A new way to connect, collaborate and synergize with clients, friends and otherprofessionals

How to get started with online networking sites like Linked In, Facebook, YouTube and Twitter?

How to utilize these sites to find your target audience and how to approach

How to generate quality contacts for your business

How to communicate with your audience the way they like to communicate.

How to create better relationships and build rapport with thousand’s of your contacts from your “C” list

What is Social Media and how will it change our life?

Social media is information content created by people using highly accessible and scalable publishing technologies.

At its most basic sense, social media is a shift in how people discover, read and share news, information and content. It's a fusion of sociology and technology, transforming monologue (one to one) into dialog (one to/or many to many) and is the democratization of information, transforming people from content readers into publishers.

Social media has become extremely popular because it allows people to connect in the online world to form relationships for personal and business.

Facebook

MySpace

Twitter

LinkedIn

YouTube

And 40,000 others. Every day are more then 10 new networks created…here are just a few

It took Radio 38 years to reach 50 million listeners. Terrestrial TV took 13 years to reach 50 million users. The Internet took four years to reach 50 million people... In less than 9 months, Facebook added 100 million users. 

Social networks and blogs are the 4th most popular online activities online, including beating personal email.

67% of global users visit member communities and 10% of all time spent on the internet is on social media sites. 

If Facebook were a country, it would be the fourth most populated place in the world. This means it easily beats the likes of Brazil, Russia and Japan in terms of size.

Market share of U.S. Internet visits to top five social networking Web sites

Rank Name Domain September 2009 August 2009September

2008Year-over-year percent

change

1 Facebook www.facebook.com 58.59% 55.15% 19.94% 194%2 MySpace www.myspace.com 30.26% 33.00% 66.84% -55%3 Tagged www.tagged.com 2.38% 2.36% 1.62% 47%4 Twitter www.twitter.com 1.84% 1.95% 0.15% 1170%

5

myYearbook www.myyearbook.com 1.05% 1.16% 1.76% -40%

Source: Experian Hitwise

Facebook Visits Increased 194 Percent in Past Year. U.S. visits to social networking sites have increased 62 percent year over year; visits from 55 and older age group have increased 77 percent

New York, N.Y., Oct. 9, 2009 - Facebook accounted for 58.59 percent of all U.S. visits among a custom category of 155 social networking Web sites in September 2009. The 58 percent was the highest among all social networking sites, as U.S. visits to Facebook increased 194 percent. Tagged received 2.38 percent of visits in September 2009, the third-largest amount. Twitter had the largest percentage gain, increasing 1170 percent compared with September 2008. U.S. visits to social networking Web sites increased 62 percent in September 2009

…because we increasingly trust people (even people we don’t know) more than institutions (government, churches, corporations) and their marketers

…people were asked to pick the sources they use and trust for information

80% of companies use, (or are planning to use), Linked In as their primary tool to find employees during the course of this year. The site has just celebrated reaching its 50 millionth membership.

Around 64% of marketers are using social media for 5 hours or more each week during campaigns, with 39% using it for 10 or more hours per week.

Wikipedia currently has more than 13 million articles in more than 260 different languages. The site attracts over 60 million unique users a month and it’s often hotly debated that the information it contains is more reliable than any printed Encyclopedia.

 

The other day I got a Tweet

It said “Man, you are so but your

goes right down the

That must mean something….

As of October 2009, LinkedIn had more than 50 million registered

users spanning more than 200 countries and territories worldwide, of

which approximately half are in the United States.

11 million user are from Europe

3 million users are from India, which is also the fastest-growing

country as of 2009.

The Netherlands has the highest adoption rate per capita (outside of

the United States) at 30%.

LinkedIn reached profitability in March 2006. The company a post-

money valuation of approximately $1 billion.

Facebook is the leading social networking site based on monthly unique visitors, having overtaken main competitor MySpace in April 2008. ComScore reports that Facebook attracted 132.1 million unique visitors in June 2008.

According to Alexa, the website's ranking among all websites increased from 60th to 7th in terms of worldwide traffic, from September 2006 to September 2007, and is currently 2nd.

Quantcast ranks the website 4th in the U.S. in terms of traffic, and Compete.com ranks it 2nd in the U.S. The website is the most popular for uploading photos, with 14 million uploaded daily.

Facebook is the most popular social networking site in several English speaking countries, including Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

In a 2006 study conducted by Student Monitor, a New Jeresey-based company specializing in research concerning the college student market, Facebook was named the second most popular thing among undergraduates, tied with beer and only ranked lower than the iPod.

