Notes from a wireframe world

“You need to be in the TwitterFaceSpace to make a success of your business!”

“Social Media will make your business grow!”

“A facebook fan page is a magic bulleted!”

All rubbish! Yes that’s right, rubbish, at least according to a August 2009  study from Citibank.

More than three quarters of the small business surveyed said they didn’t find that social networks generated leads or expanded their business.

That’s a shocking figure, especially as we reported in back in September that you can? So what’s the scoop? Did I lie in September? Has CitiBank made a mess of the numbers? The real answer, as I alluded to back in September, is neither. Social media, just as with anything in business needs to be done correctly and not under the illusion that it’s some type of magic bullet. You need to know your market, are you’re the type that use social media or are they going to be more at home with a print advert? What do you want out of it? How are you going to get that?

Fundamentally social media is a tool, and just as with any tool if you use it incorrectly (or use the wrong tool in the first place) going to have a hard job getting it to do what you want it to do.

And this situation is made worse by two groups of people, one understandably the other unforgivably. The first group is throes small business, and it’s understandable that they make mistakes. The whole social media thing looks so simple stick up a facebook fan page or get a twitter account, and suddenly the whole world and his dog will be knocking at your door. Sadly it takes effort, time and planning before that will happen, effort because you have to publicise your facebook fan page or twitter stream to the right people, which means figuring out who they are and how to do that, and effort because you have to update content all the time, and respond to your fan’s.

Time because unsurprisingly that takes time, time to do and time to reap the rewards of. I advise clients to plug away with their social networking plans for at least six months before they look at if they are working. Because that’s how long it takes for people to trust your twitter stream or facebook page, and start acting on the things you want them to do.

And lastly it takes planning, you wouldn’t rush head long into a product redesign just because this year everyone’s talking about how cool red is (have you ever seen red fries?) yet I’ve seen organisations rush head long into social media projects without even asking themselves what they want out of it. Needless to say throes projects fail (well they success in a way, since they have no goals they meet throes goals…. ). And there are another group of people who must share at least part of the blame. People like me. Consultants, consultants who should know better but who push half baked projects onto organisation in order to make a quick buck, but in doing so they not only damage the image of social media but the companies they work for and their own reputations.

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The simple answer to this is… Nothing, but we’ll be implementing the CMP.ly when we need to.

The more complex answer is that it doesn’t affect us because 1) we don’t do sponsored posts nor do we get (yet anyway hint. Hint. Microsoft, a new windows 7 laptop would be nice…) any freebies, and 2) because we’re not a US based Blog.

That said I will still be implementing the CMP.ly (See Mashable’s article about them) because the vast majority of my readers access this site from the US, it therefore makes sense for me (as far as I can anyway) to abide by the strictest parts of UK law and US feudal law.

However I’m a lazy bugger and so I’ll most likely not bother tagging every post, but if I write something about someone I do business with, or about some freebie I get (nudge nudge Microsoft… Windows 7 looks very nice, it’s a shame my laptop won’t run it…) I will make it very clear (either in the text or by a CMP.ly tag. The nature of the business.

While I’m on the subject of disclosure, I’d like to echo the words of ReadWriteWeb on this subject…

But it’s interesting that the FTC went after bloggers rather than, say, entertainment writers who don’t mention the expensive junkets that movie studios take them on. A blogger who has to disclose that she or he received a free package of hot dog weiners has every right to feel burned after dropping fifty bucks to take the family to the latest "THRILLING!" "FANTASTIC!" "SURE-FIRE WINNER!"

It is of course hardly surprising that the FTC is going after Bloggers, we, for the most part are easy pickings, we are small and don’t have a huge army of lawyers to fight our cases. That said why shouldn’t we be honest and tell people exactly what (if anything) we get for the hard work we but in, that way people may be more willing to click on the “donate $1” paypal links.

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I just added a new page, highlighting more ways you can read this blog. This page will permanently be in the same location and linked to from the side so that you can easily access it for quick reference (Should you want to).

You can now add Notes from a Wireframe World to your iGoogle page, and get the headlines delivered to you homepage everyday. just click on the button below.

RSS

You can of course also read this blog via you own RSS reader just add http://feeds.feedburner.com/NotesFromAWireframeWorld as the RSS feed and your done.

As if by magic, the danger I warned about, phishing scams taking advantage of the twitter password issues  to launch a deluge of phishing scams, appears.

Normally I’d recommend that you change your password if think you’ve been duped into giving your details up, and this time is no different. You are risking being locked out however if you are so will throes who’ve duped you, and you will have access to your email account and so will be able to restore your account once the problems are sorted.

However remember if in dote, DO NOT LOG IN from a link. Go directly to twitter main page ( www.twitter.com ) and login from there.

Posted via email from scottherbert’s posterous

Yes that’s right, normally we’d advice people to change their password regularly however twitter users are being advised by Twitter NOT to amend their passwords, usernames or e-mail addresses.

Twitter is investigating an issue with users becoming locked out of the service after changing their email address or username, or resetting their passwords.

Of course this will be very concerning for security experts around the world, it would be the perfect time to launch a password stealing/phishing attack on Twitter, as the normal advise (change your password) will at this time be counterproductive.

We will update you when this issues is sorted.

Posted via email from scottherbert’s posterous