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An article in the Daily Mail shows the soon to be floated site is testing a pay to be popular feature…. now when I heard there were changes to the timeline due I had no idea that they were thinking of introducing one that completely flies in the face of everything facebook has said it stands for.

Now we all knew that there were be changes with a float and for a site that is free can we really complain?  But this is a really odd strategy in my opinion.  There have been many changes over the past few years some good and some not so good but all have had the underlying thread of enhancing customer experience.  I therefore find it very difficult to comprehend that this social networking site would even contemplate such a thing.  This is only a test and it is apparently judging the reaction of the users.

Facebook will hit the billion user mark at some point later this year and has some 500 million mobile users so it certainly has a powerful beast and some serious klout and no doubt they will have something to say about the latest changes.  With the float this month there has certainly been some interesting things going on with aquisitions like Instagram and timeline for facebook and only time will tell what else will happen but one thing is sure, the users are vocal and will do what they do best and discuss it – very publicly. Whether that will make any difference when the company has floated and has shareholders to appease who knows?  Or will they listen more to those who have invested in them?  Stranger things have happened and we are seeing all sorts of shareholder revolts in places we would never have imagined.

Given that only 12% of your connections are likely to see content I can see how this would be appealing to big brands and marketers but that would be a huge turn off for the mass of users and would it be possible to turn it off in a similar manner to Hootsuite?  If I were a cynical person I might suggest that this could be a way of creating a premium account where the user can turn off the promotion?  Very worrying ideas… Buying popularity is not something that sits right with me… I prefer the use of questions, pictures, video and engaging content, as well as getting to know people for my engagement and popularity but what do I know? What do you think?  Is this a step too far for the largest European social network?

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The traditional B2B and B2C is seriously old hat and we need to remember that behind every business is a person who has their own likes and dislikes, foibles and personality.  By getting to know them and even working with them we get to see the real person and draw out the best not only from them but from ourselves.

One thing I have realised I don’t like is the closed shop type networking – run on a regimented basis and using the “locking out your competition” this is a very narrow minded approach to business… OK so you can’t get on with everyone.. but by joining with others in your world you are very much greater than the two separate entities.  You get different skill sets and and thinking as well as fresh perspectives and several pairs of hands to get something off the ground much quicker and more efficiently than you would alone.  You also get a wider reach of the contacts you both have.

I often work with others who do what do or at least part of it, I have writers, trainers, bloggers, tweeters and myriad others and we work with some great businesses and achieve much more by combining our skills.  We also have a great working relationship and share business between each other.  We are  also much more likely to recommend each other for particular things that come up because we have a more sociable relationships that we would have as potential rivals.  We do not lose our identity and have our own clients as well but we also enjoy the sharing element.

However,Ii do not work with everyone and obviously those you don’t see eye to eye with would not be on your list of joint venture partners.

We all look at what our competition are up to and if we don’t we are mad or lying… you can learn so much from them even if it is what not to do… but what a much nicer place to be to be a social business and create joint ventures and collaborations that are far greater in value than you could ever hope to do on your own.

You do however have to trust them and lay out guidelines of how things will work and what is expected… the traditional stuff called communication.. which as a lone ranger you may not be used to.  This makes it much easier to having a trusting and ongoing relationship for things going forward and stops any niggling and distrust that may creep in.  Who is responsible for what and when is it due and probably the most important part who is going to get paid what?

Once you open your mind to the possibility of working with others in your field your aspirations may rise in line with your new found resources and you need to be certain that you both have the capacity to deliver or another potential for disharmony can creep in.  Again the guidelines of what you both want to achieve and are expecting of each other are imperative.

Once you have got that bit sorted you are ready to fly… and I look forward to seeing what you do.. let us know what collaborations and joint ventures have worked for you…

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If you are using social media for business you should be thinking strategically.  Therefore think about who your perfect partner on twitter may be.  It could a business that is aligned to yours or even one that just has the same target market.  Obviously a partner is just that with mutual benefit for you both… so who is your perfect twitter partner and what should you think about?

1. Why are you on twitter?
2. Who do you want to connect with on twitter?
3. Who is listening to you on twitter?
4. How often are you posting?
5. What are you posting?
6. When are your connections online? (Think about using Tweriod or Buffer to check)
7. Who do you work well with?
8. Do they share your reasons for being on twitter?
9. Are they putting in similar time commitment on twitter?
10. Do you get on and bounce off each other?

