How Do You Decide To Connect or Not to Connect?

by jonathangood on February 19, 2010

I receive requests regularly from people I haven’t met in person or don’t know at all. And while connecting with people on social networks like Facebook and Linkedin can be a great way  build your online audience and brand, it can be a tough decision to add someone without knowing much about them.

Here are a couple of steps you can take that will make it more likely that people will want to connect with you.

  1. Add a message to your request
  2. Tells me why you want to connect with me
  3. How being connected to you could benefit both of us
  4. Have a profile photo (a nice friendly photo works best in my opinion. (Sorry I don’t really care about being friends with your kids or dogs even though I’m sure their photos are very cute).
  5. Read and comment on the persons blog or visit their Web site. If you read my blog and leave a comment it will make it much more likely I’ll add you and even reciprocate.
  6. Make sure you have some relevant information in your public profile available to peruse. If there’s very little information in your profile – what else do I have to make a decision on?
  7. Don’t try to sell me something right away (you know who you are). Try developing a relationship first. It’s much more likely that I’ll buy something from you without you asking,  or refer people to your service or business.
  8. If Facebook shows we’re connected to few of the same people,  let me know how and why or even if that person recommended we connect.

I’d love to know more about how you make your decisions to friend or not to friend?

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Get a Magic Travel Machine: Why I Love Using Skype.

by jonathangood on February 2, 2010

I just got off a Skype call with my friend Jonathan, who recently relocated to Phuket, Thailand. It’s already Tuesday there. Earlier this morning I was talking with my mother who lives in Bratislava, Slovakia. Yes — I said Slovakia.

Now I’ve been using Skype for a couple of years, and yet every time I use it I can’t help but think that it must use some sort of magic. Connecting with people around the globe for free — having conversations with friends, family and business partners. It is amazing.

With Skype we are able to stay connected globally using voice and video chats for free. Video chat is almost as good as being in person. You can see body language and really get a sense of having a real conversation with the person on the other end of the line. You also use video and chat simultaneously which makes for easy sharing of links, files, and that I can share my screen with someone thousands of miles away. It is great for collaborating on projects.

If you’re not a Skype user yet — I highly encourage you to try it out or look me up and give me a call if you want to chat about technology, social media or business!

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Asking for Recommendations on LinkedIn

by jonathangood on January 12, 2010

I receive requests for recommendations on LinkedIn regularly and thought I’d share some ideas for anyone who is trying to build up his or her number of recommendations.

When asking for a recommendation, it’s a good idea to ask only people you really know — so if someone in their network actually contacts them, they can speak openly, honestly and authentically about you. Remember: Most people will not recommend anyone who they haven’t worked with at least once, or have had some sort of positive business dealing with to reference.

If you are serious about getting recommended, write unsolicited recommendations for people in your network that you feel deserve some recognition. Everyone loves receiving unsolicited compliments. Especially when you can say something positive about that person’s work and abilities.

After a few days if that person hasn’t reciprocated with a recommendation of you, it’s ok to send a polite request for a recommendation of your work. Keep in mind, if you don’t think they could write an authentic recommendation, it’s probably best to skip them and realize you’ve created some goodwill simply by recommending them.

If you do send the request, it’s a good idea to tell the person you’re asking to take the time to recommend your work or skills you’d like to be recommended for to potential clients/customers or employers.

Last, try to schedule informal in-person meetings with people in your network you think you could help or do work for over the coming year. Try coming up with something you think would interest the person, such as an introduction to a resource or connection who could further their business interests.

I’m usually very happy to meet most people who request my time for a phone call or coffee to talk about business and social media.

I’d love to hear your thoughts about how you’re using LinkedIn to build relationships and your business. Give me a buzz or tweet me! @jonathangood

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Clay Shirky Discusses How Social Media Can Make History

by jonathangood on December 7, 2009

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Don’t Let Your Brand Get Hijacked

by jonathangood on July 14, 2009

Whether you are launching a new service, product or company, it is always one of the first tests to see if the right domain name is available. You may also want to consider registering some alternative spellings of the domain name if there are some obvious phonetic spellings available.

In order to protect your brand, another important step is to make sure that you also register your company user name, product or service name on as many social networks and social sites as possible even if you have no plans to actively use it.

To speed this process along, go to http://knowem.com, allowing you to quickly see if anyone is using your brand as a username on any on 116 popular networks. If you’re too busy to do all the registering yourself, you can Use the premium service to register your Username on all these sites.

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Choosing the Right Twitter Name

by jonathangood on June 3, 2009

I recently gave a presentation on using social media tools to build your business and received an e-mail from one of the attendees who had decided it was time to take the plunge into Twitter.