By 2005, the use of Facebook had already become so ubiquitous that the generic verb "facebooking" had come into use to describe the process of browsing others' profiles or updating one's own.

In September 2009, Facebook claimed that it had turned cash flow positive for the first time

Face Book Friend wheel shows connections between your friends

Before the launch of YouTube in 2005, there were few easy methods available for ordinary computer users who wanted to post videos online. With its simple interface, YouTube made it possible for anyone with an Internet connection to post a video that a worldwide audience could watch within a few minutes. The wide range of topics covered by YouTube has turned video sharing into one of the most important parts of Internet Culture.

In November 2006, YouTube, LLC was bought by Google for $1.65 billion, and is now operated as a subsidiary of Google.

In June 2008 a Forbes magazine article projected the 2008 revenue at US $200 million, noting progress in advertising sales.

In November 2008, YouTube reached an agreement with MGM, Lions Gate Entertainment and CBS which will allow the companies to post full-length films and television shows on the site, accompanied by advertisements. The move is intended to create competition with websites such as Hulu, which features material from NBC, Fox, and Disney.

On October 9, 2009, the third anniversary of the acquisition by Google, Chad Hurley announced in a blog posting that YouTube was serving "well over a billion views a day" worldwide.

The top 7 people on Twitter have more combined followers than the entire population of some small countries (15 million)

1. Ashton Kutcher (aplusk) http://blahgirls.com

Followers 1,962,584

Friends 164

Updates 2,300

Started 5 months ago

2. Ellen DeGeneres (TheEllenShow) http://www.ellentv.com

Followers 1,685,521

Friends 24

Updates 249

Started 10 months ago

3. CNN Breaking News (cnnbrk) Everywhere http://cnn.com/

Followers 1,608,204

Friends 9

Updates 765

Started 29 months ago

Zappos stocks over 3 million shoes, handbags, clothing item and accessories from over 1100 brands. 24-year old CEO Tony Hsieh (with some 140,500 Twitter followers) encourages its Zappos' employees to twitter. Zappos now claims it is twittering with over 9 million customers, or 3% of the U.S. population. The company’s efforts with social media networking before the public eye, including Blogs, Zappos.TV, Facebook,Twitter have resulted in over $1B in sales, 75% of which are from repeat customers.

Driving web traffic through well-placed self-linking in public conversations is a new marketing tool. A web page like twitter.zappos.com is worthy of study as the "secret sauce": It drives inbound links, its employees create a good deal of internal web links -- all magnets for search engine activity, in particular, raising Google Page Rank.

Zappos is delivering on some mighty good customer service offers in those tweets. The company offers free shipping both ways, has a 365-day return policy and supports a call center that's always open. Zappos also randomly bestows free upgrades to customers. Twitter is not a magic technology bullet. Twitter can clearly magnify great customer service, but the offers, the compelling content, still need to be there to fully manifest the benefit of this great new social media too.

The twitter.zappos.com page is not only a customer service forum, it's a public relations, branding and search engine attraction platform. Companies that continue to view these functions as separate corporate silos aren't going to realize the full and magnified benefits of Social Media.

A Fall 2008 announcement by Dell's Bob Pearson, VP of Communities and Conversations, that the company credits Twitter sales alerts with over $1 Million in incremental revenue.

Dell's Twitter followers receive messages when discounted products are at the company's Home Outlet Store where they can click over to purchase the product or forward the information to others.

Beyond coupons, Dell also credits that they have successfully identified and acted upon customer concerns up to three weeks earlier than previously, thanks to blog and social media commentary.

If you are unwilling — or unable — to interact with your customers in new ways, those customers may turn to companies that have a presence where they like to communicate through (Facebook, Linked In, Twitter). Customer will increasingly favor companies that listen, respond, engage, interact and respect this new breed of customers.

This isn’t about hype and exaggeration. This is about making sound, rational, strategic business decisions to identify market and communications shifts and to adapt appropriately and sensibly to them in order to stay in touch with your customers.

1. "The transformation to a bottom-up culture needs help from the top". Executive management not only sets precedent for behavior, it provides best practice examples of how touse the tools with customer, the public and others.

2. "What's in the Workflow Gets Used". Organizations that have been successful with Social Media have embedded Twitter use into their

customer service operations with compelling results.

3. Effective use of participatory technology leverages not just "cognitive surplus" or the untapped potential from employees, but from customers and partners as well.

