According to an eMarketer report there is an estimate of 800 million mobile social network users by 2012. That is up from an estimated 147 million in 2008. This is obviously a world wide estimate.

Source: eMarketer

For the US market we see only a small percentage of 4 million mobile social network users in 2008 according to a Nielsen report. There is so much room for growth in the mobile social network market in the world not to mention the United States.

According to a recent Facebook blog post in early September 2009, Facebook Mobile is excelling in the mobile social networking space by growing to over 65 million users. That is up from 20 million in the beginning of the year. This is over 300% growth in less than a year. I myself am a dominate user of the Facebook iPhone Application which I use to access Facebook more often than the normal site as I am constantly on the go and not in front of a laptop/desktop.

Mobile Social Network Channels

One reason for the rise of Facebook as a mobile social network is its availability among multiple ways to access their social network online. Listed below are a few channels to consider for a successful mobile social network reach.

• Mobile Web Sites
• Text Messages
• Mobile Application for Devices (Apple, RIM, Symbian, Palm, Windows)
• Common ID for Mobile Web (OpenID/Facebook Connect)

This ubiquitous approach to provide all touchpoints for the social network has allowed users to be able to connect to the social network with practically any mobile way currently possible. As we can see from a recent report on AdMob and written about in Read/Write/Web requests by devices play a critical role in understanding which ones are used to access the mobile web. We can see that the iPhone has a 60% share in the US and RIM dwarfed at 13%. World wide, iPhone still maintains lead and the Nokia devices running the Symbian operating system in second place.

Source: AdMob.com / ReadWriteWeb.com

What is interesting however is the fact that Nokia (Symbian OS) has a huge lead when it comes to devices on a world wide scale. So the strategic decision needs to be made when approaching a mobile social network. What market segment should the focus be placed on. The U.S. market or to expand globally. In other words, should a focus be on Apple products or Nokia products?

Source: Admob.com / Gartner

Perhaps another question is will Apple rise to even the playing field or pass Nokia by 2012 when the expected 800 million mobile web users have access to mobile social networks? As we can see from the graph above, Nokia in 1 year has fallen in comparison with the rapid growth of Apple from 3% to 13% market share in 1 year.

As we have seen the mobile market is rapidly growing and is ripe for an opportunity for existing powerhouse social networks to condition users to the idea of using a mobile social network. The question is will existing social networks just dominate this market or will another service arise from the shadows to leverage all of the mobile social network behaviors into a successful next thing?

Steps

Simple version

1. Find people for whom you would like to work.
2. Interact with those people on message boards, by replies, through private contact. Make it your goal to be helpful to them and demonstrate your knowledge.
3. Ask if they can help you get a job either by appealing directly to them or posting in a space where they are likely to read your comment.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is a professional social networking site.

1. Join LinkedIn.
2. Create your profile, making it as complete as possible. Remember that your profile will be the first thing any potential boss sees, so adhere to the standards of resume-writing.
3. Add people to your network with whom you know on a professional basis.
4. Solicit recommendations from members of your network. Concentrate on those who know you best and those who have the best credentials themselves.
5. Answer questions on LinkedIn in the questions section.
6. Join groups related to your career interests. Participate on those groups. Add people you develop relationships with to your contact list.
7. Search the job listings on LinkedIn.
8. Update your business card to include your LinkedIn information.
9. Advertise for yourself by handing out your business card at networking functions.

Twitter

Twitter is a great tool for finding all sorts of jobs.

1. Join Twitter.
2. Complete your profile, including links to your other networking pages or your blog. Including your real name, a brief summary of your resume, and your location may help make your Twitter page seem more professional.
3. Follow people who are in the industry you want to be in. Make sure you can actually keep up with everyone you are following; do not allow your follow list to expand excessively. Only follow people who have something to contribute to your job search.
4. Interact with the people you follow by @replying to them and engaging them regularly.
   • Keep in mind that some people receive huge quantities of @replies and direct messages. Make sure that all your interactions are unique, meaningful, and memorable.
   • Reply to all messages in a timely manner. Neglecting to do so makes you seem unprofessional or incompetent and will severely hurt any job prospects you may have.
5. Post tweets that demonstrate expertise in your field.
6. Ask questions of people you are following regarding the area in which you are trying to get a job. Example: If you are an electrician, ask people you are following if they have heard about recent changes to code inspection in your area and how that will impact what they are doing.
7. Update your business cards to include your Twitter profile information.
8. Attend tweet ups in your area. Hand out your business cards when you socialize, and concentrate on people who can contribute to your job hunt.
9. Ask anyone with whom you have communicated about job leads.
10. Watch for tweets about job leads and reply to them promptly.
11. Follow other people who apply for the same job and try to contact them about their own job hunt.

Tips

• Connect your online activity with your real name and other online names where you think you can benefit from having an employer knowing about that activity.
• Always try to be helpful and polite. If you can help some one else by connecting them to a person who can help them get a job, do it. It builds good karma.