His question:

“What would be a good twitter name for me? If I focus on my professional Web site, I could use my business name. If I focus on my passion for rock climbing, I could use @climberjunky. If decide on something generic, I could use my @myname.”

Which is the right decision?

Choosing your Twitter name depends on what you want to do with Twitter. There are many strategies and many opinions.

Three common choices are:

  1. Your name
  2. Your company
  3. A “fun” name that is creative or references a passion

There are good reasons for all three.
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Make Your Browser Amazing With Firefox Add-ons

by jonathangood on May 31, 2009

Over the past couple years I’ve become a big fan of Mozilla Firefox. The main reason: You can customize with Add-ons it to fit your needs.

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Here are my top 10 Firefox Add-ons

1. Alexa Sparky — Sparky is a free plugin built by Alexa and gives you useful information about the sites you visit without interrupting your Web browsing.

  • Learn about Website Traffic Trend information and be able to see if a site getting more popular, or less popular. It provides detailed traffic information including Reach and Rank.
  • You also can use it to compare a site’s traffic to other sites on the Web.
  • Surf more efficiently with Related Links for each page — If I like this site, are there others that I might want to visit?
  • As you surf around you are helping to make the Web a better place for everybody by contributing to the traffic information that Alexa provides.

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What Twitter Dashboard Are You Using?

by jonathangood on May 26, 2009

There are hundreds of applications based on the Twitter API, however I think the dashboard applications are some of the most useful. If you’re not using a dashboard, you are likely not getting the full experience of what its like to participate in the twitter community.

Dashboards allow you to monitor, interact, retweet, sort, categorize, follow trends, create groups, search and much more. Here are a few of the dashboards that I’ve used and like.

Tweetdeck

The first dashboard application I ever used is Tweetdeck.  It’s still my favorite dashboard today, but there are several others viable applications that are nipping at the heels of Tweetdeck.

Packed with some really great features that allow you to see your friends twitter stream, @replies, direct messages, create groups, Twitscoop, 12seconds, stocktwits and even your facebook status updates. I particularly like the groups feature to watch groups of friends that I am interacting with on a more regular basis or for watching the most active, informative or entertaining tweeps that I follow.

Seesmic Desktop

Another very cool dashboard was developed be Seesmic. Once you’ve installed the Seesmic dashboard you will notice that it looks very similar to Tweetdeck. The design is fairly clean and light compared to Tweetdeck although it doesn’t have all the features of Tweetdeck it does allow you to add multiple twitter accounts and tweet from one dashboard — a great feature for true twitter addicts.

Nambu

nambu_492

For Mac OSX users there is a dashboard from Nambu. Nambu has many similar features as the two dashboard I’ve already mentioned but also has some flexibility to switch from a combined view, to a sidebar view, to  column view. This can be handy if you are challenged for screenspace. Nambu also  allows for multiple accounts, timelines, mentions and direct mentions in a single or separate streams. Twitter Groups so you can separate people or services into separate groups so you never miss that key tweet. Threaded @mentions so conversations you are having appear together in one place, with the original tweet you sent.

And coming in the future, look for them to have integrations with FriendFeed, Ping.fm and Facebook to cover all your social messaging services in one great desktop application.

Hootsuite

hootsuite_492

One last online site that I also like is hootsuite. They also allow you to have multiple accounts and to allow other “editors” to work on those accounts. This might be of particular help if you have several employees posting to a variety of twitter accounts on behalf of  a product, service, or company. I also really like the design of hootsuite.

I hope you enjoy checking out these applications and let me know what your favorite dashboards or other applications you are using for twitter. I’m excited to see how these applications become more integrated, more intelligent and more useful over the coming months.

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Hello

by jonathangood on May 13, 2009

Welcome, and thank you for stopping by!

HelloSocialMedia.com is a social media marketing agency that focuses on the creation and execution of social media strategies, including blogging, social applications and community development.

We work with businesses, organizations and individuals to integrate social media into their marketing, branding and PR efforts. This integration creates stronger awareness and buzz while generating more leads, increasing ROI and having a positive impact on the bottom line.

Hello Social Media helps companies in many ways:

  • Identifying opportunities to leveraging social media tools
  • Improving SEO, analytics, blogging, podcasting, video, writing and graphic design
  • Creating and distributing content

We will be posting our thoughts, observations and insights about social media and how companies can leverage these new media technologies to help make their marketing and branding efforts more effective. It is our aim to inspire some great conversations and dialogue, and we’re looking forward to hearing from you.

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