Social Media Strategies: Hobby Sites A Source of Business

Courtesy Flickr.com

Computer Shopper published this deansguide article 8-14-2009

Social media strategies often ignore one of the most important aspects of networking to produce leads: hobbies. Your hobby or passion can produce leads and new networking connections if you understand how to leverage Web 2.0 Social Media site. As a new fan to photography, equipped with a real camera, I am about to begin a life long desire to produce quality pictures. I am going to do both black and white and color shots concentrating on the beauty of Northern California. My social media tool of choice will be Flickr.com the photo sharing social network.

Social Niche Networking: Hobbyist

1. Make a list of your hobbies

2. Choose one hobby that you would like to write about for a community

3. Choose the right Social Media site for you

4. Provide articles, photos, podcasts, or video that communicates within the community

5. Link your work on this site to your blog, website, and your profiles around the Social Media System

Many times we connect through liked minded beliefs, hobbies, and interests. These efforts can lead to a business relationship as people begin to become more comfortable with new friends and the different ways to connect.

Twitter Strategies for Realtors: Follow to Follower Ratio Solution

Are you a beginning Twittering Realtor looking to connect but without a strategy? Have you gone off the deep end by following hundreds of people and companies and now find yourself in the unenviable position of being perceived as a spamming MLM sales person? Is nobody following you back because of your initial aggressive follow “strategy”? If you are in this situation there is hope and it starts with bringing your follow to follower ratio inline. Simply put you want to have a near 50-50 ratio between people you follow and people who follow you. A huge thank you to developer Dossi Shiobara for this fantastic tool.

The Premise

Dossi’s tool is based on the Twitter premise that many people adhere to in their strategy: I will follow you if you follow me back. That is a reciprocal follow strategy for nothing more than an attempt at generating large follower numbers. Dossi’s Twitter Karma tool allows you to check to see who has followed you and most importantly remained a follower thus keeping your follow to follower ratio intact.

Twitter Karma: Clean Up Your Ratio

Twitter Karma aka dossy.org is simple to use Example:

• Green Arrows: you follow them
• Red Arrows: they follow you
• Time Stamp: key to knowing their Tweeting habits
• Batch Unfollow: you can check multiple accounts if you wish to do a batch unfollow

Strategies:

• Unfollow: many Twitterers follow then quickly unfollow within a few days. The idea behind this is to build recipricol followers and then unfollow to create more room in their ratios. When you find someone like this dump them immediately
• Due Diligence: sometimes you foget to follow somebody. If you missed one then immediately follow that person to correct the situation
• Tweeting Habits: you can tell, by looking at the time stamp, how often a person tweets. If they are not tweeting enough then they could be a candidate to unfollow
• Abandonment: according to many recent reports up to 70% of new Twitterers abandon their Twitter accounts within 60 days. This is inline with the idea that blogging, Twitter is a microblog, has a high attrition rate. If you find someone who has not tweeted in months it is time to clean up and unfollow them. It helps your ratios so you can follow somebody signficant to your efforts

Google to Launch Chrome Open Source Operating System in 2010

Microsoft Operating Systems long the standard and “bully on the block” is getting a new competitor with clout: Google. That is right! Google announced it is going to enter the OS market in 2010. Mashable’s Ben Parr broke the news with his timely article: “BREAKING: Google to Launch Operating System.” Let’s take a look at what Google has to say about Chrome OS.

Chrome OS Description

• Open Source: free is always good
• Lightweight: uncomplicated is preferable
• Targeting Netbooks users

3 Key Aspects of Chrome OS

• Speed: faster makes for efficiency
• Simplicity: too often we are bogged down by features that are less benefit than drain on a system’s speed. Are you listening Microsoft?
• Security: this has been the Achilles heal for Microsoft for a long time and the issue that could present the most value to users

Chrome OS Value Proposition: Eliminate “Microsoft Frustration”

According to Sundar Pichai, VP Product Management and Linus Upson, Engineering Director, Chrome OS advantages

• “We’re designing the OS to be fast and lightweight”
• ” To start up and get you onto the web in a few second”
• “The user interface is minimal to stay out of your way”
• “Most of the user experience takes place on the web”
• “Completely redesigning the underlying security architecture of the OS so that users don’t have to deal with viruses, malware and security updates”