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?

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!

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.

eBooks are an essential part of internet marketing from a standpoint of providing solid information on a given subject matter. eBooks are normally sold throughout the internet marketing world along with free versions that are meant as an additional value to the visitor or potential customer. At this point I also offer 3 ‘free ebooks’ on Social Media to those that subscribe via email to Social Media Core.

It is no secret that most of these free ebooks are written by an author who typically gives the ebook on a non-commercial license in order to share the information and at the same time possible draw traffic back to their website or upsell to another ebook or product.

Most people will search on Google or through time gather a collection of free ebooks. I like to use the social media strategy in having the free ebooks come to me. That is why I use a website called Scribd.com to check on new free ebooks on a given subject matter. In this case Social Media. Lately many have been uploaded to be shared. Of these, I have compiled a list of the current Top 25 free ebooks on Social Media. The order is random as quite honestly I have not read all of them. The 26th free ebook to the reader who reads all of them and gives me their opinion on the actual top order. Note: I have compiled a list of ‘true ebooks’ that are in PDF and Word Doc format.

1. Belonging Networks Corporate Social Networking
2. Social Web Basics
3. The 2009-2014 World Outlook for Advertising for Social Media Web Sites
4. Social Media and Customer Service
5. Center For Social Media – Youth As E-Citizens
6. How Blogs and Social Media are Changing Public Relations
7. Social media and the banking industry
8. Social Media: 40 Places to Find Web 2.0 for Your Web Site
9. Social Media Marketing Strategies Guide
10. Nielsen – Pharma & Social Media
11. The Need for Speed – Using Social Media to Speed Innovation
12. What is Social Media?
13. ComplexDiscovery – User Generated Content, Social Media, and Advertising
14. Social Media Guide Release
15. Social Media & Marketing – Online Networking & Advertising February 2008
16. ebook: The Art and Science of Social Media and Community Relations
17. What is Social Media? – Book 2
18. Social Media Maps
19. Social Media Manifesto by Brian Solis
20. New Media Case Studies 2008
21. The Impact of Social Media on Innovation – Josh Bernoff
22. The Secret Underground Guide to Social Media for Organisations
23. Customer Service: The Art of Listening and Engagement Through Social Media
24. The Social Web Analytics eBook 2008
25. The Essential Guide to Social Media

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BmykFKjNpdY[/youtube]

Needless to say Motrin quickly pulled the ad and made a public apology for the incident. Listed below I want to highlight a few other negative responses by the social media world for certain company ads and practices. I also wanted to mention a few “Lessons Learned” to make sure that companies learn from their mistakes so to speak.

1. Wal-Mart gets caught with fake blogging

In this MediaPost article, it was discovered that 2 people that were traveling the country in an RV and blogging about their experiences for staying in Wal-Mart parking was actually a paid gig by Working Families for Wal-Mart (WFWM), an organization launched by Wal-Mart’s public relations firm Edelman. WFWM paid for the RV and all travel expenses, rerouted the trip’s original plan, and plastered a logo on the RV’s side. Though a banner ad announced WFWM sponsored the site, it did not divulge Wal-Mart paid for the couple’s RV, gas, food and other expenses.

Once the blogosphere discovered this reality it began the negative campaign of how Wal-Mart could sponsor these bloggers without exposing the fact that they were endorsed.

Lesson learned: Be transperant.

2. Target Bulls-eye

Earlier this year the New York Times reported that Amy Jussel the founder of ShapingYouth.org wrote an email to Target that their current ad featuring a young girl was completely inappropriate. The ad show a young woman displayed across the Target bulls-eye logo with the center of the bulls-eye being at the center of the young girl crotch.

Below is an excerpt of what happened:

“Targeting crotches with a bull’s-eye is not the message we should be putting out there,” she said in an e-mail interview.

Target offered an e-mail response:

“Unfortunately we are unable to respond to your inquiry because Target does not participate with nontraditional media outlets,” a public relations person wrote to ShapingYouth.

