Posts tagged dan zarrella

The Social Media Marketing Book is an excellent read for those who have to start their work with social media. But before reading, here are some tips to make it more valuable and easy to follow up:

1. First steps

Before even starting to read the book, there are a few things that Zarrella does not tell us. Either he assumes we can take care of them by ourselves or that these are not relevant for the focus he chose for the book.

1.1 Managing your passwords

This is not included in Dan Zarrella’s book and I think it is essential.

You need to learn how to manage your accounts and passwords. Over the next days, you will create from 30 to 160 (not exaggerating!) accounts in different services, like Gmail, YouTube, Gravatar, Disqus, Yahoo/Flickr, Twitter, Hootsuite, Vimeo, Facebook, LinkedIn etc etc.

Now: if you are the type of person who uses the same username and password for all services, you are exposing yourself to more security risks every time you create a new account (chances of that information leaking increase).

If you are the type who memorizes a different password for each service, your brain will explode. And if it does not, you are just wasting a lot of energy juggling passwords around. And please do not write your passcodes in a piece of paper or on a Word document called passwords.doc. You know why this is not a good way to go.

The solution is to use a password manager. This software (you can Google around for recommendations) protects your login and passwords and automatically fills up the forms, so you only have to memorize your Master Password and never worry about other login/passwords. It is excellent.

1.2 Have an initial clear view of who you are

This is a complex and long point, but the most important part is that you should know why you are starting all this. Do you simply want to manage your digital presence (what people see about you when they throw your name on a Google search)? Do you have an ongoing business that needs more clients? Are you starting something new?

The answer to this will determine what username you will choose. The avatar. The tone (not only in terms of formality but also how you present yourself: a curious learner, a precise professor, the outrageous rebel, the naked businessman). Ideally, this tone is congruent to your personality – a key in authenticity.

Please take some minutes to reflect on this, and everything else will be much more easy, fast and fun.

1.3 Improve your search skills

When exploring all this, there will be times when you will get stuck. What the hell is a permalink? How do I configure my CNAME? Can I delete that tweet?

No book will ever tell you everything. You need to learn how to search. Today (August 2010) my favorite sources for “what is this” and “how to do that” are Google, Bing, Twitter Search, YouTube, forums and friends. There are others, but these will do the trick 99% of the time.

Google and Bing – you are familiar with these. Take your time to investigate the options of “Advanced Search” and you will be surprised.

Twitter Search – I will tell two stories.

The other day, Byline (my RSS reader on the iPhone) was giving me sync errors. I was thinking “What the hell – did the new iOS4 screw up my app?”. My theory for the error was that the new software update from Apple was causing a crash on my previously installed app. If that would be the case, there would be hundreds of people complaining on Twitter. So when I searched for “byline”, there was nobody. I was sure it was a problem on my installation so I reset it and it worked fine. Should it be however a problem with the new software version, I would have to be patient and wait for a new Byline update.

Twitter can also give you solutions. When the social network Ning decided to charge for its services, lots of users were complaining. Just by keeping a constant search column on Tweetdeck, you could see the evolution in the conversations and people slowly reporting to be shifting to Buddypress.

We will explore more on Twitter search later.

YouTube – there is plenty of “how to” videos out there. Do not assume your normal Google search will list them all as well as if you would be searching on YouTube directly.

Forums – you need to find which forums talk about themes you are interested in. Use Google/Bing to search for the forums – generally, they are open for new subscribers. Create your account, read what is already written and, should your question need a new answer, just write it down.

Friends – if you do not want to bug all your friends emailing them with questions they might not be able to answer, maybe you can use Skype status. Type “anybody can recommend a designer?” on Skype status and you will be surprised by answers. You can do the same on Facebook status. It is also okay to ask such questions in mailing lists moderately.