Okay, so maybe that’s not true. But I did learn a lot last night… including that my mother has some decent marketing chops without even realizing it. But I’ll save that for later.

So Tuesday (Sept 22) night was socStardom4 at Johns Hopkins’ Montgomery County Campus in Rockville, Maryland. (If you don’t know about socStardom, it’s a series of events co-sponsored by JHU Montgomery County Campus and Network Solutions with a huge helping hand with marketing from series “co-chair” Mayra Ruiz.)

Last night’s guest was Jason Alba, founder of Jibber Jobber, a personal relationship manager for your career, and author of I’m on Linked In – Now What? and I’m on Facebook – Now What?. The focus of his talk was how to use social media to grow your business.

So why should we listen to him about this? Because that’s exactly how he grew his business into the household name it is today. (Okay, maybe it’s not a household name yet, but that’s his goal, and he’s well on his way to achieving it. He even told us a story about that last night. But you had to be there…)

So what did I learn about social media – and general marketing and relationship management — last night? Well, here are the highlights:

Managing social media: Social media can take over your life. Don’t let it. Some suggestions if you’re short on time:
Twitter: Put one tip a day on twitter. That’s it.
Blogging: Spend ¼ of your time writing your blog posts and the remainder developing relationships with other bloggers in your space.
Linked In: Use the two-minute strategy. Anytime you go on, only stay there for two minutes. (Oh, and if you’re not living in the LinkedIn Answers space, you need to do so. According to Jason, “LinkedIn Answers is the bomb!”)

Twitter: There are two important ratios you need to master: business to personal and value add to selling. If you’re only “selling stuff” all the time, people will stop listening. (I wonder if Jason would consider my tweet last night about my new ring turning my finger green a valuable “personal” tweet…)

Relationship management: Know people’s birthdays. Know their interests. And find reasons to stay in touch. One of Jason’s suggestions? “There is nothing like cutting out a magazine article and sending it in the mail.” (Remember earlier when I mentioned my mom? She does this. All the time. To me and my sister. So yes, apparently she’s doing a great job of marketing herself to us.)

2 Sins of Bloggers: 1) leaving out the “checkbox” in the comment area that allows people to follow a thread of conversation; and 2) not giving readers the ability to sign up to get your posts via email. (Hmmm… Shashi, does NetSol offer that on this blog?)

Email Signatures and Business Cards: Be creative. Be different. (Jason’s business card is pink and says “Pink Slip” on the back. He’s in the job space and helps job seekers. It’s actually clever.)

So there was a lot more I could write about, but I think I have to keep it short. Interested in more “words of wisdom” from Jason? Go to Twitter and search on #socStardom. You’ll see my tweets (@rferrier) along with others from last night’s guests.

Oh, and one last thing, two book recommendations — other than his — from Jason last night: Brag! The Art of Tooting Your Own Horn by Peggy Klaus and Never Eat Alone by Keith Ferrazzi and Tahl Raz. (Jason said the latter changed the way he thinks about relationships.)

Guest post from Robin Ferrier. Robin Ferrier is the Communications Manager for Johns Hopkins University Montgomery County. As the Communications Manager, she oversees media relations, community outreach, marketing, publications, and special events, and manages the Campus’ web presence, including the web site and its presence in the social media realm. Robin also engages in limited legislative affairs activities and works on partnership development and business development efforts for the Campus.

Robin is the President of the Capital Communicators Group, an organization of more than 1,000 public relations, public affairs, and communications professionals in the D.C. metro area. She is also co-chair of the Tech Council of Maryland’s Marketing Committee, a Leadership Montgomery graduate, and one of the founders of the socStardom series of social media events.

Prior to joining Johns Hopkins, Robin worked in Corporate Communications for Choice Hotels and also handled public relations and marketing for a national non-profit scientific organization, a small public relations firm, and a literary agency.