It is very important that you share  common goals and interests and also get on!  It’s great as a watcher to see engagement between others and watch them help each other as it makes you feel inclined to want to join in…

So who would be your perfect partner on twitter?

It could be a client who thinks you are wonderful.  How about an aligned trade so let’s think… my husband is a chartered surveyor so who would be good for him?  Well obviously an estate agent would be good or a bank so following and joining in conversations with people in those trades would be good. But, what’s in it for them?

Well you get to share connections, you have someone to start a conversation with and you can have similar conversations where you are both experts.. publicly.  You also have someone you can retweet or retweet you which gives more credence to what you are both saying.  It also gets your content out to a greater market with no more effort.

By having on-line buddies you also have a reason to post… it’s like having a training partner.. because that is exactly what they are.  When you really find the going getting tough you sometimes need an added incentive to push yourself, especially in the early days before it comes an automatic habit.

If you go to networking events think about asking them if they are using twitter for business and how they are getting on.  You may find that they are grateful for any help they can get.  They may be flying with twitter or could just be finding their feet.  It also means you can share the tips of what works for you and they will naturally want to do likewise.  It could also give you a reason to investigate for yourself and find something to share… think of it like igniting the competitive streak within… and there is nothing wrong with that.

So get started doing the search of local people first and see if any of them have a synergy to be your twitter buddy… who do you get on well and resonate with?  Don’t forget to share how you get on…

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Well naturally I don’t just blog it and leave it at that, I also add it to twitter, facebook and linkedin and even created a follow up youtube video of how to turn a negative in to a positive.  If you look at the pic below of when it hit google you will see it is the LinkedIn one which ranked first…  I only have some 2,500 followers on twitter but obviously they are connected to others who happily shared the blog worldwide.  This happened because I used the hashtag for the event and maybe the title I chose caught the imagination… a celebrity is always a good draw.  By using the hashtag #biz2012 everyone at the event or following it could see what was going on.

Now sadly for the event it had gone very badly wrong and there were a long list of mistakes which prompted a whole host of responses… remember if people are unhappy they will share with more than those who love something and online that is magnified big time. By writing my personal account of the event I had more space to tell the story and also give people the right to reply.  I reported exactly what I felt at the time and posted it.  Then I tweeted it out to my main accounts and scheduled it via Posterous to hit again at my next peak time for readers in the morning.  The reach of the internet is actually pretty amazing and the content stays there..

Within 6 hours over 1,000 people had seen the blog and thousands more the tweets and it had been shared at least 50 times on twitter, over 30 comments are on the blog and many people who hadn’t been to the event were thinking whether or not they would bother.  People with big networks and huge influence were agreeing with the opinion and sharing it.  Within 16 hours it is page 1 of Google for the hashtag… and trending on twitter…

Whether you are listening or not (and I sincerely hope you are at the very least using Google Alerts) your audience will be talking about you, and sharing their experience… especially if they are bad.  Harness the power for yourself and get involved and if something goes wrong… publicly share how you are trying to resolve it.. do not ignore comments and brush them under the carpet… they will not go away and a determined blogger will amplify the issues even more..

Now this event has a huge amount to learn and hopefully this will help create a better experience next time… and by sharing things we are creating a whole new world of what we want to see, hear feel, buy and even experience.  Whether we like it or not we all have influence… it may be on style, colour, shops or just our choice of places to eat and that is very powerful, in fact the like button on facebook is so incredibly powerful because of that.  By using the facebook plugin on your blog you open it up to the peer factor… that is the old fashioned “well if it is good enough for xxxx it is good enough for me” or even better they see their competition or someone the trust or admire liking something… This is very powerful.

By blogging you are sharing with the world and engaging with them, you are also showing your areas of expertise and making yourself the person people recommend or go to first in your world so why not get started and showcase what you do?  You can start by being a guest blogger on someone’s site and get them to help you get started… around 500 words should do it.  We’d love to hear about your wins.. why not share them below…

As events go this was a bit of a no brainer to publicise.. Sir Richard Branson, Lord Alan Sugar, Penny Power and even Cherie Blair headlining.. plenty of businesses and seminars were promised at the O2 business event aimed at kicking us in to 2012.. and it was free… unless you fancied a VIP ticket wow… so why didn’t the 2012 business show live up to the hype?