Warnings

• Remember to keep your real name separate from the name you use with other forms of online interaction where you may not want a potential employer to discover those interactions.
• Separate your professional accounts from your social accounts. Potential clients don’t need to see pictures of your latest wild party or heated political debates with your friends.
• Never appear overly pushy or unprofessional in asking people about job leads. If someone tells you that he doesn’t think you’re the right person for a job, accept that gracefully or ask what they might be looking for. Never become hostile or angry.
• Guard all your account information carefully now that you are using social networking professionally. The spam and trolling that can ensue after you lose your password can quite quickly ruin any job prospects.

Article used and modified from WikiHow. All content on wikiHow can be shared under a Creative Commons license.

Immediately I pose them the question; “If there is something negative to say, wouldn’t you want to be there to correct it?”

Either way in our era of consumer journalism and advocacy, we have to cope with the fact that we as the consumer, customer, or client have the power to promote or demote something that has a worthy negative attribute.

So as a company or brand, our thought should be to enter using Social Media marketing as a way to listen, communicate, engage, and monitor the conversation. When a nightmare does occur, having at least somewhat of a Social footprint we  can react accordingly.

Being hesitant will only bring more chaos when the nightmare does happen.

I especially like the Mashable.com  – How to Survive the Social Media Revolt blog post where the author speaks of these following steps to approach a Social Media what I call “nightmare”:

1. Communicate Even If You Have Nothing to Say
2. Be Forthright
3. Make It Clear That You’re Listening
4. Acknowledge Your Mistakes
5. Promise to Learn and Improve – Then Deliver

How have you approached a Social Media Nightmare?

So this is yet another twitter application done by another company/website. One thing is interesting however is the fact that now the question will arise. Will teens join in the twitter phenomenon?

During the summer of 2009 there were many artices, blog posts and studies on how tween are not adopting the use of Twitter therefore from an advertising and marketing standpoint Twitter was unique with other social networking sites that have exploded over the past few years.

If we take a look at the statistics from the research firm Pew Internet we can see:

• 19% of online adults age 18-24 have used twitter or something like it
• 20% of online adults age 25-34 have used twitter or something like it
• 10% of online adults age 35-44 “    “     “    “
• 5% of online adults age 45-54  “    “    “   “
• 4% of online adults age 55-64  “    “    “   “
• 2% of online adults 65+

source: sociamediatoday.com blog post

So the majority of the users are 25-44.

My thought has always been that due to the fact that many teens and youth are just beginning to purchase “smart phones” and typically they share the monthly bill with their parents (or are just included with their parents bill) not all teens have mostly low minutes and an unlimited texting plan with limited ‘data access’.

Now with MySpace which has the largest youth demographic of all social networks exposes the Twitter status updates to teens, it will only be a matter of a few short months before the younger demographic for twitter will explode.

Your thoughts?

The key stumbling block of many twitter users is how to add new followers. To many web users growing such a network seems like a manual time intensive task. There are tools to help automate some of this growth of followers.

Listed below are a set of tools that will help grow not only a targeted follower base, but a valuable community of like minded friends. This is the key difference. There are many on Twitter who follow for following sake. This is seen as “twitter spam”! If your goal is just to add random users, this is not for you! However, If you are interested to grow a niche specific high value twitter community here is a step by step listing of the tools necessary to do it:

Step 1 – Auto Follow Keywords

Twollow.com – This tool allows a you to input up to 5 keywords specific to a niche that you are trying to target. This is done by selecting the amount of people you wish to follow per day based on a keyword, twollow will then automatically follow people. If twollow is set to follow 15 new people per day for all 5 keywords that is a total of 75 new targeted users per day.

Step 2 – Follow Like Minded People

Twannabe.com – Now try to find some niche specific people to follow by doing a general search on your nich keyword on Twitter Search. Once you have identified a few key people in a niche, twannabe allows you to input a key twitter username that will then automatically all people that the key twitter user is following. This allows you to follow those people. This way it ensures that there is an organic growth of like-minded twitter users therefore increasing the chance of that person following you back.

Step 3 – Automate Direct Messages

Tweetlater.com – Send automated Direct Messages when someone follows an account and then one follows the user back instantly! You can automatically thank or direct someone to your website immediately after someone follows you. In this way the community is growing and your account is following like-minded individuals while all on an automated process!

Step 4 – Manage Your Twitter Followers

Tweepular.com – Perhaps the best tool to continue to grow your network on Twitter is the service called Tweepular. This service allows one to refine the audience. Tweepular will continue to suggest new users based on their ‘Build your Tweepularity” feature. You can also who manage who follows you and most important who is ‘not following’ you after a given period of time. With this tool you can continue to refine your community to have active and engaged twitter users.

Step 5 – Track Your Twitter Followers

As your followers begin to grow automatically and organically, tracking tools come in handy to further refine your profile to be attractive to other twitter users to follow you. Tools such as Tweetstats.com and Tweepletwak.com help monitor your twitter statistics.