It should hardly need repeating at this point: When you post stuff to the Internet, people will see it, and quite possibly use it in ways that you don’t intend. And yet, either people keep finding new ways to make the same mistakes, or other people keep finding ways to use that information.

Two recent cases in point:

* Project ‘Gaydar’: This Boston Globe article looks at some MIT researchers who analyzed Facebook friending patterns and figured out that they could pretty accurately predict which men were gay, even if they didn’t list it in their profile. They did this by looking at the subjects’ Facebook friends; apparently, gay men have more gay male friends than straight men, so by looking at someone’s followers and plugging them into a computer model, they could infer who was gay. (It didn’t work as well with bisexuals and lesbians.)

The reason it works is that people with similar interests tend to cluster. Call it birds of a feather flocking together, or guilt by association. Either way, it shows another way that indirect information — in this case, the company you keep — can be used to reveal more information about you than you might have intended, especially when that information is accessible online.

(A further example comes from another researcher cited in the article who used predictive models, combined with follower information, to predict political affiliation based on music preference. Again, while it may be an old stereotype to associate, say, the Grateful Dead with progressives, and while you might miss a few outliers — like noted Republicans who are Deadheads — the ability to cross-check against the stated preferences of your online friends, over whom you have little control — is a new thing to worry about.)

Although I’m sure many audience research, political polling, and marketing types are salivating at the possibilities, any privacy-valuing individual should take pause. Though the logical answer — don’t post information under your own name, which basically means don’t post anything — seems pretty draconian. [link via Slashdot]

* Online Compliments Can Haunt You, Too: From the Wall Street Journal, a lawyer who represents corporations in employment cases recommends they tell employees not to post recommendations for laid-off co-workers on job networking sites (like LinkedIn), on the theory that if someone is let go for cause, but gets good online recommendations from co-workers, it might be used as legal fodder.

You know the mom-ish advice — if you can’t say something nice about someone, don’t say anything at all. I guess we can amend that to simply say, “Don’t say anything at all.”

Online job recommendations are strange beasts — as Jeremiah Owyang notes, their value is already dubious, since people are only likely to ask for a recommendation when they think they’ll get a good one, but this is a new twist. Most of us are hesitant to give a less-than-shining recommendation if the other person can see it; take away the ability to give a good recommendation, and all that’s left is the mushiest of litigation-proof recommendation letters, or simply a very corporate verification of employment dates.

It’s easy to say, “Just stop posting stuff online,” though in practice, it’s getting to be like saying “so just don’t drive” or “just don’t talk on the phone” — you can do it, but the cost is increasing.

Got a comment (that’ll add to your online body of work, possibly lending more insight into your personality and purchasing habits)? Leave a comment.

This blog covers many topics regarding running your business online and we talk about social media quite a bit. However, I don’t think we have really provided you with some basics to get started if you are trying to make sense of all the tools out there. Sure, we have covered Twitter and the Twitterverse and using our blog tools but there are some basic things you should be doing to use social media in your marketing activities.

I was reading an article in Entrepreneur.com and they stated that “Twitter grew 3,000 percent in April. Facebook hosted 61.2 million visitors in March. LinkedIn counts 20 million users worldwide.”

THOSE ARE POWERFUL NUMBERS. BUT HOW DO YOU TAKE ACTION?

We have been piloting classes in Social Media and we have found that there are found basic things you should do if you are going to start leveraging social media tools for your small business.

Way #1 – Google Alerts: Know Who is Talking About You
For those of you who don’t know Google Alerts, you can set up alerts to come to your email or an RSS feed based on keywords you set. You can set them up at http://www.google.com/alerts. You will need to create a Google account to get it running.

Way #2 – Get a LinkedIn Profile
LinkedIn provides the opportunity to connect with others who are also looking to create partnerships or to collaborate. LinkedIn has incorporated additional social networking capabilities such as special interest groups and open discussion threads. You can also have people recommend you and recommend them which can be very powerful for people searching for someone with your expertise to hire you or your firm.  You can get started by creating a profile allows you to post your online career history, then to connect with your network, many of which probably are on LinkedIn already. You can also set up your company on LinkedIn and get your employees/contractors connected to your company profile. This can also help promote not just you but your firm as a whole.