Well the glossy website was great but finding something as simple as who is speaking and when and even what time the whole thing kicks off was not easy… eventually I decided that 10am looked good as it was when the exhibition opened.  In fact I even toyed with paying the £297 plus vat for a VIP ticket to include the cocktail evening… which when I looked a few days ago had only 10 remaining (oh and guess what still does now) and had I done that I would have been horrified…

The show was shockingly organised… no signs in the car park.. head for the building and hope for the best… wander in and spot a long snaking queue to one of the main seminar rooms and join it only to be told you are in the wrong one and need to go all the way to the back of the O2 to register as this is VIPs only… head a small exodus of people to the not inconsiderable walk through the cobbled areas to the very back where we pass another webinar area and loads of girls desperately touting some of the speakers… in fact there was even a board outside saying get your picture taken with some guru type, Stedman Graham, in 30 minutes… really?

I don’t do the celebrity picture stuff… and there is no way I would join a queue to have my picture taken with someone… and the thought of a load of people touting some speaker as the next best thing really leaves a bad taste.. especially given the headliners…

Asking the people in the show t-shirts where things were and what to do was a waste of time… Having been herded yet again to the very back of the venue we knew we were in the right place… it should have opened 50 minutes ago but no one had been able to get in to the exhibition… and there was a very unhappy atmosphere and loads of people.. technology had let them down and no one could register and get tickets.. eventually they decided don’t start a stampede and just let everyone in without registering them.

Once in there were an abundance of stands.. but nothing really new… there were loads of mini seminar stands (well something had to take up the spare spaces) with hastily rewritten signs on the glossy outline of who was doing what and when as well as the usual suspects such as Regus, Google, Blackberry, Microsoft, internet marketers, social media specialists and networking companies like 4networking (in fact as at previous shows they were organising the speed networking which you could hear all over the show… that will perhaps tell you how small it really was).

I tried (and failed) to see when the key speakers were on and where.. so I asked and was told oh you can’t see them unless you have a VIP ticket… seriously?  Seeing red I stomped off in my knee high boots to speak to the organisers office.  After politely waiting outside with 2 competition winners who had been waiting 3 hours for something to happen I asked to speak to an organiser… having explained that I felt people were being duped by the advertising they said no that was wrong the seminars were all free and anyone could go in… having already been turned away I explained that none of their staff were really helping and they agreed.. one of their assistants walked all the way back to the main seminar room with me and we were turned away and told to use  the back entrance… we didn’t even have a clue who was on… even she agreed it was shocking that no one could easily find out what was going on.  The mafia on the door at the back heard the lady with me say she was with the organisers and they said she should keep that quiet… and as she disclosed to me she had a queue of over 30 people to deal with having a go she thought it would be good to hide at that side of the show.

We wandered in to a presentation on forex.. seriously… not impressed so I asked one of the staff  to see if I could find out who was on and when.. I was pointed to reception (the back of where we had been refused entry) and asked about two speakers including Sir Richard… I was told you don’t have a VIP pass we can’t help you… really?  They have the only list in the building of who is on and when and because I have not paid £360 I am not important enough to be told anything… sorry but I don’t waste my time on idiot organisations that really cannot organise a P*ss up in a brewery.

I chatted to a few cool stand owners, met a few people I knew and caught up but didn’t achieve anything I couldn’t have done elsewhere or online… oh expect for the people I chatted to in the queue to get in or maybe the turquoise knee high boots, silver hotpants and my black social media cafe shirt were the reason they chatted to me?

I may not do things by the book and have a few quirks of my own but the Tshirts for one of the seminars shouting WTF were about spot on… seriously this is a shocking show… far too many seminars… not enough substance and the venue absolutely does not work.. technology issues aside.. this was style over substance in a big way.  Having pushed this show to the max on-line.. I will now hold my hand up and say “Don’t bother” and did in a tweet.

If Lord Sugar was in charge he would fire the lot of them… and Cherie Blair is a lawyer who should do a class action for the poor exhibitors who have invested time, effort and money in to one of the most shocking shows I have every had the misfortune to go to and believe me I have been to a few turkeys in my time..

The O2 was absolutely wrong for this type of event and with the misinformation, bad organisation and technology issues, not to mention starting it on Mother’s Day… no wonder the hashtag #biz2012 is going in to melt down.  Even worse there are tweets the winner of the competition to win 30 minutes with Richard at the show has not had it… we really do need to know if this is the case… as thousands of people all over the globe joined in on that.

I would have loved to listen to Sir Richard but really couldn’t justify the wait for this car crash of a show… I will one day.. but it was so bad that I really didn’t want to waste any more time there.

