In case you’ve been living under a social media rock for the past 48 hours, Old Spice has launched the current mother-of-all viral social media campaigns.

Apparently, they’ve assembled a crack creative team and locked them in a Portland, Oregon bunker with cameras, a shower and a live internet connection to answer questions posted at various social media sites.

When I first sat down to write this, I thought I was going to poke all sorts of holes in it. Yeah, a big company with a well established character & brand could do this sort of thing with deep pockets, but it really doesn’t do any good for the little guys. Local businesses could never pull this sort of thing off.

But why not?

I mean, yeah, you couldn’t do it on this sort of scale cranking out 87 videos in 11 hours that get national attention, but how about on a micro scale?

Maybe one a week?

With some sort of interesting delivery?

Educating & informing your potential customer base instead while entertaining them?

It could be done.

But you’ve got to have something of value and be interesting first.

I’ve tried a lot of twitter tools and some are painfully slow or borderline useless. Yesterday, I decided to thin the number of people I’m following and used Refollow ( http://refollow.com ) to thin the herd.

It was awesome. Fairly quick to use once it loads your info and offered just about every way possible to sort Friends/Followers.

** This is a unsolicited/unpaid, yet glowing endorsement

Part 2: General Social Media Philosophy

While I was going through the list of people that I followed, I started to notice that quite a few people weren’t following back and I started to get a little miffed. I’m not talking about celebrities either major or minor (for a good take on that look here: What Twitter is For ). Some were people that I knew personally and others were businesses that I though, “Well, heck. why wouldn’t they want to follow me???”

You Can’t Take Social Media Personally

After getting a grip on myself, I started to really think about why someone doesn’t follow back and I’ve put this in a nifty web friendly scanning unordered list for your viewing pleasure & enlightenment.

• They Don’t Use Twitter The Way I Do
  Believe it or not, a lot of people use social media for *gasp* socializing with their friends. Even business accounts are going to skew towards friends & associated because they’re run by real people. They’re not so much interested in links or (as in my case) the occasional anonymous dry sarcastic comment. They’re communicating with their real life circle and that’s a good thing.
• I’m Not Offering Anything of Value
  My Twitter account is a mix of professional and personal items and leans heavily in the personal direction because I feel that blatant self-promotion makes me look sleazy. No offense to anyone who blatantly self-promotes; it’s just not encoded in my DNA. Still, posting design related items doesn’t always attract local business people because they’re worried about other things… like staying in business.

  Along the same lines, I don’t follow everyone back immediately. I only reciprocate after I look at their profile & recent tweets and decide that they’ve got something I’m interested in. I also am not prone to follow someone if I’ve already got an expert in their field in my list. For instance: I’ve got my goto guys for SEO already.

• I Haven’t Engaged Enough (or at all)
  Guilty as charged. I see a lot everyday that I think is cool or interesting. A Retweet isn’t always enough. I’ll be making a effort to engage more beyond my normal circle.
• I Haven’t Shown Up On Their Radar
  Many Twitter users follow thousands of people. I don’t know how they keep track of it all. Unless you’re making a regular effort, you’re going to miss some people.

In Closing

Getting upset about the whole who-follows-me-and-who-doesn’t social media game is a lot like cursing the darkness; the darkness doesn’t care. The best thing to do is be yourself and try to be interesting. All the cool tools & tricks in the universe won’t gather you anything of value if you’re not trying to do those two things first.

Why?

Once customers come in your shop, would you send them down to the coffee shop (where all their friends hang out) just to sign up for your mailing list?

Heck no.

So, now that they’re on your website, why would you make it easy for them to go to Facebook where there are a thousand other distractions?

Once they visit your site, you’ve got their attention. Do something quick or you’ll lose it.

I’ve noticed several inconsistencies in the way businesses are using Facebook and I think a lot of it comes from not really understanding the different types of Facebook accounts/pages and how they work. If you get caught doing the wrong thing, Facebook can delete all of your accounts and that would mean the loss of a lot of hard work & followers. So, it pays to do a little research before you jump in.