Way #3- Using Twitter: To Tweet or Not to Tweet
Many people, including me used to advise companies to start with a blog, but now it is probably easier to get on Twitter first.  This allows your to engage in conversations faster and better along with building a powerful network that will drive traffic to your web site and blog. This way, when you do things like an  announcement of a new product or promotion you can use Twitter to include a link back to the details on your company’s blog or website, all while waiting to get a coffee.  Connecting with people on Twitter produces the necessary personal touch so many clients and customers prefer and shows that you are really listening. You can also leverage Twitter to get instant answers to questions, feedback on brand elements and product ideas. Be warned thought, Twitter can be a time sink. Look at using tools like Tweetie, Tweetdeck or Seesmic Desktop to keep up with ongoing conversations.

Way #4 – YouTube: Internet Video is Not Just for Laughing Babies and Sneezing Pandas
Another way to capitalize on the fast pace of social media is by posting videos on YouTube. I know, I know, when you think of YouTube all that seems to come to mind are viral phenomenons like the Star Wars Kid, Laughing Baby and the Sneezing Panda. While alot of the content on YouTube is very juvenile and not very useful for work, many companies are establishing an outpost on YouTube for many reasons. To share interviews, protect their brand, have a channel to rapidly respond to PR crisis issues (e.g. Burget King) and even to demonstrate your knowledge to the world to help establish your company as a thought leader. You can started with very low overhead (I use a Flip video camera which is $100-200) and using your channel to uploading a short clip can be a rapid way to test the market and also demonstrate your knowledge to potential customers.

The irony of online video and sites like YouTube? You reach a wider audience than network or cable TV. That is pretty powerful, don’t you agree?

Way #5- Set up a Blog: How Will People Know You Are an Expert

Having just a web site is very 2005. If you are out there trying to build reputation, especially as a thought leader in a particular area, you must start a a blog now. Blogging takes disseminating information about a company a step beyond formal press releases, ads, marketing brochures and websites. A well-managed blog invites peoples’ perspectives and provides an opening for real relationships to be formed which is a critical aspect of great customer service, and a good user experience.

Blogging doesn’t have to be a huge time commitment, but expect to spend 1-3 hours to research, write and edit a post. You should also do it on a regular basis. If you are going to write daily or weekly, be consistent and pick a day to publish. I find it best to writing during mornings or on weekends to maximize my schedule. The nice thing about blog tools now is the ability to schedule. You can write a post when you have a free block of time and schedule it when every you want it to go out. Granted, some things are time sensitive but if you look to build readership, you must be consistent otherwise people will think your blog is dead and unsubscribe or just stop visiting.

Another side benefit is that search engines love blogs. Blogs that are refreshed regularly get a boost in search engine rankings. When blogs publish a new post, it lets the search engine know that you have new content and they spider your site and reindex you, helping you with increasing authority and relevance in search engine rankings.

The Bottom Line – Mix Social Media with Traditional Media and Find the Mix that Best Suits your Business

Pulling a quote from the article in Entrepreneur.com which is very appropriate – “Traditional advertising and marketing is not dead,” says Olivier Blanchard, business strategist and principal of The Brand Builder Marketing. Blanchard advocates integrating social media into a more traditional marketing and advertising plan, “so you can have a healthy mix, much like a diversified investment portfolio.”

Time is money, so before you dive in you have a solid website, e-mail list and a contact database before venturing into social media.

Remember it is conversation before conversion. No matter what the platform, the true value of social media is found in the conversation. You are not necessarily going to get tons of comments every day, or @tweets/retweeting your every word but you are engaging a potential customers or clients in the way you could not have before and than conversation naturally leads to the point were they become new customers and your investment in social media will come full circle.