Mind on Marketing

I went to a great workshop this morning, Social Networking 201, led by Marijean Jaggers (Standing Partnership PR), Sasha Farmer (Montague Miller) and Jason Hull (OpenSource Connections). Reminders of important basics, and much info on more advanced topics.

I learned I can use Facebook’s privacy settings to set boundaries on who gets to see what–as a way to keep your family and friend posts separate from business or other posts. I fiddled with settings, but don’t think I gained any ground. There are people I was hasty to accept as friends whose Wall posts really don’t interest me, but there doesn’t seem to be a way to filter for that. I know a lot of tech stuff, but am still a newbie in FB. I hate to say it, but I’m actually going to have to do some reading to learn how to manage the details.

If you’re new to social networking, RSS, and any number of topics, check out the CommonCraft channel on YouTube for wonderful explanations on a wide variety of topics. They explain things exactly as if you were sitting with a friend over lunch and showing how something works by drawing on your placemat. Very friendly, very accessible.

Sasha has used Facebook paid advertising with good success in marketing her real estate business. She likes the flyers–ads that you see on the right side of the screen. Targeting is available that goes beyond demographics to select on interests based on content in user posts on their pages.

If you want to start your own social networking community, Ning is one place where you can do it. But don’t even think about it unless you can invest the time needed to feed and water it so it can grow and flourish. I’m participating in one Ning community, My Linking Power (”My Linking Power Forum lends a hand to help members have more linking power to solve business, employment, and social problems faster…), and the founder of the community, Vincent Wright, works to keep the connections going and grow the community.

 Twimailer is a service that replaces the email notifications you normally get when someone signs up to follow you on Twitter.  It shows you that person’s page on Twitter so you can see who they are and the types of things they tweet, and if you want to follow them, you can do so right from the email. You’re saved the steps of going to Twitter and looking up their page. They’ve posted a video so you can see how it works. I think I’m going to like it.

Dabbleboard is a collaborative online white board. Looks like fun, although if you’re using a mouse for input the freehand drawing is pretty funky. Check it out if you use whiteboards or want to scribble on a virtual napkin.

It’s amazing how many new businesses have arisen in the social networking space.

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