. If you are truly passionate about your subject matter and comfortable speaking about it, then you may not necessarily even need a script.

You will of course want to have a plan so you can stay focused, but YouTube is a social network, not a television channel. You can respond to videos with your own. Demonstrate your expertise and provide value to the viewer by filming step-by-step instructions. You have the opportunity to address your customers with more humanity than you ever could in an advertisement. If you want a great example search YouTube for Sears.ca. The retail giant, despite their vast resources, films unscripted answers to customer questions on the floor of their store with a handheld camera. Their YouTube videos are no more sophisticated or polished than yours would be. This is a level playing field, so why not get in the game?

…from a series of Social Media articles I’ve been contributing to the Business Link newspaper, with editions in Niagara, Hamilton-Halton and Brantford. This article ran in Volume 3, Issue 2, March 2010.

 Adam White (adamwhite.org) is a software developer at JMR SoftwareSystems (jmr.ca) and an editor at Punknews.org. For info, tips and events visit socialmedianiagara.com.

Count Your Conversations, Not Your Followers

Social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook provide a deceptively simple metric of success: the number of friends or followers you have amassed. However one should never mistake an account with a huge number of followers for an account that actually impacts people. This is particularly true on Twitter, the 140 character messaging phenomenon, where an account doesn’t even necessarily represent a single person (in the walled-garden of Facebook it is a little more cut and dry). This is compounded by the fact that many opportunistic users use tools to automatically find and add followers on the fly. Try mentioning the word “marketing” in a Tweet and see how many accounts tied to marketing consultants instantly follow you. This is not real or useful social interaction, it’s just more spam.

Does the follower count matter? It does, but only as one piece of the puzzle. Unless they are a well known celebrity or tastemaker, a user who is followed by thousands of accounts and in turn follows thousands themselves is probably not a real person. Few human beings could sift through such a massive influx of messages. Ideally a person would be followed by many but only follow a select few. The list of accounts you yourself follow is public on Twitter, and it should be a resource for your audience. It provides an insight into who you find useful, interesting and important.

So what is a better metric for gauging your Twitter success?  Try counting conversations. Count the number of people you reply to who actually reply back. Count the number of times your brand is mentioned by others. Count the number of useful links you pass on to your followers and how often they pass that information on themselves. If you find that you are unable to strike up conversations then perhaps that is a sign that you should reevaluate who you are trying to connect with. As with all business endeavours you should be setting clear measurable goals for yourself and working hard to meet them. Treat social networking the same way, just make sure your metrics are meaningful. 

As a thought experiment, ask yourself if your posting habits on Twitter or Facebook would change if your follower count was hidden If all you had to go on was the conversations you participated in, how would you measure success? You would measure it by how many actual human beings you have impacted. That is how it works in real life, where there is no convenient list of friends, and that is how you should conduct yourself online. Nobody is impressed with your follower count but yourself.

…from a series of Social Media articles I’ve been contributing to the Business Link newspaper, with editions in Niagara, Hamilton-Halton and Brantford. This article ran in Volume 8, Issue 1, February 2010.

Adam White (adamwhite.org) is a software developer at JMR SoftwareSystems (jmr.ca) and a news editor at Punknews.org. Find him on Twitter @adamwhite, at 905-374-2878, or adam [at] jmr.ca.

Working on tomorrow’s presentation…

I’m giving an oh-so-brief talk on social media and Facebook in particular to the Rotary Club of St Catharines Sunrise. I was struggling to pair down what’s normally an hour (plus) of content to twenty minutes, but instead I’ve figured out a way to actually just talk about last Sunday’s gold medal game. Thanks for the hook TechCrunch!