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Social Media | Tony Adam - Entrepreneur, Marketer
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Tony Adam

Entrepreneur, Marketer, Aspiring Polymath

Social Media

Networking
Keys to building quality relationships and things to avoid
February 18, 2009 at 2:18 pm 27
  
     
I could go on and on for hours about how people abuse relationships because I am sooo passionate about the topic. Within Internet Marketing, I have developed some solid relationships with and would work with them, partner with them, and/or hang out with them at the drop of a dime. The problem here is that there are people that don't understand there is big difference between someone that is a contact vs. someone that you have established a relationship with and the value of that relationship.

Relationships versus Contacts: Quality is the key

I'm a networking machine and I like to meet people, that's just how I am built. I look for ways that I can help people and/or look for ways that we can help each other out. There are a variety of ways to do this, whether through learning and education, partnerships, or referrals. That said, I need to establish relationships with the people that I meet. Granted, I do meet a lot of people and I do have a contact list, but, I am not here to win a "popularity" contest, have a large amount of Twitter followers, or friends on Facebook. To me, that is not what this is all about, there is more to it than sheer numbers. The real value is in the quality of the relationship and not the quantity of contacts. Building up a lot of followers on Twitter or a huge friends list on Facebook is fine, do it if you have to, but realize that you are really just playing a popularity game and not creating opportunities or relationships, especially if your goal is solely in the numbers. I have added a ton of people in the past and then groomed/weeded people in/out of my friends list on Social Platforms and in life, but, the ones that I keep are great relationships and partnerships that have thrived. The people that I have established relationships with have led to great career opportunities, partnerships, knowledge, and most importantly, long lasting friendships. This is not something that you will get by only going for the quantity of contacts and trying to win some sort of popularity contest or ego driven "grader" application.

Relationship & Perception Killers: Social Capital, Trading up & Burning Bridges

As I mentioned above, there is a group of people that are all about ego stroking and popularity contests, it is an inevitable fact of life. With that comes interesting attempts at leveraging "Social Capital" or "Trading up" without the care of burning a bridge. I've run into this many times in my career where I have either been used for access to the relationships I have created, to provide knowledge to the individual, or in a partnership to create opportunity. I bring this up because I am starting to see more and more individuals like this sprouting up within the Internet Marketing, Social Media, and Technology communities. These people go to events, parties, and participate in Social Media sites for the sole purpose of using them for only personal gain, ego stroking, or popularity. The key takeaway is that the individual does not take value in the relationship built, thus trading up and burning a bridge. People like this have no problem "trading up" for new contacts for friendships because they have not vested anything into the current ones they have. They saw a value that could be used or leveraged, took advantage of this, and now have no reason not to burn the bridge that they have created. I can't and never will understand this form of deception and personally am appalled by it. Also, as it related to being popular, there really doesn't leave much time for actually achieving any goals and/or providing value within the industry you are in. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying don't have fun and enjoy life, but there is a time and place for everything. At the end of the day, in my opinion, it is about what you do and the relationships you've created and not how popular you are. This isn't only related to partying and the offline social scene as well. Think of the time you spend on Twitter and Facebook. If you are spending enormous amounts of time on Social Platforms like these without actually thinking of or caring about the actual value within it, you are wasting away your days. Social Media is about the conversation, but that doesn't mean to over do it, think of it like parties and events, if you are over doing it, when are you actually going to get anything done. Lets put this to the test in the case of a startup. I was having this conversation with someone I respect in the technology industry and it came up. If the owner/founders of a startup are spending ridiculous amounts of time on partying, drinking, only building social capital, and/or rotting away the days on Facebook, it is going to be very hard for your startup to prove value or change the perception of your worth. Imagine the stakeholders and/or people that are funding your business, won't they be questioning the decision making? Assume you have done a "friends and family round" of raising capital, how do you think that bridge is going to hold up if you haven't treated it with respect or as a relationship that you care about. Remember, it is one thing to have fun and enjoy life, but, it's another to be attempting to win a popularity contest. When it comes down to it, using your time wisely, being efficient, and getting shit done is the most important thing in life, bottom line. (Remember, these are my opinions, you can agree and/or disagree as you wish.) Remember to Subscribe to my RSS and Follow me on Twitter to keep the conversation going!
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Analytics
Checking StumbleUpon Referrals and Reviews to specific URLs
February 6, 2009 at 9:31 am 15
  
     
I was listening in on Office Hours on WebmasterRadio.fm today and the question came up of how to find the referrer URL from StumbleUpon to your site. When you look at Google Analytics the referrer shows up as refer.php or toolbar. This won't take you to the page that refers to your URL, similar to how digg would do something like /movies/some-movie-specific-url. It is a little bit of a process to figuring this out and also keeping in mind that a large percentage of StumbleUpon users view new pages via the Stumble button. This will show you how to track the referrals from the StumbleUpon page linked to your URL. Google Analytics shows you the base analytics data, but again, refer.php and toolbar are shown:

As mentioned, you can't click through from the refer.php to view the actual reviewed page. That just takes you to a generic page that tells you your site is on StumbleUpon. Not much help is it? If you want to check the page that links to you from StumbleUpon you are going to need to make sure that you have the StumbleUpon toolbar. If you don't, download it and install it. Once you've done that, you'll notice there is a little "comment" bubble, which takes you to a page to review a URL. The Review Button is highlighted in red in the top of the image:

That will take you to the page with the StumbleUpon reviews to the URL that you want to track. Once you get there, you will notice your URL stringle after in the address bar: StumbleUpon URL String:

You'll also notice the title of the page, who submitted the page, stumbles, and reviews for the page you are tracking. StumbleUpon Page with Reviews: Again, thats where you are going to find anything that is tied to the page/URL you are attempting to track, but, you have to keep in mind that there are still users that view your site with the Stumble Button in the toolbar. That is basically how StumbleUpon works, you click the button, a new site comes up, and so on. Stumble Toolbar button highlighted in red:

Remember: If you are trying to view the reviews/stumbles and page your URL is linked to from StumbleUpon, then click the review button, but, its important to note the toolbar clicks. Typically the way pages are browsed to via StumbleUpon is through the toolbar. I hope this answers the question for the person that asked the question on Office Hours with Vanessa Fox. If not definitely leave a comment and we'll figure it out from there! Also, If anyone has more detail or would like to add on to this, please leave a comment and I can even update the post, etc. Some Notes from Twitter: - Matt Inman recommended Mint Website Analytics which tracks Viral / Linkbait - Joost De Valk also has some Mint Peppers (Mint Plugins)
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Analytics
Measuring success in SEO and Social Media by determining ROI, Analytics, Metrics up front
February 4, 2009 at 11:43 am 11
  
     
When you are working at an organization that doesn't have the right analytics, its painful. This also goes for working with clients that don't have the money to buy an analytics package like Omniture or WebTrends. I've been through this on both sides of the organizational and the client side as well. (A couple times it was even my fault! Ooops, my bad! :P ). It is important to understand that not providing metrics and/or reporting or being able to measure certain aspects of your job and/or client work is going to have a negative effect on your overall performance. Before starting any project you're going to be working, whether it's on the In-House or Client side of things, you need to know goals. The most important thing that you can do for yourself and for your "client" is going to be figuring out the goals of any project you are working on. Is it ranking for a certain number of keywords? working on Brand or Reputation Management type things, or increasing traffic by a certain percentage? Once you have determined those goals, start by figuring out what types of analytics and metrics you will need to measure to be successful in your campaigns. Here is a list of the items necessary. Analytics: There is absolutely no excuse now at days for not having any sort of analytics packages to use. There are free solutions like Google Analytics that has everything all the way through Advanced Segmentation, etc. to Omniture with tons of click funnel reporting and more. Important Metrics: Now that you have analytics setup, you need to define the common metrics that you will be reporting on. If you're goal is to drive traffic to a specific part of the site, then you should have a saved query or report that you can click on and get to quickly to perform that task. Also, define other important metrics or metrics that you find valuable to the current role/climit - Time spent on site (per LP) - Click thru Rate - Bounce Rate - Keyword by Landing PAge - etc. Dashboards: If possible, you should setup dashboards that give you an overview of the quick and dirty statistics that you need for the week/month/year. If these are also a click away or triggered by email, then you are golden. This is really not a "crucial" element, but a nice to have. Subscriptions: RSS and Email subscription can be important numbers that you are looking at, especially if one of your many goals is to increase engagement. Feedburner does a good job of tracking RSS subscriptions and you can use other web services or email providers to track email subscription. Social, Brand, and Reputation Monitoring: If you are doing any Social Media or Brand Marketing and/or Reputation Management type work, you are going to want to setup the right type of alerts to monitor the brand and or key terms around your brand. Three tools that I use consistently are Google Alerts, TweetBeep, and Trackur. Trending Metrics: When doing any news related work you are going to want to monitor and measure the trends in the industry. You can do this by monitoring and reporting on Google Insights data for high trafficked terms around a particular event, date, etc. Also, if you are doing something that is going to "create buzz" or a "trending topic" then you are going to want to monitor that carefuly and report on this by showing the ability to create something that went "hot." Reporting: You and your client or group have definied success metrics as I mentioned above at this point. Also, you should have great metrics and dashboards that measure that data. Now that you have all of that, use it to your advantage by creating reports using charts and graphs that show off the progress and/or lack of progress. Create a reporting template and provide analysis: You should start by creating a template for tracking this data and provide some sort of analysis. Sometimes having the data/charts in Excel and only rolling the charts into a powerpoint are a great way to provide analysis and value to just a chart, graph, or list of numbers in a table. I've learned had tons of experience of looking like an idiot or losing income by not having the appropriate metrics and reporting in place for clients and internally at a company. But, I can tell you that there are also organizations out there that flat out don't have this in place or won't be able to put this into place, and, well, you'll just have to deal with it. But, when that situation arises, make sure that you are upfront and straight forward about that and the situation it will cause. If you have done that, it will usually ready the client for the type of things that you will use to measure success.
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