I know 2012 is something special and there are brilliant businesses all over the world that are really doing something special… I have been working with many of them and the prospects and things going on are so amazing and incredibly encouraging – hopefully they are doing much better than this business show which was a masterclass in how not to excel at something…

You may also like the follow on: http://thesocialmediacafe.visibli.com/share/138dbG

If you are in business you should be at The Great British Business Show and The Business Start up Show – we’d love to see you on Stand 971 – book in here.. http://ht.ly/aqwgV

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Infographics are pretty cool… they show things pictorally and encourage comments and engagement… but unless they are written in html will not rank in google as content… However I am sure there are ways around it and the share value alone has to be worth something as many of them get shared all over the places…

Make them fun and interesting and see what happens….  This app created ours and I love it.. it’s a break down of the action on the facebook fanpage and although I will hold my hand up and say we should be doing more… it’s not bad… how’s yours looking?

infographic created with visual.ly

Don’t forget to share cool content on your fanpage to get the viral effect and you will see some real results… pictures and video will work very well so make sure you add them in to your social media strategy.  If you don’t have a social media strategy you have no idea what you are measuring or if you are achieving anything… at the very least think about who you want to chat to and why… then what you what to do with them and how you will achieve that.  Think about what you can do to help them and give it to them… share interesting and fun pictures and things for them to do as well as interesting articles they can do something with.

Polls and videos get the biggest reactions as do cute pictures (did you know the three most talked about things on facebook are cats, chocolate and well.. I am sure you can guess the third 3 letter word… So what can you share that will get them chatting?  Who will you ask and where and when are they on-line?  What will you talk about?

None of this is rocket science… it’s really just starting a conversation… your very own pub on-line… how does it feel to be a landlord or landlady?  Keeping your regulars entertained so they keep coming back for more of the same?  Enticing new people to your own little domain to share and tell their friends, neighbours and colleagues about this fantastic place on-line that serves up quality content day after day?  Think about it… if you plan you social media strategy you could have the hottest social media property on-line… but don’t cut corners and skip things.. like not posting daily… if I turn up at a pub and it’s shut I am likely to think it’s gone out of business and find somewhere else for my on-line hit… and I may even like it better… There are ways of having constant content that will help you when you busy and you can always schedule content to go out when you know this will be the case (a bit like having a temp on hand to run the pub) so no excuses for sloppy posting… now I am not perfect but we are getting there.. how about you?  Is your facebook fanpage hitting the dizzy heights it’s capable of?

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When someone follows you on twitter should you be reacting quickly saying thanks within a reasonable time (and these days a day or so is no longer sufficient) which means you need to monitoring your account pretty often or is it ok to use one of the many apps on the market to do it for you?  I will admit I do automate my thank you… and try to keep it sweet and welcoming… without selling anything…  I hate it when someone I have decided to follow immediately sends back a sales pitch – don’t you?  In fact I will probably immediately unfollow them so if they have something like this free app for twitter called Qwitter  and they will see it pretty quickly…

There are plenty of things on the market to do this.. one thing I would NOT recommend is setting up an auto follow for anyone who follows you and here’s why:
1.  They may be spam accounts
2.  You don’t get to check how loud they are
3.  They may not be relevant to you or you to them
4.  They may be erm… selling something you don’t wish to be associated
5.  You will end up with a very onfocused list
6.  You may end up with something that’s too big to handle
7.  It’s not very sociable…

One thing I would recommend is Social Oomph – you can use  the features you need in the free programme and if you really get to grips with it you can pay for the upgrade and really get your social media on track.  We are creatures of habit and we always do the things we enjoy… if something becomes too difficult we will ditch it and what a waste that would be.

So is it acceptable to automate a touch and interact when you have the time?  Or should you spend more time on-line just in case?  There is a fine balance to be struck and you do need to decide what works for you and your business…. there is no right or wrong… but if you do things with the best intentions and be polite and helpful, I can see no reason for not giving yourself a helping hand to get to grips with social media… if that means a touch of automation then so be it… let’s face it… I often schedule blog posts for the optimum time so what is so different about being polite?

Have you seen some really horrendous auto follow messages?  We’d love to see the best and worst of them why don’t you share them below…  I do get around to refollowing people back but don’t do it to everyone as you probably saw in the video… it doesn’t mean I don’t interact and help those I don’t follow so if you fancy listening I am @amanda_hill.

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