Types of Facebook Pages

1. Personal Account
   This is the account that any *person* can have when they go to Facebook and sign up. I’m emphasizing *person* because it’s very important to understand that these are for individuals and not groups/businesses.
2. Page
   This is the official representation of a business on Facebook . You must be an authorized representative of the business in order to create one of these.
3. Group
   This has some important differences from The Page, but the main thing is that you need not be an official representative of a business/group to create one of these.

Well, That’s about as clear as mud…

Yeah, I know. It’s confusing. The best way that I know to explain it is to tell a story about a familiar character.

Jethro Bodine moves with his uncle’s family from the Ozarks to Beverly Hills. In this strange & wonderful new land, Jethro makes a lot of new friends, but he finds himself missing the friends and family that he left back home. One of his new California friends (Miss Jane) suggests to Jethro that he join Facebook to keep in touch with them. This sounds like a great idea, so he signs up for a Facebook Personal Account. Unfortunately, no one from back home has indoor plumbing much less a computer with an internet connection, so Jethro’s friend list mainly consists of his really weird Hollywood friends and all of the animals that his cousin Ellie May has created accounts for.

Eventually, Jethro’s Uncle Jed gets tired of seeing him sitting around watching TV while eating cereal out of a mixing bowl and tells him that he needs to go out and get a career. He tries a lot of different jobs (bookkeeper, brain surgeon, street car conductor…), but settles on the role of Hollywood Producer. None of the big studios will hire him, so he starts his own production company and names it JBP Studios. Uncle Jed gives him a little cash for marketing, so Jethro creates a Facebook Page for his studio & put the money in ads on Facebook. He also tells his weird Hollywood friends about the page and they all become fans. Their friends see that they’ve become fans and they join up as well. Pretty soon Jethro has the most fans of any business on Facebook before he’s even released a single movie.

After many months of hard work, JBP Studios releases their first movie titled, The Double-Naught Spy and despite the massive push on Twitter, it’s a tremendous failure. It has such abysmal numbers on the first weekend that the distribution company decides to immediately pull it in hopes that the general public will not hear the horrendous reviews and buy it on DVD because the cover looks cool. However, no one buys the DVDs and the movie is forgotten until several years later when a programming director for TNT uses it to fill gaps in programming for five nights in a row.

Then, something odd happens.

A young man in Akron, Ohio sees The Double-Naught Spy on the last night of the TNT run, and is immediately inspired by it. He finds a copy of the DVD in the discount bin at Wal-Mart and begins organizing viewing parties for all of his friends. One of them starts a Facebook Group called Fans of the Double-Naught Spy and word of the movie goes international. Soon, it becomes a cult classic and Jethro returns to the Ozarks as a hero. Parades are held, keys to the city are presented, and Jethro retires on the income from the licensing rights for Double-Naught action figures, lunch boxes & t-shirts.

Summary

If you managed to make it this far, then bravo for you.  Here’s what you need to remember:

1. Facebook Personal Account – Individual People

2. Facebook Page  – Official Business

3. Facebook Group – Unofficial Representation

4. Never under estimate the power of TNT reruns.

More Resources

Facebook Advertising: Pages

Facebook Business Accounts

140 Characters is just too short a space to recommend people to follow on Twitter. So, Here are my #FollowFriday recommendations. This isn’t a comprehensive list & I’ll try to do this on a regular basis.