“This practice,” the public relations person added, “is in place to allow us to focus on publications that reach our core guest,” as Target refers to its shoppers.

Word of this exchanges quickly spread in the blogosphere but Target continued to hold its ground while communicating its position when asked for.

So what happened to the ad? The campaign continued for its duration.

Lesson learned: When replying to a negative concern in Social Media, listen and communicate your position.

3. Streisand Effect

This is the ‘grandma’ of them all if I may add when it comes to company and in this case celebrity faux pas in negative social media reactions. Wikipedia actually has a dedicated page describing this event in full detail. I will give a summary of what happened.

When a photographer took an aerial photograph of Barbara Streisand’s California home on the coastline she sued him for $50 million to not allow the photo to be publicly viewable. The photgrapher claimed he was photographing beachfront property to document coastal erosion as part of the California Coastal Records Project.

Of course as the photo got out on the internet it all went down from there as news of the story broke out the image spread like wildfire through the internet and the lawsuit news caused more damage than it did good in Streisand trying to protect the photo.

Lesson Learned: Don’t draw attention to a negative effect from Social Media. Once again listen and communicate your position to fan out the flame.

There are alot of questions when it comes to social media marketing and what are the best approaches. Some like to dive right in by choosing a technology platform that has some type of measurement capability while others take a more conservative approach.

When it comes to strategy in social media marketing I would like to highlight 5 key building blocks to consider.

1. What is your identity?
2. Who do you associate with?
3. User conversation.
4. Platform conversation.
5. Face to Face conversation.

1. What is your identity?

First things is first, when you place yourself or your brand online you need to define your identity online. If you are fortunate to not have an online presence you are in a territory to begin the shaping of your identity as you want to communicate it. You can begin by signing up to a few “profile” type websites that allow for personal and business branding. Good examples of this is:

• LinkedIn – http://blog.linkedin.com/2008/03/20/company-profile
• Facebook Business Pages – http://www.facebook.com/business/?pages
• ClaimID – http://www.claimid.com

Once you setup your brand profile in these website begin to populate the profile with brand specific content and messaging. A key aspect is to make sure your branding is consistent as possible among all profile sites a key to any marketing initiative.

2. Who do you associate with?

Once you have created your online identity the next steps naturally progress to the aspect of association. Who do you befriend? Who chooses to be friends with you? Are you targeting a specific niche within your interests or industry? Are you going outside of this to reach a different demographic?

From experience I tend to befriend people that I find from within site specific searches that are relative to my industry. For example on Twitter, I choose to search for a specific keyword within Twitter that is relative to my industry and begin to seek out those that I have associations with or would like to have. Then I begin to associate myself with this circle. This will begin to shape itself over time to a specific audience. Some great examples to use are micro-blogging tools such as:

• Twitter – http://www.twitter.com
• Plurk – http://www.plurk.com
• Utterli – http://www.utterli.com

3. User conversation

Next next step is to search out to see the current climate on your brand. What are others talking about your brand. I simple google.com search will typically extract some conversations. Other buzz metrics you can find about from a search on technorati.com from a blogging standpoint.

Ultimately you need to listen to others and enter the conversations to support or argue the positions. This begins to give your brand a voice online and for others to respond to it.

The best places to do this listening is by going to blogs, message boards, forums, and group sites. Some examples of these kinds of sites are:

• BlogCatalog - http://www.blogcatalog.com
• Board Tracker - http://www.boardtracker.com
• Yahoo Groups – http://groups.yahoo.com

4. Platform conversation

Another channel to listen to others as they speak about you or your brand is to go directly to the place where user clamor such as large social networking sites that have specific groups within the networks. One aspect to consider is the demographic the social network has when you are listening to it. As some social networks have not only various age groups but also different regions. For example, Facebook is extremely popular in Canada (more so than in the USA). While MySpace is the king in USA, it isnt as influential in South America where sites like Orkut is popular in South America. Bebo and Hi5 are more dominant in Europe and Asia.

Either way, you must tap into the conversation from within these platforms. I have mentioned a few already here is a few more contemporary (as of today) platforms to consider.