4. Companies with great brands adopt the latest brand-expanding technologies early. It is no longer sufficient to have a great brand inside your industry, companies have to be seen as

technology leaders, specifically adopting the latest brand communication channels. And today that channel is Twitter. In the end, the trick to social media tools is no trick at all: Twitter just happens to be the latest green field marketing channel.

There are many more new social media channels to come. You have to be ready to sample them, swirl and savor them in your mouth (perhaps biting a few rocks and pebbles along the way), and then spit the whole thing out with a ferocious force.

Companies need to recognizing that marketing has become 360 degrees of mass participation. Everyone will be playing the "participatory marketing" game in 2010.

Rule 1. Use All The Social Media Tools.

Rule 2. Offer “Free” Content and Value.

Rule 3. Be Completely Transparent.Intense blending and merging of personality, product and media is the new world of branding and marketing. Twitter and web video expose your real brand and company publicly. Transparency, and with that comes authenticity and honesty, is part of the reason behind people's attraction to these tools. And part of being transparent means you let the rough edges show. And in the end, he ends up looking all the more human for it.

(Side note: It is also the transparency factor that drove the Obama administration's use of RSS feeds as a mandate to taking stimulus money. If everybody can watch the Stimulus Money RSS channel, we all know where the money's going.)

Rule 4. "Don't Listen to Anybody, Listen to Everybody"First and obvious, it's clear that savvy business people do watch what people are twittering about their company. In fact, there's probably no faster way to convert executive management to Twitter than to take them to seach.twitter.com and type in the company name.

Second meaning. It's impossible to stay up on all the social media tools real-time, but if you've added value to your followers, among those "followers" are "leaders", people who have tools, insights and news relevant to your business to share with you. This is the true genius of Twitter business use: Even the smallest of companies can have 10,000 low-overhead marketing and customer service evangelists.

Google Alerts (www.google.com/alerts) Google Alerts notifies you via email when your name shows up on the Web. You can also use Google Alerts to stay on topof what's happening with your close professional contacts.

TweetBeep (www.tweetbeep.com) TweetBeep is like Google Alerts for Twitter. It enables you to track Twitter conversations that mention you, providing hourlyupdates so you can stay connected to and respond to relevant conversations. You can also track who's tweeting yourwebsite or blog.

Online ID Calculator (www.onlineidcalculator.com) We developed this tool because we found no way to measure the strength of one's online reputation. The Online IDCalculator will give you a basic understanding of your current online ID. If you use it before and after a major onlinepersonal-branding campaign, you can see how the campaign affected your score.

Bit.ly (www.bit.ly) This is a great service for tracking the links that you include in your Web-based articles, blog, and Twitter posts. It's helpfulbecause it shortens standard URLs, but its true value lies in its tracking tools. With Bit.ly, you're able to see in real timehow often your links are clicked. It's a great way to measure which sources are most popular (use different bit.ly links foryour blog and Twitter posts, for example) and which posts and links generate the greatest interest.

Addictomatic (www.addictomatic.com) This is a useful tool that provides a comprehensive snapshot of how your brand shows up across many online searchengines, including video search engines. Type your name in quotes (e.g., "william arruda") and see a custom page

createdjust for you, with input from Google, Twitter, Bing, FriendFeed, Twingly, YouTube, Digg, Flickr, Delicious, Bloglines, Truveo,Wikio, Yahoo, Technorati, etc.

Build a positive brand image online and watch your

competition.

Have all your professional information and achievements in

one place.

Save and manage time with advanced online tools and

applications like toolbars and RSS feeds integrated with the

different social media (LinkedIn toolbar, XOBNI etc.)

Open yourself up to be approachable by other professionals

Stretch your Marketing Budget and Efforts with free exposure

and get real time feedback how you are doing.

Enhance your SEO and Internet exposure with Social Media

Strategies and connect with your audience appropriately. Become digitally distinct as a Brand

State of the Art Web Design Combine corporate look and feel with Hawaiian spirit and emotions

Web development from e-commerce to member driven portal sites Strong experience in non for profit and community based websites

“Joomla” website content management software based applications Joomla is an open source content management platform with millions of users worldwide

Website analytics and search engine optimization (SEO) Measurements of advertising effectiveness through marketing copy writing

Social Media Marketing (SMM) strategy consultation and education From corporate internal communications to ad campaigns with SMM

Want to learn more? HI Net Associates offers a series of 2-3 hour workshops, focusing on one (1) social network at a time

from basic to advanced and overall Social Media Marketing Strategy Consulting.

Company intern hands on workshops on social media use and benefits Tips and tricks to save and manage time with the tools around social media