• @JimWare – “Night editor and crime team leader at StarNewsOnline.com and the StarNews newspaper”
  I try to follow a lot of news folks (both print & Broadcast). Jim is a genuinely nice guy and always a pleasure to talk with.
• @WilliamLang – “25 year old entrepreneur. // SEO/Social Media Enthusiast. // Larry David Imitator.”
  William is a sharp young man and someone to keep an eye on (but in a good way).
• @CosmicKitchen – “Casual Breakfast/Lunch/Dinner Restaurant headed by a Culinary Institute of America Graduate (910) 792-6720″
  Kristin runs the Twitter account for Chris’ Cosmic Kitchen. If you’re a business wanting to use Twitter, look at her tweets and take notes.
• @gwensutton – “Jazz Loving, Hard Working, Woman!”
  If you’re interested in real people that are worth getting to know, this wonderful lady is a must to follow. (She’s a pretty good shutter bug too)
• @DeniseMerritt – “QuickBooks expert, bookkeeper, wife, mom to 2 daughters, scrapbooker, quilter, lover of Jesus, Third Day and Eagles music fan, love 24 and Kay Arthur Precepts.”
  QuickBooks expert, but also another good real person to follow.
• @scottpiner – “Photographer”
  Excellent, Excellent photographer – and a new dad.
• @NatashaNDavis – “Nonprofit updates, gardening, gluten free lifestyle, and Cape Fear area events and news”
  Community minded Tweets (plus, anyone that works with non-profits is more than ok in my book.)
• @CoachReggie – “ActionCOACH Business Coach, OU Sooner Fan, Husband, Daddy, Christian, Business Educator, Mentor, Speaker, Butt Kicker of Small Biz Owners, Social Media Junkie”
  Man, what more can I add to that bio?
• @carolynmejia – “Wife, mom, geek, and all round lover of all things good and/or funny. Media Director at The ROCK. http://rockwilmington.com”
  ‘Followed her on Twitter, met her in person and discovered that we knew each other from more than 20 years ago at a church in Raleigh. (ain’t life funny that way?)

Congrats to all the guys at StarNewsOnline.com! The MyReporter.com website recently won the Citizen Media Award in the Knight-Batten Awards for Innovations in Journalism.

And what can you take away from this? A little quote from their announcement says it all…

“Executive Editor Robyn Tomlin had noticed editors and reporters were connecting with readers on Twitter and other social networking sites, and she saw that readers appreciated the personal connection to people who reported the news.”**

Using social media isn’t about just blatantly promoting yourself. Tootin’ your own horn a bit is ok, but if you’re not making personal connections then you’re probably not going to get a whole lot out of it. In fact, if all you do is toot away, you’re probably going to come off doing a good bit of damage.

link: MyReporter.com wins national media award

** BTW, local TV stations should take note. Simply tweeting teases like you’re tossing to break isn’t going to cut it.

Kevin Spacey explains Twitter to David Letterman.

Oh, look. I can upload an avatar! I gotta do that *now*.

Go see it here: http://www.fallon.com/skimmer

We take clean drinking water for granted. We go to the sink, fill up a cup and off we go, but 1.1 billion people in the world don’t have access to clean, safe drinking water.

This Thursday night, the social media types in Wilmington will be gathering for the Wilmington Twestival to raise money for charity:water. Charity:Water is a non-profit organization dedicated to bringing clean water to developing nations where unsafe water and lack of basic sanitation cause 80% of all sickness and disease.

One of my favorite clients, Indo Jax Surf School, has generously donated a week long group surf lesson to be raffled off. There will be other prizes, drinks, food and the chance to meet a lot of local people that you may only know by their screen names & avatars. Plus, you’ll literally be saving lives.

Tickets are $15 online & you can get them at http://www.amiando.com/twestivalwilmington.html.

Credit goes to Ty Downing of Perspective Internet Marketing for kicking this event off locally at well as the Star News and a whole slew of volunteers & local businesses that are donating their time and resources.

What: Wilmington Twestival
Where: Port City Pub – Wilmington, NC
When: February 12, 2009 – 6:00 PM
Why: Charity:Water

Congratulations to client Abba First Mortgage for breaking the top 10 in number of mortgage applications submitted by a XSites customer.

Abba First is also now on Twitter where they can be followed for mortgage related news.

Now, I’ve just got to get that twitter feed on their blog…