Krishna De: Insights From Ireland On Digital Marketing, Social Media And Entrepreneurship

Quickly share the events you are participating in using Plancast.com - and it's free.

1. Register your account at www.plancast.com - you can log in with your Facebook or Twitter account or start from scratch

2. Update your profile and your own calendar of events - what events are you attending in the months ahead?

3. Look for friends, subscribe to their updates and see what they are attending - then decide if you plan to join them

4. Tell your network - share events that you are attending to your friends by email, through Facebook or Twitter

5. Share events that you can not attend but think your friends would be interested in knowing about - again do this via email, Twitter or Facebook.

You can find my profile at http://www.plancast.com/krishnade

What great events are you attending in the months ahead and are you using Plancast.com yet?

This week LinkedIn.com announced that you can now integrate LinkedIn staus updates and your Tweets without having to use a third party service.

Historically I posted all my Tweets on my LinkedIn profile by adding my Twitter profile to the website links area and using the Six Apart application on LinkedIn - this pulled my Tweets and blog posts into my profile on LinkedIn. However there were sometimes Tweets that were not so relevant to my community on LinkedIn.

You will notice under the status update area on your home page that there is a Twitter icon - just click on that and it will ask you to confirm that you want to connect your Twitter account with your LinkedIn account status updates.

On LinkedIn, adding your twitter account will mean that under the area where your website is listed it will reference your Twitter account.

Then when you post to Twitter if you decide that you want to share a Tweet on LinkedIn, you can decide if you want to share all your Tweets to LinkedIn or selective tweets to update your LinkedIn status. If you pick the latter, you need to add the #li or #in hashtag to every relevant tweet you’d like to send back to LinkedIn.

Have you started posting your Tweets to LinkedIn yet?

Research released today by Morse, the IT services and technology company, has shown that use of Twitter and other social networks by employees at work is costing UK businesses £1.38 billion* each year in lost productivity. 

From the 1,460 office workers surveyed over half (57%) said that they used social networking sites during the working day for personal use.

On average those people were spending 40 minutes on these sites each week, equating to just under a full working week being wasted each year by employees using social networking sites at work.

The survey of 1,460 office workers was commissioned by Morse and conducted by independent research company TNS. Further details of the survey are available from Spark Communications on 020 7436 0420.

Portsmouth City Council was reported to be banning Facebook on its computers after it was revealed staff spent on average 400 hours on the site every month. Portsmouth City Council said it had decided to change its policy and block access to the social networking site along side use of Bebo, Twitter and eBay (YouTube had already been banned) in September 2009. You can read about this case at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/hampshire/8231234.stm

The report also indicated that 76% of the respondents stated their employer had not issued them with specific guidelines with regards to using Twitter.

The press release from Morse.com also commented that there have been several high-profile incidents recently, involving the likes of Curry’s, PC World, BA and Virgin Atlantic, where employees have abused customers on social networks and other public-facing sites therefore damaging the reputation of the company.

The research also states that a third of office workers stated that they had seen sensitive information posted on social networks, overall 84% felt that it should be up to them as to what they post online.

Of the office workers surveyed 81% admitted that they were worried they might be clicking on a link to an unsecure website when for example they clicked on shortened URL's especially prevalent in Tweets.

Interestingly, I am working with a non-profit organisation who have taken the opposite approach. It is important for them to allow their employees access many different sites in the course of their work so instead they have put in place systems that check for viruses at the network level and at an individual PC's level and they are developing codes of practice for their employees and other stakeholder groups.

Does your organisation have an IT or communications policy that addresses employee access to social media sites?

When do you Tweet? When driving, at work or on vacation?

A recent Gadgetology study by consumer electronics shopping site, Retrevo.com found that most people check Facebook and Twitter a couple of times a day.

27% of respondents to the survey who are under 35 years of age however are checking Facebook more than 10 times a day.

The survey also found that that 36% of people under the age of 35 often use Facebook or Twitter after sex - men being more likely to do this than women - and iPhone users are three times more likely to do so than Blackberry owners.

The Retrevo.com Gadgetology study indicates that only 19% of the over 35 year olds use a phone as the preferred device for social media services with 81% preferring instead a desktop or laptop computer. However 46% of the under 35 year old survey respondents prefer to use a mobile devise to engage with social media..

Among the survey respondents under age 35, 27% of Facebook users check it more than 10 times a day compared to 39% of Twitter users checking in on Twitter more than 10 times a day.

When do you Tweet? And how addicted to Facebook and Twitter are you?

ABOUT THE RESEARCH

The Retrevo Gadgetology Report is an ongoing study of people and electronics from Retrevo, the consumer electronics shopping site.

The survey was an online study of individuals (non-Retrevo customers) conducted by an independent panel. The sample size was 771 distributed across gender, age, income and location in the United States.

 

Facebook finally makes money(5:38)Sep 15

Sheryl Sandberg, the social networking site's COO, announces 300M users and positive cash flow.

One of the questions that many people ask about Facebook is if it is 'making money'. Actually it's the question that many people ask of all social media platforms.

On the 15 September, Sheryl Sandberg the COO of Facebook announced that Facebook is now cashflow positive and that they had reached 300 million users (Ireland is fast approaching 1 million users which is almost a quarter of the country's population). She also comments that their priority was in building the membership base.

While there are 300 million users overall - 55 million of them are mobile users.

She also comments that advertising spend on Facebook has increased as marketeers are looking for more effective ways to advertise - the ability to demographically target your Facebook ads makes your online advertising spend must more cost effective than banner advertising for example.

Sheryl also comments that Facebook's goal is not for Facebook to be 'the one place' to come to on the Internet - they do however aspire to be the technology platform to allow people to connect with who ever they wish to, wherever they are.

It is a really good video and one worth taking 5 minutes to watch.

And remember if you would like to connect to me on Facebook, you can join me - and you can leave your digital marketing and social media questions which I will do my best to answer for you:

http://www.facebook.com/marketingmentor - marketing and social media with an Irish Focus

http://www.facebook.com/bizgrowthnewdia - marketing and social media tips from my business

How are you using Facebook to connect to friends and fans?

Are you frustrated that you can't archive and search the Tweets and the direct messages you have sent with Twitter?

I have been exploring a number of ways to back up my Twitter messages especially as there is a limited archive in Twitter.

Many of the services I have tried are far from complete. But Evernote the free archiving and bookmarking tool just night have the answer for us. Read all about how to set your Evernote and Twitter integration here on the Evernote blog.

While US focused, this is a great video with statistics about the increasing impact ad influence of social media.

What do you think they have missed or you would challenge?