• Consumating – http://www.consumating.com
• Mashable – http://www.mashable.com
• Multiply - http://www.multiply.com

5. Face to Face conversation

Social Media Marketing consists of alot of online engagement however at its core as humans we interact on a face to face basis much more effectively than in a virtual enviornment. That is why a major final building block is the actual face to face and networking opportunities that you can position yourself and your brand. Thankfully there are many resources within the social media world that allow you to monitor and choose to host or participate in an event. Some examples are:

• Meetup - http://www.meetup.com
• Upcoming – http://www.upcoming.org
• Eventful – http://www.eventful.com

Each of these three examples is an excellent place to tap into the opportunity to meet face to face and continue your online brand to the real world. This is a key aspect of social media marketing. The online brand and persona that you choose to create must be transparent enough to leverage in real life situations. This will solidify your brand and persona and allow you to merge social media marketing to its fullest potential.

So now we are more than a week past the final election week results and Barack Obama is our President Elect and George Bush regrets saying alot of things while in office. What a wild post election week.

I am a non-traditional when it comes to politics, internet, and blogging. I am a conservative Republican.

However, one thing I have admired almost a year ago is how Democrats, Barack Obama exclusively has used the power of the internet, more specifically social media to rally his supporters and influencers. Never before has a campaign leveraged the power of online social communities like Barak Obama. As of today here are some general statistics for some major social sites the Barack Obama campaign has tapped into:

• Facebook Group - Over 3.1 million subscribers
• Myspace Profile – Over 900,000 friends
• Youtube Profile – Over 1,800 videos and 135,000+ subscribers
• Twitter Profile – 128,000 + followers

Why I am bringing up these statistics is the fact that Barack Obama (and the Democrats per se) have a huge crowdsourcing gem on their hands for not only during Barack Obama’s Presidency but for his re-election aspirations in 2012.

Barack Obama is the first president to have the power to leverage Social Media in such a way as never seen before by our Presidency or Government as a whole. Immediately after he won the presidency, he launched the website, CHANGE.GOV – A website dedicated to educating and communicating with the social user.

On the flip side, the Republicans seem to be taking note. I won’t get into how massive the difference in statistics were for John McCain for the website mentioned above, but what I want to mention is that it seems the Republicans are taking note as well by launching their own Social site called REPUBLICANFORAREASON.com

I applaud the Republicans for jumping on the band wagon and understanding the power of Social Media, but I have to admit the massive difference in Social Media Strategy is still massive. Consider the domains themselves used from a marketing standpoint. Change.gov vs. RepublicanForAReason.com – The Republicans just may have added hyphens inbetween words, it would have made the domain easier to remember.

I am excited to see that both parties now are understanding the power of Social Media. Time will tell who will win this campaign of utilizing Social Media to its maximum potential.

Collaboration and communication within Social Media culminates with monitoring. Many people and companies often start off with the end result question, “how do I monitor the buzz on my Social Media campaign”. Therefore I have compiled a list of categories and sites that will help you instantly get started. Obviously this list may change and grow with due time.

Listed below are some resources to help you follow the “buzz” on your brand, product, and service on a daily basis.

Search

• Google Trends – http://www.google.com/trends

General Site Comparisons

• Compete – http://www.compete.com
• Alexa – http://alexa.com

Inbound Links

• Yahoo Site Explorer – https://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/mysites

Social Overview

• HowSociable – http://www.howsociable.com
• Addictomatic – http://www.addictomatic.com
• Techrigy – http://www.techrigy.com

Blogs

• Google Blog Search – http://blogsearch.google.com
• Nielsen BlogPulse – http://www.blogpulse.com
• Technorati – http://technorati.com
• Trendr – http://www.trendrr.com

Social Networks

• Facebook Lexicon – http://www.facebook.com/lexicon
• Digg Search – http://www.digg.com
• StumbleUpon Reviews – http://reviews.stumbleupon.com
• Twitter Twitscoop – http://www.twitscoop.com
• Twitter Search – http://search.twitter.com