By following these simple tools and steps a solid foundation can be created in order to have a long lasting organic growth to your social community on Twitter. I would love to hear your feedback after using these steps for a few days and how it these 5 steps are working for you!

BOSSdev

Collaborating with a Michigan based coffee chain Biggby Coffee in the city of Madison Heights, Cosmin and Grant from BOSSdev launched the first ever “Breakfast Tweetup” in the Metro Detroit area.

@danielbora – Biggby’s Coffee taking orders.

On Tuesday April 14th from 8am – 10am Twitter users showed up and began chatting things up both face to face along with the occasional tweets to the Twitter “back channel” of #bfastup. All the tweets from the event were displayed via the software Tweetdeck on the 50 inch plasma at Biggby’s, a great synergy of both real and virtual world usage of Twitter to establish professional relationships. Of course also enjoying their favorite coffee, latte’s, and pastries. Some people even posted Tweets of what coffee order they wanted.

There was great conversation, great networking, and above all great coffee to keep us going. Listed below are some of the participants during the event.

@cosguru
@gkravitz
@scottheath
@ruthreaser
@ddelonge
@mollysly
@davemurr
@balanon
@davebenjamin
@k_labudde
@hillsdalesam
@joshyurich
@virtualjason
@danielherdean
@jfavreau
@mruffi
@sullyvan
@sandradeelee
@kaylook
@brian_halicki
@karenevanstm
@danielbora
@kristanabraham

Tweetdeck on plasma screen for all to follow tweets in real time.

A big thank you to all who arrived and also participated even though they were not physically at Biggby’s ( @sazbean, @davepeckens ) The feedback was to continue the event at another date so please be on the lookout for the next Breakfast Tweetup!

Ps. Great recap from @davemurr with video – http://digg.com/u111ZK

More photos from the event:

@joshyurich and @mruffi – “talking”

@virtualjason and @gkravitz

Someone on Twitter followed me over the weekend and sent me an automated Direct Message to click a link to make money by only investing $6. So naturally, I was curious to see what this was all about. Low and behold it was your typical MLM scam on Facebook called “Chat To Text”.

No. I am not linking out to this application as I am not writing this post to make myself millions of dollars and retire to some tropical island while being the ‘early adopter’ of this MLM scam on Facebook.

What I want to highlight is the fact that of all applications MLM scams should NOT be allowed on Facebook. There already are a multitide of worthless applications and invitations that I get every day to install this application and  that application. This is the biggest feedback that I get from those that I speak to about applications on Facebook, the fact that they hate all of the invitiations they are bombarded with on a daily basis.

When a clever and innovative way to create a sticky application comes along such as the Whopper Sacrifice campaign it gets shut down.

Facebook please do not allow MLM scams.

This year we are continuing the seminar/workshop  tour and stopping in the New Jersey/New York area. I am excited to be speaking again with Dave Evans the author of “Social Media Marketing and Hour a Day“. Along with him this time around we will have the Social Media Manger from HP,  Tac Anderson. Looking forward to meeting him for the first time. Of course I cant forget my colleagues at BOSSdev, Korye Logan, Andy McDonnell and Sam Swenson.

We will be focusing on a major pain point for brands and enterprises that are looking for measurement and analytics in their Social Media initiatives. So if you are in the area please feel free to sign up and reserve your seat! More information below:

BOSSdev Social Media Marketing Breakfast

“Social Media Strategy: Achieving Real Results in a Virtual World”

Space is limited

Reserve your seat now

Date: Jan. 29th, 2009

Time: 8:30 AM – 12:30 PM

Location:

Parsippany Hilton
One Hilton Court
Parsippany, NJ 07054
973-267-7373

Social media is here to stay, and it has an enormous effect on the depth and speed that information is disseminated. There’s no denying the powerful influence this has on how companies need to approach communication, collaboration, multimedia, and entertainment.
Social media is the building block of the online world – and the content generated by casual users is expanding faster than any other kind. Those who truly want to succeed need to understand how it all works.

Regarding analytics, it makes sense to want data that proves and validates the impact of social programs. This helps to justify your investment by providing data for ongoing modification to maximize effectiveness.

Now, you can discover advantageous new insights on social media channels through real world case studies along with metrics of results. The next BOSSdev seminar will address these relevant issues – and more – to keep you ahead of the curve when it comes to this potent and expanding force.

Speakers include:

Tac Anderson, Social Media Marketing Manager, Hewlett Packard
Dave Evans, Author of “Social Media Marketing: An Hour a Day”
Cosmin Ghiurau, Social Media Analyst, BOSSdev
Korye Logan, Digital Marketing Strategist, BOSSdev
Andy McDonnell, Business Development Director, BOSSdev
Sam Swenson, Social Media Analyst, BOSSdev
Justin Wyman, Director, Collective Intellect (Social Media Analytics)

As you see in the screenshot below. I left my browser open to twitter search for approximately 5 minutes and watched as the tweets jumped past 2,500 (it was up over 6,000 15 minutes later!)

Yet another amazing case study of the power of micro-blogging to instantly spread news!