How do you get social media to be viral and grow your business ?
You need to have some percentage of your tweets, and wall posting re-tweeted, recommended, and referenced so people who wouldn’t otherwise see them will. Thats the viral part. So how are you going to do this?  Build a relationship:

1. Don’t just tweet promotional info, nobody watches TV just for the ads (except perhaps the Super Bowl) They watch it for entertainment and information. Add personal, general business, and industry information that may interest your customers and prospects.
2. Get in the conversation. Reply to to comments, tweets/postings, answer questions, do it regularly and frequently (multiple times per day).
3. Manage your reputation, negative information should be responded to immediately. Figure out how to make your critics your fans.
4. Collaborate with others in your industry to extend reach. (Contests, cross promotions, recommendations, etc.)
5. Commit to it. Social media is a long term investment; If you drop it after a short time you won’t get a decent return.

As you can see there is a significant commitment of time and effort to get social media to work. But if your prospects and customers are using social media it can pay off.

Related Posts:

• A couple of great marketing resources
• There’s No Such Thing as Social Media

Why, because you’ve probably put the answer to your password reset verification questions in your social network profiles. Usually the password reset verification questions are thinks like the town you were born in, your favorite pet, where you were married, etc. Frequently this information is in a profile, or other post you’ve created. You mother’s maiden name, your wedding date, and your kids names may be on that family tree site you site or application you use. The list goes on…

So what should you do?

1. Think about those verification questions
2  Sanitize your social networking profiles and remove or obscure that information, so it can’t be used against you
3. Or better yet, change your verification questions, to information you have never published,  since once information is  on the Internet old copies are stored all over the place.

Remember most of the information put put on social networking sites are searchable somehow, so don’t risk your security–think about what you put out there and how it can be used.
I know of a documented and publicized case where a hacker used social networking to get answers to verification questions as part of network break-in.

(OK, this site is called Irunabiz:Technology, and these sites are about marketing, so how do I justify this post. First, They are on the Internet, that’s technology, isn’t it? Second, sometimes they talk about technology subjects like Twitter and Facebook. Third, this is my blog and I can write about anything I want to, so there!)

• Copyblogger. While ‘blogger’ is in the name, this site is about a lot more than blogging. Its about good writing, with a focus on persuasive, and engaging copy. I pick up great tips almost every time I go to it.  It’s also organized very well, so it’s easy to get lots of information on a specific subject.

• The Duct Tape Marketing Blog. This blog is written by John Jantsch (who also has  books and related media on this subject). His blog has a lot of cutting edge information on marketing in general with a focus, lately, on Internet and social media marketing. I think I have referenced material from his blog more than any other. He is well worth reading regularly.

Take some time to let me know about any site you think are worthwhile below.

Related Posts

• Figuring out Twitter when you can barely figure out email.
• Fast Read: Sales and Marketing

“entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem”
(entities must not be multiplied beyond necessity).–Occam’s razor

Given that I write a blog, I spend  a lot of time reading other blogs, both on general business subjects and on blogging business. Over the past two weeks I read (and commented on) two posts that really got me thinking about social media.  The first post was on the DuctapeMarketing  blog. It was an post about creating a special role or position in a company for the person that handles Social Media (“Adding a Chief Conversation Officer” ); I got into quite a rant on this one. The other article was on Graywolf’s SEOBlog, where he discusses the fact that Social Media is so complex that its not possible for there to be experts on the subject (“Is There Really Such a Thing as a Social Media Expert“). After reading both these postings and ruminating on the subject for a while I came to a realization– Social Media isn’t new, and its mostly hype.

What we call social media on the Internet has existed in some form since the  the beginning of time. Since the invention of printing with movable type, there have been newspapers and letters to the editor; since the 1960’s there has been some form talk radio; since the late 70’s there have  been call in TV shows. Twitter is the Internet equivalent of a cocktail party, where you can get involved in  conversations on different topics with various groups of people. In the late 80’s and early 90’s people wrote books about ‘networking’ at these types of events, there were even (and still probably are ) seminars on how to ‘network’. Facebook, Linkedin, et all, are quite similar to regular social or business luches with friends or colleagues. Before Digg, if you wanted to know what people were reading, you could check out your coffee shop, or hotel lobby, or even a park at lunchtime. The big difference between non-internet versions of ‘being social’ and the new Internet ’social media’ is access and speed.  The concepts and skills manage these activities have not changed much.

Once you get past the hype, and objectively look at social media, you will see that most of the skills you use to be social, will work with social media too. Now, don’t get me wrong, there are technical nuances and issues that you will need specialists to help you with, but the overall strategy and tactics have been around for hundreds of years. Just look at Martin Luther, who nailed a listing of his criticism’s of the Catholic Church to a church door, perhaps he was one of the earliest bloggers. And if you want to know how to drive traffic to your blog, spend some time studying the tactics that Benjamin Franklin used to increase the circulation of his brother’s newspaper.

One of the thing that is frequently talked about in the press, was the Obama campaign’s use of the web to interact with  his supporters– To Summarize, he had the designer of the Facebook social network design his campaign website. His site allowed him to accomplish the following goals

1. Present his Platform (Product Information)
2. Collect Money (E-Commerce Sales)
3. Inform Supporters of Events (Promotions/Advertising)
4. Communicate with Supporters (Advertising)
5. Obtain Feedback from Supporters (Market Research/Customer Service)

If you are running a small business you hould want your web presence to accoplish as many of these goals as is possible.

Ok, you say “now that you have told me what I already know, how am I going to do it ?”

Below is a list of tools and hints and resources to help you:

1. Pick the right domain name. This link is to a Video blog about how to pick a good domain name by Bob Parsons at GoDaddy.com. You can also register you domain name at goDaddy.com‡. I have my Domains registered at with GoDaddy, as well as my web hosting and some of my email accounts.

2. Create a website with interactive features. Once you have a domain– Google has a great free tool called Google Sites, that allows you to create a website withn many features  (like announcements, Calendars) and other information and, it does not require any programming. Google Forms lets you collect data and information from site visitors and store them in a google Spreadsheet.

4. Ceate a blog. Blogs are a great way to ceate  personal interaction with you customers. I recommend you get blogging platform created for businesses. If you have some technical savvy you can use use the ‘quick install apps from goDaddy’s Hosting Connecton‡ (This blog is setup that way with a blogging program called WordPress), or you can have your blog hosted by Wordpress.com for a reasonable prices.

5. Send an email newsletter. Newsletters are a great way to communicate with your customers. Make sure that you have valuable and informative content as well as promotional  information. A tool that comes well recommented for this purpose is  Aweber‡. They lots of tools to help you leverage your email list.

6. Setup a web store. You can use goDaddy’s Quick Shopping Cart‡ (I have used it, and found it to be pretty good) or one of the many other ecommece sites out there. Don’t forget to setup a payments, PayPal and Google Checkout are good options for a basic store.